The controller told them the building was a hospital and off-limits.
“No way that’s a fucking hospital,” said A-Bomb. “I’m looking at a dozen fucking artillery pieces, sandbagged in. Fuck.”
Hack waited for O’Rourke’s curses to subside, then gave the ABCCC controller another shot. But he wasn’t buying.
“Devil One, we’ll have a FAC check it out on the coordinates you supplied,” said the controller finally. “I have a target for you.”
Hack’s fingers fumbled his wax pencil and he had to dig into his speed-suit pocket for the backup. He retrieved it just as the controller began the brief, setting out an armored vehicle depot as the new target. He scrawled the coordinates on the Persipex canopy, then double-checked them against his paper map, orienting himself. The target was to the east, a stretch for their fuel.
Doable, though.
A-Bomb continued to grumbled about the ersatz hospital, even after they changed course.
“Hospital my ass.”
Hack tried coordinating the numbers against his map, but lost track of where he was for a moment, thrown a bit by the INS. You could get distracted easily in combat, no matter what you were flying. He had to keep his head clear.
The opposite seemed true for A-Bomb. “I’ve seen more convincing hospitals in comic books,” he railed.
“O’Rourke, shut the hell up and watch my six,” barked Preston.
“What I’m talking about.”
This time, there was no difficulty seeing the target. It had been bombed in the past hour or so; smoke curled from the remains of buildings or bunkers at the north and south ends of what looked like a large parking lot. Roughly two dozen vehicles were parked in almost perfect rows at a right angle to the buildings. Beyond them were mounds of dirt— probably more vehicles, dug into the sand. Whatever air defenses the Iraqis had mounted had been eradicated in the earlier strike.
A flight of F-16 Vipers cut overhead as Hack turned to line up his bombing run. At least five thousand feet separated him from the nearest plane, but it still felt like he was getting his hair cut. He hadn’t known about the flight, which was en route to another target; Hack fought against an impulse to bawl the controller out for not warning him that the aircraft were nearby.
Do your best, he reminded himself, as he nudged tentatively into the bombing run. The A-10A’s primitive bombsight slid slowly toward the row of vehicles as he dropped through nine thousand feet. They were small brown sticks, tiny twigs left in the dirt by a kid who’d gone home for supper.
Hack’s heart thumped loud in his throat, choking off his breath. He began to worry that he was going to be too low before the crosshairs found their target, then realized he’d begun his glide a bit too late. He was in danger of overshooting the vehicles. He pushed his stick, increasing his angle of attack. The cursor jumped onto a pair of fat sticks and he pickled.
Wings now clean except for the Sidewinders and ECM pod, the Hog fluttered slightly, urging her pilot to recover to the right as planned. But Hack’s attention stayed focused on the ground in front of him, the sticks steadily growing from twigs to thick branches. The bark roughened and indentations appeared. They were armored personnel carriers, all set out in a line. He could see hatches and machine guns, sloped ports. He stared at them as they grew, watching with fascination as they became more and more real, yet remained the playthings of a kid.
Finally he pulled his stick back, belatedly realizing he’d flown so close to the ground that the exploding blomblets might very well clip his wings. He reached for throttle, slamming the Hog into overdrive, ducking his body with the plane as he tried desperately to push her off to the south.
It was only as the Hog began to recover that Hack realized he hadn’t bothered to correct for the wind, which could easily send a stick of bombs tumbling off target.
As he twisted his head back to get a look, A-Bomb’s garbled voice jangled his ears. He started to ask his wingmate to repeat, then realized what the words meant.
Someone on the ground had fired a shoulder-launched SAM at Hack’s tailpipe.
CHAPTER 4
OVER SOUTHEASTERN IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1130
A-Bomb repeated his warning, then stepped hard on his rudder pedal, twisting his A-10A in the air. The ants that had emerged from the burned out bunker were fat and pretty in his screen— no way could he waste a shot like this, even if there were missiles in the air. He kissed his cluster bombs good-bye, then tossed a parcel of flares off for luck, tucking the Hog into a roll.
He swirled almost backward in the air, goosing more decoy flares off before finally pushing Devil Two level in the opposite direction he’d taken for the attack. If either of the SA-7s that had been launched had been aimed at him, his zigging maneuvers had tied their primitive heat seekers in knots.
Probably.
Something detonated in the air about a half-mile north of him. Immediately above the explosion, but a good mile beyond it, Devil One crossed to the west.
Assured that his wingmate hadn’t been hit, A-Bomb pulled his plane over his shoulder, flailing back at the armored depot to share his feelings at being fired on.
“I’m a touchy feely kind of guy,” he explained as Iraqis scattered below. “So let me just hug you close.”
The 30mm Avenger cannon began growling below his feet. About the size of the ’59 Caddy A-Bomb had on blocks back home, the Gatling’s seven barrels sped around furiously as high-explosive and uranium armor-piercing shells were fed in by a duet of hydraulic motors, only to be dispensed by the Gat with furious relish. The recoil from the gun literally held the Hog in the air as the pilot worked the stream of bullets through the top armor of three APCs.
As smoke and debris filled the air before him; A-Bomb pushed the Hog to the right, leaning against the stick to fight off a sudden tsunami of turbulence. He let off the trigger as he came to the end of the row, pushing away now at only fifteen hundred feet, close enough for some of the crazy ragheads on his left to actually take aim with their Kalashnikovs. The assault rifles’ 7.62mm bullets were useless against the titanium steel surrounding the Hog’s cockpit, and it would take more than a hundred of them to seriously threaten the honeycombed wings with their fire-retardant inserts protecting the fuel tanks. Still, it was the thought that counted.
“I admire the hell out of you,” said A-Bomb. Then he turned back to nail the SOBs. “Let me show you what a real gun can do.” As he zipped back for the attack, the Iraqis dove on the ground. “Do the words ‘thirty-millimeter cannon’ mean anything to you? How about u-rain-ee-um?”
CHAPTER 5
OVER SOUTHEASTERN IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1135
Tiny bubbles of sweat climbed up the sides of Hack’s neck, growing colder as they went, freezing the tips of his ears. His lungs filled with snow, ballooning, prying his ribs outward against the cells of his pressure suit. Hack jigged and jagged, throwing the plane back and forth as he tried desperately to avoid the SAMs.
The sharp maneuvers sent gravity crushing against his body. Even as his g suit worked furiously to ward off the pressure, Hack’s world narrowed to a pinprick of brown and blue, surrounded by a circle of black. He heard nothing. He felt nothing. He knew his fingers were curled hard around the stick, but only because he saw them there.
The plane was going where he didn’t want it to.
He pulled back on the stick, struggling to clear his head and keep himself airborne. The black circle began to retreat. The wings lifted suddenly, air pushing the plane upward. Something rumbled against the rudders.
I’m hit.
Damn, I’m going in.
His lungs had a thousand sharp points, digging into the soft tissue around them.
Do your best.
The plane’s shudder ceased. He caught his arm, easing back, leveling off.
He was free. The missile that had been chasing him had given up, exploding a few yards behind as it re
ached the end of its range.
Or maybe he’d just imagined it all in his panic. Maybe the g’s rushing against his body had temporarily knocked him senseless; made him hallucinate. In any event, he was free, alive and unscathed, or at least not seriously wounded.
As deliberately as he could manage, Hack took stock of himself and his position. He was about three miles south of the target area, now clearly marked by black smoke. Open desert lay below and directly south. He was at five thousand feet, climbing very slightly, moving at just over 350 knots— a fair clip for a Hog.
Fuel was low, but not desperate.
Where the hell was A-Bomb?
“Devil Two,” he said over the squadron frequency. “Lost Airman. A-Bomb?”
“Yo,” responded his wingmate.
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m just north of Saddam’s used parking lot, helping them put up the going out of business sign.”
“Where the hell are you?” Hack repeated.
“Relax Devil leader,” said O’Rourke. “I got you. Hold your horses and I’ll be on your butt. We’re clean.”
“What do you mean, we’re clean?”
“I mean the only thing we have to worry about is running into some of those pointy-nose types on their way to mop up.”
“What are you screwing around for? Check your fuel. Come on. Didn’t you get a bingo?”
A-Bomb didn’t answer, which was just fine with Hack. He turned southwards to intersect the original course back to King Khalid, where they would refuel before heading back to the Home Drome at King Fahd.
Dark curls of black wool filled the eastern horizon. Saddam had set the Kuwait oil fields on fire and released thousands, maybe millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, doing to the environment what he had done to Kuwait.
“Got your back,” said A-Bomb, announcing that he had caught up and was now in combat trail, roughly a mile offset behind Hack’s tail. “How ‘bout we find a tanker instead of going into Khalid? Their coffee sucks.”
“Can it.”
“Man, you’re being bitchy. What happened? That SA-7 get your underwear dirty?”
This time, Hack was the one who didn’t reply.
CHAPTER 6
HOG HEAVEN, KING FAHD AIRBASE, SAUDI ARABIA
28 JANUARY 1991
1200
Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington lowered his head toward the desktop, stretching his neck and shoulder muscles until he could feel the strain in the middle of his back. Then he rolled his head around slowly, trying to keep his shoulders relaxed as he completed each revolution, counterclockwise, moving his head as slowly as he could manage. Six more times and he put his chin on his chest, covering his face with his hands, fingers massaging his temples. Then he dropped his arms and sat upright in the chair, breathing slowly.
Though dissipated, his headache had not quite disappeared. The throb was familiar and low-grade, potentially manageable by one of several additional therapies, including what Skull called “the oxygen cure” — breathing pure oxygen through his pilot’s face mask. But there were only two real cures— one was time, the other was a drink.
Or perhaps they were the same, for wasn’t he destined to drink, again, and again, and again, sooner or later?
Knowlington had been sober for twenty-three days before last night. Then, on the ground at KKMC, waiting for his umpteenth debriefing, someone had stuck a beer in his hand and he’d slipped down a long, familiar hole.
Wrong.
No one made him drink the beer. He didn’t slip, he went willingly. He took the beer and drank it, then got another and another.
There were extenuating circumstances. He’d gotten back from a hellacious sortie north, fighting the odds to help rescue one of his pilots, one of his kids. B.J. Dixon had been a ground FAC, helping a Delta team spot Scuds deep in Iraq territory. Dixon— who was or at least ought to be sleeping in his quarters in nearby Tent City— had saved the life of one of the Delta boys but got separated from them in the process. Devil squadron had found him and brought him home.
As squadron commander, Knowlington had felt responsible for the kid and went along personally to bail him out. Everything had gone well— too damned well, which was the problem. He’d let his guard down.
Liar!
He’d wished for it. He’d known what was happening. The tingle in his mouth, the roar in his head— he knew what he was doing.
Just a few beers.
How long had he been sober before that? Two weeks? Three? He couldn’t even remember now.
Yesterday, he could have counted the minutes.
Michael Knowlington pushed back in his office chair, staring at the blank wall of his trailer headquarters.
God, he wanted a drink.
It would take him ten minutes, fifteen tops, to walk over to the Depot, an illegal “club” located just off the base property. A few slugs of Jack Daniel’s and he’d be back on his feet.
He wasn’t fit to command the squadron. He should resign.
Someone knocked. Skull turned toward the door, waiting a moment before saying anything, though he had already recognized the familiar rhythm of knuckles tapping against the frame.
“Come,” he said.
Chief Master Sergeant Allen Clyston pushed into the small office like a bear inspecting a new cave.
Clyston was the squadron’s first sergeant— and much, much more. He personally oversaw the maintenance of Devil Squadron’s twelve Hogs. In the squadron’s stripped-down organization chart, every enlisted arrow pointed to him: Knowlington’s capo di capo, the colonel’s right arm— and his left, and his legs, eyes and ears. Clyston was the last of a veritable mafia of enlisted men who had helped Knowlington through half-a-dozen commands and assignments stretching back to the waning days of Vietnam.
“Allen.”
“Colonel.” Clyston groaned as he slipped onto the metal chair across from Knowlington’s desk. “Ought to let me find you a real chair.”
“Don’t want visitors getting too comfortable,” said Skull. He tried smiling, then realized how forced it must seem.
“I hear ya,” said the sergeant. He folded his arms around his chest, leaning back in the chair so his gray-speckled head touched the wall. “Got a problem I thought you could help with.”
“Fire away.”
“Got a fix for the INS units,” said Clyston, referring to the gear that helped the A-10As navigate. Though a basic piece of equipment, the gear was notoriously unreliable and needed constant readjustments. “Kind of a work-around-upgrade thing, but we need a pair of special diodes I can’t seem to get through the usual sources.” Clyston reached into his pocket for a piece of paper. “Becky Rosen says she can give them a five-year, sixty-thousand-mile warranty if she gets this stuff.”
Skull’s head throbbed at the mention of Sergeant Rosen. She was a damn good worker and smarter than hell, but she had caused Skull nothing but trouble. She had a way of pissing off half the officers who crossed her path. The rest made passes at her— not her fault certainly, but her way of dealing with them fell somewhat outside the parameters of the Military Code of Conduct.
Worse, she’d recently joined Delta Force in an unauthorized foray across the border to help the Army retrieve a battered helicopter. A good many butts were hanging in the wind because a woman had gone over enemy lines.
Not that she hadn’t done a kick-ass job and probably single-handedly saved the operation.
“Your usual channels can’t get this stuff?” Skull asked, trying to make sense of the specifications.
“My channels are military,” said Clyston. “Turns out, those are pretty rare little circuits. Rosen claims she can adapt them to regulate the voltage and then use that to feed back against the errors. Has a little card designed and everything, neat as a pin. She’s a whip, I’m telling you.”
“It’ll work?”
“She says so, if we can find the parts.” Clyston shrugged. “You know somebod
y at GE, right? They probably have something like that. Or they’d get us onto someone. Maybe a regular supplier of theirs or something. That G.E. guy now— Rogers, right?””
No, not Rogers. Jeff Roberts, who’d flown Phantoms with Skull out in California. Some sort of senior vice president at the company now. Probably didn’t know shit about radios, but he’d like this. Roberts had always talked about finding ways around the brass, military or otherwise.
Skull did know a Rogers, though. Had known.
Captain “Slammin’ Sammy” Rogers had gone out over Vietnam, ended up a POW. Supposedly, he’d been at Son Tay with a bunch of other guys shortly before the raid there in ’70. Knowlington had led one of the support packages, flying a Phantom.
The raid came up empty; Rogers never came home.
“Captain Roberts,” said Clyston.
“I think he went out as a lieutenant colonel,” said Skull.
Clyston’s left shoulder edged up slightly in a shrug. “Pretty much a captain’s attitude, though. It stays with you
“Oh, that’s a new theory.”
“F no,” said Clyston. He smiled. “Guy has a rank stays with him for life, whatever the stripes say. Or what have you.”
“What rank am I?”
“Oh, a colonel. Definitely. Not full of shit enough to be a general. No offense.” Clyston smiled.
The capo probably hadn’t come here to give him the parts list. He must know about Skull’s drinking. The reference to Roberts— a subtle hint that he ought to resign?
Clyston could be very subtle. But he was also pretty straight. Very straight.
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 2