Hogs #1: Going Deep (22 page)

OVER IRAQ

0553

As Doberman pushed
toward the top of the cloud cover,
he felt something in his eyes
tighten. He took a quick breath
and glanced at the Maverick television screen over his right knee. Until
the guns started firing, he couldn’t be quite sure of his target. His fingers
felt as if they were on fire.

There was
plenty of
time for
this. Still, he wanted it to start already.

***

Done with waiting, A-Bomb lined himself up off
Doberman's wing and went for it. He had one eye on the
screen, one eye on the HUD, and one
eye on his stinking CD cartridge, which had managed to leap out of his flight-suit
stereo as he took the Gs
pitching toward the target.

The cartridge smashed into at least three pieces. And
he just knew the CDs were going to be
trashed by the time he
got home.

Son of a bitch. That was his only copy of "Darkness
at
the Edge of Town."

Fucking Saddam. Now he was really mad.

***

The Maverick targeting screen suddenly lit up like a
video game.

“Hot shit!” Doberman said– or thought he said. He was so
busy guiding his hands that he couldn’t pay attention to his mouth. Nearly
instantaneously, two Mavericks shot out from his wings, gunning for the two gun
emplacements further south. In nearly the same motion, he pushed his right wing
down and started looking for the radar dish he’d missed yesterday morning.

***

A-Bomb had to wait until Doberman fired and cleared his
path before he could launch his own Mavericks. It seemed to take his flight
leader all day. Finally, the second missile kicked off Doberman’s plane, bucking
like a wild bronco before putting its nose down and getting to work. Doberman
cranked right, clearing his path. A-Bomb had already locked on a target; he
squeezed off the Maverick and dialed up a second, pushing the crosshairs fat
into the last of the truly dangerous big caliber guns they had targeted.

“Nothing like a high-explosive enema to start your day,
eh, boys?” he shouted as the missile winged toward the ground.

***

Doberman scanned the ground through the windscreen
.

Nothing. Was that because he was confused about where
he was, or because the dish didn't exist?

The Hog was screaming toward the earth. Sitting in his
office, Doberman worked his head
around the problem,
checking
the front corner of his screen for a large concrete
building they'd picked as a good
landmark. Sure enough, that
was missing, too. He realized his mistake– he’d flown further north
than he thought— then slammed the Hog
nearly upside down in a twist back in the other
direction,
gravity
sharpening its claws as he accelerated in a violent
plunge.

Suddenly, the RWR screeched. The Iraqi operator had
snapped on the dish to see what was
coming for them.

And damn if that big, ugly catcher's mitt didn't smile
for Poppa, front and center in the
Maverick's TV screen. The
phosphorus
glow warmed his belly as Doberman got a lock and
slammed the missile out. He let off another for
good luck,
then took the
stick hard left for his second priority
target.

He'd been so focused on finding the dish in the small
television screen that he hadn't quite
been aware how low he was. The pilot reacted with shock as the rapidly
approaching
earth caught
his full attention. Two thousand feet lay between him and the roof of the
building he was auguring
toward.

***

A-Bomb lost Doberman through the clouds. He was at ten
thousand feet, just barely in range of any of the heavy stuff the Iraqis had
lefts, but they could have fired bulldozers at him at this point and A-Bomb
wouldn’t have noticed.
He
put the A-10A on its wing, winced as a piece of a CD flew by him, then got a
lock on his prime target, one of the trailers housing the GCI equipment. He
fired; as the missile left the plane,
he realized there was
only
half a trailer there. No matter; he was already lined up perfectly on the
microwave transmitter, and that sucker
was
intact.

Not for long.

OVER IRAQ

0555

The powerful sensors
in the Pave Low caught the Iraqi
ground intercept radar as it snapped on.

Captain Hawkins glanced back at his squad members, then
up toward the cockpit. Concerned, he
looked at his watch for
the
thousandth time in the last five minutes. His eyes
followed the second hand as it crept
across the dark face.
He
hated digital watches, even if they were considerably more accurate and
disposable. Digital watches didn't bring
you luck, though at the moment he didn't need luck, he
needed the damn Hog drivers to do
their job, wherever they
were.

He glanced over at Sergeant Winston. He was wearing a
headset, with one hand on his gun.

"Sun's coming up," muttered Winston.

Hawkins nodded. His eyes remained pasted on his watch.

"Think the radar means they're hitting it?"
Winston
asked.

Hawkins shrugged.

"Can't afford to wait much longer," said
Winston.
"Sooner or
later, someone's going to find our British
friend."

“How’s our Sandy doing?” Hawkins asked. “Sandy” was an
A-10A assigned to maintain contract with the downed flier and chase away any
bad guys on the ground.

“Still hanging in there. Gas is getting tight, though,”
said Winston.

“As soon as our boys take out the radar site, send him
home,” said Hawkins. “I don’t want to have to pick him up too.”

“Yes, sir.”

If he needed it, Hawkins could get a flight of Eagles
for CAP and a pair of Spectre
gunships up in about ten
minutes.
The Eagles would take care of enemy fighters. The
Spectres were specially designed
Hercules C-130s equipped with cannons; they could eliminate a battalion of
ground
troops in three
minutes flat. But they weren't supposed to come north if the dish was still
operating.

"He hasn't come up on the radio yet, has he?"
the
captain asked. The
last thing he wanted to do was disobey
orders for someone who'd already been captured.

"He's not supposed to for another five minutes.
Sandy last talked to him an hour ago
," said the
sergeant. “Said he
felt chipper, whatever that means.”

"All hell's breaking loose at that GCI site,"
the
chopper pilot called
back.
He continued
talking over the crew
^’
s com set as Winston
jumped up to find out what was going
on. The quiet but tense
boredom
was replaced by a cacophony of voices, everyone
talking at once.

"Three, four aircraft. Hogs— northeast,"
reported one
of the crew
members, relaying the radar information.

"Right on schedule," shouted Winston.
"Hot damn! Radar
is fried! AWACS says
go."

"Go, go, go," Hawkins yelled.

"AWACS is reporting contact to our northwest, too
low
for a clear read."

"Ignore it. Go!"

OVER IRAQ

0555

They were like
sleigh bells now, shaking in a steady, rhythmic beat. Dixon was entranced by
the beauty of the sound, as if he were listening to some heavenly concert.

He wondered where the
sound was coming from. His eyes flew over the control panels, but could find no
indication of a problem. The airplane vibrated steadily around him in a
reassuring hum.

So what the hell was it?
Some angel whispering in his ear? An undocumented G effect?

He glanced at his oxygen
hose. It seemed unobstructed.

And still the bells rang,
growing louder now, slightly more urgent, yet losing none of their beauty.

The nose of the A-10A
broke through the last tuft of clouds into the clear air at approximately 5500
feet. Only then did Lieutenant Dixon realize what he was hearing.

Shells were exploding all
around him.

The concert turned into a
sinister screech. The Hog’s grunts were drowned out by the reverberation of
proximity fuses and high explosives. The pilot could see a gun emplacement
directly below, centered precisely in his screen. He watched as a black puff
erupted from it, and then saw the shell rise, coming for him like a messenger
from Hell itself. It grew larger as it neared him, so large that it seemed
bigger than the airplane. Suddenly it opened its mouth, and its jaws exploded
in a profusion of red and yellow, petals of a spring poppy bursting in the warm
sun.

In the next millisecond,
Dixon snapped out of his daze. Time began moving at its proper pace as his body
reconnected to his brain. He pulled the stick and pumped the rudder pedals,
jerking the Hog away from the gunfire, recovering from the dive in time to skim
away from the antiaircraft shells. Here was a real G effect— he could feel the
bladders in his suit erupting as the plane came around to his eyes, its forked
tail bending to his will, the two turbofans pushing themselves to keep up with
the pilot’s hands. Dixon jerked to the left, kept accelerating. He nailed his eyes
to the horizon bar, making sure he was upright as he ran south as planned, away
from the guns.

Mission accomplished— at
least the most critical part of it.

He took a breath and made
sure he had a good memory of it— coming through the clouds in ultra-slow
motion, the light sound of bells, breaking the clouds, realizing it was flak.
What part was hallucination and what part was real, he couldn’t say, but he
remembered it all.

He hadn’t chickened out.

Where was Mongoose? He
did a quick scan and couldn’t find the other silhouette. He could feel the
first twinge of panic starting in his throat— he’d lost his leader again.

But no— Mongoose had been
behind him. He’d called him off. By now he ought to be somewhere ahead, to the
south, as planned.

The dark green shadow of
an A-10A Warthog appeared in the upper left quadrant of his windscreen. Its
forked tail was like something you’d see at a barbecue, not on an airplane; the
round power plants glopped onto the fuselage seemed to have been stolen from a
707.

Dixon had never seen
anything so damned beautiful in his life.

“Hey, kid. I thought I
lost you there for a second,” said Mongoose, his transmission fuzzed with
static. “We’re a little closer than we planned. Hang loose until Doberman gives
us the word.”

“Gotcha.”

“You got your Mavericks
ready?”

“Copy, uh, affirmative.
Yeah.”

“Easy. You’re looking
good.”

Dixon’s radio lost half
the transmission. He pounded the com panel, but that only made the answering
static worse.

“Okay, the big guns are
gone and the dish is out,” said Mongoose. “There’s a ZSU-23 off your right
wing. You see it winking at you?”

“Got it,” said Dixon,
already lining up the Maverick shot.

“All yours. Stay in the
orbit after you fire.”

Dixon pushed his lungs
slowly empty, then fired the Maverick. It was easy now, easier than in
training— Mongoose was floating off his left wing, lining up and firing on his
own target. They planned to hold one Maverick back apiece, just in case
Doberman and A-Bomb missed the radar dishes.

“How’d you do back there?”
said Mongoose as the two planes swung back around to take a look at the damage.

“Okay.”

“Hot shit! Look at the
ground.”

Dixon stared through the
canopy. The Mavericks had hit, all right. There was smoke all over the place.

And no more winking. Or
flak.

The pilot followed the
flight leader into a wide, orbiting turn to the east, still climbing. He
checked the fuel stores — a good ten minutes of loitering time left at least.

How’d he do back there?

Not horribly. Pretty good
actually.

But he wondered about the
bell thing. Some sort of weird trick with his mind, or maybe the radio?

Mongoose said something,
but it was completely lost in static.

“I’m losing your
transmission,” he told the major.

There was no response. He
saw Mongoose tucking back toward the GCI site, and pushed his Hog to follow.

OVER IRAQ

0555

Doberman screamed a
pair of curses, one at himself, the other at Saddam, as he pulled the stick back
with every ounce of strength in his body. The Hog coughed before finally agreeing
to change direction, her nose nudging away from the yellow-gray splotch of
earth very reluctantly. Sky edged into the top of Doberman’s windshield as the
HUD ladder told him he was at five hundred feet.

He eased off on the
stick, back in control of his muscles as well as the plane. All hell was
exploding around him as he struggled to orient himself. A fresh string of
curses tumbled from his mouth when, for a quick second, he thought the engines
had stalled because of the sharp pullback. Realizing they were still cooking—
his fatigue was playing tricks on him— he began to bank toward his right, which
ought to be north and therefore out of most of the heavy triple-A.

I did this yesterday, he
thought to himself. I can do it again. I got the lucky penny.

The Hog began bucking as
a sold wall of flak appeared right in front of him. Doberman jinked back to his
left, unsure now what to do next. He was surrounded by bursts.

He asked himself which
way he should go? Left? Right? Forwards? Back? The possibilities froze him.

Maybe it was luck, going
one way or the other.

Good luck? Or bad luck?

Damn it to hell, he told
himself. Luck had nothing to do with it.

He decided left, but as
he began to pull the plane in that direction, he saw that his maneuvering had put
his nose nearly head-on with a trailer.

“Here’s some good luck
for you, Saddam!” he screamed, bringing his cannon to bear. The trailer
disintegrated in a haze of smoke that seemed to magically part as he flew into
a patch of sky completely clear of flak. He brought the Hog around quickly and
served up another Maverick to the dish he had hit the day before.

***

By the time Doberman called
the shot on the infamous first dish, A-Bomb had seen the explosion. He was at
eight thousand feet and hadn’t seen any flak yet. Suddenly, Tower Two and its
Tonka Toy-like trailer appeared smack in the middle of the Maverick targeting
tube.

Tower Two was supposed to
be Doberman’s— and even for him it was a low-priority, secondary,
hit-it-if-you-got-it, left-at-the-end-of-the-war,
what-the-hell-we’re-going-home-anyway shot. But this was way too good to miss. A-Bomb
pressed the trigger to kick out the Maverick.

The exact second the
Maverick fell off his wing, the damned tower went boom.

“Damn it, Dog Man,” A-Bomb
yelled, dipping his wing back to look over the remains of the CGI site. “You’re
taking all my shots.”

“Stop screwing around
then.”

There was a pile of
rubble where the hidden dish had been. The one Doberman had gotten yesterday,
further south, was now twice-fried meal. Running out of real estate— and
feeling more than a little frustrated— A-Bomb pushed off his last Maverick at a
trailer and began climbing back into the clouds to get into position for a
cannon run. Doberman was already overhead, reorienting himself for a fresh
attack.

“What do we have left
down there?” he asked the element leader.

“There ought to be a
couple of trailers back near that second dish,” said Doberman.

“Negative,” said A-Bomb.
“They’re crispy critters. I just passed that way.”

“Uh, copy, uh, how about
that microwave transmitter out near two?”

“You got it and I got it.
That’s two gots.”

“The bunker then. How’s
the flak?”

“They still have some
peashooters, but nothing too serious that I saw.”

“Follow me in.”

A-Bomb had only a vague
notion of where the target was, but how hard could it be to find a bunker?
Besides, Doberman had a sixth sense about these things. A-Bomb followed him
around, dipping his wing into the plunge.

The busted CD cartridge
slid across the floor as he poked the A-10A back toward the target. Doberman
screamed something along the lines of “got it,” only with a lot more curses.
A-Bomb followed into a thunder-burst of flak, the plane bucking like an
out-of-balance washing machine. Doberman was gone and the bunker had disappeared
in a cloud of cement dust.

Shifting slightly to the
south for a fresh target, A-Bomb found a huge gun battery almost smack dab in
the middle of his HUD aiming cue. He started to pull the Hog onto it, but
miscalculated somehow; it slipped out of the crosshair and then fell totally
out of view. There wasn’t time to screw around— flak was flying all around him.
A-Bomb pulled left, found a truck in his screen, and pushed the trigger. The
two-second burst hit. As he continued through his banking turn he saw another
gun emplacement, and fired, but missed badly. There was so much antiair now, he
looked like he was dodging through a snowstorm.

The Hog was in exactly
the kind of environment it had been designed for— hot and dirty. The pilot
hulked down in his seat, cradled by the plane’s titanium plates, and wheeled
toward a row of antiair guns on tank-type chassis. He was so low now that had
he hopped out of the plane, he could have hit the ground and bounced over the
cockpit.

“Turkey shoot!” A-Bomb
shouted. The airplane’s Gatling exploded with so much energy he felt the Hog
move backwards in the air. His first two shells missed low, but the rest drew a
thick line through the guns, metal evaporating as the pilot worked his rudder
to literally dance sideways through the sky, erasing the Russian-made weapons
in one violent smear. Barrels, turrets, trucks erupted as he whipped by.

“You do not shoot at
Hogs, no sir,” A-Bomb told them, pulling that A-10A into a bank to come back
for anything he’d missed. As he turned, the Springsteen CD tumbled from behind
his seat, cracking into pieces as it flew through the cockpit.

I really ought to make
those bastards pay for that, he thought to himself. But there didn’t appear to
be anything left to hit. Most of the ground fire had stopped, and the radar
intercept complex was now a former radar intercept complex, with emphasis on
the “former.”

Damn, A-Bomb thought. I
was just getting going.

Out of the corner of his
eye, as he turned, he saw a small building with a gun emplacement on its roof
just to the south. The glimpse was so fleeting, he couldn’t tell exactly what
it was, but he knew he hadn’t hit it before.

What the fuck, the pilot
said to himself as he pushed the Hog’s nose back. I still have bullets.

This one’s for the Boss.

***

Doberman, back on top of
the clouds, took stock of his airplane as he looked for his wingman. As far as
he could tell, the plane was running Dash-1, exactly according to spec. He
practically bumped his helmet on the canopy glass craning back to make sure his
wings and fuselage were still there.

The attack had taken a
bit longer than they’d planned, but they’d taken out everything they’d come for
and more. The problem now was getting home— or rather, to the tanker that would
give them enough fuel to make it home.

“Devil One, we’re done,”
he told Mongoose. “Dishes are down, we’ve blown up every trailer we could find,
and I think A-Bomb got a hot-dog wagon on the last run. Time to go home now.
Copy”

He scanned the sky as he
waited for an answer, still looking for the black shadow of A-Bomb’s Warthog.
But his wingman was still somewhere below the ever-thickening clouds.

“Devil One, do you copy?”
he asked Mongoose, wondering where the flight leader was.

“Affirmative. Saddle up.
We’ll meet you at BakerCharles after the refuel.”

“Gotcha,” snapped
Doberman. He put his eyes out of the plane again, craning his neck for a sign
of A-Bomb. “Devil Three, this is Two. We are out of time. A-Bomb, what you
doin’, boy?”

***

The thing was, the
ZSU-23-4 was a very good gun. While its radar could be distracted, even by eye
the cannon threw serious lead at you. The stripped-down version had done in
quite a number of pilots, dating back to Vietnam. You had to five it to the
gun’s Russian manufacturers— once they got something right, it stayed right.

A bit of A-Bomb’s
bravado, though not his courage, began leaking away as the shells whipped past.
He realized that the Iraqi gunner was shooting high, and that this particular
set of buzzing bees were probably not going to strike him. But he guessed
smaller-caliber weapons nearby would be firing any second now, and given the
general hail of bullets, one of two had no choice but to hit his plane.
Titanium hull or not, the Warthog was not invincible.

Still you couldn’t, on general
principals, break off an attack this easily. An American taxpayer back home in
Duluth had just written his congressman asking for some bang for the buck. It
was A-Bomb’s job to deliver.

The building jumped into
his gun sight. Square and squat, the cement structure was just the sort of
thing that could be used as a command and control center.

Or an outhouse.

A-Bomb pushed the magic
button. The GAU barrels rattled around, spitting 1.6-pound shells of spent
uranium— augmented by the occasional round of high explosive— from the plane’s
nose. The ground in front of his target opened: a trench seemed to consume the
building and its gun. It was as if the Devil had decided to reach up and pull
it down to Hell where it belonged.

Springsteen properly
avenged, A-Bomb decided discretion was the better part of valor— or however the
saying went— and kicked butt in the opposite direction.

“Lost airman, A-Bomb,”
Doberman was saying on the radio. “Yo— acknowledge me, asshole. Where the fuck
are you?”

“Who you calling lost?”

“What the hell are you
firing at down there?”

“A cement outhouse.”

“Yo, we’re bingo.”

“Damn, and I just bought
this card. How come I never win?”

Winging southeast of the
site, out of range of the antiair weapons, A-Bomb pointed the Hog’s nose upwards.
He found Doberman skimming the cloud ceiling, heading back in his direction.

“Are you out of your
mind?” Doberman yapped, twisting his Hog due south for the tanker?

“You have to ask?”

“Didn’t you hear me
calling you? Why the hell didn’t you acknowledge?”

“I just did.”

“We should be halfway to
the refuel by now. Sometimes I think all that candy goes to your brain.”

“Man, you are a boring
date.”

Starting to feel the
fatigue of the mission and the long day before, A-Bomb dug into his vest for a
Three Musketeers Bar. The A-10A accelerated as it hunted for its companion’s
wing and the route back to the tanker.