by Jim DeFelice
Doberman looked up and saw A-Bomb ambling over, a Styrofoam cup hanging out of his mouth.
“Want some coffee?” A-Bomb asked.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Hey, relax, Dog Man. It’s too early for a beer, right? Besides, we got more work to do.” He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a small cupcake. “Want a Twinkie?”
“That’s not a Twinkie. Twinkie’s are rectangular. That’s round.’’
“No shit?” said A-Bomb, examining it. “All of them?”
“Yup.”
“How about that. Guy told me it was a Twinkie.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Special Forces.” He thumbed back in their direction. “Tell them Rusty sent you.”
“I don’t have time. Neither do you.”
“Shit, you’re going to be here all day. Guy told me it’d be a miracle to have that plane back in the air by dark. Guess they lost their manuals or something.”
“No, I’m going up with you and Johnson. I’m flying Dixon’s plane.”
“Really? How come?”
“Because the major told me to, that’s why. And he had a rake up his butt when he did it.”
“Really? What happened to Dixon?”
Doberman shrugged. “Johnson thinks he screwed up.”
“Did he?”
“No way,” said Doberman. He wasn’t sure why he felt so protective of the younger pilot all of a sudden. Today had been only the third or fourth time they’d flown together. “The kid got turned around after dropping his bombs and didn’t hear the AWACS calling, that’s all. I think he was looking for me and just ignored them so he could stay up there longer. Hell, that’s what I would do.”
A-Bomb nodded. Any self-respecting wingman would ignore his own skin to save a buddy.
“Johnson got righteous about it,” Doberman added. “He shoves his hand in my face and says, no discussion.”
This was a difficult concept for A-Bomb to fathom and he blinked his eyes trying to process it. He pushed the cupcake into his mouth and gulped down the rest of the coffee. A full third of what was in the cup splashed across his face and onto his suit, where it joined a well-established montage.
“He acts like he’s got a stick up his ass sometimes,” Doberman said. “A fucking rake. He just about told me I screwed up by getting my plane hit.”
“Ah, you’re exaggerating.”
“Listen, I heard a lot of stuff from guys who served in Germany with him. He’s probably frustrated because he’s not head of the squadron.”
“That’s not Mongoose. He’s a good guy, I told you. I’ve flown with him before. He knows his stuff and he sticks by you. What the hell else do you want?”
Doberman realized he was being harsh. It made sense to put your best pilots in the planes that were going to the dance; he probably would have done the same thing.
It was just the way the major went about it that had burned him. He could have been, well, more diplomatic.
“He could have asked me if I wanted to bump the kid,” said Doberman.
“Yeah, and what would you have said?”
“I don’t know.” Doberman shrugged, not wanting to admit he’d have pushed Dixon aside. “Hell, he could at least have been more diplomatic.”
“There’s a fucking war on,” argued A-Bomb. “How diplomatic do you expect him to be?”
“I don’t know,” Doberman conceded.
“How’d the kid take it?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“See? You don’t even know if he was diplomatic or not.”
“I meant with me.”
“Oh, fuck yourself. Nobody has to be diplomatic with you. You’re the Dog Man. And a god damn Hog driver, for christsake. Diplomatic. Give me a break.”
“Hey, where are you going? The planes are this way, remember?”
“I’m thinking refill before we take off,” said A-Bomb. “There’s time.”
“No there isn’t.”
“Shit, I can make it.”
“Hey A-Bomb, hold up. a second.” Doberman jogged the few steps toward his friend. “You think I’m lucky?”
“How’s that?”
“Lucky. You know.”
The pilot laughed. “You? You’re the least lucky person I know. Why the hell do you think we let you play poker with us?7’
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Sure you don’t want no coffee?”
Doberman shook his head and watched as A-Bomb ambled off in search of more caffeine.
Not having to take a leak while you were flying — now that was luck, especially after twenty cups of coffee.
What Doberman had was skill.
Mostly.
CHAPTER 13
AL JOUF FOB
0915
Mongoose walked Dixon off into the sand, trying for a little privacy. A big MH-53J Pave Low helicopter idled a short distance away, its throaty whine filling the air with anxious energy. The big special ops chopper sounded like it wanted to fly all the way to Baghdad and personally take out Saddam.
“Listen, kid, I’m putting Doberman in your plane for the rest of the day. I want you to babysit his Hog until it’s patched together well enough to get back to King Fahd. They may have to scrounge around for some spare parts, but the crew chief swears he’ll have it back well enough for you to fly. Jimbo’s a good guy; he crewed for me a couple of years ago. But listen, you look at it real careful, and you think it won’t fly, that’s your call. Then you stay here, all right? I don’t want you taking any chances. I’ve talked to the commander and I sent word back to Hog Heaven about what’s up. You got it? You all right, Dixon?”
“I’m fine.”
“This isn’t a grounding or anything. You don’t have to get pissed off or anything.” Mongoose had to tilt his head upwards to look into Dixon’s face. None of the emotions he’d expected — anger, resignation — showed through the dazed stare. “I just want the most experienced guys in the cockpit today. All right?”
Dixon shrugged.
Really, what more did he expect? What would he have done in his situation?
“You got something you want to talk to me about?” Mongoose asked.
“Should I?”
Yeah, thought Mongoose. You ought to fight me on this. If you’re smart, you’ll tell me to go to hell. You’ll tell me I’m out of my mind to keep you from going up. You’ll tell me you’re the best god damn pilot in the Air Force, anything to keep flying.
Because if you don’t, if you just keep standing here with a look that’s only half angry, I’m going to think you screwed up big time back there, for no reason but my gut tells me.
“I just think there’s something on your mind,” Mongoose offered. “You feel bad about losing Doberman when things got tight?”
“I guess.”
“The Mavericks look like they all hit. You got the tower. It’s on tape.”
Dixon nodded.
“You weren’t sure?”
“Things were moving so fast. The images weren’t sharp.”
“Well, this isn’t training. What about the CBUs? You saw them hit?”
Dixon hesitated. “I think I was too high.”
“You sure?”
He shrugged. “Pretty sure.”
“Did you have your targets in the sight, or what?”
“Yeah. Jeez.”
Mongoose couldn’t tell whether the kid was being overtly conservative. Hell, the kid might not even know.
No use belaboring this.
“All right. Hang in there,” said Mongoose. “I got to get going.”
* * *
Dixon watched Major Johnson walk back toward the planes. He felt the wind grip the sides of his face, rubbing sand against his cheeks.
Guys like Johnson and Glenon, it was easy for them. They didn’t think about what they were doing. They just went up and punched buttons, held on for dear life. Pilots like A-Bomb, shit, he was oblivio
us to half the world. He flew by the seat of his sticky pants.
BJ Dixon was different. He thought about things. Maybe he thought too much, but that was the way it was.
A fatal, deadly flaw.
CHAPTER 14
KING FAHD ROYAL AIRBASE
0930
“This is CNN.”
James Earl Jones’ voice shook the walls of Cineplex. The network’s logo spun around and filled the immense television screen had not only given the Devils’ squadron room its unofficial nickname but had made it a very popular hangout.
Especially now. Off-duty pilots and most of the intelligence officers who shared the Devils’ Hog Heaven trailer complex crowded the room, watching as the TV flashed a picture of the night sky over Baghdad, shot from a downtown hotel room. One second, the night was dark, blank, peaceful. The next second, more triple-A than Skull had seen over Hanoi during the Linebacker raids filled the heavens.
Knowlington listened in fascination as one of the television correspondents described what it was like to watch an air raid outside your window. He’d never been on that end of it.
On screen, the sky erupted with flash after flash, reflections of explosions on the ground. The F-117As were hitting their targets.
“Take that, you god damn son of a bitch!” said someone in the room.
And with that, Cineplex erupted in a cheer.
* * *
Colonel Knowlington was still standing by the door, eyes glued to the television, when someone grabbed his sleeve fifteen minutes later.
He looked across at the balding head of Chief Master Sergeant Alan Clyston. Clyston had started as an airman crewing Knowlington’s Thud three decades before; he was now the squadron’s chief sergeant, in charge of everything from paperclips to cluster bombs. Knowlington called him capo di capo; the people who worked for him just said “Chief” — and genuflected. Pudgy, with gray whiskers and jowly cheeks, the man could still strip and reassemble an engine blindfolded faster than anyone on the base. He was a walking encyclopedia on everything the Air Force flew, but what Clyston was really an expert on was people. Anybody who crewed for him would march barefoot to Baghdad if he asked.
And any officer who crossed him would wish he’d done that instead.
“’Scuse me, sir,” said Clyston. He smiled — mostly, Knowlington thought, at using the word ‘sir,’ which he always did in public. “Can I catch you outside a minute?”
“You remember that guy on TV doing the commentary?” the colonel asked him in the hallway. “He flew F-4s.”
“Didn’t catch him,” said Clyston.
“Shot me down in a training exercise once.” Knowlington led him down his office. “Your manuals on the Maverick are on the way,” he added. “A congressman is hand delivering them.”
“Really? Jeez, sir, good work.”
Knowlington laughed. He half-suspected that tracking down the manuals had been something of a test: Clyston seemed able to locate and appropriate anything he really wanted.
Like the TV and the trailers.
“I got good news and I got bad news,” said Clyston, once inside Knowlington’s spartan office.
“Bad news first.”
“They’re connected. Major Johnson’s group got their target, all planes back to Al Jouf intact.”
“That’s the bad news?”
“One of them got chewed up pretty bad. I talked to Major Johnson and then a buddy of mine who was rustled out that way to make sure the planes are patched together. Jimbo. Remember him?”
“Round black guy, always nods to himself?”
“That’s him. He’ll get it back together as quick as anyone I know.” Clyston tried to make himself comfortable on the small steel folding chair, an exact mate to the colonel’s. He had offered to find the colonel better furniture several times, but Knowlington — who could have a leather-clad suite airlifted through his own connections if he chose — declined.
“They’re scrounging for parts,” added the sergeant. “One of the things they can’t seem to find is a radio. Johnson’s got fried.”
“That’s the bad news?”
“I’m getting there. I was thinking I would put somebody onto a Herc that’s heading in that direction. I could have them on the ground in two hours, tops.”
“So do it.”
“I had to use your name a little to get space on the plane,” said the sergeant.
Knowlington shrugged. Usually he could figure out where Clyston was going, but this time the sergeant had him flummoxed. He only beat around the bush like this if it had to do with personnel.
Damn.
The colonel realized what it was as the name formed on Clyston’s lips.
“Probably going to have to be Technical Sergeant Rosen,” said Clyston.
“Oh, Jesus, Alan. For cryin’ out loud. Not her.”
“Whatever it is, she can have the plane back here tonight. If I were sure it was just dropping a radio in, I could send half a dozen other guys. But Jimbo didn’t exactly have time to do an X-ray, you know what I mean?”
“Damn.”
“It’s either her or me, if you want the plane back tonight. Otherwise, there’s no guarantees.”
“Tell her I’ll cut her fucking tongue out if there’s another incident like General Smith.”
“You know, she wasn’t totally unjustified — “
Knowlington’s eyebrows ended the conversation.
* * *
“You keep your F-ing mouth shut the whole flight, you keep it shut at the base, you come back here and you report to me. You got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Rebecca Rosen told Clyston twenty minutes later, as she stood waiting for the C-130 crew to finish loading their gear.
“They’ll throw you the F off the plane if you act up. And at the base — you say nothing. F nothing. It’s a special ops base. They’ll bury you in the sand, we’ll never find a body.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t yeah-yeah me, Rosen.” Clyston shook his head, and once again considered going out to Al Jouf himself.
“Look, Sergeant, I’m not a total asshole.” She stuck her nose up in the air like she was a stinking English princess. Five foot-two, a hundred and ten pounds when wet, and she thought she was a stinking Amazon. “I just don’t suffer fools gladly.”
Clyston rolled his eyes. “Your problem is that you never met another member of the Air Force who you don’t think is a fool.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool, Sergeant,” Rosen told him.
“Get the F out of here, Rosen. I want to see that airplane in my hangar by 1800. It has a date with Saddam tomorrow. You got it?”
“I’ll have it here if I have to fly it myself.”
Clyston would bet money she would. Better than most pilots.
* * *
Colonel Knowlington glanced at his watch. It was nearly ten a.m.
Where the hell had the time gone? He hadn’t done a damn thing all morning.
Not true. But he hadn’t done anything useful. He’d become one of those red-tape idiots he used to rail against.
Hell, that had happened long ago.
Knowlington slid his notes about the next day’s ATO into the drawer and locked it. Standing, he centered his pad on the desktop, then went to the four-drawer file cabinet and made sure it too was locked. The uncluttered order of the room reassured him somehow, the blank walls a comfortable contrast to the thoughts that jumbled and raced through his mind.
Down the hall, Cineplex was still filled to overflowing. Most if not all of the people watching CNN knew more about what had happened than all of the broadcasters and studio analysts put together; still, there was an undeniable fascination to the reports, especially the video of Baghdad being bombed.
Walking toward the chaplain’s tent, the colonel wondered about the coverage. Would it provoke sympathy for Iraq? Did Saddam now look like the victim?
Vietnam had been like that. You couldn’t blame everything o
n the media, sure, but they had to shoulder a shitload.
The worst stuff, maybe. People applauding — applauding! — when a pilot was captured.
Knowlington had argued with his two sisters only once about the war. He’d known it would be useless before he even opened his mouth. Something — booze probably, but maybe his love for them, too — made him try.
No way. They knew the truth — they had seen it on TV and in the papers.
Colonel Knowlington found the chaplain’s tent. There were a few people standing around a coffee machine at the back. He walked over silently, nodded to an officer from one of the transport units he knew vaguely. Nice guy. Young. Most of the other people who came to these meetings were enlisted. There were no ranks here.
Today was a busy day, and there wasn’t likely to be a crowd. The colonel had barely filled his cup when the informal leader of the group, known as “Stores,” cleared his throat near the small wooden podium at the front of the tent.
“We ought to try and keep things quick today, since there’s a lot going on,” said the man, who was a logistics sergeant. The others began sifting among the chairs, everyone sitting near the front, but not in the front row itself. No one was next to anyone else. “We’ll just be ad hoc for the next few days; catch as catch can, etcetera. Anyone who has to leave, you know, ought to go when they have to. Okay — anyone have anything to say?”
Knowlington glanced around. When no one else spoke, he rose slowly to his feet.
“My name is Michael and I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been sober now thirteen days, going on fourteen. I thought it would be easier here, but it turns out its probably a bit worse. Too much Listerine.”
Everybody laughed.
CHAPTER 15
TAKING OFF FROM AL JOUF FOB
1135
In theory, every A-10A had been stamped from the same sheet metal. The parts were completely interchangeable; weapons, performance, characteristics precisely the same. The bare-bones design and facilitated production lines were supposed to churn out the Air Force equivalent of a model T, available in any color, as long as it was muted green. Unlike most other military jets, there weren’t even different versions or model numbers to complicate matters. An OA-10A was just an A-10A on a target-spotting mission. The only thing different was the mix of bullets in its gun.