Hogs #2: Hog Down (2 page)

KING KHALID

21 JANUARY 1991

1704

M
ost combat pilots,
especially ones facing a
sortie sure to stretch several hours, stayed away from coffee hours before
climbing up into their winged chariot. Most pilots would sooner bring an armed
hand grenade into a cockpit than a loaded half-gallon thermos. Especially
Warthog drivers— the plane lacked an autopilot, and wrestling with the
piddlepack in flight was probably more hazardous than running past a dozen SA-6
installations, the fiercest Russian-made anti-air missiles in Iraq.

Of
course, most pilots weren’t Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke, the commander of
Devil Two.

As A-Bomb
stowed his thermos back in its specially designed compartment in his flight suit,
he considered the possibility of rigging some sort of pressurized device that
would operate with a tube and spigot. This way he could sip coffee even pulling
high g’s. Nothing like a little caffeine to counteract the effects of all that
blood rushing into, or away from, your head.

Of
course, he could just go ahead and use a cup, but the ground crew tended to
complain about splashes on the instruments.

A-Bomb
still had about a few ounces of coffee in his plastic “preflight” cup, not as
much as he wanted but enough to keep his hum level up for the trip north. He
sipped it delicately, like a connoisseur checking out fine wine. Truth was,
this Java Roast was really Chase & Sanborn from the windy side of the
vineyard, but what the hell. Sacrifices had to be made in wartime.

King
Khalid Military City was a forward operating area, in theory a scratch base
near the front where A-10As could reload and get back into the fray as quickly
as possible. But Khalid didn’t look like a typical scratch base. Sure, there
were army guys running all over the place, which gave it the homey look. There
was also the requisite Saudi dust, and the change in temperature could provide
a very handsome fog in the early morning, exactly the sort of thing you wanted to
accent sheer chaos.

But
there was also an immense dome and office building complex nearby— a pit helmet
and band box— which made the place look more civilized than Charles DeGaulle Airport,
in A-Bomb’s humble opinion.

Now
DeGaulle would be kick-ass FOA. Those Frenchmen knew how to throw the fear of
God into a pilot, the one thing they did right, as far as A-Bomb was concerned.
Plus as an extra bonus you could fly under the Eiffel Tower on the way in for a
landing.

The
pilot gave his instruments a final check as his Hog rumbled across the tarmac.
The pointy nose F-16 had finally gotten his butt down on the airstrip in one
piece. He’d obviously been shot up pretty bad, and A-Bomb didn’t begrudge the
Viper’s pilot for taking so long to land. He was, after all, working under a
hardship— he wasn’t driving a Hog.

A-Bomb’s
eyes pegged the indicators on the dials over his right knee as he made sure the
twin engines were running at spec. Together, they put out over eighteen
thousand pounds of thrust, enough in theory to lift fifty thousand pounds of
Hog off a strip faster than he could finish a Twinkie. The plane couldn’t
actually go all that fast— her posted top speed was 439 miles an hour in level
flight at sea level, a mark A-Bomb had never actually made, partly because he
rarely found himself at level flight at sea level. But the Hog wasn’t about
speed; she was about pounding the crap out of bad guys, and that he had done,
and done well. Going slow was a point of honor.

When
the dials confirmed his gut feel that the power plants were pumping at shop
manual spec, A-Bomb swept his eyes across the panel on the right, making sure
the fuel tanks hadn’t sprung a leak. Then he glanced down at the switches for
the INS navigational system, marching his glance around the rest of the cockpit
in a sweep that took in the radio and weapons switches and worked over to the
large, globe-like horizon indicator at the top center of the dashboard before
returning to the canopy. With all instruments present and accounted for, A-Bomb
shifted his one-hundred and sixty-something pounds in his seat, hunkering in
the cockpit like a medieval knight getting into joust position on his horse. To
his everlasting disappointment, the ACES II ejector seat could not be
customized as his flight gear had been; otherwise, A-Bomb might have fit it
with a gun rack and maybe a massage unit.

But
then, being a Hog pilot was all about roughing it.

He
reached his left hand to give his steed more throttle. The TF34 GE power plants
whinnied hungrily, winding their turbofans into a snorting frenzy. The plane
jumped forward, her nose sniffing the air for the smell of battle as A-Bomb
nudged toward the firing line. She gave the pilot a snort and a gentle shake as
she flexed her muscles and strained for the sky.

He
still had the coffee cup cradled in his lap. He liked to hold out as long as
possible for the last sip. There was nothing like the feeling of a
perfectly-timed takeoff— one where gravity forced the final gulp of joe down
your throat.

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

21 JANUARY 1991

1704

L
ieutenant William Dixon
shuffled through the
listing of Republican Guard units the army wanted bombed, in theory reviewing
their priorities as targets. In reality he was doing nothing more than
providing a fifth check on someone else’s math. One of Devil Squadron’s most
promising young pilots, Dixon was currently assigned as a “floating liaisonary
aide” to the FIDO, or fighter duty officer at Black Hole. It might sound semi-impressive
outside of Riyadh, but it was actually a make-work job created especially for
him, a velvet-barred temporary exile cum dog house.

Black
Hole was the nickname for the command staff under Lt. General Buster Glossom in
Riyadh. They prepared the daily air tasking order, essentially the daily game
plan for the air war. The ATO was, in effect, Lt. General Charles A. Horner’s
main tool for directing the battle, and Black Hole amounted to the right brain
of USCENTAF and the allied air effort against Saddam. Everything that flew
higher than a grasshopper, from Marine AV-8B Harrier jump jets to U.S. Air
Force F-117 stealth fighters, got its marching orders from Black Hole.

The
FIDO— a rotating assignment from each squadron— was a pilot who acted as a
liaison and advisor to both the planners and the guys on the line. But as the
FIDO’s sidekick, Dixon wasn’t here to liaison with anyone, much less give them
advice. His squadron commander, Colonel Michael Knowlington, had shipped him
over after the lieutenant had screwed up on a mission the first day of the war and
then glossed over exactly what had happened. Before being shipped out, Dixon
had partly redeemed himself by shooting down an Iraqi helicopter and becoming
an instant celebrity— a good thing, as far as he was concerned, or he would now
be cleaning latrines somewhere in Alaska.

Dixon’s
contriteness after the affair had also played in his favor. Knowlington had as
much told him that, if he kept his nose clean for a few days, he would rejoin
Devil Squadron by the end of next week. And that meant he would find himself
back in the air— the only reason to be in the Air Force at all, as far as Dixon
was concerned.

So
he was on more than his best behavior. Staying out of trouble wasn’t all that
hard, actually, since his exile was more than just symbolic: The FIDO needed
less than no help, and no one else at Black Hole had any place to put him. He’d
been given a back desk in a back office carved from a custodian’s closet in an
auxiliary building some distance from the main Black Hole contingent in the
Royal Saudi Air Force building. He was so far from the action scorpions didn’t
even bother to visit.

Which
was why the knock on the outside wall literally scared the hell out of him.
Dixon jerked his head up and saw the door frame filled by a six-six bruiser of
an air force officer, with round, dark black cheeks and a smiling face that
seemed semi-familiar.

“Ben
Greer. Remember?”

“Oh,
yeah,” said Dixon, rising to shake the major’s hand. He and Major Greer had
shared root beers together at King Fahd his first night in Saudi Arabia—
neither he nor Greer drank alcohol. “How are you?”

“In
one piece. How the hell are you? I hear you’re a hero.”

“Nah.
I came around behind my lead and bam, there was a chopper in my face. I don’t
know which one of us was more surprised.”

“That’s
not the way they tell it on CNN.”

“I
wouldn’t necessarily believe everything I heard.”

“This
is your reward, huh? Looks more like purgatory. I didn’t even know this was an
Air Force building.”

“Kind
of a long story.”

Greer
flew an MH-53J Pave Low Super Jolly Green Giant chopper, a serious piece of
whirly meat specially fitted for clandestine missions behind enemy lines. Based
at Fahd like the A-10As, the Pave Lows were under the direction of the Special
Ops command, a special group that combined army, air force and navy commandos.
They were tasked with a variety of jobs, most importantly— at least as far as
Dixon was concerned— SAR or search and rescue missions. They spent a lot of
time in the hot and dusty regions of the war zone.

Because
SAR was not specifically an air force operation, there was friction at the
command level and a bit of grousing from some pilots, who questioned whether
they would get the operational priority they needed when the shit hit the fan.
Nonetheless, the crews who manned the Pave Lows were full-blooded members of
the right-stuff fraternity, and Dixon felt a little awed by the much older
Greer.

“Want
to go grab dinner?” Greer asked.

“I’d
love to but, uh, shit, this guy invited me to his house, and– ”

“Coffee?
Just take a minute.” Greer had a strange look in his eye, as if this wasn’t
completely a request.

“Well
sure, what the hell.”

“Off-campus,
so to speak.”

“Off-campus?”

“I
wanted to talk to you about something where we won’t be disturbed. I got just
the place.”

“Um,
OK. Let me just tell the sergeant where I’ll be.”

Greer
gave him a “you-weren’t-listening” squint.

“I
mean, let me just tell her I’ll be out for a while,” said Dixon.

Ten
minutes later, over some of the sweetest yet strongest coffee Dixon had
experienced outside a hangar, the major laid out a plan for a Special Ops
strike of Scud sites.

It
was, as Dixon told him, a brilliant plan. But why, exactly, was he hearing it?

“We’ve
been getting nowhere with the brass, and when I heard you were at Black Hole, I
figured that was a message from God.” Greer gave Dixon a huge, Special Ops
grin— his twentieth, at least, since they had sat down.

“I
don’t have much influence,” Dixon told him.

“You
can talk to some people, right? I heard Glossom likes you.”

“General
Glossom? I’ve never even met him one-on-one.”

“Shit,
guy like you? Splashes a chopper with a Hog? They’ll listen to you. Just bring
it up in a meeting, offhanded kinda. We can take out the Scuds. I guarantee
that. We’ll blow those little fuckers into so many pieces no one’ll even know
they were there.”

“It’s
just I don’t think I can talk anyone into it. Shouldn’t you guys be working on
the CINC?”

“His
Cincship?” Greer gave him a disrespectful grin. “Boss is working on Schwarzkopf
personally. This is more a guerrilla operation me and some of the guys are
drumming up.”

There
was that smile again. Then something lit in Greer’s eyes, a bit too obvious to
have been anything but rehearsed.

“Hey,
I just thought of something,” he told Dixon. “You ought to sign up for some
Special Ops yourself. As an observer. I can get you in, no sweat. We can use
Hog pilots.”

“Go
on.”

“No
shit. A lot of pilots are bitching about the SAR flights. You could tell them
what’s going on. That’s how we sell it from your end, and I’ll take care of it
on mine. Shit, you’d be perfect. Forget SAR. You can come with us and blow up
Scuds. I’ll pull strings and get you on board. My colonel is an A-1 guy. Man,
he loves Hogs. Love ‘em. I think he creams just thinking about them.”

“I’d
love to, but –”

“It’s
done then. My colonel’ll make the call. In the meantime, make the pitch for us,
OK? This is the kind of thing we’ve been training for.”

A
half hour later, Dixon found himself in his supervisor’s office, repeating word
for word— except for an occasional stutter— what Greer had told him.

The
answer came quickly.

“No.”

“I’m
sorry, Major, I knew you wouldn’t –”

“At
ease, Dixon, relax. You’re the fifth guy who made this pitch today. Special Ops
is putting on a full court press to get into the Scud game. I think they’ve assigned
someone to work over everyone in Riyadh.” The major drew back in his chair,
cracking his knuckles with a full finger spread. “I hear you’re getting bored
around the office.”

“Who
told you that?”

“Little
birdie gave me a call just five minutes ago. Listen, I know the only reason
you’re up here is that some general somewhere wanted to make sure the press
could get a look at you. Well, they have. You’re chomping at the bit, aren’t
you?”

“I
would like to get back to my squadron.”

“I’ll
be honest with you, BJ. I know there’s nothing here for you to do, I mean,
besides waiting for somebody else to catch a cold. I know you’ve been bored. So
I’m going to see what I can do about your request to ride with Special Ops as
an observer. Not a bad idea, actually. We need more of our guys looking over
their shoulders. Keep them from getting taken over by the god damn Green
Berets. Pretty soon, these guys are going to be driving tanks instead of
helicopters.”

Dixon
sucked a quick, deep breath. He hadn’t exactly expected Greer to follow through
on the offer, especially this fast.

Truth
was, he’d be surplus material in the highly trained and capable crew that
worked Special Ops.

On
the other hand, this might be a kind of backhanded way of putting him back at
King Fahd where he could just walk across the tarmac to Hog Heaven and get back
in the starting rotation. It might be a way of getting around all the paperwork
normally involved. Knowlington knew everyone in the air force; hell, he
probably set this whole rigmarole up.

“I
certainly wouldn’t pass up the chance to do anything, uh, anything important
for the air force,” Dixon said.

“Good.
If it was up to me, SAR would be entirely an air force mission. Special Ops is
fine, don’t get me wrong, and I’m not against joint commands and all that
bullshit, but— hey, this will work out. I’ll get on it right away,” said the
major. “Listen, if anybody asks, you can handle a rifle, right?”

Dixon
hesitated a moment. Since getting in trouble, he had made a solemn vow not to
lie or even shade the truth.

“Absolutely,
I can handle a rifle,” he said finally, deciding that handling wasn’t
necessarily the same thing as aiming, firing and hitting anything he happened
to point it at.