HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (14 page)

Surprised,
Salt jerked his head toward his friend. “You scared?”

“You
bet I am.”

“Ah.
Fuck you.”

“I
am scared,” said Davis.

“Yeah.”
Salt patted Davis’s leg. “Me fuckin’ too.”

OVER IRAQ

27 JANUARY 1991

1930

The
ground intercept
station betrayed no sign of life as Doberman leveled Devil Two off at five
thousand feet. But the station wasn’t the point— Doberman continued toward it,
holding the plane at an altitude that not only made it visible on radar but
also fairly easy to hear from the ground. If the Iraqis were looking for Hogs
up here, they had two very visible ones to track.

But
there was no indication that he was being tracked. The AWACS had discounted
Skull’s Roland read; there was nothing between here and Kajuk that could see
them, let alone harm them. And the GCI site— just now visible in the Maverick’s
IR viewer— looked like a kid’s squashed Erector set.

Doberman
knew from bitter experience that the moment you thought you were safe was the
moment you were most likely to get whacked. The Iraqi missile men had learned
to keep their radars off-line until they were absolutely ready to fire; the
handful of operators who had survived the early days of the war were good
enough to flick the set on, fire within seconds, then shut down to lessen the
odds of a wild Weasel or Tornado sending them to la-la land. Just because his
RWR was quiet, just because the AWACS said he was clean, didn’t mean he was
safe. On the contrary, it meant he had to sit at the edge of his seat, as wary
as ever. The threat could come from any direction.

He
missed having A-Bomb on his butt. Frankly, Preston didn’t exactly impress him.
For one thing, the guy hadn’t flown an A-10 in years; Doberman didn’t
understand why Skull let him join a mission where he’d not only be flying far
behind the lines but at night. Better to take Bozzone, even if he was a kid.
Billy had the moves and the stuff; all he needed was a little experience and
he’d be a kick butt driver.

Plus,
Preston didn’t like the A-10. Anyone could see he thought he ought to be back
flying Eagles. Why the hell had he been sent here? Punishment?

Had
to be something serious. A guy didn’t just fall into the A-10 community after
flying Eagles. Hell, no. Especially a guy who’d nailed a MiG.

Doberman
checked his INS. The units had a bad habit of drifting while you were flying,
throwing everything off. Naturally, it only happened on a mission when precise
timing and location were important.

Like
tonight’s.

“Devil
Three, this is Four. Uh, we still turning?”

Doberman
cursed before hitting the mike button. “Turning,” he said, angry with himself
for letting his thoughts drift, even though he was only about two seconds off
the mark.

“Four,”
acknowledged Hack.

Not
like him to be late. Preston had him all out of whack.

As
he banked south, Glenon began pulling back on the stick, beginning a gradual
climb that would take them to just about fifteen thousand feet as they crossed
the border. The tanker should be in a track about two miles further south.

Flying
through enemy territory at “high” altitude went against everything a Hog driver
was taught. The plane didn’t seem to like it either; she didn’t buck, exactly,
but she did seem to be dragging her wings, taking her time on the long climb.
She might also be wondering why she was heading south with unfired missiles.

Right
about here, Doberman thought to himself, A-Bomb would chime in with something
funny. But Preston stayed quiet.

Which
was, after all, how they’d briefed it— silent com, talk only when necessary.

Damn,
he missed flying with A-Bomb.

As
Doberman’s radar picked up a pair of approaching F-15s, a voice on the
long-distance radio frequency demanded that he and Hack identify themselves. As
he went to acknowledge, Preston beat him to it.

“Hey
assholes, we’re on your side,” said Hack.

If
A-Bomb had said that— and it was the sort of thing he might have said— Doberman
would have laughed. But somehow Preston’s remark pissed him off.

“Devil
Three to Piranha Seven,” he told the interceptor pilot who had queried them.
“We’re A-10As from the 535
^th
Devil Squadron, heading for a refuel.
You got a problem with that?”

The
Eagles carried electronics gear to identify friendly aircraft; the FOF
“tickled” equipment in the Hogs and painted them on the displays as good guys.
That should have been done by now. The AWACS controller would also have given
them information about the planes, since it was responsible for tracking
flights in the sector.

So
why were they being challenged?

“Yo,
Blaze, it’s Hack. What the fuck are you doing?” said Preston.

“Hack?
Major Preston? No way. I’m looking at a pair of flying pickup trucks. Hack’s a
real pilot.”

“Stop
busting our chops, Piranha,” snapped Doberman. “If this is a real fucking
challenge, then get your goddamn ident gear fixed. Stand the fuck down.”

“Hey,
relax Devil Flight,” answered the fighter pilot. “Just trying to giggle your
nugget wingman.”

“You
don’t bust chops by targeting me with your radar,” said Doberman.

“Negative.
Negative. You weren’t targeted. Jesus,” said the Eagle jock. “Relax.”

“We
have not targeted you,” said the other Eagle pilot. “Radars are not targeting
you.”

Doberman,
still playing righteous, didn’t even acknowledge. The planes rocked off to the
east, back to whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

“Devil
Three, I have your six,” said Preston over the squadron frequency. “Blaze is
okay. He’s just a ball buster.”

“How
the fuck did he know you were here?” shot back Doberman.

“How
would I know? Probably the AWACS sent him to make sure we were who we were
supposed to be.”

“This
mission is secret.”

“Well
they know we’re here, for christsakes,” answered Preston. “Besides –”

“Yeah.
Tanker,” snapped Doberman, ending the exchange.

He
began correcting to fall in behind the KC-135, which had turned south. The
director lights in the belly were just visible.

Man,
he missed A-Bomb.

OVER IRAQ

27 JANUARY 1991

1955

Major
Ronald “Wick” Durk
had always believed he could sense a mission’s karma right out of the gate. Not
that he believed in any of the Eastern mysticism crap that went with the karma
thing. But he could sense a winning streak when it was coming.

And
one wasn’t, not tonight.

The
F-111 pilot had nearly been diverted about five minutes after taking off from
Taif in western Saudi to hit allegedly “live” Scuds found by a Delta team in
western Saudi. He’d nearly had to scream at the AWACS trying to order him off
his assignment. Not that it was the controller’s fault— for all he knew, Wick’s
two-plane element was going after the low-priority bridge as originally posted
in the ATO. Clearing up the misunderstanding without revealing the nature of
his mission had not been easy.

And
now his wingman had severe engine trouble, bad enough to knock him out of the
game.

Hell
of a time. They were less than five minutes away from their IP, the initial
point or starting line for their bomb tossing.

He
glanced at his weapons system operator next to him before contacting the ABCCC
plane coordinating the mission. Mo had his head pressed to the cowling around
the radar unit, seemingly oblivious to everything except the screen a few
inches from his eyes. Two Paveway II two-thousand pound bombs were sitting on
the wings waiting to be launched; a Pave Tack targeting set in the belly of the
plane was even now hunting down their target. The pod head rotated as the
turret flexed, the forward-looking infrared radar examining the terrain ahead.

“Wolf,
this is Bad Boy leader,” said Wick, contacting the command plane. “I’ve just
sent Two home. He’s limping but he thinks he’ll make it.”

“Wolf
acknowledges. We heard that.” The controller was an Air Force Spec Ops captain
sitting in the back of a specially equipped C-130 flying just over the
Saudi-Iraq border. He was part communicator, part coach, part mother hen for
the complicated mission. “We’d like you to continue into target as planned.”

That
answered that question. Not that he expected anything different.

“Bad
Boy acknowledges.”

He
flipped the radio to its interphone circuit, allowing him to speak to Mo.
“Sixty seconds.”

His
bombardier grunted. Mo didn’t like to talk when he was working.

“We
have the SA-11s. They’ll have to get someone else on the SA-9s.”

“Uhgg”

“You
comfortable with a ramp toss?”

“Uhgg.”

“Green
Bay ever going to win the Super Bowl?”

“Uhgg.”

“Your
mother a whore?”

“Uhgg.”

Wick
turned his full attention back to the plane, confident that they were going to
get a good splash. Mo had everything under control.

OVER IRAQ

27 JANUARY 1991

1958

Flying
at fifty
feet
above ground level, the hairs on your forearms and wrists became small pieces of
ice, sticking into your skin. Your knees locked, the joints pinched by a mass
of cold iron. The fabric of your flightsuit got heavier and heavier, weighted
by a fog of sweat and adrenaline. And still you flew faster, your left hand
resting on the throttle, as if its mere presence there might coax a few more
ounces of thrust from the turbofans nailed to your spine. You held the plane’s
stick firmly in your right hand, your consciousness centered in that the grip.
Your eyes ran ahead, not so much seeing as absorbing the sky and ground,
bleeding into its shapes and shadows. You were the plane and you were the pilot
and you were the space where you were flying. And you knew that at any second
if you lost just a fraction of your concentration, if you flicked your wrist
the wrong way at the wrong moment, you’d pile into the earth.

Something
twitched; Skull nudged left, lifting the Hog to stay with the contour of the
land. Something else twitched and he took his turn right, precisely on his
mark, thirty seconds from the landing zone. The village lay further northeast,
to his right as he flew; the highway where Saddam would be hit sat further to
the east.

And
the SA-11s were dead ahead. There was a battery of the advanced Soviet-made
missiles right where Wong said it would be. He could actually see the shadows
without using the Maverick’s nine-inch targeting screen.

The
Iraqi radars were inactive. As long as they stayed at fifty feet, however, the
Hogs would be obscured in the ground clutter, even if it turned on. The angle
of the radar waves and the reflections off the earth surface made it impossible
for the targeting devices to see them.

Or
rather, difficult; Wong had warned that there was a theoretical possibility
that the Russian-made radars could be arranged in a way to guard against
exactly this type of attack.

He
pushed the seeker head around, scanning the scraggly ground beyond the SAM
site. It wasn’t Iowa loam, but the land below was close enough to the Euphrates
for farming, or so he’d been told. In any event, it wasn’t sandy desert; more
like hard-packed dirt interrupted by rocks and occasional vegetation. The hill
where Wong believed Dixon was holed up was on his right; Skull avoided the
temptation to scan in that direction, concentrating on his job, which was to
his left.

“Wolf
to Devil Leader. One, we have a wrinkle.”

“One.
Go ahead Wolf,” he snapped.

“Bad
Boy Two is scratched. Bad Boy One has prime target. Can you mop up?”

The
controller was asking them to strike the SA-9 site immediately south of the SA-11
the Aardvark targeted. The short-range heat-seeking SAMs could target the Herk
when it made the pickup a few hours from now. Hitting them would necessitate
quick action— Skull was less than three miles from the target, closing at
roughly four hundred knots. Minimum range was around 3,000 feet, maybe twenty
seconds from now.

Not
a problem.

“One.”
He nudged his stick slightly, pushing the targeting cursor at the same time to
slide the Mav’s IR head over in the direction of the Iraqi missile launcher,
which lay to the west of the SA-11 due west of Kajuk.