Going Deep h-1

by Jim DeFelice

  Springsteen properly avenged, A-Bomb decided discretion was the better part of valor — or however the saying went — and kicked butt in the opposite direction.

  “Lost airman, A-Bomb,” Doberman was saying on the radio. “Yo — acknowledge me, asshole. Where the fuck are you?”

  “Who you calling lost?”

  “What the hell are you firing at down there?”

  “A cement outhouse.”

  “Yo, we’re bingo.”

  “Damn, and I just bought this card. How come I never win?”

  Winging southeast of the site, out of range of the antiair weapons, A-Bomb pointed the Hog’s nose upwards. He found Doberman skimming the cloud ceiling, heading back in his direction.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Doberman yapped, twisting his Hog due south for the tanker?

  “You have to ask?”

  “Didn’t you hear me calling you? Why the hell didn’t you acknowledge?”

  “I just did.”

  “We should be halfway to the refuel by now. Sometimes I think all that candy goes to your brain.”

  “Man, you are a boring date.”

  Starting to feel the fatigue of the mission and the long day before, A-Bomb dug into his vest for a Three Musketeers Bar. The A-10A accelerated as it hunted for its companion’s wing and the route back to the tanker.

  CHAPTER 50

  Over Iraq

  0605

  The clouds suddenly broke. Mongoose turned and looked through the canopy, out across the clear sky toward Dixon’s plane. The second Hog was still climbing to take its position on his wing, its black-green body none the worse for its dash at the ground cannons.

  From what Doberman had just told him, there was nothing left to fire the Mavericks at. Mongoose decided to hold them back, either for targets of opportunity on the way home or for a future mission. It was time to go home.

  The kid had done okay, no doubt about it. Mongoose told himself he’d overreacted yesterday: he owed the kid one. HE keyed the mike and gave Dixon an ataboy.

  “Repeat, Devil One, you’re scratchy,” answered Dixon over the Fox Mike radio.

  “Good work,” he repeated. “Now get up front and dial us a course for that tanker.”

  Mongoose eased the Warthog toward the south, waiting for the younger pilot to overtake him. He couldn’t help but glance at the INS, which was still stuck back in Saudi Arabia somewhere.

  How hard could it be, he wondered, to stick a state-of-the-art geo-positioner in the plane? More to the point, how much could it possibly cost? Bureaucrats and congressmen were screwing with defense appropriations and contract bids and all that crap while people’s butts were on the line.

  But then, the Warthog had always been the Air Force’s forgotten stepchild. Low, slow, and ugly, the A-10A Thunderbolt II was supposed to be a limited plane with a limited mission, a throwback unsuited to modern warfare.

  This group of Hogs — and the hundred or so that had flown during Desert Storm’s first hours — had proved that was all bullshit. The naysayers were wronger than wrong.

  Check That. They were right about one thing. The A-10A Thunderbolt II was a kind of a throwback, a blue-collar tough guy with an old-fashioned work ethic who could get all hell pounded out of him and still come at you. Maybe the Thunderbolt moniker the brass had stuck it with — a nickname no one used — was right after all. The P-47 Thunderbolt was a kick-your-butt fighter in World War II, a hell of a ground-attack machine.

  But maybe the B-17 was a better parallel. Now there was a plane that could get sawed in half and still make it back to the airfield. The comparison seemed sill until you considered that a Hog could carry twice the bomb load as the World War II bomber. The Flying Fortress was damned ugly too. But ugly pretty.

  Like the Hog.

  Mongoose checked over his instruments, looked carefully at the artificial horizon in front of him, and made sure his furel was okay. They had a very good margin for error to the tanker, at least ten more minutes than he’d planned.

  Dixon gave his wings a gentle wag as he set his course. At least, Mongoose assumed he did that on purpose; because of the Hog’s trim controls, you never could be sure. The old joke was that if you took you hand off the stick when you were under fire, the plane would jink and jive for you.

  “I got your wing,” Mongoose told him. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

  * * *

  Dixon exhaled loudly. His heartbeat was back to normal, his adrenaline already drained. His body felt as if it were covered with cement. A hundred different muscles ached, and his eyeballs were squeezed dry.

  But he’d done it. He’d fought through the panic and made it.

  He was who he’d hoped to be.

  Except. Except that he’d lied to Major Johnson, to everybody, about what happened yesterday.

  That was the part he hadn’t made up for.

  * * *

  Mongoose had just stretched a cramp out of his legs when the long-range radio crackled.

  “Devil Flight, this is Cougar,” said the AWACS controller. “Devil One, acknowledge.”

  “This is Devil One. Go ahead.”

  “Devil One, we have a situation.”

  The calm voice ignited a fire in Mongoose’s chest. Every part of him snapped back to attention. He leaned forward unconsciously as he told the E-3 Sentry crew to fill him in.

  “We have two low-level contacts on an intercept to Buddy Boy,” said the controller. “We believe they are helicopters, probably transports, possibly Mi-8’s.”

  “Copy. You want them driven off?” Mongoose asked, completing the controller’s sentence.

  “Affirmative. Sandy bingo’d a few minutes ago. First Team CAP was diverted and the backup is five minutes off.”

  “Give me a heading,” snapped the pilot.

  CHAPTER 51

  OVER IRAQ

  0605

  Like most of his peers, Captain Feroz Vali hated his country’s president and family, blaming them for the ruinous war with Iran and the difficult situation they now found themselves in with America. And like most of his peers, Captain Vali left his politics and preferences outside of the cockpit.

  A good thing, since the cockpit was cramped as it was. Vali’s helicopter swarmed around him, a massive flying tank. Propelled by over-sized TV3-117A engines, the Mi-24D Hind could dart through the sky like an avenging angel. With four ground-attack rocket packs mounted on its plane-like wings and a four-barrel 12.7 mm machine-gun under its chin, the Hind was as deadly an attack helicopter as any in the world.

  The problem was the helicopter was considered so valuable by the regime that Vali had been instructed to avoid combat. And to underline that instruction, he and the Hind following behind him had been posted here, far behind the lines in western Iraq.

  Vali cursed his coward’s role. Yesterday, the Americans had begun their long-awaited air offensive. The official news reports said that it had been a glorious victory for Iraq, with hundreds of American planes downed. Even as he doubted the details, Vali wished for a part of glory. Heading out on his routine training mission, he toyed with the notion of taking the chopper south toward the Saudi border, well within its range. The only thing that stopped him was the realization that the desert there was most likely empty.

  Captain Vali studied the gray overcast sky as he steadied the helicopter toward its patrol point on the Amman-Baghdad Highway. A trainee could accomplish this make-work mission.

  The voice of his weapons operator snapped in his ear.

  “Captain, I have two helicopter contacts directly ahead.”

  Vali glanced forward toward the operator’s cockpit, directly below him in the Hind’s nose.

  Two helicopters? As far as he knew, his two-chopper flight should be the only one in the sky for at least fifty miles.

  Before he could key his mike to acknowledge, the operator added, “Captain, I believe the Intercept Station G-5 is under attack.”

  Vali threw his hand to the th
rottle, nudging the big warship toward its 180-mile-an-hour maximum speed.

  God had smiled upon him.

  CHAPTER 52

  OVER IRAQ

  0607

  Smoke furled from the GCI site, now fifteen miles away. Captain Hawkins steadied himself near the door of the big Pave Low, his teeth rattling with the whomp from the Super Jolly Green Giant’s rotor. Somewhere beyond the smoke British RAF Major Clinton Rhodes was hunkered on the ground, waiting for the big green rescue choppers to appear.

  “Says he could do with a spot of tea,” laughed Sergeant Winston, mocking the pilot’s accent. He had the British major on the UHF rescue band.

  “Tell him to keep transmissions to a minimum,” said the captain, just barely loud enough to be heard. “We still got a ways to go.”

  If you stared at it long enough, the desert sand revealed endless varieties of shades, everything from yellow to gray to black and even green. Roads blurred; buildings, vegetation merged into the terrain. You lost a sense of where you were, forgot how much danger you were really in.

  Someone yelled up front. A crew member barked in reply.

  “He’s waving. Yeah, we got him. It’s him, it’s him,” shouted Winston, talking to the pilot and his captain simultaneously. “He sees us. Damn! We got real contacts on the radar.”

  Hawkins folded his fingers around the metal bar he had steadied himself on. The Sikorsky angled herself for the approach, skimming even lower.

  “Enemy helicopters are coming right for us,” Winston told him. “They’re moving pretty fast.”

  “Let’s hope we move faster.” Hawkins cinched his helmet and checked his rifle, narrowing his eyes for the job at hand.

  CHAPTER 53

  OVER IRAQ

  0610

  Dixon snapped the mike button angrily. “No way I’m backing off, Major. You can’t go home blind.”

  “I can make it back. Besides, these are just transport helicopters.”

  “Let me do my goddamn job.”

  There was no answer. Mongoose really had the lead out, pushing his Hog as fast as it could go along the heading Cougar had broadcast. Dixon did a quick check of his six, his hand glued to the stick and throttle.

  “Stay with me,” barked the lead pilot.

  Mongoose dipped his wing toward the thick overcast between them and the ground. Dixon followed, his Hog plunging through the curtain of tufts and wind drafts. The plane bucked, then shrugged it off, slipping toward the earth like an Olympic-class diver, smooth and poised.

  Breaking into the clear, Dixon realized for the first time that their path was dangerously close to the GCI site. Though at the moment he was out of range of any antiair left down there, he had to keep it in mind if things got complicated.

  Hell, he’d have to keep a lot of things in mind. Like the fact that they would almost surely end up with less than enough jet fuel in the tanks to get home.

  * * *

  It took a second for Mongoose’s brain to register the helicopters, and another long second after that for it to realize they were the Pave Lows.

  “Those are our friendlies,” he told Dixon, just in the case the kid had the same trouble.

  “Roger that.”

  “We want positive visual IDs before we take the boogies out,” Mongoose told him. The rules of engagement issued for the start of the air war were not quite that stringent, but the major didn’t want to take any chances, even though the AWACS had already identified the contacts as Iraqi. “Make sure the bastard’s Iraqi before you blow him away.”

  “Roger that.”

  Three or four other voices overran the rest of the transmission. Mongoose pushed the confusing babble to the side of his brain and steadied the Hog, giving the MH-53s as good a berth as possible. If they were talking to their downed flier he didn’t hear it; at this point, the only voice that was going to make it through the filter of his brain was Dixon’s…

  And God’s. In that order.

  Air to air tactics weren’t exactly his forte. The truth was, you practiced getting away from things in a Hog, not shooting them down. But Mongoose had a rough plan mapped out in his head. Once he had the enemy choppers in his face, he’d swing around to make a rear attack with the Sidewinders; the helicopters’ exhaust would give the heat-seekers a good target to aim at.

  He double-checked the armament panel, making sure the Sidewinders on the double-rail at station one on the left wing were armed and ready. The missiles needed to cool their noses a bit, so their heat-seeking gear would work right. Once ready and in the thick of things, the missiles would cue the pilot for launch with an audible growl that meant “shoot me, shoot me.”

  Assuming he could find the enemy birds. The blank sky wasn’t giving them up easily.

  Finally, he spotted a black fur ball about seven o’clock off his left shoulder. He had just pitched his stick slightly, willing the Hog toward it, when he saw a much larger black shadow considerably higher and directly in line with the bearing the AWACS had given.

  “We got one high, we got one low,” he barked over the radio. “Follow me through. We want to get them from behind their three-nine.”

  * * *

  “Roger that.”

  Dixon stared at the immense black beetle growing in the bottom left corner of his windscreen. That was no utility chopper out on a picnic run. It was immense, with stubby wings projecting toward the ground like muscled shoulders. And the damn thing was moving.

  Big-time Hind, he thought; he wasn’t sure what model. It would — or at least could — have air-to-air.

  Dixon’s AIM-9 Sidewinders had been on long enough for the heat-seeking gear in their noses to cool down. But the major was right — they had to attack from behind. The missiles needed the heat signature from the engine exhaust to home in for the kill.

  The helicopters weren’t going to make it easy. Something sparked from the wing of the angry bug as it suddenly whipped out of Dixon’s screen.

  CHAPTER 54

  OVER IRAQ

  0610

  Doberman didn’t need a calculator to know they didn’t have anywhere near enough jet fuel to double back and help Mongoose and Dixon. In fact, he suspected they would run themselves dry even if they found the Iraqis and crashed them in record time.

  Which made it all the harder to leave them. But it was the only thing to do.

  A-Bomb concurred. “I say we kick butt on the refuel, then go find them.”

  “You read my mind.”

  “Damn, I’d like a piece of that,” moaned A-Bomb. “Air-to-air Hog action. It’s what I’m talking about.”

  Doberman decided to make absolutely certain the AWACS people knew how low Mongoose and Dixon were going to be when they finished their job.

  “Cougar, this is Devil Two. Request that you expedite a tanker contact for Devil One and Devil Four. They’re beyond bingo.”

  It took a while for the E-3 Sentry to respond.

  “Affirmative. We will try to assist any way we can.” The controller paused, then added, “How’s your fuel situation?”

  “We should be at Texaco in ten,” Doberman said. Even with all the stops out, the estimate of the time it would take to reach the tanker was wildly optimistic.

  “Affirmative. Don’t worry about your buddies; we have some CAP coming up from the south to assist. Should arrive in three or four minutes.”

  “Appreciate that,” he answered.

  “Hey,” barked A-Bomb after the transmission with the AWACS was complete. “How come it’s Texaco? Why not Sunoco? My cousin works for Sunoco.”

  “I didn’t know you were related to a suit.”

  “What suit? He makes change in a little booth on the Jersey shore. You’re ever around Cape May, tell him I sent you. He’ll give you some free window-wash.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  CHAPTER 55

  OVER IRAQ

  0614

  “They’re firing at the choppers, not us.”

  Dixon had alr
eady pulled the Hog down and hit the chaff and flares before Mongoose’s words sank in. Gravity and momentum whacked him broadside as he tried to yank the plane back onto the intercept course. The leading-edge wing slats groaned as the Hog literally slid sideways, engines whining. The pilot felt as if he was being stabbed in the chest as he worked the stick and rudders a hundred feet off the ground. Something whizzed by the canopy — the missile that had been launched; one of the helicopters; maybe even an angel.

  “You go high, I’ll go low,” said Mongoose, unaware that Dixon’s position had changed so radically.

  * * *

  Mongoose didn’t wait for the kid to acknowledge as he angled after the darting grasshopper. He knew now that his opponent was hardly a utility chopper. Iraq had something like forty of the Mil M-24 Hind helicopter gunships, extremely potent warbirds that combined the best features of the American Apache with the Blackhawk. Like the Apache, it was primarily a ground attack weapon, but its nose-mounted Gatling cannon was not to be taken lightly by anybody, Warthog included.

  Mongoose angled upwards, taking the Hog into a banking turn toward the helicopter’s vulnerable rear as he approached. But the chopper had been waiting for his move, and pushed to get inside him. Mongoose realized it too late to spin back sharply enough to get a firing solution. That left him further away as the chopper broke for all it was worth, running about two inches off the ground.

  He lost it in the confusion. Mongoose went into a wide bank and started sweating. Maybe it was only a helicopter, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t shoot him down if it was in the right position.

  The pilot whirled his head around, eyes flailing the empty sky. Cursing, he yanked back in the other direction, then saw the black cricket kicking dust north. It fluttered through the diamond aiming cue on his HUD screen as he worked to bring his adrenaline — and the plane — back under control.