Hogs #1: Going Deep (11 page)

AL JOUF FOB

SAUDI ARABIA

1314

Dixon couldn't find
the F-16 pilot, if he existed.
There were two F-16s at the base, one
of which had been
pushed
off the side of the runway and left for scrap metal. Neither pilot had been
anywhere near Tweedledum— or Taqaddum,
the actual name of the Iraqi installation. They didn't
know
anything about a
lake, but they had seen plenty of things on
fire.

Military intelligence at its finest, the lieutenant
thought as he returned to the intel Humvee.

Bauer didn't seem all that broken up about the lack of
information. He sent him to debrief a pair of French pilots
who had somehow wandered up to Al Jouf
in their Jaguars.

Unfortunately, Dixon didn't speak French. And though
the other pilots spoke English, it
rolled off their tongues
the
way a Mk 82 would fall down a flight of stairs at
Versailles.

Like the A-10, the aging Jaguar was primarily designed
to support front-line troops, but it
represented an entirely
different
philosophy, something more akin to the F-16's― get in and out as fast as
possible. And that was about the only element of their mission Dixon could
understand― the
two
pilots gestured freely as they described an attack on an
installation that for all the world
sounded like a circus tent. Even more of a mystery was how the pilots had
managed to get way the hell out here. They were based at Al Ahsa, back near
Riyadh. Dixon hadn't seen the entire ATO; the air order dictating the first
day's game plan ran hundreds of pages. He knew the Frenchies had started
out in the eastern part of the theater.

Every time he asked how they got here, the two pilots
began replaying what sounded like a
seriously awesome,
close-in
fur ball gun battle. Their desert-brown ships bore
no evidence of a gunfight, however,
and Dixon got a firm
“no” whenever he used the
word “damage.”

Eventually, the lieutenant decided he had as much
information as he was ever going to
get. He thanked the men,
who
now began to pepper him with questions about how in God's name they could get
home from here. Dixon nodded
cheerfully, answered “yes” as much as possible, then turned
and ran for Bauer.

At last he was getting the hang of this intelligence
stuff.

The major reinterpreted the pilots' pigeon English and
added a few notes to a thick stack of papers on the Humvee seat. Looking up,
Bauer pointed to an F-14 that had swung
its wings out wide to land and announced that it belonged
to
the Saratoga, a
carrier in the Red Sea; it had been part of a Navy package striking deep into
west Iraq and lost its
INS, among other
things.

“You want me to go debrief him?” Dixon asked.

“Nah. I'll get that one myself. Got a cousin on the
ship I want to say hi to. Listen, the
parts you were waiting
for
landed about ten minutes ago. Ought to be at the repair area by now. Why don't
you go make sure they get to the right place? Thanks for helping. If you're
ever looking for a
job in intelligence, come
see me.”

***

The Hog had been moved several times in the past few
hours, and was at the far end of the maintenance areas. A tubular steel ladder
had been erected
around
part of the wing and fuselage, and a small figure was atop it, busily tossing
pieces of the plane to the ground.
As Dixon got closer, he realized a succession of curses was
accompanying the work. He also
realized something else; the tech sergeant working on the plane was a woman.

Though he recognized her from his unit, Dixon didn't
know Becky Rosen; in fact, he didn't
know most of the maintenance people besides his own crew chief and one or two
of the men who habitually worked on
his plane. He'd heard a
few
things about her though, none of them pleasant. Short, built like a mud
wrestler, she had cat eyes and round,
freckled
cheeks.

She turned around and saw him staring at her from the
ground. “Dixon, right? What the hell
did you do to this Hog?
Drive it through a
wheat thresher?”

“I didn't do anything to it,” he said, taken by
surprise. “Captain Glenon was flying.”

“Doberman, huh? I thought he knew better than this.
Fuck, did he think we were bored or
something?”

“Maybe,” said the lieutenant, not really knowing what
else to say.

She scowled. “What the hell happened to yours?”

“My plane? Nothing.”

“Well where is it? Did you walk back from Iraq?”

Dixon felt his entire body begin to burn. His temporary
assignment as non-intelligence
officer had taken his mind off his failure, but now the guilt shot back in a
heavy
dose.

But damn it; when did a tech sergeant earn the right
to grill an officer?

“Major Johnson bumped me,” he said stiffly.

“Oh.” She looked at him a moment, then turned back to
the plane.

There was something in the look that pissed him off
even more than her tart tone.

Pity?

He didn't need that from a stinking technician.

“Say Lieutenant, you think you could hand me up that
TACAN aerial cover?”

“What?”

“The big flat doohicky thing by your feet. The radio
antenna? The fin?”

“I know what it is.” Dixon was so flustered with anger
he couldn't say
anything
else. He reached over and picked up the thick blade.
Rosen had returned to work on the
Hog, and so he had to
climb up onto the wing
to hand it to her.

“Thanks. Looks like the IFF is fine, but these wires
here are toast. You all right,
Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“Get shot at?”

“I guess so.”

He tried to make his voice sound hard, but Rosen
laughed as if he were joking. “Hand
me the screwdriver out
of the bag over there, okay?”

“What, you think I'm your gofer?”

“No, sir, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “But I was under
the impression that you wanted to get
this airplane back in
the
air as soon as possible, and helping me out a little
will expedite matters.”

“Expedite. Where'd you learn that word?”

“I have a masters degree in English lit,” she said,
holding out her hand for the tool.

Dixon couldn't tell if she was serious. He reached into
the large bag Rosen used as a tool
carrier and handed her the screwdriver. He noticed that the bag, though covered
with grease and dirt, was made of leather.

“
My dad gave it to me. Sentimental value,” she said.

“The degree?”

“No, the bag, wise guy. I earned the degree myself.
Romance poetry.” She took the tool
and went back to work connecting the fin. Dixon couldn't see what she was doing
beneath the access cover
and fin, but there were loose parts
everywhere.
“What was it like?”

“What?”

“Jesus! Bombing Saddam,” she said. “Did you hit your
target?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?” Rosen turned so quickly her face almost
smacked his. “No offense, Lieutenant,
but we're busting our butts back here for you guys, and a straight answer
wouldn't
hurt now and then.”

Dixon stepped back. “What's up your
ass?”

Rosen turned around to him. “Lieutenant?”

“Why are you riding me?”

“I'm not.” Her eyes were all innocence. “I'm not. Come
on, help me get these wires in here.
Don't mind the sheet
metal.
I had to bend things a little. We'll straighten that
out later. Not by the book, but you
want to fly before
tonight, right?”

She didn't mean anything, Dixon thought to himself.
She's just blunt.

“Watch your hands. That end's sharp. Twenty-seven
millimeter went right through here,
see? Doberman was
flying?”

“Yeah.”

“He's one lucky son of a bitch, I'll tell you that. She
slapped the side of the plane like she was smacking a
favorite horse. “Of course, a Hog can
take a lot of shit. But what I'd like to know is how he managed to take
triple-A
on the top of
the plane. I can understand the holes in the
belly
and the back, but this?”

“Probably he had the Hog on its side, rolling out of the
attack,” said Dixon. He motioned with his hands. “The
shells would have gotten him like
this. There was a lot of
triple-A.”

“I thought you guys were supposed to stay above the
flak.”

“We were. But the cloud cover was kind of high. Have to
see where we're bombing. And you know. . .”

“Anything over five hundred feet you want oxygen, right?
That Hog macho anti-snob snobbery shit.” She slammed
an access panel closed, then scooped
up her tools and slid down the ladder to the ground, half-running to work on
another part of the jet. Dixon, still unsure what the hell
to make of her, followed tentatively.

“By three. Four the latest,” she said.

“Huh?”

“It's going to take me a little while to finish. I want
to make sure it will work the whole way hom
e. The rest of this we can tidy up back at the
aerodrome. The crew here did a kick ass job. Looks like they stamped you out a
new rear end. Honest. You'll be
taking off for King Fahd in no time.”

“Great.”

“You sound disappointed. You looking to go back north?”

“Yeah,” he said, his anger stoking up again.

“You're not scared?”

Scared?

She wasn't busting his chops. It was a real question.

“Yeah,” admitted Dixon. “I was petrified.”

Her eyes softened. They were pretty eyes, actually,
when they looked at you like this.

“Takes balls to admit it,” she said, snapping her game
face back on. “Don't worry, you'll get another shot. Say listen, Lieutenant,
you think you can go steal a really big
hammer off that crew over there? A really big one. I have
to
do some serious
banging if we're going to get you back to
Fahd in time for dinner. And don't tell them what it's
for.
Somebody comes over
here with a manual and we're going to
bed
without supper for three weeks.”

OVER SAUDI ARABIA

1504

The first refuel
was a piece of cake.

It was on the second that Doberman lost control of the
plane.

They grabbed a tanker and top priority about three
seconds after crossing the Iraqi
border. Doberman had a good
feel for the plane by then; the damaged Hog didn't have the
most desirable flying characteristics,
but he could hold her
reasonably
steady at five thousand feet. The tanker, though,
ordinarily did its business much
higher than that. Apprised of the situation, the KC-135 pilot slid down to
about ten
thousand feet;
Doberman coaxed the Hog toward her gently. Even under the best conditions with
two engines, it took the
underpowered
plane an eternity to climb; now it seemed like he was climbing Mount Everest.

The director lights beneath the tanker normally provided
a reference for approaching planes. This morning they seemed only to throw him
off, juggling back and forth as he eased in. Finally, Doberman got close enough
for the boom operator in the back
of the tanker to hook his spike into the receptacle. The Hog
snorted with pleasure as it sucked up
the fuel.

That was the first time. Swinging southeast toward King
Fahd, they had to be vectored out the
path of a large
package
of bombers headed north. Doberman's right hand started shaking uncontrollably
as he brought the plane to the proper course heading. At first it was just a
twitch in his thumb, and he laughed at it– compared to
the immense knot in his back, this
torture was amusing.

But as it spread from his thumb to his other fingers,
he stopped thinking it was funny. He
grabbed the stick with his left hand and shook his right in the air before him,
as
if he could shoo the
problem away. When that didn't work, he
tried stretching his hand out against the top of the
instrument panel. Finally, he yelled
at it to stop.

It stopped.

"Doberman, you okay in there?" A-Bomb asked. A-Bomb
had
slid behind him; Mongoose was in the lead.

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Doberman.

"You know you're down to three angels."

The pilot looked at the altimeter in shock.
"Yeah," he
said.
"I know. I was just looking for a good draw. I got an
ace in my hand."

"Huh? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm bringing it back up." Doberman put his
right hand back
on the
stick, holding the control with both hands for a few
seconds, not sure he could trust it.

"How are you on fuel?"

"Fine," he barked.

"Just asking."

Mongoose called in with the time to tanker and the
frequency, then double-checked the
course headings with both
pilots.

Doberman barely acknowledged. There was so much shit to
do, so much blank sky to fly through.

Luckiest dead man, huh? What the hell were the odds of
getting all shot to hell twice in one day?

Worse than pulling a full house on a four-card draw.
Worse than hitting an inside straight.

Never in his life had he done that.

Nah, he must have. All the years he'd played cards,
since his uncle JR taught him at age
seven, and he hadn't
gotten one?

Didn't remember if he did. Shit, it was just that he
never tried to do it. A sucker's move.

Good ol' JR. Taught him how to play poker, taught him
how to smoke cigars, taught him just
about everything
important.

Ought to call him.

Jesus, that would be a good trick, Doberman realized.
JR died two years ago.

Hell of a thing to forget. Son of a bitch got crunched
so bad in a car accident they had to
close the coffin.

"Doberman, you awake back there? The tanker is
trying
to reach you on their frequency."

The pilot gave the com panel a dirty look, as if it
were responsible for JR's death.

"They're at twenty-four thousand feet," said
Mongoose.
"You're two cars back."

At 24,000 feet? No way he was getting that high.
Hell, even a perfect Hog didn't like
being that far off the
ground.

"Devil Four?"

"Yeah, I'm switching to their frequency now,"
Doberman
snapped. "I
need them to come down. Way down."

The tanker was a KC-IOA Extender, a military version of
the three-engine McDonnell Douglas
DC-10 adapted to a tanker role. Taking the boom from the jet was similar to
grabbing a line from the older KC-135, and in fact Doberman
had flown his Hog into the Gulf
following a KC-IOA. He could
suck up to one blind, and had come close to doing so on
several night flights.

But no way he was getting to 24,000 feet,
not in this lifetime. He was at six thousand,
and struggling
as it was.

How high can you fly with a hole in your wing?

The tanker pilot brought the plane to about seven
thousand feet and threw his landing gear out to help slow
himself down. Doberman huffed and
puffed against the wind to
hold
the Hog relatively steady as he closed in. Everything was taking so damn long
but at least the A-10 was flying
perfectly;
slow and perfect.

Then as the pilot pushed the Hog the last few feet
toward the long pipe extending from
the plane's rear end, he felt his head starting to spin. His eyes seemed to
slip back
behind their
sockets and down into his cheeks. When he got them back in place, he thought he
was coming too close too
fast
and backed off the throttle; the next thing he knew, he
was heading downward in a spin.

***

A-Bomb, riding off Doberman's starboard wing, saw the
Hog tilting to the left. Before he
could key the mike to say anything, Doberman's plane had rolled toward the
earth.

He tucked his wing and started to follow. There was no fresh
sign of damage to the Hog, and the wing remained
intact despite the stress of the dive. In fact, if
A-Bomb
didn't know there
was a hole in it, he would have sworn
there was nothing wrong with the A-lOA that was
plummeting
toward the
earth at several hundred miles an hour.

Doberman didn't answer his hail. A-Bomb tried choking
back the metallic taste that crept
into the corners of his
mouth, but it kept
coming.

***

Lines and circles. You could divide the world into lines
and circles. Everything could be measured. In the physical world, at least.
Measuring changed it.
Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle, right? But it could
always
be counted off somehow.

Counting off. Ten, nine, eight. . .

Doberman's eyes found the altimeter clock as he pleaded
with the stick to right the aircraft.
He had a bum wing, but he could do it.
He
^’
d been a check pilot, putting newly
overhauled Hogs
through
their paces. This was a piece of cake.

Unlucky or not, he could do it.

His mind was flooded with images that rolled and
pitched much faster than the injured
Hog. He was dizzy as
hell,
and the shake had returned, only it was hitting his
chest. He reached for the throttle,
discovering with a start
that his hand was
already on it.

What the fuck is going on with my brain!

Yo! Snap the hell out of
it!

Something in his head hiccupped as the Hog fell from his
hands. Now he felt a
numb pain in his chest.

Maybe the damage this morning was
supposed to take him out. Maybe
somebody, somewhere was
fixing the ledger.
Luckiest dead man, my ass.

JR was there, giving him advice. "Fold when you see
the
other guy's eyes twinkle."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Why'd you teach a little kid how to play poker for?

Because you're too young to parachute.

JR took him up in Cessna for his thirteenth birthday,
got him hooked on flying.

For his fourteenth birthday, JR got him a parachute
ride, the damn coolest thing that had
ever happened to him
in his life.

Too cool to tell his mom, though, until after he landed
intact.

Jump, JR was telling him. Just jump. Everything else is
automatic.

***

A-Bomb watched as Doberman's starboard wing began to
edge upwards; the plane was heading
into a spin.

"Eject!" he yelled over the radio.
"Doberman eject! Get
the fuck out of that
plane!"

***

Doberman felt it getting further and further away from
him. He couldn't get the nose pointed
back upwards, and now
the wing was sliding out
from under him.

The airbrakes weren't working. The right aileron had
been
hit, and probably
the inside ones were screwed up.

There was a simple formula in his head for fixing all
of this. It was just a matter of
finding it in the clutter.

Call with two pair. Fold on anything
less
.

A-Bomb was yelling at him, but Doberman couldn't hear
what he was saying.

He could hear his uncle, though. He was telling him to
jump from the Cessna. Jump; everything
else is automatic.

No, that was the problem; he was so tired he was trying
to fly on instincts and the Hog didn't
like that, not with a
frazzled wing.

He wasn't compensating right. He was pretending he was
just out of the maintenance shop.
Straighten up and fly right, he told
himself.

The refrain danced in his brain. JR used to hum that
song. Meant he had a good hand. Gave
himself away. Made it
easy to beat him.

The Hog snorted as Doberman's hands finally took hold
of its sides. The metallic animal
sniffed at the air, unsure where the hell it was. A small piece from its wing,
part of
the aileron,
damaged by debris when the missile hit, flew backwards like a Frisbee. Then the
craft straightened
herself out.

Doberman leveled out at one thousand feet, heart
pumping, feet shaking, but head clear.

"Man,
you got a one-track mind with this ejection
thing," he told A-Bomb. "I don't feel like
jumping today. Maybe tomorrow.