Hogs #1: Going Deep (6 page)

“We got one more plane in our group,” said Doberman. “The
Devils. Major
Johnson.
He's running a little late. He was
just
clearing the border when we landed.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here,” said Jimbo. “We're
getting a hell of a lot more action
here than they thought. A lot of guys short on
fuel.”

“We're supposed to be back up in an hour,” said Doberman.
“What do you think?”

“You're not going to make it in an hour.”

They had arrived at the rear of Doberman's Hog. Three
airmen stood staring at different sections of the plane, a
little like gawkers at a museum.

Or traffic accident.

“We got a mission,” said Doberman, feeling like he
ought to exert a little authority.
Some of the older NCOs
thought they ran the
show.

They did, but you didn't want to admit that to them.

“Don't we have priority?” the pilot added when the
sergeant didn't comment.

“Oh, your planes have priority,” said Jimbo, “That's no
sweat. We'll have the others shaved
and perfumed before the puke's dry on the lieutenant's uniform. But you need a
radio before you fly again, doncha think?

“So plop one in.”

The sergeant gave Doberman a world-class NCO-to-officer
smile. “Well, sir, as soon as we get one here with an antennae and all, we’ll
do some ploppin’. We’re kind of triage, me and my guys. Colonel just got us out
here to keep the strip clear. Still, we can handle the sheet metal. Meantime,
don’t you think you should be rubbing a rabbit’s foot or something?”

“Why?”

“You fucking Hog pilots are all alike.”
Jimbo's cheeks worked like a set of
bellows as his head bobbed back and
forth, smiling, shaking his head and frowning, all at the same time. Finally,
he ran his thick fingers through his thicker
brush of hair and smiled again. “Sir, no offense, no
disrespect, all right? But whack me at night if you're not
the luckiest dead man on this base,
all right?”

“It flew okay,” protested Doberman, defending the plane.
“Except towards the landing. Then it
shook a bit.”

“Sir. No disrespect. Here, come with me, all right?”
Jimbo clamped Doberman’s forearm and
pulled it toward the fuselage.
“See this? Half an inch over, you got no more tail. No,
seriously, sir. This? A little
deeper, the cable's gone. No disrespect but your hydraulic line was missed by
what– the length of a thumb? Sure you got back up, but look at th
is. What’d it miss by, two inches? And
here? Oh, maybe a quarter of an inch more
, some of our Special Forces guys are looking to
sweep you up and bring the parts back
in a body bag.”

The sergeant continued around the plane, pointing out
half a dozen places where, had the shrapnel landed an inch
to the right, or left, backwards or
forwards, Doberman would
have
been fried to, as Jimbo put it, crispy critters with
extra sugar frosting.

“I got a guy who’ll patch up the worst of it so you can
take it on back to
King
Fahd,” concluded Jimbo. “A couple of hours, tops, assuming we get that radio.
It won’t look extra pretty, but hell, we don’t have the car wash working today.”
He winked. “Mechanically, you pulled a miracle, getting hit like this without
going down. I mean, hell, it’s a tough plane and all, but with this much flak,
the odds are something would go. Like I say, sir, no disrespect and I admire
your
balls, but whack me
at night if you aren't the damn luckiest
son of a bitch dead man on this planet right now.”

AL JOUF FOB

0835

O
nce Mongoose told
the controller how low on fuel he
was, he got pushed to the head of the line, right behind a Phantom Wild Weasel
that had sucked an assortment of scrap
metal into one of its engines. He had to sweat the last
few
miles into the
field; the fuel dial increased its downward
spiral quicker than the altimeter, and the turbofans
started
to complain.
Finally he said screw it, concentrated on the gray-yellow blur of tarmac and
put the A-10 down with a
spoonful of petro to
spare.

From the air, Al Jouf looked like sand punctuated by
airplanes and dust storms. On the ground, the dust storms
turned into people and the rest turned
to chaos. As Mongoose
trundled
to the end of the runway, an Army corporal appeared from nowhere and began
directing him toward the edge of the desert; for a moment the pilot wondered if
the guy was an Iraqi infiltrator, trying to sabotage the plane by sinking it
into a sand dune. But as he turned he spotted a long row
of boxes on low-slung sleds, parked
behind another Hog. Next
to
them was a dragon, the wheeled machine used to load the
A-lOA's GAU-8/A “Avenger” Gatling cannon.

The ground crew pitting the planes wanted him as far to
the right as possible, so they could
fit others into the small space they'd been allotted. Mongoose pushed along as
best he could. Not only was he w
ary about running off into the sand,
but he had to take a fairly
severe leak; he nearly always did at the end of a flight.

Meanwhile, men were running all around without paying
any
particular attention
to the moving aircraft. Barely missing
a Special Forces sergeant with his left wing, he decided
he'd gone as far as possible. He practically flew out of the seat and onto
the desert, relieving himself
directly into the Saudi soil.

Few pees felt as sweet.

“Hundred mile piss, huh?” said a familiar voice behind
him.

“Five hundred miles, more like it,” he told A-Bomb.

“Ought to use your piddle pack,” said the other pilot,
grinning into his face.

“Can't a guy get some privacy?”

“Sorry.” Dressed in his flight gear, A-Bomb managed
somehow to look totally disheveled
and cool at the same time. He'd customized the gear so completely Mongoose
half-suspected he had an onboard
climate control unit.

“Did Doberman make it?”

“Ah, no sweat.” A-Bomb reached into one of the myriad
of pockets and pulled out a thick
cigar in a protective
metal
tube. “Want one? Clyston got me a bunch. Says they're
from Cuba.”

“No thanks. How about Dixon?”

“Not even a scratch on his fucking plane,” said
A-Bomb, puffing the cigar into flame. “He
looks like he was
in a parade.”

“They do BDA yet?” asked Mongoose. Bomb damage assessment
was especially critical, since their targets were
part of the Iraqi air defense system.

“They're running a little behind,” said A-Bomb. “A few
more people decided to stop by than
they planned, I think.
Man,
this is good.” He paused and spit out a wad of chewing
gum. “Sure you don't want one?”

Mongoose shook his head. “We have to be back in the air
in a half-hour.”

“Yeah. Just enough time to find some coffee,” said the
other pilot, starting away.

“Hey, A-Bomb, hold on— where are Dixon and Glenon?”

“Up ahead, near their planes I think,” said A-Bomb,
pointing. “Say,
^‘
Goose— better zip up, huh? You're a little
out of uniform.”

***

Mongoose found Dixon sitting beneath the wing of his
Hog, next to the wheel, legs crossed
beneath him.

“Yo Lieutenant, what the hell are you doing down here?”

Dixon gave him a blank look, said nothing.

“Doberman tells me his radio went out before you fired
your
Mavericks. What happened?”

Dixon continued to stare.

“Did you lose him before or after you fired your
Mavericks?”

“I think it was after. He didn’t break the way I thought
he would.”

“Did you try and find him?”

Dixon nodded.

“Did you have trouble reading the AWACS when they first
contacted you?”

This time he shrugged.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you hit the tower?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Lieutenant, get the fuck out here and tell me what the
hell happened.”

The six foot-four Dixon crawled out on his hands and
knees like a kindergartner.

“
Something
wrong with you?”

“No,” said the young pilot. His thick, close-cropped
blond hair was crusted with muddy sweat. “I need a drink of
water or something. I/m thirsty.
Maybe I'm dehydrated. After I fired the
Mavericks, I spun around
and
went after a couple of trailers with my CBUs.”

“They hit?”

“No. I mean I don’t think so.
I was too high
.”

“How come you didn't take any flak?”

“I'm supposed to apologize because I didn't get shot
down?”

Mongoose, pissed that he'd nearly run dry searching for
someone who didn't need to be searched
for, rubbed the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes down with his
fingers. “What about the AWACS call?”

“I acknowledged when I heard it.”

“Why didn't you try contacting them sooner? Or me,” he
added pointedly.

“I thought I did. Maybe I selected the wrong frequency.”

Mongoose frowned. That wasn’t unheard of, especially
when things got hairy. But it wasn’t necessarily something to hand out a medal
for. On the other hand, there’d been a lot of traffic and there were plenty of
non-screw up explanations for missing a radio call.

“See if you can find somebody to check the radio out,
just in case,” Mongoose told him.

Dixon nodded.

“Hey, you okay, kid?” Mongoose asked, making his voice
as
calm as possible.

“I'm fine,” snapped Dixon. “I just need some water,
that's all. When are we taking off
again?”

***

“The triple-A was heavier than hell,” said Doberman. “It
started before we even
got in the clouds and followed us right down. I'm
not surprised he's rattled.”

“He's more than rattled,” said Mongoose. “He couldn't
give me a straight answer on why he
didn't go to SierraMax.”

“We got separated. I think he got lost when we came out
of the bombing run.”

“Yeah.”

“His Mavericks hit. I went over and checked it out with
the intelligence guys,” said Doberman. He was
sitting on a pile of iron bombs waiting to be loaded
beneath
Mongoose's Hog. “He
probably scored with the
CBUs, too. They
screwed up half his video with their equipment. Watch they don’t do the same to
yours.”

“So why didn’t he tell me that?”

“He ducked under the wing and took a nap or something.”
Doberman shrugged. “I think he’s just being cautious about taking credit. Kid’s
never been in the frying pan before.”

Mongoose didn't bother answering. He'd made a mistake,
picking Dixon for this mission. The
kid was too green. He
saw it in his eyes.

“You mad because he lost me?” Doberman asked. “My radio
was out. Could've happened to anyone.
Check his INS— ten bucks says it gave him the wrong coordinate and he got
confused. He just doesn't want to admit it.”

“It's more than ego,” said Mongoose.

Why the hell had he missed it back at King Fahd? Why
hadn't he realized it when he was slotting the pilots for
the missions. Dixon was the only
lieutenant he'd had fly the
first day.

Hell, there probably weren't more than a dozen
lieutenants flying missions in A-lOs
today. Going deep,
right
into the heart of Iraq— shit, what was I thinking?

He was a hell of a pilot, though. He had the stuff.

No, he had moves, but not the stuff. His eyes were
empty. He was a liability in combat.

I made a mistake once; I can fix it now, Mongoose
decided. I have to.

“I want you to trade planes,” he told Doberman. “You
take Dixon's north with us. He can
hang out until yours is
fixed enough to fly
home.”

“Jeez, Major, don't you think you're being kind of hard
on him? I mean—”

“It's an order,” snapped Mongoose. “No discussion.” He
turned before Doberman could react,
and went off to see how
much
longer it would be before the planes were ready to go.