by Jim DeFelice
And now his wingman had severe engine trouble, bad enough to knock him out of the game.
Hell of a time. They were less than five minutes away from their IP, the initial point or starting line for their bomb tossing.
He glanced at his weapons system operator next to him before contacting the ABCCC plane coordinating the mission. Mo had his head pressed to the cowling around the radar unit, seemingly oblivious to everything except the screen a few inches from his eyes. Two Paveway II two-thousand pound bombs were sitting on the wings waiting to be launched; a Pave Tack targeting set in the belly of the plane was even now hunting down their target. The pod head rotated as the turret flexed, the forward-looking infrared radar examining the terrain ahead.
“Wolf, this is Bad Boy leader,” said Wick, contacting the command plane. “I’ve just sent Two home. He’s limping but he thinks he’ll make it.”
“Wolf acknowledges. We heard that.” The controller was an Air Force Spec Ops captain sitting in the back of a specially equipped C-130 flying just over the Saudi-Iraq border. He was part communicator, part coach, part mother hen for the complicated mission. “We’d like you to continue into target as planned.”
That answered that question. Not that he expected anything different.
“Bad Boy acknowledges.”
He flipped the radio to its interphone circuit, allowing him to speak to Mo. “Sixty seconds.”
His bombardier grunted. Mo didn’t like to talk when he was working.
“We have the SA-11s. They’ll have to get someone else on the SA-9s.”
“Uhgg”
“You comfortable with a ramp toss?”
“Uhgg.”
“Green Bay ever going to win the Super Bowl?”
“Uhgg.”
“Your mother a whore?”
“Uhgg.”
Wick turned his full attention back to the plane, confident that they were going to get a good splash. Mo had everything under control.
CHAPTER 25
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
1958
Flying at fifty feet above ground level, the hairs on your forearms and wrists became small pieces of ice, sticking into your skin. Your knees locked, the joints pinched by a mass of cold iron. The fabric of your flightsuit got heavier and heavier, weighted by a fog of sweat and adrenaline. And still you flew faster, your left hand resting on the throttle, as if its mere presence there might coax a few more ounces of thrust from the turbofans nailed to your spine. You held the plane’s stick firmly in your right hand, your consciousness centered in that the grip. Your eyes ran ahead, not so much seeing as absorbing the sky and ground, bleeding into its shapes and shadows. You were the plane and you were the pilot and you were the space where you were flying. And you knew that at any second if you lost just a fraction of your concentration, if you flicked your wrist the wrong way at the wrong moment, you’d pile into the earth.
Something twitched; Skull nudged left, lifting the Hog to stay with the contour of the land. Something else twitched and he took his turn right, precisely on his mark, thirty seconds from the landing zone. The village lay further northeast, to his right as he flew; the highway where Saddam would be hit sat further to the east.
And the SA-11s were dead ahead. There was a battery of the advanced Soviet-made missiles right where Wong said it would be. He could actually see the shadows without using the Maverick’s nine-inch targeting screen.
The Iraqi radars were inactive. As long as they stayed at fifty feet, however, the Hogs would be obscured in the ground clutter, even if it turned on. The angle of the radar waves and the reflections off the earth surface made it impossible for the targeting devices to see them.
Or rather, difficult; Wong had warned that there was a theoretical possibility that the Russian-made radars could be arranged in a way to guard against exactly this type of attack.
He pushed the seeker head around, scanning the scraggly ground beyond the SAM site. It wasn’t Iowa loam, but the land below was close enough to the Euphrates for farming, or so he’d been told. In any event, it wasn’t sandy desert; more like hard-packed dirt interrupted by rocks and occasional vegetation. The hill where Wong believed Dixon was holed up was on his right; Skull avoided the temptation to scan in that direction, concentrating on his job, which was to his left.
“Wolf to Devil Leader. One, we have a wrinkle.”
“One. Go ahead Wolf,” he snapped.
“Bad Boy Two is scratched. Bad Boy One has prime target. Can you mop up?”
The controller was asking them to strike the SA-9 site immediately south of the SA-11 the Aardvark targeted. The short-range heat-seeking SAMs could target the Herk when it made the pickup a few hours from now. Hitting them would necessitate quick action— Skull was less than three miles from the target, closing at roughly four hundred knots. Minimum range was around 3,000 feet, maybe twenty seconds from now.
Not a problem.
“One.” He nudged his stick slightly, pushing the targeting cursor at the same time to slide the Mav’s IR head over in the direction of the Iraqi missile launcher, which lay to the west of the SA-11 due west of Kajuk.
He started to tell A-Bomb about the change in plans, but O’Rourke cut him off.
“Two, yeah, I got ya, Chief. I’m looking at the LZ.”
Knowlington took one last read on the altimeter— sixty feet above ground— then turned his eyes to the blur of the Maverick screen, pushing the targeting cursor into the thick hull of the lightly armored vehicle where the missiles were mounted. The day’s sun had left the truck’s metal skin hot, making for a nice, fat blob in the monitor. He locked the target, then poked his nose up slightly, a bit over-anxious about letting go of the missile so close to the ground.
And then he launched.
If he told A-Bomb he had fired— and most likely he did, because he had intended to— he couldn’t remember later. Nor could he have detailed exactly how he dialed the cursor for the next AGM as a second SA-9 launcher— unbriefed— appeared in the screen roughly seventy yards to the north. But he had a good memory of pressing the trigger, and an even better memory of what happened next— the air in front of him turned into a wall of red streaks.
Flak, said a voice that belonged neither to A-Bomb nor to Skull. It came from behind an iron wall in a F-4 Phantom twenty years in the past, his old “bear” growling out a warning on a mission long since forgotten.
Now as then, Skull ignored the warning, sticking to his game plan. He tacked to the left, right through the exploding shells, swinging around as he scanned the target site with his AGM-65G. He had nothing but blurs— then his eyes caught a leaping tongue of flame on the ground, the result of a large Paveway series laser-guided missile launched from the F-111 striking the SA-11 launcher. Another roman candle erupted a half-second later— probably the van that provided targeting data. Then everything was red and white.
Skull whacked the Hog hard to left, then hit the transmit button.
“Door is Open,” he said over the long-range frequency, alerting Wolf that the SAMs had been knocked out.
As he lifted his finger, something rapped his right wingtip so hard it nearly rolled the plane.
CHAPTER 26
IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2000
The village was smaller than Dixon had imagined, laid out along one main road that had been cut into the saddle of three hills. The road jagged away from a sharp rock outcropping at the entrance; by climbing the rock Dixon had been able to scout the town before going in.
A mosque sat at the center, elevated on a narrow plain in front of one of the hills; the other buildings were small, mostly made of concrete or something similar, their sides shadows in the dim evening light. Industrial buildings, either warehouses or factories, were wedged into the slope to his right; he couldn’t see much of them from the rocks.
Worried about being seen, he moved slower than a turtle across the sloping scrubland beh
ind the village. The boy seemed caught up in the game his rescuer was playing; he moved behind him like a shadow, ducking when Dixon ducked, rising when Dixon rose. He made no sign that he knew the village. They huddled together as the sun set, waiting for the long shadows to make it easier to move. But the night wasn’t nearly as dark as Dixon wanted. Or perhaps he was just getting more paranoid.
They moved ever more slowly, stopping any time there was a sound or odd shadow ahead. They drew a semi-circle around the village without seeing anything remotely resembling a store. At three spots along the street clusters of men stood around vehicles; otherwise there was no sign of life. They were too far away to see for certain whether the men were soldiers or not. The vehicles they stood around seemed to be civilian, but Dixon knew that meant nothing.
Gradually, he and the boy worked back around the hillside, inching closer to a group of houses that lay below the rock he’d climbed earlier. Finally, they came to a flat, open space less than twenty yards behind three small buildings. A faint light shone through one of the windows of the house on the left. Dixon decided to send Budge there to ask for some food.
He mimed it out for the kid, who nodded.
“You really understand, Budge?”
The boy nodded again. “Budge,” he said.
Dixon patted his shoulder. He considered simply waiting a few more hours and break in, steal what they needed. But something inside him was uncomfortable with that— as if he truly were back in Iowa, as if this weren’t a matter of life and death.
“Yeah, all right,” he told the kid. “Go for it.”
A rattle echoed off the hills, the sound of a rattlesnake about to strike. Dixon dove forward, grabbing the boy as a bomb hit somewhere to the northwest, not terribly far from the hill. A second explosion followed, then the sky behind them turned red, fiery hands waving across the horizon. Anti-aircraft rumbled, tracers arcing into the sky overhead. The closest gun was a half-mile away; the rest were scattered around in a vast semi-circle that seemed to form a fist around them.
“This way,” he told Budge, jumping back to his feet. “This way.”
Dixon picked the boy up under his arm, hauling him along as he ran up the slope to the rock, hoping he might see what was going on from there. The ground shook like the floor of an old auditorium where a rap group played. Dixon ran as fast as he could manage, clutching the kid and the guns to him, stumbling as much as climbing.
The thunder of the flak guns stopped. A truck or some other vehicle started its engine in the distance, but otherwise everything was quiet. The sky beyond the village to the northwest was red; whatever the American bombers had hit was on fire.
When Dixon reached the rock he hoisted Budge up first, then clambered behind him. But the topography made it impossible to get a clear view; whatever had been hit lay beyond or on the side of the short hill opposite the road they’d walked down. Dixon faced it, trying to orient himself north-to-south; it seemed the target lay a mile or more north of the highway, commanding an open plain just before the hills.
Probably another Scud launching site.
If that was true, it was possible it had been pointed out by a Delta team. They’d be around somewhere, maybe waiting for pickup.
Go in that direction and see what was going on? He could skirt the house by walking around the slope, get down to the highway and walk along it. He could go to the spot where the Black Hawk had appeared last night— it was an easy place for a pickup.
The Iraqis might have it guarded.
Scout it first.
If not there, where? Back to the Cornfield? The kid would never be able to walk that far without food.
Maybe it better to sneak back to the village, go ahead and get some food and water. The attack might divert attention for a while.
Or it might make the villagers doubly suspicious.
Dixon looked at the boy, trembling on the ground, curled around his leg. Dixon saw a shadow on his pants and realized the child had pissed himself.
“Hey, it’s okay, buddy,” he told him, pulling him up. “Happens to the best of us.”
His father used to tell him that, didn’t he? When he was three or four?
Dixon couldn’t really remember much his father had told him. It didn’t matter, one way or another.
“It’s okay, Budge, come on.” He stood the kid up. “Let’s go see what all this fuss is about, okay? We’ll move around to the other side of this hill and see what we can see. We’ll get something to eat later. Moving’s better than standing still. Remember that.”
He repeated the advice, as if he expected Budge to take it to heart.
CHAPTER 27
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2002
A-Bomb’s stomach twitched. It wasn’t hunger— Skull had twisted his plane directly into a spewing fountain of yellow lava, seemingly oblivious of the ZSU-23 anti-aircraft guns even though A-Bomb had broadcast two warnings about them.
O’Rourke cursed, leaning against his restraints as the cascading sparks enveloped the lead plane. At the same time, he nudged the aiming cursor of his first Maverick toward the bank of ZSU-23s, the image jumping around and refusing to lock on target. It took so long that before he finally nailed the cursor the air around him had begun to bubble with the hot steam of exploding 23 mm shells. As the Maverick dropped off her rail, A-Bomb tapped his throttle for luck and yanked the Hog into a tight dip that would take him to the west and out of the Zeus’s line of fire.
Had to give it to the Iraqis— they had lined the stinking flak guns up damn good. And they had a million of them here, more than last night, or so it seemed.
Tracers arced over his left wing as he pushed the Hog into its bank. He felt the plane rumble as he flipped the wings hard the other way, trying to dart north into a piece of open air. The violent maneuver tugged the hell out of ailerons, not to mention the wings and the rest of the plane, but the Hog didn’t seem to mind, not even bothering to groan as her pilot shoved her over into a roll, gamely holding her rudder straight despite the violent g forces and exploding artillery fire. Finally clear, A-Bomb leveled out, running due west as briefed, his eyes hunting for Knowlington.
His stomach twitched again. Devil One ought to be right in front of him, but it wasn’t.
CHAPTER 28
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2002
Captain Wong stood at the edge of the MC-130 ramp, waiting in front of the open doorway. He had his arms linked with the two Delta troopers who were jumping with him, not wanting to take even the slightest chance of mistiming the jump. The combat transport dipped suddenly, turning and rising so sharply that the sergeant on his right slipped toward the opening. Wong tightened his arm, pulling the man back.
“Not yet,” he said, though it was unlikely the sergeant could hear him.
Red flashes began sifting through the sky behind the plane, followed by violent greenish-yellow sprays.
Good, thought Wong.
In the next second, the jump light flickered and Wong stepped forward into the rushing air. He spread his arms and in the same instant, the ripcord pulled. The chute of his low-altitude rig popped open as Wong pushed his arms back into his chest. They’d gone out below five hundred feet, even lower than planned— Wong barely got himself situated when his rucksack hit the dirt behind him. He got his legs ready, the ground coming up hard; as he hit the ground he rolled to his right, turning his body into a shock absorber. He sprang up, undoing the harness that had held his rucksack below him on the jump. As he furled his chute, he noted a group of convenient rocks; he was able to stow the darkly colored chute beneath one of them.
The two troopers came down within a few yards of him. They gathered their chutes silently, shouldering their gear and then joining Wong near the rocks to hide their chutes as he checked their location on his GPS.
They had landed ten feet off the mark. The inaccuracy irked Wong, but was within the acceptable margin of err
or for the mission.
“I’m jumping at 32,000 feet from now on,” grouched Salt. “We couldn’t have been over a hundred fuckin’ feet. Fuckin’ pilot shoulda warned us.”
“I believe we were lower than planned,” agreed Wong. “But nonetheless we were on target. Your knee?”
“Ain’t nothing,” said the sergeant. “I ain’t no fuckin’ pussy.”
“Wrap it as a precaution,” said Wong. He reached into his belt and removed a piece of ace bandage he kept handy for precisely such contingencies. Salt frowned but took the bandage, diligently winding it around his knee. He continued cursing, apparently unable to go more than thirty seconds without using at least one expletive.
In the meantime, Davis unfolded his AN-PRC-119 and its keyboard to transmit a short, coded message indicating that they were on the ground in the proper location. Though bulky, the unit ensured that the transmission could not be intercepted and give their presence away.
Transmission sent, the sergeant repacked his equipment. As he shouldered his rucksack, the earth shook with a violent explosion, undoubtedly a fresh secondary from the attack that had been launched as the Hercules approached the drop point. A gush of red lit the sky to the northwest, throwing a pinkish shadow in the direction of the hills surrounding Kajuk, which lay to its right. Both Delta troopers turned toward it.
“Sergeants, no one admires a good explosion more than I, but our task lies this way,” said Wong, pointing to the east. “And I would prefer to reach the highway before the trucks.”
“What trucks?” asked Davis.
“You’ll hear them presently,” said Wong, starting off.
CHAPTER 29
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2003
Lars felt the Herk hop upwards as the rear door snapped shut. He hit the transmit button, radioing Wolf that their passengers had disembarked, then held on as the pilot began a sharp bank west, at the same time pushing the nose to get back close to the terrain. Besides the heavy flak vest, he was wearing a full helmet and night vision gear; their weight seemed to triple the effect of the g’s the plane pulled as it whipped through its finely choreographed paces. They had popped up to five hundred feet to make the drop, lower than they had planned when a blip of the radar detector forced a last-second deviation in the game plan. But the strike aircraft had done their job well, for the MC-130E’s sophisticated equipment gave no indication that they were being tracked.