The cold metal stung his bare hand. Hack ran his fingers along the louvered vents for the cannon, the tear-shaped port seemingly too small to house the muzzle of a weapon. Adrenaline boiled through his arms and legs, breaking his movements into sharp jumps and harsh jerks. He grabbed the edge of the cockpit, hauling himself onto the chin fairing. The Zvezda K-36D ejection seat sat behind an old-style dashboard of dials and rocker switch-gear. The instrument set was much closer to that of an A-10A than an F-15C.
The restraining straps were cinched against the seat. No helmet. No flightsuit.
Not that he expected to find them here.
His own gear— where the hell was it?
Shit. Back on the helicopter. He’d forgotten it in the rush. Even if he didn’t need the suit and helmet, he wanted the flight board. He’d taken it with him on every flight he’d ever made, even the Russian Fulcrum spin. It was good luck.
“Major, the jamming station control panel is in the upper left hand-quadrant, below the angle-of-attack.,” said Wong. He popped the back of a small camera, quickly changing the film as he spoke. “Please examine it first. Information on the radar warning scope would likewise be beneficial. I have photographed the cockpit and the flight computer. I will now document the exterior hard points and other areas of interest.”
Hack spun around, nearly kicking Wong in the face.
“I need my gear,” he said. “It’s in the helicopter. Get it.”
Wong looked at him coldly. “Your bag is on the apron there, where Sergeant Fernandez placed it.”
“Good.” Hack looked to his right. The hangar was open and unguarded. “The Iraqis must keep their flight gear in the hangar. Come on.”
“Please. We must complete our evaluation of the aircraft first,” said the captain, refusing to clear off the ladder.
Hack stepped away and leapt off the airplane, holding the M-16 in front of him for balance as he landed. It wasn’t as far as he thought; his right leg buckled slightly but he kept his balance, staggering a step ahead. Then he turned to run to Eugene, who was examining the underside of the wings.
“Not plumbed for air-to-air refueling,” the British mechanic announced. That wasn’t big news— almost no MiGs were. “Or for wing tanks. I’m not familiar with the mounting on points three and five; perhaps it is an Iraqi arrangement for unguided bombs.”
“Forget all that,” Hack told him. An Apache whizzed low overhead drowning his words. He shouted as loud as he could. “Fuel. Is it fueled?”
“What?” said the mechanic.
“We need to fuel it!”
“Yes. Captain Wong wants me to examine the radar.”
“Fuel! Does it have fuel?”
The mechanic blinked, then ran his hand over his bald head, perplexed.
Hack pushed the mechanic toward the plane, then began running toward the hangar. Short and squat, the building was made entirely of metal. It looked more like a civilian warehouse than a military hangar building. Thick bands of smoke slithered from the dark interior. The heavy sulfuric odor made Preston cough as he ran. As he reached the door he pushed his rifle up. He couldn’t see anything inside the building, but squeezed the trigger anyway, as if a random spray of bullets would guarantee his safety.
Nothing happened. He glanced down and realized he’d placed his finger not on the rifle trigger but on the grenade mechanism.
He coughed again, this time so hard that he had to drop to one knee to recover. But the air was even thicker here, the scent stifling. He rose slowly, telling himself to slow down.
A small fire burned about midway down the far side of the building, casting a reddish glow across the interior. Metal ramps and a small hand truck sat near the glow; a set of benches and lockers were lined against the wall.
A tractor was parked on his right. Hack sidled toward it, trying to hold back his coughs. A bomb trolley had been hooked to the back of back of the vehicle; two slim anti-air missiles sat in its base.
Hack put his arm over his mouth to filter the stench. Something moved on the floor a few feet from a workbench beyond the weapons carriage.
This time his finger was in the right place. Bullets ripped through the figure and ricocheted everywhere, the hangar reverberating with the automatic-weapons fire.
Hack coughed uncontrollably and threw himself down, rolling and starting to retch, his lungs and throat scratched by the toxic fumes of the smoldering fire. He tasted metal in his mouth; his nose felt like it had been filled with shavings from a metal lathe. Hack lost his hold on the gun and fell against the floor, stomach heaving.
He knew he had to stand up to breathe, but he wasn’t sure if there were other Iraqis in the hangar, or even if he’d killed the man he’d aimed at. Finally he summoned his energy and jumped up, threw his hand over his face and pumped his lungs against the fabric of his jumpsuit.
A man sprawled across the ground ten feet away. Hack froze, then realized the man wasn’t moving. He could see the man’s head glowing with the dim red light of the fire across the way.
A helmet. The pilot.
He walked toward the man, looking this way and that. His lungs felt pinched in his chest. He had to get outside and breathe.
The building rattled with an nearby explosion. Hack reached down and grabbed the man’s leg, hauling him backwards toward the yawning blue light. He started slowly, then felt himself tripping. He managed to keep his balance long enough to reach the entrance, where he fell over backwards. He whirled around, still coughing as the clean air hit his face. He gulped it, then reached back for the boot, pulling the Iraqi clear into the sunlight.
The dead pilot’s fingers were wrapped around a pistol. He was fully dressed in a pressurized suit and helmet. While his torso and limbs were intact, his nose and forehead looked more like a smashed pumpkin covered with red pulp than anything human. Part of the flight helmet was missing; the rest was cracked and fused to the man’s skull.
Something warm touched Hack’s shoulder. He flinched, thinking it was blood, but it was Fernandez, the Delta soldier.
“I shot him,” Hack said.
“I think a grenade got him, Major,” said Fernandez. “Look at the helmet.”
“Maybe,” said Hack, though he knew he’d seen the man move. He dropped down, examining the flightsuit. It seemed intact, though there were blood splatters all over it. The survival gear and belts, nicked here and there but seemingly sound, were thick with blood, already congealing into brown crust.
A helmet and mask. He’d have to go back into the hangar. There must be a dressing station further back.
“Fuel’s on it way, coming across the strip,” yelled Eugene, running up to him and pointing across the field.
“Can you load missiles?” Hack asked.
“Missiles?”
“There’s a pair in there, attached to a tractor. Can you get them on the plane?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hangar’s on fire,” Fernandez said.
“I know that,” said Preston, running back into the building. He bunched his flightsuit up to cover his mouth, and tried to hold his breath as much as possible. He pointed to the tractor, hoping the others were following, then kept going, kicking his 203 on the floor as he ran.
There should be a rack of suits standing against the wall, lockers for personal gear. A readyroom, an area to brief pilots.
Or maybe not. Maybe they used the buildings on the other side of the base.
No. He was thinking about this all wrong. It wasn’t a real air base. It was more like a lone bus terminal, a solitary stop.
Might be no gear here at all then.
The fire licked across the row of benches at the left, blue flames circling a tank of some sort. The light waxed and waned, cycling from red to purple to blue. The fire seemed to die but then flared back again.
Three large trucks sat at the back the building. Empty sacks sprawled on the floor near the far corner. Several benches and metal structures looked like lockers. Ha
ck moved toward the lockers, then saw that the sacks were men’s bodies.
Something rumbled behind him. Hack whirled, throwing up his hands and expecting the building to come crashing down. But it was just the tractor – Eugene and Fernandez had managed to get it started.
Hack stepped over the bodies, looking for the suits or at least a helmet. The dead men were just workers or soldiers, of no use to him. There were large metal tool chests under the benches, and some old machinery that seemed like farming equipment. Tires were stacked against the wall, not far from where the fire was slowly working its way through a pile of rags.
As Hack turned to go back to the other side, his right leg kicked something on the floor. The fire flared bright and he saw it was an oxygen mask, its long hose curled in a neat spiral. As he scooped it up, something popped behind him. Now there was plenty of light to see— the fire leapt into a can on the floor, exploding and flaring up the tires. Hack ran out of the hangar, feeling the heat as the flames suddenly found plenty of fuel to ignite.
“The plane! Get the plane out of the way! The fire!” he screamed.
Fernandez and Eugene had already hooked the front of the MiG up to the tractor. The plane jerked and screeched as it moved— the Fulcrum’s parking brakes were obviously still set. Hack tucked the gas mask beneath his arm and ran for the wing, hauling himself up over the trailing edge flap as the plane stuttered forward with a groan. He caught the back end of the canopy and threw the mask inside, then squeezed himself around and down into the seat, his right leg catching on one of the panels as he fell in. He curled his leg beneath him as best he could, trying to orient himself.
So where was the brake?
He flailed on the left side of the cockpit of the unfamiliar plane. He couldn’t remember a thing, not from the MiG he had flown in or the briefings.
The emergency extension for the landing gear was on the left, at the bottom of the panel near his knee.
His mind blanked. He couldn’t find the parking brake on a Chevy, let alone work a foreign airplane.
On the panel. On the panel.
Hack found the small, slender handle right above the turn-and-slip indicator. He clawed at it, and the MiG rolled forward and then sideways, stopping abruptly. Unsure of himself again, not trusting his memory, he fumbled around the cockpit, looking for something else.
Wong appeared on the right wing, shouting.
They’d stopped the tractor.
“The configuration appears to be the most primitive export model,” said Captain Wong. “Do you concur?”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Preston, pushing himself up. He pulled the oxygen hose out from under his leg, untangling himself in the process. He found the end and inserted it into the panel, then sat back down, getting his bearings now— remembering himself, his plan, his checklist.
He needed his flight board. Not for the few notes he’d scribbled. Hell, they were useless now. He had all the important stuff memorized and he could, would remember it. But the cartoon, and Ecclesiastes, and most of all his dad’s advice— he couldn’t fly without them.
Wisdom exceeds folly.
Do you best
Don’t be superstitious, he told himself.
Hack turned his attention back to the plane. It had been outside the hangar, so the Iraqis might have already fueled it.
Power the instruments, find out.
Hack turned to the power panel on the right and began walking himself through the checklist he’d repeated on the flight from KKMC to the Delta base.
Power, number one. Switches set, check them front to back.
He remembered Lieutenant Romochka Dmitri Krainiye, the Commie pilot who took him up at Kubinka. He had walked Hack through it step by step. Easy stuff.
They’d puffed that engine, though, starting off an external power source.
Do your best.
Hack looked at the voltmeter in front of his crotch.
He had a good battery. Hot shit.
What was next?
As his eyes rose across the rest of the instruments, he felt a twinge of vertigo, dizzy suddenly, the rush from the hangar catching up with him.
Do your best.
He remembered his dad saying that to him during a Little League game when he was walking to the plate, bases loaded.
He’s struck out.
Blinking and then rubbing his eyes, Hack stared at the gauge faces. He recognized the clock, an old-fashioned dial at the base of the panel. It was his anchor.
Compass at the top right. HUD, of course, slaved to the radar. Gear below it. Armament on his right— hard to reach in a dogfight, not natural.
No place for a critique, he told himself.
Fuel gauge was a bar indicator with a flow gauge on the right side of the central panel. He’d had trouble keeping track of it during his flight at Kubinka— you had to stare at the damned thing to figure it out.
No fuel.
“Do you have power?” asked Wong.
“Yeah. Needs fuel. Get us some juice. I can go!” he yelled to Wong, pushing up out of the seat. “Four thousand kilos, no more. The runway’s damn short and I need this plane light.”
Wong started to complain, but Hack pulled himself out, rolling off the plane to get the flight gear.
Flames licked out of the hangar.
He’d have to undress the dead pilot, use his own helmet.
Preston rolled over the side of the plane, intending to walk along the cowling. He slipped, plummeting right to the ground. He hit awkwardly, but kept his balance, running to the dead man as a Hog whipped overhead, fifty feet off the runway. The ground shook with a massive explosion. An arm caught him as he began to fall.
“The Iraqis are sending reinforcements,” said Captain Hawkins, pulling him up and yelling in his face as two Apaches crossed overhead. “Maybe tanks and helicopters. If you’re going, you better make it fast.”
CHAPTER 43
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0613
Skull banked his plane back south, cutting back over the line of hills that lay to the east of Splash. Smoke curled from a dozen places as he flew, the battle sorting itself into several messy knots.
Closest to him was the hangar and apron area, where he could see the MiG being worked on perhaps seventy yards from the hangar. A Pave Hawks at the edge of the runway; .50-caliber bullets spitting from its doorway. An RAF Chinook skittered from the hangar area toward the buildings on the northwestern end of the complex.
Apache gunships zipped around the buildings, peppering them and the surrounding emplacements with rockets and gunfire. Smoke furled everywhere, in every sort of permutation— gray wisps and thick black clouds, red-tinted mushrooms, and diaphanous white scarves.
The commandos had entered the buildings. From what Knowlington could decipher from the excited communications, neither team had found any trace of their quarry. The SAS men were using mobile infrared radar units and other detectors. To lessen the chance of hitting their own men, the Apaches were in direct communication with the helicopters, but the gunships were not exactly subtle— every so often their chins would erupt in smoke and blue flame, and part of the buildings would implode.
The F-16s, their services not needed for the initial assault, had diverted to nearby secondary targets, including a small ammo dump or bunker area just below the runway. They were already en route home, leaving three A-10s— Skull and his wingman Antman, along with Dixon— to cover contingencies. The scheduled escort flight of four Navy F-14s had been reduced to two, apparently because of mechanical problems, the planes had just relieved the F-15s and would remain to escort Hack and the MiG back.
As Skull banked west, he saw a glint on the road about ten miles away, up toward the river and the highly populated area. He told Dixon and Antman to stay in a wheeling orbit over the airfield, then nudged his stick. As he did, he noticed a cloud of dust where the highway should be.
Splash Controller came over the circuit, repo
rting that one of the Apaches had seen a column of vehicles and possibly a helicopter approaching. Someone else came on the line, ignoring the controller’s attempt to keep them quiet. By the time the circuit cleared, Skull had changed course and identified targets in the dust cloud:
A dozen vehicles, including at least three light tanks or self-propelled guns and a jeep, coming along the highway toward Splash.
“Add two transport helicopters,” Skull told the Splash controller as the helos caught up to the column.
They were at a very low altitude, slowing as they caught the column. Mi-8 Hips, probably, large transport types that occasionally carried rockets in side packs along the cabin.
Skull studied the area beyond the helicopters, expecting escorts or other Hips to appear. He suspected there would be more— an entire formation of Mi-8’s and Mi-24 Hind gunships and Fishbeds, everything Saddam could throw at them.
Nothing.
They’d have to swing with the highway at a bend three miles away. Get the lead vehicles there with Mavericks, while the F-14’s splashed the helicopters.
On beam for that.
“I’m at two o’clock,” Dixon snapped as Skull alerted his flight. “I have the Hip.”
“Negative. Let the Navy boys take the helicopters. Stand off and let them in,” Skull told him. “We’ll get the column as it clears that bend northeast of the airport.”
Devil Two swooped ahead, well out of formation.
“Dixon? What the hell are you doing,” Skull said, flipping the transmit button off quickly and listening for an answer.
“Dixon, you’re supposed to be east where I told you to orbit. Acknowledge. Dixon! Dixon!”
CHAPTER 44
OVER IRAQ
29 JANUARY 1991
0614
The seeker head in the Hog’s Sidewinder misled growled at him, anxious to launch. It had locked on the helicopter’s hot turbine engines from nearly eight miles away— much too far to fire and guarantee a hit.
BJ had done this all before. He pushed on toward the Iraqi helicopter, keeping the large angled exhaust square in the middle of his windshield, a juicy target for his missile.
HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Page 15