by Jim DeFelice
“Yeah, how could you?”
“Only question is, what do I listen to on the bomb run?” said A-Bomb, dead serious. “I’m kind of leaning toward Springsteen and ‘Candy’s Room,’ because of the beat and all, but there’s a certain ontological dissonance with the words.”
Doberman rolled his eyes nearly out of his head.
“How can you concentrate?” Dixon asked. “I mean, seriously, doesn’t it throw you off?”
“Nah. It’s kind of like having a sound track. Theme music, you know. Kind of like Apocalypse Now, where the helicopters attack to the Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Next you’ll want to mount speakers on the wings,” sneered Doberman.
“I’ve thought about it.” A-Bomb took his helmet and adjusted it over his ears — checking not the fit but the volume control on his stereo.
“You’re one of a kind, A-Bomb,” said Doberman. “Thank God.”
“How’s that?” said the pilot, removing his helmet.
“Never mind. Come on, kid, you ready?”
“Uh-huh,” said Dixon, waddling over toward them. The chem suit tended to cut into his crotch, and walking could be a little tough at first.
“We got to come up with a better name for him,” said A-Bomb. “BJ’s too tame.”
“BJ’s fine,” said Doberman.
“Nah. He needs something with balls.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to come up with something all night. Everything I think of is obscene or taken,” said A-Bomb. “We could call him Balls. What do you think?”
“Nah,” said Doberman. “Then you’d have these radio transmissions — where are your Balls?”
A-Bomb began laughing uncontrollably, as if it were the funniest joke in the world.
* * *
Mongoose nearly ran Dixon down outside the hangar where the last Hog was being readied.
“Sorry, Major,” said the pilot. “I didn’t see you.”
“I wasn’t watching where I was going,” Mongoose told him, determined to be as conciliatory and up-beat as possible. “Here, come with me just a second.”
Dixon followed him around a corner. The reflected light threw odd shadows on the ground, and made the young pilot, dressed in his survival gear and ready for flight, look like Frosty the Snowman on safari.
“Look, we’re going to do things a bit differently than we choreographed before. Same plan, just different people — you and me are going to tease the defenses, instead of you and A-Bomb.”
“Okay.”
“It makes sense to pair the most experienced guy with the least,” he explained. “I should have done that yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
Dixon didn’t say anything.
“You okay, kid? I have to go tell the others.”
“I’ll be fine,” sputtered Dixon.
“I know you will. Otherwise I wouldn’t have you covering my ass, right?”
Dixon nodded. Mongoose was grateful he didn’t ask why the switch hadn’t gone the other way, with him in Doberman’s place bombing the dishes. He had a namby-pamby answer — too many people changing position, with Doberman moving up into A-Bomb’s slot because of rank and experience. But that was so obviously bullshit that the kid would instantly realize he didn’t trust him to make the bomb run right.
He might already. But at least he didn’t say it.
“Clyston rolled up Tommy Corda’s Hog for you,” he told the young pilot. “We’re running a little tight on time, so we figured we’d shuffle around the planes.”
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather have the Hog I flew yesterday morning. I know its personality.”
“It’s already armed.”
Dixon’s disappointment was obvious.
Mongoose glanced at his watch. “Hey look, if they get your plane up in time, you can take it. But we’re tight — you got that?”
“Yes, sir, I do. Thank you.”
“Sure.” Mongoose took a quick look into the kid’s eyes. They told him exactly what he expected — nothing.
He chucked Dixon on the shoulder and went to find A-Bomb and Dixon.
Did the kid just use the word, “personality,” he wondered to himself as he walked away. God damn A-Bomb was infecting everybody.
* * *
Finished dressing, Doberman took a step in the direction of the door. A shiny piece of copper caught his eye. It was a penny, right side up.
Hadn’t seen one of those in a while.
He scooped down and snapped it up.
“Whatcha got?” asked A-Bomb.
“Penny,” he said sheepishly. “See a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.”
“Aw, you don’t believe in that crap, do you?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” said Doberman, looking at the coin. It was from 1981. Had that been a good year?
“You going to step on all the cracks out to the runway?” A-Bomb asked.
“Hey, you’re the guy who said I was lucky.”
The other pilot snorted. “Want a Tootsie Roll Pop?” “You’re out of your mind,” said Doberman, sliding the penny into his glove.
CHAPTER 40
KING FAHD ROYAL AIRBASE
0310
Dixon had never seen anything like it. What seemed to be the entire squadron’s worth of maintenance experts were working on the plane, slapping parts in and out, checking and rechecking equipment, fueling, arming and maybe even buff-waxing. The lieutenant had always heard that the Air Force technical experts, the people who handled the planes, were without peer in the world, but this was unbelievable. They were going at the plane like a team of surgeons doing a heart transplant. Not only had the wing been completely repaired, but it looked as if it had been repainted. It was hard to imagine this was the plane that had barely made it back to the base less than twelve hours before, a basketball-sized hole in its wing.
Someone stuck a cup of coffee — black — in Dixon’s hand. It was far too hot to drink, even if he had wanted to, but it somehow seemed wrong to refuse it.
Sergeant Clyston materialized in front of him. “Yeah, I know Lieutenant — you want your Hog, right? I don’t blame you. We’re kicking ass, but no guarantees, okay?” He pointed at the coffee. “You’re not going to drink that, are you? You’ll be peeing all the way to Baghdad.”
Dixon shook his head. He started to pour it out, then felt a powerful hand grab the cup.
“No sense letting it go to waste,” grinned the sergeant. Clyston took a slug, winked, then turned back to his crew. “Pull that F-ing dragon back up here and get the damn Hog loaded while Rosen finishes up,” he shouted. “Come on, come on. Let’s look alive. What the hell, you guys looking to join the Navy? Get moo-ving!”
The dragon was pushed into place beneath the Hog’s belly. A large flatbed with a special treadmill, it loaded the A-lOA’s cannon with bullets.
Things looked chaotic, but Dixon could tell that even with the rush, the crew was still dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.
“Rosen, kick butt up there,” Clyston called. “I need you done in five minutes. Got that? Five! No, that’s too long. Make it three. Hey, Larry — what the hell are you doing up there, sawing fucking wood? Let’s go, people — we have some Iraqis to bomb! This ain’t a goddamn high school play we’re putting on!”
Suddenly, all of the techs were doing rolls off the plane. Equipment was trundled away and the crew fell silent.
“Lieutenant, let’s preflight,” barked Clyston — more an order than a request. The gray bear loomed in front of the pilot. A smile broke on his grizzled lips. “Now you take your time, sir. Anything you want fixed, it gets fixed. You just go at this like you have all day, you hear? Don’t let us rush you.”
Dixon nodded and started toward the nose of the craft. He liked to touch the very tip of the Gatling gun before he began his walk around — it was a superstitious thing, and he sure as hell didn’t want to miss it this morning.
As he leaned forward to touch the weapon, he realized he had an audience. The squadron’s entire mechanical crew was looking over his shoulder, worried that he had found a problem.
“It’s okay,” he explained sheepishly. “I just like to touch it. For good luck.”
A murmur of approval passed through the techies.
The crew members followed him around the plane, silently shuffling along as he examined the belly, the weapons, the flaps. Clyston hovered at his shoulder, silent, nodding, sometimes frowning, once or twice ducking in to take a look at something himself. Dixon moved deliberately, trying not to rush things and yet be as thorough as possible given the time limits.
The bottom line was that he had to trust the people who had just given over the plane to him. But it seemed somewhat disrespectful not to look closely at their work, not to nod or pat the part and move on. Once or twice he thought he saw something; each time, three or four crew members would leap to the plane and help make sure there wasn’t a problem.
Dixon had done many preflights; certainly he had done more thorough examinations of the airplanes he was to fly. But he had never felt so confident climbing into the cockpit.
“Kick ass job, Sergeant,” he said, swinging onto the ladder. “I’ll say hello to Saddam for you.”
“You beat the living shit out of them, you hear me?” said Clyston, slapping the pilot on the rear.
From the crowd, Dixon heard a throaty female voice yell out, “Hey lieutenant. Break a leg up there, huh? Just make sure it ain’t yours.”
He turned down and saw Rosen, gave her, gave everybody, a salute.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get going. And don’t break my god damn plane,” snapped Clyston. “All right, everybody, party’s over — we got eight more planes to work on. Get your F-ing butts moo-ving!”
CHAPTER 41
KING FAHD ROYAL AIRBASE
0330
For a long, long second, Doberman thought he lost the plane fifty feet off the runway. It was still dark, and as the Hog roared off the concrete he felt a touch of weightlessness. He started to bank as planned — they had choreographed just about every foot of this mission — and felt his right wing coming up too fast. He began to correct, then felt he was over-doing it, then felt a queasy hole in his stomach.
He wasn’t sure where the hell he was. The dark night loomed out in front of him, vast and empty; clouds covered the stars. The wind rushed around his head, spinning it, confusing him. He saw the earth, an old mistress, trying to lure him back to her bed.
Doberman’s head swam. He was back under the tanker, trying to connect. He was playing cards, getting creamed again.
Lucky my stinking ass, he told himself. I got the luck of Job.
Somehow his eyes found the artificial horizon in the center of his dash. Somehow his brain managed to tell him he was precisely at the proper angle. Somehow his hand held the stick steady, calming the rest of his body.
I’m okay, he told himself. It’s vertigo because of the dark.
Fly your instruments, not your eyes.
He flexed his fingers inside their Nomex gloves, felt the lucky penny in the palm of his hand, frowned at himself for being superstitious, and put the Hog on course.
* * *
Mongoose could feel the fatigue riding behind his eyes. He hadn’t gotten any real sleep, undisturbed, head sinking below-the-horizon sleep, for nearly a week now. He promised himself he would have a full eight, ten, twelve hours at the end of this mission.
But none until then.
The pilot had a small pill box in a pocket on his leg; he hoped not to have to use any of the pills inside, but he would if absolutely necessary.
He envied A-Bomb. The guy could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, doze ten minutes and then go another twenty four hours. Not only that, but he could then go party his butt off, snooze twenty minutes on a pile of bombs, and come back fresher than a flower the next morning. Truly amazing.
Of course, he drank coffee like it was water. But damn if he never had to pee.
Inhuman. No wonder he’d become a Hog driver.
Mongoose checked the INS, hoping to hell it would work more accurately than usual.
KKMC was now just under an hour away. The crews there had been alerted to perform the fastest hot pit they had ever attempted.
They’d be over their target fifty-five minutes after taking off from KKMC. Assuming the planes cruised well, didn’t run into an unexpected head wind, and didn’t suddenly run low on fuel.
It was all doable. Mongoose had worked the calculations himself. But that was on paper. This was for real.
On paper, everything always went precisely according to plan. Everyone followed the dotted lines. The Iraqis swallowed the bait and Doberman and A-Bomb went in unscathed. Dixon didn’t get lost on the quick jink toward the guns, then followed him out to safety and the tanker.
In real life, Mongoose hoped like all hell the kid hung in there. He’d never forgive himself if he lost him.
* * *
A-Bomb rocked off the strip, feeling a little like he was straddling his first Harley, unwinding the big old bastard up the Pennsylvania mountains on 1-81, wind cutting into his face as the road narrowed for a bridge through the fog.
The crew had done something special to the Hog tonight, goosed her engines or something — maybe even juiced the plane with super-unleaded. She was cranked and she was cranking.
“There’s a darkness on the edge of town,” wailed Bruce Springsteen in his ears.
The man knew what he was talking about.
* * *
The plane wrapped itself around him like a familiar coat, taking him in its arms as it leapt into the Saudi sky. It was as if it had been waiting for him, counting the hours until Lieutenant Billy James Dixon would return to the cockpit and push its nose toward the dark shadows of Iraq. There was no logic to it, but this A-lOA felt very different than the one he’d ferried back from Al Jouf only a few hours before. It felt different than the others he’d flown, more familiar than any plane, even the old T-38 he’d spent so much time in. There was definitely something particular, something personal about this particular arrangement of sheet metal.
Everything was going to be perfect on this flight. He had Mongoose’s butt pasted to his windshield and wasn’t going to lose him.
Step by step by step.
Screw the major if he didn’t think he could handle it. Everybody else did. Everybody in the squadron was cheering him on.
Dixon walked his eyes through the cockpit, triple-checking the gidgets and gadgets. Fuel was good, airspeed was fine, even the INS seemed perfect. The weapons hung low and ready on his wings, each one signed and sealed with a personal kiss for Saddam.
I’m going to make it, Dixon told himself. I’m going to help rescue the pilot and make up for my fuck up. I’m going to be brave this time.
I’m going to redeem myself.
CHAPTER 42
SAUDI ARABIA,HEADING FOR IRAQ
0501
The first hop went smoothly enough. Mongoose led the group off from King Fahd and headed north to King Khalid Military City, changing course only once, and even that was minor; they lowered their altitude to accommodate a pair of transports heading across their flight path. The KKMC ground crew did the hot pit with engines idling on the tarmac; the four Hogs cranked it up and headed into the night sky ten minutes ahead of schedule.
Five minutes out of KKMC, running parallel to the Saudi-Iraqi border, Mongoose spun his eyes around the cockpit on a routine instrument check. At first glance, everything seemed to be fine― temperature, fuel, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. But when he returned his eyes to the large navigational display in the center of the front panel, he realized something was wrong― way wrong. The INS numbers marking his exact location hadn’t changed since he lifted off from KKMC.
That shouldn’t have been possible. It was like a car odometer not moving while the car was doing sixty on the highwa
y.
Mongoose gave it the old car mechanic’s fix: he pounded it with his fist.
Didn’t move. He quickly double-checked the compass heading against the dial that sat at the top of his windshield. They agreed — until he tilted the Hog a few degrees north.
The INS was whacked beyond belief. Big problem.
The game plan called for Devil flight to fly parallel to the Saudi-Iraqi border until they were almost due south of their target. They would then angle hard north, flying nearly in a straight line to their target. The one serious jog was an angling maneuver around the edges of the radar belonging to a suspected mobile SAM site.
Making the turns without a reliable INS wasn’t particularly advisable. Especially since the rest of the group would be keying off him.
Mongoose blinked at the display a few times, hoping he’d made a mistake. When he finally admitted he hadn’t, he felt as if he’d taken a shot directly in the stomach.
There were exactly two options: abort the mission, or have someone else take his slot as pathfinder.
And the most logical person to do that was Dixon.
* * *
Back in his plane, Dixon concentrated on not screwing up.
It was easy, really. All he had to do was keep the dim glow of exhaust from Mongoose’s plane in his eyeballs. Every so often he marched his attention around the cockpit, making sure the Hog was running normally. Flying at night, especially on silent com, had a special loneliness to it. It was all glow and hum. The plane hulked around you; depending on your particular mood, it could feel tremendously huge or tremendously small and fragile.
Dixon didn’t want it to feel anything. He cleared his mind of all emotion and extraneous thought. He focused entirely on where he was.
All he had to do was follow Mongoose and he’d be fine.
* * *
Mongoose hesitated before hitting the speak button. It came down to trust.