Hogs #1: Going Deep (4 page)

OVER WESTERN IRAQ

0728

T
he smoke curled
in a thin line from the desert, as
if
fueled by the final
embers of a spent cigar. It was about
five miles south and three due east of the GCI site— exactly
where a damaged Hog might crash after the attack.

Grimly, Mongoose altered course and continued lowering
his altitude. He made double sure his
radio was tuned to
Guard—
the band a downed flier would use to call for help.

The twisted wreckage in the distance could be a Hog.
Then again, it could be a pickup truck,
smoked by somebody returning home with some bombs or bullets to spare. He was
by it too fast and too high to tell.

The radio stayed silent. A good or bad sign, depending
on how he cared to interpret it.

Mongoose whirled his head around, making damn sure he
was alone in this corner of the sky,
then cranked the Hog back for another pass. This time he slowed the big plane
down to a crawl; any slower and he'd
be going backwards.

The major berated himself for picking Dixon for the
mission. He liked the kid, but hell,
he'd been in the
cockpit
barely long enough to qualify for a learner's
permit.

True, Dixon had fighter jock written all over him.
Easy-going bravado, spit-in-your eye
aggressiveness, and
just
the right touches of insubordination and selfless
dedication to remind any older pilot
of his early years—
accurately
or not. Lean and at six-four on the tall side for
a pilot, he had an upper body toned
by the squadron weight
machines
and a daily run. Dixon was a recruiting poster come
to life.

Or maybe death. Mongoose pushed himself high in the seat
as he walked the plane across the desert, his eyes
sorting through the wreckage for
anything that would mark it as a Hog— a flat, stubby stabilizer or a thick
round engine
among the most obvious.

But no. He saw a wheel and a body and then another
body.

Some sort of truck, definitely.

He couldn't help feeling relieved, even though he was
looking at corpses.

Enemy corpses, but he shuddered a little.

Mongoose cast a wary eye at his fuel gauge— not great
,
but he still had a
little to play with. He angled the jet toward the GCI site, marked out in the
distance by a thick
plume
of black smoke. From here it was difficult to tell if
the smoke was coming from one source
or many.

Mongoose continued to monitor the rescue band as he
headed north. Part of him hoped to
hear the telltale chirp of an
emergency survival beacon activated by ejection; part of him was
relieved that he didn't. He expected the gunners at the GCI site to start
firing any minute. Sure enough, gray fingers began raking the sky
ahead. The rattle wasn't particularly
threatening yet,
falling
far short of the Hog, but it distracted him all to hell. He had to stay low to
see the ground clearly, which would mean running through the top of the
triple-A in about
ten seconds.

“Devil One, this is Cougar,” snapped the AWACS. “Are
you reading me?”

“Go ahead, Cougar.”

“We're showing a flight headed south we think is your
boy. You copy?”

“Who does he say he is?” Mongoose asked.

“Not responding at the moment. We're a bit busy here,”
added the controller— a not too subtle hint.

“Yeah, right, I copy. Heading back,” said Mongoose. He
pulled a U-turn and gave the ground
batteries a good view of
his
twin rudders as he slid onto coordinates that would get
him back to Al Jouf with three minutes
of fuel to spare.

Assuming
he coasted half-way.

KING FAHD ROYAL AIRBASE

Saudi Arabia

0800

H
is domain had
come down to this: a single pad of
lined
white paper in the
exact middle of a plain steel desk, a
thin, dented silver Cross pen he'd once thought of as
lucky,
and a telephone.

Colonel Michael Knowlington continued outlining the
large triangle he'd drawn around the
phone number on the top
of
the page, his eyes lost somewhere between the thick line and the memory of many
other triangles, drawn on many other
sheets,
under many other circumstances.

Nostalgia was not useful. But it was difficult to push
it completely away. Much earlier this morning, when the first group of “his”
Hogs took off on their long mission to bomb radar sites in Iraq, Knowlington
felt as if he were standing at an airline terminal, killing time before a
flight. And then, just as he turned to
walk back through the
hangar
area, he somehow remembered watching an RC-135 take
off in Alaska a million years ago.

For a moment, the white-haired colonel thought his mind
had thrown up a completely irrelevant
memory. Then he remembered he'd watched that particular flight not with
detachment
but a premonition of doom; the plane had later
gone down in a thunderstorm, all personnel
lost.

It was at that moment that he admitted to himself how
much he dreaded this
afternoon.
Knowlington felt— knew— he'd lose at least one pilot, maybe two or three, of
the twelve he was responsible for. He was especially worried about the
four-plane group
led
by the squadron DO, Major Johnson. In his opinion,
they'd been assigned to do something
well beyond the Warthog's capabilities, flying hundreds of miles to bomb
sites that were part of sophisticated
anti-air systems. Going deep was not exactly a job the A-lOA was designed to
do.

But his opinion didn't count. His being here in Hog
Heaven was only a freak of war,
someone else's unlucky throw
of the dice. A few weeks before, these planes were headed
for the scrap heap, and he'd been
given
“
command
”
of them to
make sure they got there. Then General Schwarzkopf
himself decided there should be more Hogs in theater, and that was
that.

Real War Rule Number One: Things Change. Rarely for the
better.

What really bothered Knowlington watching the Warthogs
take off wasn't a premonition or
pessimism, but a
realization
that for the first time in his life he didn't
care to have his fanny in the cockpit. He didn't care,
really, to be here at all.

What he did care for, what he wanted more than anything
else, was a drink. But instead, Colonel Michael Knowlington,
paper commander of the 535th Tactical
Fighter Squadron (Provisional) of the 99th Air Wing (Temporary), picked up the
phone and asked for help connecting to
the stateside number. Yes, he told the communications
expert
on the other end,
he was well aware of the time back in D.C.
And yes, it was a private number. This was Colonel
Knowlington on the line.

He waited. The building rattled as a misplaced Hercules
crossed overhead.

The phone was answered on the fourth ring, just as he
worried that the answering machine
would take it and he'd
have to try again
later.

A sleepy voice asked, rather than said, hello.

“I'm looking for Nitro,” Knowlington said.

“What?”

“Hey Nitro. This is Skull. How the hell are you?”

“Mikey?”

“One and the same.” Knowlington slipped back in the
stiff desk chair, relaxing a little,
picturing his old
wingman asleep in his
pajamas.

“Jesus, Mike— where the hell are you? You in trouble?”

“Not exactly. Well, sure, I guess I'm always in some
sort of trouble.” The phone line
wasn't secure. “You probably can figure out where I'm at,” he added. “It's
pretty warm, but I'm not getting a tan.”

“Jesus, Mike. You know what time it is back here?”

“I need an important favor. Today if possible.”

“I'm listening.”

Knowlington smiled, remembering another time Nitro— Captain
Grenshaw at the time— had used that exact
phrase. It was over a UHF radio as Knowlington— he
hadn't
earned the Skull
handle yet— tried to help vector in a
Jolly
Green to pick up the downed pilot.

“This is going to sound really, really dumb,” the
colonel told his old friend, “but my
chief needs a manual
for something you guys
make.”

“You're shitting me, right?”

Knowlington laughed. He'd had the same response himself
when the chief of his maintenance
section— actually, his capo di capo, Chief Master Sergeant Alan Clyston— told
him two days ago that the Air Force had somehow neglected to supply anyone in
Saudi Arabia with a manual for the AGM-65G
heat-seeking
Maverick missile.

Something of an oversight, considering they were being
used today. Everybody said they worked
the same as the other models, except for the fact that they had shaped charges,
were a lot heavier, and used infra-red instead of video.

Same thing, except different.

“I wish I were kidding,” Knowlington told Grenshaw. “My
guys claim they've figured them out,
but I want to make
sure, you know?”

“Some things never change. Shit.”

The colonel's telephone wasn't secure, and while he
doubted Saddam was listening still, he was squeamish about giving out too much
information over an open line. But he
wanted to make sure Grenshaw knew what he was talking
about.
“It's a G,” he
hinted. “Does that make any sense to you?”

His friend had to think for a second or two. “We're
talking about something we first used
back in our war,
right?”

“Well, you might have used it there,” said Knowlington,
“I dropped strictly iron potatoes.”

“It was a piece of shit in those days, right?” asked
Grenshaw.

“I was hoping your joining the company would make it
work a lot better.”

“Fuck you. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It
works great now. I can't believe you
don't have the manual.”

“Can you do it?”

“Of course. I'll get you a dozen.”

“There's a friend of ours who can get them over quick,
Bozzone-”

“That old phony is still in uniform?”

“Tucks his shirt in and everything.”

“Damn. I would have thought they'd kicked him out years
ago.”

Bozzone was several years younger than Knowlington, but
Grenshaw didn't realize the irony.

“I think they tried, but he wouldn't go,” said
Knowlington. “Billy's a general now.”

“Yeah, I heard. I thought they gave him the star to get
rid of him.”

“Didn't take the hint.”

“You know what, Mikey, I can get them there faster.”

“Really?”

“One of our congressmen is going over on a fact-finding
tour. He'll be leaving in a few hours,
as a matter of fact.
I can make some calls.
It's done.”

Our congressmen. Knowlington shook his head, but said
nothing.

“Listen, you want some steaks?” added Grenshaw. “We'll
get you a crate. You still drinking
Jack Daniels?”

His men would love the steaks. But the colonel declined.
“Just the manuals,” he said.

“I'm not trying to bribe you,” Grenshaw laughed.

“No, we're fine out here. Got more of that sort of
thing than you'd think. It's the
manuals I need.”

The voice on the other end of the line changed. “How
you doing, Mike?”

“I'm hanging in there. Have my own wing.”

“Your own wing?”

“Yup.” Knowlington didn't bother explaining the
paperwork, much less the fact that
most of his meager supply
of
Hogs were under de facto control of other commanders here. Nor did he say that
he had ceded much of his actual
responsibilities
to Johnson.

Maybe he didn't have to. Maybe it was common knowledge
that he was played out. Because
Grenshaw immediately asked
if he was being
screwed.

“Nah.”

“You know, I can help if you need it,” said Grenshaw. “Shit,
we can use somebody with your background ourselves.”

“Maybe after all this is over,” said Knowlington.

“Honor and country, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Don't go punching out again. Leave that to the younger
guys.”

“Don't worry.”

“It's been great talking to you, Mikey. We have to get
together next time you're in town.
Dissect a few old
missions.”

“Sure thing.”

“Fly straight,” said Grenshaw, his voice nearly thirty
years younger as he recalled the
first half of their
personal motto.

“And get shot down,” answered Knowlington, hanging up.