Hogs #4:Snake Eaters (8 page)

O
VER IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1555

D
oberman eyeballed the
paper map on his kneeboard as A-Bomb gave his wayward engine another shot at relighting itself. He had already decided he was sending his wingmate home, no matter what, but he realized the news wasn’t going to go over very well.

“Damn, Dog Breath, she won’t catch for me no way, no how,” cursed
A-Bomb. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah,
okay, you think you can make Al-Jouf?”

“You sending me home without supper?”

“You want me to come with you, no sweat.”

“Shit. Shit.”

“You have to go back, A-Bomb.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Damn. You ever, ever heard of one of these engines giving out? Ever?”

There was only one acceptable response. “No. Must be a fluke,” said Doberman. “All right, let’s go.”

“I don’t need you holding my hand,” answered
A-Bomb.

“The most important thing is that you get back in one piece.”

For some reason, that unleashed a fresh stream of curses loud enough to nearly shatter Doberman’s shatterproof helmet.

Flying solo with one engine
— frankly, even with two— over hostile territory was not exactly risk free, but A-Bomb pointed out that Doberman had a job to do. There were plenty of Coalition aircraft to call on if needed. Besides, there were worse things, especially as far as he was concerned.

“See now, this is the kind of thing that really pisses me off,” said
A-Bomb, his tirade fading down. “This Spec Ops coffee tastes like green tea.”

Doberman nudged his stick, widening the circle he was drawing over the Iraqi scrubland. Al Kajuk lay ten miles to the northeast. Iraqi air defenses were thin but still potent
. The village could easily be hiding flak guns and mobile missiles. He was at eight thousand feet, circling high enough so he couldn’t be heard, but the sky was clear and anyone with a good set of eyes, not to mention binoculars, ought to be able to spot him from the ground. And if a radar was turned on— well, that was show business.

“If you think you can make it. . .” Doberman started to say.

“It’s what I’m talking about.” Hell. Unless you don’t think you can handle things.”

“Screw you,” snapped Doberman.

“Anytime.”

“
Yeah, all right. Sorry about the coffee,” Doberman told his wingmate.

“
Coffee’s the only reason I’m going to Al Jouf,” said A-Bomb. “You want anything?”

“Taco with beans,” Doberman answered.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said A-Bomb. “Devil Two, gone. You’re solo.”

A-Bomb
had a million personal call signs, signoffs, nicknames, curses, and slang sayings, but that was one Doberman had never heard before.

“Yeah,” was all he could reply.

****

The Warthog’s top speed was supposedly 439 miles an hour, though there was considerable debate and not a little bragging among Hog drivers about the “real” speed. It was a kind of inverse of bragging
— pilots liked to say how slow the A-10A
really
flew, even going downhill with the wind at her back.

Normal cruising speed was less than four hundred miles an hour, so slow that a World War II era propeller-driven fighter could easily keep up. Cutting his circles around the Iraqi desert south of his target area, Doberman’s indicated air speed was exactly 385 nautical miles an hour.

Vital flight data was projected in front of his eyes via a HUD or heads-up display. While it was easy to see out of the airplane, the front windshield area was narrow and even cluttered by the standards of planes like the F-15 or F-16. But it was also better protected. A thick frame held armored windscreen panels, a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the people a Hog driver most wanted to meet weren’t welcoming him with open arms. Doberman sat in what amounted to a bathtub constructed of titanium. The mass of metal protected the airplane’s most vital part— him. If at times he felt a bit like a bear in a cave, it was a highly secure cave.

The
ground team, “Snake Eaters,” was supposed to come on the air at precisely 1600, or in one minute and thirteen seconds. Doberman, impatient by nature, tried to divert himself by starting a very slow instrument check. He began with his fuel gauge, a large clock-faced dial over the right console, just above a selector switch that allowed him to separately measure the stores in the various tanks. He moved deliberately, slowly, precisely, expecting to be interrupted— hoping to be, actually— but concentrating on what he was doing.

There were two kinds of pilots, in Doberman’s opinion
. There were guys like A-Bomb, who were really birds in disguise, equipped with some sort of sixth sense about planes. And there were guys like him, who had trained themselves essentially by rote and repetition. Doberman had an engineering background, and he thought like an engineer, or at least tried to, leaving nothing to chance. He calculated the fuel readings against his estimated time over target and reserves, running the numbers quickly through his mental computer to make sure he had all his contingencies covered. Then he walked his eyes over the rest of the readouts and instruments: temperatures, pressures, speed, altitude, heading. Check, check, check— gun ready as she would ever be, threat indicator clean— check, check, check.

And where the hell was Wong and the rest of the ground team? It was already 1603.

He started to click his mike button to hail him when the AWACS controller cut in with a warning: enemy planes were coming off a runway less than fifty miles northeast of him.

N
EAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ

2
6 JANUARY 1991

1603

A
t the precise
moment Doberman was wondering what was going on below, Wong was holding his breath and sliding down between two very large and uncomfortable rocks ten feet from an Iraqi soldier.

Two soldiers, actually, though he had only a good idea of where one of them was. Wong suspected there were
even more manning the small guard post just beneath the summit of the hill.

Sergeant Golden crouched about six feet to his left, training his MP-5 in the Iraqis’ direction. While Golden had a silenced version of the Heckler & Koch, “silence” was a relative term for submachine-guns; the weapon would be heard by anyone nearby. The sergeant was therefore unsheathing his combat knife, hoping the guards would come close enough to be plucked.

One good thing— the Iraqis wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have an excellent view of the highway and village.

On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t be there without some sort of radio.

Wong slid his hand into the back of his desert-chip fatigues, pulling out his own knife. Molded and tempered from titanium to his specifications, the weapon’s blade was barely six inches long— 150 mm to be precise. Honed like a barber’s razor, the single-edged cutting blade was 45 mm at its widest point, shaped for what Wong had determined by careful study of several obscure medieval Korean texts was the best angle for severing the arteries of the neck and throat.

Medieval Korean was a job to translate, but the labor excited a certain mental vigor difficult to duplicate. And nobody knew as much about knives as ancient Koreans, in his opinion.

Knife ready and eyes trained on the summit, Wong carefully worked a small grenade into his launcher so that the weapon would be ready to fire if needed. The gun was a breech loader, admirable in its simplicity— and liable to be set off accidentally or by the enemy once he put it down between the rocks, only semi-hidden. But the contingencies demanded a certain percentage of risk.

Golden looked at him. Wong removed the Beretta from his belt
— a stock but nonetheless dependable weapon— and nodded. He understood that the sergeant intended on taking the man on the left whose foot was just now appearing at the top of the hill. He would take the man closest to him, whose footsteps were now conveniently approaching up the hill parallel to his comrade. Wong would attempt to take him silently with the knife, reserving the pistol.

Contrary to popular belief, most if not all elite troops considered the knife a weapon of absolute last resort. It exposed the user to an immense amount of danger, and no matter how good the weapon, represented the least potent force multiplier available. Wong ranked it far below his preferred options, which naturally star
ted with ten-megaton nuclear warheads. Still, there was no denying the primal thrill a knife represented. The knife wielder joined a long string of ancients, a royalty that included the ancient slayer of Beowulf, a glorious slob of a man who rolled a thick blade into the belly of the archetypal beast.

Wong’s aim was considerably higher as he sprung on the
guard. His right hand jerked across the front of the Iraqi’s throat as his left hand brought the butt-end of his pistol hard against the soldier’s skull. As the man coughed and began to fall Wong saw a third Iraqi four yards down the slope, turning toward him with a rifle in his hand. He drew his hand back and whipped the knife forward, striking the Iraqi in the throat with such force that he dropped his AK-47. Wong rushed forward before the man could recover, applying a kick to render him unconscious.

Technically speaking, the kick to the head was not p
articularly well executed; his karate master would have been appalled. But it did its job, incapacitating the Iraqi. Wong dropped to a knee, scanning the area with his handgun as he retrieved his knife.

“Damn good work with the ragheads,” said Sergeant Golden between hard breaths. His man lay in the dirt a few yards away, his skull broken and neck slashed.

“Ragheads is probably not technically correct,” said Wong.

Golden began to laugh. “You’re a pisser. Where’d you get that sense of humor, Wong?”

“The appellation ‘raghead’ would seem to be meant for nomadic tribesmen or, with less precision, to members of the Islamic faith in general,” said Wong. “Neither of which any of these men were. For example, this man has a cross around his neck, and . . .”

“Jesus, Captain, you’re a ballbuster,” said Golden. “That’s their radio.”

As Wong surveyed the slope looking for other Iraqis, he wondered why everyone in Iraq seemed to think he was a comedian. The fact that the men were not Muslims was highly unusual and undoubtedly significant, though at the moment he wasn’t sure what it might mean.

“I think we’re clear,” said the sergeant.

“I concur.”

“You figure we can put the com gear on the ridge?”

“Or just below,” said Wong, gesturing over the hill. “In the meantime, if you lend me your glasses I will examine the village. I have a clear view.”

“Gotcha.”

A dozen small houses made of yellowish brick or cement nestled along a small road jutting against a shallow hillside. Two larger buildings sat along the only paved road, which led to the highway. Constructed of concrete block, they were perfectly suited as warehouses. Beyond the hill was a mosque. The paint on its minaret had faded somewhat, but the tower was impressive, out of proportion for the mosque itself and much newer.

Standing, Wong scanned down the road to the highway. He followed the highway several miles to the east. There were several fields with irrigation systems, though at the moment they did not seem to be under cultivation. In the distance, he could see more signs of population; houses and other buildings were scattered like pieces from a discarded Monopoly game.

The highway ran over a large culvert about three miles from the hill. A ramp had been dozed off the side, as if to prepare for a cloverleaf exit.

Or, much more likely, a Scud launching spot. The missiles could be placed beneath the roadway until ready for launch.

Golden and the rest of the team set up the dish just behind the crest of the hill. It took a few minutes to position it properly; as they did, Wong studied the culvert.

“I have contact with the A-10s,” said Golden. “They’re waiting for a target.”

“There’s an erector hidden beneath the highway in that culvert,” Wong told him, pointing out the shadow in the distance. He was just about to hand the glasses to the sergeant when he noticed a pickup truck and what seemed to be a large APC approaching on the highway. A brown tarp flapped loosely over the rear of the carrier. “Excuse me,” he said, putting the glasses back to his eyes to examine the trucks.

He watched as they approached the culvert. He was not surprised to see them stop, but Wong at first wondered why the larger vehicle did not pull down under the roadway with the pickup.

And then he saw why.

“Humph,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Golden.

“I have not seen SA-9s for some time now,” admitted Wong. He watched a pair of Iraqis adjust the netting that helped camouflage the mobile missile launcher; the battery appeared ready for action. “Frankly, I had not considered that we might encounter them.”

“Problem?” asked Golden.

“Problem is a relative word,” said Wong, handing the sergeant the glasses. “But I would not describe this as a positive development.”