HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (13 page)

But a
first
sergeant, a leader of men and
minder of officers— a first sergeant also had to be a genius of thought, a
translator of the ethereal and timeless. For who but a first sergeant could
properly frame the unending questions of life? Who but a first sergeant could
say, with a straight face and great authority,
This is this
? Who but a
first sergeant could look at a glass and declare that it was neither half full
nor half empty, but rather, a symbol of man’s status in the universe.

And the best damn beer he’d quaffed in at least
twenty-four hours.

“The best,” repeated the capo di capo from the
armchair in his over-sized temp tent in the heart of Tent City.

“Better than that porter Elwell brought in from
Czechoslovakia,” agreed Sergeant Melfi, sitting on the capo’s right. Despite
being a mere staff sergeant, Melfi showed great promise— as did all of the capo’s
hand-picked minions.

“Czechs don’t make porter,” said Technical
Sergeant Luce dismissively.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Clyston. “Blanket
statements like that will get you in trouble every time.” He took a long sip
from his glass savoring the bouquet. Since he was in a war zone, he limited
himself to two beers each night, lingering far longer over each glass than he
would do under any other circumstance. But self-restraint sharpened the palate.

“As a general rule, Czech porter is not the best
porter,” said Luce, amending his pronouncement. “Now, you want to talk about
pilsners— that’s a whole different kettle of yeast.”

Clyston snorted approvingly at Luce’s turn of
phrase. “Gentlemen, I believe it’s time for a smoke,” he said, reaching for the
humidor below his chair. He opened it and removed a large Cuban Partagas
Lusitania, then offered the polished walnut box to Melfi, who selected a Punch
in the robusto size. Luce, as was his custom, passed.

They had just lit up when Aaron Racid, an E-4
ordnance loader or candyman, rushed into the tent without knocking— a violation
of protocol so serious that it could only be caused by a crisis.

Which it was.

“Devereaux’s sitting on a Maverick and won’t get
off,” the black weapons specialist told his capo. “Swear to God, Chief. Lost
his fucking mind. Lost his fuck-
ing
mind.”

Clyston put down his beer and unfolded himself
from the chair. “I’ll be back,” he told his men, stoking the flame of his
double corona with a big puff of his cigar before following Racid out toward Oz.

Seven Hogs sat in various stages of dress in and
around the hangars. The day’s bombing runs had been relatively easy for the
Devil Squadron, and none had been damaged or even nicked. With no major
maintenance tasks and hours before most of the squadron needed to be at the
flight line, only a light crew was on duty. The candymen were supposed to be
loading up a pair of Hogs that Colonel Knowlington wanted to use to support a
covert deep-strike mission.

Racid’s description had not been entirely
accurate— Devereaux sat on two Mavericks, his butt on one and his legs on the
other. Both missiles were on low-slung trolleys directly in front of Devil
Five. Two other bomb loaders stood several feet away, throwing worried looks at
Racid.

“Devereaux, what the F is going on?” said Clyston,
looking not at Devereaux but the others. The men took half-steps backwards as
he stopped, hands on his hips. “You guys find some coffee.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they said in unison,
disappearing.

Clyston turned toward Devereaux. The E-4 weighed
at least 220 pounds. While the AGMs were safed and designed for semi-rough
handling, it was never a good idea to treat any ordinance lightly, let alone as
a couch.

“You resting?” Clyston asked his man.

“No, Sergeant.”

“You intending on loading these?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

Now in theory, there were a million ways to handle
a situation like this. The capo could ask for a clarification of what the hell
“prefer not to” meant. Or he could skip the bull, give a direct order, and wait
for it to be fulfilled. If it wasn’t— as seemed somewhat likely— he could have
Devereaux forcibly removed, even placed under arrest. Charges could be brought
or the man could be removed to medical care.

But the capo, mindful that the head on his perfect
beer back at the tent was steadily dissipating, did not have time for anything
so involved. He took a thoughtful puff on his cigar, and went to his ordie.

“Mind if I sit down?”

Devereaux shoved over slightly. Clyston gingerly
placed himself on the Maverick next to him.

“Thinking of what these suckers can do, huh?”
Clyston said.

Devereaux, who obviously had been, said nothing
for a moment. Then he asked if the capo had ever heard Mozart’s “Requiem.”

“I was just listening to it, as a matter of fact,”
said Clyston, who firmly believed that fibs in the line of duty were not fibs
at all.

“Shows you how puny we are.”

“Not really,” said Clyston. “Shows what man is
capable of— giving the angels a voice.” He hummed a small piece from the
overture— the chief did, in fact, have a recording of the masterwork in his
tent, along with many of Mozart’s other works.

Devereaux jerked his head around for a moment,
then looked at the ground. “I don’t want to kill anybody, Chief.”

Funny, this kind of stuff never came up at the
recruitment office. Clyston took a long puff on his cigar. One thing he had to
give the Marxist bastard Cubans— they sure as shit knew how to roll tobacco.

“I know I’m not pulling the trigger,” continued
Devereaux. “But no man’s an island.”

Donne and Mozart in the same conversation. Almost
made flat beer worthwhile.

Not really. Still, it was an elevated sort of
conversation. Bomb loaders as a class weren’t generally given to classical
music and poetry, unless you numbered the Beastie Boys among the great masters.

Clyston exhaled the smoke from his cigar.

“Fate’s a funny thing,” he told his senior airman.
“Puts you places you never thought you’d be.”

Devereaux nodded, then looked toward the sky.
Clyston folded his left arm under his right, taking another long, slow drag on
the cigar.

“Yeah. Fate,” said the ordie. “Can’t live with it.
Can’t live without it.”

Now
that
was a candyman’s philosophy.

“Excuse me, Sergeant,” said the E-4, slipping his
feet off the Maverick. “You don’t mind, but I have to get these suckers loaded.
And uh, no offense, but this isn’t the safest place to be smoking a cigar.”

“Good point, Devereaux,” said Clyston. “Carry on.”

KING KHALID MILITARY
CITY (KKMC)

29 JANUARY 1991

0002

Hack pushed the
receiver closer to his ear,
trying to pick up the others through the static. There were more than a dozen
British and American officers on the line, and all of them sounded like they
were underwater or they had filled their mouths with sand.

“Neither Tension nor Hercules produced anything,”
said the British SAS major reviewing the search operations. “Light resistance,
including some SAM activity, was encountered at both sites.”

Hack took that as a slap, but kept his mouth shut
as the major continued. The British RAF general ultimately responsible for the
missing men had opened up the phone conference by tossing Devil Squadron a
bone, saying that the two RAF fliers credited the Hogs with saving their skins.
If anyone criticized Preston directly, he’d throw that back in their faces. In
the meantime, it was best to keep quiet.

“Splash remains our only possibility,” said the
major after detailing some other leads that had washed out. “Granted, it is
still a long shot.”

Hack started to say that he and A-Bomb were ready
as well, but he was cut off by Captain Wong.

“The small base we are calling Splash may be more
significant than original estimates surmised,” said Wong.

It was obvious from the background noises that he
was speaking from an aircraft, though he didn’t bother to explain why he was
aboard one, let alone how he had managed the link.

Wong launched into a long and somewhat muffled
dissertation on what the tapes from the Tornado overflight and recent satellite
snaps showed. Unable to follow Wong amid growing static, Preston dug his nail
into the Styrofoam coffee cup— real Dunkin’ Donuts, as A-Bomb promised. As the
unintelligible filibuster continued, Hack glanced at the box of donuts on the
desk, which lay just out of reach. He considered putting the phone down and
grabbing another Boston Kreme. As implausible as it seemed, the treats were
authentic. O’Rourke could probably find a McDonald’s in downtown Baghdad.

If he ever took command of the squadron, he’d make
A-Bomb one of the flight leaders. Not because of the donuts— the guy was a damn
good pilot, a kick-ass pilot, even though personally he looked like a slob.
Glenon— Glenon had too much a temper to be a front-line jock, in Hack’s
opinion, though he obviously must do well in peacetime exercises and the like.

Wong— Wong could go back to the Pentagon or wherever
he came from. He kept talking and talking, even though all he seemed to be
saying was that there were now two very short-range missile launchers at
Splash, SA-9s.

Preston gave into temptation and stretched for the
donut. When he picked the phone back up, Wong was still detailing the point
defenses, noting that four more trucks with antiair artillery had been seen on
the road nearby. The SA-2 site they had identified earlier remained a potent
threat, even though it had not come up on the aborted mission.

“They’re probably defunct,” said Preston harshly.
“They’re not a factor.”

Despite his hope that his comment would cue
someone else to take over the conversation, Wong kept right on talking.

“There is a building at
garshawl
eastern
gergawsh
.”

Wong’s words trailed into an swirl of echoing
static, scrambling the sentences as effectively as a 128-byte encryption key.
The words Hack could make out sounded something like “shadows inside a
building,” although that didn’t make much sense..

“Hey, hold on,” interrupted A-Bomb, shouting into
his headset a few feet away. Hack pulled the phone away from his ear, but not
before his eardrum felt like it had been shattered. “What you’re saying is there’s
a plane in the hanger?”

“Affirmative,” said Wong.

“What kind of plane?” said Hack.

“That is what I intend to find out.” Wong said. “I
believe it is a MiG-29, variant unknown. My task will be to examine the plane
and gather as much detail about it as possible.”

“A MiG?” asked one of the British officers.

“We think there’s a MiG-29 in the old hangar
building at the northeast side of the airfield,” Knowlington cut in. His voice
came over the scrambled line sharp and direct; the snap in it reminded Hack of
his father. “Wong wants to have a look at it.”

“Wong?” asked Preston.

“What if it takes off?” asked Hawkins.

“There is that possibility,” said Wong. “A fuel
truck has been positioned in the L-shaped revetment at the northernmost point
of the field. The aircraft should be targeted by one of the attack planes in
the support package.”

“The revetment was empty yesterday afternoon,
Bristol,” said Hawkins. “I remember it very clearly. We were planning to use it
for cover.”

“Correct. As I was saying, there is a possibility
the Iraqis are preparing the plane for an early morning takeoff.”

“CentCom has assigned a pair of F-15s to take out
the MiG if it tries to come south,” said Knowlington. “The Iraqis may have a
suicide bombing run in mind. Hard to tell. In any event, we’d like to try and
have a look at the plane before we destroy it.”

“It presents a unique intelligence opportunity,”
added Wong.

 “What does Wong know about MiGs?” said Preston.

“I know a considerable amount about Soviet
weaponry,” said the captain haughtily.

“You ever fly one?”

“I am not a pilot.”

“We’ll nail it,” said A-Bomb. “Maverick will slice
through the hangar like a knife through a cheese danish.”

“The hell with blowing it up,” said Hack. “I’ll
fly it out of there.”

“What are you saying?” asked one of the British
officers.

What was he saying? Steal it?

The idea seemed to explode in his head, and adrenaline
suddenly flowed into the muscles and bones that had been worn down by the day’s
action.

Steal it.

“Let’s fly it out,” said Hack. “I can do it.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” said Hawkins.

Hack jumped to his feet. “We can get it. I’ll fly
it. I can do it. Fuck, I know I can.”

“You’re going to fly a Fulcrum?” asked A-Bomb.

“I already have,” Preston said. “I was at Kubinka
last year. Colonel, you know that. Shit. I can just walk off with it, assuming
it’s fueled. Tell them, Colonel – I was at Kubinka. I’ve flown MiGs.”

“It’s true,” said Knowlington.

Kubinka was a Russian air base, where Hack and
three other officers had visited as part of an exchange program. Knowlington
did
know, because Preston had come back to the Pentagon directly from that
assignment.

What he obviously didn’t know was that Preston had
flown from the backseat, doing little more than take the controls at medium altitude,
and then for only a few minutes.

But he could do it. He knew he could do it. The
idea of it— the sheer, beautiful audacity of stealing the prize right out from
under Saddam’s nose— he couldn’t resist! No one could.

“Let’s take it,” he said. “I’ll go in with the
ground team. Bing. We’re off.”

“You’re talking about huge risk here,” said
Hawkins. “Incredible risk.”