by Jim DeFelice
No radars were active as they descended, flying toward the earth’s nap. They had more to fear from bullets than missiles— antiaircraft fire cascaded into the sky to the north and east as the Herk banked to turn southwards. Lars’s hands began to shake as the pilot continued to descend.
“Turbulence,” remarked the pilot.
Lars grunted. He tightened his grip on Herky Bird’s control yoke, trying to will his hands steady. Anyone with a rifle on the ground could hit them, even with his eyes closed.
Lars pushed his helmet to the side, trying to scratch an itch without removing it or the night goggles, which magnified the outside starlight enough so he could see. He felt his head growing woozy, and took a breath. The hum of the plane and the dampened, surreal glow of the cockpit’s instrument panel pummeled his senses, trying to convince him he was in a dream, not reality.
“We made the drop too low,” said DiRiggio.
No one answered. They hadn’t been off by that much, thought Lars, and besides, the commandos could handle it. He read their present altitude— falling through 300 feet above ground level. The terrain-following radar showed a clear, unobstructed flight path— nothing to run into.
He looked toward the FLIR screen on the left near the pilot, then jerked his head to the left to glance through the pilot’s side window. An immense fireball shot into the sky from the direction of the SAM battery that had been hit to darken the alley for their drop. The yellow-white flames turned inside out, blackness erupting from the inside as the fire burned through its fuel.
“Wow,” he heard himself say.
“Got to be the missiles frying,” said DiRiggio. “How’s that temp?” he asked the flight engineer, who was perched like a wise man in a seat directly behind the two pilots. The seat was elevated, ostensibly to give him a better view, though a few wags thought for sure the men who had designed the flight deck had been former sergeants intent on telling pilots who really ran the Air Force.
“Green,” replied Kelly, the engineer. They’d seen some spikes in the temp on two earlier in the flight, and three’s oil pressure had flickered just before the airdrop. “Gauge was flaky a second, I think. We’re fine.”
Lars managed a long, slow breath, lowering his eyes to the horizon indicator. His heart began to slow. He checked the altimeter clock again, still gathering himself, then pulled himself back up in his seat, helping the pilot with a crosswind correction as they hung tight on their course.
They were safe now, out of the radars’ detection area. A few more minutes of flying time at low altitude and they’d be free to climb— they were entering a dark zone in the Iraqi radar coverage.
The worst was over, for now at least. Granted, they had nearly three hours to kill before the extraction— and that was going to be sheer hell— but for now things were fairly easy. All they had to do now was orbit in the dead zone and wait.
“Not like flying a slick, huh?” DiRiggio said to Lars, using Herk slang for a “normal” C-130. Compared to the heavily modified Combat Talons and other special operations craft, the transport models had smooth or slick skins.
“It’s the flak vest I can’t get used to,” he said, coaxing what he hoped was a jocular note into his voice.
“Probably a good idea, though.”
“Uh-huh.”
Because the mission was classified, the crew had been told just the bare outlines, the absolute minimum they needed to do their jobs. Lars and DiRiggio knew that the Delta team was targeting a caravan of vehicles for F-111s. Lars figured that the target was a high-ranking Iraqi— possibly Saddam himself, given the location where they’d made the drop. Lars guessed that DiRiggio thought that too, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if the rest of Herky Bird’s crew had figured it out. But their code called for ignorance, and to a man they practiced it, concentrating on their job and pretending to know nothing beyond what was in front of them.
DiRiggio hit his mark and began angling into a slight turn eastward. They double-checked their indicators. They were still clean; the terrain before them empty desert. Lars listened for the transmission from Wolf that would tell them the landing team was down and in the right spot. Their MC-130E carried the latest high-tech communications gear, but radio transmissions could still be problematic, hampered by everything from low altitude to atmospheric vagaries to interference from jamming craft. In theory none of those things were supposed to matter, but somehow communications remained as much an art as a science. Lars remembered an old Philco monster radio his great-grandpa had had in his Bristol, Connecticut row house. It managed to pull in Yankee games from New York City, crystal clear, even day games— once you hit the knob right. Took a certain flick, though.
“Jerry? Three? God. God!”
Lars snapped his head toward DiRiggio, unsure whether he was worried about engine three or something else. The major’s face seemed to glow white in the dim cockpit, as if he were made of white marble instead of flesh. His eyes were round, large circles that stared at Lars, stared at him for a long moment, as if DiRiggio had woken from a dream and wondered how he’d gotten there. Then they rolled back in his head, the pilot’s body flailing against the restraints, his arms snapping taut. The plane jerked to the right so hard the control yoke pulled out of Lars’ hand.
“Somebody help me.”
Lars wasn’t sure whether the words came from DiRiggio or himself. He grabbed at the controls desperately, struggling to right the Hercules as its right wing pitched toward the ground barely fifty feet away.
CHAPTER 30
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2003
Skull brought the Hog level at just under a hundred feet, not sure exactly where he was and half-suspecting that he was going to slam into a hill any second. He stepped through the last of the blurring tracers and found himself in the open air, though dangerously low. The plane quickly responded as he pulled back on the stick, plucking its nose upwards toward the sky. If he’d been hit— and surely the odds had favored it— the Hog had shrugged it off. The plane responded crisply to his control inputs.
Not wanting to believe his luck, he hesitated before checking the row of warning lights on the dash.
Clean and green.
What had the rattle been? Shock waves from the exploding shells? Or was he flying with holes in his sides?
Knowlington craned his neck around, checking the exterior of the plane through the Perspex. It was too dark to see, of course, but he had to look, just as he had to recheck his indicators once more, working through them slowly.
If anything, he had a bit more fuel than the preflight calculations had predicted.
He’d always been good. But he hadn’t been this lucky since the old days— the really old days, back in the Thud.
“Devil Two to Devil One. I’m having trouble locating you, Boss,” said A-Bomb.
“One,” said Skull, keying his mike to let A-Bomb use the radio signal as a primitive direction-finding beacon. In the meantime, he got out his small flashlight and pulled the paper map off his flight board, shaking it out with his left hand as he got his bearings with the help of the plane’s nav gear. He’d flown slightly to the northwest of where they had planned, but was more or less in the right place.
He saw A-Bomb before the pilot saw him— bearing straight at him from the east, less than a mile away.
“A-Bomb, you’re on me,” he said, tucking his wing in an evasive and hopefully attention-getting roll. “Time for glasses,” he added as he recovered.
“What I need is one of those NOD doohickeys,” complained A-Bomb. “Night vision. What I’m talking about.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t traded for one yet,” said Knowlington. While he was still a bit put off by some of A-Bomb’s personal habits— not to mention the music he played— Skull had come to respect O’Rourke and his skills. A-Bomb goofed around a lot, except when the shit started to fly; then he was the sort of no-nonsense, can-do pilot Knowlington wanted watching
his six.
“I almost had one off these Green Beret dudes at Al Jouf,” replied A-Bomb. “Went for a FAV instead.”
“A FAV being what, exactly?”
“Fast Attack Out-of-my-way Vee-hicle,” said A-Bomb. “The ‘O’ is silent. Your basic dune buggy.”
“You strap it to your wing?”
“Geez, Colonel, why didn’t I think of that?”
“That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Knowlington. He leaned the Hog into a wide bank, now precisely on the course they had laid out before the mission. They were approximately twelve miles from Kajuk, south of a highway that ran west to east over mostly empty scrubland. They were far enough away not to attract attention, but close enough to ride in to the rescue if things went sour. He dialed in Wolf and asked for an update.
The F-111 had done its job well, taking out one of the SAMs. There was still some doubt as to whether the missiles had been SA-11s or not; their radars had never been activated. A pair of Tornadoes had been tasked to sit on the remaining sites in case they flickered to life. While the sites would present a danger to the F-111 tasked with actually nailing Saddam, Wong had felt that taking out all of the SAMs would have caused the dictator to go elsewhere.
Which he might just do anyway, Skull realized. But you took your shots where you found them.
Skull advised Wolf that he and his wingman would orbit for another forty-five minutes, then go and tank as the other two A-10As came north.
“Wong ought to be finding Dixon right about now,” said A-Bomb after the exchange with the command ship was finished.
Skull shrugged to himself, not sure what to say. He hoped O’Rourke was right, but knew better than to be so wildly optimistic.
He should have pulled strings and insisted on the original plan. He cursed himself for not being more forceful.
Honestly, though— what more could he have done?
If anyone could find Dixon, it was Wong. But damn it— they should have launched a full-blown SAR mission. The hell with Saddam— any American was worth twenty, a hundred dictators.
Not true, not even close. And he’d done the best he could as far as getting the mission authorized. This was a lousy compromise, but if Wong brought something harder home than a long-shot hunch, they’d be back.
Skull checked his instruments as he continued southward, easing off on the throttle to conserve fuel. The Maverick IR head painted the terrain empty and lonely in his screen, a green-hued plain of desolation.
“Turning,” he said, cueing A-Bomb as he began a fresh bank.
There was no way to do this part of the mission comfortably. You flew and you waited, you flew and you waited. It was worse than the interminable ferry flight he’d made from the States to the Gulf, surrounded by darkness, waiting for something to happen, partly wishing it would and partly hoping it wouldn’t. Skull tried not to let his mind wander, concentrating on his airplane as he came back north, nudging the Maverick viewer around in what he knew was a fruitless attempt at widening the area he could see.
At least there was no temptation to drink.
Maybe he was over that now. Maybe getting back into the adrenaline rush of combat was the shock therapy he’d needed.
The idea of bourbon in his mouth seemed mildly nauseating.
“Turning,” he told A-Bomb again, reaching the northern end of their racetrack pattern. The Hog seemed to anticipate him, pushing her wings down and gliding through the smooth bank as if she were showing off for the crowd at a Sunday afternoon air show. The plane looked ugly— hell, it didn’t look like even belonged in the sky. But sitting in her cockpit putting her through her paces, it was hard to imagine a prettier aircraft. She went where her pilot wanted; she could walk through a standing wall of triple-A; she could carry a heavier bomb load than most World War II bombers. Every plane should be so ugly.
Skull checked his watch. They had a half-hour to go.
Waiting sucked.
Wong had a pair of fancy binoculars that let him see heat sources, basically hand-held IR. Still, finding the kid was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. The search area was more than a mile from the point where the two Delta boys were going to watch the highway for Saddam or Strawman, as everyone on the mission now referred to him.
Boys. Kid. Dixon was twenty-three. Old enough to fly a Hog well enough to nail a helicopter on the first day of the air war, no mean feat.
But still a kid.
Skull had nailed three MiGs and hit the silk once by the time he was twenty-three. He’d seen two of his close friends go down, never to come back.
Had his commanders thought of him the same way?
“Vulture Three, Vulture Three,” said a distant voice in the faint crackle of Knowlington’s radio.
At first he thought it was a transmission from a flight overriding their frequency. Then Skull realized it was a distress call on Guard, the emergency band.
“Vulture Three,” said the voice again. Static crashed over it like an ocean wave.
Was he identifying himself or talking to another airplane?
“Any allied airplane, please respond,” said the voice as the channel cleared. “Vulture Three, requesting assistance from any allied plane.”
“Vulture Three, this is Devil leader. What is your location?” answered Skull.
The response was garbled, but Knowlington heard coordinates approximately ten miles directly west of their position. His head turned that way, as if he might catch a glimpse of the stricken plane.
There were no other allied planes in the area. Detouring his orbit would add a little more than a minute to his response time back to the ground team.
“A-Bomb, you catch that?”
“Catch what?”
“The transmission on Guard,” said Knowlington.
“Negative.”
“Not at all?”
“Nothing but static.”
“Hang with me,” he told his wingman. “We’re going west. Come to 255 on my signal.”
“On your back,” said A-Bomb.
Skull tried hailing Vulture Three again before telling Wolf what was up. The controller acknowledged, volunteering to alert the AWACS control plane in the area and hurry up the two Devil flight Hogs that were tanking.
It was only after he snapped the mike off and found his new course that Skull realized Vulture Three was the call sign of one of the buddies he’d lost in Vietnam.
PART TWO
VULTURE DEATH
CHAPTER 31
IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2030
Wong thumbed the contrast wheel at the top left of the AN/PAS-7 thermal viewer, dulling the glow of the approaching vehicle’s engine. It was more than a mile away, just turning north from the dogleg that would finally bring it into view.
There were two people in the front seat of the sedan. From his vantage twenty yards from the highway it was difficult to tell whether the men were soldiers, though that seemed obvious— the car was following a military transport, and besides, who else would be driving at night in Iraq? He could draw no other conclusions, however; a civilian vehicle might be part of Saddam’s advance party or it might not.
“Truck a problem?” asked Salt, lying next to him.
“Negative,” said Wong. “The Zil-130 6x6 is empty except for its driver. The sedan has two passengers, neither of whom would appear to be our target.”
Salt hastily set down the M82A1 Light Fifty sniper rifle. The long-barreled heavy rifle fired the same cartridges as the Browning fifty caliber machine-gun; equipped with armor-piercing shells, it could get through an armored car at roughly 1,000 yards. Salt sighted toward a slight bend that brought the road roughly three hundred and fifty yards away from their position.
“What kind of car?” Salt asked.
“I am not acquainted with the model.”
“You don’t know what kind of car it is?” asked Davis, hunkered on the other side.
“I am an expert on
weapons, not automobiles,” said Wong.
“You sure it ain’t a Mercedes?”
“It is not a Mercedes, nor a station wagon,” said Wong. “Please keep your voice down.”
“It’s a piece of shit Jap car,” Salt told the other sergeant as it came in view of the starscope on his Barrett sniper rifle. “I could nail it.”
“The provenance of the sedan is irrelevant,” said Wong. “They are not our target vehicles. Saddam would not be traveling alone, and in any event, he is not due until midnight.”
“Nothin’ says he can’t be fuckin’ early,” said Salt.
The two vehicles continued up the highway toward Kajuk. Wong scanned behind them to make sure they were alone, then turned the infra-red viewer northwards, scanning past the intersection with the main highway, then up the road towards the nubby hill that guarded the turnoff to Kajuk. A T-72 tank sat in a shallow depression just to the west of the intersection; there were at least a half-dozen soldiers scattered there. Wong made out a small observation post on the nearby hill manned by two men. A second post, this with three or four soldiers, a Jeep-like vehicle and an armored car or personnel carrier, sat in the middle of the road at the very western edge of the hill, commanding a curve in the highway.
The post on the hill presented them with an immediate problem. If the soldiers there were equipped with the proper night vision equipment mining the road would be difficult. Still, doing so was important— if the bombers were late or there was confusion about the target, cratering the roadway would increase the chances of killing Saddam.