Knowlington rolled his eyes. In fairness to Rosen, some officers did make unwanted advances toward her; it was a problem for all women in the military. But Rosen wasn’t particularly discriminating about what exactly constituted an “unwanted advance.” And her way of dealing with them wasn’t exactly by the book. A few days before a captain had shown up in Knowlington’s office sporting a badly bruised kneecap and ribs.
Rosen’s defense? She was wearing new shoes or she would have broken them.
As a general rule, Knowlington didn’t interfere with Clyston’s “suggestions” on assignments. No one in the Air Force knew their personnel better than the capo.
Still . . .
“You sure, Alan?”
“I’ll kick her butt around a bit and make sure she keeps her f-in’ nose in line,” said Clyston. He crossed his heart with his finger.
“It’s not her nose I’m worried about. She slugs the wrong person and even I won’t be able to get her out of it.” Knowlington drained his glass and set it down, then got up to leave. “Somebody ought to stick a gun in her hands and send her after Saddam.”
“Hey, you never know,” said Clyston, putting his earphones back on.
###
Aside from one of his sisters, about the last person Skull expected to be waiting for him as he walked back to Hog Heaven was Major James “Mongoose” Johnson.
“You’re supposed to be back in Buffalo by now, aren’t you, ‘Goose?” he asked.
“I missed the plane,” said the major. “Mind if I talk to you a second? It’s kinda. . . I’d really appreciate it.”
Even though Mongoose was the squadron’s director of operations and Knowlington’s second in command, the two men hadn’t known each other very long and had never gotten along particularly well. Knowlington couldn’t imagine why he was suddenly being called on as a confidante, even though he had risked his neck, and A-Bomb’s, to snatch the major out of an Iraqi troop truck only a few days before. But he led the major into his spartan quarters anyway, waving him toward the only seat in the small room, a trunk at the foot of the cot. Knowlington sat on the cot.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I don’t want to go home,” Mongoose said.
Knowlington laughed, thinking there was a punch line.
There wasn’t.
“I’m serious,” said the major.
“Why don’t you want to go home?”
“I belong here. There’s a lot to be done.”
Nearly thirty years in the Air Force, including a shitload of time in Vietnam, and this was a first. Major Johnson had his arm in a cast, to say nothing of a few less visible injuries. He was in line for umpteen medals and due some major R&R. Knowlington shifted uncomfortably on his cot. “Major. . . listen, Goose, you deserve to go home. You earned it.”
“I didn’t earn anything. I got shot down.”
“Bullshit. You did a kickass job in that airplane. Hell, you took on those bastards who captured you.”
“No, you guys took them on. I got lucky.”
Knowlington shook his head. Mongoose wasn’t a particularly good person to argue with— as he knew from experience.
“Orders are that you’re heading home,” Knowlington said simply.
“You can get around them, though. I know you can. You’ve got connections coming out your. . . ”
He stopped short of saying “ass,” which struck Skull as funny, though he didn’t laugh. “I don’t know if I have enough connections to get around that. Hell, Major, don’t you want to see your kid?”
“Yeah, I do. More than anything. But I belong here. It’s my job. You need me.”
“No one’s irreplaceable.”
“Come on, Colonel. Don’t send me home.”
“You can’t fly. What are you going to do? Saw that cast off?”
Johnson ignored the question. “There’s a lot I can do. Please. I’ve never asked you for anything.”
What the pilot didn’t say, though clearly meant, was that Knowlington owed him big time. Major Johnson had taken care of a lot of things— a hell of a lot of things— before Knowlington finally managed to control himself and put himself on the wagon.
The grand total time of which now amounted to twenty-one days, twenty hours and fifteen minutes, by his watch.
Of course, tallying it made him want a drink more than ever.
“I really think you belong with your family, Goose. You just had a kid.”
“Colonel? I want to do my job.”
Tired, surprised with a request he hadn’t expected, Knowlington searched his mind for something to say.
Johnson was nuts.
But he did owe him. And maybe the guy knew something he wasn’t saying.
He’d never pegged Johnson as a drinker or a druggy, but maybe that was what he was afraid of. Or maybe there was something with his wife. Or the kid. Some sort of personal thing that needed time or something. Knowlington had never married and he really wasn’t good at figuring that kind of thing out, except to know for some guys, a lot of guys, it was important.
But damn. The Air Force had an interest in making sure pilots who’d gone through hell got a decent reprieve.
Even if they didn’t want it?
“Colonel?”
“You know what, Major? I’m going to have to think about this. I just don’t know.”
“I do know, sir. I belong here.”
“I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”
The major’s face lit with an enormous smile. “Thanks.”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” said Knowlington.
“I know that,” said Mongoose, but he was still smiling as he left the tent.
CHAPTER 7
KING FAHD AIRBASE, SAUDI ARABIA
25 JANUARY 1991
0245
Lying in his cot after volunteering to go on the mission, Doberman found it impossible to sleep. It wasn’t because he was worried about flying so far into enemy territory. He was thinking about the stupid card game.
He had nearly been dealt a dream hand, unarguably the best seven cards he had ever had with a pot fatter than he could have wished.
No, he hadn’t come close to being dealt it— he had been dealt it. He just hadn’t had a chance to play the damn thing.
The dream hand to top off the dream night. Over four hundred bucks was tucked under the mattress.
What a run. Too bad that it had been cut off.
And that was the problem. Because if things had gone on, the odds would have balanced out. He would have started to lose. That was the law of averages, the way statistics worked, the way of probabilities. You could describe it with math. Bing-bang-bam.
Unless there was something else involved, like luck. And what did Sullivan say— lucky at flying, unlucky at cards, and vice versa.
Bullshit. He didn’t believe in luck.
Except a little.
But if he had any luck, it was all bad. Luck of Job. Bullshit luck.
Doberman hadn’t believed in luck or any such superstitious bullshit until the war started. Now he did kind of believe— a little. He had to admit he had been just a little lucky to make it back the second time his plane got hit.
And the first.
The sergeant who inspected his plane called him the luckiest dead man alive.
More skill than luck was involved in getting those planes back. Way more.
Though he had found a lucky penny.
Bullshit. He had a goddamned engineering degree, for Christ sake. There was no such thing as luck.
If he hadn’t gotten the stinking card— if he hadn’t peeked at it— he’d be sleeping by now.
Did the fact that he’d been stopped from playing the hand mean anything?
Maybe he had only a certain amount of luck and couldn’t use it up playing cards. So God or Fate or the Easter Bunny had stopped him from playing it.
Right.
Or maybe his luck was running out.
There were X number of possibilities such a hand would come up; he had played Y times. He’d had a million crappy hands. The pendulum had to swing back at some point. The two curves of probability met at the axis point, bing-bang-bam, the best hand of his life. No luck involved. Only probability.
Was there another curve that had to do with flying?
If there was such a thing as luck, if he had been lucky, he’d have to admit something was going on. Fate or some other superstition which he didn’t believe in. Because if there was such a thing as luck then there would be things like omens, and then the hand might mean truly that he was screwed.
Or not. Because it was all bullshit and superstition. A man succeeded because he busted his ass. Doberman had learned that lesson from his Uncle JR, the guy who’d taught him everything important. Luck was bullshit.
There were only two kinds of pilots. Guys like A-Bomb who were somehow naturals, who just kind of fell into things somehow and made them work. Those guys could fly no matter what happened.
And then there were guys like him, who studied it like a book, worked and worked themselves until they had everything so precise you could describe their flights with mathematical models.
If one somebody like A-Bomb wanted to be superstitious, well what the hell? The guy was already so whacked out one more thing wasn’t going to make any difference. But a pilot like Doberman, a pilot who relied on being exact in everything he did— throw superstition into the equation and that pilot was in serious trouble.
There was no such thing as luck, only probability.
But Doberman just couldn’t get the stinking idea out of his head. As desperately as he needed sleep, the best he could do was play the game in his head, over and over.
CHAPTER 8
NEAR FORT APACHE, IRAQ
25 January, 1991
0355
Captain Kevin Hawkins stopped and checked the geo-positioner in his hand. They were allegedly less than a quarter-mile from the abandoned stretch of concrete the Bat Cave planners had designated Fort Apache, but he couldn’t see it. Like the other members of the team, Hawkins had a set of AN/PVS-7 night vision goggles, known as NODs or night observation devices, attached to his helmet. The high-tech devices gave a dim green glow to the surrounding terrain, making it possible to see large objects several hundred yards ahead. But the Iraqi desert was real desert here, with shifting dunes and blowing sands. While they were working off satellite photos little more than thirty-six hours old, Hawkins was worried that the concrete had been swallowed whole.
He also worried that the flat surface nearly a thousand feet long was simply a mirage. The intelligence folks had not been able to come up with a plausible reason that the Iraqis would start an airport here, nearly five miles from a highway, nor had they explained why they had suddenly abandoned it.
Not that Hawkins really cared what the explanation might be. He only cared that he found the damn concrete, secured it, and then made it into an airfield. If he succeeded, a pair of Special Ops helos would fly in tomorrow night with supplies, and stay for more than just dinner. He’d also start getting serious parachute drops with enough equipment to turn this little sidewalk in the middle of the desert into Saddam’s worst nightmare.
Assuming he could find it. Hawkins double-checked the positioner again. The line display on the unit, dubbed by its makers “Magellan”, told him his target lay straight ahead.
His eyes told him there was nothing there. What should he believe?
The positioner relied on information supplied by a set of dedicated satellites high overhead. The system had not been completed before the start of the war, and there were grumbles about its accuracy. But it had always worked perfectly for him.
So he trusted it, more or less.
“All right, we move north. Let’s go,” he told his team of Delta Force troopers. His voice sounded confident, and he knew anyone hearing it might think he had spotted the base.
Or not. These guys were pretty much on to his style by now, which was straight-ahead, no-turning-back, no matter the insanity.
“Captain, building at two o’clock.”
Sergeant Nomo’s warning— which somehow managed to sound like a whisper though it was nearly as loud as a shout— stopped the team. Hawkins trotted up to his position on the northeast flank of the unit.
A jagged wall stood over a low dune two hundred yards ahead. Nomo had found Apache’s lone structure, a twenty-by-twenty poured-cement foundation the analysts said stood about three feet high.
Quickly, Hawkins had the team reorient into groups to surround their target. The team’s lone infra-red viewer, more precious than gold in the Gulf, revealed no warm bodies in the chilly night. But this deep in Injun country, they were taking no chances. The men moved out slowly, the lead troopers in each group armed with silenced MP-5s. While not absolutely silent, the submachine gun was difficult to hear more than a few yards away.
Which was why the loud report of a gun a few minutes later sent every member of the team diving into the dirt.
The shot came from the left flank, near the end of the runway. There was no possibility it had come from the troopers, at least as far as Hawkins was concerned. When no other shots fired, he began making his way in that direction, one hand on his viewer as he scanned to see where the Iraqis were positioned.
“What do we have, Vee?” Hawkins asked as he reached the flank team leader without spotting anything.
Sergeant Olhum Vee pointed toward a ditch with the end of his M-16A2. The rifle had a grenade launcher attached to the barrel. “Got to be in the ditch,” he said. “Teller and Garcia are swinging around. We have them covered.”
“How many?” Hawkins asked.
“Don’t know,” said Vee. “Nobody saw anything. There’s no place to hide besides that ditch; can’t be more than four men, tops. Maybe just one or two.”
“There’s a culvert on the other side,” Hawkins told him, gesturing toward the other end of the runway. “But it’s empty. We’ll move in slow
It took Teller and Garcia five long minutes to get into position. By then, the rest of the team had the area well covered: nothing else was moving.
Hawkins watched as Teller and Garcia bolted upright behind the ditch where the shot had come from. They jumped into it without firing.
Were they trying to take the Iraqi’s alive? Hawkins and Lee leapt up, running to assist their men— who were leaning against the edge of the ditch, laughing their butts off.
There were no Iraqis.
“What the hell?” said Vee.
“Relax,” said Garcia. “It’s a crow banger.” He held up a handful of spent cartridges and pointed to a small device near his feet. “See the wires? One of us must’ve got the last one, ‘cause it’s empty now.”
Hawkins bent down to examine the device as the rest of the team gathered at the top of the ditch. Similar to ones used on some American farms, the miniature cannon was intended to scare off animals. Activated by trip wires in the desert, it fired blanks.
“Damn fucking lucky it wasn’t a mine,” said Hawkins, which stopped the laughter. “Let’s make sure this place is secure. And watch where the hell you step from now on. You may end up with more than camel poop on your boot.”
CHAPTER 9
IRAQ
25 JANUARY 1991
0455
Dixon’s legs felt like they were going to fall off. He dragged them forward, desperate to keep his momentum up. The number five man in the team, Jake Green, kept looming behind him, and Dixon felt him sneering every time he had to cut his pace to keep from running over the Air Force lieutenant.
The thing was, Dixon thought he was in excellent shape. He had run and won a 10K race just before coming over to Saudi Arabia, and had managed to work out nearly every day since the deployment began. He thought he shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up with them.
But the Special Forces soldiers practically galloped through the desert, even with their overstuffed rucksack
s. Each member of the team, Dixon included, carried more ammo on him than a good-sized gun store. Dixon’s brown desert camo suit was covered by a vest stuffed with smoke grenades and clips for his MP-5; his pockets were so jammed with extra bullets for his Beretta that he couldn’t sit properly. Each trooper had a gas mask in a leg pocket; a full chem suit sat at the top of his ruck. The rest of the gear varied, depending on the team member’s assigned role. The point man and the tail gunner both carried silenced Berettas and MP-5s. The team’s pathfinder worked with a geo-positioner from the number two slot in the line. All but Dixon carried a pair of “night eyes”— AN/PVS-7 goggles, which could be attached to a helmet and turned the terrain a fuzzy but viewable green.
Maybe there was something in the goggles that made them move so damn fast, Dixon thought to himself, struggling into a trot to keep his place. He was behind the jumpmaster turned communications specialist, Sergeant First Class Joey Leteri, the number-four man in line. The trooper packed an M-16 with a grenade launcher, and humped not only his own ruck but the satellite com gear as well. But just like the others, he was moving quicker than a race horse threatened with the glue factory.
Suddenly, Leteri stopped short. Dixon felt himself being pushed into the ground by Green.
“Tents,” whispered the trooper, who was the team’s medic. He pointed over Dixon’s shoulder toward the left; in the dim twilight the only thing Dixon could see was the shadow of hills that were part of an old quarry some miles away.
Sergeant Winston came back to them. “Aren’t supposed to be any Bedouins this far north,” he told them. “But we think that’s all they are. They got camels. We have to take a jog east near here anyway. Cornfield’s about four miles on. That OK with you, lieutenant?”
It was the first time anyone had made even a glancing reference to the fact that Dixon, though an observer, technically outranked everyone here. There was no question from Winston’s tone that it had better be okay.
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