Hogs #4:Snake Eaters (17 page)

O
VER IRAQ

2
6 JANUARY 1991

1840

Doberman hunched to
the side of the cockpit, leaning over the throttle console as he tried to get a good view of the highway. Four British Tornadoes had been detailed by the AWACS controller to mop up. Doberman had been asked to play impromptu spotter for them, mapping out the site. The F-16s, meanwhile, were swinging south to shadow the Pave Hawk in case it got into trouble.

There were three or four good-sized fires going where the Vipers had dropped their bombs on the highway. Red and yellow mixed with a black smoke so dark and inky it stood out in the heavy twilight. Doberman leaned the Hog gently on her wing, fixing his eyes on the largest and nearest fire. It seemed to be a fuel truck, not a missile, though from six thousand feet even in the daylight it would not be easy to tell. A second hulk further along seemed definitely to be a missile; only the tractor cab was burning. He continued south, spotting three medium-sized shadows near where he’d hit the erector. They looked like the most likely targets, though he wasn’t sure what they were.

He banked northwards, making sure the SA-9 sites were smashed. The ground looked flat— no flames, no smoke, nothing. The Vipers had reported a hit on the remaining launcher and they looked to be correct— if there had been a live SAM launcher down there, Doberman would be swinging from a parachute.

“Devil One, hay-low Yank, this is Tory Leader. We are five klicks south of you and request target guidance.”

“Yeah, One to Tory, hang tight,” he told the British pilot, who was under thirty seconds away. “I got three trucks near the erector. Hang tight, I’m coming back low and slow to eyeball this mess.”

Doberman lined up his weary Hog for one more walk through. He pushed his nose toward the ground, coming over the highway toward the smashed tanks and hill in a straight-at-the-road diving, dropping his altitude below two thousand feet. There was an armored vehicle of some sort, smaller than a tank, at the corner of the hill beyond the tanks he’d unzipped. He stayed with the road over the village, no longer drawing anti-aircraft fire. The idiots had shot themselves dry.

Doberman felt his heart beat picking up as he nosed closer to the road, down at a thousand feet now. It was low for a plane flying in the dark without ground terrain radar, even though he felt he knew the area pretty well. He arced toward the burning fuel truck, its flames flickering toward his hull. Two long cylinders lay in the dirt about a hundred yards away. One was definitely smashed – it looked like a broken crayon stomped into a carpet.

He couldn’t be sure about the other. He steadied the plane, riding out to the erector south of the highway. One of the shadows he’d seen was clearly a tent; the other two were small panel vans.

Not much for the Tornadoes to hit, but that was their business. He gave Tory Leader a quick rundown, offering to mop up himself with his cannon while they went on to another target.

“Thanks Yank, but we’ll stay with this tea party all the same,” said the British pilot cheerfully. “Our primary was scratched which was why we were sent here originally. And I’ve just received word that our secondary target has been hit out as well. You Americans are putting on quite the show. Hogging all the glory, eh?”

The Englishman meant it as a joke and even something of a compliment, but it struck Doberman the wrong way. He punched the mike button, intending to snarl that nobody here was doing it for the goddamn glory. Nobody. He wanted to scream that he’d lost a squadron mate today, a good kid, to this bullshit, and worried that he’d lose more.

He didn’t say it, though. For one of the few times in his life, Doberman controlled his temper and gave only a brief acknowledgment. Then he pumped the throttle and gave himself stick, setting course for the long and hazardous trip home.

N
EAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1840

D
ixon heard the
helicopter’s engines whirl into high gear. He pushed himself to run faster, conscious now that his salvation was within reach. He ran and he ran, long legs striding, lungs wrenching against his ribs, eyes scratching the dark night to make out the helo. Finally he saw it, out ahead across the road, its dark hull stuttering, the rotor blades whirling. It seemed like a mirage.

It wasn’t. It was real and less than a half-mile away. He could feel the ground pounding with the heavy twin motors. He ran and he ran, forgetting his wounds and his hunger, his thirst and his fear, forgetting most of all his conscience and the ghosts.

And then he realized that the helicopter was moving, speeding away; already it was growing slower, already it was too far to stop. He ran another few feet and launched himself, arms grabbing the empty air in despair, two hundred yards away from being saved.

S
OUTH OF FORT APACHE

26
JANUARY 1991

1840

S
ergeant Rosen strained
against the seat restraints in the AH-6 Little Bird, watching the narrow fringe of reddish light at the horizon sift into blackness. The desert before her lay empty, its vastness turned from idea to fact. Something in the human imagination hated the void, made it feel cold; Rosen braced herself against the frame of the small helicopter and stared. She had seen a great deal in her life: raised by her grandparents and aunt in a rough neighborhood; working her way through all kinds of crap growing up and then in the military. But she had not understood the fierceness at the edge of the horizon until the war. She had not understood that every human soul had a hollow place inside, a pocket where it could go to survive.

A strong gust of wind smacked against the helo’s bubble nose, whistling over the Allison
turbo shaft and its main rotor. Whipping over the desert at almost a hundred and fifty miles an hour, the crammed chopper drew a straight line toward its rendezvous, skids less than six feet from the sand. It was their third and next-to-last trip. Only a half-dozen troopers and their gear were left at Fort Apache now.

The Little Bird had first undergone trials as the Army Defender light helicopter in 1963; christened the OH-6A Cayuse, the chopper saw extensive duty in Vietnam as a support and scout craft. The first production helicopter in the U.S. to use a gas turbine engine, the OH-6 was fast and maneuverable. It could sport a variety of weapons, starting with the smallish but popular 7.62mm minigun and progressing right up to TOW missiles. The versatile design had been enhanced several times after its introduction, proving more versatile than craft tw
ice as costly.

Rosen admired the simplicity of design. Despite the high-tech cockpit with its fancy night-gear and radar, the Spec Ops AH-6G melded function with design without excess. It was like a stripped ’63 Chevy Nova, all engine and drivetrain, no
BS like leather or climate control. You gunned it and you knew what you had.

“Sixty seconds to Sandlot,” announced Fernandez, the pilot. He turned his head slightly in Rosen’s direction; he’d donned night-vision goggles before taking off and looked more cyborg than human. Rosen turned back and looked over her shoulder at the three Delta troopers crowded into the back of the tiny helo; they all had heard and gave slight nods.

She couldn’t see the big PAVE LOW they were meeting until Fernandez whipped the tail around to pull the craft to a landing. The pilot of the big bird had found a shallow depression to sit in, waiting there patiently as the two AH-6s ferried men and supplies from the clandestine fort roughly forty miles away. The troopers in the back jumped from the Little Bird even as it settled in near the big helicopter, no doubt glad to stretch their legs after the knee-crunching shuttle. They were the Pave Low’s last passengers; the Little Birds would return and top off by themselves from the tanks the Pave Low had brought north for them. Then they’d zigzag across the border on their own.

“Okay,” Rosen shouted to Fernandez as the others got out. “Let me check the wires again.” The jury-rigged wire harness had slipped a bit on the last flight and she worried it would pull loose in mid-air, not a good thing.

“You want the rotor off?” the pilot asked her.

“Don’t get nervous,” she told him, grabbing her flashlight and screwdriver. The tech sergeant jumped from her seat and ran around the front of the helo, tucking her head down though with her short frame she had plenty of clearance. The repaired wire harness sat in the housing next to the AN/ALQ-144A omnidirectional infrared jammer, which meant there was less than a foot
— a lot less than a foot— of clearance between the cover and the whirling rotor blades. But Rosen wasn’t attempting an overhaul. All she had to do was fight the damn tornado of wind and shine the flashlight in the right place.

She threw herself against the side of Little Bird, toeing the rocket tube
. Grabbing the rear radio fin with her right hand, she worked the flashlight with her left as she inched upward. She slid the screwdriver out along the flashlight with her thumb, then poked forward to nudge the metal back – she’d rigged the access panel for an easy view after the first flight, when her check cost them nearly fifteen minutes.

She leaned in to look. The thick electrical tape she’d wound around the harness to hold it was still solid. She craned her neck just to check the front of the assembly when she felt her legs shifting out from under her. The Little Bird began to rise and move backwards. She lost her grip and started to slide in the rush of wind. Her instinct was to hold the flashlight and the screwdriver, but something inside made her let go
. She found herself falling, and in that moment her eyes went hard and her hands turned to claws. She grabbed for the rear door handle, kept falling. For a second she felt herself getting chewed up by the rear rotor, sliced and diced into dog food. Her soul fell into its secret niche; she fought to remove it, not ready for salvation, or at least not death. Rosen managed to kick her leg into the helo’s body, then rolled her torso around to grab onto the rocket launcher tube, landing half in and half out of the craft. She managed to push herself into the back of the helicopter.

Fernandez’s horrified face loomed over hers.

“Okay,” she shouted, getting up. “Okay, okay. Go. Go.”

“Are you all right?”

“Go! Go!”

He waited until she had strapped herself in before pulling ahead.

The shadow of the Pave Low in the distance told her what happened— the draft from its massive whirly nearly knocked the Little Bird over.

“I’m sorry,” Fernandez shouted back to her. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” she said. “Next time I’ll wear my magnetic boots.”

O
VER WESTERN IRAQ

26 JANUARY
1991

1840

M
ajor Horace “Hack”
Preston scanned the F-15’s instrument panel, moving quickly through the dials and indicators on the Eagle’s high-tech dashboard. The large screen at the top right was clean— no enemy radars were active, at least not at the moment. He had plenty of fuel for the two more turns they planned before going home; the rest of his instruments declared the F-15C in showroom shape. Preston turned his gaze back to the HUD, which was projecting its white lines, letters, and numbers in front of a steadily darkening sky.

Their tour of Iraq had
been extended due to some last-minute tasking snafus. Hack had welcomed the double shift, hoping it would give him a chance to redeem himself for the botched chance earlier in the day. But now he was just tired. Piranha One and Two were due to be relieved in less than fifteen minutes; he’d go home eagerly and very possibly fall asleep before the debriefing ended.

He hadn’t necessarily screwed up
the MiG shot. On the contrary— he’d followed procedure to the iota, hesitating only because of the friendlies in the vicinity. He’d locked and launched within the Sparrow’s optimum target range, then jinked his plane and launched countermeasures. Everything had been precisely by the book.

But it nagged at him. He should have had nailed the damn thing. Anything less was failure.

He acknowledged as his wingmate checked in with two more radar contacts. They ID’d the planes as F-111s en route to Baghdad.

“All quiet on the Western Front,” added Johnny.

“Affirmative,” he told his wingmate, expecting that the formal tone would discourage him from chitchat.

It did. The two Eagles continued their silent patrol of the skies, trekking along their racetrack at a leisurely four hundred and fifty nautical miles an hour. Fuel flowed steadily through their thirsty engines. The video screens and dashboard lights filled the cockpit with a soft glow that faded from red to green to yellow. Hack worked methodically, fighting off fatigue, struggling to keep his focus as they completed their next
-to-last circuit and headed north for one last run.

Somewhere far below, triple-A flared toward the heavens in a steady, thick stream of tracers. The gunfire was so furious
that the line looked unbroken— a fairly sobering thought, given that typically only one in four of the rounds fired would be a sparkler.

“Coming to our turn in zero-one minutes,” Hack told his wingmate. They were in tactical separation, two miles abreast, with the wingman stacked above him about a thousand feet. The formation allowed each man to check the other’s “six” or rear, and provided clearly defined hunting spheres for their missiles. Offsetting each other’s altitude made it more difficult for an on-coming fighter pilot to spot both planes with one sweep of his eyes.

But the abreast formation did make turns a bit more difficult, especially in the dark; they had to be closely coordinated or the formation would be broken. The planes moved like parts in an old-fashioned clock. Hack called the turn and they went at it textbook style, Two pulling three gs as it started left, One easing around with a tight turn and roll-out that picked up his wingmate precisely abeam, two miles apart, still stacked but heading south.

Twenty-five thousand feet, four hundred and sixty nautical miles an hour. F-111s passing ahead of them, twenty miles.

Hack got another contact below eight thousand feet about fifty miles to the east heading west. He tickled the identifier.

A-10A. The Warthogs were all over the place today.

“What do you figure that A-10 is doing this far north?” Hack asked his wingmate.

“Got me,” said Johnny. “Maybe he’s lost.”

Hack debated asking the AWACS if it really was an A-10. Before he could decide, his radar kicked out three more low-level contacts, all moving relatively slow further southwest, most likely helos. He began to query them when the AWACS broke in with an alert.

“Two boogies coming off the deck,” screeched the controlle
r. “No three, four— damn, they’re sending the whole air force after you.”