Fort Apache

PROLOGUE

Private Smith and Private Jones had spent the whole day arguing about the Super Bowl. So when their duty shifts wound down, Private Smith found a football and tossed it to Jones.

“Go long,” said Private Jones, dropping back to unleash one. “Here comes a bomb.”

Smith had played tight end in high school. He’d done pretty damn well, too; made all-county his junior and senior year. People used to say he ate defensive backs for breakfast, or at least lunch.

So when he put his head down and darted across the Saudi desert in a post pattern, he felt as if he were reliving a little of his old glory. He felt damn good, turning back with impeccable timing as Jones’ bomb arced overhead.

One second, the pigskin fluttered in the evening sky, headed for his outstretched arms.

The next second it had been swallowed whole by a dark angel of Hell.

The demon swallowed the ball and kept coming. Smith threw himself head-first into the sand. He thought he was a dead man. He said the only prayer he knew.

“Now I lay me down to sleep.”

His words were drowned by the roar. The ground shook so hard that he thought the devil best was chewing him whole.

Then he realized it had passed him by.

“Yo, what the hell are you doing?” asked Jones, nudging him in the back with his foot as the ground stopped shaking.

Smith turned over. “Didn’t you see that? Shit. I’ve never seen anything like it. That… thing… came right for me.”

“What? The Warthog? They always fly low around here.”

“Warthog?”

“Yeah. It’s an A-10. Mother-fucker of an airplane. Ugly as hell. Kills Iraqis just by lookin’ at ‘em.

Smith pulled himself up. “That was an airplane?”

“Meanest stinking bomber in the whole damn Gulf,” said Jones. “Say, how’d your pants get wet?”