That was virtually impossible for a primitive air force like the Iraqi’s. But Knowlington had learned to fly against a supposedly primitive air force. The Vietnamese MiGs had been outdated, outmoded, and son of a bitchin’ good. They came at you from a cloud or caught your tail or suckered you into a turn where their wingman popped up behind you. They hid in the sun, or the blind spot of your inattention. They waited until you were out of missiles or low on fuel. They took advantage of your arrogance and sloppiness, your failure to hit the marks just so. It was more the men than the machines— but that had always been the case, back to the very beginning over the trenches in France and Belgium. Skill and machine and luck.
Never forget luck, the under-rated factor in every equation.
Skull’s eyes reached the right wing of his Hog, then slipped upward, repeating the ritual search. He blew a long breath into his mask, nudged his stick just barely left, staying on course. A hundred other missions played at the edge of his brain, memories of mistakes and triumphs that pricked his adrenaline. A list of contingent to-do’s played constantly at the back of his mind: if this, then that; if that, then this. Skull had only the vaguest awareness of the list, knew only that if it was needed his brain would flash it like an urgent bulletin to his arms and legs and eyes. His actions would be automatic.
To fly you had to “think and not think” at the same time. To fly well you had to forget you were flying.
An old instructor had told him that. Skull could still remember nodding solemnly at the time, not knowing what the hell the geezer was talking about. He’d had to shoot down two Vietnamese MiGs before he started to actually understand— before, really, the tension of combat became familiar enough to relax him. Before the jagged rhythm of an over-pumped heart became a thing to live for.
Knowlington would be giving that up, quitting now. It was his duty to resign.
Who wanted to go out that way, sneaking off in the middle of the night? Better to burn out in a last fireball.
That was why he’d gone along with the plan to steal the MiG. One last burst of glory. He wasn’t coming back from this mission. Auger in.
Years from now, people would talk about him in awed tones: Michael Knowlington— Skull— the guy who bought it carrying out the impossible dream.
Arrogance. Vanity.
He tightened his eyes and continued scanning the sky.
CHAPTER 37
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0535
A-Bomb wrenched the stick to the right, crunching the rudder pedals at the same time, more for leverage than actual effect. The plane’s wings finally steadied and he started working his nose back up, regaining control. He’d lost nearly three thousand feet in little more than the time it took to chew through a half-stick of red licorice.
That was nothing. He’d dropped the other half of the candy, losing it somewhere on the floor of the plane. That was the kind of thing that hurt your ego, as well as attracted ants.
Cycling through the restart procedure on the starboard engine, he considered that what he really needed right now was a good cup of Joe, something beyond the Dunky in his thermos. Dunkin’ Donuts made a mean batch of caffeine, but in a situation like this there was no beating the takeout at Joltin’ Joe’s Diner in Schenectady, N.Y. A-Bomb had thought several times of arranging a pipeline for just such emergencies, but hadn’t been able to come up with a way of keeping the coffee hot in transport to the Gulf. A cold Jolt didn’t do it.
At the moment, he’d take any jolt, cold or hot. The power plant just wasn’t willing to restart, and nothing he did— including a very unsubtle string of curses and a harsh rap on the instrument panel— worked.
“Hey, Two! Yo kid! I got a situation up here,” he told Dixon. “One of my thinks it belongs in a Ford.”
“One?”
“Left engine died.”
A-Bomb checked his position against the paper map on his kneeboard as Dixon acknowledged. He’d drifted west, edging dangerously close to the SA-2 site, which wasn’t due to be taken out for a good ten minutes. So close, in fact, that a direct course to his target area would take him inside the missile’s envelope.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he told his wingman. “We change the game plan slightly— I’ll go after the SA-9s, then nail the guns with the cluster-bombs.”
“Uh, lost some of that One,” said Dixon. “You’re looking to hit all the targets on one engine?”
“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. “Can’t fly with all this weight under my wings. Might as well get rid of it where it’ll do the most good.”
“Uh, Captain—” Static swallowed the rest of Dixon’s voice. His meaning, however, was clear. A-Bomb was out of his mind to not cut his stores loose and head home.
Maybe if he’d been flying another kind of plane, that might have been true. But in a Hog, A-Bomb’s decision made perfect, logical, conservative sense. At least to him.
“Got to shoot my wad,” explained O’Rourke. This way, I get rid of it quick and leave you a full load to back up the assault team with. Let me get what we know is there, you handle the contingencies. I’ll turn around, you hang out, catch up over the border or back at base, whatever.”
“You’re flying back alone?”
“I think I take a left and keep going until I hit the stop sign, right?” A-Bomb lifted his finger off the mike, remembering he was flight leader and had to make a pass at sounding like one.
What would Doberman do in this situation?
Curse and snarl something nasty.
Couldn’t curse the kid, though. It was tough to be nasty to BJ.
“Unless you’re thinking of pushing, it’s not going to make much difference if you’re on my butt or not going home,” said A-Bomb. “Besides, I don’t want you to miss the show.”
Under duress, A-Bomb might have admitted that he knew vaguely of some sort of standing order— or suggestion or maybe a whimsical thought somewhere— about dealing with engine failures that might, under certain very specific circumstances, be interpreted as advising against proceeding to a target on one engine. He’d also admit, again under heavy duress, that although the plane could fly quite adequately with one engine once properly coaxed and flattered, she wasn’t particularly happy to do so while carrying a full load— a fact she emphasized now by giving him a stall warning.
He traded a little altitude for speed.
“You with me, Two?”
“Your call, Gun.”
“What I’m talking about. One other thing,” he added. “I want you to leave me and track back to our original course. I have to cut a closer line to Splashdown.”
“Uh. . .” The rest of his transmission was covered with static.
“You got to work on that stutter, kid,” said A-Bomb. “Ruins a really beautiful singing voice.”
“Captain, anything like a straight line is going to take you right through the target area for the SA-2. It’s still live.”
“Our British buddies are going to take it out any second,” said A-Bomb.
There was a pause. O’Rourke knew what Dixon was going to say— it was, after all, exactly what he would say.
“I got your butt,” said Dixon.
“Kid. . .”
“You really ought to think about upgrading your choice of toilet paper,” said his wingman. “And maybe doing something about that hair.”
“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb, nosing onto the course.
CHAPTER 38
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0545
BJ kept his eyes nailed on A-Bomb’s good engine, trying to ignore the churning juices that had spit up from his stomach to his lungs and throat. He’d always thought O’Rourke was a little crazy, but this was insane. In approximately ten seconds they were going to cross into the scanning area of one of the most potent missiles in the Iraqi arsenal, a missile that had been downing Western aircraft for something like thirty years.
If the SAM operators decided to target the a-10s— and even if no radar anywhere in Iraq had detect them, the planes were certainly low and slow enough to have been eyeballed by now in the early light— the chugging Hog was dead meat.
Insisting that he take all the known targets was equally insane. The Maverick launches were one thing— the AGM-65s could be targeted and fired from a good distance away. But the cluster-bombs had to be released essentially over the target, which meant that likely as not O’Rourke would be plunging into a hail of flak to kick them off. With one engine – hell, with two – yanking and banking to duck even optically guided 23mm shells was not an easy way to make a living. Half the push as you recovered meant the gunners had twice the chance to nail you.
BJ shifted against his seat restraints, hunkering over his stick, pushing himself into the red zone.
The Iraqi missile was probably dead. It hadn’t come up last night. Wouldn’t now.
Dixon checked his weapons panel, made sure he was ready to go with the Mavs, glanced at the targeting screen. It took patience to work the blurs into a hittable target, and he wasn’t feeling particularly patient.
His mind flashed on Becky, the warm feel of her body next to his in bed, her softness. He wanted her warmth. He hadn’t realized how good it could feel before, or perhaps he hadn’t needed it before. It didn’t erase everything. It didn’t banish the memory of the kid or everything else, but it was something he wanted. He didn’t feel cold anymore.
BJ’s eyes itched. He moved them up from the screen, looked outside the plane, checked the HUD, went back to the IR image in the video.
The target area dribbled into the top corner of the screen. Dixon found the dim shadow of an SA-9 launcher, or at least thought he did— definitely yes. He slipped the cursor toward it in case A-Bomb missed. He took a breath and checked his altitude, nudging through thirteen thousand feet. His left hand tightened on the throttle and he looked toward A-Bomb’s plane, watching for the burst that would show he’d fired; waiting for the yell in his ears over the short-range radio announcing the game was on.
He waited, but what he heard was not A-Bomb’s triumphant screech but the warning blare of the RWR, and a scream from the AWACS controller, their impromptu duet announcing that the Iraqi SA-2 battery had launched a pair of missiles in their direction.
CHAPTER 39
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0545
Captain Hawkins leaned back, trying to see their target area through the Pave Hawk’s windscreen. It would have taken better eyes than he possessed— Splash was still nearly ten miles away. The two helo pilots worked silently in the cockpit, fingers jumping across the cockpit panels in an elaborate ballet. Every so often one would point to something; inevitably the gesture would be answered by a thumbs-up.
The aircraft the two men were flying was based on the Sikorsky S-70/H-60 Blackhawk, the military’s standard utility helicopter. The successor to the ubiquitous UH-1 Huey, the base model could carry an eleven-man squad and three or four crew members roughly six hundred miles before refueling. While combat use generally shortened the range, the type was considerably faster and longer legged than the versatile Huey. The MH-60G Pave Hawk— an Air Force ship often used on Spec Op missions, as well for combat SAR or rescue operations— differed from the standard H-60 in several key aspects. Among the most important for this mission were advanced ground-following radar, an infra-red radar, satellite communications and position finder, and range-extending fuel tanks.
Hawkins pushed back against the wall of the helicopter, tightening his grip on the restraining strap. He’d been standing pretty much the whole way. He hated sitting for more than five minutes as a general rule; going into combat he could never sit, could hardly even stand still. He didn’t fidget over the operational details, much less worry about what might go wrong or what could go wrong. He also didn’t check his gear a million times – once after takeoff was good enough for him. But he couldn’t sit, and he couldn’t stand still.
Most of the D boys were standing, too. The exception was Fernandez, whom he’d told to mind Major Hawkins and the British mechanic, who were crouched on the floor talking about the MiG. The Delta sergeant perched on a jumpseat behind the two men, occasionally glaring at their backs like an angry babysitter.
The British sergeant was an older man who looked as if he’d been rousted from bed. Huddled on the floor beneath an over-sized parka, he looked more like a mound than a man, his limbs hunched together, his face whiter than porcelain. The man had no more volunteered for this mission than Fernandez had asked to watch him; how much he might really be able to accomplish was anyone’s guess, even though he seemed to know a lot about the plane. He’d told Hawkins his name was Eugene, pronouncing it with great emphasis on both syllables. If he had a last name, it had been drowned out by the noise of the helicopter.
Preston, on the other hand, was practically tap-dancing. He kept gesturing and nodding. Obviously a blowhard, the Air Force major had no perspective on anything beyond his nose.
What the hell did any pilot know about war, anyway? The fucks flew a million miles away from any real danger, pushed a button, went home. That was their war— roll around with a local girl, trying to forget the hardship involved in drinking beer instead of champagne.
Granted, some of the A-10 pilots were different.
Doberman had personally saved Hawkins’s butt by nailing a MiG in air-to-air combat. He was a nasty son of a bitch with a temper so fierce he would have been washed out of Special Operations training— hell, out of the Army— in maybe five minutes. But he used it to his advantage in the air.
BJ Dixon had humped a rucksack and saved one of Hawkins’ best squad leaders, and to hear the old coot talk about the pilot now you’d think he was in love. Dixon had lived off the land for a couple of days and managed to get his butt snared in a STAR pickup— so you knew he wasn’t the usual wimp shit pilot.
A-Bo0mb, what a piece of work. Stranded temporarily at Fort Apache, he’d helped one of Hawkin’s sergeants capture a tanker truck that turned out to be a chemical weapons ferry. Even more impressive, the SOB won a desert “dune buggy” off a Spec Ops command in a poker game and knew more about weapons than half the men in Delta Force.
And Colonel Knowlington had bona fides that stretched back before Hawkins was born. So four exceptions to the general rule of pilots being shitheads.
The only other Air Force officer that Hawkins knew well was Bristol Wong, but he was in a whole different category— a Spec Ops guy born and bred, assigned to the Air Force only by some weird fit of fate, or maybe as penance for serious sins in an earlier lifetime. Just now he was leaning over the door gunner, no doubt offering some arcane tip on how to increase the weapon’s accuracy.
But Preston was a typical goober. No way was he getting the plane out.
Hawkins suspected the MiG would be gone before they got there. The Iraqis weren’t quite as dumb as they seemed.
But what the hell. They were in it now.
He turned his head and glanced toward the sliding window, where one of the crewmen was fingering the 7.62mm mini-gun. A long tube attached to the gun would catch spent shells, ferrying them outside where they could be safely ejected. The gun was similar to the SAW Hawkins had outfitted himself with, and nicely complimented the .50-cal door-mounted weapon.
Zipping over Iraqi territory at more than a hundred miles an hour, their route had been carefully planned to follow an empty path in the desert; they had seen no sign of life except for two highways in the last half-hour. Now as he looked past the gunner Hawkins saw, or thought he saw, a row of houses only a few yards away. He pushed forward, trying to get a better view, not sure if the Iraqi village was an optical illusion or a detail he had somehow missed when the pilots went over the ingress route with him.
Illusion— just rocks.
But there were buildings there, a half-mile away, no more. People or animals or something were movi
ng, something live.
The sky flashed red in the distance. One of the crew members began talking loudly, relaying radio information from the command plane.
The chopper seemed to pick herself up by the tail, her pace quickening. The door gunner leaped forward to man his weapon.
“Missiles in the air ahead! Flak!” warned the co-pilot. “The game’s afoot!”
A Sherlock Holmes fan, thought Hawkins, glancing at his watch. They were five minutes from Splashdown.
CHAPTER 39
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0550
A-Bomb nailed the cursor on the SA-9 just as the missile warning blared. The timing couldn’t be more perfect— his CD player had just dished up “Rock the Casbah.”
“Sing it, boys,” he told the band, joining in on the chorus as he goosed the first missile toward the small mobile launcher, which was just over eight nautical miles away. A second, unbriefed launcher sat maybe twenty yards to the right of the first; A-Bomb zeroed the targeting pipper on the hatch right in front of the four-barreled launching arm and cooked off Maverick number two.
He kicked chaff out, but didn’t bother zagging to avoid the SA-2— the way he figured it, he was flying so damn slow a cut left or right wasn’t going to throw the enemy missile anyway. Besides, it would make it even harder to find the other SA-9 launcher, which didn’t seem to be in shadows of the hill where it was supposed to be. Perhaps sensing his difficulty, the Iraqis kindly lit their ZSU-23 flak guns, streaming bullets into the sky to advertise his secondary targets.
“I’ll get to you, I’ll get to you,” he told them, realizing from the position of the ZSU-23s that he had been looking for the SA-9 a little too far to the east. He slipped his cursor left, working the gear like his grandpa used to nudge the old Philco to improve reception. “Light touch, young’un, that’s what it takes,” Grandpa O’Rourke always used to advise, and just like that the baseball game would flood in with Phil Rizzuto shouting “There it goes!”— the Yankee Scooter two hundred miles away calling a Roy White home run into the upper deck in right field.
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 13