Of course, they didn’t know the mission details, and only one of them had actually flown the plane. But that didn’t matter— Hack was doing it.
His main worry was starting the MiG off auxiliary power; he decided that if he could figure that out, he could get it into the air. The strip was very short, allegedly twelve hundred feet, which was more than four hundred less than the rated takeoff distance. But the MiG’s engines were powerful as hell and the airplane had been designed for STOL or short-takeoff-and-landing operations. Hack wouldn’t be carrying weapons, nor did he have to worry about having enough fuel for a round trip. Besides, the Iraqis wouldn’t have landed there without having a way to get off.
Once he was in the air, it’d be a piece of cake. He would climb to thirty thousand feet and fly along a prearranged course— nearly due south, with a turn at the border. A pair of F-14s would escort him, communicating with him over the UHF band. His only problem would be landing at KKMC— not technically difficult perhaps, but the first time landing an unfamiliar plane always got the adrenaline going. Still, it would be daylight, in perfect weather, with no traffic and a thousand cheerleaders.
Piece of cake.
Assuming they got the plane. The Brits had assigned forty more men to the assault team, along with a mechanic who had worked on a German MiG during a brief exchange program. But their time on the ground would be severely limited.
If the runway really was that short, maybe the Iraqis didn’t actually intend on flying the plane out. The tanker truck Wong had seen might turn out to be filled with water. The MiG might turn out to have no engines or worse, much worse, just be a wooden dummy.
No way. It was his.
Returning home with a full intelligence report would be fine. Everyone at CentCom would want to talk to him. After the war it would send him on a talking tour of the Pentagon, NATO, and probably Congress as well. But he wasn’t about to settle for that. He was nailing this baby, and he was going to be famous: Major Horace Gordon Preston, the man who stole Saddam’s MiG.
Colonel Preston, more likely.
General Preston, without doubt.
Hack hoisted the canvas duffel bag with his backup flight gear and jumped down from the British transport helicopter as it touched down. Breaking into a trot, he ran past a set of artillery pieces sandbagged near a bunker area. The night was quiet; it was like being on a movie set, not a base a grenade’s throw from the enemy.
“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think we’re getting that plane out of there in one piece,” said Hawkins, materializing from behind a pile of sandbags. They’d never met, but his voice— and attitude— were instantly recognizable. “The Iraqis aren’t going to stand back and let you take it.”
“Listen Captain. You do your job, I’ll do mine,” Hack told him. “And I’m a major, thank you.”
“That don’t mean jack up here,” said Hawkins.
By reputation as well as demeanor, Delta Force was the toughest, most daring unit in the entire U.S. military, if not the world. Hawkins pissed him off, but what did it say that he didn’t think this could be done?
That Hawkins was a wimp. Because Hack was doing it.
“If you think your guys can’t complete the mission, you should have said so,” Preston told him.
“Oh, we can do our job,” said Hawkins. His tone changed abruptly. “All right. Let me introduce you Major Gold. He’s English and he’s now in charge of the assault. Wong’s in with him.”
Hack followed past a stack of filled sandbags and a much larger pile of unfilled ones, walking down a wide ramp bulldozed out of the desert. Hawkins disappeared around a corner; Preston found himself in a small maze, working his way through a series of Z-turns in the dark. Finally he saw a pair of guards— British SAS men, who stood as motionless as the sandbags lining the walls.
Just beyond them was an open doorway, a hole in the earth filled with a faint red glow from the light within. Hack had to duck his head to enter; his neck muscles pulled taut, cramping with fatigue and cold.
“Major Preston, Major Gold,” said Hawkins. “You know Captain Wong.”
Gold and two lieutenants were standing over a map table a short distance away. Wong, arms crossed and face almost on the map, frowned at some of the sqiggle marks on the paper. Gold extended a thin, long hand to Preston, who shook it and tried to look relaxed while the rest of the staff and some NCOs were introduced. His neck muscles had gone completely spastic, and he could feel the strain in his vertebrae.
“You’ll be with my guys,” Hawkins told him. He jabbed his finger at a corner of the table where a diagram of the Iraqi base had been cut and pasted together from intelligence photos. A thick red marker had been used to outline buildings and other features of the base, which had been labeled “SPLASH” with capital letters and thick underline above the diagram.
“We come in here, right over the runway, turn across the apron, and take a run at the MiG hangar right behind two Apaches,” said Hawkins. “Depending on what we see, we come down as close to the plane as we can. My guys take the hangar, move around here, secure this end of the field. Second team is going across this way, behind the hangar, to cut off any approach from the highway. SAS teams should be keeping the Iraqis on the base busy. Burns has a separate team on the tanker. They come at us this way, fuel if we can.”
The captain switched from the diagram of the base, running his hand across a large topo map where Splash was rendered to much smaller scale.
“We’ll fuel it,” interrupted Preston.
Hawkins ignored him. “If there’s too much resistance, we land here, beyond the approach to the runway, where we’ll be covered from these guns. At that point, you and Wong wait until we secure a path to the hangar.”
“If we land there,” said Wong, “in effect our portion of the mission will have been called off. The timing is severe. We should expect the Iraqis to send troops from Catin, which would be an additional risk.”
Hawkins didn’t contradict him. Catin was a built-up area about ten miles away. Symbols on the larger map indicated that the Iraqis had a battalion of troops and possibly helicopters based there.
“We can do it,” said Preston. “Piece of cake.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Gold. He had a singer’s voice, a rich baritone that vibrated even in the cave like bunker. “James, review the timetable, would you?”
One of the two lieutenants began running down the game plan for the assault, accenting the highlights with a flick of his hand, as if he were throwing confetti over the map. Splashdown would begin at precisely 0550, with an attack on the SA-2 site southwest of the attack area; the assault package was now so large that the planes would need to escape over the missile site’s coverage area. In any event, it was well past time to make sure that the enemy site was truly dead.
At the same time, two Devil Squadron Hogs, led by A-Bomb, would eliminate the most potent defenses at Splash itself; based on the latest intelligence, these had been expanded to include two short-range mobile missile units, more than likely SA-9s. A number of ZSU anti-aircraft weapons would also be targeted; any remaining would be the first priority for the wave of Apache gunships that would spearhead the assault at 0555. Defenses neutralized, the Apaches would cover the arriving ground troops, who would strike at the buildings where the prisoners might be at precisely 0600.
Four separate groups would launch the assault. One each was devoted to the possible prisoner buildings, with a third smaller team to be used to secure the highway leading to the base, preventing reinforcements from arriving. The fourth, made up of Delta and two different SAS squads for a total of twenty-four men, would concentrate on the hangar area and plane as Captain Hawkins had just described. Wong and Hack, along with a British airman with expertise on MiG systems, would fly in with Delta.
“You are to take the upmost precautions,” said the lieutenant. The major nodded over his shoulder; Hawkins merely frowned.
All told nearly one hundred an
d sixty men would be making the assault. Four Chinooks and a pair of American Spec Ops Blackhawk MH-60 helicopters, dubbed Pave Hawks, had been added to the original package. There were now a total of eight transport and six attack helicopters in the plan. Two MC-130s had been added to refuel the whirlybirds on a staggered schedule, some before the landing and some after. Besides the Hogs and Tornados, four F-16s would be available to provide ground support. Two F-15s were watching in case the MiG managed to get off before they arrived, and four Navy F-14 Tomcats had been shanghaied to escort the package— a development that struck Hack as more difficult to arrange than cooperation between the Americans and Brits.
“It’s a very tight schedule,” said the lieutenant, summing up. He sighed contentedly, as if he had just summed up the planned menu for an elaborate meal.
“We need to be aboard the helicopters now,” said Hawkins.
“Jolly good,” said the British major. “Good luck to all.”
Hack tried to surreptitiously unkink his neck as he followed Hawkins back out through the maze and down to the helicopter landing area. The Delta force soldiers stood around their gear, leaning against some sandbags thirty yards or so from the helicopters, most of them smoking cigarettes.
“Jerry, give Major Preston the 203 and show him how to use it,” Hawkins said.
“I’d rather have an M-16,” said Hack. “I’m not too bad with it.”
“A 203 is an M-16 with a grenade launcher,” Hawkins said, his voice so sarcastic that Hack wasn’t sure he was telling the truth until the weapon was thrust into his hands. The Delta sergeant told him he wouldn’t need the launcher, then demonstrated how to work it. It was a fairly straight-forward device mounted below the rifle barrel; it fired 40mm grenades which looked more like fat shotgun shells than what Preston imagined a grenade to be.
“This is what they look like,” the sergeant told Hack, showing but not giving him the grenades. “One shot at a time. Give ‘em loft, but not too much loft. You know what I’m saying?”
“Shit yeah,” said Hack.
The sergeant snorted. “Three hundred yards is the most they’ll carry. Aim at something a hundred and fifty away, look through the quadrant— you paying attention, Major?”
“I’m all ears, Sergeant.”
“You look through here, edge it up a little, just to be safe because you never done this, then push.” He hit the trigger. “Make sure you got it against your shoulder snug. It ain’t gonna knock you over, but you want to be more accurate than not. You use an M-16 before?”
“I have a marksman badge,” snapped Preston.
The sergeant smiled, as if to say, “Ain’t that sweet.”
“Excuse me, Major,” said Wong, “but I wanted to review our priorities before we start.”
“Flight gear is number one,” said Preston. “There must be some sort of life-support shop near the plane. I think the hangar, but maybe with the fuel truck or in that area. I want to talk with the men who . . .”
“Our priority is to survey the airplane,” Wong interrupted. “I am primarily interested in the avionics. And any missiles. You should concentrate on any upgrades to the control system. Our British sergeant will examine the fuel capacity and type, in an attempt to ascertain performance levels. The type is regularly de-tuned to extend maintenance intervals, which naturally affects its performance. After that, he will survey the flight control surfaces. The flaps. . .”
“I need the gear to fly,” Hack told him. “My connectors are kludges, and even if they work I won’t have a radio.”
“Taking the plane is secondary to our main objective of intelligence gathering.”
Hack curled the rifle beneath his arm. He’d blast his way into the stinking hangar single-handedly if he had to. Screw Wong and the Delta jerks.
A flak vest hit him in the chest, nearly knocking him down.
“Gear up,” said Fernandez. “Both of ya. You’re gonna wanna pee before you get on the helicopter. Otherwise you’re pissin’ out the door, which means into the wind, which usually means in your face.” He snickered. “No sense peein’ yourself until the fun starts.”
CHAPTER 35
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0524
A-Bomb did a quick check of his instruments, then reached down to his Twizzlers pocket for a piece of licorice. He and Dixon were running a good ten minutes ahead of schedule and in fact a simple flick of the wrist would put him practically on the planned IP or ingress point for the attack. Ten seconds beyond that he’d be able to cursor in his first SAM and reach for a celebratory Three Musketeers bar.
In just about any other line of work, running ahead of schedule was a good thing. But here being ten minutes early was nearly as bad as being ten minutes late. Striking now might cost the assault teams the advantage of surprise they were counting on. Worse, the ten minutes they had to wait was ten minutes’ worth of fuel they wouldn’t have to support the commandos and Delta boys when the fun started.
At least his stock of candy was strong. He had two more packs of Twizzlers, a full complement of Tootsie Rolls, three bags of M&Ms and four over-sized Three Musketeers bars in his specially designed candy pockets. And that didn’t count the pastry in his vest, nor the backup Peppermint Patties and gumdrops taped under the dash. Of course, if things got really desperate, A-Bomb could always dig into the survival stash attached to the seat. But you didn’t want to get into your contingencies if you could help it.
“Yo, Devil Two, we’re going to keep this orbit another few minutes. Splash is on time,” he assured his wingman.
“Two,” acknowledged Dixon.
The sharp click reminded O’Rourke of Doberman, very businesslike as tee time approached. Dixon had some of the Dogman’s moves as well, and while he wasn’t yet the marksman Glenon was, he still had acquitted himself well enough to nail an Iraqi helicopter with his cannon during the early hours of the air war. Of course, no one had Doberman’s explosive temper, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. BJ was a kickass Hog driver; A-Bomb’s six would be well covered when they made the attack.
Still, O’Rourke felt slightly unsettled— not uneasy and certainly not worried, just slightly out of whack. The thing was, he wasn’t used to playing lead guitar. He was more like Miami Steve, humping in the background. Oh yeah, doing very important work, but not actually fronting the band. Hitting the notes, setting the rhythm, working the solos even— but not the Boss. Playing lead had a different head to it.
Splash had grown so complicated that it was now being coordinated by its own control plane, code named Head, flying behind the lines somewhere. It was mostly referred to as Splash Control by the others in the package— another little thing that p’d A-Bomb off, because what was the sense of having a call sign if you weren’t going to use the thing.
Head came over the circuit, counting down the time to Splashdown— thirty minutes away.
“Devil One acknowledges, Headman,” said A-Bomb. “On station.”
On station. On station. If he were the wingman, he could have said something like, “Got your butts covered” or “Cheery-oh” and asked after the Queen. Because a wingman could do that kind of thing.
Flying lead, you had to be serious.
No wonder Doberman was such a grouch.
The Tornado tagged with nailing the SA-2 radar site southwest of the target area checked in. They were running five minutes late. So were the Splash Apaches, which according to the support craft had had trouble refueling. The helicopters themselves did not actually come on the circuit; given that they were much more vulnerable to the Iraqi defenses, they were on radio silence until the attack began. Besides, they were flying so low— roughly six feet above the desert floor— that it would have been difficult for the command ship to communicate with them directly.
Six feet above ground level. That was where A-Bomb’s Hog wanted to be. She was getting a nosebleed up here at eighteen thousand feet. Other planes flew such altitudes routinely;
most might even consider it low in a war zone. But an A-10 pilot this high looked around for asteroids to avoid.
A-Bomb’s A-10 grumbled as they took a bank to avoid the outer reaches of the SA-2’s radar. He patted the throttle, trying to soothe her.
“I’ll take you down soon,” he said. “I promise. Think of it this way— the higher we are, the faster we dive.”
Unimpressed, the A-10 continued to stutter. It was subtle perhaps, but it was definitely coughing when it had no reason to cough.
A-Bomb glanced at the instruments— the temp was rising on engine two. His oil pressure was good, but there was something wrong with the power plant, whose rpms were fluctuating. He throttled back gently, lightly trimming the rest of the plane to compensate.
The temp edged higher. Then the oil pressure began whipping up and down, with the turbine’s rpms doing the same.
A wingman with a full complement of bombs and Twinkies could have ignored the readings as either a product of misplaced sensitivity on the gauge’s part, or his own overworked imagination. But a pilot leading an important element of the attack had to assess them coolly and coldly and conclude that, against all odds, against all human experience, one of the A-10’s engines was actually threatening to quit.
The engine sputtered.
“Shape up,” he told his plane, smacking the fuel panel switches as if the problem were due to indigestion.
The Hog responded by surging nearly sideways, the engine suddenly back in the green, all indicators at spec. Then A-Bomb heard a soft pop behind him and felt a shudder. By the time the warning light told him the engine had put in for early retirement, he was muscling the stick to keep the heavily laden plane from spinning toward the ground.
CHAPTER 36
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0530
Skull moved his eyes carefully, using them as an astronomer might use a telescope to examine an uncharted part of the sky. Nudging them across the reddish-blue band of the horizon, he studied the thin wisps of clouds for black specks and odd shifts, looking for enemy fighters that might somehow have managed to avoid the comprehensive Allied radar net.
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 12