Snake Eaters

CHAPTER 1

Fear made him stand up. Fear cocked his arm and straightened his legs. Fear snapped his finger on the Beretta’s trigger, once, twice. Fear was everything he was, everything he felt, everything he did.

The Iraqi soldier fell to the ground.

Lieutenant William “BJ” Dixon ran forward and grabbed the man’s fallen Kalashnikov rifle. There were shouts and footsteps in the rock quarry behind the soldier he’d just killed. He squatted, assault gun in his hand. He leaned forward to kneel and waited.

Finally, a pistol and then an arm appeared around the corner. The gun fired two, three times, without aiming. One of the bullets ricocheted off the sheer rock next to Dixon, but he did not flinch. He was beyond flinching. He waited for a clear shot.

The hand drew back. Dixon waited. Finally, a face, baffled, scared, poked out from behind the corner.

Dixon pressed the rifle against his side as he pushed the trigger.

In the instant between reflex and reaction, he realized it was his own fear he saw in the man’s face. By rights, Dixon shouldn’t be here in the middle of Iraq, closer to Baghdad than Riyadh. By rights, he should be lying dead on the next hillside where the Delta Force commando patrol he’d been working with as a ground controller had been ambushed and pinned down.

The moment passed. He fired a quick burst from the Russian-made automatic rifle; two of the three bullets struck the Iraqi, the first directly through the man’s heart. Dixon jumped up and ran forward, throwing himself to the ground as he reached the body. Falling past the corner of the sheer rock wall, he fired in the direction the man had come from.

Luck and surprise caught two more Iraqis cold, both barely three yards away. Bullets spewed from Dixon’s gun until it clicked empty.

He rolled upwards, pushing his knee under him and using it to spring along the rock wall toward the two bodies. There were no other Iraqis that he could see. He threw away his empty rifle and grabbed one that had fallen between the two men. As he took it, he looked into the face of one of the soldiers.

The man gasped for breath. Tears streamed down the sides of his face.

Dixon saw that the man wore a belt across his chest with extra clips for the Kalashnikov. He reached down, curled his fingers around the canvas straps, and yanked it free with an immense heave.

The man screamed. His chest and stomach blotted with a fresh spurge of blood. His yelp turned into a spew of vomit.

To shoot him now would be a great mercy.

Dixon hesitated.

Blood mixed with the vomit sputtering from the man’s mouth. He moved his lips, trying to say something.

Less than a week ago, Dixon was merely a pilot; a Hog driver. He’d never dealt with something like this; it simply hadn’t existed for him. He had never looked so closely at death.

That was irrelevant now. His past lay in the ruined smoke of a nearby storage bunker, a probable NBC or nuclear-bacterial-chemical facility the Delta team had targeted for Dixon’s A-10A unit, the 535th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the Devil’s Hogs. Everything Dixon had done until now, from shooting down a helicopter early in the air war to rescuing a Spec Ops sergeant a few hours ago, no longer mattered.

Fear was all. Fear and survival. He had to get the hell out of here before more Iraqis came. He had to run, right now, if he was going to live. There was no time for mercy.

The lieutenant closed his eyes and took a few steps away. Then he cursed and went to the man, forcing himself to look as he pressed the muzzle to the soft temple of the agonized Iraqi and took away his pain forever.

CHAPTER 2

Captain John “Doberman” Glenon heaved himself over the side of the A-10A cockpit, balancing precariously on the narrow steps of the attack plane’s crank-down ladder. Doberman considered himself, without doubt, the luckiest man in the Gulf. He had just managed an emergency landing on a scratch strip controlled by American Special Operations Forces nearly a hundred miles deep in the Iraqi desert. With less than a sneeze worth of fuel in the sump at the bottom of his tanks, he’d fought off a last-second mechanical problem and parked his Hog ten feet from the end of the dangerously short strip.

Until today, Doberman had never really believed in luck. Now he’d belly up to a Lotto machine, blow a year’s pay, and consider it an investment. He felt like he’d just nailed the prom queen.

The desert sun boiled off some of his exhilaration as the soles of his feet scraped along the grit of the sand-swept runway. He was alive against all odds— but he was also deep inside enemy territory, on the ground, with no jet fuel and no chance of getting some anytime soon. The concrete life raft he stood on was protected by less than a dozen Delta Force troopers and a handful of combat engineers who were working feverishly to throw up some sort of defense.

And less than a half-hour before, he’d seen the body of a fellow squadron member sprawled in a rock quarry he and his wingmate had targeted for destruction. Lieutenant William “BJ” Dixon had been a nugget with a knack for getting his butt into places where it didn’t belong, but that had only made Doberman liked him all the more.

“Hey, Dog Man!” Doberman’s wingmate, Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke, ambled over. A-Bomb’s burly body hung half out of his flightsuit. “Where you figure they got the coffee going?”

“What makes you think they got coffee?” said Doberman.

“Green Berets always have coffee,” said A-Bomb. “It’s one of the requirements. Like being an NCO. Spec Ops run special courses on making it under fire.”

Doberman shielded his eyes against the sand and sun as he stared at A-Bomb’s round face. It was hard to tell sometimes whether his wingmate was kidding or not.

Odds were he wasn’t. There were only two things A-Bomb considered sacred: driving Hogs and coffee. He was undoubtedly the only attack pilot in the Air Force who carried a thermos of joe into battle.

“You will find coffee in the second dugout beyond the cement foundation,” said a voice behind them. “Though I would note that the use of the word ‘coffee’ stretches the definition beyond reasonable tolerance.”

Doberman spun around. Only one person in the Gulf spoke like that— Captain Bristol Wong, a Pentagon intelligence analyst who’d had the misfortune of wandering into Devil Squadron’s readyroom shortly after the air war began. He had been promptly shanghaied as the unit’s resident expert on Russian-made air defenses. Despite his prissy nature, Wong was actually a man of considerable talents; he had performed a tandem high-altitude jump earlier in the day to deliver a mechanic to the covert base.

The mechanic happened to be another member of Devil Squadron, Technical Sergeant Rebecca “Becky” Rosen.

Female Technical Sergeant, whose presence here violated any number of regulations, military necessity or not. It was as boneheaded a move as any Doberman had ever heard of.

“Hey Braniac, how was the parachutin’?” asked A-Bomb, slapping Wong on the back so hard the sharp creases momentarily disappeared from the captain’s Spec Ops chocolate-chip camo fatigues. But only momentarily.

Wong carefully removed A-Bomb’s hand from his back.

“The parachuting, Captain, was an elementary operation that could have been accomplished by any member of the Special Forces command. Obviously, I was assigned because Colonel Klee decided he didn’t want me at his base.”

“Gee, you think?” asked A-Bomb.

“As for your being angry with me, Captain Glenon, as I can tell by your red cheeks,” Wong nodded in Doberman’s direction, “I would suggest that the emotion is misdirected. Colonel Klee gave a direct order. I merely carried it out.”

“Klee’s an ass,” spit Doberman.

“Undoubtedly. Nonetheless, given the contingencies involved, his order appeared lawful,” added Wong. “And thus I saw it as my duty to carry it out. A fortuitous event, in any case.”

“How do you figure that?”

“There is now a mechanic here to see after your planes, as well as the helicopters,” said Wong.

Rosen was hardly an expert on helicopters, which were Army aircraft, not Air Force. But before Doberman could say anything more, they were interrupted by a sun-burned middle linebacker who turned out to be the captain in charge of the base.

“I’m Hawkins,” said the man, shoving his fat hand into Doberman’s. “Welcome to Fort Apache.”

Hawkins wore a generic camo uniform without markings of unit or rank, but the snap in his voice left no doubt that he was in charge. He’d also been wounded. There was a thick wrap around his mid-section and another on one of his legs. His rolled up sleeves revealed a series of scrapes and gashes covered with caked-up anti-bacterial ointment. But there was no hint from his manner, let alone his quick movements, that any of these injuries had affected him.

Doberman, who at five-four was short even for a pilot, shook his hand and walked with him to his command post, a makeshift bunker in the concrete ruins.

Fort Apache had been established barely twenty-four hours earlier by Hawkins and his team. It served as a staging and command center for American and British special ops troops looking for Scuds further north in Iraq. The concrete landing strip had been started as an airbase some years before by the Iraqis, and then mysteriously abandoned. Located about five miles from the nearest highway, the concrete strip was surrounded by scrubland and desert. Two AH-6 Little Birds, armed scout helicopters specially adapted to “black” missions, had been assigned to Hawkins team. They were hidden beneath desert-colored tarps just off the concrete.

The original plan had called for Hawkins’ team to capture the strip and lengthen it to at least two thousand feet. That would make it long enough for emergency landings and takeoffs by stricken allied craft heavier than the Hogs. It would also accommodate a four-engined MC-130, the Spec Ops chariot of choice. A specially modified model equipped with an airborne cannon as well as supplies and troops was cooling its heels at Al Jouf, more than a hundred miles away, waiting to make the run north.

It looked like it was going to be waiting a long while. Hawkins had discovered two immense wadis that ran along the ends of the concrete. The dry creek beds could not be filled without massive amounts of debris and cement: even then, the engineers feared the ground would give way under heavy use. Working with prefab steel mesh, the engineers had managed to lengthen the strip to about fifteen hundred feet. But that was it. They had no chance of getting the strip long enough for the intended operations.

“Herky pilot says he could get in if we need him,” Hawkins told Doberman and A-Bomb after they had shed their survival gear. “But there’s no way he can land his C-130 with any sort of load. We’re hoping to get a Pave-Low up with fuel for the helicopters tonight. At the moment I have barely enough in case we have to bug out.”

“What about us?” asked Doberman.

Hawkins frowned.

“Shit,” said Doberman.

“We may be able to run some more fuel up on another Pave-Low tomorrow night,” said Hawkins. “Or maybe they can figure out some sort of drop.”

“Shit, dump some of this coffee in the bladders, Hog’ll purr like a kitten,” said A-Bomb, draining his cup.

“The proximity of Iraqi installations make Pave-Low flights a precarious proposition,” said Wong, belatedly joining the discussion. “The MH-53 family has a significantly larger detection profile. They are likely to be seen as well as heard, if not actually scanned by radar. Their flights would comprise the usefulness of the base, especially if more than one craft was required.”

“And a Herky Bird wouldn’t?” said Doberman.

“A C-130 could, in theory, descend from altitude in a non-apparent trajectory,” said Wong.

“Which means what?” Intel specialists tended to rub Doberman the wrong way, but Wong was in a class of his own.

“I think he means they could make it look like it was going somewhere else,” said Hawkins. He said it like he not only understood but liked Wong— a truly scary thought.

“Correct. But in any event, I would not like to wager on a C-130 landing here, let alone it taking off,” said Wong. “As your landings demonstrated, even the A-10A Thunderbolt II has difficulty, despite its innate short-field capabilities.”

“Nah,” said A-Bomb. “We were just trying to make it look tough.”

Wong twisted his nose, as if his tongue were a windup toy. “At forward-strip weight, the A-10A needs 396 meters to land and 442 meters to take off. Now, depending on the ordnance configuration and fuel load, wind, ambient temperature…”

“Thanks Wong, I know the math,” snapped Doberman. “I just landed, remember?”

“Face it, Dog Man, we’re just ground soldiers now,” said A-Bomb joyfully. “Mud fighters. Snake eaters.”

“If you can handle a gun, you can take a turn as a sentry,” said Hawkins.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb, jumping up. “Give me a 203 and I’ll be happy.”

Before Doberman could ask what the hell a 203 was, Technical Sergeant Rosen entered the bunker.

“Captains.”

Like any experienced sergeant, she said the word in a way that it made it seem she was referring to an inferior rank.

“I thought I asked you not to break my planes.”

Doberman felt his face turn red. “Yeah, something jammed up the decelerons. I couldn’t get it to deploy at first. That’s why I took the lap. Must’ve been a lucky shot from somebody on the ground. I didn’t feel it.”

“Not your plane, sir,” said Rosen. “She looks like you just took her out of the showroom. It’s Captain O’Rourke’s I’m talking about.”

“What’s wrong with my plane?”

“Aside from the coffee stains on the console, you have a hole in the hydraulic line.”

“No shit,” said A-Bomb. “I thought the controls felt a little woody.”

“Woody, sir?” Rosen made a face. “I’m surprised you landed.”

“Nah. Come on.” A-Bomb shrugged.

“Well, it’s so small, you didn’t lose much fluid. But five minutes more and you would have had a hell of a problem. I’m telling you, Captain; you’re lucky.”

“You’re going to fix it, though, right?” asked A-Bomb.

“I don’t know if I can,” said Rosen.

“Shit, we’re talking a Hog here,” said A-Bomb, now fully serious. “All you got to do is stick some bubble gum on the line and fill the reservoir with piss, I’m flyin’ in no time.”

“There’s no bubble gum on this base,” Rosen told A-Bomb. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure I can fix it.”

“Fuck.”

“If I patch it,” she said, “we have to worry about having enough fluid.”

“There’s two separate systems, right?” said A-Bomb. “Tie one off, the other’s good to go.”

“Not quite that simple,” said Rosen.

“Yeah, but you can do it.”

“What I need is something to make a patch,” she said. “I need some clamps and a narrow hose, at a minimum.”

“Shit, there’s probably something you can use on those helos, no?” asked A-Bomb.

“No, sir,” said Rosen as Hawkins bristled behind her. “I don’t know if Captain Hawkins has told you or not, but there’s no Hog juice on this base.”

“Use the helo fuel,” said A-Bomb. “It’s jet fuel, right?”

Hawkins took a step toward A-Bomb and glared at him.

Shotgun shrugged. “Just an idea.”

“Jet fuel’s jet fuel,” said Rosen. She looked at Hawkins. “But the helos are already low. I don’t know if they’d make it down to Saudi if they have to. Their orders are to keep two hours’ worth in reserve, and they say their inside that now.”

She glanced at Doberman. Did the glance mean she thought there was more fuel than Hawkins was letting on? Or did it mean something else?

Doberman wanted it to mean something else, something like:

I wish I could kiss you but there are too many Delta types around and they’d get jealous.

Doberman had had the hots for her since Al Jouf, and he suspected— hoped, really— the feeling was mutual.

“Why don’t you use the fuel you have?” suggested Wong.

“Yeah right,” said Doberman. “I landed with ten minutes of reserve left, if that.”

“Me, too,” said A-Bomb.

“Take Captain O’Rourke’s fuel as well,” said Wong. “Ten minutes plus ten minutes will give you twenty; enough to make the border. You could meet the tanker, top off and come back. Once on the ground, half of your fuel could be loaded into Captain O’Rourke’s aircraft, allowing him to take off once repairs are completed.”

“If repairs are completed,” said Rosen.

“Ten minutes and ten minutes won’t make twenty,” said Doberman. “For one thing, getting off the ground is going to eat up a lot. I doubt there’d even be enough for takeoff.”

“You know what, Dog man? I think Brainiac’s onto something,” said A-Bomb. “I had a good amount sloshing around when I landed. Must’ve been three thousand pounds, at least. Maybe more. Could be five.”

“If you had so much fuel, why didn’t you fly back to Saudi Arabia?”

“What, and leave you all alone?” A-Bomb grinned and shrugged. Five thousand pounds translated into nearly half-full. “We ought to at least check it out. You might be able to do it. Hell, you know every gas gauge ever invented is pessimistic. It’s some kind of oil cartel law or something.”

Hawkins gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Captain Glenon is right,” Rosen said. “Even if we can suck every last drop out and get it into the plane, I don’t know that you’ll have enough to take off and fly to the border, no matter what the gauges say. I don’t know, Captain. You’d be taking a hell of a risk.”

She turned her green eyes toward Doberman. In that instant, he knew he could do it. He knew he could do anything, except stay here where he couldn’t touch her.

“Yeah, well, let’s find out,” said Doberman, his eyes locked on hers. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here useless on the ground.”

CHAPTER 3

Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington slid back in his office chair and craned his neck upwards so he could stare out the small window of the trailer that served as Devil Squadron’s headquarters. All he could see from this angle was blue sky.

Not very appropriate. But at the moment the colonel lacked the energy to find something else to stare at. He’d just come from the “Bat Cave,” where a general in charge of Special Operations had informed him that Lieutenant William James Dixon, temporarily assigned as a ground FAC or forward air controller with a special Delta Force unit, was MIA and presumed killed in Iraq.

Knowlington had been with the Air Force a long time. He’d had three tours in Vietnam in two different aircraft. He’d lost a wingman there, and had punched out once himself. Since then, he’d witnessed three fatal mid-air mishaps, including one where he was flying chase. The colonel knew death; he knew how delicately balanced life really was, how the chance movement of a thin wire at the wrong time upended everything, momentum twisting backwards into flame and destruction. He’d seen death not merely in the lifeless eyes of a pilot tossed from his plane, but in the empty stares of men who’d survived one mission too many. The ones who’d traded their souls to get down to ground safely, only to find the bargain too dear.

And yet, Dixon’s death hit him harder than any other. It hit him physically, pinching the ends of his liver like a forceps plunging into an un-anesthetized body. BJ was just a greenhorn kid, a nugget lieutenant not bright enough to steer clear of hair-brained Special Ops schemes. He’d volunteered for the Iraq mission— volunteered, the asshole! — without Knowlington’s permission.

The fact that the kid had sacrificed his own life to save the life of one of the Delta Force team members angered Knowlington even more. It wasn’t that he begrudged the wounded sergeant Dixon had saved; it was the fact that, in Knowlington’s mind, neither sacrifice was worth what the mission was supposed to achieve. The Delta teams had been planted to finger Scud missiles for Hogs and other fighter-bombers. In Knowlington’s opinion the missiles were tactically useless.

The colonel had reluctantly helped plan the Scud hunting mission and arranged for its support. He had heard all of the arguments for attacking them. They were all political, which in his opinion, was the exact reason not to proceed.

More than the plan irked him. The colonel had banished BJ to a do-nothing desk job in Riyadh the week before as punishment for not giving a full and proper report of a mission on the first day of the air war. At the time, it seemed like the wisest thing to do— a harmless slap on the wrist. But it must not have seemed that way to Dixon. The kid must’ve figured he had to make up for it somehow, even if it meant volunteering to commit suicide.

If Dixon had gone down while flying, Knowlington’s insides might not have stung quite so bad. Flying was a difficult business, even under the best circumstances. In combat, it was always a matter of time and luck. When you climbed into the cockpit and snugged your hat, you knew you were making a deal with Fortune. You could work to put the odds in your favor, but the fact was that X amount of hours equaled Y amount of problems, and Z percentage of those problems were insoluble, no matter how great a flier you were. Sooner or later, you would have no choice but to go for the yellow handle next to the seat. That was the deal, and at some level, conscious or unconscious, you knew the deal and bought into it.

But dying on the ground, in a firefight he’d never been trained to deal with in a place he shouldn’t have been? What sense did that make? Whose deal was that?

Knowlington felt the bile eating all the way out from his gut to his skin. It seared the rims of his eyes and melted the sensation from his hands.

There was a cure, and he knew it well: three fingers worth of Jack Daniels sour mash, straight up in clear glass tumbler. Three fingers worth, barely four ounces, just enough to burn the throat going down, just enough fire to sear the acid, snuff it out.

And then?

More and more and more, a never-ending fire.

The colonel focused his eyes, straining to see something in the blue rectangle of sky. He had work to do, a lot of work. He had to oversee the squadron’s “frag” or fragment of the Air Tasking Order, basically its to-do list for tomorrow’s action. He had to make sure he had the planes and the pilots and the ordinance to carry out his portion of the air war. He had to check on his two Hogs at Al Jouf, assigned to provide air support for the Delta Force at Fort Apache and beyond. He had to find a replacement DO or director of operations, who would serve as the squadron’s second in command. There were two or three personnel matters that Sergeant Clyston, his first sergeant, his top crew dog, his capo di capo, wanted to consult on.

He also had to notify Dixon’s next of kin.

He wanted to work. But more, he wanted, he needed a drink.

Twenty-two days, nearly to the minute. That was how long it had been.

An immense amount of time.

Skull snapped his eyes away from the blank blue rectangle, forced his hands to move into his desk drawer. He took out the computer sheets with the frag and a lined pad, along with notes and a sortie list.

He’d gone through the frag twice already. He had a plan and a backup plan and a contingency plan. He had the next day’s lineup figured out, knew how he was going to rotate the pilots for the next ten days, knew which planes would go where and which would back those up. He had every possible mission configuration covered for the foreseeable future.

Three fingers. Barely a trickle.

An informal AA meeting started at noon every day in one of the chaplain’s quarters in Tent City. If he walked quickly, he could make it.

The Depot, a theoretically off-limits black market club in a bomb shelter just outside the base, lay in the opposite direction, exactly 713 long strides away.

Skull put the paperwork away, took a long breath, and rose from his desk, not quite sure which direction he would take.

CHAPTER 4

Sometime in the early 1960s, in the steaming jungles of Vietnam, a young man pushed the controls on an ancient A-1 Skyraider and fell through a wall of small-arms fire to drop a stick of bombs on a cluster of Viet Cong rebels. The bombs fell with uncanny precision, killing enough of the enemy soldiers to allow a small patrol of Vietnamese regulars and their American advisor to escape the ambush that had trapped them.

In the grand scheme of a horrific war, it was an insignificant event. A few more people dead on either side, one way or the other, didn’t make much difference in Vietnam. But this bombing run was very different than most up to that point— it was at close range, damn accurate, and it did what it was supposed to do: kill bad guys. With all due respect to the brave men who’d flown missions in fast-moving pointy nose jets in the months before the Spad’s sortie, it was a nearly radical development.

And it was radical not because this particular pilot was very well trained or especially brave, though it goes without saying that he was both. What was radical was his plane; a geezer engineered during World War II and pulled through the air by technology the Wright Brothers would have been familiar with.

Intended as a torpedo bomber, the Skyraider could carry a lot of bombs to the fray and provided a very stable platform to drop them from. It was also completely outclassed by jets in every performance category, a slow-moving, low-flying aerial barge.

Which proved to be a serious asset. Flying lower and slower than a jet meant it was better at blowing little stuff up— little stuff like tanks and machine-gun nests and armored cars and mortar sites. It was exactly the sort of thing that mattered the most in that war; and, in fact, in any war.

There were more Spad missions after that first one, a lot more. And it didn’t take the brass long to realize that if the Air Force was going to be in the business of supporting grunts— not that they unanimously agreed it should, but never mind— it needed planes that were more like the A-1, less like the high-tech, go-fast, never-see-ya F-4s. The Spad’s success led, more or less directly, to the Attack Experimental program of 1967, a program that eventually resulted in the A-10A.

Among the many specifications for the AX was the ability to take off from “austere” forward air bases. Fort Apache was about as austere and forward as air bases got. The plank of concrete Doberman was about to walk was actually five hundred feet longer than the original AX specifications called for— but then, this Hog was quite a bit heavier as well.

Uglier, too. But ugly was good.

Snug inside the titanium hull of the ground pounder, Doberman leaned toward the side of the Hog and gave his ground crew, Rosen, a thumb’s up. Then he got ready to go to work. The plane had been positioned at the very edge of the runway, fanny over the sand, nose into the wind. Hawkins had anted up a few gallons and A-Bomb’s tanks had held more fuel than they’d hoped. Even so, with a good clean takeoff Doberman would only have under a half-hour to make the rendezvous with the tanker. The AWACS airborne command post coordinating the air war had been alerted, and he’d been promised priority at the tanker— but Doberman knew from experience that could be a difficult, if not impossible, promise to keep.

Trained as an engineer, the pilot tended to break things down by numbers. The numbers in this case said, no way. There was too little margin for error. But he’d been through so much in the past few days that he was almost comfortable ignoring them.

He took a breath, and told himself he was going for it. He needed a clean crank from the plane’s starter, so he could take off the second his wicks lit.

Another breath; then his fingers flew around the cockpit, push-buttoning himself into gear. The turbines sputtered a half moment, then caught. He was off the brake asking the Hog for full kick-butt-and-let’s-go power as the whine of the GE powerplants revved up and down his spine.

The Hog gave it to him, winding her engines with a cheerful roar. No A-10A liked sitting on the ground, and this one seemed to relish the challenge ahead. She leapt into the fresh breeze more than three hundred feet before the specs said she ought to, snorting at the fools who’d underestimated her.

Doberman nudged the throttle gently once he was airborne, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, determined to give the plane just enough fuel to fly. The Hog seemed to understand, holding steady as her pilot banked toward the south. She jostled in the air until she found a wind current to help push her along.

Earlier in the air war, heavy weather had clogged the sky. The winter had been unusually stormy, even considering that they were in the middle of what passed for the rainy season. Today there was nothing but blue, punctuated above Doberman’s canopy by the contrails of allied jets crisscrossing as they sought to eradicate Saddam’s ability to fight. Over 2,700 sorties would be made today, bringing the war to Iraq with unprecedented ferocity.

The radio was heavy with traffic. Wingmen offered each other advice and reassurance, flights warned others what lay ahead, and controllers scrambled fighters to meet different threats. Doberman caught some chatter from a group of F-111s well behind and above him on his squadron frequency; the bombers were making their way back from an open house hosted by Saddam’s interior ministry. This was apparently the first time they’d attacked during the day, and the pilots were making jokes about how they had to close their eyes so they knew what to do.

Doberman nudged the stick, pushing his nose to the proper compass point slotted in the thick dial in front of his chest. He nailed it, then took a quick run through the fuel and navigational data and glanced at his kneepad, where he’d made a cheat sheet of his fuel calculations to show him whether he was going to make it or not. He was right on course with fifteen minutes to go to the tanker and four minutes of fuel beyond that; assuming Rosen’s measurements and not the somewhat pessimistic fuel gauge were correct.

Had to go with the girl.

He hit his first way marker and made a minor correction. It was just a straight run south now. The course would take him over two known Iraqi positions, and possibly others as well. Doberman checked his altitude; he was at twelve thousand feet.

“Devil One this is Tiger,” said the AWACS controller, checking in.

Doberman acknowledged. The controller confirmed that the tanker, an Air Force KC-135 known as “Bluebeard,” had been alerted and would be ready at the northern end of its track. The planes circled in patterns similar to extended oval racetracks. Depending on the track and circumstances, several tankers could be lined up, with half a dozen thirsty planes queuing to “tank.” Doberman was getting seriously special treatment due to his mission and his fuel state. The KC-135— basically a 707 with jet fuel instead of passengers— not only had to fly to the northern-most point of her orbit just in time to meet him, she was coming down from her usual twenty- or twenty-five thousand feet as well. And nobody was going to give the crew a medal for the extra danger.

Doberman thanked the AWACS controller and worked his eyes carefully through his instruments, triple-checking the gauges and indicators that accessorized his office. With eight minutes left to the border, he was just about to spin his radio over to the tanker’s radio frequency when a warning from the AWACS boomed in his ears.

“Devil One, snap ninety,” the controller shouted tersely.

It was an impossible command, directing him to take a sharp turn he couldn’t afford to make. Immediately, the radar warning receiver on his dash showed him the reason— a ground radar had begun tracking him, undoubtedly with the intention of firing missiles in his direction.

The controller’s next transmission was overrun by a Wild Weasel, a specially modified F-4 Phantom tasked with taking out SAMs. The words flew by so fast Doberman could only get the gist, but that was enough— an SA-2 battery they’d thought dead had just snapped back to life.

Worse, it was launching.

Correct that: had launched. There were two visual sightings; confirmed by radar and by Doberman’s own eyes as they glanced involuntarily to the left. Two small white-and-black puffballs erupted three miles ahead of his left wing. Two dark black slivers arced out of the smoke.

Doberman didn’t have to glance at a cheat sheet or run the numbers in his head to know it was already too late to run away, even if his tanks had been overflowing with fuel.

CHAPTER 5

With his plane temporarily grounded and no Dunkin’ Donut franchise in sight, A-Bomb figured he’d kill a few hours by taking Hawkins up on the sentry thing. Which he assumed was a serious offer, even though the captain had been smirking when he made it. So he went and asked him about it after Doberman took off.

“Uh, with all due respect, Captain,” said Hawkins. “And no offense intended, but you’re Air Force.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. “Do I get one of those 203 grenade launchers? Or do I have to settle for an MP-5?”

“Neither.”

“Have to use what I came with, huh?” A-Bomb slapped the holster of his customized .45, which was wedged inside his customized flight suit. “Fair enough.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Why?” asked A-Bomb. “Is that a job requirement?”

A Delta-Force sergeant listening nearby took Hawkins aside. A-Bomb waited as they stepped a few paces away, talking in voices too soft for him to hear. Finally Hawkins turned back to the pilot and pointed at him.

“Don’t get yourself hurt,” Hawkins yelled. Shaking his head, he stalked off toward the helos at the other end of the base.

“Captain, my name is Sergeant Coors,” the NCO informed A-Bomb. His mouth spread into the standard issue Special Ops smile: half-sneer, half-inside-joke. “I’ll be your tour guide this afternoon, if you’re up to it.”

“Shit yeah, I’m up to it,” said A-Bomb. He pounded the sergeant’s shoulder to emphasize his point. Coors was about A-Bomb’s height but not nearly his weight. The Delta operator grimaced and nodded.

“We have a post out this way we need manned,” said the sergeant, leading the way.

“Great, Beerman,” said A-Bomb, following. “You sergeants are all right.”

“Well thank you, sir. Some of my best friends are captains.”

“What’d you say to Hawkins to convince him?”

“I told him I was going to run your ass ragged,” said Coors. “Sir.”

“Shit, my ass is so big it’s going to take a lot more than you,” said A-Bomb. “But take your best shot.”

Coors led A-Bomb across the cement landing strip behind the two net-camouflaged helicopters to what seemed to be a pair of low sand dunes. In fact, the dunes had been constructed by the sappers from canvas and dirt to conceal Fort Apache’s small motor pool, which consisted of one slightly banged-up FAV.

Officially the abbreviation stood for “fast attack vehicle.” Unofficially, it stood for a lot of other things, all of which began with an “f” word other than “fast.”

The craft was a two-tiered dune buggy straight out of The Road Warrior movie. With a low-profile and extra-large mufflers, the FAV was a Go Kart with guns. The driver manned the bottom cage; the passenger sat on a platform behind him working a machine-gun, TOW missile setup, and maybe a grenade launcher.

Unfortunately, this particular unit had been stripped of weapons. It did, however, move pretty fast. Grit sandpapered A-Bomb’s face as the FAV revved northeastwards to a high point along the western wadi that marked one side of the base. Though technically still part of the desert, the wasteland was far more solid here than further south in Saudi Arabia. There were short scrubby bushes and occasional outcroppings of something similar to weedy grass.

There were also a lot of rocks. Coors didn’t miss one, jostling A-Bomb’s head against the tubular steel backrest. They stopped next to what seemed to be a large pile of shifting sand, but which proved to be a yellow-brown tarp on a row of sandbags when A-Bomb jumped on it from the top of the FAV. He’d never have thought sandbags could be so hard.

“This is a fallback position,” Coors explained, gesturing with the MP-5 he had slung over his shoulder with a long strap. The bags made a slight arc that would provide cover for one or two men. He thumbed northward. “Where we’re going is closer to the road.”

A gray black line edged in front of a series of low hills about three miles away. “We leave the FAV here so it can’t be seen. Remember where this is— there’s a radio and weapons if you need them.”

“You got a little ol’ M-16 in there I can borrow?”

“Sorry, sir, but the idea here is not to do anything that’s going to attract attention, if you know what I mean. The idea is just to watch what’s going on, not to start firing willy-nilly. No offense.”

Coors obviously meant to offend him, but A-Bomb let it pass. He’d dealt with this sort of prejudice before. People assumed that because you were a Hog pilot you liked to blow things up, and because you liked to blow things up you wouldn’t exercise proper judgment when a fat target presented itself. You’d just go blasting away and worry about the consequences later.

Which was true enough, now that A-Bomb thought about it.

The sergeant took a large rucksack from the FAV and began trudging along the top of the wadi in the direction of the road. About three hundred yards from the FAV, Coors stopped in front of a group of small boulders.

A-Bomb stooped down, trying to find an opening in the dirt. He had to hand it to the commandos— this hide was even better than the last one. It was completely invisible, even up close.

“I give up,” he said, straightening. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The hide.”

“Right here,” said Coors with a grin. He dropped the rucksack and pulled a small folding shovel from the side. “Have fun,” he said, handing it to A-Bomb. “I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

“Hold on, Beerman,” said A-Bomb. He grabbed the trooper by the arm and spun him back as he started away. “What’s with the truck?”

“Truck?”

“A hundred yards past that bend,” A-Bomb said, pointing. “Down the dip in the road. See the edge of the roof?”

Coors couldn’t see the roof, but his whole manner changed instantly from sardonic to professional. He dropped to his knees, removing his Steiner field glasses from the rucksack. A-Bomb squatted next to him, waiting while the sergeant adjusted the glasses and scanned back and forth. Finally the pilot leaned over and helped aim the glasses into the right spot.

“Fuck, how did you see that?” asked Coors finally. “That’s three miles away.”

“Two point seven,” said A-Bomb. “If we go up a little further, we can get a better view.”

Without answering, the sergeant began to trot to his right, his head ducked slightly to keep his profile relatively low. He stopped about fifty yards away, with a much better angle.

“Tanker truck,” said the trooper. “Shit. Not moving.”

“Yeah. You mind if I take a look?” asked A-Bomb.

The sergeant hesitated for a second, then handed him the glasses. A-Bomb stood slowly. The sun was behind him, which silhouetted him but prevented any chance glare. The flash of light was likely to be more noticeable, especially given the harshness of the unobstructed sun.

“Doesn’t seem to be anybody in the cab,” said A-Bomb. “You got the hill right behind him. Maybe he’s taking a leak.”

“Long leak,” grumbled Coors.

“You can flank him from that hill.”

Coors tugged his pant leg. “Sit down and let me think about this a minute.”

While the sergeant was thinking, A-Bomb unholstered his pistol. The Colt 1911 Government Model had come from a factory stock maybe thirty or forty years before. Its gizzards had been completely replaced, and it had a beavertail grip safety courtesy of a South Carolina gunsmith A-Bomb had met while waiting at a Mickey D’s a few years back. Ordinarily, A-Bomb did his own work, but you could always trust someone who supersized his fries.

“Okay,” said the sergeant, picking up his submachine-gun. “I’m going to double-back a hundred yards or so, then cross the road. I’ll come up that rise behind him where I can get a better view.”

“And what am I doing?”

“You’re going for help if I get in trouble.”

A-Bomb figured there was no sense arguing with the sergeant, especially since Coors had already begun trotting away. He folded his arms in front of his chest, watching as the sergeant cut back across the terrain and then angled for the road. Even though he was half-crouching, wearing a rucksack and carrying a submachine-gun, Coors made good time, disappearing from A-Bomb’s line of sight in a little more than ten minutes.

The pilot waited a full thirty seconds, then began his own scoot toward the fuel truck, aiming to get close enough to cover the sergeant in case there was any trouble. Between the wadi and the slope, he had cover for a bit over a mile and a half, which meant he was still a good quarter mile away when somebody started shouting and firing an automatic rifle from the rocks at the edge of the hill.

CHAPTER 6

He found himself at the Depot, sitting at the long, black Formica bar top, staring at a pyramid of whiskey bottles. All of his old friends were there, as if gathered for a reunion— Seagram’s and Windsor Canadian, Rebel Yell, Heaven Hill, Jim Beam, Old Crow, Marker’s Mark, Granddad, and Wild Turkey.

And Jack, luscious Jack Daniels in all his glory, green and black, a serious, serious friend.

There was a large double shot glass in front of him. Filled to the white line near the rim.

Was it his first? His third? His fifth? Was he drunk already?

Skull eased forward on the bar stool. What difference did it make if this was his first or his twenty-first— he was already drunk on the fumes.

Change from a twenty sat on the bar next to him; a ten, a five, and three ones.

Two bucks for a double-shot?

Jesus, no wonder guys said this place had sprung whole from somebody’s wet dream.

Colonel Knowlington bent toward the drink, thinking about Dixon and the day he’d sent him to Riyadh.

Shit. He could still see the kid’s face, white as a bed sheet, admitting he’d screwed up.

The kid had come clean. That was who he was; naive, foolish, but honest. A damn good kid, brimming with potential, the kind of kid the Air Force needed. The kind of kid Skull had been once, if only for a very short time.

It sucked shit to lose him.

Knowlington fingered the glass. It sucked shit to lose every goddamn man he’d lost, every wingman, every friend, every acquaintance, everybody he’d had to order into battle. It sucked shit for anybody to die in war. Even the goddamn bastards on the other side, the poor slobs working for a madman, were just doing their job.

His throat contracted, waiting for the bourbon.

Twenty-two days since he’d last felt the pleasant burn. Twenty-two sober days.

Why? So he could send more good kids to their deaths?

No. So he could keep his head clear, so he made the right decisions and kept the casualties down. So people who needed him could look at him and nod. So they could trust him, not have to worry about his decisions.

Fuck that naive bullshit.

Skull brought the glass to his mouth. There was a sweet sting on his lips.

No. Not for this. Not for this.

Slowly, carefully, he set the drink back on the bar and walked out quietly, leaving his money and the full glass, his first glass in twenty-two days, behind.

CHAPTER 7

Doberman closed his hand around the control stick and narrowed his focus, staring through the heads-up display at the empty blue sky before him. His threat indicator showed clearly that the enemy missile was gunning for him. His electronic countermeasures— supplied by an AN/ALQ-119 ECM pod carried on the Hog’s right wing— were busting their transistors in an attempt to confuse the missile’s Fong Song F radar and guidance system. Ordinarily, Doberman would jink and jive to increase the odds of escaping, but if he did that, he’d run out of gas about thirty seconds after the missiles passed.

He bent his head forward and back, breathing slowly and willing the jammer to do its thing.

Above him, a Wild Weasel swept in to kill the installation that had launched the missile. A backseat whizzo in an ancient Phantom leaned against the cockpit’s iron wall as his powerful radar got a lock on the enemy trailers; he punched the trigger and kicked off an AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation (HARM) missile toward the Iraqi installation.

One of the SA-2s fell away. But the other kept coming for him. He saw it, a dark toothpick growing in the bottom left corner of his canopy mirror. It was close now, smelling him. Doberman felt the muscles in his shoulder tighten, snapping so taut he felt his throat close. He could see the damn thing coming for him, getting bigger and bigger.

“All right,” he said to himself. “Better to run out of gas than get whacked by a telephone poll.”

He leaned hard on the stick and juiced the throttle, whacking out electronic chaff at the same time. The metallic tinsel unfolded in the air, a shadow to help confuse whatever was still guiding the missile; make it think the Hog was still straight and level.

Maybe that worked. Maybe the HARM missile took out the ground radar guidance system and managed to disrupt the SA-2 before it was terminal. Maybe one of the electronic warfare planes flying further south hit just the right chord of confusion at just the right moment. Or maybe Doberman’s incredible luck continued to hold.

Whatever.

The Hog slid down toward the earth, eating g’s as she stomped toward the yellow sand. The SA-2 climbed past it, passing through the tinsel, flying for nearly a thousand more feet before her nose started to wobble. The wobble turned into a shudder, and the warhead exploded.

Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds of high explosive makes a fair amount of boom, but Doberman was well out of range by the time the missile detonated. When he realized he’d escaped, he pulled the plane back, swooping back for his course while he checked his fuel and position on the INS. Then he checked the numbers against his chart.

If his math was right, he had less than thirty seconds to the border and another five to the tanker.

And sixty-two seconds of fuel beyond that.

Doberman started to laugh uncontrollably.

“I’m going to make it,” he said, as if it were a joke. He tapped his finger on his pad. “I’m going to make it. I can’t believe it.”

He laughed and he laughed, and the only thing that stopped him was a radio call from Bluebeard, the tanker, which was on an intercept dead ahead.

“Devil One, I see you but I’m going to need you to come up to twelve angels,” said the tanker pilot.

“Nah, we’ll meet halfway,” said Doberman.

If the tanker pilot thought he was out of his mind— which he had every right to— he didn’t say. Instead, he threw out his landing gear to help him slow down and put the big Boeing into a steep bank, diving and turning at the same time. No aerobatics pilot ever performed so tricky a maneuver, or one half so beautiful to the audience.

“I appreciate that,” said Doberman, kissing his throttle to inch up his speed and catch the tanker. He tried to relax his shoulders, relax everything but his eyes, which were hard bullets homing in on the director lights beneath the tanker that told him whether he was going to make the connection or not. He had an extreme angle but there wasn’t time for a second try. He pushed the Hog a bit too far to the left, came back heavy with his rudder, eyes narrowed to pinpoints.

The Hog’s nose nailed the nozzle with a satisfying thud. Fuel flowed nearly instantaneously.

Doberman glanced at his watch and then at his pad.

According to the cheat sheet, he’d run out of fuel thirty-two seconds ago.

CHAPTER 8

For a desert, the ground was damn hard. Stinkin’ Iraqis couldn’t even get sand right, for crying out loud.

A-Bomb cursed for the millionth time, pushing himself forward on his elbows and knees, eyes pinned on the Iraqi holed up in the rocks a few yards from the tanker truck. The man seemed to have an endless supply of bullets and didn’t mind spraying them around, though fortunately he was firing toward the hill, not A-Bomb. The Iraqi was so interested in Coors— or whatever else he thought he was shooting at— that he hadn’t bothered to even glance in A-Bomb’s direction.

The pilot was no more than a hundred yards from the Iraqi, but no matter what you did to a .45 it was still a .45; a hundred yards with a pistol on a target range was a guess-your-weight shot, and this was hardly a target range. A-Bomb waited for the Iraqi to begin firing again; as soon as he did, A-Bomb threw himself forward, collapsing as the final round stopped echoing against the low hills. That brought him nearly ten yards closer.

At this rate, Saddam would be on work-release from a federal pen before A-Bomb got close enough to nail the bastard.

The funny thing was, Coors hadn’t fired, at least not that A-Bomb had heard. That could mean that the Iraqi was just dinking shadows in the hills while the Delta trooper flanked him.

It could also mean he was lying on the slope bleeding to death.

A-Bomb waited for the Iraqi to fire again. The burst was shorter this time; the pilot managed only five yards before his belly flop.

This much up and down was going to wear his flightsuit out. Then he’d be forced into Spec Ops jammies. Okay up here maybe, but what would they say back in Devil Squadron’s readyroom? They’d haul him right over to the Depot and make him buy everybody in the squadron a round of drinks.

While he waited for the Iraqi to fire again, A-Bomb decided the liability to his ego, let alone wallet, didn’t permit any more fooling around. As soon as the soldier started shooting, he got up and began walking toward him, this time not bothering to stop or even crouch as the last round of Russian-made ammo echoed against the shallow hills.

He got maybe forty yards before he heard the muffled, not quite delicate sound of the sergeant’s modified MP-5. The Iraqi immediately rose from the rocks and returned fire.

Clear shot. Too far, but clear.

A-Bomb squeezed off a round, cursing as he did. He was fifty yards away.

The Iraqi jerked around, then fell back, struck in the side.

“I knew I was going to miss,” the pilot grumbled.

Winged, the Iraqi scrambled for his gun. A-Bomb waited until the soldier squared his rifle toward him before firing again. This time he nailed him in the middle of the forehead.

“I thought I told you to stay back,” Coors screamed as he scrambled down the rocks. He’d been tucked into a crevice near the top and apparently escaped harm.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

“Fuck you,” said the sergeant.

“Not today,” said A-Bomb. He scanned the area quickly, making sure there were no other Iraqis. The dead man’s position was in the shadow of the truck and hills, which had probably made him hard for Coors to see as he came down.

“Yeah, well, thanks,” muttered the trooper as A-Bomb slipped his gun back into his holster. “I didn’t see him when I checked out the area from the ridge and then I got sloppy. Raghead must’ve heard a rock or dirt I kicked. He couldn’t get me, but he had me pinned down. I owe ya one.”

“I’ll collect,” said A-Bomb. He snatched up the soldier’s AK-47 and started back toward the truck. “Lucky there wasn’t any traffic, huh?”

Coors shrugged. “They mostly drive at night.”

“Yeah.” A-Bomb laughed. “What do you figure the odds that he’s carrying jet fuel?”

“Prohibitive,” said Coors.

A-Bomb disagreed. Leaving a tanker full of Hog juice at their door would be just the sort of neighborly gesture Saddam might use to entice Devil Squadron to go home.

It wouldn’t work, of course, but it was nice to be appreciated.

“I think it’s water,” said Coors after clambering up the tanker to peer through the manhole at the top. “It ain’t gas or oil… no, wait.”

He stuck his head down into the interior of the dull steel tank. The skin was marked by dents and dings; if it had ever been polished the finish had long worn away. The top was mated to a ZIL 130 chassis. What seemed to be military markings had been painted over with inelegant swathes of gray paint, completing the early junkyard look.

“Water?” A-Bomb asked.

Coors pulled it up with a laugh. “I think it’s milk. Still fresh, too. Or at least it don’t stink.”

“Now all we need’s a truck full of cookies,” said A-Bomb, pulling himself up the ladder onto the back.

He leaned over and took a whiff. It smelled like milk, though on the watery side and with a metallic aftertaste.

“Milk,” he declared. “But you aren’t going to want to drink it. Be okay for dunking. Yeah.” He straightened, considering the scent. Milk wasn’t his beverage of choice. Would ruin good coffee with it. No. Dunking would be okay. But not just any dunking; would have to be hard cookies, like Italian biscotti or Russian rusks. Donuts are out,” he added as he jumped down to look over the rest of the truck. “Because they’re going to soak in too much moisture and that’s going to bring the aftertaste with it. What you need something with granules and surface area. So we’re talking biscotti. Hard cookies. Evaporation and crumbs, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Coors pretended not to be interested. “What do you think they’re doing way out here with milk?”

A-Bomb shrugged, looking into the cab to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped before opening it. “Maybe they couldn’t get beer.”

Outside of a screwdriver and a map, the cab was empty. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the truck that a half-hour in a carwash wouldn’t fix. Still, ZILs weren’t known for their reliability and it wasn’t until he had monkeyed with the carburetor for a few minutes that A-Bomb realized the driver had simply run out of gas.

“You think we can siphon some out of the FAV?” he asked the sergeant. The old Soviet-era transports used petrol rather than diesel.

“Won’t have to. Got a spare gas tank lashed on the top. You wait here and I’ll be back.”

“Wait a second,” said A-Bomb. “You owe me one, remember?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m collecting.”

“You’re collecting by walking back to the FAV?”

“And driving it here. I’ll be back before you have the body buried in the rocks over there.”

Coors laughed. “You’re a piece of work, Captain.”

“Nah. Just a Hog driver,” answered A-Bomb, returning his one-fingered salute.

CHAPTER 9

Dixon’s mouth, throat and stomach had seared together, parched and burned by hunger, thirst, and heat. The only part of him that felt good was his fingers. They were curled around the stock of the Kalashnikov.

If there had been other Iraqis near the quarry or bunker they hadn’t followed him. Alone and seemingly unnoticed, he trudged eastward, paralleling the highway by about a hundred yards. At first he crouched low to the ground, huddling as close to the scrubby vegetation as possible. Soon, however, he realized there was no one nearby to see him, and the open area would give him plenty of warning if a vehicle approached. He gradually came out of his crouch, walking slightly stooped over and then finally upright, continuing to turn back and forth, checking his six like the trained fighter pilot he was.

Dixon kicked at the dirt. It seemed thicker stuff than the sandy grit and fine dust near the quarry. It was the kind of stuff that might almost be farmable, or at least hold enough promise to ruin a man once the summer came. There were irrigation ditches on the other side of the road. A few had water at the bottom, though most were dry. In the distance, Dixon could see a small hovel which he took to be a farmhouse. Beyond that on his side of the highway was a low set of hills, about five miles off. The hills were gray rather than brown or red. He assumed that meant there were bushes or trees on them; that would mean water and probably a town or settlement of some sort. Dixon debated whether to walk to it or not. He was hungry and he had to find food, but if there was food there would also be Iraqis.

He had to eat, and soon. And he didn’t figure he could live off the land. His few days in survival training seemed more like a visit to an amusement park than anything useful to him now.

Dixon was approaching the Cornfield, a pre-designated spot the Delta team he’d landed with had used to land a pair of helicopters the night before. They’d been ambushed; he’d watched the firefight from the hill near the NBC bunker, then come to rescue one of the survivors.

Last night, it had taken only an hour to get this far. Now, it seemed as if it had taken all day.

He glanced at his watch, even though he knew it had stopped. The sun wasn’t quite halfway down in the sky.

Two o’clock? Three?

Dixon could see the top of a wrecked APC south of the road. Other hulks lay beyond it. He decided to go there; he might find food or more weapons or even something he could use to contact one of the Delta teams still operating in Iraq. He turned and began walking directly south toward the highway.

Without thinking, he broke into a trot and then ran full force. The belt of AK-47 clips jostled against his chest and stomach. One fell out; he left it and kept going, off-balance and out of control, running for nearly a quarter of a mile until he slid down the sharp embankment of a dry creek bed. He threw himself against the other side, pulling himself up with his rifle and free hand, stumbling again and then starting to walk toward the APC about thirty yards away.

The drive mechanism had been twisted out from the chassis, opening like a bizarre metal tulip that protruded from the once-smooth side of the truck. The sight of the jagged metal sobered him. When he was five yards away he dropped to his knees, finally catching his breath and regaining his sense.

His eyes like telescopes, he began scanning the Cornfield for an enemy. Finally he approached the APC, his finger tensing against the trigger of the assault rifle. He moved the barrel back and forth across it, as if expecting another flower to burst from the metal and reveal a gunner taking aim at him.

A ruined tank sat beyond the APC, maybe thirty yards further from the road on his right. He began sidestepping toward it, moving the rifle back and forth as if he’d been taking fire from both sides. Then he turned and ran as fast as he could toward the tank, the last dregs of his adrenaline flooding into his legs and head. AK-47 ready, he sidestepped around the blackened frame, approaching the front of the turret as if its long-barrel gun had not been shattered in two.

When he was positive there was no one hiding behind or inside the tank, he stepped up onto the back of the vehicle to inspect it. A small bomb or missile had landed near the center of the chassis, ripping a mushroom of metal from the tank’s innards. Dixon carefully leaned in, worried that he might cut himself on the shards. Plastic soot covered the interior, a gritty mud that had coagulated and cooled after the initial explosion and fire. A hand, its fingers extended but its thumb missing, lay against a thick lump of metal at the front. The rest of the body was gone.

Dixon stepped back, sliding down to one knee behind the turret as he surveyed the battlefield from the Iraqis’ vantage point. Greatly outnumbered, the American fire team had briefly held a small hill fifty feet high to his right, but had fought most of the battle in and around a series of ditches directly in front of the tank. Only the arrival of the helicopters had saved the day.

Dixon jumped off the tank and made his way to the hill; it would give him a good view of the rest of the area. As he climbed it, he realized he hadn’t seen any dead bodies yet.

There were no bodies here either, nor could he see any from the top. The only sign of the battle on the hill was a crater on the southeastern corner of the summit. The dirt in the center was tinged red, as if the earth had bled.

As he stood at the edge of the crater, Dixon’s feet began to slip. He managed to throw his weight backwards just enough so that he fell down as if plopping into a seat.

He stayed in the hole for a minute, eyes staring into the sky. Faint contrails teased him; twenty or thirty thousand feet above him allied planes were carrying on the war, oblivious to his existence or plight.

Hunger pushed Dixon back to his feet. The lieutenant resumed his search, methodically inspecting the rest of the burned-out vehicles. The fact that no bodies remained meant the Iraqis must have come through already; it was unlikely he would find anything useful. Still, he kept looking. A Ural 6x6 sat almost unscathed nearly a quarter of a mile from the rest of the vehicles. He found a small metal canteen near it. He jiggled it in his hand and, though he didn’t hear anything, unscrewed it and held it upside down over his mouth anyway.

A trickle of water surprised his tongue. The liquid felt like hot pebbles, burning holes in his mouth, and then it was gone. He gulped air, and his thirst became a fire, ravaging his body. Canteen in one hand and rifle in the other, Dixon ran to a streambed a hundred yards south of the battlefield. But he found only dust.

He’d been here before, on this spot, last night. He’d kicked ice. Where was it?

He walked along the dead streambed. The day had warmed to near fifty, perhaps more. Ice would have melted, but there must be water. It couldn’t have evaporated; he hadn’t imagined it.

Dixon must have spent nearly a half-hour searching without finding anything. Finally, he whipped the metal bottle down against the rocks. He kicked at the ground and took the rifle and rammed it against the dirt, screaming and cursing.

A voice at the back of his head told him it was a foolish thing to do.

It was his father’s voice, rising from his institutionalized sickbed. A voice he hadn’t heard in many months. A voice that hadn’t been coherent for a much longer time, and could never have offered advice— his father had been in a mental institution since Dixon was ten or eleven.

But the voice was right. Whether it was a temporary hallucination, or a memory. or just Dixon’s own conscience disguising itself, it helped him catch hold of himself. He sat down, pulling his shirt out from his pants to rub the barrel of the gun clean. Then he retrieved the canteen. Examining it, he found a fresh dent but no real damage. He stuffed it in his pocket.

As he did he saw a small brown box on the side of the wadi, next to a twisted brown bush. Dixon approached it warily; carefully he scanned the area, made sure he was alone. Then he knelt and looked it over for booby traps. When he didn’t see any, he reached to his belt and unsheathed his combat knife. He punched it into the earth near the box, then began moving it around the ground, hoping that if there was a booby trap he’d somehow manage to find it before setting it off. When he didn’t find anything, he stood back, and used the AK-47 to poke the box. Nothing happened, and he finally picked it up.

It was an ammo box. Inside were several banana clips of 7.62 mm ammo for the assault gun.

He would have much preferred water or food.

Dixon tucked the box under his arm and began walking along the wadi slowly. The streambed intersected an irrigation ditch a few yards ahead. He turned and walked down the ditch, realizing it was deeper than the wadi. A hundred yards down, past two or three other ditches in the network, he finally saw a pool of water.

Fear welled up from his stomach with every step, clamping itself down like a force trying to keep him from moving. He slid to his knees and unscrewed the top of the canteen, lowering it to the surface of the water. There was at least six inches; he filled the canteen only halfway before rising. He intended on pouring the water over his fingers, to see if it was clean, but as he tilted the metal bottle his thirst jerked his hand up and he poured it nearly straight down into his mouth, every part of him trembling. He did it two more times, silt and grit rubbing against his teeth, choking in his throat.

Nothing liquid had ever tasted as good. He leaned back, balancing on his haunches; finally he put the rifle down next to the ammo box and removed the campaign hat from his head, soaking it and then wringing it over his face.

As he straightened, he heard trucks on the road a half-mile away. He pulled the hat down, took the gun and the ammo box, and crawled up to watch them pass.

Except that they didn’t pass. They slowed and then stopped along the highway. He raised his head as high as he dared and saw someone running toward the Ural truck he had inspected before. The man shouted something and two or three others got out of a white pickup and came over.

Dixon couldn’t see what they were doing. The pickup truck was part of a convoy of four or five vehicles, one of which was an APC.

At the tail end were two tractor-trailers with long tarps covering their loads.

He’d stared at them for nearly five minutes before he realized he was looking at a pair of Scud missiles.

By then, the Iraqis had concluded they couldn’t do anything with the 6x6 and had returned to their vehicles. Dixon rose; he watched the pickup jerk ahead, then the APC. Black smoke puffed from the exhausts of the lead Scud carrier as the motor revved.

Belatedly, he pulled the assault rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the truck. He had it in his sights, but he was so far away that even if he managed to hit it the bullet would barely graze the canvas.

Better to follow, get close, find a way to destroy it.

Madness.

But what else was there left for him to do? Stay here and die of starvation?

Die for a purpose, at least. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than starve. Or worse, be found alive but passed out. The Iraqis would use him. That would be worse than torture, worse than death.

Dixon shouldered his rifle and walked back up the low hill to study the area ahead. He couldn’t be sure, but it appeared that the last of the Iraqi vehicles that had just passed was following a turn in the road just beyond the hills.

There’d be food if there was a village or settlement there. His stomach would stop hurting.

He’d have to kill for it. Kill to eat, to survive.

Dixon shrugged, as if he’d been debating with himself. Killing to survive meant he might kill civilians.

So be it. There were no more civilians as far as he was concerned. Civilians were his father and mother, back home in the States.

His father; Mom was gone.

Could he kill his dad, standing face-to-face; shoot him if his own life depended on it? If he didn’t know him?

If he couldn’t, if he wouldn’t, how could he shoot anyone?

Dixon opened the ammo box and stuffed the extra clips into the belt and his pants. Pushing himself forward, Dixon stumbled once or twice but kept moving, gaining momentum as he walked.

CHAPTER 10

When Kevin Hawkins was seven years old, his Irish grandmother came to stay with him. Within her first hour at the house, she had introduced him to stud poker and Earl Gray tea. Hawkins gave up poker when he joined the Army, but the Delta Force captain’s appreciation of the tea had only grown since basic training. Sipping a cup as he crouched at the edge of Fort Apache’s makeshift runway, he felt his fatigue drifting into the nearby sand. The bergamot-scented liquid worked like an amphetamine, pumping him up, restoring him, at least temporarily, more completely than eight hours of sleep.

Hawkins watched as a dark green vulture approached from the south. Fifty feet off the ground, the vulture began a wide turn to the east, then swung back toward the runway where Hawkins sipped his tea. The wind began to pick up; the vulture stuttered over the desert. It was an ugly bird, ungainly and fidgety, all wing and head.

And then it wasn’t a bird at all. It was an A-10A Warthog landing with a fresh load of fuel. The long straight wings grew as the plane’s segmented ailerons and flaps deployed; the nose-wheel folded out like a clock pendulum stopping mid-swing.

The plane landed so close Hawkins could feel the heat from the brakes as it screeched past on the mesh his engineers had laid out to cover holes in the concrete strip. The Hog’s dark hull weaved slightly as the plane halted at the edge of the ravine. It was a reminder that he’d failed.

As good as Hawkins’ team was, the immense wadis at either end of the concrete strip limited the makeshift strip to exactly 1,607 feet. That made it too short for the C-130 supply and gunships they’d hoped to base here in support of Scud hunters. Without them, there was no sense staying. It was too great a risk for too little reward. More than a dozen American and British Scud hunting teams were now operational, each with Satcom gear that could hook them into airborne command and control units. Having Apache’s two helos handy was nice if they got into trouble— but only if the helos had enough gas to operate; which couldn’t happen without those C-130s.

Besides, the plan called for a full squadron of AH-6s, with AC-130 gunships and four A-10s. That was the sort of firepower that made the risk worthwhile.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Better to leave Apache before it was discovered. It might come in handy during the ground war, assuming there was a ground war.

Hawkins sighed and took a long sip from his tea. He expected the order to bug out would come in a few hours. He and his crew would be reassigned, most likely. Hopefully they’d end up doing something more important than playing palace guard for the bigwigs.

The captain took a last gulp of tea and met Doberman as he came down the ladder of the plane. “Nice landing,” he told him.

“Yeah,” answered the pilot. “Fucking short runway.”

Hawkins wasn’t sure exactly how to take that, so he ignored it. “I have two teams about a hundred miles north,” Hawkins told him. “Both have laser designators.”

“Yeah, well, those are useless as shit,” said Doberman. He came to Hawkins’ chest, but his voice was as deep as if he were six-eight.

To say nothing of his attitude.

“What do you mean?” the captain asked.

“I mean we have nothing to drop on what they point to,” said Doberman. “You can have your fuel back, with a little interest. Where the fuck is A-Bomb?”

Hawkins cocked his head to one side, his teeth edging against his lips. “He went out with one of my men to set up an observation post.”

Doberman shook his head. “Fuck it.”

“You got a problem, Captain?” asked Hawkins.

The pilot jerked his head up. “In what sense?”

Hawkins squinted his eyes at the shorter man, trying to figure him out. Doberman seemed to be one of those guys who went through life with a chip on his shoulder— or at least he came across that way.

He was cocky and more than a bit arrogant.

While it was true that they were the same rank, Hawkins was in charge of the mission and the Hogs were assigned to work with him— or at least not against him. The pilot ought to at least make a stab at courtesy. But before he could deliver the overdue etiquette lecture, Hawkins spotted a suspicious cloud of dust rising northwest of the base.

He ran to a sandbagged position a few yards off the concrete, grabbing the binoculars that had been laid at the top of the low wall.

One of his FAVs. Followed by an Iraqi tanker truck.

What the hell?

Hawkins watched as the two vehicles twisted across the scrubby sand toward him. Coors was hanging out the window of the tanker; the FAV was being driven by A-Bomb. By the time they pulled onto the runway, everyone at Fort Apache not manning a lookout post had gathered to see what the hell was going on.

“Captain Hawkins, sorry we’re a little late for tea time,” said Sergeant Coors, jumping from the truck with a grin.

“What is this, Coors?”

“You like milk with your tea, don’t you?” asked A-Bomb, unfolding himself from the FAV’s driver’s cage.

Hawkins listened as his sergeant explained what had happened. He was shaking his head vehemently before Coors got halfway through.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded. “You should have come back here.”

“I figured if there was someone in the truck, he would see the airplane when it took off or came back,” said the sergeant. “I thought I’d have to do something quick.”

“Which was what? Get lucky and nail him?”

“Hey, luck had nothing to do with it,” said A-Bomb.

“You’re starting to bother me, Captain,” snapped Hawkins. “Somebody go get a tarp to cover the back of this truck. Coors! You get a shovel and you start digging. I want this thing in the dirt. Did you cover your tracks off the road?”

“Jesus, I’m not stupid, sir,” said Coors.

“Well you sure as hell acted like it,” said Hawkins.

The sergeant nailed his eyes to the ground in contrition.

Not A-Bomb. “Milk’s on the house,” he said, opening the spigot control on the back of the truck. He frowned. “Ought to just pour out of this thing here.”

Captain Wong put his hand on his shoulder to stop him from taking a drink.

“In all likelihood, the tank was not properly decontaminated before it was filled,” said Wong. “I believe you’ll discover a proportion of distillate in the liquid, as well as a great deal of water.”

“Ah, don’t cry over spilt milk.” A-Bomb put his mouth beneath the spigot as he started the flow. He gagged and jumped back. “Wow. That’s worse than Dogman’s socks. Why didn’t they clean the tank out right?”

“Because the truck’s cargo isn’t milk,” said Captain Wong.

Hawkins watched him walk around the tanker, searching for something. Wong waved his hands over the shiny metal surface of the tanker, as if he were a faith healer. Finally he stopped.

“Sergeant Rosen, would you happen to have an acetylene torch handy?” he asked.

The Air Force technical sergeant shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

“The difficulties of operating in contingent circumstances,” sighed Wong. “We’ll have to drain the tank.”

Hawkins had met Wong on a clandestine mission in North Korea two years before; while eccentric, the intel officer was probably among the smartest and bravest guys in the service— certainly in the Air Force, a branch rapidly sinking, in Hawkins’ estimation. But it was often hard to tell what the hell Wong was up to.

“What’s the story?” Hawkins asked him.

“You wouldn’t want to drink this,” Wong told Hawkins as he opened the spigot at the rear and began draining the liquid. “Believe me.”

“No shit.”

Wong nodded.

“You going to explain what’s going on, Bristol?” Hawkins demanded. “Because I’ll be damned if I can make sense of what the hell you’re doing.”

“There will be a compartment at the bottom of the tank, with bladders inside. We can get into through the manhole once the liquid is removed is out. There isn’t much.”

“What are we looking for?”

Wong glanced over at the men, then back at Hawkins. He frowned as the liquid continued to flow, but said nothing.

Hawkins finally guessed what Wong suspected.

“Coors, go get ABC gear on,” he told his sergeant. “You’re going to personally get to the bottom of this.”

“It would be best for everyone to be prepared,” Wong said to him. “And if Sergeant Coors is going inside the tank, a suit over his normal suit would be optimum.”

CHAPTER 11

It wasn’t until he became a squadron commander that Knowlington truly appreciated how hard enlisted personnel worked. Not all the time, of course; just when it mattered. He’d given lip service to the clichés about NCOs being the backbone of the air force, and owing his life to mechanics and crew dogs, etc., etc., but he hadn’t really understood how true the sayings were until the first time he’d been responsible for getting a squadron of F-4 Phantoms in the air.

Partly that was because his first command was so badly screwed up when he arrived. The pilots were mediocre, but the real problem was the planes. The maintenance people were poorly trained, disorganized, and dispirited. And they stayed that way for exactly five days— which was how long it took him to get Clyston and a few other men he’d worked with over to his team. He called his guys “The Mafia,” and together they kicked enough butt to make their squadron one of the best in the Air Force— his bosses’ opinion, not just his.

Most had long-since retired, except for Clyston. But the new kids who came along to replace them were every bit as good, maybe better: if not smarter, they were more thoroughly trained and worked with better systems. Standing in the middle of the maintenance area— aka “Oz”— Knowlington marveled as his people overhauled the tailfin of a battle-damaged Hog; in the space of maybe twenty minutes, they had the plane stripped and reskinned.

“A little slow today,” growled Clyston, winking at Knowlington as he passed to inspect the crew’s handiwork. The colonel waited for the capo’s well-rehearsed grunts to change to grudging approvals before stepping forward himself to tell the men what a kick-butt job they were doing.

“And I mean kick-butt job,” he repeated, aware that his voice was a little loud and a little shaky. “This is damn good work.”

“All right, you heard the colonel,” barked the capo. “Everybody take ten. Then I want that flap on six checked out. Let’s go, let’s go! Come on. Don’t you guys know how to take a break, or do I have to send you back to school for that, too? Jee-zus-f’in hell!”

Clyston grinned at Knowlington as the men scattered.

“You’re getting a little predictable in your old age,” Skull told him.

“Yeah, but they love it.” The sergeant put his arms on his hips and snorted, laughing at himself.

“How are the men reacting to Dixon?” Skull asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they’re pleased.” Clyston folded his arms together across his chest. “But we’ll get on. He hadn’t been with most of these guys too long. And it wasn’t one of our missions. That makes a difference.”

Skull nodded. Clyston’s cold assessment was undoubtedly correct. War’s inevitable hardening process was well underway.

“How are you taking it?” the sergeant asked.

“Oh, like a wimp.” Skull laughed. Clyston didn’t. The colonel rubbed his neck and realized he hadn’t shaved this morning, an odd thing to forget. “I hate losing kids, Allen. Especially like this.”

“Sucks,” said the sergeant.

More than two decades had passed since he’d met Clyston, who had been an E-5 or E-3, or maybe even an airman then, crewing on butter-bar-nugget Michael Knowlington’s “Thud,” an F-105 Republic Thunderchief. They’d said hello and shared a cigarette— one of the only two Knowlington ever smoked in his life— shortly before the green lieutenant climbed into the cockpit. Within the hour he had dropped his first bombs and gotten his first air-to-air kill.

On that very same mission, a lieutenant who had flown with Knowlington back in the States went down over Laos. He was the first of many.

Vietnam had been a damn stupid war. But Knowlington didn’t know that then. He didn’t think it was a smart war, particularly, but he did think it was necessary. He figured he was sweating his fanny for something important, something like democracy and freedom, as corny as that sounded.

He still thought that— mostly. But Vietnam had turned out to be a damn stupid war. Maybe this one would turn out the same way. It hadn’t started all that smart.

“Colonel? You want some coffee or something?”

Knowlington snapped his head up, realizing his face was being scrutinized by the capo.

It was more than that. The colonel realized he smelled of the Depot, its smoke and its booze.

He resisted the urge to tell the sergeant he was still sober— it would come off phony, making it sound like exactly the opposite was true.

“Thanks anyway,” Knowlington said instead. “I’m about to start jittering with all the caffeine I’ve had already. I have a bunch of things to take care of back at the office. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t bitten off any heads today.”

“None that didn’t need biting.”

Knowlington nodded.

“We’re open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” said Clyston. “For any reason.”

“I appreciate that, Allen. I appreciate it a lot,” he told his old friend before walking away.

CHAPTER 12

Rosen volunteered to go inside the tanker when it became obvious Coors and his two suits wouldn’t fit through the manhole without vast amounts of butter. Doberman couldn’t object, not really. It was pretty clear they had to find out what the hell was inside the tanker, and she was the only one who could get in and out. Still, he made them tie a rope around her so she could be hauled out in case something happened.

Alien bugs looked more human than the small tech sergeant, who eased feet first into the black hole with a pair of tiny Special Ops flashlights in each hand. Doberman’s heart pounded harder than it ever had; harder than when he’d been chased by the SAM, harder than his first solo. This was worse than flying, a hell of a lot worse. Flying, he could do something. When you were driving a Hog, or piloting any plane for that matter, there was a checklist. You did A, then you did B, then you did C. When you hit shit, you just moved through the list faster. But this— all he could do was watch.

He was seriously hooked on Rosen, he knew that. And the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it up here was almost as hard to take as standing by helplessly as she disappeared inside the tanker.

The Hog pilots were wearing special ABC underwear beneath their flight suits and theoretically could have gotten by with booties, gloves and headgear, but both Doberman and A-Bomb donned full suits borrowed from the commandos. He couldn’t see all that well through the hood’s small visor. He was tempted to whip it off as Rosen emerged with what looked like an oversized purse.

Wong, next to her on top of the back of the truck, took it and threw it to the ground. Rosen returned twice more with two more purses.

Doberman walked around to the back of the truck to look at them. He got about five feet away before Wong jumped in front of him, waving his hands like a flagman waving off traffic. Doberman cursed but stopped, watching as Wong poked the bags with a wand from a small device the commando team had supplied. He poked and prodded for about ten minutes before straightening. He gestured for Rosen to stay near the bags, then walked back to Hawkins.

“The bags are empty. The seals were never implemented,” said Wong after lifting the hood off his head.

Wong had to be the only guy in the Air Force who actually looked natural in the chem suit. The bulky gear made his head seem almost normal-sized.

“What does that mean?” Hawkins asked.

“These weren’t used. This device is primitive,” he added, holding up the meter in his hands, “but it should be sufficient to detect traces of most toxins the Iraqis might use. It’s clean. But we should wrap the bags according to full protocol. We should also proceed as if the tanker itself was contaminated.”

“Why?” Doberman asked.

Wong frowned, as he always did when asked to explain. He held out his gloved hand and counted the points. “One: The Iraqis are not renowned for their safety precautions. Two: The bags were in the open compartment, absurdly foolish, even for the Iraqis. Three: the tanker was oriented in a western direction. Four…”

“What does the fact that it was going west have to do with anything?” asked Doberman.

“I surmise that it was returning rather than arriving at its destination,” said Wong.

“You’re telling me that it delivered chemicals somewhere?” said Hawkins.

“That would be a leap in logic that I am not prepared to make, especially since we are speaking about the Iraqis,” said Wong. “But it would be foolish not to consider that a distinct possibility. The most likely theory is that these bags were never filled. Rather, they accompanied similar bags, which have now been deposited at some destination further west.”

“Maybe they were on their way to get filled,” said A-Bomb.

“Admittedly a possibility,” said Wong. “I would note, however, that the ambient temperature of the liquid they were submerged in was the same as the truck, which suggests the liquid had been in the truck a long time. Such would be the case certainly if the truck were making its way back after a morning delivery, but not if it had only just taken on the milk in preparation for its mission.”

“What do we now?” asked Hawkins.

“I suggest we examine the map your sergeant discovered and see where the truck has been,” said Wong. “And then we attempt to act on that information.”

“I knew we’d get around to blowing something up eventually,” said A-Bomb.

The Iraqis were not so cooperative as to have marked their drop-off with an X, but Wong worked over the map like a forensic scientist— or, as A-Bomb put it, a witch doctor summoning the dead. He claimed that the folds and pen impressions in the paper showed that the truck had followed a course from somewhere near or in Jordan, continuing west into some hills about fifteen miles from Sugar Mountain, where Doberman and A-Bomb had blown up a storage bunker that morning.

Had it stopped at the bunker? Wong couldn’t say. Had it made a delivery or picked something up there? Wong couldn’t say. What had it done afterwards? Wong couldn’t say.

And somehow, everybody nodded and called him a genius.

Doberman nodded as Hawkins said he would authorize a recon mission to the village where the truck had apparently turned around. It was called Al Kajuk on the map. None of the Delta teams Scud hunting up north were close enough to check it out. Fort Apache would have to send its own people.

“There are three or four buildings large enough to be storage facilities there,” Hawkins told Wong as they examined the maps and some satellite photos near the truck. “It’s pretty close to Sugar Mountain. Maybe the buildings there house Scuds.”

“The facility at Sugar Mountain may well be related,” said Wong. “They might have kept the chemicals there, then moved them with this or another vehicle. Or it could be a coincidence. It could conceivably be a decoy.”

“Doubt it,” said Hawkins.

“So this could be a wild goose chase,” said Doberman. It seemed to him they were jumping to way too many conclusions here. Hawkins glared at him; the Army guy definitely had a stick up his butt, Doberman decided. Tall guys always did.

“If it’s a wild good chase,” said Hawkins sharply, “it’s my wild goose chase.”

“Not if we’re giving you air cover,” said Doberman.

“Bullshit.”

“What do you mean bullshit?” said Doberman. “What the hell do you think we’re doing here?”

“One of your planes is still grounded,” said the Delta Force captain. “And as for you…”

“Captain O’Rourke’s plane is good to go,” announced Rosen, joining the small group huddled in Hawkins’ command post.

“You found a patch?” asked A-Bomb.

“I borrowed a few things from the tanker truck. I don’t think the Iraqis will be needing brakes anytime soon, do you? Or hose clamps?”

“Will the patch hold?” Doberman asked her.

“As long as he doesn’t stop for candy. I even got the pressure up, borrowing off fluid from the other… uh… I made it work.” Something caught in Rosen’s throat as they looked at each other. Rosen’s face flushed and then became very serious. “Yes, sir, I think it will.”

Sir?

Why had her face flushed?

“We don’t need air cover. I have my helos,” said Hawkins. “Thanks for the report, Sergeant.”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” said A-Bomb. “Dog Man and me ride out there and see what’s going on. We find something moving, we shoot it up. We don’t, you guys sneak in at night.”

“We can’t wait for night,” said Hawkins. “We have to be out of here by then.”

“You’re bugging out?” said Doberman.

“That’s right, Captain. If it’s okay with you.”

“So why are we having this discussion?”

“We are not having this discussion,” said Hawkins. “I am talking about the situation with Captain Wong.”

“Wong works for me.”

“Begging your pardon,” said Wong, who was crossing his legs like he was standing on a ten-hour pee, “but in fact I am assigned to Admiral…”

“Yeah, yeah, my point is, why are we wasting our time talking about this if you guys are going home?” said Doberman.

“Because there’s plenty of time to check this out in the meantime,” said Hawkins. “We’re not leaving until nightfall. This is a potential Scud site with chemical warheads.”

“So is every damn town in Iraq, by your criteria,” said Doberman. “You just want to play Rambo.”

“You’re out of line, Captain!” roared Hawkins.

“Hey Dog Man, time for a walk,” said A-Bomb, grabbing Doberman by the arm before he could respond with a roar of his own. His wingman picked him up by the arms and carried him fifty yards into the desert before finally letting go.

“Damn it, A-Bomb. Let the hell go of me.”

“You’re out of line, Dog. Way out of line. Those guys saved our butts.”

A-Bomb’s voice had a tone to it so rare that Doberman felt as if he’d been slapped across the face. He felt his throat thicken as he lowered his voice, managing to calm his tone if not all his anger.

“That doesn’t mean we can let them go off and get themselves greased on a wild goose chase,” said Doberman.

“Wong thinks it’s worth taking a look.”

“Wong.”

“Braniac’s an expert, Dog Man. Besides, what the hell do you think these Delta guys were sent up here for? They’re in the wild-goose-chasing business, don’t you think? That’s half the fun of Spec Ops.”

“Yeah, fun. This isn’t a game, A-Bomb. We lost a squadron mate today.”

“I know that.” A-Bomb gave him a disapproving frown. “But we’ve got a job to do. I agree with you, we go where they go. But we have to play it their way.”

“I hate it when you get serious, A-Bomb,” Doberman said. “You’re a lot more fun joking around.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Yeah. All right. Shit.” Doberman stamped his feet against the ground. “We ought to be the ones to check out the village.”

“If we do that, we’re going to have to get real close and personal, which’ll definitely tip them off. Think about it,” said A-Bomb. “We can’t stand back with Mavericks and play push-button bye-bye. No sir. If we only have the cannons to take them out, it’d be better to know what we were shooting at before we went in. I mean, I like dodging flak as much as anybody, but it sure helps to know where you’re going when you’re duckin’.”

A-Bomb’s voice had gradually resumed its normal bounce, and now the desert practically shook with his overstated enthusiasm. “What we ought to do is have the Delta boys go in there, scout the area, then call us in once they have a target. This way we’re just in and out, no fooling around. That’s what I’m talking about. No muss, lots of fuss.”

“Yeah,” said Doberman. “But that fucker was holding out on us with the fuel. I could have been killed.”

“Nah. He’s just blowing his reserves now because they’re leaving,” said A-Bomb. “Besides, you’re too damn lucky to get killed.”

“Right.”

“It’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Doberman still wasn’t convinced, but there was nothing to do about it now. “You think Rosen’s fix on the hydraulic line’ll hold?” he asked.

“Ah, there’s two different lines, for cryin’ out loud. Hey, I can fly the Hog without hydraulics. Jeez, plane and me been flying together so long I can steer her on thought power if I have to. Now what I’m worried about is finding some decent coffee. Have you tasted the stuff they’re trying to pass off as joe up here? My aunt brews better stuff for her cat. And she hates her cat.” A-Bomb shook his head sadly. “Was a time being a Delta operator meant you were skilled in basic survival skills. Standards are going right down the poop chute. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

CHAPTER 13

Finally lashed into his F-15C Eagle cockpit, seat restraints cinched, Major Horace “Hack” Preston gave his crew chief a thumbs-up. The sergeant nodded, then reached over and removed the last safety pin from the ejector seat before disappearing down the boarding ladder. Hack said his customary prayer and turned his eyes to his kneepad. He’d already memorized nearly all of the details of his mission— he’d been blessed with a nearly photographic memory— but repeating each bit of flight data aloud had become an important part of the preflight ritual. He’d have sooner left his waterproof underwear back in the barn than takeoff without flipping through the neat rows of carefully lettered notes. Navigation points, frequencies, tanker tracks, even some weather notes filled the small pages on the pad. He worked through quickly but methodically, thumbing his way to the board at the bottom.

The thin piece of wood had flown with him now for nearly five years. The top half contained two sayings. Hack dutifully read and recited both to himself:

“Wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.”

“Do your best.”

The first saying was from Ecclesiastes. The second one he had heard from his father nearly every day until leaving for the Air Force Academy.

Beneath the words was a Gary Larson cartoon. It showed an entomologist in a bug fetal position above the caption, “How entomologists pass away.”

There was no reason, really, for the cartoon, except that it had once struck him as hilarious. He looked at it, smiled, and flicked the paper back in place, completing his routine.

The cartoon was the only frivolous thing in the gleaming Eagle, unarguably the most potent operational interceptor in the world. To Hack and his squadron mates, it was certainly the star of the Gulf War.

Ready for his mission, Hack waited while the huffer— a diesel-powered device on a large mobile cart used by the ground crew to start the plane’s engine— kicked the fighter’s F100-PW-200 turbofans to life. Hack allowed himself a moment to soak in the rumble, then proceeded through his pre-takeoff checklist, slowly but surely making sure the plane was ready to go.

While the interceptor could be quickly scrambled into action, under normal circumstances the preflight briefings and prep work stretched past two hours; sometimes twice as long as the “working” portion of the mission. This was normal for Hack, who was notorious for demanding a high level of preparation before any Eagle under his command took to the sky. Better to take care of a problem on the ground, he figured, than at thirty thousand feet.

Piranha Flight’s four interceptors were slated to patrol a wide swatch of western Iraq this afternoon, working in pairs as roving marshals on the Wild Western frontier. Their missions had become progressively more aggressive and free-wheeling as the air war proceeded. While other Eagles and Coalition fighters might be part of large packages of planes with specific flights to escort, the Piranhas had been tasked today as roving interceptors. Working with a controller in an AWACS E-3 Sentry, Hack and his flight would Fly a long loop or racetrack high over enemy territory. At the first sign of activity, they would be vectored in for a kill.

While the other Piranhas had flown several such missions already, they had yet to fire in anger. Today, however, promised to be different. For the first time, their track would take them near a large enemy air base. It housed at least a dozen MiGs and its runway had survived numerous bombings by the British RAF. The intelligence specialists at Black Hole reported that the Iraqis were getting anxious; a U-2 spy plane had caught support vehicles moving around the ground. Word was, the Iraqi planes were going to try and make a run for it, maybe to Iran.

Which pleased Hack no end. His mission— his job and his life— was dedicated to splashing MiGs. He hoped and had even prayed last night to get his chance to do that today.

He’d also prayed that he wouldn’t screw up.

Hack snapped the mike button and requested clearance from ground control. Acknowledged and approved, he slipped the Eagle’s dual throttles out of idle and eased out from his parking spot.

Hack hated this part of the flight. His stomach stirred with anticipation, juices building. Inevitably he poked the stick around like a novice, shaking the plane’s control surfaces like a new lieutenant queuing for his first flight.

“Tower, Piranha One, in sequence,” he began, asking the controller for his departure ticket.

“Piranha, the wind three-two-zero at 12 knots, cleared for take-off.”

“Piranha,” he acknowledged, leading the rest of his flight toward the long gray splash of runway where they would take off. His stomach jerked back and forth furiously, bile climbing up his windpipe as he glanced through the large bubble canopy at his wingman Captain “Johnny” Stern.

Stern gave him a thumbs up. Hack returned it, then got serious about his throttle, poking his Pratt & Whitneys to full military power while checking his instruments. RPM, turbine inlet temp, oil pressure and fuel flow were at spec. He checked them off in his head, working quickly through the numbers for engine two. His stomach boiled— the temp gauge for the inlet read 322 degrees Celsius, about 900 Fahrenheit, and he might have believed that was measuring his own temperature.

Do your best.

When the brakes were released, the Eagle didn’t roll down the runway— it bolted, pushing itself against his back as it jumped from zero to 120 knots in nothing flat. Hack brought the stick back steadily. The F-15 could literally fly straight up off the runway, but there was no need to show off. The Eagle ascended into the desert air, past the fine mist of sand, beyond the heated air radiating in waves off the concrete. The fire in his stomach subsided. He settled into the routine, cleaning up the airplane by cranking in the wheels and adjusting his flaps. The Eagle was already moving through the air at over 220 nautical miles an hour.

As the unsafe gear lights blinked off, Hack checked through his instruments quickly, making sure he was in the green. Then he swept his head around the cockpit glass nearly three hundred degrees, from one end of the ejector seat cushion to the other, back to front to back again, before beginning a bank to set course to the flight’s rendezvous point.

Once airborne, the four Eagles split into two sections. Hack and his wingmate went north. The second group stayed south, queing up to tank. They would trade places in roughly forty-five minutes, one group in reserve while the other zipped over southwestern Iraq at roughly twenty-five thousand feet.

Hack and his wingman were just falling into their first sweep when the AWACS broke the loud hush in his ears with the words he’d prayed to hear.

“Boogies coming off the runway at H-2.”

Oh yeah, thought Hack. Oh yeah!

CHAPTER 14

A-Bomb adjusted the harness on his seat restraint, rocked back and forth and played with the rudder pedals as he sat off to the side of the runway, waiting for Doberman to clear so he could trundle into takeoff position. His Hog had been fueled, he had close to a full combat load in the Gatling-style cannon beneath his chair, and the plane had just been given a personal going over by the best A-10A maintenance tech this side of the capo di capo.

Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little discombobulated.

Not anxious, exactly, not worried or nervous. Those words weren’t in his vocabulary, at least not as they pertained to flying. Just off.

Part of it was the fact that, in order to conserve fuel, the Warthog was going to be pushed to the far end of the runway. Not that he personally cared, but the plane was apt to feel embarrassed, especially with all these Special Ops guys watching. In the pilot’s opinion, the eleven seconds or so of flight time that would be gained weren’t worth the indignity, but Doberman was in such an obviously bad mood today that A-Bomb had just nodded when he suggested that.

No, what was bothering him went beyond the Hog’s sense of self-esteem. A-Bomb had a full load of coffee, such as it was, in the thermos. The Boss was cued up on the custom-rigged CD system that had been integrated into his personal flightsuit and helmet. But his cupboard was practically bare: no Twizzlers, no Three Musketeers, not even an emergency M&M.

In fact, his entire store was represented by a single Twinkie. He eyed its bulge in his shiny pocket longingly, aching to swallow it but not wanting to be without hope of sustenance at a critical moment in battle.

War was hell, but this was total bullshit. It was the kind of thing that really made him mad. Not to mention hungry.

A-Bomb was aware that most combat pilots, perhaps even all combat pilots, never ate on the job. There was all the flight gear to deal with — the mask, the helmet, the pressure suit. There was gravity and there were vague altitude effects, which played havoc with your taste buds. And admittedly, the wrong crumb in the navigational gear could send you to Beijing instead of Baghdad, though that was the sort of mistake you had to make the most of.

But A-Bomb wasn’t another combat pilot; he was a Hog driver, and Hog drivers were genetically equipped to do the impossible. He had stuffed a Tootsie Roll in his mouth on his very first flight in an A-10A, savoring the chewy caramel flavor through his first roll. Few things in the world could compare to the shock of four or five gs hitting you square in the esophagus as you bit down on a Drake’s cherry pie. It made the blood race; it made you feel like you were an American, connected to the great unbroken chain of 7-Elevens strung across the Heartland. It was what he was fighting for, after all.

A-Bomb shook his head and watched as Doberman lit his Hog’s twin turbofans at the far end of the Apache base and start down the runway. Unlike many other planes, the Hogs were equipped with on-board starters that allowed them to operate at scratch bases like these; they were just one of the many features that made the A-10 the ultimate do-it-yourself airplane. Doberman’s mount picked up speed, jerking herself in the sky two hundred feet before the wadi.

Rosen ran in front of A-Bomb’s Hog and gave him a thumbs up. The pilot released the brakes, sighing to himself as the soldiers began pushing the plane forward. He could tell the Hog didn’t like this — she grunted and creaked, dragging her tail across the concrete like a dog yelled at for peeing on the rug.

“Get over it,” he barked at the plane. She stopped her whining, rolling freely and poking her tail surfaces around as A-Bomb helped steer her around with a touch of the pedals.

Rosen’s fixes to the hydraulic system couldn’t be properly tested until he was in the air. Under other circumstances, the checkflight would have been conducted very carefully, according to a rigidly prescribed to-do list. Here though, A-Bomb was basically going to make sure everything worked and go from there.

Which suited him just fine. He’d never been much of a test pilot.

Actually, under other circumstances, he’d have been under strict orders to return to a “real” base for “real” repairs, but heck, who’d listen to orders like those when there was good stuff just waiting to be blown up?

Besides, the controls were responding just fine. The Hog had two sets of hydraulic systems as well as manual controls; even if Rosen’s fix fell apart A-Bomb figured he’d have an easy time flying the plane. When he lit the GE TF34-GE-100 turbofans on the back hull, the Hog roared her approval. She bucked her nose up and down and began striding down the short run of concrete, willing herself off the ground. A-Bomb had the wheels coming up as she thundered over the dark crease at the runway’s end. She gave a wag of her tail to the men working to bury the tanker, as if she were saying goodbye to the blood donor who’d helped her carry on. A-Bomb brought her to course, cranked “Born to Run” — kind of mandatory, when you thought about it — and reached for his customary post-takeoff Twizzler.

And came up empty.

“Now I’m starting to feel really mad,” he said, sweeping his eyes across his instruments and then the rest of his readouts. Speed brisk, compass doing its thing and altitude moving in the proper direction. The master caution on the warning panel — no light, good. Enunciators clean, good.

The controls were sharp; with only the Sidewinder missiles and ECM pod under her wings, the Hog felt clean and light, and gave no hint that she was flying with a patched hydraulic system.

“Devil One this is Two,” A-Bomb said over the squadron frequency, contacting Doberman as he set course in a loose trail roughly three miles behind his flight leader. Their initial direction was south, towards open desert where it was unlikely they’d be spotted as they climbed. “I’m up.”

“About time,” grunted Doberman.

“You get the helos on the air yet?”

“They’re on the back burner,” Doberman told him. That meant things were going according to plan — Fort Apache’s two helicopters had dropped off their men a few miles from the site a short time before. They had moved south a few miles to hide in case they were needed. “Ground should be positioned in fifteen.”

“My math has us there in ten,” said A-Bomb, who actually was just guessing. He hadn’t been very big on math since Sister Harvey’s class in fifth grade.

“Yeah, twelve,” said Doberman. “Conserve your fuel.”

“I go any slower I’m walking,” A-Bomb told him. “I’m surprised you can hear me over the stall warnings.”

“One,” snapped Doberman, an acknowledgment that basically meant, shut up and drive.

The two Hogs were to fly up and orbit south of the highway that led to the village, which was supposedly sparsely populated, with no known Iraqi army units. They’d be at eight thousand feet, ready to pounce once the Delta troopers gave them a good target. Captain Wong had gone along to help make sure things worked right; with Braniac on the job, A-Bomb figured they’d be working the Gats within five minutes of the fire team’s first transmission. That still left them a good twenty minutes worth of fuel reserves before they’d have to head back to Al Jouf.

Ten officially, but Doberman always padded those calculations.

Doberman had insisted on the ground that he would make all of the cannon attacks, not wanting to push A-Bomb’s plane and test the repairs. But A-Bomb knew once the fur started flying, he and his plane would do what was natural — leaky hydraulic system, missing wing, whatever. Doberman might bitch and growl, but in the end he’d understand.

His leader’s tail was a small black line in the upper left quadrant of his windshield. The loose trail formation was a de rigueur Hog lineup for a two-plane element. It was basically follow-the-leader with a slight offset; the trail plane off the right or left wing back anywhere from a half-mile to three, depending on the circumstances. The planes would generally fly at slightly different altitudes, making it a little more difficult for an approaching enemy to pick out both in one glance. Freelancing attack gigs like this sortie and the others typically flown by Hogs tended to be somewhat less precise than the carefully orchestrated plans employed by vast packages of advanced bombers and escorts, but they were well suited to the ground support mission. The Devil Squadron’s trail formation was almost infinitely flexible, the wingman protecting the lead plane’s six while allowing for a quick, two-fisted ground attack or a more leisurely figure-eight wheel and dive when it was time to boogie.

“How’s that repair holding up?” Doberman asked.

“Fine,” A-Bomb replied. “I’m dyin’ up here, though. Nothing to eat.”

“You didn’t check the seat for crumbs?”

“Now that you mention it, there’s probably a gum drop or two under the sofa. Probably full of cat’s hair, though.”

“This is war, Gun. You have to rough it.”

“It’s what I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. Now that he thought about it, he probably had dropped something on the floor during the morning’s mission. He rocked the Hog left and right and pitched the nose up, trying to shake something loose.

Then the plane jerked hard to the left, much harder than it should have. A-Bomb felt the G’s snap into his body as he muscled the stick, got the Hog back.

He knew by the feel even before he checked his gauges that it wasn’t the hydraulics. He’d lost power in his right engine.

Gone. Dead. Dormant.

What the hell?

A-Bomb worked through the restart procedure, thought he had a cough.

Nada. He tried twice more and came up empty.

Serious caution lights; the damn cockpit looked like a Christmas tree.

Well, all right, a slight exaggeration. But this is what came of flying without even a good luck Three Musketeers bar.

A-Bomb cast his eyes toward his last resort — the lone Twinkie. Then he snapped the mike button in disgust.

“Devil One, this is Two. I’ve got a situation.”

CHAPTER 15

Three weeks ago to the day, Bristol Wong had been enjoying a leisurely game of chess in a small club frequented by Pentagon and CIA intelligence specialists in Alexandria, Virginia. With its thick leather chairs, horse paintings, and British decor, the club appealed to the Air Force captain’s innate sense of culture and decorum. The fact that a good game of chess and reasonably decent sherry could always be had there didn’t hurt. But on that very day, Wong had no sooner settled into a Sicilian defense— old hat to be sure, but he was playing a former CIA agent well known for his love of extreme symmetry— when his beeper vibrated. Wong knew immediately that he was going to hate the next four or five weeks of his life.

An hour after returning the call, Wong found himself aboard a Navy transport plane, en-route to Saudi Arabia, armed with a title several sentences long that had little to do with his actual mission. Officially, his job was to “consult and brief” Centcom on Iraqi air defenses. His actual task was to gather information about any and all advanced Soviet systems in the theater, which would be provided back-channel to the Pentagon G2’s chief of staff. The dual nature of his mission was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, at least not for Wong who was, after all, the world’s greatest expert on Soviet weapons — outside the Soviet Union, of course.

In due course he made his way to Hog Heaven and Devil Squadron at their Home Drome, also known as King Fahd Royal Air Base. He was chasing down a lead on the use of a shoulder-fired weapon that both the CIA and the Air Force claimed the Iraqis didn’t possess: the SA-16, a relatively sophisticated shoulder-fired weapon in some ways comparable to an American Stinger. While publicly expressing skepticism with the initial report, Wong in fact already had ample evidence that the missile was in Iraqi possession. He suspected that they were even using an improved version, only recently issued to Russian troops themselves. A member of Devil Squadron— Captain Glenon, in fact— had had the misfortune of encountering one during the first day of the war.

Unfortunately for Wong, the Devil Squadron commander, Colonel Michael Knowlington, had taken an inexplicable liking to Wong and managed to pull all manner of strings to have him assigned to his command. Naturally, Wong realized that he would be a prize jewel in any command structure, and had employed a vast array of tactics to get himself removed and returned to Washington, D.C., where he might play chess with some regularity, not to mention challenge. But his efforts had been misinterpreted. Colonel Knowlington now considered him an essential cog in the machine, and detailed him to help the advance elements of Devil Squadron supporting Fort Apache.

That was how he found himself here, close to two hundred miles inside Iraq, sucking dirt as the interminable wind whipped up through the hills surrounding the small pimple of a settlement called Al Kajuk. He and the Delta troopers accompanying him had at least a mile of climbing to do before getting a clear view of the village, such as it was.

Wong had worked with Delta and other Special Ops troops before. Aside from a predilection for running when walking would have been sufficient, he found them competent, professional, and taciturn, characteristics he thoroughly appreciated.

The sergeant in front of him held up a hand, signaling a stop. Wong passed the signal along to the team’s com specialist behind him, who in turn passed it on to the tail gunner. There were only four troopers on this ad hoc team: Sergeant Mays at point, Sergeant Franks at the rear, Sergeant Holgrum with the satellite communications gear, and Sergeant Golden, the team leader. Golden was in charge; Wong was in theory just along as an adviser and knew better than to interfere.

“Let’s rest here a minute,” said Golden, coming back. “We have a house or something over that hump and down the slope, maybe half a mile, a little more. That way, there’s a road and the village. Over there’s the highway, on our right. Looks like when we get to the peak, we’ll be exposed, the sun in our faces. We should be able to position the Satcom up there somewhere, but let’s scout the area first. Kind of weird we got vegetation on that side of the hill and pretty much nothing here,” he added. “Must be water underground or something.

Wong nodded. He suspected that the vegetation on the long, sloping hillside to their left had more to do with the wind pattern, which would amplify the modest moisture effect produced by the nearby river. But he knew from experience that meteorological matters hardly ever interested anyone, except while waiting for a train.

“Captain Wong and I will go on ahead,” the sergeant told the others. “That okay with you, Captain?”

“It would suit me.” Wong dropped his pack on the ground, pulling his M-164 and its 203 grenade launcher up under his arm. It was not his preferred weapon, but it would serve.

“Captain Hawkins said you were with him when he jumped into Korea,” said Golden. The sergeant was short for a Green Beret, about five-seven, and fairly skinny. Wong, at six-two, towered over him, even on the incline.

“Yes. An interesting mission.”

“You killed two gooks?”

Wong smiled at the racial slur, but didn’t answer. Golden was white, but obviously of mixed ancestry; no one ethnic group could have produced a face quite so ugly. Wong himself was fifth generation Chinese-American born in Hong Kong to a Scottish mother — not quite classic “gook,” but undoubtedly close enough for the sergeant.

“We may be doing some killing here,” said Golden. “I know you Pentagon boys don’t like to get your hands dirty.”

“I would not be surprised to find mine are dirtier than yours,” Wong said, starting up the hill ahead of him.

CHAPTER 16

Doberman eyeballed the paper map on his kneeboard as A-Bomb gave his wayward engine another shot at relighting itself. He had already decided he was sending his wingmate home, no matter what, but he realized the news wasn’t going to go over very well.

“Damn, Dog Breath, she won’t catch for me no way, no how,” cursed A-Bomb. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, okay, you think you can make Al-Jouf?”

“You sending me home without supper?”

“You want me to come with you, no sweat.”

“Shit. Shit.”

“You have to go back, A-Bomb.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Damn. You ever, ever heard of one of these engines giving out? Ever?”

There was only one acceptable response. “No. Must be a fluke,” said Doberman. “All right, let’s go.”

“I don’t need you holding my hand,” answered A-Bomb.

“The most important thing is that you get back in one piece.”

For some reason, that unleashed a fresh stream of curses loud enough to nearly shatter Doberman’s shatterproof helmet.

Flying solo with one engine— frankly, even with two— over hostile territory was not exactly risk free, but A-Bomb pointed out that Doberman had a job to do. There were plenty of Coalition aircraft to call on if needed. Besides, there were worse things, especially as far as he was concerned.

“See now, this is the kind of thing that really pisses me off,” said A-Bomb, his tirade fading down. “This Spec Ops coffee tastes like green tea.”

Doberman nudged his stick, widening the circle he was drawing over the Iraqi scrubland. Al Kajuk lay ten miles to the northeast. Iraqi air defenses were thin but still potent. The village could easily be hiding flak guns and mobile missiles. He was at eight thousand feet, circling high enough so he couldn’t be heard, but the sky was clear and anyone with a good set of eyes, not to mention binoculars, ought to be able to spot him from the ground. And if a radar was turned on— well, that was show business.

“If you think you can make it…” Doberman started to say.

“It’s what I’m talking about.” Hell. Unless you don’t think you can handle things.”

“Screw you,” snapped Doberman.

“Anytime.”

“Yeah, all right. Sorry about the coffee,” Doberman told his wingmate.

“Coffee’s the only reason I’m going to Al Jouf,” said A-Bomb. “You want anything?”

“Taco with beans,” Doberman answered.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said A-Bomb. “Devil Two, gone. You’re solo.”

A-Bomb had a million personal call signs, signoffs, nicknames, curses, and slang sayings, but that was one Doberman had never heard before.

“Yeah,” was all he could reply.

The Warthog’s top speed was supposedly 439 miles an hour, though there was considerable debate and not a little bragging among Hog drivers about the “real” speed. It was a kind of inverse of bragging— pilots liked to say how slow the A-10A really flew, even going downhill with the wind at her back.

Normal cruising speed was less than four hundred miles an hour, so slow that a World War II era propeller-driven fighter could easily keep up. Cutting his circles around the Iraqi desert south of his target area, Doberman’s indicated air speed was exactly 385 nautical miles an hour.

Vital flight data was projected in front of his eyes via a HUD or heads-up display. While it was easy to see out of the airplane, the front windshield area was narrow and even cluttered by the standards of planes like the F-15 or F-16. But it was also better protected. A thick frame held armored windscreen panels, a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the people a Hog driver most wanted to meet weren’t welcoming him with open arms. Doberman sat in what amounted to a bathtub constructed of titanium. The mass of metal protected the airplane’s most vital part— him. If at times he felt a bit like a bear in a cave, it was a highly secure cave.

The ground team, “Snake Eaters,” was supposed to come on the air at precisely 1600, or in one minute and thirteen seconds. Doberman, impatient by nature, tried to divert himself by starting a very slow instrument check. He began with his fuel gauge, a large clock-faced dial over the right console, just above a selector switch that allowed him to separately measure the stores in the various tanks. He moved deliberately, slowly, precisely, expecting to be interrupted— hoping to be, actually— but concentrating on what he was doing.

There were two kinds of pilots, in Doberman’s opinion. There were guys like A-Bomb, who were really birds in disguise, equipped with some sort of sixth sense about planes. And there were guys like him, who had trained themselves essentially by rote and repetition. Doberman had an engineering background, and he thought like an engineer, or at least tried to, leaving nothing to chance. He calculated the fuel readings against his estimated time over target and reserves, running the numbers quickly through his mental computer to make sure he had all his contingencies covered. Then he walked his eyes over the rest of the readouts and instruments: temperatures, pressures, speed, altitude, heading. Check, check, check— gun ready as she would ever be, threat indicator clean— check, check, check.

And where the hell was Wong and the rest of the ground team? It was already 1603.

He started to click his mike button to hail him when the AWACS controller cut in with a warning: enemy planes were coming off a runway less than fifty miles northeast of him.

CHAPTER 17

At the precise moment Doberman was wondering what was going on below, Wong was holding his breath and sliding down between two very large and uncomfortable rocks ten feet from an Iraqi soldier.

Two soldiers, actually, though he had only a good idea of where one of them was. Wong suspected there were even more manning the small guard post just beneath the summit of the hill.

Sergeant Golden crouched about six feet to his left, training his MP-5 in the Iraqis’ direction. While Golden had a silenced version of the Heckler & Koch, “silence” was a relative term for submachine-guns; the weapon would be heard by anyone nearby. The sergeant was therefore unsheathing his combat knife, hoping the guards would come close enough to be plucked.

One good thing— the Iraqis wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have an excellent view of the highway and village.

On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t be there without some sort of radio.

Wong slid his hand into the back of his desert-chip fatigues, pulling out his own knife. Molded and tempered from titanium to his specifications, the weapon’s blade was barely six inches long— 150 mm to be precise. Honed like a barber’s razor, the single-edged cutting blade was 45 mm at its widest point, shaped for what Wong had determined by careful study of several obscure medieval Korean texts was the best angle for severing the arteries of the neck and throat.

Medieval Korean was a job to translate, but the labor excited a certain mental vigor difficult to duplicate. And nobody knew as much about knives as ancient Koreans, in his opinion.

Knife ready and eyes trained on the summit, Wong carefully worked a small grenade into his launcher so that the weapon would be ready to fire if needed. The gun was a breech loader, admirable in its simplicity— and liable to be set off accidentally or by the enemy once he put it down between the rocks, only semi-hidden. But the contingencies demanded a certain percentage of risk.

Golden looked at him. Wong removed the Beretta from his belt— a stock but nonetheless dependable weapon— and nodded. He understood that the sergeant intended on taking the man on the left whose foot was just now appearing at the top of the hill. He would take the man closest to him, whose footsteps were now conveniently approaching up the hill parallel to his comrade. Wong would attempt to take him silently with the knife, reserving the pistol.

Contrary to popular belief, most if not all elite troops considered the knife a weapon of absolute last resort. It exposed the user to an immense amount of danger, and no matter how good the weapon, represented the least potent force multiplier available. Wong ranked it far below his preferred options, which naturally started with ten-megaton nuclear warheads. Still, there was no denying the primal thrill a knife represented. The knife wielder joined a long string of ancients, a royalty that included the ancient slayer of Beowulf, a glorious slob of a man who rolled a thick blade into the belly of the archetypal beast.

Wong’s aim was considerably higher as he sprung on the guard. His right hand jerked across the front of the Iraqi’s throat as his left hand brought the butt-end of his pistol hard against the soldier’s skull. As the man coughed and began to fall Wong saw a third Iraqi four yards down the slope, turning toward him with a rifle in his hand. He drew his hand back and whipped the knife forward, striking the Iraqi in the throat with such force that he dropped his AK-47. Wong rushed forward before the man could recover, applying a kick to render him unconscious.

Technically speaking, the kick to the head was not particularly well executed; his karate master would have been appalled. But it did its job, incapacitating the Iraqi. Wong dropped to a knee, scanning the area with his handgun as he retrieved his knife.

“Damn good work with the ragheads,” said Sergeant Golden between hard breaths. His man lay in the dirt a few yards away, his skull broken and neck slashed.

“Ragheads is probably not technically correct,” said Wong.

Golden began to laugh. “You’re a pisser. Where’d you get that sense of humor, Wong?”

“The appellation ‘raghead’ would seem to be meant for nomadic tribesmen or, with less precision, to members of the Islamic faith in general,” said Wong. “Neither of which any of these men were. For example, this man has a cross around his neck, and…”

“Jesus, Captain, you’re a ballbuster,” said Golden. “That’s their radio.”

As Wong surveyed the slope looking for other Iraqis, he wondered why everyone in Iraq seemed to think he was a comedian. The fact that the men were not Muslims was highly unusual and undoubtedly significant, though at the moment he wasn’t sure what it might mean.

“I think we’re clear,” said the sergeant.

“I concur.”

“You figure we can put the com gear on the ridge?”

“Or just below,” said Wong, gesturing over the hill. “In the meantime, if you lend me your glasses I will examine the village. I have a clear view.”

“Gotcha.”

A dozen small houses made of yellowish brick or cement nestled along a small road jutting against a shallow hillside. Two larger buildings sat along the only paved road, which led to the highway. Constructed of concrete block, they were perfectly suited as warehouses. Beyond the hill was a mosque. The paint on its minaret had faded somewhat, but the tower was impressive, out of proportion for the mosque itself and much newer.

Standing, Wong scanned down the road to the highway. He followed the highway several miles to the east. There were several fields with irrigation systems, though at the moment they did not seem to be under cultivation. In the distance, he could see more signs of population; houses and other buildings were scattered like pieces from a discarded Monopoly game.

The highway ran over a large culvert about three miles from the hill. A ramp had been dozed off the side, as if to prepare for a cloverleaf exit.

Or, much more likely, a Scud launching spot. The missiles could be placed beneath the roadway until ready for launch.

Golden and the rest of the team set up the dish just behind the crest of the hill. It took a few minutes to position it properly; as they did, Wong studied the culvert.

“I have contact with the A-10s,” said Golden. “They’re waiting for a target.”

“There’s an erector hidden beneath the highway in that culvert,” Wong told him, pointing out the shadow in the distance. He was just about to hand the glasses to the sergeant when he noticed a pickup truck and what seemed to be a large APC approaching on the highway. A brown tarp flapped loosely over the rear of the carrier. “Excuse me,” he said, putting the glasses back to his eyes to examine the trucks.

He watched as they approached the culvert. He was not surprised to see them stop, but Wong at first wondered why the larger vehicle did not pull down under the roadway with the pickup.

And then he saw why.

“Humph,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Golden.

“I have not seen SA-9s for some time now,” admitted Wong. He watched a pair of Iraqis adjust the netting that helped camouflage the mobile missile launcher; the battery appeared ready for action. “Frankly, I had not considered that we might encounter them.”

“Problem?” asked Golden.

“Problem is a relative word,” said Wong, handing the sergeant the glasses. “But I would not describe this as a positive development.”

CHAPTER 18

Hack cursed, unable to sort out the bandits in the chaos. More than fifty contacts crowded into the F-15’s powerful radar, and now he had another problem— the RWR warned that a ground radar had just popped to life north of him.

The Piranha’s radio frequency— in theory assigned only to them— jammed with talk from two other flights as Hack’s brain began swimming with the black chaos of battle-induced stress. He flipped his radar back and forth through search modes, but he still couldn’t get a positive contact.

The AWACS did. The airborne controller identified the two Iraqi planes rising off the runway as MiG-29s and said they were on course for a flight of F-111s and a lone A-10, which was orbiting in the bushes at ten o’clock.

“Drop tanks,” Hack ordered his wingmate. Letting go of the extra fuel rigs beneath their wings would increase the F-15s’ maneuverability and speed.

Didn’t help the radar, though. He couldn’t even find the A-10.

Saw the F-111s now, though, cutting hard to the west, out of the line of fire.

The radio blared with static and more cross talk. The AWACS controller asked for silence on the circuit, his voice several octaves higher than at the start of the mission. Then he gave Hack and Johnny a new vector.

“Okay, okay!” Hack shouted as the Eagle’s APG-63 radar flicked two contacts about where the MiGs should be, ghosting them on the heads-up display at the front of the glass. That didn’t absolutely mean it had found the Iraqis— the vast majority of planes in the air were Coalition bombers tearing up Iraq. And he still hadn’t found the A-10, which he assumed would have a wingmate somewhere behind him. Hack “tickled” the contacts with the Eagle’s electronic query system, checking the planes for their IDs.

No IDs.

MiGs.

Or coalition planes too shot up to have working transponders.

Possible. Where was that damn A-10?

“I’m spiked!” Johnny yelled. An unfriendly radar had found and targeted him— and they hadn’t even sorted the enemy fighters yet. “That MiG is on me.”

One of the unidentified contacts disappeared from Hack’s radar. He didn’t have time to wonder why— the other, apparently the one that had turned its radar onto Johnny, began angling for his wingmate.

Bandit?

Or a confused allied plane with battle damage?

The Eagles and the unidentified contact were moving toward each other now at just under 1200 miles an hour. They were thirty miles apart; Hack had sixty seconds to decide whether to fire.

Maybe less. The RWR warned that a ground radar ahead had begun tracking him. Hack ignored it, trusting that the Eagle’s advanced avionics and his altitude would protect him, at least for the moment.

The bottom of Hack’s heads-up display indicated he had four Sparrow III AIM-7 air-to-air missiles, ready to go. He took a breath, narrowing his focus on the boogie. He was just coming into range.

He queried again. Still no ID. His heart was pounding on overdrive, but something in his head was warning him away — the plane wasn’t acting like a MiG, he thought.

“Tiger, I’m locked on a target,” he told the AWACS controller as calmly as possible. “I want IDs. I can’t find that A-10.”

But the transmission was overrun. He tried again; if he got through he didn’t hear the reply.

“Piranha One, I’m still spiked,” said Johnny.

If the boogie was a MiG-29s with beyond visual range weapons, Hack’s wingmate was going to be history in about twenty seconds.

If it was a beat-up Warthog, friendly fire was going to claim its first victim of the air war.

“Fox One, Fox one!” he shouted to his wingmate, warning him that he was firing a medium-range radar missile.

CHAPTER 19

As soon as Doberman heard the Eagle pilot call the radar missile shot, he slammed his plane back toward Wong and the rest of the Snake Eaters ground team. Their radio frequency buzzed with static; he worried that maybe the MiGs had been coming after them.

“Devil One, this is Snake Eater. Please reply,” said Wong. The transmission crackled and broke up.

“Devil One,” said Doberman, pointing his nose back in the direction of the highway. He was roughly eight miles south of the village. “Hey, Wong, you got a target for me?” he snapped.

“We have a tel erector approximately three miles west of Kajuk beneath a culvert on the highway,” Wong told him.

“Okay, good. Yeah, okay.” Doberman could see the hill in front of him on the left; the culvert would be almost dead on. He immediately began a sharp turn west, deciding to work the Hog down to a thousand feet for the attack. He’d swoop out of the north, turning around the village, riding down toward the culvert, trading a little bit of angle for a longer, better view.

“There are other developments,” said Wong before he had completed his turn.

“Yeah?”

“A Gaskin SA-9 mobile launcher has been set up on the hill behind the erector, immediately to the north. Excuse me,” added Wong. “I’m told another is approaching.”

Doberman cursed but didn’t alter course. The Gaskin was a seventies-era missile with a heat-seeking warhead. Compared to missiles like the SA-2, its range and altitude were relatively limited— but it was sitting just to the side of his attack route.

It would fire as soon as he pulled up. He could let off diversionary flares and jerk his butt around, but it’d be tight.

At best.

Doberman’s eyes hunted through the terrain, spotting the hills where the village was located. He was too far away to make out any buildings there, let alone the highway and SAMs.

He could go for the antiair first, but that would be a bitch with two of them. By the time he splashed the first— if he splashed the first— the second might be ready to fire.

And without a wingman.

“Give me the layout, Wong,” he said. “Are those SAMs set up or what?”

“One definitely is. The other has taken a position at the south side of the road. The mean time for launch… ”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

It was too risky. Especially since he’d have a hard time seeing the launcher under the roadway.

Worth it if he could be sure he was getting missiles— especially if they had chemical warheads.

Hell, if he had to bail he could always hook up with Wong and his Delta Force buddies. Wouldn’t that be fun?

“What about the Scuds themselves?” he asked Wong. “Are they there too?”

“We’re working on it, Captain. Please be patient.”

“I have less than twelve minutes of fuel to play with,” Doberman said. “Don’t take all day.”

He banked the Hog back westwards, barely. The village and hill were between him and the SAMs, he was within their range; they could hit a hot target from five miles out.

Best thing to do, get low and go after the SA-9s first. Fifty feet head-on, no way they’d nail him.

Could be get both launchers in one run?

The Iraqis would have to be pretty stupid to line them up for him.

Duh.

“Devil One, we have a pickup truck entering the village. We are observing it now. It appears to be a command vehicle,” added Wong. “Please stand by.”

Doberman jostled his legs nervously, barely keeping himself from upsetting the rudders. He felt like he was waiting on the express line at a supermarket with a week’s thirst and a six pack in his hand, stuck behind a fat lady with a month’s supply of groceries.

The woman morphed into Rosen.

This was not the time to be distracted. Doberman pushed his head down and ran through the instrument readings, trying for a routine, trying to keep his edge and his focus. He began a steady climb as he slid his orbit further north toward the river. He turned and lined up to come into Al Kajuk with the Avenger cannon blazing. All he needed was a target. He’d smoke it, then use the hill for cover from the SAMs.

Tight, but doable.

“Come on Wong, what’s the story,” said Doberman. He now had five minutes of fuel left before he’d be at bingo and have to go home. “Is that pickup truck heading anywhere, or what.”

“We’ve found the storage facility,” said Wong finally. “We believe we have identified two missiles, but we do not have a positive confirmation.”

“That’s enough for me. I’m going in,” he said, bolting upright against his seat restraints. “Give me directions. I have that tower thing dead on.”

“The tower thing,” Wong said slowly, “is a minaret, and it is part of the target. We believe the missiles are being stored in a mosque.”

“Repeat?”

“Affirmative, a mosque. Please break off your attack until we have received authorization for the strike.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Doberman. Standing orders prevented an attack on a mosque without explicit approval.

“Repeat?”

Mosque or no mosque, if there were Scuds with chemical warheads down there, they needed to be taken out. He could see the building in the lower right quadrant of his screen.

In five seconds, he cross into the SA-9s’ range. They were going to get a strong whiff of his exhaust if he waited any longer to turn.

“Captain Glenon?”

“Yeah, I’m breaking off,” he told Wong. “Let’s think this through. I’m going to be bingo pretty damn quick. Shit.”

CHAPTER 20

By the time the two F-15s had recovered from their evasive maneuvers, the MiG had disappeared from the screen. Hack knew that his shot had missed; he blamed himself for waiting too long, probably giving the Iraqi time to hit his counter-measures and run away.

He and his wingmate swept north, their radars once again beating the weeds.

Hack’s screen popped up a fresh contact at a bare thousand feet, almost dead ahead.

Exactly where the MiG would be if it had hit its afterburners and dove into the ground effects, trying to duck his radar.

“I have a contact,” he told Johnny, giving him a bearing. “We’re close, we’re close.”

“You got a visual.”

“Negative. I’m locked.”

“I’m tickling— shit, shit, he’s friendly! He’s ours, he’s ours.”

Hack cursed too. The plane his radar had just locked up was an A-10A Warthog.

What the hell was it doing way up here? It sure as hell wasn’t on the air tasking order, at least not that he had seen.

The AWACS controller was yelping in his ear.

“Piranha One acknowledges,” Hack said coolly. “I understand that is a friendly. Tell him not to sweat it. We’re coming south.”

“Probably doesn’t even know you had him by the short hairs,” said Johnny as they turned to head south.

Hack didn’t answer. He suddenly felt angry as hell at the Warthog and its driver, as if the plane had made him miss the MiG.

Damn Warthogs had no business being in the war, let alone being so deep in Iraq. They were old, obsolete, slow, and worst of all, ugly.

Hack ought to know: he’d been a Hog driver for nearly three years before finally kissing enough ass to get promoted to the real Air Force.

Damn stinking Warthog and its dumb-as-shit drivers. Probably got lost.

He checked his position and flicked the radar into air-to-air scan, hunting for his tanker.

CHAPTER 21

Even a Hog driver had his limits.

After nearly twenty minutes of temptation and ho-hum flight back toward Al Jouf, A-Bomb was overcome by boredom as much as hunger. He reached down to the pocket flap for the Twinkie. The cellophane wrapper teased his fingertips— the pilot rarely wore flight gloves— but the package had somehow wedged itself in the bottom of his pocket and resisted his gentle tug. Under ordinary circumstances, A-Bomb would just yank, squeeze and swallow, but with your last piece of pastry you had to consider Karma. Squishing the delicate icing was very bad luck, especially while you were still over enemy territory. So he leaned down, trying to slip his fingers beneath the cardboard at the base of the pastry and tease it out.

As he did, his eyes caught something on the ground ahead, a small gray shape scuttling along like a crab in a shallow pool. A-Bomb left the Twinkie in his pocket and jerked upright in the seat. A Zil truck with a trailer was running across the desert ahead, maybe ten miles from the Saudi border. This wasn’t some Iraqi dad taking his kid to college, either— the trailer was a 122 mm D-30 towed howitzer, a large and effective medium range artillery piece designed to harass well-meaning trespassers and Coalition troops on the good-guy side of the border.

The Hog sniffed and snorted, her appetite inflamed by the tasty treat. She was in almost perfect position to gobble it up; a good solid push on the stick, perhaps a tad of rudder, and the target would slide into the cannon’s crosshairs at maybe five thousand feet. A-Bomb pushed in, so excited by his good fortune that he forgot he was flying with only one engine.

The A-10A promptly reminded him, bucking her tail behind him. It didn’t amount to more than a slight whimper of complaint, however— A-Bomb barely noticed as the altitude ladder on his HUD scrolled downwards, falling promptly through eight thousand to seven thousand feet. At six thousand, the truck passed into his targeting pipper, but A-Bomb held off, deciding that he would bank behind the truck and come lower, attacking it from the rear with a long, shallow approach, a tactical concession to the fact that he was running with only one engine.

Technically, of course, the concession he should have made was to ignore the target and fly directly back to base. But A-Bomb had never considered himself a technical type. He banked and came around, down now to nearly three thousand feet, a turkey shoot except that the Zil was not only moving faster than he thought but had cut to his right, leaving whatever trail it was following to dart and dodge in the hard-packed sand. A-Bomb corrected but then threw his momentum too far to the right, not only completely losing the shot but nearly putting himself into a spin.

Never again would he fly without a reserve supply of Twizzlers. Never.

He sighed, straightening the plane and circling back in a long arc, the target now running toward him in the left corner of his windscreen. A-Bomb kissed the stick with his fingertips, pulling the Hog’s nose onto the radiator of the Zil as he nailed the trigger home. The gun roared as he gave the Gat a good double-pump, a personal signature kind of thing. The cannon’s recoil practically stopped him in midair, the plane jittering as her nose erupted with flames and smoke from the gun.

As he let off on the trigger, A-Bomb realized two things:

One, he’d blown the shot, because the truck was still moving.

Two, things were suddenly awful quiet.

The shock of the recoil had flamed the plane’s one good engine. Under other circumstances, A-Bomb would have undone his seat restraints and given himself a good kick in the rumpus area for flying like such an idiot. But he was down to two thousand feet, not a particularly good place to fly without means of propulsion. And besides, he was already being chewed out sufficiently by the plane’s problem panel. He nosed down for momentum, cursing over the stall warning as he worked to restart the engine. The turbines spun, the fuel combusted, and the GE turbofan on the left side of the hull kicked herself back to life. The Hog lurched and a whole lot of desert flew in front of A-Bomb’s face. He pulled out maybe three seconds before his job description would have changed from Hog driver to backhoe operator.

Any other pilot would have called it a day and set sail for the Saudi border a few miles away. But whatever other characteristics he possessed, A-Bomb was not a quitter. He had a very deep sense of obligation, and realized that his boneheaded, hot-dogging stupidity had just brought serious embarrassment to Hog drivers everywhere. True, he had an excuse— obviously his blood sugar was out of whack. But how could he take his place in the great fraternity of Hog men, to say nothing of tomorrow night’s poker game, knowing that he had missed an easy shot on an unprotected target?

He couldn’t just go in with the cannon, though. It wasn’t simply that he might flame the engine again. Hardly. That could be avoided or at least prepared for by simply climbing higher and attacking with a steeper angle. But doing that would be tantamount to admitting he was unworthy; it would be expected, it would be boring. The stakes had been raised. A-Bomb had to go beyond the mundane. Hog drivers the world over were counting on him to demonstrate élan and ingenuity.

There was, fortunately, a way.

He steadied the Hog at roughly twelve hundred feet over the desert, banking roughly two miles behind the Zil. Nudging his nose into the swirling grit, he picked up speed as he hurtled toward the rear of the truck. The Hog coughed for a second, wondering what he was up to, but A-Bomb kept on, his timing and aim perfect. He caught the Zil and whipped his right wing up in a terrific banking turn directly in front of the windshield, swooping into the driver’s vision so suddenly that the man yanked the wheel hard to the left, toppling the truck and trashing the howitzer behind him.

A-Bomb’s wingtip was two feet off the road before he slapped the plane back level. He belatedly realized he could have smashed the truck’s windshield if he’d popped his landing gear at the right moment.

But that was Monday morning quarterbacking. The truck and its trailer lay sprawled upside down in the desert sand, the howitzer broken in a half.

A-Bomb checked his course for Al Jouf, did a quick instrument check, and then reached down for the Twinkie.

Which, shaken loose by the encounter with the Zil, slid right into his fingers, demanding to be eaten.

CHAPTER 22

Captain Wong cast an eye toward the dark speck in the sky to the west as he continued to talk to its pilot over the satellite system. The Hog was undoubtedly into its reserves and ought to head back to its re-supply base. But Captain Glenon was as stubborn as the dogs he’d been nicknamed for.

“There is no need for us to call a strike in on the mosque,” Wong told Doberman speaking patiently into the Satcom’s retro-black-plastic and steel handset. The radio consisted of the control unit rucksack and an antenna “dish” that looked like a large X fashioned from thin, flat metal blades. “If the Iraqis follow their usual pattern, they will move the missiles as dusk fall, perhaps slightly afterwards. It will then be rather easy to attack them. I would expect an approximate time of 1900 hours.”

“Yeah, all right,” said Doberman. “I’ll be back.”

Wong shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Doberman could get back in time; on the contrary, given the legendary efficiency of the A-10A maintenance crews, not to mention Captain Glenon’s own snappy manner, he could undoubtedly rearm and return with four or five minutes to spare. The Hog, however, was not a night fighter; if the Iraqis deviated from their normal pattern he would have a difficult time locating his target, unless he managed to obtain infrared Mavericks during his reload. He was also flying without a wingman— a dubious situation at best.

Wong’s preferred solution was to request fresh air support. But it was useless to argue with Doberman, who was even more cantankerous and aggressive than the normal Hog driver. Wong had a theory that this was due in large measure to his small stature— so little place to store the bad humors the body naturally accumulated.

He didn’t bother sharing the theory with Doberman, just as he did not bother telling him that he would, indeed, be calling for another flight of bombers. Instead he wished Devil One luck.

“Yeah. Be back,” said Doberman, almost cheerfully.

Wong shook his head at the speck of a Hog in the distance, already disappearing. Then he clicked off the circuit and turned back toward the communications specialist, intending to ask him to contact the AWACS.

The com specialist had his hands spread out wide. A few yards down the hill, six Iraqis were pointing guns at them. One of the soldiers gestured toward Wong, indicating that the captain should raise his hands and step away from the radio.

It seemed expedient to comply, and so he did.