Hogs #3 Fort Apache

by DeFelice, Jim

  She picked up the submachine gun and folded it against her arms, resisting the temptation to smash out the front windshield of the helicopter in frustration, resisting the urge to scream.

  “I think I can get us back to Fort Apache,” said the pilot next to her.

  “I know you can,” she said softly, clutching the gun to her chest.

  CHAPTER 81

  OVER IRAQ

  26 JANUARY 1991

  1112

  “We got one chance,” A-Bomb told him. “And that’s Apache. We’re never ever making the border, let alone Al Jouf. We’ll be walking fifty miles, at least.”

  Doberman didn’t argue. He’d already plotted the course himself.

  “Got your six,” said A-Bomb when he told him he was changing their heading.

  ###

  From a purely technical, specs-on-paper point of view, landing on the short strip at Fort Apache wasn’t an impossible proposition. The A-10As had been designed to operate from scratch bases close to the front lines. Apache was only slightly beyond what the plane’s designers had in mind when they started processing the blueprints, and within what a majority of them would have considered an acceptable margin of error, given the circumstances. The planes were essentially empty. The light load meant they had less momentum to slow down, and would less runway than normal. They had a good head wind, not the stiffest, but definitely another positive factor. And these two pilots were, without question, two of the finest Hog drivers in the world, able to wring things from the plane that challenged if not defied the laws of aeronautics.

  But there was always a gap between theory and reality, a huge space inhabited by human beings and metal— a place where things went wrong as well as right, where the fact that you had been flying for tons more time than you were ever supposed to became more important than any theoretical wing-loading equation. It was a place where even the bullets that had missed the plane mattered, where the torque of the last screw in the final slot might be life or death.

  And it was a place of luck, whether Doberman wanted to admit it or not, finally spotting the tiny squint of dirt in his windshield. It was smaller than the arms of the tiny silver cross on his sleeve.

  “Damn short,” said A-Bomb.

  “What’d you expect?”

  “Hey, I got it, no problem,” replied A-Bomb. “I’m just saying it’s short, you know what I’m talking about?”

  The Special Ops troops were standing by at the far end of the field, off the side in a small area that from here looked tinier than the main ring of a flea circus. They weren’t there to applaud. Because the landing strip was so short and narrow, the Hogs would have to land one at a time, the first plane hustling out of the way to let the second plane in.

  Since their maneuvers at the battle scene had left Doberman with marginally more fuel than A-Bomb, he told him to land first.

  “See you on the ground,” said A-Bomb, working into the first leg of the landing approach.

  Doberman lifted his left hand and shook it, relieving some of the muscle stress.

  At least that’s what he intended. It didn’t seem to do anything.

  A-Bomb’s wheels hit at the very edge of the runway, the Hog nosing into a textbook-perfect, short-field landing. He ended with a good hundred feet to spare at the end.

  Doberman practically whistled in admiration, trucking into position for his own landing.

  If A-Bomb could do it, so could he.

  Doberman was tired as hell, but the day was far from over. Taking off was going to be another test, assuming the Special Ops people found some jet fuel for them

  Hogs could probably run on moonshine.

  Doberman forced his mind back to the job at hand, slotting into a final approach as he set his flaps and prepared to duplicate A-Bomb’s perfect touchdown.

  Except that the outer decelerons didn’t deploy.

  He knew instantly he had a problem, tried quickly to reset, felt his heartbeat go from overwrought to ballistic. The plane fluttered and threatened to turn into a spinning football. He had hydraulics, had everything, but for some reason the decelerons stayed flat on the wing. His altitude bled off and speed dropped, though not nearly enough as he fought to control the approach.

  No way was he landing without either smashing in a heap, or rolling off into the immense ditch at the not-so-far end of the cement. Doberman pulled off, his mind and hands whipping through the emergency-procedures checklist.

  Nothing worked. The Hog’s decelerons— actually split ailerons located at the far end of each wing outside the two-segment flaps— were critical for short-field landings. The bottom part slide down to supplement the flaps while the upper portion popped up like air brakes. Besides increasing the wing area and helping the plane slow down, the decelerons helped control a certain innate tendency of the plane to roll.

  Basically, they allowed the pilot to land on a dime without becoming a piece of lawn sculpture. Without them set right, Doberman needed a lot more runway than he had, and even then it might not be pretty.

  Caul my ass, he thought, as he tried everything he could think of without result. I got the stinking goddamn crappiest luck of fucking Job in the whole damn Air Force.

  Doberman worked into a new approach, pressured the stick, and pumped his rudder, trying to jink the damn things loose. But nada. He glanced at his fuel gauges. He was beyond dry.

  Have to climb and bail. God, he’d break every bone in his body, not to mention the plane.

  Shit!

  So what would Tinman’s cross have done? Made the decelerons work? Put a tiger in his gas tank. It’d be as useless as his gun.

  The gun.

  As he began to pull up out of his approach, and idea occurred to him that was so wild, he knew not only that he had to try it, but that it would absolutely, positively work.

  He put the nose back toward the runway and cleared his head, moving around the Hog cockpit as calmly as an insurance executive cleaning up his desk for the weekend. He was in a perfect position to land— damn decelerons still not deceleroning— speed still high, but otherwise right on the money. The plane nudged a bit, but he had her tight in his grip and she wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want her to.

  Doberman stared out the windshield. He could have been the insurance man, waiting at the twentieth floor of his high-rise, killing time at the window as he waited for the elevator to arrive. The edge of the runway came up big. His thumb danced over the elevator button.

  Or rather, over the trigger of his gun.

  Bing-bang-bam.

  The Gatling’s heavy burst shook the Hog violently, and three things happened:

  The Hog slowed down, as Doberman had hoped.

  The Hog nearly dropped straight down onto the desert, which he hadn’t.

  The Hog’s decelerons suddenly popped into action, helping him regain enough control to pull to a slightly cockeyed, burn-out-the-brakes, blow-the-tires, screech-to-a-smoky-halt stop a good fifty feet before the end of the strip.

  As he popped the cockpit and threw off his helmet, Doberman looked up at the sky.

  “I am one damn lucky son of a bitch!” he shouted.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” shouted A-Bomb, clambering up onto the wing. “You’re also a goddamn show-off with that gun.” He slapped the nose of the Hog in admiration. “Wish I’d thought of that.”

  __EPILOGUE___

  I

  GOING HOME

  CHAPTER 82.

  KING FAHD

  26 JANUARY 1991

  1200

  The general gave him the news about Dixon personally. Colonel Knowlington listened quietly, nodding ever so slightly as the Special Ops commander finished.

  “Officially, he’s MIA,” said the general. “But someone saw the body.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s war.” Knowlington shrugged. “I’m sorry to cut you short, but there’s something I have to do right away.”

&n
bsp; “Sure.”

  ###

  Colonel Knowlington left his office and walked directly to Tent City. He found Mongoose in his tent.

  “Hey Colonel,” said Mongoose. “I’ve just been going over the frag.”

  “Don’t bother. Get your bags packed. You’re out of here.”

  Mongoose nearly dropped the sheets of computer paper containing the squadron’s daily assignments. “What?”

  “There’s a C-5A going to Newburgh, N.Y. at 3 p.m. You’re on it or you’re court martialed for desertion.”

  “You bastard.” Mongoose jumped to his feet, as angry as if Knowlington had told him he was sleeping with his wife. “You promised me you’d take care of keeping me here.”

  Skull said nothing, turning and leaving the tent.

  “I won’t forget this!” shouted Mongoose, running after him. “I’ll get you back, you drunk bastard.”

  Tightening the fingers in his right fist, Colonel Knowlington walked away.

  CHAPTER 82

  SUGAR MOUNTAIN

  26 JANUARY 1991

  1200

  His mouth was full. Warm lamb, scented with mint and a little bit of thyme, his all-time favorite dish.

  It was a celebration, in honor of his finally becoming a real, bonafide officer. Mom blew out all the stops.

  His cousins and aunt were there. His mother sitting at the end of the table, smiling.

  When he saw her, he knew it was a dream. For a moment, he didn’t want it to end. Then he decided it had to. He pushed his arm under his chest, raised his head for a moment, collapsed back.

  It was dirt in his mouth, not lamb.

  He pushed up and heard the voices nearby, Iraqi voices.

  His gun was lying a few feet away.

  Useless. It had jammed.

  A Kalashnikov was a few yards beyond it.

  So was its owner. Dead. He’d shot him.

  The pistol was on the ground. He bent and scooped it up.

  The AK-47 was empty, he remembered, but he picked it up anyway. He grabbed the H&K as well.

  The voices were louder now, no more than ten yards away, around the corner of the crevice.

  Air Force Lieutenant William James “BJ” Dixon put down the rifles and knelt on one knee, bracing himself in firing position, both hands wrapped firmly around the pistol.

  No way was anyone taking him alive.

  _The End_

  An historical note:

  While inspired by actual A-10A missions conducted during the Gulf War, this book is fiction. All characters, commands and locations are to be interpreted as such, and in no case are meant to reflect on anyone living or dead, actual military procedures, practices or whims.

  Readers familiar with the A-10A facilities at King Fahd and Al Jouf will realize I’ve moved a few things around in the interest of the yarn. We haven’t gotten the Jacuzzi yet, but Chief Clyston is working on it.

  While Special Ops— Delta Force in particular— infiltrated a number of teams into various parts of Iraq prior to the ground portion of the campaign, Fort Apache and its command structure is entirely a figment of my imagination. No documents released after the war include any reference to a permanent base of its size in Iraq. While the A-10As did at times operate in support of the Special Ops teams, no official documents support the theory that they operated from inside Iraq. A discrepancy in declassified records has tended to reinforce certain rumors about classified A-10A Forward Operating Areas or bases, but none of the official documents I’ve seen to date specifically prove that Hogs operated from enemy territory. In any event, all activities north of the border in this book are fictitious.

  As for the Special Ops missions, we will probably have to wait years for the full story to be declassified— and for the guys who were there to say what really happened. But readers can find some details of the Special Ops missions in Iraq in several books.

  Among my favorites, because they cast the operations in their historical framework, are Commandos by Douglas C. Waller, and From a Dark Sky by Orr Kelly. Kelly’s book focuses on the Air Force’s contribution to Special Ops, a perspective often missed.

  Terry Griswold and D.M. Giangreco also include some stories in their book, Delta, America’s Elite Counterterrorist Force; if you’ve never seen how small an AH-6G is, you can get an idea from the photos included in their book.

  Some of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering is hinted at in Rick Atkinson’s larger history to the war, Crusade, a much different book than the others. And a personal look at the British SAS contribution to special operations in Iraq is told by Andy McNab in his first-person memoir Bravo Two Zero. McNab managed to survive capture; his true story is more harrowing than fiction.

  A final note: Don’t try Doberman’s approach to short-field landings on your local shopping mall parking lot. It beats the hell out of the landing gear and results in a lot of broken glass.

  -Jim DeFelice

  Other Books by Jim DeFelice

  This is the second in the original Hogs six-book series including

  HOG #1:GOING DEEP

  HOG #2: HOG DOWN

  More in the series coming out soon including:

  HOG #3: Fort Apache

  If you like this book, visit Jim’s website to find out how to download a free copy of Jim’s short story called In the Hunter’s Shadow, at www.jimdefelice.com. It’s yours as a thank you for buying this series.

  #1 New York Times Bestselling author Jim DeFelice (American Sniper), writing as James Ferro, originally published this book in paperback for Berkley in 2000. His other books on Kindle include:

  Novels:

  Leopards Kill

  Brother’s Keeper

  Havana Strike

  Short Stories:

  Wolf Flight (WWII)

  Ace Combat (based on Ace Combat game)

  Military History:

  Omar Bradley: General at War

  Rangers At Dieppe (WWII)

  American Sniper (Navy Seal Chris Kyle)

  Andy Fisher FBI technothrillers:

  The Helios Conspiracy

  Cyclops One

  Threat Level Black,

  Patriot Spy Revolutionary War series:

  The Silver Bullet

  The Iron Chain

  The Golden Flask

  You can also find his co-authored series listed on Jim’s Amazon Author’s page:

  Rogue Warrior with Dick Marcinko

  Larry Bond’s First Team and Red Dragon Rising series

  Dale Brown’s Dreamland and Whiplash series.

  The first five books in the Stephen Coonts Deep Black series