Hogs #1: Going Deep (23 page)

Over Iraq

0605

The clouds suddenly
broke. Mongoose turned and looked through the canopy, out across the clear sky
toward Dixon’s plane. The second Hog was still climbing to take its position on
his wing, its black-green body none the worse for its dash at the ground
cannons.

From what Doberman had
just told him, there was nothing left to fire the Mavericks at. Mongoose
decided to hold them back, either for targets of opportunity on the way home or
for a future mission. It was time to go home.

The kid had done okay, no
doubt about it. Mongoose told himself he’d overreacted yesterday: he owed the
kid one. HE keyed the mike and gave Dixon an ataboy.

“Repeat, Devil One,
you’re scratchy,” answered Dixon over the Fox Mike radio.

“Good work,” he repeated.
“Now get up front and dial us a course for that tanker.”

Mongoose eased the
Warthog toward the south, waiting for the younger pilot to overtake him. He
couldn’t help but glance at the INS, which was still stuck back in Saudi Arabia
somewhere.

How hard could it be, he
wondered, to stick a state-of-the-art geo-positioner in the plane? More to the
point, how much could it possibly cost? Bureaucrats and congressmen were
screwing with defense appropriations and contract bids and all that crap while
people’s butts were on the line.

But then, the Warthog had
always been the Air Force’s forgotten stepchild. Low, slow, and ugly, the A-10A
Thunderbolt II was supposed to be a limited plane with a limited mission, a
throwback unsuited to modern warfare.

This group of Hogs— and
the hundred or so that had flown during Desert Storm’s first hours— had proved
that was all bullshit. The naysayers were wronger than wrong.

Check That. They were
right about one thing. The A-10A Thunderbolt II was a kind of a throwback, a
blue-collar tough guy with an old-fashioned work ethic who could get all hell
pounded out of him and still come at you. Maybe the Thunderbolt moniker the
brass had stuck it with— a nickname no one used— was right after all. The P-47
Thunderbolt was a kick-your-butt fighter in World War II, a hell of a
ground-attack machine.

But maybe the B-17 was a
better parallel. Now there was a plane that could get sawed in half and still
make it back to the airfield. The comparison seemed sill until you considered
that a Hog could carry twice the bomb load as the World War II bomber. The
Flying Fortress was damned ugly too. But ugly pretty.

Like the Hog.

Mongoose checked over his
instruments, looked carefully at the artificial horizon in front of him, and
made sure his furel was okay. They had a very good margin for error to the
tanker, at least ten more minutes than he’d planned.

Dixon gave his wings a
gentle wag as he set his course. At least, Mongoose assumed he did that on
purpose; because of the Hog’s trim controls, you never could be sure. The old
joke was that if you took you hand off the stick when you were under fire, the
plane would jink and jive for you.

“I got your wing,”
Mongoose told him. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

***

Dixon exhaled loudly. His
heartbeat was back to normal, his adrenaline already drained. His body felt as
if it were covered with cement. A hundred different muscles ached, and his
eyeballs were squeezed dry.

But he’d done it. He’d
fought through the panic and made it.

He was who he’d hoped to
be.

Except. Except that he’d
lied to Major Johnson, to everybody, about what happened yesterday.

That was the part he
hadn’t made up for.

***

Mongoose had just
stretched a cramp out of his legs when the long-range radio crackled.

“Devil Flight, this is
Cougar,” said the AWACS controller. “Devil One, acknowledge.”

“This is Devil One. Go
ahead.”

“Devil One, we have a
situation.”

The calm voice ignited a
fire in Mongoose’s chest. Every part of him snapped back to attention. He
leaned forward unconsciously as he told the E-3 Sentry crew to fill him in.

“We have two low-level
contacts on an intercept to Buddy Boy,” said the controller. “We believe they
are helicopters, probably transports, possibly Mi-8’s.”

“Copy. You want them
driven off?” Mongoose asked, completing the controller’s sentence.

“Affirmative. Sandy
bingo’d a few minutes ago. First Team CAP was diverted and the backup is five
minutes off.”

“Give me a heading,”
snapped the pilot.

OVER IRAQ

0605

Like most of
his peers, Captain Feroz Vali hated
his
country's president
and family, blaming them for the ruinous
war with Iran and the difficult situation they now found
themselves in with
America. And like most of his peers,
Captain Vali left his politics and preferences outside
of
the cockpit.

A good thing, since the cockpit was cramped as it was.
Vali's helicopter swarmed around him,
a massive flying tank.
Propelled
by over-sized TV3-117A engines, the Mi-24D Hind
could dart through the sky like an avenging angel. With
four
ground-attack
rocket packs mounted on its plane-like wings and a four-barrel 12.7 mm
machine-gun under its chin, the
Hind was as deadly an attack helicopter as any in the world.

The problem was the helicopter was considered so
valuable by the regime that Vali had
been instructed to
avoid
combat. And to underline that instruction, he and the
Hind following behind him had been
posted here, far behind
the lines in western
Iraq.

Vali cursed his coward's role. Yesterday, the Americans
had begun their long-awaited air
offensive. The official news reports said that it had been a glorious victory
for Iraq, with hundreds of American planes downed. Even as he
doubted the details, Vali wished for a
part of glory.
Heading
out on his routine training mission, he toyed with the notion of taking the
chopper south toward the Saudi border, well within its range. The only thing
that stopped him was the realization that the desert there was most
likely empty.

Captain Vali studied the gray overcast sky as he
steadied
the helicopter
toward its patrol point on the Amman-Baghdad
Highway. A trainee could accomplish this make-work
mission.

The voice of his weapons operator snapped in his ear.

"Captain, I have two helicopter contacts directly
ahead."

Vali glanced forward toward the operator's cockpit,
directly below him in the Hind's nose.

Two helicopters? As far as he knew, his two-chopper
flight should be the only one in the
sky for at least fifty
miles.

Before he could key his mike to acknowledge, the
operator added, "Captain, I
believe the Intercept Station
G-5 is under
attack."

Vali threw his hand to the throttle, nudging the big
warship toward its 180-mile-an-hour
maximum speed.

God had smiled upon him.

OVER IRAQ

0607

Smoke furled from
the GCI site, now fifteen miles away.
Captain Hawkins steadied
himself near the door of the big Pave Low, his teeth rattling with the whomp
from the Super
Jolly
Green Giant's rotor. Somewhere beyond the smoke
British RAF Major Clinton Rhodes was hunkered on the
ground,
waiting for the
big green rescue choppers to appear.

"Says he could do with a spot of tea," laughed
Sergeant
Winston,
mocking the pilot's accent. He had the British
major
on the UHF rescue band.

"Tell him to keep transmissions to a minimum,"
said the
captain, just
barely loud enough to be heard.
^“
We still got
a ways to go."

If you stared at it long enough, the desert sand
revealed endless varieties of shades,
everything from yellow to gray to black and even green. Roads blurred;
buildings,
vegetation
merged into the terrain. You lost a sense of
where you were, forgot how much danger you were really
in.

Someone yelled up front. A crew member barked in reply.

"He's waving. Yeah, we got him. It's him, it's
him," shouted Winston, talking to the pilot and his captain
simultaneously. "He sees us.
Damn! We got real contacts on
the radar."

Hawkins folded his fingers around the metal bar he had
steadied himself on. The Sikorsky
angled herself for the
approach, skimming even
lower.

"Enemy helicopters are coming right for us,"
Winston
told him. "They're moving pretty
fast."

"Let's hope we move faster." Hawkins cinched
his helmet
and checked
his rifle, narrowing his eyes for the job at
hand.

OVER IRAQ

0610

Dixon snapped the
mike button angrily. "No way
I'm
backing off, Major.
You can't go home blind."

"I can make it back. Besides, these are just
transport
helicopters."

"Let me do my goddamn job."

There was no answer. Mongoose really had the lead out,
pushing his Hog as fast as it could
go along the heading
Cougar
had broadcast. Dixon did a quick check of his six,
his hand glued to the stick and throttle.

"Stay with me," barked the lead pilot.

Mongoose dipped his wing toward the thick overcast
between them and the ground. Dixon followed, his Hog
plunging through the curtain of tufts
and wind drafts. The
plane
bucked, then shrugged it off, slipping toward the
earth like an Olympic-class diver,
smooth and poised.

Breaking into the clear, Dixon realized for the first
time
that their path was
dangerously close to the GCI site.
Though at the moment he was out of range of any antiair left down
there, he had to keep it in mind if things got
complicated.

Hell, he'd have to keep a lot of things in mind. Like
the fact that they would almost surely
end up with less than
enough jet fuel in the
tanks to get home.

***

It took a second for Mongoose's brain to register the
helicopters, and another long second
after that for it to realize they were the Pave Lows.

"Those are our friendlies," he told Dixon,
just in the
case the kid had the same trouble.

"Roger that."

"We want positive visual IDs before we take the
boogies
out,"
Mongoose told him. The rules of engagement issued for the start of the air war
were not quite that stringent, but the major didn't want to take any chances,
even though the AWACS had already identified the contacts as Iraqi. "Make
sure the bastard's Iraqi before you
blow him away."

"Roger that."

Three or four other voices overran the rest of the
transmission. Mongoose pushed the confusing babble to the
side of his brain and steadied the
Hog, giving the MH-53s as
good
a berth as possible. If they were talking to their downed flier he didn't hear
it; at this point, the only voice that was going to make it through the filter
of his
brain was Dixon's. . .

And God's. In that order.

Air to air tactics weren't exactly his forte. The truth
was, you practiced getting away from
things in a Hog, not
shooting
them down. But Mongoose had a rough plan mapped out in his head. Once he had
the enemy choppers in his face,
he'd swing around to make a rear attack with the Sidewinders; the
helicopters' exhaust would give the
heat-seekers
a good target to aim at.

He double-checked the armament panel, making sure the
Sidewinders on the double-rail at station one on the left
wing were armed and ready. The
missiles needed to cool their noses a bit, so their heat-seeking gear would
work right.
Once ready
and in the thick of things, the missiles would cue the pilot for launch with an
audible growl that meant
"shoot me, shoot
me."

Assuming he could find the enemy birds. The blank sky
wasn't giving them up easily.

Finally, he spotted a black fur ball about seven o'clock
off his left shoulder. He had
just pitched his stick slightly, willing the Hog toward it, when he saw a much
larger black shadow considerably
higher and directly in line
with the bearing
the AWACS had given.

"We got one high, we got one low," he barked
over the radio. "Follow me through. We want to get them from behind
their three-nine."

***

"Roger that."

Dixon stared at the immense black beetle growing in the
bottom left corner of his windscreen.
That was no utility chopper out on a picnic run. It was immense, with stubby
wings projecting toward the ground
like muscled shoulders.
And the damn thing was
moving.

Big-time Hind, he thought; he wasn't sure what model.
It would— or at least could— have
air-to-air.

Dixon's AIM-9 Sidewinders had been on long enough for
the heat-seeking gear in their noses to cool down. But the
major was right— they had to attack
from behind. The
missiles
needed the heat signature from the engine exhaust
to home in for the kill.

The helicopters weren't going to make it easy.
Something sparked from the wing of
the angry bug as it
suddenly whipped out of
Dixon's screen.