Hogs #1: Going Deep (5 page)

AL JOUF FOB

SAUDI ARABIA

0805

I
t began as
a
wobble so slight Doberman didn't even
realize the plane was shaking. But by the time he was
ready
to line up for his
landing at Al Jouf behind A-Bomb, the A-10A was bucking sideways worse than an
out of balance washing machine about to explode. Nothing he did seemed to
calm it.

The funny thing was, the instruments were at spec and
the wobble didn't seem to affect the
plane's ability to fly.
It
was like driving a race car with one wheel way out of alignment on an empty
track— it might whack the hell out of your perception, to say nothing of
your body, but you were never in any
danger of crashing.

At least, the pilot hoped that was the case. The plane
didn't seem to want to go down, or
spin in, or implode— just slide back and forth a whole lot. It tried to move
left, then right, then left and left,
and then right.
Doberman
wasn't entirely sure what would happen if he let it. And he didn't intend to
find out. He corrected constantly with the rudder and stick, eyeing the engine
gauges carefully to make sure they
were running precisely in parallel. No amount of adjustment or cursing cured
the problem.

At least it took his mind off the Mirage. He was still
pissed off that he'd lost his chance
at shooting it down.
He'd
decided now that he definitely would have creamed the
SOB if the F-15s hadn't gotten in the way.

The scratch of concrete spreading out in his windshield
was the centerpiece of a forward
airbase. It had been carved
out in the middle of the wastelands only as a staging area
for some Special Forces units and
Hogs, but Doberman saw all sorts of planes lining up in landing patterns. The
sharp, businesslike commands of the tower personnel were punctuated
by even sharper breaths for air; it
was doing a brisk
business in emergency
landings today.

But hell, there weren't any wrecks that he could see.
Things must be going reasonably well.

Doberman did a last-second check of his instruments as
the Hog's wheels snapped into
position beneath the fuselage,
helped by the jet's slipstream. Nosing toward the concrete,
the plane finally shook off her
shudder. Doberman felt a shock of relief run through his body as he pushed her
onto
the ground.

***

Doberman felt another kind of shock a few minutes later,
surveying the rear of his plane from
the ground. The back third of the A-10A looked as if it had been used as a
backstop for a platoon's machine-gun practice. Foot-long pieces of the interior
were exposed, wires and fried metal
falling through the jagged gaps. The engine cowling was
nicked in a star burst pattern, and
it looked as if someone had tried to write his name on the rear stabilizer. The
radar warning antennas, light and most of the rest of the
center part of the tail section had
been ground into chewing gum. The fuselage in front of the twin tailfin was
creased,
spindled and
corroded. Bits and pieces of the bag-like fuel
tank
was exposed; it looked slightly singed.

A-Bomb whistled, shaking his head as he trotted over.
“Jesus, Doberman, the assholes who
shot at you would have taken off your tail if you'd been going any faster,” he
said. “Here's why your radio was out.
You lost the antenna.”

The pilot pointed toward the top of the fuselage.
Somehow, the UHF/TACAN fin on the
very top of the plane
directly
behind the cockpit had been blown clear away.

“Damn,” said Doberman. The fin was only a few inches
from his seat. Why the hell hadn't he
heard— or felt— what
hit
it?

“Put a new one in, Dog Man, and you'll be set,” said
A-Bomb. “Hell, this is nothing. Hog
eats this kind of stuff
up.
Shit, it likes taking flak. That's what I'm talking
about.”

“I guess so. Looks bad, though.”

“Nah. This is all sheet metal. It's like on a car.
Hell, they just take out a screw here,
screw there, bam,
you're back to normal.”

A mechanic who had been listening to the conversation
rolled his eyes, then left to get his
chief so they could
decide what to do.
His guess was, put a bullet through the A-lOA's
nose
and call it a day.

“The plane shook a little on the way back,” said
Doberman. “But the instruments said I
was fine.”

“That's what I'm talking about.” A-Bomb held out his
arms as if he had had to explain the facts of life to a raw recruit. “This fucking
plane was made to get hit. Not like
those sissy pointy noses. Now, you're flying an F-16, right?
You couldn't have ejected fast
enough. F-15? Man, Saddam's serving you lunch right now. But this— God, all you
need's
a new paint job and you're outta here.”

“I don't see any bullet holes in your stinking plane.”

“Hey, that's not my fault,” said A-Bomb. He turned his
head back toward the runway.
“What do you think Dixon's plane'll
look
like?”

“I don't know. I'm kind of wondering what happened to
him.”

“He wasn't too talkative on the radio coming in,” said
A-Bomb. “I think he got rattled.
First day and all.”

“He'll be okay,” said Doberman. It was a reflex, like he
was sticking up for his kid brother.

“Shit, I didn't say he wouldn't, did I?” A-Bomb
pointed to a Hog steadying itself for
a landing at the far
end
of the strip. “Maybe that's him. We ought to start a pool on the number of
bullet holes. Whoever gets the most
wins.”

“Wins what?”

“I don't know. A case of homemade beer.”

“Gee, there's a prize,” said Doberman. “And how the
hell would you count them on my plane?”

“Good point.”

***

The hot Saudi air whipped into Dixon's face like a
blast from an afterburner. He caught
his balance against the
fairing
strip of the cockpit's windshield, checked to make sure the ladder had scrolled
itself downwards, then hoisted his long legs around and over the Hog
^s
front end. The uncontrollable urge to get his feet onto the pavement kept him
from noticing the shake in his legs, kept him from noticing anything until he
was down, leaning against the darkened green camo of the A-lOA's body, leaning
and then sinking.

Dixon had never puked from flying before, not even the
first time he'd pulled negative g's, but he lost his
cookies now, guts erupting in a
bilious flow that spread out
below the big jet like oil from a ruptured tanker. He puked and puked,
stomach and chest exploding as if they had just
invented the phenomenon. His mind flew out with the
fluids,
evaporating on the tarmac.

Exhausted, still shaking, the lieutenant found himself
on his hands and knees beneath the
jet's wing. He was soaked, though thankfully from sweat, not puke. Carefully,
his stomach still turning, he backed
out from under the plane. Still bent over, he found himself face to face with
Doberman.

“Yo, Lieutenant, where the hell have you been?”

Dixon fell back, startled, his heart stoking up as if
he'd been caught off-guard in an
alley by a couple of thugs.
He fell against the hard metal of the airplane, trapped
there.

“Lost your breakfast, huh?” laughed A-Bomb, standing
behind Doberman. “They teach you that
in F-15 school? Oh
that's
right— you never matriculated, right?”

“Ease off, A-Bomb,” said Doberman.

“Hey, I didn't mean anything,” said the pilot. “You okay,
kid? You look a little,
you know, loose in the head.”

“I'm okay.” Dixon heard his voice crack, like he was
nine
years old. He
pushed himself off the plane, standing on his
own two feet for the first time. He towered over
Doberman,
who was short even for a pilot.

“What happened?” demanded Doberman. “Did the Mirage jump
you, too?”

Dixon shook his head. “I lost you somewhere in the flak.”

“My radio went out,” the captain added. “Is that why
you lost me?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“What happened?”

What had happened? Dixon started to tell him everything
— how the plane and world had started
moving in slow motion;
how
he'd lost track of where he was and fired his Mavericks poorly; how he'd risen
through the flak and gotten rattled; how panic had flooded
his bloodstream.

Something stopped him. Whether it was ego or A-Bomb's
grin or the look on Doberman's face— a
look that expected a right-stuff playback— Dixon couldn't find the words to
tell
the truth with.

“Uh, I don't know exactly,” was the best he could manage.

A-Bomb laughed. “What do you mean, you don't know?”

“After I called the antiair battery when you started
lining up your mavericks, I thought we were breaking the figure eight,” Dixon said.

I didn’t hear the call,” Doberman said. “My radio must
have been out already.” He nodded. “Did your Mavericks hit?”

Dixon shrugged.

“Did you get the tower?” Doberman asked.

“I don’t think so

“No?”

“I don’t know. I thought I locked at first, but then I
realized it wasn’t it.”

“You get anything?”

“A van. I can’t even remember.”

A-Bomb was
scouting around the plane. “Jesus, you're not even scratched,” he said.
“You're a lucky son of a bitch. You should have
seen what happened to Doberman's plane. Chewed up and
spit
out.”

“You all right kid?” Doberman put his hand on his
bicep. Though the captain was half his
size, his grip hurt.

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“I'm sorry I lost you,” said Doberman.

Dixon knew he was the one who ought to be apologizing,
and more, but he kept his mouth shut.

***

Maybe it was the hard light of the desert, but to
Doberman the kid looked like a
teenager, and a scared one at
that. His clouded blue eyes and fuzzy red cheeks seemed to belong to a
thirteen-year-old, not a towering, over-achieving, aw-shucks fighter jock.
Dixon had All-American good looks to go with a tall, athletic frame, but he
suddenly seemed stooped over and
frail. It could've been the
after effects of the vomiting spell, but damned if the kid
didn't look a lot like he was going to cry.

Doberman opened his mouth to say something encouraging—
he wasn't sure what the hell that might be— when a
damaged F-16 careened in for a landing
on the runway not far
away.
The yelping roar of the plane's engine took the words
away; he settled for a punch to the
shoulder.

They didn't teach that in leadership training, but it
was the best he could manage at the moment. Someone on the maintenance crew was
shouting at him; there were a thousand
things to get squared away before they took off again.
Until Mongoose came in, he was in charge of the group.

A black chief master sergeant, nearly as fat as A-Bomb,
pulled him by the shoulder and shouted
in his ear. “Hey, you
Glenon?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“Call me Jimbo. I'm running this crew here,” he said,
gesturing indiscriminately toward the
swarm of maintenance people. The sergeant, well into his forties, had a
confident, easy-going crease in the
corner of his eyes, put
there
by a lifetime of squinting at airplane parts. “We were hustled out here at the
last minute on loan, so we’re making do. What else is new, right?” The chief
stopped and pointed at Doberman’s plane. “That
your
Hog?”

Doberman nodded, then followed as Jimbo started walking
toward it. The sergeant nodded his
head as he went, as if carrying on an imaginary conversation. Finally, he
turned
and smiled. His
cheeks puffed out as if he were blowing into
a
tuba. “You took some beating, huh?”

“I didn't even realize I was hit.”

“No shit.” The sergeant uttered the phrase without the
slightest hint of amazement. Once
again he began walking;
the nods took up where
they had left off.