HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (7 page)

Originally designed as a long-range interceptor,
the Panavian Tornado lacked the furball maneuverability of American fighters.
It could, however, go very fast, and its terrain-following radar and
quick-response engines allowed it to do so in all sorts of situations, day and
night. In fact, to Captain Conrad, this mission was rather bland— clear sailing
in daylight without nearby defenses to worry about.

But it was still a hell of a lot of fun. Flying
was always fun.

“SAM tracking,” shouted his nav, warning that
there was another anti-air battery hunting them. “ECMs!”

“Stay on it,” Conrad said, winding the Tornado’s
altimeter toward zero.

As the rectangular shape of the abandoned runway
came into view, Conrad cut hard left to run over it, speed washing from the
plane. He was at five hundred feet . . . now three hundred. . . and still
lower, getting personal with his target. He pushed his wings level, saw a
speckle of something out ahead of him, cursed and felt a light thump as he
pulled the plane upwards. The smell of fried chicken filled the cockpit— the
Tornado had mashed through a flock of birds, sizzling at least one of them.

“Clean!” yelled the navigator. Either the ECMs or
their hard maneuvers or both had shaken the Iraqi defenses. The radar warning
screen, which had shown the missile battery’s radar to be quite some distance
to the west, was now blank.

Conrad banked south, quickly reorienting himself.
The A-10A’s escorting the Chinooks  blipped on the radar screen, just over
fifty miles away. The helicopters should be somewhere nearby, but Conrad was no
longer interested in them— his job now was to get home. He sailed through his
turn, running to the west out of their path. Climbing steadily now, the
Tornado’s altimeter nudged through six thousand feet, then headed toward ten.
He was north of the Euphrates, circling south in the same area as the base,
lining up for his getaway leg home.

“More guns beyond the runway,” announced the
navigator. “Nothing big.”

“Tank?”

“No.”

“Other defenses?”

“Road south of the base, bunker, maybe just a
defensive post.” The navigator’s voice trailed off as he checked the videotaped
sensor image. “Maybe some cached weapons there. Can’t tell.”

“Jolly good. Feed the Yanks the positions of the guns,
and remind them where the SA-6 was, in case the Weasel hasn’t gotten her yet.”

“Right.”

But before the backseater could hail Devil flight,
their detection gear threw up another radar warning.

“Roland on us. Where’d that come from? Fuckers,
fuckers!” The navigator’s voice hit an octave so high Conrad thought his
helmet’s faceplate would break.

“ECMs,” Conrad said calmly, though of course the
instruction was unnecessary; his backseater was already trying to jam the enemy
trackers. The Roland— a German missile— was a nasty medium-range missile that
could detect aircraft at roughly ten miles and nail it around  four. The RWR
had it pegged straight ahead, five miles away, two miles north of Splash.

“Missiles in the air! Missiles!” yelped the nav.

Once launched, the Roland moved at roughly 1.5
times the speed of sound, somewhat slower than the Tornado was capable of. But
Conrad was in a poor position to outrun it; his best bet were the
countermeasures his beackseater was furiously working, along with the fact that
the Roland had been launched just beyond its lethal envelope.

He flooded the afterburners and pushed the Tornado
into a sharp jink. Newton’s Laws struck him with a vengeance, gravity smashing
every inch of his body. He flicked his wrist left, flicked right; the fly-by-wire
controls faithfully fought the turbulent shockwaves to fulfill his commands,
whipping the plane back and forth to accentuate the confusion.

“Lost one!” yelped the navigator, but the words
barely registered. Conrad could feel the second missile, gunning for him. It
had somehow managed to follow his twists and was now behind him, burning
through its second stage in an all-out effort to bring him down.

But if it was a race, Conrad was going to win. He
shut out the voices blaring in his headphones, shut out the blur of the sky,
the rumble of the jets, the hard rush of gravity against his chest and face.
His fingers were wrapped on the throttle, holding the Turbo-Unions at the
firewall.

It came down to him and the missile and the plane.
Sister Sadie wasn’t giving in, and neither was he.

Roland would be reaching the end of its range now.

A fresh rush of adrenaline hit Conrad’s veins. He
was going to make it; he had it.

This sure as fuck was fun.

“Come on you bleedin’ bugger,” he yelled at the
missile, laughing again. “Hit me, fucker. I dare you. I dare you.”

And then it did.

OVER IRAQ

28 JANUARY 1991

1755

Hack steadied his
hand on the stick. At
least three different transmissions overran each other on the radio. His RWR
blared, and he could see a furious geyser of anti-aircraft artillery rising in
the sky off his right wing.

He had the missiles beamed, riding away from their
Doppler radar in a way that made his airplane invisible to their seeker. In any
event, they didn’t seem to be looking for him.

It wasn’t clear from the cacophony in his headset
whether the Weasel had launched at the battery or not. Nor was he sure where
the Tornado was.

The SAM launcher seemed to be about eight miles to
the northwest of his position, which would put it about two, maybe three from
the target— damn close when they attacked, within its lethal range.

Depending on how well the Iraqis were trained, it
could take them a while to reload the double launcher.

Or not.

Hack looked for the Tornado. It had swept north
after its second recon run and should be coming back at him, overhead and to
the left.

An English voice broke through the radio static,
but Hack couldn’t decipher the words as another excited voice filled the
frequency, an F-16 pilot screaming that he was being targeted in another
encounter far from here. The voice burst loud, then cleared, as if it were a
figment of his imagination.

 “Splash One is zero-eight from Splashdown,” said
the pilot of the lead helicopter, apparently unaware of what had happened.
“Sister Sadie, what’s our sitrep?”

As if in answer, a large gray cloud blossomed in
the northwest sky. An orange dot pricked through the gray, then disappeared.

“I’m hit,” said the RAF pilot a few seconds later.
“Wing damage.”

“Splash One and Two, hold your positions,” ordered
Hack. “Sister Sadie, give your position.”

Preston heard only the hard pull of his own
breath. Hack glanced at his warning radar— clean. Nudging his stick gently to
the right, he rode the Hog in the direction of the Tornado.

And the Rolands.

“Sister Sadie, repeat.”

A garbled tangle of words answered him; Hack
deciphered “hit” but nothing else.

“I can see him,” said Doberman in Devil Three. He
gave a heading and then his own position— Glenon was at least three miles
further north than he should have been.

“Watch yourself,” answered Hack.

“I’m on you,” said Doberman, obviously in contact
with the RAF plane, though Hack couldn’t pick up the British pilot’s response.

“You’re hit bad,” said Doberman. “Bail.”

Hack tried hailing Sister Sadie on the Emergency
Guard frequency, but got no response.

“Missile away,” said a distant voice.

The Weasel, launching on the site.

“What are we doing?” asked A-Bomb. The last part
of his transmission was overrun by the F-16 flight again.

“I need radio silence here,” barked Hack. “Devil
Three, stay with him. Two, you’re on my back.”

Preston slid southward, trying to psych out where
exactly the Tornado pilot would go out. The assault team was behind him and on
his left; the Tornado, Doberman and his wingman ought to be crossing straight ahead.

“What’s going on?” asked Splash One.

“Hold your position,” Hack told him. “Repeat, all
Splash aircraft, hold your positions.”

And shut the hell up
, he wanted to add.

A brown and red stone shot into his windscreen, a
meteor tossed down from space. Hack jerked back reflexively before realizing it
was the Tornado, several miles off.

He’d never seen a plane on fire before. It didn’t
seem to be a plane at all. It didn’t seem real.

Doberman and his wingman were lower, much lower,
tracking southward behind the stricken plane.

What the hell had Doberman been doing so far
north?

“Bail out, Sister Sadie! Bail out!” Hack said,
pushing the mike button.

“Rolands are still hot. They’re gunning for you,
Doberman!” said A-Bomb over the squadron frequency.

“Fuck them,” said Doberman.

Hack’s RWR lit up, warning of a fresh salvo of
anti-aircraft missiles. Where the hell was that Weasel and his SAM killers?

OVER IRAQ

28 JANUARY 1991

1759

Doberman cursed as
a fresh wave of
turbulence buffeted his wings, shaking the Hog so hard, his head nearly hit the
canopy despite his snugged restraints.

The Iraqis had launched two more missiles; maybe
at the Tornado and maybe at him or his wingman.

“Chaff and go lower,” he told Gunny in Devil Four,
hoping his wingman had the good sense to take evasive maneuvers and not hang on
him as he continued to track the stricken RAF plane. “Sister Sadie, if you’re
getting out, now’s the time to go.”

The British pilot said something in return, but
static swallowed his words. The rear quarter of the plane was engulfed in
flames, and yet it flew on seemingly untroubled by the massive damage, picking
up speed as it flashed over Doberman.

“Don’t they have ejection seats in those fucking
planes!” Doberman shouted.

The red flames were replaced by a large, hairy
spider that grew in an instant and disappeared. Doberman cursed, then yanked
his plane hard to left, pushing out electronic tinsel in case the Rolands were
still behind him.

Which they were.

The Roland was designed as a medium-range
surface-to-air system, intended to work as part of a more comprehensive antiair
net, but nasty enough on its own. One of the things that made it particularly
difficult to defeat was its ability to track very-low-flying objects; once the
missile attached itself to your back, it could trail you even below fifty feet.

Glenon knew that, but hitting the deck was his
only defense— the missile was several times faster than the Hog, hard to fool
with tinsel, and couldn’t be defeated by the primitive ECM pod slung beneath
the A-10’s wing. Doberman and his wingman had only one thing going for them: They
were flying Hogs. They slashed across the terrain, throwing out electronic
tinsel as they cut, hoping the missile would grab for the electronic ghosts or
at least hesitate enough for the Hogs to get away.

Doberman pushed his nose into the dirt, braving
the buffeting wind as he ran less than thirty feet from the desert floor. And
he urged the missiles onto his back – no way could he live with himself if they
took out Gunny.

The warning gear snapped clear. Either he’d ducked
the missiles or they were about to crunch his tailfins.

Doberman pulled back on the stick, taking a half breath
as he twisted his head, searching for his wingman. A tree of smoke filled the
left quarter of his canopy— one of the Rolands had exploded on the ground. Glenon
jerked his attention to the other side, and spotted a dark green hulk running
off his right wing, almost behind him, flying so low he thought for a second it
was a truck.

“You okay, Four?”

“They tell me I am,” said his wingman. “Six is
clean. Rolands went off course and splashed in the grass.Weasel says he got
‘em, but I want pictures.”

“You’re starting to sound like A-Bomb.”

“Aw shucks. I’m blushing.”

“Three.” Doberman pushed the Hog’s nose up, trying
to puzzle out where he was.

“Devil Three, acknowledge,” said Preston, his
voice blurring into static as the rest of his transmission was lost.

“Three. Didn’t hear a word you said, Hack.”

“Are you okay?”

“We’re fine.” Doberman snapped his finger off the
transmit button. What did the fuckhead think? Just because he wasn’t flying a
fast-mover he couldn’t duck SAMs?

“Weasel reports Rolands are down. SA-2 is not
active. Watch the guns at Splashdown. What’s your position?”

Gunny’s excited voice snapped in before Doberman
could answer.

“Two chutes! Two chutes! I have two parachutes off
my nose, two miles maybe. Shit! Those bastards are luckier than a dog in a
whorehouse!”

IRAQ

28 JANUARY 1991

1759

Captain Conrad watched
as his navigator hit
the ground a good thirty seconds ahead of him, tucking his feet and falling
over into the sand. The wind took the nav’s parachute, pitching him along the
ground like a bag tossed in the street.

That was all the hint Conrad needed— he got his
legs moving as he touched down and worked the snaps off with his hands, hoping
to release the chute and step off like a pro. He undid one but not the other
and ended up dragged along as ignobly as his backseater. The wind was so strong
it finally yanked the chute away, leaving him to roll in the dirt for several
yards before his momentum finally gave out.

He stopped facedown, helmet in the dirt; he did a
pushup to his knees, then began laughing uncontrollably.

Damn sight for anyone to see, he thought. Good
thing his squadron mates hadn’t been along or he’d never hear the end of it.