Hogs #1: Going Deep (10 page)

OVER WESTERN IRAQ

1239

Hakim Ibn Lufti
was not religious by nature, but he
prayed to Allah nonetheless as he snaked his way onto the catwalk surrounding
the water tower. The American invaders were all around him; though he had lived
in the desert his
entire
life, he had never felt more alone. The green-black planes
had destroyed the missiles and all of
his comrades; as far
as he knew, he was the
only one left alive.

Yesterday, Private Hakim had confided to another man
that if the Americans came, he would
most likely surrender;
this
was Saddam's war, and he felt no particular fondness
for the head of his country. But the
man Hakim had told that to lay in the sand several hundred yards away; he'd
caught a fist-sized piece of metal in his chest when the planes began
dropping their bombs. Hakim's
ambitions had accordingly
changed;
he wanted nothing more than to extract some revenge
on the invaders.

He had carried a missile launcher to the tower to help
him do so. He wasn't entirely sure how
to use the weapon,
however.
It was a new model, an SA-16, and though he had
heard others say it was considerably better than the
SA-7, in fact he had never been trained to use either. He knew how
to push a trigger, however, and had
some hope that if the weapon were pointed in more or less the right direction,
it
could take care of the rest.

Hakim had almost fired at one of the jets zooming at him
when he was distracted by a billow of thick smoke. He
began to choke. By the time he
recovered, the warplane was
veering away.

Hakim cursed, and pushed the trigger anyway.

***

Doberman cursed as he watched his cannon shot spitting
wide right, a bad putt on an uneven green. The first two
slugs punctured the side of the tower
but the plane's pull
and
maybe the wind threw him off. He had too sharp an angle
and then the smoke got in the way and
he had to slide off and
try for a better pass.

Damn it, I have to give myself more room this time, he
told himself. I may be tired but I
can still hit a fucking
water tower.

God, he thought, I'll never hear the end of it if I
miss the damn tower.

***

It took a second for Hakim to realize why the weapon
had not fired. The missile had a prime
button which kept it
from being accidentally
launched.

Tears came to his eyes as he realized his error. Cursing
himself, cursing his God, he unsafed the weapon and
punched its stock against the steel
rail in anger. The jet
was far away now, and
getting further.

And then, God brought it back. It was as if His hand
took its nose, drew it up in the sky
and yanked it
backwards.
Its strange, stubby wings straightened as it
angled around and flew directly toward him.

Fire erupted from its mouth. The tower shuddered,
crumpling above him. Hakim cringed, held his breath, waited
for death to come. He felt the
grating below him start to give away. He held the missile launcher up, falling
as the plane flashed overhead. He pressed the trigger as his life
evaporated in a steam of metal and fire.

OVER WESTERN IRAQ

1244

A-Bomb saw the
flash from the tower, saw the rocket
shoot out wide, and saw
the tower disintegrate, all at the
same time. He barked a warning to Doberman and pounded his own plane
hard left, shooting flares and giving it gas and
pushing his body to the side, trying to add
mustard to the evasive maneuvers. Doberman jinked ahead, twisting, diving
and climbing behind a shower of flares.

The missile had shot straight out from the tower,
perpendicular to the Hog's flight path. An ordinary SA-7, if it happened to get
lucky and catch a whiff of the exhaust, would choke out its engine swinging
back and fall harmlessly
away.

This one didn't. This one came around in a tight arc,
snorting for Doberman's turbofan.

“It's still on you,” yelled A-Bomb.

***

Doberman sensed the missile before A-Bomb warned
him.
Something had moved on the tower as
he
closed in; a sixth
sense told him there was a suicidal
maniac on the rail with a shoulder-missile. The pilot pushed
the Warthog hard in the direction of
the launch as he flew past, tossing flares and jinking as wildly as he could.
His cannon burst had slowed his momentum, and there wasn't a huge amount of
altitude left to use gathering speed. He danced and shook, shoving the
forked-tail of the Hog in a wild streak across the desert, riding a roller
coaster of right angles and flares. His stomach rolled into a pea as G forces
slammed against his body in every direction. The pilot felt the flesh on his
cheeks peeling under the sudden
weight of the oxygen mask, plunging itself into his face.
But it was a good feeling, blood
running away from his head despite the best efforts of his suit. The heady,
floating
weightlessness told him he was alive.

Doberman had practiced this sort of escape under these
sorts of circumstances at least a
hundred times. He realized
he
should be clear now, a few miles and a dozen hard turns
from the missile. The Russian-made
SA-7 was a good weapon,
but
couldn't hang with you on a serious G turn. He kept
g
oing a few more seconds just to be
sure, pulled one more turn with more flares, being extra cautious, then turned
around, looking for his buddies. His
eyes shot over to the altimeter ladder on the HUD, focusing on the white
numbers
as he reoriented himself.

In that second, a sledge hammer hit his right wing.

OVER WESTERN IRAQ

1245

The next five
seconds defied all known physical
laws of
time and space.
Simultaneously, the universe moved at
infinite speed and stood completely still. Doberman was
paralyzed beyond comprehension.

Hit a bit beyond midway on its right wing, the Hog
slumped in the air. Small bits of the
wing were sucked into
the
turbo fan. The GE groaned, its fire quenched by the
in-rushing rain of debris.

The engine munched the shrapnel, spit it out, and then,
helped by the momentum of the air
rushing through the blades as the plane hurtled downwards, kicked itself back
to life. Doberman felt the surge in his arms as he coaxed just enough
power to stay airborne;
stutter-stepping off the ugly brown earth, he managed to hold the plane in a
slow but steady
climb. He
was even going in the right direction, southeast— though he couldn't for the life
of him figure out how he got
that way.

Once the plane was stable, the pilot pitched his head
back to look out the right side of
the cockpit, back at the
wing.
The missile had gone straight through, blowing a fair-sized hole en route. A
bit of the aileron had
been
taken away; he couldn't quite bend his body around far
enough to see how much or what other damage had been done.

On the bright side, the missile had missed the fuel
tank.

That, or angels really did drive Hogs in heaven.

***

A-Bomb waited for the canopy to blow, then worried that
Doberman had been hit too low, too fast, too hard to
save himself. The distance between
the two planes closed as
quickly
as the bile rose in his throat, the empty sickness
of seeing a buddy go down.

“Dog man, get out,” he shouted again and again. “Eject.
Eject.”

“Now what the fuck am I going to eject for?” growled
Doberman. “A-Bomb, would you shut the
hell up so I can
think?”

Suddenly, the nose of Doberman's Hog changed direction.
The plane began lifting itself off the deck.

A hand reaching down from above wouldn't have shocked
A-Bomb more.

“Jesus Christ,” he yelped. “You are one lucky mother
fucker.”

“Yeah, right. You're going to explain your reasoning as
soon as we put down.”

Adjusting his speed, A-Bomb pulled almost directly
over the damaged Hog. The wing had a
gaping hole, exposing
organs
and underwear, not to mention the ribs that held it
together. But it was intact.

Just another day in the life of a Hog driver, thought
A-Bomb. Damn, I love these planes.

***

The first thing Mongoose did when he realized Doberman
was still alive was curse himself for not taking out the
water tank first thing with bombs.
Better, he shouldn't even
have
bothered. The Scuds were the priority, and they were
gone. Getting greedy was a good way to
get killed.

It was one thing to put himself in danger, and a hell of
a different thing to put his guys there. His job was to
get them home. Period. Everything else
was way second.

Fucking water tower.

“I have a question for you I need a real honest answer
on,” he told Doberman as soon as the
pilot had the damaged
Hog headed toward the
border.

“Shoot.”

“How far you think you can fly that thing?”

“Me? Hell, I'll fly around the world if you want.”

Mongoose took a second before responding. His own arms
and legs were tired as hell; Doberman's must be aching even
more. The control surfaces on the
right side of the stricken
Hog's
wing were shot to hell, and he'd feathered his right engine. Doberman's fuel
situation was strong
enough
to get him back to Al Jouf with only a little sweat,
assuming he didn't spring a leak. But
that meant sailing
through
Indian territory just about the whole flight.

They could turn and fly directly south, safer if he had
to punch out, but that made Al Jouf a
stretch. King Khalid,
another
FOB the Hogs had used this morning to refuel, was
even further.

And what did he do once he got there?

Mongoose took another glance at Doberman's plane. The
Hog looked shot to hell. How long
could it stay airborne
with a football-sized
hole in the wing?

But the matter had to be broached delicately.

“Do you think you could tank?” Mongoose finally asked.

“If I have to. Why?”

“What I'm thinking is the tough thing for that Hog is
going to be landing. Your flap's probably not going to set
right, and I'll be honest with you,
it'll be a miracle if
your landing gear works
right.”

There was silence from the other plane,

“You can go ahead and respond,” he told Doberman.

“You want me to bail out.”

“Not necessarily. But that may end up the only option.”

“You're also thinking we shouldn't go straight back to
Al Jouf because you think I'm going to
have to bail before I
get there.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You're thinking that.”

“Yeah,” admitted Mongoose. “If we go back to the base
we'll be over Iraq most of the way.”

“You ain't going to jinx it by admitting it,” said
Doberman. “Be straight with me.”

“I'm trying.”

“If we refuel, maybe we can coax it all the way back to
Hog Heaven,”
said A-Bomb.
“Bail out in the sand and walk in for a
shower.”

“I'm not bailing out,” snapped Doberman. “Period.”

Mongoose worked his lips together, not sure what to
say. He would feel the same way. But
feelings were
irrelevant.
What had to be done had to be done.

If it came down to it, would he order Doberman to jump
out of the plane? Was it his job to do
that?

Absolutely.

Not that ejecting was risk free. The seat manufacturer
put survivability at eighty percent.

And they bragged about that.

The flight leader checked his own gauges, calculating
distances and plotting a course in his head. There was no
sense answering Doberman— what could
he say? I'm in charge
here?

“Yeah, okay,” said Doberman finally
, breaking the uneasy silence.
Mongoose couldn't tell if he was disgusted, or just tired. “Let's try for a
tanker and
then on to King Fahd. Line it up.”