by Jim DeFelice
The AIM-9 growled at him, telling him it thought it could make the shot from here. He hesitated a second, then pushed the button.
* * *
Dixon found himself swimming in the cockpit, as if trying to get up from the bottom of a very deep lake. His head pressed back against the seat so hard it felt like it was would break through.
Oxygen gulped down his throat, his heart galloped. He was losing it again.
Look at the throttle, Knowlington had told him.
It was stupid advice. Take your eyes off the windscreen where they belonged, and look at the throttle? Maybe back in Vietnam they did that kind of thing, but not here. He might just as well get out of the plane and kick the tires.
Gravity was an immense piano, smashing down from twenty stories. His maneuvers robbed his brain cells of oxygen, robbed him of sensation. He couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t fly.
Look at the god damn throttle, he told himself.
What the hell.
Dixon wrenched his head to the left, forced his eyes downward, forced a slower breath into his lungs, saw the handle pushed all the way to max.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, he said, pulling his head back to the front of the plane, focusing on the HUD. Start from scratch. Slow down.
Altitude 1250 feet, climbing.
Okay, okay, okay, he told himself, forcing an excruciatingly long exhale from his lungs. You don’t have to be calm, just in control.
Okay, okay, okay, he told himself. Level off. Check your heading. Find the bastard.
Okay, okay, okay. The Hind darted across the upper right quadrant of his screen, gun flailing at the Pave Lows and the major they’d come to save.
* * *
“Fire Fox Two,” said Mongoose, announcing the heat-seeking missile shot as the Sidewinder clunked down from his wingtip. But even as the unfamiliar words left his mouth, the pilot realized that no matter what the missile thought, he’d fired from too great a range and angle to guarantee a hit. The helicopter was already whipping hard to the east, letting off a succession of flares to confuse the heat-seeker.
It didn’t matter now. His job was to protect the Pave Lows, not collect a kill. Whether the missile got it or not, that Hind was no longer a treat. Mongoose swung back to help Dixon crash the other bird.
He saw the rescue helicopters first; both were on the desert floor dead ahead. The Hind materialized on his left, cannon smoking as it roared into the middle of his screen.
The Sidewinder growled. Mongoose punched the button, felt it kick off, and in the same instant realized Dixon was cutting across from the right toward the Iraqi, crossing directly for the path the AIM-9 would take.
CHAPTER 56
OVER IRAQ
0617
The Iraqi pilot cursed as the cannon beneath the helicopter’s nose began to rumble. His gunner had begun firing much too soon.
No matter. The distance between himself and the two American helicopters was closing rapidly. It was only a matter of ten or fifteen seconds.
The appearance of the American planes had caused him only a second’s hesitation. He couldn’t blame his companion in the second Hind for turning off; those were, after all, their orders.
But it was something Captain Vali would never do. The two American planes had flown past, obviously trying for a better position for attack. They were odd planes, nearly black with forked tails and strangely placed engines. He guessed that they had decided to concentrate on the other helicopter first, and would soon be coming for him.
He had several evasive maneuvers planned. But he would wait until he had accomplished his first mission — the enemy helicopters. Galloping forward, he heard his co-pilot shouting something in his com set, and realized the cannon was whirling around on its axis toward another target.
CHAPTER 57
OVER IRAQ
0619
The helicopter’s slow speed crossed him up. Dixon misjudged his approach and lost any possibility of a shot, not even with his cannon. As he pulled off he saw Mongoose coming out of the northwest; some inexplicable pilot’s sense made him roll the Hog hard to the right even as the launch warning sparked the radio.
The indium-antimonide in the guidance section of the AIM-9M Mongoose had fired had its heart set on the Hind. Even so, the proximity of Dixon’s exhaust was so tempting that for a half-second the little brain couldn’t decide what to do.
In that half second, two things happened: The targeted Hind shot off flares and changed course momentarily, away from the Pave Lows. And Dixon rolled the Hog and his IR signature away from the missile.
The AIM-9’s proximity fuse circuitry got so confused that it decided it had missed its target and therefore ought to detonate anyway.
Had they been close enough, the fragments would have done serious damage to a typical, unarmored air frame. In this case, however, they were just so much more shrapnel littering the air as Dixon recovered from his swooping roll and swung for the chopper. The Hind splashed out some bullets in his direction, then cranked back toward the Pave Lows, guns blazing.
Throttle to the firewall, the Hog moved nearly twice as fast as the Hind; the pilot was nearly in front of the helicopter before realizing where the hell he was. He pulled hard left, knocking the Iraqi off his course but taking a wing’s worth of 12.7 mm shells for his persistence.
Orbiting quickly, Dixon took as slow a breath as he dared, steadying his hand on the stick, glancing at the weapons panel though he knew the cannon was ready. This time he didn’t need Knowlington’s advice — he felt the stick in his grip, felt the plane around him, saw the Hind flashing to the right and knew that it would fall into the Hog’s crosshairs in a half second.
* * *
There is no precise formula for becoming a combat pilot, no clear line to be crossed. A green newbie passes a series of initiations that guarantee nothing and yet are more critical than oxygen. It happens in various ways at various times, sometimes noticeably, most often not.
For Lieutenant William James “BJ” Dixon, it happened the second he pressed his finger on the red trigger, lighting the A-lOA’s GAU-8/A Avenger cannon, and watched as the stream of 30 millimeter slugs tore the helicopter in front of him to pieces.
CHAPTER 58
ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ
0623
Captain Hawkins shoved the British pilot to the ground as the fireball erupted less than a hundred yards from them. Oil, metal and blood rained through the air, the Hind spewing its guts as it tumbled into the desert, the biggest chunk of the wreck just clearing the second Pave Low, squatting on the ground thirty yards beyond Hawkins’ craft.
“Go, let’s go,” he screamed, spitting sand from his mouth. He clawed the back of the pilot’s flight suit, lifting and dragging him to the door of the waiting chopper. A crewman helped him pitch the major in, head-first.
Sergeant Winston and one of the other squad members crawled over him. The inside of the giant chopper echoed with shouts. Hawkins felt the floor move beneath his stomach. He rolled, smacking his arm against something very hard as the MH-53 lifted off.
“Rhodes, you okay?” he asked the British pilot as he got to his knees.
“Bloody hell,” said the pilot, looking up from the floor. “I do believe I’ve lost my lucky pen.”
The Special Forces squad and nearby crew members exploded with laughter. Hawkins was practically blinking away tears as he scanned the compartment, making sure everyone had gotten back safely.
“We’re all here, sir,” smirked Winston. “Cut it a bit close, though. Good thing the Iraqi was off with that first round of missiles or we’d be walking.”
While RAF Major Rhodes searched his various pockets for the pen, Hawkins patted his own uniform down — he wasn’t entirely convinced he’d made it back intact.
He had. Along with the rest of his team.
“Kind of close, huh Captain?” Winston asked, smirking. “Our friends took their time,” he added, jerking his finger toward the window
. The two A-lOAs were disappearing in the distance.
“Were those Thunderbolts?” Rhodes asked.
“Warthogs,” said Winston. “Nasty mothers.”
“Quite,” said the Brit approvingly. “But bloody ugly.”
“I don’t know,” said Hawkins. “They looked kind of pretty to me. Welcome aboard, Major. You want some tea? It’ll be cold by now, but it is Earl Gray.”
PART FOUR
NO PLACE LIKE HOME ’DROME
CHAPTER 59
Over Iraq, heading south
0630
Even though congratulations were still crackling across the radio, the euphoria of the battle faded as Mongoose took stock of their fuel situation. He unfolded his map across his lap, plotting how far they could nurse the fumes they had left. It wasn’t pretty — even flying directly south, on minimal power and at dangerously low altitude, they would miss the border by a good five miles.
“Cougar, this is Devil One. Have to advise you of a fuel emergency,” he told the AWACS, unsure of how precise to be — there was always a possibility the Iraqis could be listening, and decide to send a welcome committee.
“Affirmative,” said the E-3 controller. “We’re aware of your situation. We need you to fly to new coordinates. Hold on just a second while we fix the math. My buddy here can’t count higher than ten.”
The joke sounded more than a bit hollow. Before Mongoose could ask what was going on, the controller shot them a heading that took them nearly as far east as south, further inside Iraq.
“Dixon, did you copy that?” Mongoose asked.
“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” said the kid.
Mongoose could feel a bubble of anger starting to rise in his chest. He told himself to calm down — the last thing he needed was to go ballistic right now. But it was a hell of a time for a screw-up.
“Cougar, this is Devil One. Please recheck your numbers.”
“Our math’s fine,” snapped the controller. “Just proceed.”
“You’re sending me to a tanker?”
“That’s affirmative.”
“You’re aware where that takes me?”
“Better than you.”
He got Dixon on the squadron’s private — or semi-private, as experience had shown — frequency, and asked his opinion.
“You got me, Major,” said the pilot. “They repeated the numbers twice.”
“Okay. Let’s give it a shot. If we dump the Mavericks we’ll give ourselves a bit more leeway.”
“You read my mind.”
Mongoose half-believed they had stumbled into an elaborate Iraqi plot until a dozen planes — all friendlies — appeared in the sky directly in front of them. A motley assortment of allied craft, including a flight of F-15 interceptors, at least three F-16 Vipers, a British Tornado and a Phantom Wild Weasel, had been rounded up to provide a posse for a KC-135, lumbering deep into Iraqi territory for the emergency refueling. There was a high CAP and a low CAP and a mid CAP, a pair of close escorts and a chase plane and an AH-130 Spectre gunship tagging along for good measure.
“Hey, you the guys that crashed the choppers?” asked one of the Eagle pilots.
“My partner got the kill,” said Mongoose. As the words came out of his mouth, he realized he felt a bit like a proud papa. “I think mine got away.”
“Shit, you’re gonna put us out of work,” guffawed the F-15 pilot.
“You sure you shot him down, or did you just scare the hell out of him with that plane?” joked another.
“Devil One, this is your milk cow speaking. How bad is your fuel situation?”
Mongoose glanced at the fuel gauge. “I got seven minutes. Devil Four’s got eleven and a half. That right, BJ?”
“Make it twelve.”
Mongoose could almost hear the tanker pilot whistling to himself. The lumbering jet — outwardly similar to a civilian 707 — swung into an orbit toward them, still struggling to get low and slow. The pilots quickly decided Mongoose would grab a few pounds of fuel, then back off and let the kid tank before topping off.
In theory, it was a piece of cake. But both men were tired as hell, Mongoose especially. His arms and legs dragged at the controls as he pushed the Hog toward the director lights on the tanker belly. He’d probably done a thousand refuels over the years, but none this tight.
It wasn’t his fuel he was worried about, it was Dixon’s. If he took too long his wingman’s plane would turn into a glider.
Mongoose nudged everything out of his mind as he pushed his fighter toward the wing-tipped nozzle protruding from the tanker’s rear end. The line between his body and the plane blurred; he saw the boom and willed it into the port on his nose, nostrils flaring as the precious fuel began spitting into the thirsty Hog.
“I want high test,” he told the boom operator.
The crew member gave him a thumbs up through the rear window.
Mongoose took a few hundred pounds — the Hog held ten thousand — before abruptly pulling downward to break the connection. Fuel sprayed over his fuselage, as if he were flying beneath Niagara Falls.
“All yours, BJ,” he said, careful to keep his voice cool and calm, as if the two Hogs were out on a training mission.
Dixon had maybe three minutes of fuel left. Mongoose thought he was moving in tentatively, and had to fight the temptation to tell him to kick butt. At this point, there was nothing he could say that would help.
As it slid in under the tanker’s tail, the nose of the hungry Hog suddenly bucked downward. The plane fluttered in the air, wings trembling. Finally, the nose jumped back toward the refueling boom.
The straw rammed home. Dixon looked over at Mongoose and gave him a wave and a thumbs up.
Mongoose waved back, then snapped a salute as sharp and crisp as possible in the cramped office of a Hog.
CHAPTER 60
KING FAHD
1000
The adrenaline from the helicopter tangle and refuel kept Dixon’s heart pounding until they had King Fahd’s long, gorgeous runway in sight. It was only as he took his place in the landing queue that Dixon’s brain began reprocessing what had happened — not only this morning, but yesterday.
He had vindicated his flying by shooting down the helicopter. He’d overcome his fear — it was best to admit what it was, use the F word. And he’d hung tough under fire. If a pilot had been shot down because of his screw-up, at least he had helped rescue him. He’d made it right.
But something else remained to be done. Something scarier, and more important.
He had to admit he lied about what had happened, and face the consequences.
And so when they finished debriefing the flight in Cineplex, Dixon walked over to Mongoose and asked to talk to him alone.
The major got a funny look on his face. “Listen kid, I know I was hard on you yesterday,” he said. “Maybe too hard. Don’t take it personally, okay? We’re all feeling our way a bit, even me. All right?”
“Yeah, but um, I really have to talk to you about something. Maybe the colonel, too.”
“Knowlington?”
Dixon nodded. Mongoose, confused, led him down the hall to the colonel’s office, where Knowlington was talking to Captain Wong loudly enough to be heard in the hallway.
It wasn’t an entirely pleasant conversation.
“You can pull whatever strings you think you have, you’re here for the duration,” Knowlington was saying. “Frankly, we can use a guy like you. You aren’t just yanking my chain here, are you Wong? I can never tell when you’re bullshitting me.”
“I assure you, Colonel, this is very serious.”
Knowlington started laughing. “You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch. You’re just busting my balls, aren’t you? You bastard you. You had me going. Goddamn.”
Mongoose glanced over at Dixon with a confused smile, then knocked on the door.
“Come,” said Knowlington, still laughing.
The colonel got up as soon as he saw Dixon. “Kick a
ss work, BJ. Kick ass. We heard about two seconds after the Iraqi crashed. Three generals have called to tell me the media is on its way. You’re a goddamn hero, kid.” He pounded Dixon’s shoulder. “Feels weird, huh?”
“I was just, uh, the helicopter was in my sights and I fired, sir.”
“Yeah, believe me, I know. You just did what came natural, right? Don’t worry about it. People want to make you a hero, don’t argue with them. Relax and enjoy it. I’ll tell you something, BJ, we need good stories like this. Believe me, you’re doing everybody a favor, even if it hurts. I want you to head over to the host squadron commander’s office. Couple of people from CNN and some lady from PBS waiting for you. Word travels fast.”
Dixon nodded and glanced at Wong, who was still sitting in the chair.
“One thing I want to set straight,” added the colonel. “That pilot you guys helped rescue says he had engine trouble up near Musail. Plane wasn’t hit, at least not that he could tell. So your raid on the GCI site the day before had no bearing on him. We didn’t cause him to get shot down.”
“Really?” For just an instant, Dixon considered not telling them at all.
“Colonel, do you mind if the lieutenant and I had a private conversation with you?” said Mongoose. There was a certain official twist to the inflection of the words that Knowlington noted with his eyes.
“Excuse us, will you Wong?”
“But… ”
“Seriously, I have a lot of work to do this morning. You finish your report on the missile?”
“Well, I… it does appear to have been an SA-14, though we know that’s impossible.”