He circled south of the two trucks and the damaged airplane, the altimeter nailed on three hundred feet above ground level. Devil Four was circling several thousand feet above and slightly to the south.
The players were getting hard to see. A flare might be a good idea.
Except it would help the Iraqis find their guys.
One of the remaining trucks fired its machine-gun, the stream of bullets arcing across the desert as Doberman passed. He rolled the Hog and sailed into what amounted to a 165-degree turn, pushing the wings out level as he got the nose angled onto the shadow. He lost speed and altitude—he was maybe ten feet off the ground when he put his nose on his target. Devil Three didn’t seem to mind, though, nor did she complain when he kicked the Avenger 30mm Gatling back into action, a full three-second burst obliterating the tiny stream of machine-gun fire that was now aimed directly at his face.
Something scraped against his belly as he let off the trigger. For a moment Doberman thought he actually did hit the ground— he was very, very low. But as he pulled up past the smoked target, he realized it must have been bullets from the Iraqi striking the Hog’s titanium armor.
If they’d done any damage, the emergency lights weren’t admitting it. All systems were in the green.
“Saved the best for last,” said Gunny. “You nailed a tank. T-54, looks like.”
“Three,” said Doberman. He’d flailed back at the target so fast he hadn’t even known what he was hitting.
“Thanks, Yanks!” shouted a voice over the emergency rescue band. It was Sister Sadie’s pilot.
“Devil Three to Sadie. What the hell? I had you a mile further north.”
“Quite,” responded the pilot. “Nav’s still there. I had to retrieve a souvenir.”
God damn Brits were worse than Hog drivers.
“Stay put, would you?” Doberman told him. “We have to smoke the rest of the Iraqis so the helicopters can come in..”
“It’s a starlit night and I feel all right,” sang the voice, laughing as if it were karaoke night. “But I’ve got company.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“More lorries down here,” said the Brit, his voice only marginally more serious.
“Yeah, whatever. Stay out of the cross fire, okay?”
Lorries? Did he mean trucks?
Goddamn Brits couldn’t even speak English.
CHAPTER 20
OVER IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1840
Hawkins tried to control his anger as he unfolded the paper map over the hump of controls between the two pilots at the front of the Chinook. The SAS sergeant slapped his small flashlight twice without getting the light to work.
“Figures,” muttered the sergeant.
Hawkins reached into his pocket and got his own.
“We’re here,” he said, pointing. “Sadie’s crew is about here.”
“Further south, and they’re busy,” said the pilot, pointing to the side glass. Flashes lit the horizon.
If they were going to hit the base, they had to get moving. The Apaches were well into their fuel stores, and even with the planned behind-the-lines refuel, they’d be pushing things. The Hogs, too, must be nearing their limit.
On the other hand, he couldn’t take the risk of flying the helicopters anywhere near serious antiair defenses.
Which, basically, was what Preston was concerned about, even if the shithead hadn’t spelled it out.
He didn’t even know Preston, but he had worked with two of the pilots in the support group, Doberman and A-Bomb. If those guys thought there was a problem, there must really be a problem.
One way or another, they’d probably lost the element of surprise.
Better to fail than never to try.
Unless failure meant twenty dead men.
“Our chaps,” said Sergeant Burns.
“They’re all our chaps,” said Hawkins. “We’re going to have to scrub.”
“I agree,” said the pilot.
Burns didn’t say anything. Hawkins bent his head slightly, studying the SAS sergeant’s face in the wash from the dimmed cockpit lights.
“Best thing,” said the commando finally.
“Let’s go grab the Tornado crew,” Hawkins told the pilot.
“Wait!” The co-pilot put out his hand, touching Hawkins as he listened to a transmission over the headphones. “The A-10s say there’s a second wave of vehicles approaching. They may light a flare. Looks like quite a snit.”
“Get me the Apaches, and then Devil One,” said Hawkins. “Plot that course but hold until it’s clear.”
CHAPTER 21
OVER IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1845
Doberman swung back to the south, climbing steadily. Devil Four completed the far end of a figure-eight about a half-mile ahead, still flying at six thousand feet.
“Three pickups that I see,” Gunny told him over the squadron frequency. “Moving toward the wreckage. I can nail them with the Mavericks.”
“Hold off,” Doberman told him.
Using Mavericks on relatively soft targets like pickups was a bit of an overkill. Had A-Bomb been his wingman, the response would have been along the lines of, “Going for the best bang for the buck,” or “Spoken like a real taxpayer.” But Gunny simply acknowledged.
“Devil Three, this is Devil One,” said Preston. “What’s your status?”
“Circling over the crew,” said Doberman. “Three Iraqi vehicles approaching, about a mile off, little more. There may be some ground troops near our guys. Can’t tell.”
“Flare?”
“Figure it’ll help them more than us,” said Doberman. “More than the Brits.”
“Concur. Can you take the pickups?”
“Shit, yeah.”
“They’re going to send the Apaches north to help out. Chinooks will stand by to pick up the boys a mile back,” responded Hack. “Lay it out for the Apaches.”
The way Hack said it, connecting the dots for him like he was an imbecile, pissed Doberman off. Preston was just a little too perfect and crisp, the kind of guy who never did any wrong and let you know it. He thought the rest of the world couldn’t cross the street if he wasn’t there to take its hand.
Doberman steamed while Hack read the com frequency for Splash leader— which of course he already had— and then reminded him that he was getting close to bingo— which of course he already knew.
“Repeat, Devil Three?” asked Hawkins, the Splash commander, as he snapped onto their frequency.
“Need you to move exactly three point five north, precisely north, from your position,” said Doberman, working it out in his head. “When you’re ready I’ll have our boys give you a flare.”
The Apache commander got a little pushy when he clicked on, saying they were less than three minutes from the battlefield and asking which vehicles he could take.”
“None. They’re all ours,” snapped Doberman, pushing the Hog’s wing over. “Finders keepers.”
CHAPTER 22
IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1845
Captain Conrad played striker on the squadron soccer team, and while he was perhaps not the most gifted forward in the RAF, he had a certain quality of persistence and stamina that translated into points late in the game.
As it was late in the game now, he put his stamina to good use, running for all he was worth from the shadow of Sister Sadie as a flare shot upwards in the distance.
One of the vehicles the A-10 had hit earlier flashed with a fresh explosion as its gas tank caught fire. The noise caught him off-guard, unsettling his balance and sending him face-first into the ground. Conrad dropped the tape and had to hunt for it on his hands and knees, patting down the desert but finding nothing but sand.
He heard a roar and then loud secondary explosions. Grappling in the dust, he heard the distinct thump of approaching helicopters. Then he felt a rush of air— the A-10
had returned to attack the vehicles, which were closer to him than he’d thought.
The plane descended so low that its bullets passed only a few yards away, streaming in front of his eyes like a surgeon’s laser beam excising a tumor. The desert shrieked as the American lit his weapon in three distinct, brief bursts. Blue, red, green and orange lightning lit sideways across the sand, erupting in a pure white geyser so intense that dirt and smoke and grit filled Conrad’s eyes. He threw his head down, rubbing his face with his sleeve; he managed to clear one eye and groped again for the tape. Finding it, he stood, running again toward the sound of the approaching helicopter.
A small flare shot upward. His mate, no more than a quarter mile away.
Something this and dark shot between them.
Conrad stopped quickly. There were shadows all around; with the battle smoke, falling darkness, and swirling sand, he’d completely lost his bearings.
The A-10 danced above him, cannon roaring again.
He could hear a truck motor and the clicks of automatic rifle fire approaching. He thought he could see the moving shadow. Red glints pricked closer.
He waited for the Hog to hit the truck. But there were no geysers of burning metal, no secondary explosions.
Conrad dropped to his knees. He pulled his emergency radio out of his vest, but couldn’t hear anything over the roar. He checked his settings, tried again, then tossed it down and fumbled for his flare gun. He fired a charge— not skyward but at the vehicle. A hiss, a whoosh, the sound of glass smashing— but the truck kept coming.
He couldn’t find another flare, tossed the gun, and lost the radio, but he held onto the tap. He ran to his right, the only direction where there were no shadows. He smelled burning metal, and something like antifreeze,.
Trucks. Right behind him.
For the first time since he’d come to the Gulf— for the first time ever in his twenty-six years— he realized there were limits to life, realities that had nothing to do with his abilities or strength or will. Heavy caliber bullets cut a swath ten feet away; the truck barreled on. Conrad willed himself to his feet again, pushing to the right, resigned to go out the way a soldier wanted to go out, fighting at least. He reached for his pistol, got it in his hand, and whirled around just in time to see the shadow of the Iraqi vehicle, an open-back Zil, crest a small hill less than ten yards away.
Then oblivion arrived.
But not for him. Red flames burst upwards as the heavy fist of the A-10A Thunderbolt II smashed down on the Iraqi vehicle. The night tore in two as Conrad flew backwards, propelled by some superhuman force that left him dazed and disoriented, but intact.
And with the video still in his hand.
He managed somehow to get back on his feet, realized he had both eyes open now, though they hurt like hell. He couldn’t hear. His body seemed to feel the swirl of the battle continuing. Wind, sand, cordite, blood flew into his face.
Something fluttered a few yards away. A heli.
No, it was a wolf, snapping for him.
More like an Apache war bird, her Gat swiveling beneath her chin, so close it could poke him in the chest.
Conrad threw himself onto the helicopter’s right skid. “Go!” he yelled. “Go! Go!”
And it did, skittering backwards a moment, twisting its body, then running a half-mile south to a calmer place where the others were waiting and where Conrad, back to himself, began laughing hysterically as two burly SAS men pried him off the rail and hustled him to safety.
CHAPTER 23
OVER IRAQ
28 JANUARY 1991
1845
Part of him wanted to be philosophical – sometimes things went this way, all to hell.
But another part, a bigger part— a part that had driven Horace Gordon Preston to excel in school, in sports, in the Air Force— couldn’t accept defeat, not even a hint of one. Horace Gordon Preston couldn’t abide failure. And that part made him look for a way to salvage something, to find something to take home, something to notch, to banish the taste if not erase the memory.
That was the reason, the only reason, he thought of the Roland launcher when the AWACS controller told him that the Weasel had failed to knock it out.
Logic argued against attacking it. The SAM system completely overmatched the A-10 and its operators had already proven they knew how to use it.
But logic didn’t count for much, especially after Hawkins’s disgusted tone when he agreed that the mission had to be scrubbed.
A tone that implied it was Preston’s fault.
Delta dickwad.
“Two, I want you to follow me down to seventy-five feet,” Hack told A-Bomb.
“Roger that,” replied A-Bomb, without even asking what their course heading was.
Maybe O’Rourke had read his mind. In any event, Hack was grateful that his wingman didn’t question his judgment as he pushed his plane into the howling wind and tipped northeast, vectoring for the Roland’s approximate position. When he passed through five hundred feet, the wind increased exponentially and the Maverick-heavy Hog’s air speed dropped below two hundred knots. He pushed still lower, aiming to get under the Roland radar, falling through four hundred. . . three hundred. . . two hundred.
The wind whipped up in a fury so intense that the plane moved straight downward at one point, dropping another fifty feet in a second. And then miraculously, inexplicably, everything went silky smooth. Preston eased his grip on the stick as the altimeter nailed fifty feet, air speed climbing back toward three hundred miles an hour.
At night, in the dark, even over flat terrain, three hundred miles an hour feels incredibly fast when you are less than a hundred feet off the ground. ,Shadows leap up at you, hands trying to pull you down to earth. The Hog lacked terrain-following radar; the only night-vision equipment at Hack’s disposal was the IR seeker on the Maverick, which offered a very limited view. His knowledge of what lay ahead was based on a relatively primitive map which experience had shown was not always one hundred percent precise. His sense of where exactly he was relied heavily on a navigation system proven to be less than one hundred percent reliable.
Logic would have, should have, sent him home. But logic no longer had a place in Horace Gordon Preston’s cockpit. He slammed the throttle to max as he neared the crunch zone, dividing his attention as evenly as possible between the RWR, the windscreen, and the Mav’s display, which ghosted several buildings, a road, more buildings, but no SAMs.
“Zeus on your right,” warned A-Bomb, and the next instant the sky filled with a stream of tracers, a hose of red fire spurting about two o’clock off his nose. “Mine.”
Something clicked in Hack’s brain and he nudge the Hog gently, pitching her on her axis to bring her path more slightly west as A-Bomb fired an AGM at the gun, whose errant fire was obviously optically aimed. Hack looked to the Maverick screen, saw a series of buildings and the edge of a river, then lost everything momentarily; the optical sensor jangling for some unknown reason.
When the screen flashed back, Preston saw a low-slung chassis shape in the upper right-hand corner. He slid the cursor over and clicked his trigger to fire.
He hadn’t locked on the Roland, however. A boneheaded, freshman-nugget, idiotic, deadly mistake. There was a flare and a launch— the missile operator firing the missile blind.
Not blind, exactly, just without ground guidance. The Roland was fully capable of finding its own target once launched, and if its kill probability wasn’t nearly as high in manual mode, it was deadly nonetheless. Hack cursed himself, hitting flares and chafe, kicking right quickly, trying to outrun the fire that suddenly ignited in his stomach. Gravity punched him in the chest and pushed at his neck, and a voice deep inside told him it served him right for being such a fuckup, for not having what it took— for choking when it was all on the line.
He zigged left, right, felt the missile piss through its first stage, go terminal— he felt it reach for him, then saw it, or saw something anyway, a large b
lack shadow that miraculously sailed right over his head and kept going.
Then the ground exploded almost below him. Devil One bucked, then shot clear, her nose pointing due south.
“I’m on your six,” said A-Bomb. “Splash one slightly used missile launcher. I’m thinking the Brits owe us big time. You figure they stock Watneys, or are we going to have to settle for Bass?”
PART TWO
LOVERS
CHAPTER 24
KING KHALID MILITARY CITY
28 JANUARY 1991
2045
Every conceivable chore done, paperwork in order, contingencies prepared for, Lieutenant Michael Knowlington stood up from his desk and took a laboriously lone, slow breath, filling his lungs from bottom to top with the recirculated Saudi air. He exhaled the breath twice as slowly as he had taken it in, pushing the air gently from his lungs, pushing until his stomach muscles flexed far toward his back.
Then he picked up the phone and, still standing, called his commanding general.
I want to resign, he planned to say.
Or, I’m resigning.
Or, I’m quitting.
Or, I’m unfit for duty.
His mind flitted back and forth among the possibilities, unsettled. The exact choice didn’t matter: what was important was to hold his voice calm and to speak distinctly and to get it started. He waited for the connection to be made, waited in the static limbo where he’d been since the flight took off to support Splash this afternoon.
“General is at dinner,” said an aide’s voice, breaking through the white noise.
“Excuse me?” said Knowlington, though he’d heard clearly.
“Not sure precisely when the general will be back,” said the aide. “Can I help you with something, sir?”
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 7