HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (18 page)

“We
ain’t fuckin’ leaving you,” said Salt.

Wong
sighed. This was exactly the situation he had sought to avoid.

“I
assure you, Sergeant, my assignment is ancillary to the main mission. And to
put it bluntly, Sergeant, I am expendable. If all goes well, I will meet you
back here in precisely one hundred and thirty minutes. If it does not, you will
carry on without me. Please, follow the plan and my orders to you now.”

“God
damn Air Force assholes,” muttered Salt.

Wong
checked his MP-5, then looked back up into Davis’s face. The sergeant seemed to
be trying to find the words to say something.

Wong
shook his head. Davis finally shrugged and scooped up the explosives kit. Wong
made sure his extra clips were easily accessible, then turned to start the long
loop around the Iraqi positions.

He’d
taken only two steps when he heard a fresh set of vehicles approaching from the
distance. He froze, turning his head toward the sound, holding his breath as
the faint rumble grew slowly but steadily. There were at least four or five
vehicles approaching, maybe more. Even before he began trotting toward the
others with his IR viewer in his hand, he knew one of them would be a station
wagon painted with the red crescent.

OVER IRAQ

27 JANUARY 1991

2030

Lars
screamed as
he
pulled against the controls of the MC-130, pitting his muscles not just against
DiRiggio’s but against gravity. The big plane danced on her wing, slicing a
diagonal in the sky, losing altitude even as he managed to keep her nose
pointing upwards. She was ready to roll— she wanted to roll— and as he
struggled Lars considered just letting her, hoping against hope that there
would somehow be enough room to get her back level. But even if he’d been
twenty thousand feet higher, there was no guarantee he’d recover from such a
violent invert, or even that the wings and control surfaces would survive
intact. It was him and it was gravity; the plane was caught in the middle,
skittering just above the cold sand.

Lars’s
arms and chest disintegrated, his legs melting to flaccid bands of flesh. He
threw his right arm literally around the control column, and with his left
punched DiRiggio. He hit him as hard as he could, once, twice, then felt the
yoke slam back hard against his jaw. With his knees and elbows and chin he
smothered the controls, urging the plane upright, willing it into something
approaching stable flight. The ground loomed, an optically-enhanced blur of
oblivion. A stall warning sounded. A million thoughts occurred to him, a
checklist of possible evasive action; he even considered popping the landing
gear and wheeling in. But all he did was hold on, riding it out like a surfer
caught in a monster tsunami.

The
surfer would have swamped. The Herk somehow managed to level off inches from
the gritty dirt. A moment later they began to climb.

“All
right,” he said over the interphone circuit, which connected to the others in
the plane. “All right. All right.”

He
repeated the words several more times. Kelly, the flight engineer reached
forward from his station and held him on the shoulder.

“The
engines, do I have the engines?” Lars asked.

He
did— he had to, or the plane wouldn’t be reacting as smoothly as it was.

“Captain,
we’re fine,” said the sergeant.

“We’re
fine,” repeated Lars.

“You’re
right on course,” said the navigator. He spoke funny, as if half of his mouth
had been Novocained— he’d been slammed violently as Lars struggled to control
the plane. “Is the Major okay?”

Lars
forced a glance toward DiRiggio, who was slumped back in his seat.

“I
don’t know,” he said. “I think— he may have had a heart attack.”

“Definitely.”

“I
had to hit him. I had no choice.”

“Couple
of guys banged up in the back, but no serious injuries,” said Kelly. “I think I
busted my finger.”

He
continued talking but the words bounced around Lars’ helmet, not truly
registering. A crewman gave a fuller report from the back but he couldn’t make
out any of it. He just flew, staying in their pre-set track but pulling up to
three thousand feet, judging that the risk of being detected was worth the
leeway with the plane. What he really wanted to do was take it to fifteen
angels, to twenty, to thirty— get the hell
up
there, climb and
keep climbing.

Climb
and go home.

The
flight engineer and navigator pulled DiRiggio from his seat, lifting him over
the center control console and past the flight engineer’s seat. His head
flopped down against Lars’ arm as they pulled him out, skin ghost-white, eyes
rolled back like a bizarre toy. The two men took him back off the flight deck
to the rear crew area, where the two paramedics aboard quickly began working on
him.

Or
at least Lars assumed they did. He was alone, sitting in the middle of a
precarious bubble, struggling to keep himself afloat. He couldn’t breathe, he
couldn’t think— he ripped off the helmet and goggles, prying them away. His
head rushed, as if he’d just surfaced from the bottom of a deep lake. He
blinked at the massive wall of instruments in front of him, numbers and needles
floating in space. He readjusted his seat restraints, felt his heart calming.
Slowly, he began pushing the plane back towards the earth, flying in the track
they had briefed.

“DiRiggio’s
on oxygen,” said Kelly, returning to the flight deck ahead of the navigator.
“We have to get him help. Fast. Real fast.”

Lars
kept his eyes fixed on the dark landscape in front of him.

“Captain?”

The
flight engineer leaned over the console. Lars cocked his head so he could see
him from the corner of his eye but said nothing.

“We
got to go back, don’t you think?” said Kelly. The middle and ring fingers on
the engineer’s left hand were taped together.

“We
really have to go back,” said the navigator.

Lars
concentrated on the plane, working into his bank south. The border was less
than twenty miles south; it would take at least— at least— thirty minutes to
reach a base with a hospital big enough to handle something like this. He
wasn’t even sure where that be; maybe King Khalid.

He
could cut almost a straight line there out of this leg of his pattern. There’d
be one tricky point near the border, but otherwise it was an easy run. And he
could get an escort— hell, he could get half the Air Force.

He
wanted to do it. He wanted to get the hell out of here.

But
should he? If he left now, the three-man Delta team he’d dropped would be
stranded. There were no other STAR-equipped C-130s available; if there
had been, he wouldn’t be here.

They
could scramble SAR assets. That was the backup plan. Send a helo.

Not
really. Certainly not while the SA-11s and the other SAMs were still down
there. The SAMs would make mincemeat of a helicopter. They’d factored that in
already— that’s why Herky Bird was here.

They
could divert planes, take out the SAMs, put real force down there. Hell, they
should have done it that way to begin with.

But
they hadn’t. And the truth was, this probably put less people at risk. Working
at night, quietly, slipping in and out— that was the best way.

As
if SAMs wouldn’t mince him up. As if the Herk didn’t just miss getting smashed
to pieces by that flak— forget about the missiles.

Two
night grabs— he had to do it twice. Five hundred feet in the pitch black, reel
them in, go back, do it again. All at the edge of the acquisition envelope of
one of the most powerful surface-to-air systems in the world.

No
way. No way.

Lars
had done it in an exercise, though. He had done it. He’d ducked under a Hawk
radar without being detected and evaded a Patriot battery as well— at least as
difficult as the mission tasked here.

But
that was long before he came to the Gulf, long before he knew fear.

“Captain?”

Lars
stared into the darkness. It was his call to make. Who did he owe— three men on
the ground, or the pilot in the back of the plane?

Three
men who had the odds against them anyway?

Or
a fellow officer and Herk pilot, a nice guy with a family back in the States, a
guy more or less like him?

Go
home. Get the hell out of this. No one was going to blame him for running away
now.

Lars
reached down and pulled his radio gear back on.

“Major
DiRiggio has had a heart attack,” he told the crew, though of course they all
knew by now. “We’re going to complete our mission as best we can, and then
we’re going to go home. The men on the ground are counting on us.”

He
meant to say something else, something about DiRiggio wanting it that way— a
lie maybe, but the kind of lie men often need to hear. But fear choked off the
rest of the words.

No
one said anything. Lars hands shook so violently as he began to bank in his
pattern that he feared he’d roll the plane.

OVER IRAQ

27 JANUARY , 1991

2030

Knowlington
read the
altimeter ladder in the HUD, making sure he was low enough to be heard from the
ground. Then he glanced at his watch and the map, trying to figure out exactly
where Vulture Three had been when he sent the call. There was of course no
guarantee that the pilot had had his position correct, nor was it possible to
know precisely where he had been when he pulled the eject handles. But search
and rescue was basically about taking logical guesses. Skull began to turn the
plane south, figuring it as the most likely direction.

Unless
the pilot came back up on the air, however, no amount of guesses were likely to
turn him up. The Maverick viewers could see only a tiny area at a time, and
when they were designed no one was thinking of using them to spot bodies. An Iraqi
airfield lay due north, about five minutes away for an enemy MiG with its pedal
to the metal, increasing the tickle factor if not the degree of difficulty.

“Work
out from me to increase what we’re covering,” Skull told A-Bomb as they began
their second sweep. “I think you can take it further south on your turn.”

“Yeah,”
replied A-Bomb.

“I’m
going to turn now,” said Knowlington.

“Two,”
replied his wingmate.

The
Maverick screen remained a blurry, undefined mess. But at least that meant no
one was down there to shoot at him— Skull was at three thousand feet, a juicy
target flying at barely 250 knots an hour.

“Devil
One, this is Coyote,” said the controller in the AWACS coordinating flights in
the sector.

“Devil
One.”

“We
have no Vulture flight,” said the AWACS.

“What
exactly do you mean by that, Coyote?” snapped Skull.

“There
is no Vulture flight on the ATO at this time.”

The
crewman paused between each word, strongly implying that Skull had made a
serious mistake. The plane’s powerful airborne radar helped it keep track of
everything happening north of the border; while it was possible that a plane
had been hit without Coyote knowing about it, it was extremely unlikely. The
call sign did not appear to be a valid one, since the plane was not on the
tasking order for duty that night. That alone would convince even the most
open-minded controller— and certainly his commander— that the transmission had
been bogus.

Or
some sort of auditory hallucination.

But
Skull knew what he had heard.

“Acknowledged,
Coyote,” he said. He maintained his course heading north, studying the view
screen.

“Devil
One, this Coyote,” snapped a new voice obviously belonging to controller’s
supervisor. “Please advise your current status.”

Skull
blew a long breath into his mask, then calmly noted his location and course.

Which
wasn’t the answer Coyote wanted.

“There
is no Vulture Three,” said the officer flatly. “We have no data indicating a
downed plane at this time. Colonel, we’re concerned here that you’re being
sucked into a trap.”

“I
appreciate your concern. Maintaining search pattern.” Skull could almost hear
the exasperation in the static that filled the radio band.

“See,
now that’s why you get the big bucks,” said A-Bomb over the short-range radio.
“I woulda told him to jerk off.”

O’Rourke
would have been perfectly within his rights to suggest they break off their
search. Most if not all of the wingmen Skull had flown with, from ‘Nam to
Panama to Red Flag, would have at least asked if he was
positive
he’d
heard the distress call.