Hogs #2: Hog Down (23 page)

Over Iraq

22 January
1991

0610

A
-Bomb leaned back
and looked at the remains
of the convoy, scattered in disarray on and along the road. No way those
suckers were bothering anybody for a long, long time. He pushed the Hog to
continue its climb into what was now a crowded sky— a pair of F-15s had
screamed overhead, chasing the MiGs off far to the north, while a four-ship of
F-16s had pulled into the neighborhood to see if they could join in the fun.
Behind them two big, dark-colored grasshoppers— big ol’ MH-53J Pave Lows— were
skimming toward the spot where they’d located Mongoose. Alongside them came an
A-10A from another squadron, one of the SAR team’s guardian angels.

Fuckin’
Goose. He’d laid out half the stinking Iraqi army and was just hanging out
having a smoke, right? Or just about. Because damn straight the guy waving down
there was Mongoose, no way it was anybody else. Maybe A-Bomb was at a thousand
feet and moving over three hundred knots, but his eyes were still sharp as hell.
There was no way, absolutely no way, he could mistake his ol’ section leader.
There was a guy standing alone down there— well, kneeling maybe— and it had to
be Mongoose. Could only be.

Son
of a bitch probably be flying tomorrow. Plus, A-Bomb was going to have to stand
him a whole slew of drinks for letting him get waxed.

Only
fair.

Probably
have to throw in some Micky D bags, too.

One
thing he had to say— for a guy who hadn’t sat in a Hog cockpit all that long,
Knowlington had kicked butt. You could tell Skull liked to wallow in the mud
the way he laughed at the flak on that last run, just went in and kissed it,
got three stinking APCs and a truck on one run— not bad for a rookie.

Or
an old coot, come to think of it.

Of
course, he’d probably flown against those same guns in Viet Nam, and in
something not nearly as good as a Hog. So he’d had practice.

“We’re
going back south and make sure their flank is clear,” Skull told him. “I don’t
want nothing screwing us up now that we’ve worked up a sweat.”

“I’m
right behind you,” said A-Bomb. He nudged his stick to get a slightly better
angle off his wing, scanned his wedge of the world, and reached into his
survival vest for his reserve cache of Good & Plenty. They weren’t his
favorite candy to eat while flying. The slick little torpedoes could shoot down
your throat if you didn’t pay attention, and then you lost all that flavor. But
this was war and you had to take some chances.

On the ground in Iraq

22 January 1991

0610

H
e was played
. He could feel the desert
warming into daylight around him, felt the relentless approach of his enemy,
but Mongoose could do nothing but stare upwards at the emptiness. He’d tried to
stand but got no further than his knees; he leaned back on them, wanting to
collapse back but unable even to do that.

He
no longer felt any pain. His consciousness was squeezed into a two inch by two
inch rectangle, the space defined by his eyes, which saw only the blank sky.

When
the Iraqis found him, they would shoot him. It was only fair.

He
hadn’t had a chance to read the letter. He regretted that. It was the only
thing he regretted.

Maybe
he would die before the soldiers found him. His knee was twisted and his arm
broken. He was probably dehydrated beyond belief, and who knew what other
injuries he had. He certainly didn’t. All he knew was the blank space above.

Blank
space filling with a dark angel.

Death.

The
earth roared at the end, he thought, just like he’d heard it would.

Someone
shouted at him over the din.

The
angel was asking his name.

“James
Johnson,” he said.

“Major,
you just ease back now, sir; we want to hop you into a stretcher just as a
precaution. We got all the time in the world. Your colonel’s blasted the shit
out of half the Iraqi army to save you,” said the para-rescueman, squatting
with him and helping him move his legs into a sitting position. “We’ll have you
home faster than you can say, ‘Kiss my ass Saddam.’”

Over
Iraq

22
January 1991

0619

Skull
heard the
Pave Low pilot practically yahoo as he got the thumbs-up from the rescue crew.
Mongoose was alive.

“Shit
yeah,” he acknowledged.

Not
precisely military, except that it was, totally.

“Shit
yeah,” said A-Bomb.

Knowlington
checked the Hog’s dials as he ran a lazy arc south past the two choppers. At
spec and with plenty of gas. Damn, he loved this plane.

Two
Super Jolly Greens squatted in the hardscrabble terrain, fetching his pilot and
making sure the Iraqis were dead.

Big,
beautifully-ugly choppers, just like in Nam.

Except,
they weren’t the same. They might look it from a distance, but they’d been
rebuilt from the ground up— stronger, meaner, much more capable.

More
considered. More deliberate. Living by intelligence, not sheer brute force or
instinct.

The
facts were just the facts, back there, obscured by memory and smoke, fog of war,
and all that bullshit. It didn’t change or get negated by the present; it
stayed back in the past.

You
had to deal with the present. It wasn’t fair to blame his drinking on that ride
over Laos. He’d been drinking before that. Laos was what it was— a bad day with
bad decisions and some luck for him, not for his buddy. It was back there now,
squashed with the remains of bridges and guns and MiGs and APCs he’d wrecked or
managed to evade. He had to deal with what was in front of him in the
windscreen.

Fact
was he still wanted a drink. Fact was the sting of whiskey in his throat would
feel great.

But
he wasn’t going to taste it. Not today. Today he was going to struggle against
it, and find a lot to do back at the base to take his mind off it.

It’d
be hard, though.

Knowlington
checked his instruments again. He was just a mediocre pilot now, compared to
most of the others in the squadron. Hell, this was going to look damn good, but
the reality was it had been a turkey shoot; poor slobs had only one AAA gun,
and they hadn’t even set it up right.

More
time in the cockpit wouldn’t help. His reflexes were a touch slower. And his
eyes— his eyes were just normal eyes now.

Probably
still had his share of luck, though. Must have, to have gotten the chance to
get back up here.

The
thing was, he’d traded some of his flying ability for experience, for
leadership. He’d figured out where Mongoose was, walked his head through it
like a commander should. He didn’t have to prove himself in the cockpit
anymore; that wasn’t his job. His job was to get these guys up here— and back.

“Hey,
we got a knot of soldiers down here near those trees,” radioed A-Bomb over the
squadron frequency as the two planes passed the area. “Kinda huddled down like
maybe I won’t see them.”

“What
are they doing?”

“Beats
me. Maybe they’re having breakfast. Shit, they’re waving.”

“Waving?”

“Yeah.
What do you think?”

Knowlington
began circling back. He gave the plane a smidgen of rudder as he settled on a
precise line to the trees.

They
were waving all right. And they made a show of tossing away their guns.

“They
want to surrender,” Knowlington told A-Bomb.

“Hot
damn. Hog-tied prisoners. That’s what I’m talking about. You cannot do this in
any other plane. You ever see anybody surrender to an F-16? I don’t think so.
F-15. Ha, there’s a joke.”

Skull
suppressed a laugh. But sure as hell, those soldiers did want to surrender.

“I
accept your surrender in the name of the President of the United States, the
commander in chief, and Kevin Karn,” announced A-Bomb.

“Who’s
Kevin Karn?” Skull asked.

“My
homeroom teacher in tenth grade. He said I ought to go into the Air Force.”

“I
don’t know what we’re going to do with these guys,” Knowlington told him. “It’s
a hell of a long walk back.”

“Hell,
stash them in one of the choppers. If they can’t take ‘em, I’ll land and lash
‘em onto the wings,” said A-Bomb.

I’ll
bet you will, Skull thought. “Stand by while I talk to the Pave Low.”

Over Iraq

22 January
1991

0620

D
ixon jumped from
the helicopter into a whirl
of dust and sand, running behind one of the soldiers. He’d meant to stay aboard,
but something about the adrenaline of the others pushed him out.

The
one thing he hoped was that he didn’t need to use his gun. Because sure as shit,
then he was going to fuck up.

No
one was firing, though. He ran forward a few steps, then stopped as he caught
the silhouette of a Hog low and slow to the south. He turned and saw a second
Pave Low landing about fifteen yards south of the chopper he’d just left; one
of the commandos on the ground was waving its team out to help secure the area.

He
turned back and saw the men from his Pave Low huddled around a man kneeling
ahead.

Major
Johnson.

He
ran forward, the gun almost slipping from his hands. He slid onto his knees and
stopped right at Johnson’s chest.

“Mongoose,
it’s Dixon. Hey, Major, you okay?”

Mongoose
groaned.

“Got
a broken arm,” said the sergeant. “Not sure what else. We’re putting him on a
stretcher.”

Dixon
nodded, leaned back over Johnson. “You’re gonna be okay, Major.”

Johnson
blinked his eyes. Dixon looked him over, saw him move his feet. One of the para-rescuemen
came up with a med kit; Dixon stepped back and let the man do his job.

“Looks
like he shot that guy there,” said the sergeant. He pointed to an Iraqi
captain. “Maybe the rest of them, too. Your Hogs must’ve smoked the trucks.”

“No
shit.”

“Yeah.
You fucking Hog drivers. Jesus, you guys want to win the whole war by
yourselves, don’t you?”

Dixon
stood back and watched the Special Ops troops secure the area, checking over
the dead Iraqis. He trotted over to the truck; he’d never seen the damage an
A-10A could do to an enemy before.

The
destruction was amazing. The vehicle looked as if it had been ripped in two by
a school of metal-eating sharks.

“Hey,
you Lieutenant Dixon?” asked one of the helicopter crewmen, running up to him.
“Major needs you to take care of something.”

“I’m
Dixon.”

The
soldier pointed toward the road. “Your guys captured a squad of Iraqis. You
have to accept their surrender.”

“What?”

“’Cause
you’re an officer and part of their squadron. Major Greer says the pilots wants
to make sure the air force gets full credit. Don’t sweat it, these guys’ll go
with you.”

Dixon
looked over to the highway, thinking that Greer had somehow arranged a
practical joke.

Six
unarmed Iraqi soldiers, each one fluttering a piece of white cloth above their
heads, approached slowly, huge smiles on their faces. A pair of Hogs
crisscrossed above them, wagging their wings.

“Fucking
Hogs,” said the sergeant, sidling up next to Dixon as the Iraqis came forward.
“What the hell are you guys going to do next?”

__EPILOGUE__

HOMEWARD

BOUND

Hog Heaven

22 January 1991

2100

In
the rush
that followed his return to base, Mongoose didn’t have a chance to read the
letter. He barely had a chance to do anything besides drink water, have his arm
fixed and talk to people.

Talk
to people mostly. First there were the official de-briefers, including a pair
of colonels from General Schwarzkopf’s staff who were anxious to find out
everything they could about the soldiers he’d encountered. There were so many Air
Force people he lost track of whom he was telling what to. He even gave a short
and undoubtedly uninformative brief to a pair of British colonels wondering
about the Roland.

Then
there were the squadron personnel, and what seemed like every other member of
the A-10A community, officers and enlisted, and maybe a few civilians thrown in
for good measure. A lot of people, pilots especially, wanted to touch him for
good luck.

Not
that they were superstitious or anything.

Finally,
there was the media, which treated him with more reverence than a four-year-old
having a private audience with Santa Claus.

All
of which confused the hell out of him, because, after all, he had been shot
down. And by his standards, that meant he’d screwed up.

No
one else seemed to see it that way, though, and Mongoose was smart enough to
keep his mouth shut and not contradict them. He remembered to take his aspirin
and had his arm cast signed so much it looked like an ink pad. Finally, he
found himself sitting alone in Colonel Knowlington’s office, waiting for the colonel
to return from some last-minute detail over at the host squadron commander’s
office.

So
finally he reached in his pocket for Kathy’s letter.

He
found the crinkled photograph that had belonged to the Iraqi captain first. He
pulled it out and stared at it, a token that what he had gone through really
had happened; it wasn’t part of a surreal dream.

The
strangers looked out from their glossy space with unknowing smiles. He ran his
finger over the surface of the photograph before returning it to his pocket and
retrieving the letter from home. It was crinkled and folded all to hell. The
inked address with his name had smeared and faded. Tucking it in the fist of
his damaged hand, he slipped his finger under the flap to slit it open.

He
stopped halfway.

What
if, after all this, it had bad news? What if the one thing that had gotten him
home turned out to be a Dear John letter, or worse?

Couldn’t
be. Would never be.

He
drew his finger all the way through.

Honey:

Well,
nothing much happened today. Again. Just a boring day.

Robby’s
getting bigger by the minute. He misses you. I show him your picture every day.
I tell him you’re thinking about him and doing an important job for us all and
that you’ll be back soon.

This
morning we saw a pair of hawks circling in Felicia’s yard. I took him outside
to see. ‘Pretty birds,’ I said. They swept down and we ran over to see, even
though we didn’t have our coats on. It’s been warm.

Then
I realized what they were doing. There was a little chipmunk on the ground and
they killed it. I took him quick and ran inside. I don’t think he saw.

They
were so beautiful and mean at the same time. But of course they were just doing
what they had to do.

We
miss you so much—

“Am
I interrupting you?”

Mongoose
was so startled he jumped to his feet.

“Hey,
relax Goose,” said Knowlington, folding his arms. “Nobody’s going to be
shooting at you for quite a while.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s
leg’s okay?”

“Got
a mile’s worth of bandage on it. Feels okay. My arm’s another story.”

“You
want me to open that for you?” asked Knowlington, pointing to the letter.

“No,
no, it’s fine.” He refolded the envelope and slipped it back into his pocket.

“I
wish I could say you don’t look the worse for wear.”

“I
feel fine.”

“I
know that lie.”

“I’d
like to stay here with the squadron. Obviously I can’t fly for a while, but I
think I can put myself to pretty good use.”

“You
don’t want to go back and see your wife and kid?”

“Well
. . .”

“We’ll
try to keep the war going for you, but I can’t make any promises. Ol’ Saddam’s
a lot more incompetent than anyone thought.”

Mongoose
smiled. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?
For getting shot down?”

“No,
for misjudging you,” said Mongoose. “I wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with
at first, I realize that. I was wrong.”

“If
I had a complaint I would have told you.”

“Thanks
for rescuing me.”

“Aw
hell, I didn’t rescue you. You thank A-Bomb and the Special Ops guys.”

“A-Bomb
told me you came up with the Mavericks and you ran the mission yourself. I
appreciate that. I did misjudge you, Colonel,” he added. “I thought, uh— ”

Knowlington
nodded. “That I was a drunk? Yeah, well, maybe you had it right. I am. A sober
one, though.”

There
was too much there for either one of them to talk about it directly. It didn’t
need words, though; they understood each other a lot better today than
yesterday.

“Come
on, I got a surprise for you,” said Knowlington, jumping up.

“Surprise?”

“Yeah.
Don’t worry, it’s not a party or anything, and I promise, no more generals, or
guys with cameras and dumb questions. But I had a little trouble figuring out
how to get it set up, so you have to come down the hall with me.”

Mongoose
followed the colonel past Cineplex and the rest of the squadron rooms, down to
an office belonging to the intelligence section that was housed in the back end
of the Hog Heaven trailer complex. One of the intelligence officers was on the
phone.

“Here
you go,” said the officer, handing him the phone. “All ready for you.”

Mongoose
took it warily. “Hello?”

“Jimmy?
Are you okay.”

“Kath?
Kath!”

“I’m
so glad you’re okay.”

“So
am I,” he said, and he slipped down into the chair. In the background he heard little
Robby crying. He glanced upwards and saw that Knowlington and the intel officer
had left him alone, shutting the door so no one in the world would see that in
certain very special circumstances, Hog drivers did cry.