And just like that A-Bomb nudged the Maverick target cue precisely into the sloped grille of the SA-9 Gaskin launcher, itself a throwback to the days of stifled offense and a big strike zone. The Russian-made launcher lacked White’s deceptive speed and couldn’t play the difficult sun of Yankee Stadium’s left field, but it did possess something of the outfielder’s quiet grit— the launcher puffed up two missiles just as A-Bomb sent his fastball its way.
“Nice try, my friends,” A-Bomb told the Iraqis.
He was just coming into the missiles’ extreme range. Essentially hopped-up SA-7 heat-seekers on a mobile platform, the Gaskins were somewhat old-fashioned and relatively small, though of course any amount of explosive with wings attached was nothing to sneeze at.
A-Bomb kicked defensive flares and deepened his angle of attack, sliding right as he came for the AAA guns at the foot of the hill to the right of the airstrip. He found four of them, staggered in pairs, each pumping enough lead in the sky to keep a million batteries from ever running out of juice. A-Bomb thumbed his last Maverick at the first stream he could designate, then pushed his Hog right, leaning against his good engine to get an acceptable glide path for his CBUs.
Problem was, the bombs were preset for release around five thousand feet, and there was no way he was going to be that high when he got over the target. He couldn’t fudge it either— he was passing through seven thousand already and very far off the mark.
The air percolated with exploding shells, the gunners homing in on the slow-moving, chugging target. A-Bomb wasn’t quite in their range, though that didn’t stop them from giving it the ol’ Iraqi college try.
Nor did it prevent at least a few shells from bursting close enough to the Hogs skin to rattle the wings.
“Gonna melt your barrels you keep shooting like that,” he told them.
People were yelling at him over the radio. The Clash had moved on to “Red Angel Dragnet.” The Hog added a few jangles and rumbles of its own. The SA-2 was somewhere behind him,. The SA-9s sped upward somewhere to the left. The 23mm slugs were coming for his nose. A-Bomb felt right at home.
Almost perfect.
“I could really go for a good cup of Joe right now,” he told the Iraqis, pushing his nose down sharply. “Got any?”
His Maverick erupted, erasing the first Zeus.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, dropping his bombs into the flak dealer to its right. The Hog jerked slightly as the bombs fell, helping as A-Bomb pushed right, angling for the second group of guns, which inexplicably stopped firing before he pickled.
“I told you not to start firing too soon,” A-Bomb told the Iraqis as he pulled back on the stick. “Damn. Didn’t the Ruskies teach you anything?”
“One, repeat?”
“Oops, did I transmit there?” A-Bomb asked Dixon over the squadron frequency.
“You’ve been doing play by play,” answered his wingman.
“Any good?”
“Don’t give up your day job. That the Clash on the soundtrack?”
“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb, who always appreciated when a youngster picked up on the classics. He checked his position— three thousand feet, give or take, a mile north of Splashdown, air speed 185 knots.
Must have a tailwind, he thought.
“What happened to that SA-2?”
“Got confused and blew up right after launch,” BJ told him. “Tornados nailed the site right after the radar came on. Gave them a good beacon.”
“Always glad to help out our allies, even if I’m just playing clay pigeon.” A-Bomb flicked the CD player back to the beginning of side one; something about “Know Your Rights” always got his juices moving.
“A-Bomb, did you hear me tell you about that SA-9 launch?”
“Musta missed it,” A-Bomb told him. A gun far to the north began firing, probably at him. The defenses to the north and west were serious and numerous; he banked southward, still climbing slowly. He could just make out Dixon beyond the thick gray smoke rising from his targets. “You got it, kid?”
“I’m taking a run at the field now,” Dixon told him.
“Go for it,” said A-Bomb. He checked his instruments, working through the numbers slower than usual— a difference of approximately one nanosecond.
Fuel a little lighter than he’d expected. More than enough to make it back to KKMC, though, especially on one engine.
A-Bomb spotted Dixon’s Hog diving toward the smoking airfield. A plume of black smoke erupted in its path; the dark fingers climbed high into the air, far higher than the ZSU 23 had been.
“Heavy artillery gunnin’ for ya kid,” A-Bomb shouted, as Dixon’s plane disappeared in the geyser of 57mm shells.
CHAPTER 40
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0554
Dixon hadn’t seen the antiaircraft gun in the web of shadows and smoke. The first shells— fat twists of glowing metal hurling past his windscreen— seemed unreal, old nightmares remembered long after sleep.
If he’d seen it, he could have nailed the obsolete but still deadly self-propelled ZSU-57-2 gun with his AGMs, dropped the CBUs, or even lit his cannon and erased them with a quick burst of combat load. But Dixon wasn’t seeing very well— or rather, he was seeing in slow motion. It had been less than two weeks since he’d last flown, but those two weeks had been a lifetime. Shapes that would have crystallized immediately into threats remained vague and distorted for an agonizingly long time before he could decipher them.
In truth, the difference in reaction time might have only been a matter of a second or two, but in war, under fire, a second or two was the difference between life and death. He pushed his Hog right, ducking the path of the flak, increasing his speed as he dove.
The gun firing at him threw massive shells to twelve thousand feet in the air, but it was an ancient system, manually aimed. The bullets chewed the air behind the Hog, not quite fast enough to catch the plane’s tail.
Gravity smashed into Dixon’s face as he zagged away. Weighed down by her munitions, trying to respond to her pilot’s harsh inputs, the plane slammed downward. The flight suit tried desperately to compensate for the forces trying to squeeze blood from BJ’s body, but there was only so much it could do. Dixon felt his head begin to float above his body, icy blackness poking at the edges of his conscience.
This had happened to him before. On his very first combat mission, it had shaken him so badly he’d launched his weapons without targets, broken his attack, run away.
He didn’t do that now. If the days that had passed since he last flew had robbed him of his instantaneous reactions, they had also changed him irrevocably. He might flinch, but he would never again run away from anything ever again. He would bite his teeth together hard enough to taste blood flowing from the gums, hard enough to taste the smoking cordite of the grenade that had killed the boy, hard enough to hold off the yawning blackness of fear.
And then he would do his job, without fail.
As the g’s backed off, Dixon pushed the Hog into a wide banking turn, his hand reaching for the armament panel. Close on the target, below the prime altitude for dropping the cluster bombs, he selected his cannon. He straightened his wings, saw the thick line of flak turning toward him, and pushed the trigger. The seven-barreled Gatling spun in the Hog’s chin, spitting spent uranium into the open gondola of the Iraqi gun. Metal hissed into steam and another vehicle parked near the 57 erupted in a fireball as Dixon’s bullets caught it.
He let go of the trigger, quickly scanning the area for another target. There were dug-in positions on the hills opposite the airstrip; small weapons, probably, nothing that could hurt him but a problem for the assault teams.
No other defenses. And damn— there was the MiG, sitting on a ramp just waiting for Preston to come and snatch her.
“Kid! Kid!” screamed A-Bomb.
“I’m here. Nailed the gun,” said Dixon.
“Yeah, I see that,” s
aid O’Rourke.
“Climbing,” he told him, double checking the ladder on his HUD as he cleared five thousand feet. “Going to take out some trenches on those hills with the CBUs, then clear Splash in.”
“What I’m talkin’ about.”
Dixon turned his attention back to the hill, where the enemy positions looked like a series of thumbprints on a misshapen cookie. BJ rolled on them, descending quickly into the sweet spot of his bomb swoop and pickling right on target. The Mk 20 Rockeye II Mod.2’s were veritable dump trucks. Their munitions fanned out in an elaborate and deadly pattern as the CBU unit ignited over its target. The bombs were capable of piercing light armor, and could do very nasty things to flesh.
Dixon recovered, sweeping his eyes around the battlefield one last time.
“Splash zone is clear,” he announced, glancing at his watch. They were two minutes ahead of schedule.
CHAPTER 41
IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0559
The helicopter’s tail whipped so hard to the left that Hawkins fell sideways, losing his balance as the door gunner began blasting away at a defensive post at the southern end of the runway. One of the Apaches roared across their path, bullets whipping from its chain gun. Hawkins pushed upright and caught sight of the MiG, sitting in front of the hangar not ten yards away. The Pave Hawk veered back right, whipping around— one, maybe two Iraqis were running from the plane back toward the hangar, cement flying around them as the door gunner and the Minimi operator turned their attention on them.
The plane was out in the open, canopy up, a ladder nearby. The hangar door was open. Another Apache crossed between the plane and the building, unmolested.
The ragheads had been caught completely by surprise. Idiots!
You couldn’t pray for luck like this!
“Down! Down!” Hawkins yelled, anxious to get on the ground. “Get us on the runway! In front of the plane! In front of the plane!”
The Pave Hawk had already pitched toward the ground, fluttering and then coasting along as if on a gentle wave. It touched down not five yards from the nose of the enemy plane. Sergeant Crowley, the point man, leapt through the open door. Pig followed, with Wong right behind him.
“Go! Go! Go!” Hawkins yelled to the others, leaping forward himself. Only Fernandez, with Preston and Eugene, remained behind.
The helicopter jerked forward as Hawkins jumped out. He tripped against the edge of the doorway but somehow managed to keep his feet squared so that he hit the cement clean, even though he was falling off balance. He rolled, got up, whipped the nose of his heavy gun around to cover the MiG. Satisfied that it was empty, he ran toward the hangar. He caught sight of the British Chinook with its SAS team descending beyond the northeastern corner of the hangar area. The commandos were uncharacteristically late, though only by a few seconds— their big helo dropped nearly straight down, obviously not encountering any resistance.
We’re in, we’re in, Hawkins thought. Wong and that bozo Preston are going to pull it off.
Hot shit!
Hangar. Stop celebrating and secure the hangar.
Hawkins pushed forward, spotting Crowly at the large open door. The sergeant reached his hand back. Hawkins threw himself down, realizing the D boy was going to toss a flash-bang into the building, neutralizing any resistance with a grenade.
It wasn’t necessarily the optimum move— there were maybe a dozen flammable substances inside a typical hangar that the grenade could easily ignite. A fired could ruin the plane, not to mention snare Crowly. But in the fury of the moment, he wasn’t thinking about that.
The grenade went off. He pumped another. There was a puff of smoke, but no secondaries. The Iraqis who had run for the hangar were either dead or severely wounded.
Something flashed from the hedge of dirt on Hawkins’ right. He whirled around, saw Pig near the crest of the berm working his MP5.
“Secure the plane! Secure the plane!” Hawkins yelled before realizing that Wong was doing just that. He had already started to wheel the large, unpowered ladder platform toward the cockpit.
Hawkins turned back toward the helicopter to look for Fernandez when he a tan stick popped up into his periphery vision near the hangar. Hawkins jerked around, pressing his trigger at the same time. His SAW cut the Iraqi in half.
The captain dropped to one knee, covering the area more carefully now. When he was satisfied that there were no other soldiers there, at least that he could see, he jumped up and ran toward the trench where the Iraqi had hid, quickly making sure no one was hiding beyond the hangar.
The trench ran down from the helicopter through a small sewer pipe at the edge of the berm. Thick black gook covered the bottom. To Hawkins, it conjured up an image of oil draining from an old car engine.
A jet roared overhead and two Chinooks stuttered in on his left, the reserves being ordered in to help one of the units. Dirt flew into his face. “Incoming! Incoming!” yelled someone.
The damn A-10 is firing at us, Hawkins thought.
Then a fresh spray of dirt and chips of cement showered over his head. He realized that the Iraqis were firing some sort of mortar from beyond the hump of dirt below the hangar and runway area.
“Incoming!” yelled someone, and Hawkins realized it was him. Something ripped over his head, a hot stream of air pushing him flat on the cement apron in front of the MiG— the Pave Hawk had jerked upwards, giving the machine-gunners an angle on the mortar man.
Crowley had raced to the far end of the berm beyond the hangar, pumping his 203. His grenade and the Pave Hawk’s machine-gun bullets hit the Iraqi defenders at the same time. Blood and dirt flared into a large secondary explosion behind them. A vehicle had been wedged into the berm. Crowley’s grenade ignited the gas tank.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Hawkins shouted. He turned around, saw that Wong was on the plane. One of his men was following up the berm.
Secure against counterattack.
Crowley and Pig were already blazing away at two knots of Iraqis in ditches nearly a hundred yards away. Those trenches had obviously been intended as fallback positions for attacks from the south, and were open to the berm. His men had the Iraqis in them pinned down, though they didn’t have enough of an angle to get them all.
Two Apaches were concentrating on a vehicle or a bunker or something about three hundred yards to his right, across and well beyond the runway. The rest were whipping back and forth above the two barracks-type buildings the SAS were attacking. Heavy machine-gun fire announced that the Iraqis were putting up stiff resistance. Smoke poured from one of the windows.
Hawkins turned and called for Krushev, his com specialist. The team tasked with grabbing the fuel truck had landed; its Chinook was still on the ground. He couldn’t tell whether they had met resistance or not.
Wong was lying across the wing of the MiG.
Hit?
Hit?
No. The Intel expert jumped up and then did a hand-roll off the wing, obviously inspecting something.
So where the fuck was Preston? Had the prissy major wimped out under fire?
CHAPTER 42
IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0603
Hack slammed his knee against the helicopter door. his body slid sideways into the open air, the world pirouetting around in a grayish-white tangle. His head slammed hard against the concrete and he cursed, his lungs flaming with anger as he pushed back to his feet then collapsed, his knee crumbling with pain.
Smoke and the spent exhaust of the helicopter hung thick in the air, making it difficult to breath and even harder to think; an Apache gunship whipped toward him, its nose gun revolving downward as if Preston were being targeted. Something tried pushing him down from behind; Hack wheeled around and slammed the butt-end of the M-16 at it, only to realize that it was Fernandez, the Delta sergeant assigned to get him safely off the helicopter and into the plane. The blow landed against Fernandez’s side, but if he felt
it, the sergeant gave no hint. The burly Delta trooper set Preston on his feet, then ran back to the helicopter to get Eugene, the British mechanic.
A ladder had been pushed near the plane. Hack hobbled, then skipped, finally gaining momentum and managing a full run. But before he could get to the ladder, the ground rocked with a heavy explosion. He lost his balance and dropped his rifle as he spun. Once more, he slammed his head hard against the concrete surface of the runway access apron as he landed.
Something red covered his eyes— he thought the MiG had exploded and felt a pit in his stomach; anger at the thought of his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity being taken from him. Cursing, he got to his feet, so mad that he nearly smashed the rifle barrel end into the ground. He might have tried putting the fire out with his bare hands, but with his first step he realized that the plane hadn’t exploded— it was standing there not five feet away, untouched by the chaos around it.
“Major, I am ready for your assessment,” said Wong, his voice calm as he appeared at Preston’s side. He nudged Preston toward the other side of the plane, where a large boarding ladder constructed of tubular steel sat next to the cockpit. Painted bright orange, the contraption looked like a piece of scaffolding for a construction site.
It held Preston’s weight easily. With his rifle in one hand, he climbed up quickly and touched the cobra cowling along the forward fuselage,. The fin extended forward from the wing, which helped give the Russian plane extraordinary flight stability in difficult maneuvers.
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 14