HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series)

by Jim DeFelice

  Of the two northern points they had selected as candidates, one had no cover at all; the gully which made it an attractive location for the explosives was directly exposed to the observation post. The backup candidate had a few rocks scattered around it and was further away; it seemed the better choice.

  Wong watched the truck and the sedan pass the spot. If the highway were blocked there the rocks would make it difficult to pass but not impossible.

  At most, it would slow the convoy down by a minute as they regrouped, then treaded their way off the road.

  Blow up the other spot, however, and the vehicles would have to backtrack a good distance. They would be easy targets even for Salt with his sniper weapon.

  The truck and the sedan continued northward, passing parallel to their position and heading for the T-intersection with the main highway. The charred remains of a Scud launcher and some anti-aircraft weapons littered a bulldozed area at the side of a small rise a quarter-mile or so to the southeast of the intersection; Captains Glenon and O’Rourke, with some help from a group of F-16s, had blown them up the previous evening. The scarred skeletons of the support vehicles sat in the dim light, ghosts jeering from the sideline.

  The oversized T-underpass at the intersection itself had been obliterated during the attack, but the Iraqis had bulldozed a detour at first light. It took the vehicles a few moments to negotiate it, bouncing along the ruts before regaining the highway and continuing toward the tank checkpoint.

  Wong swung his view back to the hill. Dixon had been near the base at the far side, opposite the area where the observation post was. Wong readjusted the contrast on his viewer, panning the area. The AN/PAS-7 thermal viewer was an excellent device, remarkably rugged and, at least as night viewers went, relatively light. It looked something like an oversized camera, with a single porthole to squint through at the top of its large metal case. Its ability to read heat sources was particularly useful in picking out bodies from a distance. But it did not have the range Wong would have liked.

  Two minutes of observation by a J-STARS with its attendant armada of sensor craft would have told him everything he needed to know. Five minutes with a properly equipped drone, a real-time feed from a thermal-viewing satellite . . .

  Wong sighed. It was always a trial when your mission did not rate significantly high enough to command proper resources.

  “Captain, it’s almost time for our check-in,” said Davis.

  “Proceed.”

  The sergeant ducked back behind the small rise to activate the encrypted radio unit. Wong turned his attention to the west. He would flank the hill, approaching it in a semi-circle. It wouldn’t be necessary to walk more than a mile. There was some low cover and the moon was not bright enough to cast a strong shadow.

  “I can hit anything along that elbow,” said Salt.

  “You must establish your aiming point along the ravine,” Wong said, pointing further north. “I’ll have Sergeant Davis plant the charges there.”

  The Delta trooper took his AN/PVS-7A night goggles and scanned the terrain. They worked by magnifying available light rather than heat.

  “Damn easy to see from the post on the hill,” Salt pointed out.

  “True. But charges there will stop the convoy, especially if the detonation is keyed when the first vehicle passes. The rest will have to back up. You will have a much longer time to shoot. I believe also that you will command a wider area.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Salt, nodding. “Worth the risk.” He continued scanning the area, assessing the defenses.

  “They acknowledged. We’re set,” said Davis. He tapped his demolitions pack, a special hard-shell suitcase that contained a remote trigger and a set of small C-4 explosive packs. “We ready to plant these?”

  “Take note of the observation post on the hill before proceeding,” said Wong, pointing it out. Salt gave Davis his viewer. “An infra-red viewer may spot you on the roadway. Move along that ravine side to limit your exposure, and slide your charges out along the road.”

  “More like a ditch than a ravine,” said Salt. “I thought you said they wouldn’t have night equipment.”

  “The possibility that they do is diminishingly low,” said Wong. “But it cannot be ruled out. We are therefore better safe than sorry.”

  “Davis is better safe than sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Davis handed back the viewer and took his demo pack. “Wish me luck.”

  Salt grabbed his friend’s arm. “What about that spot there, Captain?” he said, pointing about a quarter of a mile further south than the bend he’d targeted before. “The drop off on that north side is immense. That would make them come this way, if they could get through the rocks, and I’d have a good angle on them.”

  Wong studied the spot.

  “Excellent choice,” he told the sergeant. “But in that case we will have to move further south with the designator.”

  “Fuckin’ easy,” said Salt.

  “Looks good to me,” said Davis, examining the area with his NOD. “Take us fifteen minutes.”

  “Take your time,” Wong told him.

  “We can set up the sniper rifle behind that little slope up there,” said Salt, pointing to a spot about a quarter of a mile from the road. He patted the metal stock of the gun. “Easy shot.”

  “Yes. I will meet you there,” said Wong. He turned back to scan the area to the west.

  “You’re not coming with us?” asked Davis.

  “No,” Wong told him. “In the interval, I will am going to scout the hill to our north.”

  “What?” said Salt.

  “It has to do with the contingency of our mission that I referred to earlier.”

  “No fuckin’ offense, Captain,” said Salt, “but could you just talk fuckin’ English.”

  “He’s saying this is the need-to-know shit,” said Davis.

  “Precisely,” said Wong.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do if you don’t come back?”

  “You are to carry on with your mission. Be sure to identify the vehicle for the bomber before you fire. Exit precisely as planned if I’m not here.”

  “We’re not fucking leaving you,” said Salt.

  “Hey, Captain. Seriously, what’s the story here?” said Davis. “We’re about two hundred miles deep in Iraq. You got to trust us.”

  “I do trust you,” said Wong. “I trust you implicitly. That is irrelevant.”

  “Fuck,” said Salt.

  “Carry on with your mission. You should have approximately three hours before Strawman arrives.”

  “If he arrives,” said Davis.

  “I believe he shall.”

  “We ain’t fuckin’ leaving you,” said Salt.

  Wong sighed. This was exactly the situation he had sought to avoid.

  “I assure you, Sergeant, my assignment is ancillary to the main mission. And to put it bluntly, Sergeant, I am expendable. If all goes well, I will meet you back here in precisely one hundred and thirty minutes. If it does not, you will carry on without me. Please, follow the plan and my orders to you now.”

  “God damn Air Force assholes,” muttered Salt.

  Wong checked his MP-5, then looked back up into Davis’s face. The sergeant seemed to be trying to find the words to say something.

  Wong shook his head. Davis finally shrugged and scooped up the explosives kit. Wong made sure his extra clips were easily accessible, then turned to start the long loop around the Iraqi positions.

  He’d taken only two steps when he heard a fresh set of vehicles approaching from the distance. He froze, turning his head toward the sound, holding his breath as the faint rumble grew slowly but steadily. There were at least four or five vehicles approaching, maybe more. Even before he began trotting toward the others with his IR viewer in his hand, he knew one of them would be a station wagon painted with the red crescent.

  CHAPTER 32

  OVER IRAQ

  27 JANUARY 1991

  2030 />
  Lars screamed as he pulled against the controls of the MC-130, pitting his muscles not just against DiRiggio’s but against gravity. The big plane danced on her wing, slicing a diagonal in the sky, losing altitude even as he managed to keep her nose pointing upwards. She was ready to roll— she wanted to roll— and as he struggled Lars considered just letting her, hoping against hope that there would somehow be enough room to get her back level. But even if he’d been twenty thousand feet higher, there was no guarantee he’d recover from such a violent invert, or even that the wings and control surfaces would survive intact. It was him and it was gravity; the plane was caught in the middle, skittering just above the cold sand.

  Lars’s arms and chest disintegrated, his legs melting to flaccid bands of flesh. He threw his right arm literally around the control column, and with his left punched DiRiggio. He hit him as hard as he could, once, twice, then felt the yoke slam back hard against his jaw. With his knees and elbows and chin he smothered the controls, urging the plane upright, willing it into something approaching stable flight. The ground loomed, an optically-enhanced blur of oblivion. A stall warning sounded. A million thoughts occurred to him, a checklist of possible evasive action; he even considered popping the landing gear and wheeling in. But all he did was hold on, riding it out like a surfer caught in a monster tsunami.

  The surfer would have swamped. The Herk somehow managed to level off inches from the gritty dirt. A moment later they began to climb.

  “All right,” he said over the interphone circuit, which connected to the others in the plane. “All right. All right.”

  He repeated the words several more times. Kelly, the flight engineer reached forward from his station and held him on the shoulder.

  “The engines, do I have the engines?” Lars asked.

  He did— he had to, or the plane wouldn’t be reacting as smoothly as it was.

  “Captain, we’re fine,” said the sergeant.

  “We’re fine,” repeated Lars.

  “You’re right on course,” said the navigator. He spoke funny, as if half of his mouth had been Novocained— he’d been slammed violently as Lars struggled to control the plane. “Is the Major okay?”

  Lars forced a glance toward DiRiggio, who was slumped back in his seat.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think— he may have had a heart attack.”

  “Definitely.”

  “I had to hit him. I had no choice.”

  “Couple of guys banged up in the back, but no serious injuries,” said Kelly. “I think I busted my finger.”

  He continued talking but the words bounced around Lars’ helmet, not truly registering. A crewman gave a fuller report from the back but he couldn’t make out any of it. He just flew, staying in their pre-set track but pulling up to three thousand feet, judging that the risk of being detected was worth the leeway with the plane. What he really wanted to do was take it to fifteen angels, to twenty, to thirty— get the hell up there, climb and keep climbing.

  Climb and go home.

  The flight engineer and navigator pulled DiRiggio from his seat, lifting him over the center control console and past the flight engineer’s seat. His head flopped down against Lars’ arm as they pulled him out, skin ghost-white, eyes rolled back like a bizarre toy. The two men took him back off the flight deck to the rear crew area, where the two paramedics aboard quickly began working on him.

  Or at least Lars assumed they did. He was alone, sitting in the middle of a precarious bubble, struggling to keep himself afloat. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think— he ripped off the helmet and goggles, prying them away. His head rushed, as if he’d just surfaced from the bottom of a deep lake. He blinked at the massive wall of instruments in front of him, numbers and needles floating in space. He readjusted his seat restraints, felt his heart calming. Slowly, he began pushing the plane back towards the earth, flying in the track they had briefed.

  “DiRiggio’s on oxygen,” said Kelly, returning to the flight deck ahead of the navigator. “We have to get him help. Fast. Real fast.”

  Lars kept his eyes fixed on the dark landscape in front of him.

  “Captain?”

  The flight engineer leaned over the console. Lars cocked his head so he could see him from the corner of his eye but said nothing.

  “We got to go back, don’t you think?” said Kelly. The middle and ring fingers on the engineer’s left hand were taped together.

  “We really have to go back,” said the navigator.

  Lars concentrated on the plane, working into his bank south. The border was less than twenty miles south; it would take at least— at least— thirty minutes to reach a base with a hospital big enough to handle something like this. He wasn’t even sure where that be; maybe King Khalid.

  He could cut almost a straight line there out of this leg of his pattern. There’d be one tricky point near the border, but otherwise it was an easy run. And he could get an escort— hell, he could get half the Air Force.

  He wanted to do it. He wanted to get the hell out of here.

  But should he? If he left now, the three-man Delta team he’d dropped would be stranded. There were no other STAR-equipped C-130s available; if there had been, he wouldn’t be here.

  They could scramble SAR assets. That was the backup plan. Send a helo.

  Not really. Certainly not while the SA-11s and the other SAMs were still down there. The SAMs would make mincemeat of a helicopter. They’d factored that in already— that’s why Herky Bird was here.

  They could divert planes, take out the SAMs, put real force down there. Hell, they should have done it that way to begin with.

  But they hadn’t. And the truth was, this probably put less people at risk. Working at night, quietly, slipping in and out— that was the best way.

  As if SAMs wouldn’t mince him up. As if the Herk didn’t just miss getting smashed to pieces by that flak— forget about the missiles.

  Two night grabs— he had to do it twice. Five hundred feet in the pitch black, reel them in, go back, do it again. All at the edge of the acquisition envelope of one of the most powerful surface-to-air systems in the world.

  No way. No way.

  Lars had done it in an exercise, though. He had done it. He’d ducked under a Hawk radar without being detected and evaded a Patriot battery as well— at least as difficult as the mission tasked here.

  But that was long before he came to the Gulf, long before he knew fear.

  “Captain?”

  Lars stared into the darkness. It was his call to make. Who did he owe— three men on the ground, or the pilot in the back of the plane?

  Three men who had the odds against them anyway?

  Or a fellow officer and Herk pilot, a nice guy with a family back in the States, a guy more or less like him?

  Go home. Get the hell out of this. No one was going to blame him for running away now.

  Lars reached down and pulled his radio gear back on.

  “Major DiRiggio has had a heart attack,” he told the crew, though of course they all knew by now. “We’re going to complete our mission as best we can, and then we’re going to go home. The men on the ground are counting on us.”

  He meant to say something else, something about DiRiggio wanting it that way— a lie maybe, but the kind of lie men often need to hear. But fear choked off the rest of the words.

  No one said anything. Lars hands shook so violently as he began to bank in his pattern that he feared he’d roll the plane.

  CHAPTER 33

  OVER IRAQ

  27 JANUARY , 1991

  2030

  Knowlington read the altimeter ladder in the HUD, making sure he was low enough to be heard from the ground. Then he glanced at his watch and the map, trying to figure out exactly where Vulture Three had been when he sent the call. There was of course no guarantee that the pilot had had his position correct, nor was it possible to know precisely where he had been when he pulled the eject handles. But search and
rescue was basically about taking logical guesses. Skull began to turn the plane south, figuring it as the most likely direction.

  Unless the pilot came back up on the air, however, no amount of guesses were likely to turn him up. The Maverick viewers could see only a tiny area at a time, and when they were designed no one was thinking of using them to spot bodies. An Iraqi airfield lay due north, about five minutes away for an enemy MiG with its pedal to the metal, increasing the tickle factor if not the degree of difficulty.

  “Work out from me to increase what we’re covering,” Skull told A-Bomb as they began their second sweep. “I think you can take it further south on your turn.”

  “Yeah,” replied A-Bomb.

  “I’m going to turn now,” said Knowlington.

  “Two,” replied his wingmate.

  The Maverick screen remained a blurry, undefined mess. But at least that meant no one was down there to shoot at him— Skull was at three thousand feet, a juicy target flying at barely 250 knots an hour.

  “Devil One, this is Coyote,” said the controller in the AWACS coordinating flights in the sector.

  “Devil One.”

  “We have no Vulture flight,” said the AWACS.

  “What exactly do you mean by that, Coyote?” snapped Skull.

  “There is no Vulture flight on the ATO at this time.”

  The crewman paused between each word, strongly implying that Skull had made a serious mistake. The plane’s powerful airborne radar helped it keep track of everything happening north of the border; while it was possible that a plane had been hit without Coyote knowing about it, it was extremely unlikely. The call sign did not appear to be a valid one, since the plane was not on the tasking order for duty that night. That alone would convince even the most open-minded controller— and certainly his commander— that the transmission had been bogus.

  Or some sort of auditory hallucination.

  But Skull knew what he had heard.

  “Acknowledged, Coyote,” he said. He maintained his course heading north, studying the view screen.