Hogs #2: Hog Down (22 page)

Over Iraq

22 January 1991

0550

E
ven before he
saw the flare, Skull knew
Mongoose was here. Call it intuition or ESP or stubbornness or just dumb luck,
he knew his guy was there.

He
wasn’t sure, though, whether he was still alive. Anybody could fire a flare. It
would be a perfect way to lure them close enough for a good shoulder-launched
missile.

There
was only one way to find out. And it wasn’t a job he could give a subordinate.

A
flicker of fear shot through the fingers of his left hand as he steadied the
throttle.

Good,
he thought. I can deal with that.

“Watch
for a ground launch,” he told A-Bomb.

“I
got it.”

Low
and slow. Dangerous as hell, but there was no substitute. The flaps were out as
airbrakes, he was nearly going backwards damn it, but he couldn’t tell. There
wasn’t enough light and he was too far off.

And
his eyes were failing him. That was the real story. He was old.

There
were bodies, but none seemed to be moving.

Someone
had fired the flares. He was going to call the search-and-rescue team in.

Hell,
it was either that or land the plane.

“See
him?” asked A-Bomb as he pulled up.

“I
saw someone. I’m coming around again.”

“Go
for it. I’m on you.”

He
came in even lower and slower than he had the first time, but the truth was, he
was still moving too damn fast for his eyes.

Bodies
were strewn haphazardly. He couldn’t tell if one was wearing a flight suit; if
one was different than the rest.

He
couldn’t tell whether they were all dead. Nothing had moved.

But
hell― he knew Mongoose was down there. The flare had definitely been one
of theirs.

Skull
refused to consider any other possibility. The only thing he worried about now
was bringing the helicopter into an ambush.

But
wouldn’t anybody looking to grease an American take him out? Ducks flew slower
than he did.

Another
shot of fear in his fingers. Skull turned the Warthog around for a third
circuit. This time, he wasn’t looking at the ground. Instead, he concentrated
on holding the plane a half-knot over stall speed as he made his tail as fat a
target as possible.

A
water pistol could have nailed him.

“Mark
the location so we both have it,” said Skull. “I’m calling in the helos.”

“Kick
ass.”

* * *

A
pair of Special Ops Pave Low helicopters, call signs Big Bear and Little Bear,
had been waiting not far from the border to make the pickup. But it was going
to take them and their escorts at least a half hour to get here.

“We’ll
wait,” Skull told the controller.

The
rescue choppers were part of a full-blown “package” or group of airplanes that
undertook rescues behind the lines. F-15 Eagles were tasked for combat air
patrol, Weasels were watching for SAMS, a fresh pair of A-10As flew close
support escorting the choppers in, and tankers were available to keep everyone
topped off. Combat might come down to one-on-one, but there were a ton of guys
and gals behind the scenes making it happen. Part of Colonel Knowlington’s
brain mapped the different elements out as if on a dry-erase board, plotting
and planning like a squadron commander.

The
other part focused on the desert, scanning the ground for possible resistance.

Two
halves, commander and pilot. The pilot was younger, more primitive Knowlington―
one with better reflexes and a cast-iron gut. He was damn sure Mongoose was
down there, and alive.

The
commander wasn’t quite so positive. Sure be nice if one of the bodies down
there got up and started doing a jumping jack or something.

The
two Hogs patrolled the area in a large orbit at about eight thousand feet,
giving themselves a decent vantage to check for movement on the roads. There
had been none in the five minutes or so since Skull had called for the pickup.

“Looking
at a dust bunny comin’ out of the north,” said A-Bomb. “Shit. Somethings
heading down the road, beyond the buildings.”

Skull
immediately cut short his leg of the circle and the two planes winged into a
combat trail, A-Bomb offset on the right side of the lead and back a half-mile.

“Let’s
bring this out to the west then take a fast turn to head back,” said Skull. “I
don’t want to billboard Mongoose’s location.”

“Gotcha.”

“Take
it up to fifteen, give us a little more margin for error.” He quick-checked his
instruments as the Hog began climbing, making sure he was ready for action. He
considered calling for reinforcements but decided to hold off until he knew
what they were up against. The helicopters were still a good ways off, and A-Bomb’s
dust bunny might turn out to be a jeep dragging a screen ― he still
hadn’t spotted it.

Even
without a lot of ordnance to weigh her down, the Hog took its time going
uphill. Take an Eagle and put her nose at the sun and bam, she was there. Same
with an F-16.

Thud
could climb with the best of them, unless she had a full load. Even then she
could go like all hell. The Pratt & Whitney J75 turbojet was a brand new
engine at the time, with huge thrust ― nearly 25,000 pounds in
afterburner, which could carry the plane over Mach 2. A bear and a half to
service, and from the early days there were problems with the autopilot, the
computer, and the fire control system. But damn he loved to fly the
Thunderchief, a lot more than the Phantom. They said the F-4 was a better
plane, but you couldn’t prove it by him.

He’d
had his worst days in a Phantom.

Leaving
his wingman. Chickened out.

Negated
everything else.

“Looks
like there’s a whole convoy or something. Be almost nine o’clock, north there.”

For
just a second the voice sounded unfamiliar, as if Skull had been expecting Bear
to be talking to him from the backseat.

“How
the hell did you see that through the ground fog and all?” Skull asked A-Bomb when
he finally spotted it. He took the Hog further east, pushing to come at the
convoy from the side.

“Got
X-ray eyes,” said A-Bomb.

The
airborne controller checked in with the SAR helicopter’s time to pickup―
twenty minutes. By the time Skull acknowledged, he was close enough to A-Bomb’s
dust bunny to see that wasn’t a jeep.

Or
rather, it wasn’t just a jeep. There were at least two dozen vehicles on the
road. They were moving fast, in the direction of their flier. Skull was up to
ten thousand feet, flying a bit slow but in a reasonable position for a
Maverick attack. He kept coming, deciding to make his approach angle as steep
as possible.

“Looks
like we’re going to have to smoke these guys,” he told A-Bomb.

“Hot
damn.”

“They
must think Mongoose is the fucking President. All right, we freeze the column
first. I take the lead truck and whatever else I can get at the head. Put your
cluster bombs about a third of the way back if you can. Shit, they may see us ―
column’s starting to break up.”

The
AWACS controller broke in before A-Bomb could acknowledge. “Devil Flight, snap
one-eighty. Snap one-eighty.”

It
was a dire warning telling him to take evasive maneuvers by jumping quickly to
a new course― enemy interceptors were coming for them.

Ordinarily,
Skull would have complied immediately. He was supposed to comply immediately;
the warning was meant to save his plane and his life. Taking evasive action was
the prudent thing to do.

But
he wasn’t being prudent. He was saving his guy. No way he was turning around
and running for home with his tail between his legs, not this time.

He
ignored the controller.

The
AWACS, with its powerful radar, knew instantly that its order had not been
followed.

“Devil
leader. This is Abracadabra. We have a pair of MiGs taking off from Al
Nassiriya. Take evasive action.”

“Noted,”
he told the controller. He didn’t bother communicating with A-Bomb; he knew he
would stay with him.

“Repeat?”
asked the AWACS.

“Noted.
We are engaging a troop column approximately ten miles north of our pickup
area.”

“Devil
Leader, the MiGs are off the field and are vectored in your direction. Snap
one-eighty. Repeat, snap one-eighty!”

The
first vehicle looked like some sort of armored personnel carrier, wheeled, not
tracked. A good, easy target for a Maverick.

Even
a greenhorn like him ought to be able to splash the damn thing. Problem was, he
couldn’t get the crosshair to move. And all of a sudden he was feeling
disoriented, eyes not knowing where to look, TVM or windscreen.

Stick
to the monitor, damn it.

The
personnel carrier was fat in the middle of the targeting screen, and the cursor
sat at the bottom. He switched from the narrow to wide and back to the narrow
view but better magnified view, losing his target momentarily. He eased the
plane’s nose just a tad and had his target back, juicy and hot. And now the
cursor had it right in the middle.

Didn’t
make sense, but hey, there it was.

“Devil
Leader? The MiGs!”

“Noted,”
he told the controller, locking his cursor.

“Sir?”

“Noted!”
he said, and in the same second the Maverick thumped off the wing, hiccupping
in the air before her motor kicked into high-gear.

Over Iraq

22 January
1991

0600

T
he flak vest
the sergeant had given him
was way too big, and no matter how Dixon tried adjusting it he couldn’t get
comfortable in it. For the Special Ops troops used to it, the gear was a
lightweight second skin, but for him the damn thing felt more awkward than
wearing a parka at July Fourth picnic.

He
shifted under it and tried to get a fix through the window on where they were.
They had come in over the border more than an hour ago, sitting here so they
would be ready to grab their guy once he was found. As far as the air commandos
were concerned, squatting in enemy territory was no more dangerous than waiting
on line for a roller coaster ride.

The
chopper’s massive turboshafts cranked with an immense fury; they didn’t seem to
lift off so much as vibrate forward, the big Pave Low lifting off gracefully.
The air force crew chief emerged from the pilots’ station and announced that
they had a good fix on Major Johnson, even though his radio was out. Shouldn’t
be much of a problem snatching him from the jaws of death this time around.

The
rest of the men, all well-versed in behind-the-lines operations, grinned and
rechecked their M-16s. Most had been completely silent since Dixon came on
board.

Iraq
passed by ten feet below. The helicopter rushed forward with an angry beat, its
powerful rotors churning the sky.

The
pilot called back that they were ten minutes from their man. And there was a
column of Iraqi Republican Guards racing them for him.

The
sergeant chucked him on the shoulder. “No offense, sir, but you just hang back
the first few seconds, make sure the area is secure before you go jumping out
of the aircraft. Okay?”

“No
sweat.”

“Good.”
The sergeant stuck an M-16 in his hands. “It’s loaded and ready to rock.”

Dixon’s
stomach flipped over backwards as he grabbed the rifle.

“Thanks,”
he yelled.

“Don’t
mention it. But, uh, sir, again, no offense, but I’d be obliged if you didn’t
point it in my direction.”

Over Iraq

22 January 1991

0600

S
kull edged the
stick ever so slightly as
he got ready to launch his second missile. The plane was right there, right with
him, as tight to his body as anything, even his old Thud. Better than that,
really, and truer, without having to worry so much about your muscles giving
out. He was well into his dive, coming steep as if he were dropping unguided
munitions— old-school habits— but this wasn’t a problem. He had the number
three truck dead-on. The pilot punched out the Maverick, then turned his
attention back to his windscreen. His cannon was loaded and ready to chew. An
armored personnel carrier rumbled into his aim and he pushed the button on his
stick. The force of the seven-barrel Gatling’s ten-thousand pound recoil seemed
to hit him in the face, slamming his head back away from his eyes. His eyes
didn’t move because they were fixed on the HUD and windscreen, guiding the
steady stream of metallic death into the metal. He still had altitude and a
good angle as he found another APC toward the end of the line and squeezed the
trigger for three short bursts. The bullets sliced through the front and then
the top of the lightly armored personnel carrier as easily as if it were made
of tin.

Skull
let go of the trigger and the plane bucked so sharply he thought he had flamed
the engines. His stomach kicked some familiar juices up toward his chest and he
recovered, knew where he was, realized the plane was fine. He lit the gun
again, this time for a much quicker burst, lining up on a truck at the very end
of the column, but missing it. He was by it and pulling off, his rhythm back, his
heart pounding. Damn! It had been twenty-something years since this feeling of
weightlessness and heartburn and adrenaline had wrecked his stomach. Twenty-something
years since the rubbery plastic in his nose turned nauseous, and the straps
pushed against his chest like the restraints on an electric chair. He’d missed
it badly; missed the smell of sulfur that somehow whipped into his nostrils,
and the suggestion of brimstone and Judgment Day he felt when dealing death to
the enemy.

“We
got flak coming up on your right wing,” said Bear in his ear. “Coming off a
second column. You see them?”

It
wasn’t Bear, it was A-Bomb. And he was telling Knowlington that one of the
tracked vehicles off to the flank of the main column was a self-propelled
anti-aircraft gun, the Zsu-23-4. But Skull’s brain blurred, put him in his
Phantom, put him back to the last time he was trying to protect a downed
squadron mate. He saw the flash of the gun out of the corner of his eye, and remembered
the ridge in Laos.

The
acid had burned through his stomach into his lungs that day. A whole ridge of
fire came at them, unguided; a whole wall of lead. There was no way around it— just
get the pedal to the metal because he was out of energy. As he nosed past, the
plane seemed to be in slow motion. He heard Bear gasping for air through the
open mike, trying to tell him something. His own mask was sucked up tight to
his face. He was yanking the Phantom’s stick. For one of the few times since
learning how to land, he was praying, realizing he actually might eat shit
today.

An
entire division’s worth of anti-aircraft guns. All set into the ridge. Shells
were whizzing past unexploded, big shells, huge things, 57mm suckers that
looked like streamlined piranha coming at him. Some moved fast and some moved
slowly; all ran straight at him and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to
get away from them except hang on tight.

It had
taken maybe three seconds to clear the wall of lead, and no more than five
seconds beyond that to push the airplane into a completely safe space. But the
time passed like weeks, slower than the dark spot of a fur ball, the moment in
a dogfight when the opponent is unsighted and quite probably behind you.

Bingo
fuel, Bear was saying.

Bingo
fuel. They’d been low on fuel even before the anti-air lit up.

The
evasive maneuvers had only made things worse. By the time he recovered, there
was barely enough in the tanks to get home.

So
no matter what he’d done, he would have had to leave.

He
was still to blame for mismanaging his fuel.

Truth
was, you could always blame yourself, because you were never perfect. And you
were always afraid, somewhere, somehow. Fear was always in your stomach; it was
a question of whether you let it control you.

It
had that day. And every time he went for the bottle after that.

No
more.

No,
that wasn’t true. He couldn’t say that. What he could say was that he wasn’t
going to win today.

He
could also say that he would come back, no matter what. He’d get back in the
cockpit and head north again, feel the acid in his gut. And the next time the
choice came between the prudent thing and the right thing, he would choose the
right thing. Or try to.

Truth
was, there were VC all over the place where Crush went down. The ridge was just
the worst example. The flash Little Bear saw had more likely come from one of
them than the Phantom’s crew.

His
real mistake wasn’t the fuel, or even leaving his friend. His real mistake was
letting fear win that night, and every night. That was his fuck up. It was
something he knew, after all, but something he had to keep relearning.

“Repeat?”

It
was A-Bomb.

“Repeat
what?” he said, barely remembering to key the mike.

“Did
you say you’re bingo fuel?”

He
quick glanced at his gauges— he had enough gas to get up to Baghdad and back.

Well,
almost.

“Negative.”
Skull pushed through his orbit, climbing back for another run at the line of
trucks. He’d flown out nearly five miles. Reorienting himself he saw some good,
distinct column of smoke rising from the highway. He could see no more flak.

“Waxed
the anti-air, but I think there’s another truck or two at the end of the
column,” said A-Bomb. “Bastards all look the same to me.”

Skull
saw A-Bomb’s A-10 above him. His wings were clean, except for the Sidewinders
and ECM pod. It was all cannon-play from here on out.

“Let’s
dust these guys,” Skull told him. “I don’t want anything moving.”

“My
feeling exactly.”

“You
got your stereo on?”

“It’s
turned down.”

“Well
crank it up,” said Skull, pushing into his attack.