Death Wish

CHAPTER 1

It briefed damn easy: Head exactly north four miles off the last way marker, dive below the cloud cover, plink the tank.

But in the air, falling through thick clouds at five thousand, just finding the T-54 battle tanks was an accomplishment.

Or would be. Major Horace Gordon Preston, better known as “Hack,” clenched his back teeth and pushed harder on the stick, urging the nose of his A-10A Thunderbolt II “Warthog” downward. The Hog grunted, her angle of attack slicing through forty-five degrees as she finally broth through the thick deck of clouds. Unblemished yellow sand spread out before her, oblivious to the war. The targeting cue in the plane’s heads-up display ghosted white and empty over the dirt as Hack hunted for the vehicles.

They were supposed to be dug into a revetment on the southwestern end of Kill Box Alpha Echo Five. He had the fight place, and it was unlikely that the Iraqis would have moved the tanks this early in the morning. They had to be around here somewhere.

He was going to nail them the second he saw them. A pair of Maverick AGM-65B electro-optical magnification air-to-ground missiles hung on his wings, balanced by four Mark-20 Rockeye II cluster-bombs. The Mavericks would be fired first. He’d then close on whatever was left of the target and pop the Rockeyes.

Assuming he found something to pop them on.

“Yo Devil One, you got our cupcakes yet?”

“One. Negative,” snapped Hack, acknowledging his wingmate, Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke.

“Try nine o’clock, four miles.”

Hack glanced to the northwest. A brown smudge sat in the distance there, too far away for him to make out. Still, it was something; he angled his wings and turned in that direction, leveling out of his dive. The nine-inch television screen at the right side of his cockpit control panel fed video from the optical head in the missile on his port wing; Hack had a perfect gray-scale image of undulating sand.

Preston glued his eyes to the altitude indicator in the middle of the dash, momentarily worrying that he’d lost his sense of where he was. Low and out of position for an attack, he realized he should tell A-Bomb to take the lead. But that would have felt too much like giving up.

I’m only flying a Hog, he reminded himself. I can plink tanks with my eyes closed.

Three or four years ago, that might have been true. He was a high-time A-10 driver then, with tons of experience in Europe. But he hated slogging around in the slow-moving, low-flying planes. Flying them was about as glamorous as going to the prom with your mom’s grandmother, and not half as good for your career. Thankfully, his Washington connections came through with better gigs, transferring him briefly to the Pentagon before finally sliding him into an F-15C wing. He came to the Gulf with the fast movers, flying as a section leader; only a few days ago he’d nailed a MiG in aerial combat over Iraq.

Within twenty-four hours — hell, within four — he was transferred to Devil Squadron, back out of the fast lane, back into Mom’s grandmom’s Model T.

The general who came through with the billet advertised it as a command move, the chance to lead a squadron, admittedly one of Hack’s most cherished goals. He hadn’t told him it was with A-10s until it was too late. Nor was it a real command — he was only the squadron’s director of operations or DO, second in line behind the commander.

The way Hack was flying today, he was lucky someone didn’t bust him back to lieutenant. He needed more altitude to make the attack work. Still not entirely confident that the smudge was anything but a smudge, he began a tight bank, intending to spiral up like a hawk as he proceeded.

The A-10 groaned. Never particularly adept at climbing, the plane labored with a full load tied to her wings.

“Yo, Hack, you got ‘em?” asked A-Bomb.

“One. I’m not sure that’s our target.”

Preston could practically hear A-Bomb snickering through the static. He came through his bank and pushed his wings level, now dead on for the dark brown clumps. Maybe tanks, maybe not — the video screen was a blurry mess.

Could be a pair of T-54s buried in the sand. Then again, it could be an I Love Lucy rerun.

A few stray clouds wisped in to further obstruct his vision. Hack cursed at the gray fingers, flipping back and forth between the two magnification cones offered by the missile gear in a vain hope that it would magically help him find the tanks.

He needed to find the damn things. Partly because he wanted to prove to A-Bomb and the rest of the squadron that he did really and truly have the right stuff. And partly because he wanted to prove it to himself.

Not that he should need to. But somehow the fuzzy picture in the small targeting screen and the rust in his Hog-flying chops negated everything else.

Hack checked his fuel and then his paper map as he legged further north. He pushed the air through his lungs slowly, telling himself to calm down.

Below the map and the mission notes, taped to the last page of the knee board, were three pieces of paper. He flipped the sheets up and looked at them now, talisman’s that never failed him.

One was a Gary Larson cartoon about scientists and bugs. He looked at it and laughed.

The second was a Biblical quotation from Ecclesiastes, reminding him that “wisdom exceedeth folly.”

And the last was the most important, a motto he’d heard from his father since he was seven or eight years old:

“Do your best.”

All he could do. He blew another wad of air into his face mask and put his eyes back out into the desert, trying to will some detail out of the shifting sands. The smudge had worked itself into a dark brown snake on the ground.

Not a tank. Something, but not a tank.

Hack sighed — might just as well let A-Bomb take a turn; he was used to looking at things on the ground, and maybe his eyes were even better. But as Preston slid his finger to click on the mike, the transmission from another flight ran over the frequency. Waiting for it to clear, he saw a gray lollipop just beyond the snake. Then another and another and another.

“Thank you, God, oh thank you,” he said. Looking over, he dialed the Maverick targeting cursor onto the first T-54.

“You say something, Major?” asked A-Bomb.

“Have three, no four tanks, dug in, beyond that smudge,” said Hack as he coaxed the pipper home. “Stand by.”

“Story of my life,” said A-Bomb. “Yeah, I got them. Your butt’s clear. Snake’s the track from a flak gun. Zeus on the right of the target area. Two of ‘em. Firing!”

As if they’d heard his wing mate’s warning, the four-barreled antiaircraft guns sent a stream of lead into the air. They were firing at extreme range and without the help of their radar, but even if they’d been in his face Hack wouldn’t have paid any attention — he wanted the damned tanks.

His first Maverick slid off her rail with a thunk, the rocket engine taking a second before bursting into action. By that time Hack had already steadied the crosshairs on a second tank. One hundred and twenty-five pounds of explosive dutifully took its cue as he depressed the trigger, launching from the Hog on what would be a fast, slightly arced, trip to its target.

Hack jerked his head back to the windscreen, belatedly realizing he was flying toward the anti-aircraft fire. Well-aimed or not, the 23mm slugs could still make nasty holes in anything they hit. He jerked the plane sharply to his right, narrowly avoiding the leading edge of the furious lead roiling the sky.

CHAPTER 2

As soon as Hack cleared to his right, A-Bomb dished off his two Mavericks, targeting the pair of four-barreled 23mm anti-aircraft guns that were sending a fury of shells at his flight leader.

“What I’m talking about,” A-Bomb told the missiles as they sped toward their destinations. “What I’m talking about is nobody fires on a Hog and gets away with it. Go shoot at an F-15 or something. Better yet, aim for a MiG.”

Never one to waste a motion, A-Bomb nudged his stick ever so slightly to the left, lining up to drop his cluster-bombs on the buried tanks. In the fraternity of Hog drivers, A-Bomb stood apart. He was a wingman’s wingman, always checking somebody’s six, always ready to smoke any son of a bitch with bad manners enough to attack his lead. But he did have his quirks — he never entered combat without a full store of candy in his flightsuit, and never dropped a bomb without an appropriate soundtrack.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” qualified as appropriate, if you skipped the mushy parts.

As W. Axl Rose prayed for thunder, O’Rourke tipped into a gentle swoop toward the targets, planning to drop his Redeye cluster-bombs in two salvos. In the meantime, Hack’s first Maverick hit its target, the nose of the flying bomb sending a small gray-black geyser into the air.

“Decoy,” said A-Bomb. “Son of a bitch.”

CHAPTER 3

Hack rarely cursed, but he found it nearly impossible not to as he swung back toward the target area. A-Bomb might or might not be right about the tanks being decoys — hazy smoke now covered the target area, making it impossible to tell whether the tanks had been made of metal or papier-mâché. Flames shot up from one of the antiaircraft guns his wingmate had hit; black fingers erupted in crimson before closing back into a fist and disappearing. He turned on his wing, edging north, still trying to figure out what the hell he was seeing on the ground.

In an F-15, everything was laid out for you. AWACS caught the threat miles and miles away, fed you a vector. The APG-70 multimode, pulse-Doppler radar sifted through the air, caught the bandit eighty miles away, hiding in the weeds. You closed, selected your weapon. Push button, push button — two Sparrows up and at ‘em. The MiG was dead meat before it even knew you were there.

Push button, push button.

If the MiG got through the net, things could get dicey. But that was good in a way — you scanned the sky, saw a glint off a cockpit glass, came up with your solution, applied it. You might even tangle mano a mano, cannons blazing away.

But this — this was like trying to ride a bicycle on a highway in a sandstorm. You were looking at the ground, for christsakes, not the sky.

The desert blurred. Hack shifted in the ejection seat, leaning up to get a better view. His elbow slapped hard against the left panel, pinging his funny bone.

Stinking A-10.

Hack pulled through a bank of clouds and ducked lower, jerking the stick hard enough to feel the g’s slam him in the chest. He’d been out of sorts his first few times in the Eagle cockpit, out of whack again when he’d come over here for his first combat patrols, unsettled even the day he nailed his Iraqi. There were no natural pilots, or if there were, he didn’t know any and he certainly wasn’t one of them. There were guys who worked at it hard, set their marks and hit them. You learned to keep the bile in your stomach, slow your breathing, take your time — but not too much time.

Do your best.

“I’m thinking we of our cluster-bombs and maybe have a go with the guns on that cracker box.”

A-Bomb’s transmission took Hack by surprise. “Come again?”

“Cracker box, make that a box of Good ‘n Plenty, two o’clock on your bow, three, oh maybe four miles off. Looks like the candy’s spilling out of it. See?”

He did see — now. A-Bomb had incredible eyes.

“How come everything is food to you, A-Bomb?” he asked.

“Could be I’m hungry,” replied his wingmate.

A-Bomb’s “candy” looked suspiciously like howitzer shells. Their frag — slang for the “fragment” of the daily Air Tasking Order pertaining to them — allowed them to hit any secondary target in the kill box once the tanks were nailed. Still, Hack contacted the ABCCC controller circling to the south in a C-130 to alert him to the situation, in effect asking if they were needed elsewhere. Important cogs in the machinery of war, the ATO and the ABCCC (airborne command and control center) allowed the allies to coordinate hundreds of strikes every day, giving them both a game plan and a way to freelance around it. Dropping ordnance was one thing, putting explosives where they would do the most good was another. Coordination was especially important this close to Kuwait, where there were thousands of targets and almost as many aircraft.

The controller told them the building was a hospital and off-limits.

“No way that’s a fucking hospital,” said A-Bomb. “I’m looking at a dozen fucking artillery pieces, sandbagged in. Fuck.”

Hack waited for O’Rourke’s curses to subside, then gave the ABCCC controller another shot. But he wasn’t buying.

“Devil One, we’ll have a FAC check it out on the coordinates you supplied,” said the controller finally. “I have a target for you.”

Hack’s fingers fumbled his wax pencil and he had to dig into his speed-suit pocket for the backup. He retrieved it just as the controller began the brief, setting out an armored vehicle depot as the new target. He scrawled the coordinates on the Persipex canopy, then double-checked them against his paper map, orienting himself. The target was to the east, a stretch for their fuel.

Doable, though.

A-Bomb continued to grumbled about the ersatz hospital, even after they changed course.

“Hospital my ass.”

Hack tried coordinating the numbers against his map, but lost track of where he was for a moment, thrown a bit by the INS. You could get distracted easily in combat, no matter what you were flying. He had to keep his head clear.

The opposite seemed true for A-Bomb. “I’ve seen more convincing hospitals in comic books,” he railed.

“O’Rourke, shut the hell up and watch my six,” barked Preston.

“What I’m talking about.”

This time, there was no difficulty seeing the target. It had been bombed in the past hour or so; smoke curled from the remains of buildings or bunkers at the north and south ends of what looked like a large parking lot. Roughly two dozen vehicles were parked in almost perfect rows at a right angle to the buildings. Beyond them were mounds of dirt — probably more vehicles, dug into the sand. Whatever air defenses the Iraqis had mounted had been eradicated in the earlier strike.

A flight of F-16 Vipers cut overhead as Hack turned to line up his bombing run. At least five thousand feet separated him from the nearest plane, but it still felt like he was getting his hair cut. He hadn’t known about the flight, which was en route to another target; Hack fought against an impulse to bawl the controller out for not warning him that the aircraft were nearby.

Do your best, he reminded himself, as he nudged tentatively into the bombing run. The A-10A’s primitive bombsight slid slowly toward the row of vehicles as he dropped through nine thousand feet. They were small brown sticks, tiny twigs left in the dirt by a kid who’d gone home for supper.

Hack’s heart thumped loud in his throat, choking off his breath. He began to worry that he was going to be too low before the crosshairs found their target, then realized he’d begun his glide a bit too late. He was in danger of overshooting the vehicles. He pushed his stick, increasing his angle of attack. The cursor jumped onto a pair of fat sticks and he pickled.

Wings now clean except for the Sidewinders and ECM pod, the Hog fluttered slightly, urging her pilot to recover to the right as planned. But Hack’s attention stayed focused on the ground in front of him, the sticks steadily growing from twigs to thick branches. The bark roughened and indentations appeared. They were armored personnel carriers, all set out in a line. He could see hatches and machine guns, sloped ports. He stared at them as they grew, watching with fascination as they became more and more real, yet remained the playthings of a kid.

Finally he pulled his stick back, belatedly realizing he’d flown so close to the ground that the exploding blomblets might very well clip his wings. He reached for throttle, slamming the Hog into overdrive, ducking his body with the plane as he tried desperately to push her off to the south.

It was only as the Hog began to recover that Hack realized he hadn’t bothered to correct for the wind, which could easily send a stick of bombs tumbling off target.

As he twisted his head back to get a look, A-Bomb’s garbled voice jangled his ears. He started to ask his wingmate to repeat, then realized what the words meant.

Someone on the ground had fired a shoulder-launched SAM at Hack’s tailpipe.

CHAPTER 4

A-Bomb repeated his warning, then stepped hard on his rudder pedal, twisting his A-10A in the air. The ants that had emerged from the burned out bunker were fat and pretty in his screen — no way could he waste a shot like this, even if there were missiles in the air. He kissed his cluster bombs good-bye, then tossed a parcel of flares off for luck, tucking the Hog into a roll.

He swirled almost backward in the air, goosing more decoy flares off before finally pushing Devil Two level in the opposite direction he’d taken for the attack. If either of the SA-7s that had been launched had been aimed at him, his zigging maneuvers had tied their primitive heat seekers in knots.

Probably.

Something detonated in the air about a half-mile north of him. Immediately above the explosion, but a good mile beyond it, Devil One crossed to the west.

Assured that his wingmate hadn’t been hit, A-Bomb pulled his plane over his shoulder, flailing back at the armored depot to share his feelings at being fired on.

“I’m a touchy feely kind of guy,” he explained as Iraqis scattered below. “So let me just hug you close.”

The 30mm Avenger cannon began growling below his feet. About the size of the ’59 Caddy A-Bomb had on blocks back home, the Gatling’s seven barrels sped around furiously as high-explosive and uranium armor-piercing shells were fed in by a duet of hydraulic motors, only to be dispensed by the Gat with furious relish. The recoil from the gun literally held the Hog in the air as the pilot worked the stream of bullets through the top armor of three APCs.

As smoke and debris filled the air before him; A-Bomb pushed the Hog to the right, leaning against the stick to fight off a sudden tsunami of turbulence. He let off the trigger as he came to the end of the row, pushing away now at only fifteen hundred feet, close enough for some of the crazy ragheads on his left to actually take aim with their Kalashnikovs. The assault rifles’ 7.62mm bullets were useless against the titanium steel surrounding the Hog’s cockpit, and it would take more than a hundred of them to seriously threaten the honeycombed wings with their fire-retardant inserts protecting the fuel tanks. Still, it was the thought that counted.

“I admire the hell out of you,” said A-Bomb. Then he turned back to nail the SOBs. “Let me show you what a real gun can do.” As he zipped back for the attack, the Iraqis dove on the ground. “Do the words ‘thirty-millimeter cannon’ mean anything to you? How about u-rain-ee-um?”

CHAPTER 5

Tiny bubbles of sweat climbed up the sides of Hack’s neck, growing colder as they went, freezing the tips of his ears. His lungs filled with snow, ballooning, prying his ribs outward against the cells of his pressure suit. Hack jigged and jagged, throwing the plane back and forth as he tried desperately to avoid the SAMs.

The sharp maneuvers sent gravity crushing against his body. Even as his g suit worked furiously to ward off the pressure, Hack’s world narrowed to a pinprick of brown and blue, surrounded by a circle of black. He heard nothing. He felt nothing. He knew his fingers were curled hard around the stick, but only because he saw them there.

The plane was going where he didn’t want it to.

He pulled back on the stick, struggling to clear his head and keep himself airborne. The black circle began to retreat. The wings lifted suddenly, air pushing the plane upward. Something rumbled against the rudders.

I’m hit.

Damn, I’m going in.

His lungs had a thousand sharp points, digging into the soft tissue around them.

Do your best.

The plane’s shudder ceased. He caught his arm, easing back, leveling off.

He was free. The missile that had been chasing him had given up, exploding a few yards behind as it reached the end of its range.

Or maybe he’d just imagined it all in his panic. Maybe the g’s rushing against his body had temporarily knocked him senseless; made him hallucinate. In any event, he was free, alive and unscathed, or at least not seriously wounded.

As deliberately as he could manage, Hack took stock of himself and his position. He was about three miles south of the target area, now clearly marked by black smoke. Open desert lay below and directly south. He was at five thousand feet, climbing very slightly, moving at just over 350 knots — a fair clip for a Hog.

Fuel was low, but not desperate.

Where the hell was A-Bomb?

“Devil Two,” he said over the squadron frequency. “Lost Airman. A-Bomb?”

“Yo,” responded his wingmate.

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m just north of Saddam’s used parking lot, helping them put up the going out of business sign.”

“Where the hell are you?” Hack repeated.

“Relax Devil leader,” said O’Rourke. “I got you. Hold your horses and I’ll be on your butt. We’re clean.”

“What do you mean, we’re clean?”

“I mean the only thing we have to worry about is running into some of those pointy-nose types on their way to mop up.”

“What are you screwing around for? Check your fuel. Come on. Didn’t you get a bingo?”

A-Bomb didn’t answer, which was just fine with Hack. He turned southwards to intersect the original course back to King Khalid, where they would refuel before heading back to the Home Drome at King Fahd.

Dark curls of black wool filled the eastern horizon. Saddam had set the Kuwait oil fields on fire and released thousands, maybe millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, doing to the environment what he had done to Kuwait.

“Got your back,” said A-Bomb, announcing that he had caught up and was now in combat trail, roughly a mile offset behind Hack’s tail. “How ‘bout we find a tanker instead of going into Khalid? Their coffee sucks.”

“Can it.”

“Man, you’re being bitchy. What happened? That SA-7 get your underwear dirty?”

This time, Hack was the one who didn’t reply.

CHAPTER 6

Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington lowered his head toward the desktop, stretching his neck and shoulder muscles until he could feel the strain in the middle of his back. Then he rolled his head around slowly, trying to keep his shoulders relaxed as he completed each revolution, counterclockwise, moving his head as slowly as he could manage. Six more times and he put his chin on his chest, covering his face with his hands, fingers massaging his temples. Then he dropped his arms and sat upright in the chair, breathing slowly.

Though dissipated, his headache had not quite disappeared. The throb was familiar and low-grade, potentially manageable by one of several additional therapies, including what Skull called “the oxygen cure” — breathing pure oxygen through his pilot’s face mask. But there were only two real cures — one was time, the other was a drink.

Or perhaps they were the same, for wasn’t he destined to drink, again, and again, and again, sooner or later?

Knowlington had been sober for twenty-three days before last night. Then, on the ground at KKMC, waiting for his umpteenth debriefing, someone had stuck a beer in his hand and he’d slipped down a long, familiar hole.

Wrong.

No one made him drink the beer. He didn’t slip, he went willingly. He took the beer and drank it, then got another and another.

There were extenuating circumstances. He’d gotten back from a hellacious sortie north, fighting the odds to help rescue one of his pilots, one of his kids. B.J. Dixon had been a ground FAC, helping a Delta team spot Scuds deep in Iraq territory. Dixon — who was or at least ought to be sleeping in his quarters in nearby Tent City — had saved the life of one of the Delta boys but got separated from them in the process. Devil squadron had found him and brought him home.

As squadron commander, Knowlington had felt responsible for the kid and went along personally to bail him out. Everything had gone well — too damned well, which was the problem. He’d let his guard down.

Liar!

He’d wished for it. He’d known what was happening. The tingle in his mouth, the roar in his head — he knew what he was doing.

Just a few beers.

How long had he been sober before that? Two weeks? Three? He couldn’t even remember now.

Yesterday, he could have counted the minutes.

Michael Knowlington pushed back in his office chair, staring at the blank wall of his trailer headquarters.

God, he wanted a drink.

It would take him ten minutes, fifteen tops, to walk over to the Depot, an illegal “club” located just off the base property. A few slugs of Jack Daniel’s and he’d be back on his feet.

He wasn’t fit to command the squadron. He should resign.

Someone knocked. Skull turned toward the door, waiting a moment before saying anything, though he had already recognized the familiar rhythm of knuckles tapping against the frame.

“Come,” he said.

Chief Master Sergeant Allen Clyston pushed into the small office like a bear inspecting a new cave.

Clyston was the squadron’s first sergeant — and much, much more. He personally oversaw the maintenance of Devil Squadron’s twelve Hogs. In the squadron’s stripped-down organization chart, every enlisted arrow pointed to him: Knowlington’s capo di capo, the colonel’s right arm — and his left, and his legs, eyes and ears. Clyston was the last of a veritable mafia of enlisted men who had helped Knowlington through half-a-dozen commands and assignments stretching back to the waning days of Vietnam.

“Allen.”

“Colonel.” Clyston groaned as he slipped onto the metal chair across from Knowlington’s desk. “Ought to let me find you a real chair.”

“Don’t want visitors getting too comfortable,” said Skull. He tried smiling, then realized how forced it must seem.

“I hear ya,” said the sergeant. He folded his arms around his chest, leaning back in the chair so his gray-speckled head touched the wall. “Got a problem I thought you could help with.”

“Fire away.”

“Got a fix for the INS units,” said Clyston, referring to the gear that helped the A-10As navigate. Though a basic piece of equipment, the gear was notoriously unreliable and needed constant readjustments. “Kind of a work-around-upgrade thing, but we need a pair of special diodes I can’t seem to get through the usual sources.” Clyston reached into his pocket for a piece of paper. “Becky Rosen says she can give them a five-year, sixty-thousand-mile warranty if she gets this stuff.”

Skull’s head throbbed at the mention of Sergeant Rosen. She was a damn good worker and smarter than hell, but she had caused Skull nothing but trouble. She had a way of pissing off half the officers who crossed her path. The rest made passes at her — not her fault certainly, but her way of dealing with them fell somewhat outside the parameters of the Military Code of Conduct.

Worse, she’d recently joined Delta Force in an unauthorized foray across the border to help the Army retrieve a battered helicopter. A good many butts were hanging in the wind because a woman had gone over enemy lines.

Not that she hadn’t done a kick-ass job and probably single-handedly saved the operation.

“Your usual channels can’t get this stuff?” Skull asked, trying to make sense of the specifications.

“My channels are military,” said Clyston. “Turns out, those are pretty rare little circuits. Rosen claims she can adapt them to regulate the voltage and then use that to feed back against the errors. Has a little card designed and everything, neat as a pin. She’s a whip, I’m telling you.”

“It’ll work?”

“She says so, if we can find the parts.” Clyston shrugged. “You know somebody at GE, right? They probably have something like that. Or they’d get us onto someone. Maybe a regular supplier of theirs or something. That G.E. guy now — Rogers, right?””

No, not Rogers. Jeff Roberts, who’d flown Phantoms with Skull out in California. Some sort of senior vice president at the company now. Probably didn’t know shit about radios, but he’d like this. Roberts had always talked about finding ways around the brass, military or otherwise.

Skull did know a Rogers, though. Had known.

Captain “Slammin’ Sammy” Rogers had gone out over Vietnam, ended up a POW. Supposedly, he’d been at Son Tay with a bunch of other guys shortly before the raid there in ’70. Knowlington had led one of the support packages, flying a Phantom.

The raid came up empty; Rogers never came home.

“Captain Roberts,” said Clyston.

“I think he went out as a lieutenant colonel,” said Skull.

Clyston’s left shoulder edged up slightly in a shrug. “Pretty much a captain’s attitude, though. It stays with you

“Oh, that’s a new theory.”

“F no,” said Clyston. He smiled. “Guy has a rank stays with him for life, whatever the stripes say. Or what have you.”

“What rank am I?”

“Oh, a colonel. Definitely. Not full of shit enough to be a general. No offense.” Clyston smiled.

The capo probably hadn’t come here to give him the parts list. He must know about Skull’s drinking. The reference to Roberts — a subtle hint that he ought to resign?

Clyston could be very subtle. But he was also pretty straight. Very straight.

Skull folded the piece of paper and put it down on his desk. “You got something you want to say, Allen?”

“Huh? Not me. You?”

A ton of things. Angry things: How dare a sergeant hint that a colonel hang it up? A stinking decorated colonel with three confirmed air kills and well over a hundred combat sorties, medals up the yahoo, friends in all the right places — what gave some sergeant who’d never had his fat butt graze an enemy’s gunsight, by the way, the right, the audacity, to hint that he was over the hill?

Calmer things: Gratitude for pulling the men together maybe a million times, for making planes whole, for moving heaven and earth to keep the Hogs flying.

Other things: Sadness over people like Rogers who hadn’t made it back, frustration over the delays and screwups and the human factors, fatigue and nerves. Rage that they were both growing so damn old, that after all these years, after all they knew, they had to keep sending kids to places where they could die.

But words were not things that came easily to Skull. There were too many, and no way of prioritizing them — no checklist to follow, no map to plod your way through. Much easier to stay silent — and so he did.

“Saddam’s taking a poundin’,” said Clyston finally.

“Hope so,” agreed the colonel.

“How much longer, you figure?”

“That’s a hard game to play,” said Knowlington. He thought of all the times before he’d played it — ‘Nam, mostly, ancient history, but he’d also had a squadron during Grenada and one that just missed a mission in Panama. Then there were the alerts, probably a thousand of them.

They were silent a moment longer.

“You sure nothing’s bothering you, Chief?”

“Gettin’ old, is all,” said Clyston. He smiled, but it wasn’t his usual smile; Allen definitely wanted to say something, his eyes hunting the office. But before they could settle on anything, there was another knock on the door.

Skull glanced at Clyston, then said, “Come.”

Captain Bristol Wong, an intel and covert ops specialist Knowlington had “borrowed” from the Pentagon, pushed open the door.

“Colonel, Captain Hawkins and Sir Peter Paddington would like a word,” announced Wong. His voice seemed more high-strung than usual, possibly because of the thick bandage wrapped around his chest beneath his uniform. A dark patch of skin on his face covered a fractured cheekbone, and there were several burns along his hairline, all souvenirs from his recent trip north to save Dixon. He’d also dislocated his shoulder, though it had been placed back in its socket by a burly Para rescuer on the ride home.

Wong shrugged off the injuries, claiming he’d been hurt worse trying to grab the last seat on the shuttle between Boston and D.C.

“Tell them to come in.”

“With all due respect, sir,” said Wong nodding at Clyston, “this would be a code-word classified discussion, strictly need-to-know.”

“I doubt you could fart on this base without The Chief catching a whiff,” said Skull.

The welt on Wong’s cheekbone turned dark purple.

Clyston got up. “I was just leaving,” he said. “Appreciate it if you can get us those doodads, Colonel. Let me know.”

Knowlington pushed his chair back against the desk, making room for the other men. Hawkins was a Delta Force captain who had worked with Devil Squadron before and helped rescue Dixon. Paddington’s exact status wasn’t clear. He apparently served with a British MI-6 agency and worked for one of the British commands. He was an expert on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi command structure, and seemed to fill a role as a liaison with the British Special Air Service. The SAS commandos were working north of the border spotting Scuds, scouting troop locations and sabotaging enemy installations. Sir Peter had been involved in a failed plot to assassinate Saddam that the Hogs were in on, helping set the time and place. He flitted freely around Saudi Arabia, but his rank and role in the Allied war effort were far from obvious.

What was obvious was the stench of gin emanating from his breath, so strong that it threatened to turn Knowlington’s stomach.

“Captain Hawkins, good to see you again,” said Knowlington. He’d first met Hawkins two months before, planning a clandestine operation known as Fort Apache.

“Thanks.” Hawkins flexed his shoulders, a linebacker waiting to blitz. “We appreciated your help on that bug-out.”

“My men did that on their own,” Skull said. “Right place, right time.”

“Yes, sir.” Hawkins sat down in the chair.

“Paddington.” Skull frowned in the British agent’s direction, then looked at Wong. “So?”

“The British command desires our assistance,” said Wong.

“Not precisely, Bristol,” said Paddington. He twisted the cuff of his blue wool blazer, as if adjusting a watch.

“Well, what is precise?” Knowlington said to the Brit, trying hard not to spit the words.

“To be precise, Colonel, SAS finds itself short-handed for an important mission. Delta had been enlisted and air support is desired. You have worked with Captain Hawkins before, so naturally your unit was mentioned. The target is somewhat south of As-Samawah.”

“ ‘Somewhat south’ meaning how far, exactly?”

“Not that far,” answered Hawkins. The Delta Force captain clearly had little use for Paddington, and even less tolerance for BS or Padding’s circuitous route to the point. “It’s damn close to the Euphrates. No bullshit, Colonel. Serious Indian country. That’s why we need Hogs with us. Delta’s going to lead the mission,” added Hawkins. He put up his hand to keep Paddington from interrupting. “At least this assault. According to the latest intelligence, the target has a few Zeus guns for air defenses and nothing else. But we’re thinking that may change. Old airstrip, couple of buildings; it was used briefly during the Iran-Iraq war, hit by Iranian missiles, and then abandoned. Some troops there now, but no planes. The Brits want to check it out. Sir Peter’s here to give us the layout and report back to the general, if it’s a go.”

Paddington cleared his throat ostentatiously.

“You’re looking for Scuds?” asked Knowlington.

“No,” said Hawkins. “SAS lost two commandos. There’s a chance they’re being held there.”

“A small chance,” said Paddington. “Nonetheless, it cannot be dismissed.” He touched his hand to the side of his sport coat. It occurred to Skull that he must keep a flask there.

If the bastard took out the flask, Skull would throttle him.

Why did Paddington’s drinking bother him? The man was just a drunk, like him.

“Two other operations are planned at higher-probability sites,” said Wong. “SAS is conducting them itself, with RAF support. Captain Hawkins will lead a small team of Delta and SAS men on this operation. The A-10s would strike a total of six ZSU-23-4s at the target, then remain for any necessary support during the duration of the operation.”

Paddington’s nose seemed to float above the room. “The operation must be surgical, precise, and brief.”

“No shit,” muttered Hawkins.

Skull smiled at the Delta captain. “

“Two at a minimum. They clear out the antiaircraft guns, then mop up if necessary. We’re in and out in an hour, no more.”

“Four planes would be better,” said Wong, “since there is a possibility of additional defenses being moved into position. There has been considerable radio traffic, and several Iraqi units are in the general vicinity.”

Knowlington reached to his desk and opened the single drawer, removing a large Michelin paper map of Iraq that he’d gotten in the States before deploying. As-Samawah was about midway between Baghdad and Kuwait, right on the Euphrates. If the scale at the bottom of the map was to be believed, it lay about 175 miles north of the Saudi border.

A long ride over nasty real estate.

“Can you sketch out the defenses for me, Wong?” asked Skull.

The intel officer leaned over the map.

“From memory,” said Wong, “there would be a triple-A all along this approach that must be avoided. The Republican Guard facilities closer to the border have been mostly neutralized, but even so must be respected. An SA-6 battery is believed to lie somewhere north of the base, but has not been definitively located; its radar has never been activated so far as is known. Additionally, Humint sources have rumored several Roland batteries in this general vicinity, but again, no radars or other hard indications have been recorded. Even if they do exist, the most serious obstacle would be an SA-2 site here, twelve miles south of the base. Its radar covers nearly the entire approach. It has operated intermittently, for only a few moments at a time, undoubtedly to avoid targeting from HARM-equipped SAM killer. Perhaps it is working with human spotters. There is also a possibility that it is not actually functional, as the intercepts have never been strong or of long duration. Nonetheless, it can be avoided if the A-10s travel a very precise path, breaking sharply parallel to the radar, and then jogging back.

Wong straightened.

“How would the assault team get in if the SA-2 is there?” Skull asked.

He looked at Hawkins for the answer, but it was Wong who spoke, explaining that the helicopters would have two options — either the same corridor the Hogs took, or a slightly more direct route that took advantage of the terrain and anomalies in the SA-2’s radar net. This path, which Wong preferred, would have the helicopters fly at roughly four feet above the ground for a about five miles.

While in theory the Hogs could do that as well, Wong’s first route would allow them to use less fuel. It was also less stressful.

Not that a half hour’s drive near serious antiaircraft radars and just out of reach of several flak guns wouldn’t get the heart pumping.

“So what’s at the base?” Skull asked.

“As of yesterday afternoon, just the six ZSU-23-4s. No missiles, no armor, and no discernible troops for that matter,” said Wong. “This is the configuration, organized for attacks from the south and west, though the only other directions could be covered as well. Beyond that, I have not had an opportunity to consult the latest information.”

The ZSUs were mobile four-barreled antiaircraft artillery units. Ubiquitous and deadly, but the Hogs were used to dealing with them.

“When?” asked Skull.

“Dusk,” said Hawkins. “We want to hit it just after seventeen hundred hours. We’ll have a company’s worth of men, no more, Apaches and you guys, and whatever other air support RAF can through our way.”

“A company?”

“We don’t think there are a lot of people there.” Hawkins shifted uneasily; as if he was trying to convince himself. “There are two buildings. My guys are rehearsing it right now with a squad of SAS men. They’ve taken buildings before.”

Knowlington did a mental inventory of his squadron. He had four planes available; the question was which pilots to assign. His best guys had spent an enormous amount of time in the air lately.

He could fill one of the seats himself.

No. Not anymore.

Why not? It wasn’t like he was going to drink in the cockpit. That might be the one place he could trust himself.

“Bristol assured me that your people could be ready at short notice,” said Paddington.

“With all due respect to Captain Wong, he’s not in charge of getting the airplanes ready. Or drawing up the duty roster, or even assessing the risks.” Knowlington touched the top of his temple, rubbing his fingers deep into the well behind the skull bone.

“Colonel, if you don’t think you can do this, that’s okay,” said Hawkins.

“Don’t worry, Captain. We’re in.” Knowlington stood. “I just need to figure out who’s had the most sleep.”

CHAPTER 7

Lieutenant William “B.J.” Dixon stood on the concrete apron a few yards from the start of the runway, watching a bomb-laden Hog take off. It seemed like months since he’d seen such a sight, and years since he’d sat in a cockpit himself.

It had only been a few days. But those days were each a separate lifetime.

Dixon had parachuted into Iraq with a covert Delta Force team looking for Scuds. On his second night in-country, he’d called in a strike on a probable nuclear biological-chemical weapons bunker less than a hundred yards from his position.

Then time had blurred.

He’d hauled a sergeant nearly twice his age and double his weight out from under the noses of a dozen Iraqi soldiers.

He’d seen a woman gunned down in the Iraqi countryside for trying to warn him about a search party.

He’d been singed in the explosion of an Iraqi house whose sole occupant was a two-year-old child.

He’d carried another Iraqi child, a boy perhaps six or seven, nearly to freedom, only to have the kid jump on a grenade meant for him.

The image of the boy’s broken body floated before him in the hazy wake of the Hog engines as the green-hulled warplane waddled off the runway: bits and pieces of flesh scattering in the wind, soot covering his face. The boy’s eyes open and clear, irises a brilliant green.

Why did God let that happen? Why the kid and not him? It was Dixon’s job to die, not the boy’s.

BJ rubbed his cheeks, then stared at his hands. He expected them to be black with soot, but they were clean.

There hadn’t been time to buy the kid, or even do more than make sure he was dead. Dixon had been jerked away by the others on the team, strapped into a harness, and snatched from the ground by a MC-130E Combat Talon Fulton Surface-to-Air Recovery. Propelled through the air by a flying slingshot, he’d dangled in the wind before being cranked into the bay of the big combat cargo plane. The grenade, the kid, the plane blurred into the tunneling hush of air around his ears. Infinite shades of black and brown wove ribbons around his head as he rambled weightless, helpless, through space.

Had it happened at all?

He saw himself going to the child, bending down.

But he hadn’t done that, had he? He’d stayed back, afraid of what he would see.

No, he’d been there, holding the kid when the grenade exploded. He remembered that specifically.

But no way he would have survived if he had held the kid.

But he remembered it, could feel the shock wave reverberating through his bones, shaking his arm nearly out of its socket.

Too much of this. He was losing his mind.

Dixon rubbed his fingers across his face and began walking toward Oz, Devil Squadron’s maintenance area. Four of the squadron’s eleven planes — they’d lost one earlier in the war — were being repaired and prepped for action. Techies swarmed back and forth, oblivious to him.

Dixon looked at his hands. His fingers ought to be filthy dirty, but they remained clean, stark white, not even pink. The deep bruises on his ribs and arms had already begun to heal; soon, there’s be no trace of his ordeal.

Too much of this.

“Yo, BJ, what are you doing out of bed?”

Dixon turned. Captain John “Doberman” Glenon, one of the squadron’s senior pilots, stood in front of an empty bomb trolley, shaking his head.

“What are you doing?” Doberman repeated. “You’re supposed to be resting?”

BJ shrugged.

“Restless?” Glenon didn’t bother waiting for the obvious answer. “Come on. Colonel’s rounding up some guys for a meeting. He’d probably want you there.”

Without saying anything, Dixon fell in behind Doberman as he cut past the hangars and aircraft in a beeline for Hog Heaven, the squadron’s headquarters building. Though several inches shorter than Dixon, Glenon threw his legs forward like he was flicking switchblades; Dixon fell steadily behind.

“Yo, Antman,” Doberman shouted to a thin black lieutenant talking to a pair of women officers near the building.

Lieutenant Stephen Depray turned around abruptly.

“Come on. Old Man’s looking for heroes.”

“Excuse me ladies,” said Antman, bowing.

Ladies? Did anyone call women ladies anymore? Ladies — like it was all a fairy tale.

Maybe it was. Dixon’s eyes seemed to have lost their focus. Stray sounds cluttered his ears. His boot stubbed against the metal steps as he followed the others into the building. He caught his balance on the door jamb, and pushed inside. When the door slammed shut behind him the muscles in his throat gripped at his windpipe. He felt claustrophobic.

Colonel Knowlington had commandeered Cineplex for the meeting. Cineplex, a largish open room with refrigerators, a microwave, and a couch, featured a massive big-screen TV, hence its name. The television had been turned off — Knowlington obviously meant business.

“Captain, Lieutenant,” said the colonel as they entered. “BJ? What are you doing here?”

“I thought you wanted me, sir,” said BJ.

Knowlington’s eyes burned into his forehead.

Maybe that’s where the soot was — Dixon reached his fingers to rub it away.

“All right, come on,” said Skull. He looked past BJ. “A-Bomb, Hack. Good. Close the door and let’s get going.”

Dixon sat in one of the metal folding chairs directly behind the couch, watching as Captain Wong whispered something to the colonel. Pink fluorescent light bathed the room, making it larger than Dixon remembered.

“Here’s the deal,” Knowlington told them, abruptly turning away from Wong. “We’re still nailing down the details, but basically, the British have a few dozen commando teams working north of the border, just like Delta, looking for Scuds and doing some other work. They lost track of one last night. They have reason to believe that the Iraqis grabbed them and are holding them at an abandoned air strip in a city, or rather south of a city, near the Euphrates. They’re looking at a few other places too.”

He paused, scanning their faces. “It’s a longshot,” Knowlington emphasized, “but Delta’s going in to check it out. They’re taking RAF Chinooks, along with Apaches and us for cover. We hit right before nightfall.”

“What’s the lineup?” Doberman asked the colonel.

Four of our planes, Maverick Gs, in case it gets dark and you need the infrared to see the targets. Load flares and cluster bombs as well. Supposedly there’s not much defense; guns, that’s all. Of course, that may change, especially if the British are right about their guys being there. The idea is that it may just be a way station or holding spot until Baghdad figures out what to do with them.” Knowlington glanced at Wong, who nodded. “Captain Wong should have the whole deal, or as much as there is, by 1400 hours, which is going to be very close, to kickoff time. This isn’t going to be a milk run.”

“Good thing,” said A-Bomb. “I’ve been pretty bored lately.”

The others laughed.

“I’m in,” said Doberman.

“Me, too,” said Antman.

“I’ll lead the flight.”

Dixon bent his head to see the pilot who had said that. Standing near the couch, he had a large body for a fighter pilot and a head that seemed one size too large. He was a major — it must be Preston, who’d just replaced Major James “Mongoose” Johnson as the squadron DO. Dixon knew he’d been on the mission that towed him home, but BJ hadn’t been introduced yet, and in fact didn’t even know Preston’s first name.

“Good Hack,” Knowlington said. “I thought you’d want to take it.”

“Hey, Colonel, you know we’re all in,” said A-Bomb.

“You’re not tired?” Knowlington asked him.

“Tired? What the hell is that? I’m not sure I’ve heard the word.”

Everyone laughed.

“You’ve logged over two hundred hours since the air war began,” said the colonel. His voice seemed cross.

“Shit, I didn’t know we were supposed to keep track,” said O’Rourke. “What’s the record?”

Knowlington frowned, but then nodded.

“We scrapping tomorrow’s mission?” asked George “Gunny” McIntosh. He was a captain who had served as a liaison with a Marine unit in a special exchange program before joining Devil Squadron; his nickname had apparently been adapted from the term for a Marine master sergeant. He and Doberman were tasked for an early-morning tank plinking mission.

“Tomorrow’s frag stands,” said Skull. “Assuming you and Doberman can handle the turn-around.”

“I can handle it,” said Doberman.

“Good,” said the commander. “There’s an SA-2 site close to the base that you have to avoid. That’s probably the most serious complication. There should be a Wild Weasel in the area to handle it or anything else that comes up. Like I said, we’re still working on the details.

“Film at eleven,” quipped A-Bomb.

Everyone laughed.

“Antman, you’re back up if somebody gets a cold,” said Skull.

“Yeah, okay.”

Knowlington’s frown deepened as he turned to look directly at Dixon. The lieutenant held the older man’s stare.

He’s seen it all, the colonel, thought Dixon. He’d been to Vietnam, nailed at least three MiGs there, lost some wingmen, flown black missions against the Soviets in the ‘70s. The years had burned themselves into the flesh of his face, pulling the skin tight against the bones of his skull — probably not why he had gotten his nickname, but appropriate now. He was wise and brave, the one guy you could always count on to tell you what to do, to come to you through the static and bullshit.

But had he seen anything like a little boy convulsing with the shock of a grenade?

“There just isn’t a slot for you on this ride, BJ,” said the colonel. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“I know you want back in the game. There’ll be plenty of time.”

Dixon shrugged, or thought he did. He didn’t really care one way or another.

He rubbed his chin with his hand and stared at his palm. It was whiter than the walls.

CHAPTER 8

The temptation to jump in and lead the mission himself lingered even as he finished giving them the lowdown. Colonel Knowlington wanted nothing else in the world but to fly again, to grip his hand around the stick and push the plane’s nose into a hail of antiaircraft fire.

And stay there until the plane caught fire? Did he have a death wish?

Better to go out that way than in disgrace.

Death wish — wasn’t that what drinking really was?

Not for him.

He couldn’t take the mission. He couldn’t, in fact, stay on as commander any longer. He was finished.

Telling them would be impossibly hard. Cleaner to slip out, avoid the inevitable scene.

He’d do it tonight, after they were off. He’d make the calls as soon as this was taken care of, talk to the general, get the paperwork in order, slip over to Riyadh and then home. He had friends who could smooth the way.

Knowlington asked if there were any questions, scanning the pilot’s faces one more time, indulging a twinge of nostalgia. He’d come to know them well:

Doberman, who walked through life with a chip on his shoulder because he was a good six or eight inches shorter than the rest of the world, but was a better pilot than most of the world.

Dixon, the nugget who’d come to the Gulf with tons of raw skill but was a green as a fresh Christmas tree. Not green anymore, poor kid.

Hack, the former pointy-nose pilot who wanted Skull’s job, and was now about to have it handed to him on a silver platter.

Gunny, whose two months with the Marines had convinced him he was a Marine. Antman, a Don Juan-type who seemed incapable of breaking a heart or saying a bad word about anyone.

And A-Bomb — hell, what could you say about A-Bomb? A first-class one-of-a-kind screwball who could fly with his eyes closed, nail his target, and then go back for more.

There were others in the room, too, hundreds — ghosts he’d flown with, guys who’d saved his butt and whose butt he’d saved, a whole wing of them.

“Colonel, I’d like to see about that reconnaissance flight,” prompted Wong from the sideline.

“Right. Let’s get going.” Skull snapped back to the present, his mind churning down the to-do list. “We’ll brief the mission at 1400. Planes will be waiting.”

He wasn’t going. He was quitting.

“Hack, see me in my office a minute, would you?” he added, heading toward the doorway and his duty. His tongue and throat felt as if they had been scraped by steel wool.

A quick drink would cure that.

Knowlington had flown with a thousand guys in all sorts of circumstances. Most of them had retired long ago.

How had they done it? What had they said?

Listen, the time’s here, I’m getting on, got to watch out for my family, don’t have the thrill, getting tired of the bullshit, need to make a little money for a bit…

“Colonel?”

Skull spun around in the hallway. Preston stopped short and winced as if he expected Knowlington would slug him.

“What, Hack?”

“What’s the deal?”

“I just told you. The British lost a pair of SAS commandos. There’s a chance they’re at that base. Not a very good chance, but a chance.”

“But…”

“That’s the whole story.”

For a moment, Skull felt like slugging him.

Knowlington and Preston had briefly worked together a year before when they were both posted to the Pentagon — Skull heading a working group on interservice Special Operations, Preston pulling temporary duty as snot-nosed aide for a general who, among other things, hated Skull for having helped kill one of his pet projects years before. Preston had made noises about making an issue of Skull’s drinking — undoubtedly at the general’s suggestion, though Hack was enough of a prig to think about it on his own. There had been rumors of disciplinary action, and a not-too-subtle attempt to persuade Knowlington to retire. Skull had had to go deep into the favor bank to derail the whole mess.

And yet, he would freely and honestly admit that Hack was a good pilot with a wide range of experience and a good helping of natural ability. It was possible, even likely, that Major Preston would make a decent commander.

God, Skull wanted a drink.

Without saying anything else, Knowlington turned around and walked to his office.

“Colonel?”

Skull stopped at the door, his hand cold against the cheap metal knob.

“You want to see me, right? You just asked me to see you.”

“Let’s just skip it, okay?” said Knowlington. And without waiting for an answer, he pushed inside, closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER 9

Technical Sergeant Rebecca Rosen gave the radio aerial a gentle but firm tap, nudging the metal fin into its slot behind the cockpit. Draped on her stomach over the fuselage, she screwed it in quickly; the UHF/TACAN antenna had given her so much trouble going in, she feared it might just decide to jump off.

The metal fin atop the Hog wasn’t much bigger than a CD case. Still, this was at least the third one she’d had to replace in the last four or five days. All had been pockmarked with bullets or shrapnel. Either the Iraqis were using special bullets that homed in on radio signals, or Devil squadron pilots were putting their planes in places where they shouldn’t be much too often.

Upside down, even.

“Yo, Rosen, what the hell are you doing? Sleeping on the job?”

“No, Chief!” she shouted, bolting upright but not looking down at Chief Master Sergeant Allen Clyston.

“Another F-ing aerial?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Damn. These pilots are not taking care of my planes properly.”

“No, Sergeant, they’re not. Damn sloppy of them,” said Rosen, finishing with the aerial. She rolled off the plane and jumped down to the tarmac. “They have to be scraping the suckers when they’re landing, because there is no way those ragheads could shoot them off. No way.”

Clyston grunted in agreement. “We ready to go?”

“Almost. Have to double-check the ECM pod.” Rosen gestured toward the ALQ-119 on the wing.

“Older than me,” said Clyston derisively of the ECM, the first dual-mode jammer ever put into operation.

“No way, Chief. But I bet you worked on it.”

“Prob’ly,” said the capo. He finally smiled.

A radical breakthrough when first developed, the ECM confused enemy radars by filling the air with noise as well as false signals. It had been around for a very long time, however, and was fairly useless against sophisticated weapons systems like the SA-6. Replacements had been promised, but the A-10s didn’t rate high enough to get them.

“We’ll be ready,” Rosen told her boss.

“I’m counting on it,” said Clyston. He bunched his hands on his hips.

“You selling something, Sergeant?” Rosen asked.

Clyston made a show of glancing around, as if worried that another crew member was within earshot. In actual fact, no one who worked for the Capo would be so foolish as to linger nearby without very good cause, and they would never, ever overhear something he didn’t want them to. Ever.

Rosen sensed what Clyston was going to say and felt her face go red even as he opened his mouth.

“Word has it you were asking after Lieutenant Dixon,” said the chief master sergeant.

“I was inquiring about his health, yes,” she said, trying to make her voice as flat as possible. Anyone else she would have told to screw off, but there was no way in the world to say that to the capo. No way.

Clyston’s large chest heaved upwards in an exaggerated sigh. He shook his head, but said nothing. Rosen found her bottom lip starting to tremble; she tried biting at it but her teeth couldn’t quite clamp down.

Anybody else would have gotten a double-barrel of invective, maybe even a good swing. Anybody else, she probably wouldn’t have cared.

But the Chief was — well, the Chief.

“Chief, is my work unacceptable?”

“That’s not what this is about, Rosen.”

“Sir.” She clamped her mouth shut, unable to say anything else. She steadied her eyes, hoping they wouldn’t water.

Damn, damn, damn. This shit had never happened to her before.

Rosen put her head down, waiting for the inevitable lecture. Clyston was right, of course; enlisted and officers didn’t mix. And she and Dixon had nothing in common — she was older than him, for christsakes.

But damn, damn, damn.

“Sergeant, these planes have to be ready to fly at 1400 sharp,” snapped Clyston. “Then I’d appreciate it if you helped Vincenzi on that F-in’ engine. He’s having a hell of a time.”

“Yes, Chief,” she said, though Hog engines were hardly her specialty. “Be glad to.”

“I appreciate it. Vincy makes a hell of a sauce, but he doesn’t always boil the spaghetti right, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, Chief.”

Rosen listened until the scrape of his boots told her he was far away before wiping her wet cheek with her sleeve.

CHAPTER 10

Captain Kevin Hawkins wrapped his hand around the tubular frame of his seat as the British Chinook abruptly jerked itself off the runway, its Lycoming engines whipping the twin rotors in a fury. His SAW — an M249 light machine gun or Squad Automatic Weapon, also known as an FN Minimi — slipped against his leg as the big helicopter bucked forward; he jerked his hand to grab the rifle and nearly spilled his cup of tea.

“I thought you said your aircraft were smooth,” he said to the sergeant next to him on the canvas bench.

SAS Sergeant Millard Burns turned slowly toward Hawkins and nodded in his methodical way, a bob down, a bob up. At fifty feet above ground level the helicopter stopped climbing, leaving her rear end angled slightly as she sped northwards, finally steady enough for Hawkins to sip his tea. The nose of the team’s other helicopter, carrying most of the British commandos, appeared in the window above the opposite bench. The Chinook — or “heli” as the British soldiers tended to refer to the craft — had a splotchy camouflage that blended dark green with pink splashes of paint. Referred to as “desert pink” by the Royal Air Force crew, it was the oddest scheme Hawkins had ever seen.

“Good chaps?” asked Burns, nodding at the six Delta troopers parked along the benches toward the front of the aircraft. Besides Burns, there were three more British paratroopers aboard the Splash One, and a dozen SAS men and their captain aboard the second, Splash Two.

“The best,” Hawkins said. All of the D boys had been with him on missions north of the border before. He’d known three — Jerry Fernandez, Kevin Smith, and Peter Crowley — for nearly five years. Armand Krushev and Stephen ‘Pig’ Hoffman had won medals for their still-classified exploits in Panama right before the invasion. And Juan Mandaro was a five-tools player: a communications and sniper expert with a (civilian) EMT badge and a knack for blowing things up, Mandaro had particularly sharp vision and rated among the best point men Hawkins had ever seen in combat.

“Your guys?” Hawkins asked the British sergeant, taking a stab at conversation only because Burns seemed to need to talk.

“They’ve been in hot water before. Squaddys began in Ireland. Tight after that.”

Hawkins had not-so-distant relatives in Belfast, children and grandchildren of the grandmother who had first turned him on to tea. At least one belonged to the IRA Provos — the SAS’s enemy in Ireland. He grunted noncommittally, turning his attention back to his cup.

“Jundies won’t know what hit them when we go in,” added Burns.

“Jundies?”

“Ragheads. The Iraqis.”

“Oh yeah.”

Burns reached into the pocket of his uniform and took out the map of their target. They’d gone over the plan at least twenty times before taking off, mapping contingencies and psyching out possible Iraqi moves; there was no practical benefit to reviewing it now. But maps, even roughly sketched ones, held almost supernatural power for some guys, and apparently the British NCO was one of them. The trace of his finger across the shallow berm near the road, the double-tap of his thumb against the blocks representing buildings — these were part of a holy ritual that he undoubtedly believed would guarantee success.

Some men preferred to continually check their weapons, making sure ammo belts weren’t kinked, triple-checking the taped trigger spoons on the grenades, testing the sharpness of their battle knives.

Hawkins liked to drink his tea.

“We’ll have the carriage way right off,” said Burns.

He meant the road. Two Apaches would cut off access to the base. Once the Hogs took the Zeus guns out, the plan would be boom-boom, teams at each building, top and bottom. Three stories. Neither had defenses, and it looked from the surveillance “snaps,” as the British put it, that one was completely unoccupied.

You never could tell.

Hawkins leaned his head back against the wall of the helicopter, trying to ignore the vibration as well as the sergeant without success on either front.

“Moons and Puff will move with your men to the second house,” said Burns, repeating a sentence he’d repeated now at least three times since they’d met. “I’ll be with you on the first.”

Hawkins’ attention drifted. An RAF reconnaissance Tornado would zoom over the small base roughly ten minutes before the Chinooks were to land. It would check the defenses one last time. The A-10s would pound anything that had materialized and then clear the assault teams and the supporting Apaches in.

Standard house-clearing tactics — flash-bang grenades, A-Bombs, MP-5s, in and out.

Though they came from different armies, the troopers and the commandos were equipped roughly the same. The SAS men carried American M-16 Armalites with grenade launchers, just as some of the D boys did; they referred to the guns as 203s after the M203 designation for the launcher. They also had two Minimis on their team. Three of Hawkins’ men carried silenced MP5s, very light and nasty submachine-guns that the commandos were also familiar with; two others had Mossberg A-Bombs. Between them, the commandos and troopers carried a large number of grenades, the nastiest of which was arguably the white phosphorous or “phos” to the SAS men; the ingredients could burn through unprotected skin and eat a man’s body. Among their other tasty treats were 66mm man-launched anti-armor rockets, modern-day disposable bazookas that could take out most modern tanks.

“Hit at last light,” said Burns.

“Yeah,” said Hawkins, barely paying attention.

“I’ve heard your A-10s are slower than bloody helicopters,” said the sergeant. “Will they be of use?”

“I wouldn’t worry about the Hogs,” Hawkins told him.

“You’ve worked with them before?”

“Oh yeah,” said Hawkins. “Mean bastards.”

“Fucking ugly.”

“Yeah,” said the captain.

“Ugly’s good.”

“The best,” said Hawkins.

CHAPTER 11

Hack’s heart picked up its beat as he neared the border with Iraq. The contrails of a flight of bombers arced across the top quarter of his windscreen; black clouds of smoke lined the horizon to his right. To his left, faint flickers of light — maybe reflections, maybe tracers — glinted in the dust of the desert floor.

It was one thing to haul ass across the border at thirty-thousand feet in the world’s most advanced fighter jet, when the flick of your wrist could increase your thrust exponentially and take you to Mach 2 in the blink of an eye. It was quite another to be coaxing a Maverick-laden Hog through 15,000 feet, hoping a tailwind to boost you to three hundred knots.

Why had he taken this damn A-10 assignment?

Because he had no choice. Because it would get him where he wanted to go — squadron commander, colonel, general. Beyond.

Why the hell had he volunteered for this mission?

Knowlington had put him up to it. The colonel knew damn well that if he didn’t volunteer, he’d look like a chickenshit to the rest of the squadron.

Stinking Knowlington, so full of himself, so cocksure that he still the hottest stick on the patch. If he was so hot, why the hell hadn’t he taken the mission himself?

He would have, if Hack hadn’t raised his hand. Showed him up.

One thing he had to say for Knowlington — the SOB didn’t seem to be drinking, or at least he was a hell of a lot more careful about it here than in Washington.

He would sooner or later, though. Then Hack would take over the squadron, move on with the game plan. Get his own squadron, make his mark, transfer back to a real plane. A lot of older guys were choking the path to promotion, but he could cut around them with a good job here.

Which was why he’d volunteered, right? Kick some butt in a major mission. Somebody would be bound to notice.

It was more than that. Hack was ambitious, no denying that. Nor could he deny — to himself — that he felt he’d screwed up on this morning’s mission and wanted to redeem himself.

Not screwed up. Just gotten scared when he didn’t have to be scared.

But he’d volunteered for the Splash package simply because he felt like he ought to be in the mix. He belonged on the toughest assignments. Prestige, ego, redemption, and all that other bullshit were beside the fact.

Preston tried to push the fatigue away, focusing his eyes on the navigation gear, checking his way-points, mentally projecting himself against the sketched lines of his flight plan.

“Two minutes to border,” he told his flight.

The others acknowledged. Once more, he had O’Rourke as his wingman. Doberman in Devil Three had Gunny on his six. The Hogs would work in pairs above the target, with Preston and A-Bomb on the east side on the first run, Glenon and his wingman on the west.

Preston nudged his stick as he came over the border, then gave his instruments a quick check. His fuel burn seemed a tiny bit high; it was barely noticeable, but might be a problem later on, stealing valuable minutes over the target area. He told himself to try to make up for it, if he could.

Checks completed, he rocked his body back and forth in the ejection seat, coaxing away the knots and aches. In some ways, this was the worst part of any mission — the long middle. You could easily be lulled to inattention. Worse, a tired pilot might fall asleep.

Like nearly every other pilot in the service, Hack had a stash of pep pills in his flightsuit for emergency use. But he hated to use them, and in fact had taken an amphetamine only once in his life, and that was in college cramming for a test. He didn’t even like aspirin or antibiotics. He’d accepted his anthrax shot before coming to the Gulf only because he figured he’d be court martialed if he refused.

He hit his way-marker, nudging ten more degrees east as they prepared to leg around the SA-2 coverage area south of Splash

The missile complex had been hit earlier in the war. Hack suspected that its gear had been so damaged by early Allied raids, that all it could manage was a baneful bleep, the ratted of an empty scabbard. But there’d be no way to tell until it launched a few flying telephone poles.

If it did that, a Weasel would nail it. A Phantom was flying patrol circuits in the area, ready for the SA-2 and anything else that might pose a threat.

Hack checked his watch — they were right on schedule.

In exactly 120 seconds, an RAF Tornado would fall out of the sky near the river ahead and blaze over the abandoned Iraqi base. The Tornado’s high-tech cameras would take one last look at the base before the ground teams went in. If they spotted any antiaircraft guns or SAMs, the Hogs would hit them just before the RAF Chinooks came in range.

“Devil flight, this Splash One,” said a voice with a British upper-crust accent as they hit the next-to-last way-marker before arriving at the target. “Position, please.”

As Hack clicked to acknowledge, the RWR went off — an Iraqi ground intercept radar had just come up ahead.

Several voices clogged the circuit. Somewhere in the middle of the static, Hack hoped, was the voice of the F-4 Wild Weasel pilot.

Hack waited for the cacophony to clear, then calmly acknowledged Splash One, giving his position and asking how far the helos were from setting down.

Before the Splash pilot could respond, an AWACS controller further south barked out a warning: Break ninety. A short ranged but potent Roland missile battery north of the target area had turned itself on.

The controller called for the Hogs to make a hard turn, taking them out of harm’s way. But because of the proximity of the SA-2 site and defenses to the east, it would mean the Hogs would have to backtrack around to pick up the proper vector into the target. That would screw up their timing and eat into their fuel reserves.

Weasel would nail the Roland, which couldn’t hit them from where it was anyway. Screw ‘em.

“Negative,” said Hack quickly. “Devil Flight stay on course. Acknowledge.”

“Two. Kick butt,” said A-Bomb.

“Three. We’re right behind you.”

Before Gunny could respond from Devil Four, the AWACS crewman blurted out a fresh and ominous warning — the Iraqis had launched two missiles heading this way.

CHAPTER 12

RAF Captain John Conrad started to laugh as the Panavian Tornado hurtled toward the ground. The Turbo-Union RB1999 Mk104 engines were in fine mettle. The nose of the plane shuddered slightly, then smoothed out; the jet’s speed sliding over Mach 1.2. The altimeter ladder nudged downward, breaking through three thousand feet as the world rushed brown and black, an abstract splatter of paint and speed dashing at odd angles around him.

Conrad laughed and laughed, riding the adrenaline of the high-speed run. Wings tucked tight at a sixty-seven-degree sweep, the plane shot smooth toward the terrain, knifing through the low-level turbulence. Conrad pulled back on the stick, leveling off just under a thousand feet, spotting the long gray splotch of his target area ahead.

The pilot giggled to himself as he held the plane steady so his backseat systems operator or “nav” could manage the sophisticated array of reconnaissance equipment in the weapons bay. Three BAe infra-red cameras and a Vinten Linescan 4000 IR surveillance system filled the hold originally designed for a 27mm IWKA-Mauser cannon; together, the wide-angle line-scan and thermal-image modules probed every inch of the Iranian base. Conrad counted off three seconds, saw two matchboxes at the edge of the rectangle and then he was beyond them; he yanked back on his stick, climbing quickly, gravity smacking him in the chest. He pushed the Tornado to the left as blue sky filled the canopy, the altimeter ladder galloping upwards, mission accomplished.

“Good go, Sister Sadie. Oh, good go, my girl,” he told his plane, which had been named partly for a Beatles song, and partly for the buxom tart bending over her nose. Conrad’s squadron included one of the best nose art painters in the RAF — no mean accomplishment.

The pilot asked his backseater if he had enough data.

“Not quite sure,” said the navigator, Lieutenant Charles Nevins. Besides the normal Tornado backseater duties, as recon officer, Nevins handles an array of sensors that included an infrared camera. “Revetment empty. Zeus 23’s on the hill and below the field.”

“Missiles?”

“Didn’t seem so.”

“Need another run?” asked the pilot, barely containing his enthusiasm.

“SA-6 eight miles north of Splash. They’re tracking,” warned the nav.

“Let’s have a go. Yank Weasel will take care of the missiles,” said Conrad, and before his lieutenant could answer he had knifed the Tornado back toward the Iraqi runway.

Originally designed as a long-range interceptor, the Panavian Tornado lacked the furball maneuverability of American fighters. It could, however, go very fast, and its terrain-following radar and quick-response engines allowed it to do so in all sorts of situations, day and night. In fact, to Captain Conrad, this mission was rather bland — clear sailing in daylight without nearby defenses to worry about.

But it was still a hell of a lot of fun. Flying was always fun.

“SAM tracking,” shouted his nav, warning that there was another anti-air battery hunting them. “ECMs!”

“Stay on it,” Conrad said, winding the Tornado’s altimeter toward zero.

As the rectangular shape of the abandoned runway came into view, Conrad cut hard left to run over it, speed washing from the plane. He was at five hundred feet… now three hundred… and still lower, getting personal with his target. He pushed his wings level, saw a speckle of something out ahead of him, cursed and felt a light thump as he pulled the plane upwards. The smell of fried chicken filled the cockpit — the Tornado had mashed through a flock of birds, sizzling at least one of them.

“Clean!” yelled the navigator. Either the ECMs or their hard maneuvers or both had shaken the Iraqi defenses. The radar warning screen, which had shown the missile battery’s radar to be quite some distance to the west, was now blank.

Conrad banked south, quickly reorienting himself. The A-10A’s escorting the Chinooks blipped on the radar screen, just over fifty miles away. The helicopters should be somewhere nearby, but Conrad was no longer interested in them — his job now was to get home. He sailed through his turn, running to the west out of their path. Climbing steadily now, the Tornado’s altimeter nudged through six thousand feet, then headed toward ten. He was north of the Euphrates, circling south in the same area as the base, lining up for his getaway leg home.

“More guns beyond the runway,” announced the navigator. “Nothing big.”

“Tank?”

“No.”

“Other defenses?”

“Road south of the base, bunker, maybe just a defensive post.” The navigator’s voice trailed off as he checked the videotaped sensor image. “Maybe some cached weapons there. Can’t tell.”

“Jolly good. Feed the Yanks the positions of the guns, and remind them where the SA-6 was, in case the Weasel hasn’t gotten her yet.”

“Right.”

But before the backseater could hail Devil flight, their detection gear threw up another radar warning.

“Roland on us. Where’d that come from? Fuckers, fuckers!” The navigator’s voice hit an octave so high Conrad thought his helmet’s faceplate would break.

“ECMs,” Conrad said calmly, though of course the instruction was unnecessary; his backseater was already trying to jam the enemy trackers. The Roland — a German missile — was a nasty medium-range missile that could detect aircraft at roughly ten miles and nail it around four. The RWR had it pegged straight ahead, five miles away, two miles north of Splash.

“Missiles in the air! Missiles!” yelped the nav.

Once launched, the Roland moved at roughly 1.5 times the speed of sound, somewhat slower than the Tornado was capable of. But Conrad was in a poor position to outrun it; his best bet were the countermeasures his beackseater was furiously working, along with the fact that the Roland had been launched just beyond its lethal envelope.

He flooded the afterburners and pushed the Tornado into a sharp jink. Newton’s Laws struck him with a vengeance, gravity smashing every inch of his body. He flicked his wrist left, flicked right; the fly-by-wire controls faithfully fought the turbulent shockwaves to fulfill his commands, whipping the plane back and forth to accentuate the confusion.

“Lost one!” yelped the navigator, but the words barely registered. Conrad could feel the second missile, gunning for him. It had somehow managed to follow his twists and was now behind him, burning through its second stage in an all-out effort to bring him down.

But if it was a race, Conrad was going to win. He shut out the voices blaring in his headphones, shut out the blur of the sky, the rumble of the jets, the hard rush of gravity against his chest and face. His fingers were wrapped on the throttle, holding the Turbo-Unions at the firewall.

It came down to him and the missile and the plane. Sister Sadie wasn’t giving in, and neither was he.

Roland would be reaching the end of its range now.

A fresh rush of adrenaline hit Conrad’s veins. He was going to make it; he had it.

This sure as fuck was fun.

“Come on you bleedin’ bugger,” he yelled at the missile, laughing again. “Hit me, fucker. I dare you. I dare you.”

And then it did.

CHAPTER 13

Hack steadied his hand on the stick. At least three different transmissions overran each other on the radio. His RWR blared, and he could see a furious geyser of anti-aircraft artillery rising in the sky off his right wing.

He had the missiles beamed, riding away from their Doppler radar in a way that made his airplane invisible to their seeker. In any event, they didn’t seem to be looking for him.

It wasn’t clear from the cacophony in his headset whether the Weasel had launched at the battery or not. Nor was he sure where the Tornado was.

The SAM launcher seemed to be about eight miles to the northwest of his position, which would put it about two, maybe three from the target — damn close when they attacked, within its lethal range.

Depending on how well the Iraqis were trained, it could take them a while to reload the double launcher.

Or not.

Hack looked for the Tornado. It had swept north after its second recon run and should be coming back at him, overhead and to the left.

An English voice broke through the radio static, but Hack couldn’t decipher the words as another excited voice filled the frequency, an F-16 pilot screaming that he was being targeted in another encounter far from here. The voice burst loud, then cleared, as if it were a figment of his imagination.

“Splash One is zero-eight from Splashdown,” said the pilot of the lead helicopter, apparently unaware of what had happened. “Sister Sadie, what’s our sitrep?”

As if in answer, a large gray cloud blossomed in the northwest sky. An orange dot pricked through the gray, then disappeared.

“I’m hit,” said the RAF pilot a few seconds later. “Wing damage.”

“Splash One and Two, hold your positions,” ordered Hack. “Sister Sadie, give your position.”

Preston heard only the hard pull of his own breath. Hack glanced at his warning radar — clean. Nudging his stick gently to the right, he rode the Hog in the direction of the Tornado.

And the Rolands.

“Sister Sadie, repeat.”

A garbled tangle of words answered him; Hack deciphered “hit” but nothing else.

“I can see him,” said Doberman in Devil Three. He gave a heading and then his own position — Glenon was at least three miles further north than he should have been.

“Watch yourself,” answered Hack.

“I’m on you,” said Doberman, obviously in contact with the RAF plane, though Hack couldn’t pick up the British pilot’s response.

“You’re hit bad,” said Doberman. “Bail.”

Hack tried hailing Sister Sadie on the Emergency Guard frequency, but got no response.

“Missile away,” said a distant voice.

The Weasel, launching on the site.

“What are we doing?” asked A-Bomb. The last part of his transmission was overrun by the F-16 flight again.

“I need radio silence here,” barked Hack. “Devil Three, stay with him. Two, you’re on my back.”

Preston slid southward, trying to psych out where exactly the Tornado pilot would go out. The assault team was behind him and on his left; the Tornado, Doberman and his wingman ought to be crossing straight ahead.

“What’s going on?” asked Splash One.

“Hold your position,” Hack told him. “Repeat, all Splash aircraft, hold your positions.”

And shut the hell up, he wanted to add.

A brown and red stone shot into his windscreen, a meteor tossed down from space. Hack jerked back reflexively before realizing it was the Tornado, several miles off.

He’d never seen a plane on fire before. It didn’t seem to be a plane at all. It didn’t seem real.

Doberman and his wingman were lower, much lower, tracking southward behind the stricken plane.

What the hell had Doberman been doing so far north?

“Bail out, Sister Sadie! Bail out!” Hack said, pushing the mike button.

“Rolands are still hot. They’re gunning for you, Doberman!” said A-Bomb over the squadron frequency.

“Fuck them,” said Doberman.

Hack’s RWR lit up, warning of a fresh salvo of anti-aircraft missiles. Where the hell was that Weasel and his SAM killers?

CHAPTER 14

Doberman cursed as a fresh wave of turbulence buffeted his wings, shaking the Hog so hard, his head nearly hit the canopy despite his snugged restraints.

The Iraqis had launched two more missiles; maybe at the Tornado and maybe at him or his wingman.

“Chaff and go lower,” he told Gunny in Devil Four, hoping his wingman had the good sense to take evasive maneuvers and not hang on him as he continued to track the stricken RAF plane. “Sister Sadie, if you’re getting out, now’s the time to go.”

The British pilot said something in return, but static swallowed his words. The rear quarter of the plane was engulfed in flames, and yet it flew on seemingly untroubled by the massive damage, picking up speed as it flashed over Doberman.

“Don’t they have ejection seats in those fucking planes!” Doberman shouted.

The red flames were replaced by a large, hairy spider that grew in an instant and disappeared. Doberman cursed, then yanked his plane hard to left, pushing out electronic tinsel in case the Rolands were still behind him.

Which they were.

The Roland was designed as a medium-range surface-to-air system, intended to work as part of a more comprehensive antiair net, but nasty enough on its own. One of the things that made it particularly difficult to defeat was its ability to track very-low-flying objects; once the missile attached itself to your back, it could trail you even below fifty feet.

Glenon knew that, but hitting the deck was his only defense — the missile was several times faster than the Hog, hard to fool with tinsel, and couldn’t be defeated by the primitive ECM pod slung beneath the A-10’s wing. Doberman and his wingman had only one thing going for them: They were flying Hogs. They slashed across the terrain, throwing out electronic tinsel as they cut, hoping the missile would grab for the electronic ghosts or at least hesitate enough for the Hogs to get away.

Doberman pushed his nose into the dirt, braving the buffeting wind as he ran less than thirty feet from the desert floor. And he urged the missiles onto his back — no way could he live with himself if they took out Gunny.

The warning gear snapped clear. Either he’d ducked the missiles or they were about to crunch his tailfins.

Doberman pulled back on the stick, taking a half breath as he twisted his head, searching for his wingman. A tree of smoke filled the left quarter of his canopy — one of the Rolands had exploded on the ground. Glenon jerked his attention to the other side, and spotted a dark green hulk running off his right wing, almost behind him, flying so low he thought for a second it was a truck.

“You okay, Four?”

“They tell me I am,” said his wingman. “Six is clean. Rolands went off course and splashed in the grass.Weasel says he got ‘em, but I want pictures.”

“You’re starting to sound like A-Bomb.”

“Aw shucks. I’m blushing.”

“Three.” Doberman pushed the Hog’s nose up, trying to puzzle out where he was.

“Devil Three, acknowledge,” said Preston, his voice blurring into static as the rest of his transmission was lost.

“Three. Didn’t hear a word you said, Hack.”

“Are you okay?”

“We’re fine.” Doberman snapped his finger off the transmit button. What did the fuckhead think? Just because he wasn’t flying a fast-mover he couldn’t duck SAMs?

“Weasel reports Rolands are down. SA-2 is not active. Watch the guns at Splashdown. What’s your position?”

Gunny’s excited voice snapped in before Doberman could answer.

“Two chutes! Two chutes! I have two parachutes off my nose, two miles maybe. Shit! Those bastards are luckier than a dog in a whorehouse!”

CHAPTER 15

Captain Conrad watched as his navigator hit the ground a good thirty seconds ahead of him, tucking his feet and falling over into the sand. The wind took the nav’s parachute, pitching him along the ground like a bag tossed in the street.

That was all the hint Conrad needed — he got his legs moving as he touched down and worked the snaps off with his hands, hoping to release the chute and step off like a pro. He undid one but not the other and ended up dragged along as ignobly as his backseater. The wind was so strong it finally yanked the chute away, leaving him to roll in the dirt for several yards before his momentum finally gave out.

He stopped facedown, helmet in the dirt; he did a pushup to his knees, then began laughing uncontrollably.

Damn sight for anyone to see, he thought. Good thing his squadron mates hadn’t been along or he’d never hear the end of it.

As Conrad hauled off his helmet the ground shook with the roar of an approaching jet. A pair of American A-10s whipped directly overhead, no more than thirty feet off the desert sand — so close, in fact, that he thought for a moment the Yanks might reach out a hand and try to grab him.

They didn’t. But they circled back so low and slow he could see the lead pilot give him a thumbs up. He waved, then ran to Charlie.

“Up and at ‘em, Charles,” he told the lieutenant, who was hunched over the sand.

“Stomach’s not right,” said the backseater, leaning over to retch.

Not terribly anxious to succumb to the power of suggestion, Conrad quickly backed away. He took out his emergency radio, dialing in the distress frequency. The A-10A pilot answered his hail in under thirty seconds.

“Bravo Baker,” he said, beginning the elaborate recognition procedure, which would culminate with a series of personal questions to prove he was who he said he was.

“Fuck that,” answered the Yank. “I’m Doberman. You guys okay?”

“Tip top,” Conrad.

“Yeah. Hang on while we figure this out.”

“Quite.”

“Come again?”

“Ten-four,” Conrad told him, trying to toss up a little American slang.

“What are you saying?”

“Standing by,” he responded.

The wind howled, shoving gritty sand into Conrad’s eyes; he removed his gloves to clear them, then retrieved his sunglasses from beneath his survival vest for protection. By now the sun had set and the dark glasses turned the landscape into a mass of shadows, blurry grays and blacks, like walls being moved toward him. Conrad lifted the glasses slightly away from his face, holding them like shields against the dust and looking sideways. A thick cyclone of soot rose directly south of him — Sister Sadie.

He ran back to his navigator, who was now sitting cross-legged on the desert sand. Nevins had pulled off his survival vest and found a cap and scarf in his gear.

“You look like a nomad,” Conrad joked.

“Fucking wind,” said Nevins, reaching into a flap pocket on his pant leg. He removed a pair of goggles.

“Thanks,” said Conrad, grabbing them.

“Fuck!”

“Make sure your radio works,” Conrad told him, ignoring the protest. “Quickly. Our contact is Devil Three — Doberman. Go on.”

Nevins took out the radio reluctantly, still a little jittery with stomach upset as he hooked in the earplug. As soon as Conrad saw that he had hailed the Yank, he began trotting away.

“Hey! Hey!” shouted the nav.

“I’ll be back!” Conrad told him, turning and running backwards. “Have to pay my respects.” He wheeled and ran for all he was worth toward the wreckage of their plane, more than a mile away.

CHAPTER 16

Hawkins had trouble both hearing the co-pilot and keeping his balance as the Chinooks hovered above a stretch of empty desert about twenty-five miles southwest of their target. Worse, he couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. He knew the reconnaissance Tornado had gone down — but what about the target? Was it clean, hot or what?

“Devil One isn’t answering,” said the co-pilot.

“Try again.”

“Sergeant Williams in Splash Two wants you.” Tired of trying to act as a go-between, the co-pilot slipped the bulky British headset back to Hawkins, who held it to his ear, bracing himself against the back of the seat with his leg.

“What’s up?” he asked the SAS sergeant who was heading the team in Splash Two.

“My question to you,” answered the sergeant.

“I’m trying to figure it out. We don’t have target data.”

“Heli pilot’s worried about sand getting in his engines,” said the sergeant.

“So’s ours,” Hawkins told him.

“Losing light.”

Hawkins and his men were used to working at night, but neither the Apaches nor the Hogs were equipped with the sophisticated gear that would allow them to support a night operation. Nor were the Chinooks and the SAS teams fully equipped to do so. Escaping as night fell was one thing, but run into serious defenses and the darkness could work against them.

Defenses that could take down a Tornado were by definition serious. But was the missile at the site, or one of the launchers several miles away that they’d been briefed on?

“Stand by Splash Two,” Hawkins told the sergeant. He tapped the co-pilot, who’d turned his attention to his instruments. “Can you get me Devil One?”

“I’ll try. Wind is kicking up fierce down here,” he added. “One your Apaches is turning back.”

“What?”

“Engine trouble. The sand, no doubt.”

“Get me the fucking Hogs. Shit.”

CHAPTER 17

Everything was falling apart. They had a plane down, deep in enemy territory. They had no intelligence on the landing zone, and had lost the element of surprise.

And now one of the Apaches had engine trouble.

None of it was Hack’s fault, and yet there was a hole in the side of his stomach. He tried to fight off the doubt that crept all around him, tried to focus on the rapidly dimming landscape outside his canopy. It wasn’t too late; they could still nail this thing down if he kept his head, if everyone kept their heads.

“Devil One, Devil One,” squawked one of the British helicopter pilots, though he didn’t identify himself. “What is this situation? We need a sit rep. Repeat, sit rep.”

“Devil One. British craft, identify yourself.”

Static.

As he transmitted again, Preston checked his fuel. They had between thirty and forty minutes of linger time left before nudging reserves. The dash to the target area would eat up nearly ten of that.

A new voice came back from the RAF Chinook — Hawkins.

“Devil Leader this is Splash Commander. What do we have?”

“Sister Sadie is down; we’re attempting to establish contact,” he told Hawkins.

“What’s the sit at Splashdown?”

“I’m still working on that,” said Preston. “Sadie was hit before he could tell us.”

“We need to know now.”

“No shit, captain,” he said, anger finally spiking. He hated the Delta assholes — he was tempted, sorely tempted, to tell them to go and fly right into the frickin’ SAMs.

“What?”

Hack hated everyone and everything connected with this stinking operation, the RAF crew for getting shot down, Knowlington for making him take the mission.

He hated himself. He was blowing it big time.

“I’ll get to you when I know something,” he told Hawkins, abruptly flipping back to the squadron frequency and hailing Doberman.

“Are you in contact with Sadie?”

“Affirmative.”

“Nice of you to tell me.”

“I’ve been trying to raise you,” said Doberman.

“Does Coyote know?” he asked, referring to the AWACS controller, who would alert SAR assets.

“Can’t raise him either,” said Doberman.

The whole damn mission was going to hell.

“Hold on. I’ll take care of it,” said Preston.

“Shit, we have company,” said Doberman.

“Repeat Three.”

“Vehicles, three vehicles. Must be homing in on our boy’s transmission. Shit.”

“Smoke ‘em,” cut in A-Bomb.

“Yeah, no shit,” responded Doberman. “Gunny, on my back.”

“Covered.”

Preston went back to Hawkins. “Give me your position.”

“We’re in the same fucking position we were in ten minutes ago. What is the situation at Splashdown? Repeat. What is the situation…”

Hack pushed the transmit button before Hawkins finished. The mission was finished now — there was no sense sending the assault team to rescue men who might or might not be there, when there were two downed fliers who needed help ASAP.

“Splash One, stand by for coordinates to pick up Sister Sadie’s crew.”

“Fuck you,” sputtered Hawkins.

“Fuck yourself,” said Hack. “Stand by for coordinates. Iraqi vehicles en route. We’re on them.”

He could see Doberman starting to dive to the north, and worked out a vector and distance for the Chinook.

“Tell the helicopter pilot to look for the burning trucks ten miles to your north,” he added. “Go!”

CHAPTER 18

In life, Tornado GR.Mk 1A ZA981 SS Sister Sadie had worn a speckled brown coat, the latest fashion in desert dress. In death, she wore a very appropriate black, her twisted frame wrenched across about a quarter of a mile of shadowy desert. Her arms had been shorn off and her tail scattered into several pieces, but Conrad was interested specifically in her fuselage — and even more specifically in the mission tapes, which would show what her sensors had recorded. Always an agreeable girl, Sadie had had the good sense to wedge herself into the dirt at only a slight angle, making it comparatively easy for Conrad to pick his way through the mangled metal and retrieve the video.

Except that the cartridge refused to budge.

“Haven’t all day, Sadie,” Conrad complained, but the stricken plane refused to give up her prize. The pilot stepped back, unholstered his personal pistol — a German Glock, as it happened — and fired a salvo at the locking mechanism guarding the access panel.

Sadie groaned, but the foreign bullet glanced harmlessly away. Conrad tried again. This time, the ricochet nearly skinned the side of his face.

He threw himself against the plane, this time putting the gun to much better use as a hammer. Smashing back and forth, he was finally able to wedge the barrel in and use it as a lever. He paused, took out the gun and contemplated a fresh attack, when the tape inexplicably spit out.

“Thanks, Sadie.” Conrad slapped the plane on her fuselage, then stood back and gave her a proper salute. But any temptation to linger was overwhelmed by the sound of trucks approaching across the desert. He took two steps away, turning to his right as the vehicles emerged from the shadows, ripping through the dust no more than a quarter-mile away. They must be coming for the wreckage he thought, starting to run, but as he did a shell landed less than fifty yards away, throwing him forward in the grit.

But that was just as well — a machine-gun began firing from one of the vehicles, its stream of red tracers slicing through the air only a few inches from his head.

And then a roar from above overwhelmed the noise of the Iraqi vehicles and their hellish gunfire. The rattling sound could only be properly described as the snort from a very angry animal.

A Hog, as a matter of fact.

Conrad’s guardian angels had arrived.

CHAPTER 19

Doberman nudged his rudder pedals, lining up the crosshairs on the shadow closest to the downed Tornado. Before he could press the trigger, red sparks spewed from his target.

“Aim higher,” he told the enemy armored personnel carrier. Then his thumb danced over the trigger button, first to one side, then the other. “Bing-bang-boing,” he said, unleashing a flood of spent uranium at the Iraqi vehicle. The spray decimated the enemy, like hot water eliminating a spider.

Doberman worked his pedals, pushing his aim toward a second shadow; another bing-bang-boing and more than a hundred shells erased the Iraqi vehicle, this one apparently a truck with some type of medium-sized gun mounted over the cab.

Glenon pulled back, sweeping around as he temporarily lost his bearings in the dark shadows of the fast-approaching night.

“I have something moving near the plane,” said Gunny, viewing the scene through his Maverick’s IR seeker in Devil Four.

“Pilot?”

“Uh, can’t see. Should we drop a log?” said his wingman, asking if they should light a flare.

“Hold off. Hang on. Fuck.”

Doberman yanked his stick back with all his weight, just barely pulling off the ground. Paying attention to the windscreen instead of his instruments, he’d inadvertently dropped too low. Flying the Hog at night wasn’t necessarily difficult, but you had to pay attention to what you were doing.

He circled south of the two trucks and the damaged airplane, the altimeter nailed on three hundred feet above ground level. Devil Four was circling several thousand feet above and slightly to the south.

The players were getting hard to see. A flare might be a good idea.

Except it would help the Iraqis find their guys.

One of the remaining trucks fired its machine-gun, the stream of bullets arcing across the desert as Doberman passed. He rolled the Hog and sailed into what amounted to a 165-degree turn, pushing the wings out level as he got the nose angled onto the shadow. He lost speed and altitude — he was maybe ten feet off the ground when he put his nose on his target. Devil Three didn’t seem to mind, though, nor did she complain when he kicked the Avenger 30mm Gatling back into action, a full three-second burst obliterating the tiny stream of machine-gun fire that was now aimed directly at his face.

Something scraped against his belly as he let off the trigger. For a moment Doberman thought he actually did hit the ground — he was very, very low. But as he pulled up past the smoked target, he realized it must have been bullets from the Iraqi striking the Hog’s titanium armor.

If they’d done any damage, the emergency lights weren’t admitting it. All systems were in the green.

“Saved the best for last,” said Gunny. “You nailed a tank. T-54, looks like.”

“Three,” said Doberman. He’d flailed back at the target so fast he hadn’t even known what he was hitting.

“Thanks, Yanks!” shouted a voice over the emergency rescue band. It was Sister Sadie’s pilot.

“Devil Three to Sadie. What the hell? I had you a mile further north.”

“Quite,” responded the pilot. “Nav’s still there. I had to retrieve a souvenir.”

God damn Brits were worse than Hog drivers.

“Stay put, would you?” Doberman told him. “We have to smoke the rest of the Iraqis so the helicopters can come in..”

“It’s a starlit night and I feel all right,” sang the voice, laughing as if it were karaoke night. “But I’ve got company.”

“What the fuck are you saying?”

“More lorries down here,” said the Brit, his voice only marginally more serious.

“Yeah, whatever. Stay out of the cross fire, okay?”

Lorries? Did he mean trucks?

Goddamn Brits couldn’t even speak English.

CHAPTER 20

Hawkins tried to control his anger as he unfolded the paper map over the hump of controls between the two pilots at the front of the Chinook. The SAS sergeant slapped his small flashlight twice without getting the light to work.

“Figures,” muttered the sergeant.

Hawkins reached into his pocket and got his own.

“We’re here,” he said, pointing. “Sadie’s crew is about here.”

“Further south, and they’re busy,” said the pilot, pointing to the side glass. Flashes lit the horizon.

If they were going to hit the base, they had to get moving. The Apaches were well into their fuel stores, and even with the planned behind-the-lines refuel, they’d be pushing things. The Hogs, too, must be nearing their limit.

On the other hand, he couldn’t take the risk of flying the helicopters anywhere near serious antiair defenses.

Which, basically, was what Preston was concerned about, even if the shithead hadn’t spelled it out.

He didn’t even know Preston, but he had worked with two of the pilots in the support group, Doberman and A-Bomb. If those guys thought there was a problem, there must really be a problem.

One way or another, they’d probably lost the element of surprise.

Better to fail than never to try.

Unless failure meant twenty dead men.

“Our chaps,” said Sergeant Burns.

“They’re all our chaps,” said Hawkins. “We’re going to have to scrub.”

“I agree,” said the pilot.

Burns didn’t say anything. Hawkins bent his head slightly, studying the SAS sergeant’s face in the wash from the dimmed cockpit lights.

“Best thing,” said the commando finally.

“Let’s go grab the Tornado crew,” Hawkins told the pilot.

“Wait!” The co-pilot put out his hand, touching Hawkins as he listened to a transmission over the headphones. “The A-10s say there’s a second wave of vehicles approaching. They may light a flare. Looks like quite a snit.”

“Get me the Apaches, and then Devil One,” said Hawkins. “Plot that course but hold until it’s clear.”

CHAPTER 21

Doberman swung back to the south, climbing steadily. Devil Four completed the far end of a figure-eight about a half-mile ahead, still flying at six thousand feet.

“Three pickups that I see,” Gunny told him over the squadron frequency. “Moving toward the wreckage. I can nail them with the Mavericks.”

“Hold off,” Doberman told him.

Using Mavericks on relatively soft targets like pickups was a bit of an overkill. Had A-Bomb been his wingman, the response would have been along the lines of, “Going for the best bang for the buck,” or “Spoken like a real taxpayer.” But Gunny simply acknowledged.

“Devil Three, this is Devil One,” said Preston. “What’s your status?”

“Circling over the crew,” said Doberman. “Three Iraqi vehicles approaching, about a mile off, little more. There may be some ground troops near our guys. Can’t tell.”

“Flare?”

“Figure it’ll help them more than us,” said Doberman. “More than the Brits.”

“Concur. Can you take the pickups?”

“Shit, yeah.”

“They’re going to send the Apaches north to help out. Chinooks will stand by to pick up the boys a mile back,” responded Hack. “Lay it out for the Apaches.”

The way Hack said it, connecting the dots for him like he was an imbecile, pissed Doberman off. Preston was just a little too perfect and crisp, the kind of guy who never did any wrong and let you know it. He thought the rest of the world couldn’t cross the street if he wasn’t there to take its hand.

Doberman steamed while Hack read the com frequency for Splash leader — which of course he already had — and then reminded him that he was getting close to bingo — which of course he already knew.

“Repeat, Devil Three?” asked Hawkins, the Splash commander, as he snapped onto their frequency.

“Need you to move exactly three point five north, precisely north, from your position,” said Doberman, working it out in his head. “When you’re ready I’ll have our boys give you a flare.”

The Apache commander got a little pushy when he clicked on, saying they were less than three minutes from the battlefield and asking which vehicles he could take.”

“None. They’re all ours,” snapped Doberman, pushing the Hog’s wing over. “Finders keepers.”

CHAPTER 22

Captain Conrad played striker on the squadron soccer team, and while he was perhaps not the most gifted forward in the RAF, he had a certain quality of persistence and stamina that translated into points late in the game.

As it was late in the game now, he put his stamina to good use, running for all he was worth from the shadow of Sister Sadie as a flare shot upwards in the distance.

One of the vehicles the A-10 had hit earlier flashed with a fresh explosion as its gas tank caught fire. The noise caught him off-guard, unsettling his balance and sending him face-first into the ground. Conrad dropped the tape and had to hunt for it on his hands and knees, patting down the desert but finding nothing but sand.

He heard a roar and then loud secondary explosions. Grappling in the dust, he heard the distinct thump of approaching helicopters. Then he felt a rush of air — the A-10 had returned to attack the vehicles, which were closer to him than he’d thought.

The plane descended so low that its bullets passed only a few yards away, streaming in front of his eyes like a surgeon’s laser beam excising a tumor. The desert shrieked as the American lit his weapon in three distinct, brief bursts. Blue, red, green and orange lightning lit sideways across the sand, erupting in a pure white geyser so intense that dirt and smoke and grit filled Conrad’s eyes. He threw his head down, rubbing his face with his sleeve; he managed to clear one eye and groped again for the tape. Finding it, he stood, running again toward the sound of the approaching helicopter.

A small flare shot upward. His mate, no more than a quarter mile away.

Something this and dark shot between them.

Conrad stopped quickly. There were shadows all around; with the battle smoke, falling darkness, and swirling sand, he’d completely lost his bearings.

The A-10 danced above him, cannon roaring again.

He could hear a truck motor and the clicks of automatic rifle fire approaching. He thought he could see the moving shadow. Red glints pricked closer.

He waited for the Hog to hit the truck. But there were no geysers of burning metal, no secondary explosions.

Conrad dropped to his knees. He pulled his emergency radio out of his vest, but couldn’t hear anything over the roar. He checked his settings, tried again, then tossed it down and fumbled for his flare gun. He fired a charge — not skyward but at the vehicle. A hiss, a whoosh, the sound of glass smashing — but the truck kept coming.

He couldn’t find another flare, tossed the gun, and lost the radio, but he held onto the tap. He ran to his right, the only direction where there were no shadows. He smelled burning metal, and something like antifreeze,

Trucks. Right behind him.

For the first time since he’d come to the Gulf — for the first time ever in his twenty-six years — he realized there were limits to life, realities that had nothing to do with his abilities or strength or will. Heavy caliber bullets cut a swath ten feet away; the truck barreled on. Conrad willed himself to his feet again, pushing to the right, resigned to go out the way a soldier wanted to go out, fighting at least. He reached for his pistol, got it in his hand, and whirled around just in time to see the shadow of the Iraqi vehicle, an open-back Zil, crest a small hill less than ten yards away.

Then oblivion arrived.

But not for him. Red flames burst upwards as the heavy fist of the A-10A Thunderbolt II smashed down on the Iraqi vehicle. The night tore in two as Conrad flew backwards, propelled by some superhuman force that left him dazed and disoriented, but intact.

And with the video still in his hand.

He managed somehow to get back on his feet, realized he had both eyes open now, though they hurt like hell. He couldn’t hear. His body seemed to feel the swirl of the battle continuing. Wind, sand, cordite, blood flew into his face.

Something fluttered a few yards away. A heli.

No, it was a wolf, snapping for him.

More like an Apache war bird, her Gat swiveling beneath her chin, so close it could poke him in the chest.

Conrad threw himself onto the helicopter’s right skid. “Go!” he yelled. “Go! Go!”

And it did, skittering backwards a moment, twisting its body, then running a half-mile south to a calmer place where the others were waiting and where Conrad, back to himself, began laughing hysterically as two burly SAS men pried him off the rail and hustled him to safety.

CHAPTER 23

Part of him wanted to be philosophical — sometimes things went this way, all to hell.

But another part, a bigger part — a part that had driven Horace Gordon Preston to excel in school, in sports, in the Air Force — couldn’t accept defeat, not even a hint of one. Horace Gordon Preston couldn’t abide failure. And that part made him look for a way to salvage something, to find something to take home, something to notch, to banish the taste if not erase the memory.

That was the reason, the only reason, he thought of the Roland launcher when the AWACS controller told him that the Weasel had failed to knock it out.

Logic argued against attacking it. The SAM system completely overmatched the A-10 and its operators had already proven they knew how to use it.

But logic didn’t count for much, especially after Hawkins’s disgusted tone when he agreed that the mission had to be scrubbed.

A tone that implied it was Preston’s fault.

Delta dickwad.

“Two, I want you to follow me down to seventy-five feet,” Hack told A-Bomb.

“Roger that,” replied A-Bomb, without even asking what their course heading was.

Maybe O’Rourke had read his mind. In any event, Hack was grateful that his wingman didn’t question his judgment as he pushed his plane into the howling wind and tipped northeast, vectoring for the Roland’s approximate position. When he passed through five hundred feet, the wind increased exponentially and the Maverick-heavy Hog’s air speed dropped below two hundred knots. He pushed still lower, aiming to get under the Roland radar, falling through four hundred… three hundred… two hundred.

The wind whipped up in a fury so intense that the plane moved straight downward at one point, dropping another fifty feet in a second. And then miraculously, inexplicably, everything went silky smooth. Preston eased his grip on the stick as the altimeter nailed fifty feet, air speed climbing back toward three hundred miles an hour.

At night, in the dark, even over flat terrain, three hundred miles an hour feels incredibly fast when you are less than a hundred feet off the ground.,Shadows leap up at you, hands trying to pull you down to earth. The Hog lacked terrain-following radar; the only night-vision equipment at Hack’s disposal was the IR seeker on the Maverick, which offered a very limited view. His knowledge of what lay ahead was based on a relatively primitive map which experience had shown was not always one hundred percent precise. His sense of where exactly he was relied heavily on a navigation system proven to be less than one hundred percent reliable.

Logic would have, should have, sent him home. But logic no longer had a place in Horace Gordon Preston’s cockpit. He slammed the throttle to max as he neared the crunch zone, dividing his attention as evenly as possible between the RWR, the windscreen, and the Mav’s display, which ghosted several buildings, a road, more buildings, but no SAMs.

“Zeus on your right,” warned A-Bomb, and the next instant the sky filled with a stream of tracers, a hose of red fire spurting about two o’clock off his nose. “Mine.”

Something clicked in Hack’s brain and he nudge the Hog gently, pitching her on her axis to bring her path more slightly west as A-Bomb fired an AGM at the gun, whose errant fire was obviously optically aimed. Hack looked to the Maverick screen, saw a series of buildings and the edge of a river, then lost everything momentarily; the optical sensor jangling for some unknown reason.

When the screen flashed back, Preston saw a low-slung chassis shape in the upper right-hand corner. He slid the cursor over and clicked his trigger to fire.

He hadn’t locked on the Roland, however. A boneheaded, freshman-nugget, idiotic, deadly mistake. There was a flare and a launch — the missile operator firing the missile blind.

Not blind, exactly, just without ground guidance. The Roland was fully capable of finding its own target once launched, and if its kill probability wasn’t nearly as high in manual mode, it was deadly nonetheless. Hack cursed himself, hitting flares and chafe, kicking right quickly, trying to outrun the fire that suddenly ignited in his stomach. Gravity punched him in the chest and pushed at his neck, and a voice deep inside told him it served him right for being such a fuckup, for not having what it took — for choking when it was all on the line.

He zigged left, right, felt the missile piss through its first stage, go terminal — he felt it reach for him, then saw it, or saw something anyway, a large black shadow that miraculously sailed right over his head and kept going.

Then the ground exploded almost below him. Devil One bucked, then shot clear, her nose pointing due south.

“I’m on your six,” said A-Bomb. “Splash one slightly used missile launcher. I’m thinking the Brits owe us big time. You figure they stock Watneys, or are we going to have to settle for Bass?”