by Jim DeFelice
Often had, come to think about it.
But that was the way your luck went. Sometimes you got the short straw and diddled around with pickup trucks and a ZSU that couldn’t hit a BUFF flying at a thousand feet with four engines out. Other days you got to nail down a Scud, fry a dozen T-72s and duck a battery of SA-6s, all before you finished drinking your coffee.
Would be nice to nail the Mercedes, he thought, focusing in on the sedan with his IR viewer. The doors were open, it was off the side of the road, and it was obviously not a threat, but there was nothing like poking holes in over-priced German sheet metal to puff up your chest. Frenchie woulda liked it, too.
“A-Bomb, I got some vehicles on that highway at the base of the hill. You see ‘em?”
“Not yet,” he told Skull, pulling the viewer back out to what passed for wide-screen.
“Some sort of gun on one of them. I’m not sure if it’s a tank or what, but it seems to be the only thing big left down there. Armored car or BMP, maybe.”
“Could be,” agreed A-Bomb, still trying to find them.
“I’m going to sweep around and run south toward those vehicles Doberman hit before they left. If you can’t find anything else, take out the gun.”
“It’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said A-Bomb.
“Watch your fuel.”
“Always.”
“Vipers claim they’ll be here in zero-five.”
“Tell ‘em to take their time.”
A-Bomb checked his position against the INS and his paper map. He knew which hill Skull meant— it ought to be just left of center at the bottom of his windscreen, which should put the road right across the center of the Maverick’s targeting video. But damned if all he had there were a few rocks.
Problem was, he was too high— eight thousand feet. Hog didn’t like to fly this stinking high. Eight hundred, now that was an altitude to fly at.
A-Bomb did the ol’ tuck and roll, plummeting toward the earth as the plane squealed with delight.
And hot damn, there were the vehicles Skull had told him about, definitely a BMP and something smaller, transport or an oversized pickup. Hot spots on both suddenly flared, guns blazing away on the ground.
A-Bomb wanted to reserve one missile so he’d be able to see the ground without resorting to a flare if things got hot again. On the other hand, it looked to be impossible to hit both with one shot; they were separated by five yards.
Hit the side of the BMP and go for the bounce.
He dialed in the Maverick and fired. Something on the ground blinked as the AGM’s motor lit. Gunfire sparkled all around.
Iraqis couldn’t be firing at themselves.
Shit. His guys must have wandered up there where they didn’t belong. They were going to be damn close to the BMP went it went boom.
All he could do was watch.
CHAPTER 58
IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2240
Dixon grabbed for his rifle as he fell backwards into the trench, expecting the Iraqi who had just opened fire to run forward spraying his automatic rifle. But the man’s first shots had been mistaken by the troops near the BMP as the enemy’s and they began shooting. The armored vehicle rolled forward a few yards from its hiding spot, splattering bullets from its machine-gun and 73 mm cannon. Dixon squirreled around to his stomach, clutching Budge as the gunfire crescendoed; a small truck parked ten yards beyond where the man had been burst into flame. Only then did the shooting stop. There were shouts, screams— two Iraqis ran from the BMP, talking and huffing for breathe. Dixon looked at Budge as they passed, then back at his rifle. The tone of the men’s words turned harsh and then anguished as they neared the truck; they realized they had just killed their own men.
As they ran back toward the BMP and Land Rover, one of the men seemed to be crying. They were almost in front of Dixon and Budge when a quick burst of light machine-gun fire took them down; the BMP began firing again, its two weapons clattering like over-sized typewriters as they raked the ground in front them. A dozen shadows moved from behind the personnel carrier toward the road.
No, into the ditch. They were sidling in his direction.
Dixon let off two quick bursts from his AK-74, then pulled the boy with him as he threw himself forward across the highway. He tried to hug the ground while moving at the same time; above all he kept his fingers tight on the boy’s tattered shirt. He saw two rocks ahead, barely higher than cement blocks. He swung Budge around as he dove for them, keeping him sheltered as the bullets whipped around him.
If the rocks deflected anything it was by pure chance. The light whhisssh of rifle fire gave way to the throaty thump of the cannon, the shells moving inextricably closer.
BJ choked on the smoke and dust, praying for a miracle, praying to hear a familiar sound from above— the throaty whoosh of an A-10A closing on its target. He prayed and then in his confused desperation swore he heard it; he pulled Budge beneath him, expecting, knowing that he had finally lost his mind and was ready to die.
In the next second a short, shrill whistle announced the impending arrival of one hundred and twenty-five pounds of explosive on the top of the Iraqi BMP. A ferocious wind slapped Dixon deeper into the ground as a piece of flaming steel from the personnel carrier ignited the gas tank on the nearby Land Rover, turning the vehicle into a three-quarter ton Molotov cocktail. The four or five Iraqis who hadn’t been killed when the Maverick hit were fried as the truck’s shell vaporized. Their ammo cooked off in a burst of Fourth of July finales.
And then there was a hush, the flames eating themselves into oblivion. Dixon felt the oxygen run out of his own body, as if sucked into the fire. He fought to get it back, gagging in the dust as his lungs began working again.
Something kicked underneath him. Dixon pushed himself sideways, fearing he had crushed Budge. He looked at the small body writhing on the ground, lost his breath again— then realized the kid was laughing, maybe out of fear or frustration, but no, he seemed to find the whole thing a gag or joke staged just for him. The boy giggled and cackled. Dixon, too, started laughing, as if they were in the middle of a giant amusement park, as if they were at Disney World and Goofy had just done a pratfall for their benefit.
“We’ll go there when we get out of this, kid,” Dixon told the boy, and the kid nodded vigorously, as if he’d read his mind about Disney World and going to America. “Come on— let’s get the hell out of here.”
Dixon hooked his arm around the boy’s back and side, clutching him as he began running toward the light machine-gun that had cut down the two Iraqis a few moments before. Having wished the Hog there, he now wished his countrymen to materialize before him; he ran forward, convinced it would happen, convinced the first miracle wouldn’t have happened without this one being preordained, too.
“We’re American! We’re American!” he shouted as he ran. “American! American!”
“Ammorican, Ammorican!” yelled the boy. “Budge! Budge!”
Dixon, half-running, half-dragging, started to laugh again. He was a kid himself, running through a bizarre fun house, trotting through an endless dream, his head spinning wildly. Days of hunger and almost no sleep, of thirst, stress— of every bizarre thing that war was— spun like a tornado in his chest, holding him up, propelling him.
“I’m an American!” he yelled, and he heard something pop on his left, and he heard a voice, vaguely familiar, yelling from a few yards away on his left, “Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” And the thing popping on his left flared into the dragon mouth of a machine-gun mounted on the rear of a truck, its breath flaming the ground in front of him and the air overhead, its tongue leering from between teeth dripping with blood. The dragon roared and lurched, snapping at him, trying to bite the tornado he had become. And all Dixon could do was run and laugh, run and laugh, shouting again and again, “We’re American! Don’t shoot! We’re American, me and the kid. Don’t shoot.”
CHAPTER 59
IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2250
“Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” screamed Wong as the canvas at the back of the Iraqi truck flew off. He’d seen Dixon running forward from the road just after the A-10 struck the BMP, but had been unable to warn him away from the Iraqi truck a few yards away.
As he had feared, the Iraqis had mounted a heavy machine-gun on the back of the vehicle, and had shown amazing patience in not revealing it until they had a target. And now they did, bullets beginning to spit even as the canvas was pulled away. Wong leveled Sergeant Davis’s SAW at the truck and blew through a good portion of the ammo box, raking the side of the vehicle but failing to stop the machine-gun, which was protected by a low wall of sand bags or something similar. He did, however, succeed in drawing the gunner’s attention— Wong ducked as a barrage of bullets whipped in his direction, pinning him to the ground.
Under other circumstances, he might have felt some satisfaction that he had been right about Dixon— that he had beaten the odds and found the lieutenant. But a fresh spray of bullets made it clear that the gunner on the truck was well-supplied with a long belt of ammunition, and as the line of exploding earth danced inches from his face, he realized his had been a Pyrrhic victory.
CHAPTER 60
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2250
A-Bomb had never felt so bad about smacking an enemy vehicle in his life. He actually stuffed six red licorice pieces into his mouth instead of his usual three as he pulled the Hog around to inspect the damage.
Nailed the sucker good. Land Rover looked smashed, too.
He turned back to the small, fuzzy Maverick screen, viewing the wreckage. Glowing hot stuff, not moving. Little like a fish bowl with all the water run out.
Or maybe not.
A-Bomb pushed the Hog southwards as he scanned with the Maverick’s IR head, trying to search the area where he figured the D boys would be— or at least where he hoped they had escaped to. He still had his STAR pods; they’d only be dropped if the ground team had trouble with Doberman’s. They added weight and resistance to the plane, but he didn’t notice it much as he banked and came around above the main highway, the Mav’s head trained on the area he’d just hit. His eyes had begun to fuzz from fatigue— a good thing, he realized, since it blurred the numbers on the fuel gauges.
Something sparkled in the lower corner of his glass.
Machine-gun.
Shooting at somebody on the ground.
Big machine-gun, so it had to be Iraqi.
Damn, if that wasn’t the best news he’d had all day. If they were still shooting at somebody, his guys were still alive. He hadn’t nailed them accidentally.
Without really thinking about it, A-Bomb slammed his Hog into a nose-first dive, tossing four or five g’s in a full-body slam toward the earth. Air brakes screamed, flaps groaned, and the thick flare of a heavy machine-gun, probably a Dushka, made a perfect X in the middle of his targeting screen.
And wouldn’t you know it? Bruce Springsteen was on the CD player, just dishing up “Born in the USA.”
O’Rourke lit his cannon as the Boss wailed, the GAU grabbing the bass, rhythm and drum lines with its own particular take on slash and burn rock ‘n roll. The enemy machine gun disappeared beneath an onslaught of 30 mm shells, vanishing along with its truck in a frothing white powder that turned red and black as the vehicle’s gas tank blew.
Unfortunately, the tank had been less than half-full; the explosion barely lit up the night, throwing only a lackluster fireball across A-Bomb’s path as he veered off. The fire wasn’t even strong enough to sear his wings.
“I keep telling you idiots, keep your gas tanks full,” A-Bomb admonished the Iraqis as he recovered from the steep dive. “Woulda had a 10 on the Boom Scale if you’d just held up your end of the bargain. Losing the war’s one thing, but at least score some style points while you’re at it.”
CHAPTER 61
IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2253
As the machine-gun swung its dragon-like fangs back toward Dixon, a hawk flashed above it. The Iraqi gun disappeared upwards in a furious windstorm. Flames shot everywhere; dirt, dust, shrapnel, bits of plastic and rubber swirled through the air. A ball of fire shot off at an angle. Thunder roared with a massive, ear-shattering pop. Then silence returned, the night hushed by the faint whisper of two turbofans churning in the distance.
Dixon jumped to his feet.
“That was a Hog, kid,” shouted Dixon, pulling the boy to his feet. “We’re saved. We’re saved. Shit— we were about an inch from getting creamed. Holy Jesus. Holy, holy Jesus.”
“Lieutenant Dixon?”
Dixon looked up and saw a soldier running toward him carrying a light machine-gun.
“I’m Dixon,” he said. “Thank God you rescued me.”
“We’re not rescued yet. I’m Captain Wong.”
“Lieutenant William James Dixon, 535th Attack Squadron. Wong? You?”
“Yes. A pleasure to meet you in person.” Wong had joined the squadron after Dixon was assigned to Riyadh, but had spoken to him briefly over the phone several times. Then as now, he spoke in a bored monotone, as if he were on a train platform waiting for the 6:03 to arrive. “We have a rendezvous to make,” said Wong. “It’s two miles away and scheduled to take place in five minutes.”
“I guess we better get going.”
Wong took a step then stopped. “What’s this boy?”
“Budge. I saved him.”
Wong gave him a quizzical look, then bent to examine the child. He said something in Arabic. Words flooded from the kid’s mouth.
“Your name is Budge,” Wong told Dixon, translating a bit of what the boy had said. “BJ, I assume. Budge. He misunderstood. He thinks you’re an angel sent from God. He doesn’t understand who we are.”
“What’s his name then?”
“Nabi.”
The boy nodded.
“Some Iraqi soldiers were going to kill him,” Dixon told Wong.
“His parents were taken away. I believe he saw his father shot. My Arabic is not optimum,” said Wong. “Most likely, the father was executed, along with the rest of his family. I believe we’ll find he was a Shiite Muslim and-or part of the resistance, though there are other possibilities.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” said Dixon.
“He can’t come with us, Lieutenant. We have to run two miles; I suspect our transport is already approaching. They won’t wait.”
“He is coming,” said Dixon.
Wong shook his head again. “We can’t take him back.”
“Are we going to make the rendezvous or not?” Dixon asked.
Wong frowned but said nothing. Turning, he began trotting to the southwest. Dixon started to follow, tugging the child to come.
They’d gone perhaps ten yards when the kid fell. He’d slipped well behind; it was obvious he couldn’t keep up.
“Come on,” said Dixon, running back to him. He picked Nabi up and took a few steps, but couldn’t carry both the AK-74 and the kid, not and run at the same time.
He threw down the rifle, pushed Nabi across the top of his shoulder, and set off behind Wong.
“It’s okay,” he told the boy between his labored breaths. “We’re going home. God must want us to, because there’s no way we would have gotten this far without Him. Yeah,” he said, running. “You don’t mind if I still call you Budge, okay? It kind of sounds cool. That okay?”
The boy murmured something.
“Thanks,” Dixon said. “Shit Jesus— to make it back after all this. We’re going home. Home.”
And though his legs were liquid and his lungs wheezing, though he had a dozen bruises and maybe broken ribs and a bum arm and a banged up head, he knew they were going to make it.
CHAPTER 62
OVER IRAQ
27 JANUARY 1991
2253
His Maverick’s IR
head remained out of commission, but Skull had no problem seeing the splashed trucks; one of them was burning rather spectacularly. Two other vehicles were stopped nearby, also damaged or destroyed. A pair of vehicles were coming down the highway from the west, maybe a mile and a half away. From what he understood of the layout on the ground, they weren’t an immediate danger to his guys, but that didn’t mean he was going to let them continue merrily along.
He warned A-Bomb even though he was back by the main battlefield, then pitched to climb and let off his last LUU flare. They popped at roughly nine hundred feet, lighting the sky like a bank of high-powered stadium lights as Knowlington continued upwards before spinning around to attack. A little anxious, he started firing from 3,000 feet, the shells falling in a bent arc toward the earth to catch the first vehicle, a six-wheeled truck, right across the grill. Two dozen uranium-enriched slugs made short work of its engine compartment, stalling it in a heap of steam.
Skull kept coming, riding his rudder to put his nose across the path of the second vehicle. He let loose with more cannon but could tell he missed; he jabbed the pedals and nudged his stick, but just couldn’t hold the plane in the right position, altitude and speed burning off and the light of the flare distracting him. He pulled back and got a chop warning, the plane hinting that he had pushed things a bit too far and was in danger of losing all forward momentum.
Knowlington ignored it, rearing the plane up by her nose and dipping around, goosing the throttle. The Hog divvied the air currents with her wing, skipping tightly back toward the target with an appreciative giggle, her nose centered on the truck. Knowlington clicked out a three-second burst, more than fifty rounds of combat mix flaring from the business end of the Gat. He saw another shadow to his right and pushed toward it, aware that he was getting precariously low but still calculating that he could get off a burst. His aim was short; he zeroed again and nailed his trigger but missed wide and now had to pull off.