Fort Apache

CHAPTER 1

This is what happened when you had a big mouth:

You ended up staring through the open door of a C-141B Starlifter, 35,000 feet over Iraq, sucking oxygen from a mask, waiting to kill yourself.

You also shivered your damn butt off. But at least that took your mind off what was going to happen when you jumped.

A little.

Air Force Lieutenant William B.J. Dixon would have given anything— anything— not to be standing in the dim red light of the unpressurized cargo hold, wind whipping everywhere, weighed down by what the Special Ops paratroopers around him swore was only thirty — five pounds of equipment but felt like at least five hundred.

But it was his fault. He had opened his big mouth.

Worse. He had committed the unpardonable sin.

He had volunteered.

Idiot.

Technically, Dixon hadn’t been lying when he told the Delta Force officer in charge of the operation that he had parachuted at night. He had— once, as part of a recreational sky diving program in college.

But that jump was a hell of a lot different than this. Much different. And while the Special Ops people had obviously thought he was a heavily experienced jumper, the truth was Dixon hadn’t even made the hundred jumps necessary for a Class A skydiving license.

In fact, he hadn’t made half that.

Or a quarter.

But five jumps did qualify in his mind as “a lot,” which were his exact words when asked how often he’d jumped.

It had been a seemingly innocent, offhand, and irrelevant question at the time, precisely the kind that demanded a vague and even baloney-squash answer.

You’d think.

Until tonight, the highest altitude he’d ever jumped from was twelve thousand feet. Or eight thousand. He couldn’t quite remember.

The commando in charge of the team, a Delta trooper named Sergeant Eli Winston, gave him a thumbs-up and nudged him toward the Starlifter’s door.

All these guys were serious nut cases, but Winston was the worse. The rest of the commandos had M-16s or MP-5s, serious but lightweight weapons. Created by Heckler & Koch, they could spit through their 30 round-clips in less than three seconds and were generally accurate to two hundred yards. Impressive, but not gaudy.

Winston, a wiry black man who stood maybe five-seven, was carrying an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon or “SAW,” a fierce machine-gun more than twice the size of the MP5. He had four plastic boxes of belted ammo strapped to his body within easy reach, augmenting the bulky clip of 5.56s in the SAW’s gut. Dixon was convinced the sergeant was planning on using all five clips before he hit the ground.

Thing was, to a man the Special Forces troops he was jumping with thought Dixon was as crazy as they were. Crazier. He flew a Hog, after all. He’d shot down a helicopter, after all. And he’d accepted the surrender of an entire platoon of Iraqi soldiers while riding along with a Special Ops group on a rescue mission just a few days before.

But of course what cinched it was the fact that he’d volunteered.

So no wonder they figured Dixon would have no problem jumping out of a cargo plane going, Mach 25, more than a hundred miles into Iraq in the dead of night.

Hog driver? Shit, those guys are born crazy. Ever see the plane they fly? How low they go? How many bombs they carry?

Got to be nuts.

Jumping out of an airplane in the middle of the night’s like going to a drive-in movie for those guys.

Dixon’s decision to volunteer had actually been part of his plan to get back to his squadron, the 535^th Tactical Fighter Squadron, affectionately known to Saddam and anyone else who tried messing with them as Devil Squadron. Punished for an admittedly stupid screw up the first day of the air war, Dixon had been temporarily shunted into a do — nothing job in Riyadh. So naturally, he’d salivated when one of his newfound Special Ops buddies suggested he tell a certain colonel he was available to help train ground FACs.

Ground FACs— also known as forward air controllers— worked with attack pilots to pick out targets on the front lines. In some cases, the job was actually handled by pilots, but that wasn’t particularly necessary: mostly all you had to do was work a radio and have a good sense of direction and a rudimentary understanding of a plane’s capabilities. Telling a Hog driver what he needed to know would take all of three seconds: point to something big enough to blow up, then duck.

It was a time-honored profession, and Dixon figured he could make as worthy a contribution to it as the next guy. A few lectures, a bunch of donuts, and the job would be done.

And since the Special Ops units were headquartered at King Fahd— also his squadron’s home drome— the assignment seemed a perfect chance to worm back into his squadron commander’s good graces. His boss, Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington, would certainly have cooled off by now, and volunteering to help a brother service would surely count in Dixon’s favor.

It was all going to be piece of cake, especially since there was no real need for FACs until the ground war started— weeks, if not months from now. Dixon had figured that with a little luck, string-pulling and maybe some strategic whining, he’d be back dropping bombs with Devil Squadron inside a week.

Except something had gotten lost in the translation. Because there wasn’t anyone to train.

And the Special Ops troops weren’t waiting for the ground war to start. They needed somebody north right away.

Far north. As in: Iraq.

By the time he realized what was involved, a night HAHO jump into Iraq for starters, it was too late to back out without looking like a complete coward.

And there was also the fact that he had fibbed slightly about his colonel’s permission regarding the assignment.

It wasn’t a fib, exactly. He had given an accurate and direct response, though the question had been posed casually, in what seemed like idle conversation.

Or maybe it hadn’t. Because who in God’s name would actually give permission for something like this.

Or volunteer, for that matter.

But here he was, Dixon with the six men who constituted Team Ruth, waiting in the C-141B to jump into an area just south of the Euphrates River. They weren’t alone, exactly. A larger group, code-named “Apache,” had parachuted into the southwestern desert a few minutes before. Apache was setting up a base to support Dixon’s teams and others Scud hunting in the north and east of the country.

From what Dixon could see, two dozen or so man had parachuted into a black void of nothingness. And they’d stepped off into it gladly, like ascetics giving themselves up to the spirit world.

Damned poetic way of describing idiocy.

Dixon was startled by a sharp punch to his shoulder. Wincing, he turned to face a fully loaded paratrooper wagging a finger across his equipment as if he were a witch conjuring a spell to keep him safe.

No such luck. Just the communications or “como” specialist, Sergeant Joey Leteri, checking his equipment. Leteri was the squad’s jumpmaster.

Leteri gave him an extended middle finger and a grin beneath his mask.

That was supposed to mean he was ready to go. Funny.

Winston submitted to the check next, exchanging fingers and shoulder chucks. Then he turned to Dixon and gave him a peace sign.

Not peace. It meant two minutes.

Two minutes to live.

Dixon nodded, then realized the sergeant wanted a more emphatic answer.

He gave him the finger. Not necessarily without malice.

Winston used the SAW to offer a shoulder-chuck back. If he hadn’t been braced against the side of the plane, Dixon would have gone straight to the deck. As it was, he swore he dented the metal.

The C-141 was flying in formation with two B-52s. The idea was to make the mission look like just another high — altitude bombing run instead of a deep infiltration. Which undoubtedly it would, since who’d think the Americans were this crazy?

Winston leaned closer to the door. Dixon had to go out before him. Or at least, he was supposed to.

So how much of a coward would they think he was if he stayed in the plane?

Big time. Better to shoot himself with the MP-5.

Might be less painful, actually. Certainly a lot less scary.

Winston turned and motioned him forward. Dixon took a small step, then felt himself being pushed forward by Leteri or some other fool.

Arch. That was what he was supposed to do, right?

Arch. Frog position.

Screw it, as long as he didn’t tumble too badly. They’d given him an automatic deployment device. Sooner or later, the chute would open no matter what.

Or maybe not.

The wind kicked up. Even wearing an insulated jumpsuit, Dixon began to shake with the cold.

He thought about the possibility of a freak wind current scooping him into one of the C141’s Pratt & Whitney’s? What if one of the B-52s was out of position.

Oh boy, he thought, it’s dark out there.

Oh boy, I got to take a leak.

Oh boy, here we go.

And then he was dancing at the edge of the universe, assisted with Leteri’s nudge.

He was flying.

Holy Jesus, he was outside the plane.

Holy Jesus, he was falling.

Oh yeah, he thought to himself as his stomach left his body, this is why I dropped out of that goddamn skydiving program.

CHAPTER 2

Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington had just decided the time had come to write letters to his sisters; he’d promised them both he would do so at least once a week but hadn’t since coming to the Gulf. But a tall soldier in desert camouflage fatigues knocked at the open door of his office in Hog Heaven.

“General wanted to know if you were available, sir,” said the soldier. Ramrod straight, every pore of his body sweated respect, though Knowlington never knew quite how to take the Delta Force soldiers. He knew this sergeant vaguely; he was part of the general’s retinue at the Bat Cave, the unofficial name of the Special Operations command center at King Fahd. Since Knowlington had spent a considerable time with the general over the past few days, and since there had been some ballyhoo over Skull’s recent mission to rescue one of his men north of the border, it was likely that the sergeant’s respectful tone was sincere. Still, Knowlington knew the Delta Force troopers held all officers in suspicion. Those from other commands, let alone services, were usually considered one notch above the enemy, when considered at all.

The general who headed the joint services mission had himself been Air Force, but the operative word there was “had.” Besides, the general had flown Puff the Magic Dragon gunships in Vietnam and lost enough blood in combat to impress even the hard-ass non-coms who filled his ranks.

Knowlington struggled to remember the sergeant’s first name as they crossed the air base to the Special Ops center in what had once been a parking garage. It was Jake or James or Jack, but taking a guess wasn’t going to cut it. So he merely grunted in appreciation as the trooper faded behind him at the entrance to the general’s suite.

Suite was a bit of an overstatement. It consisted of a roped off area studded with guards. Behind them were walls made of supply boxes. Knowlington found the general inside his situation room.

“Mikey, great,” said the general as Knowlington walked over to the stack of boxes that marked the wall. “We’re go. Apache’s underway.”

For weeks, the Special Ops command had been lobbying for a more active role in the conflict. They wanted to infiltrate Iraq and help destroy the enemy’s supply and command structure, as well as take out Saddam’s only long — range strategic threat, Scud missiles. But General Schwarzkopf had steadfastly refused— until Scuds started falling on Israel.

Delta troopers and other allied Special Ops teams had begun infiltrating Iraq some days before. “Apache” was even more ambitious— it called for establishing a base more than a hundred miles inside Iraq to support the commando teams. A-10As would help— specifically, Colonel Knowlington’s A-10As.

The base would be called “Fort Apache.” Deep in the heart of Injun country.

While Colonel Knowlington had helped prepare the plan, he remained slightly skeptical of it and surprised that it had been approved so quickly. “When did this happen?” he asked, sliding over one of the folding chairs that passed for office furniture.

“We got the go this afternoon. We went.”

“I’ll have your planes at Al Jouf tomorrow afternoon,” said Knowlington.

“I’m counting on it,” said the general. “But I was hoping to have them in the morning.”

“The morning?”

“There a problem?”

The squadron had a full frag set for the morning, and nearly everyone who could fly was already assigned. A “frag” was the portion or fragment of the Air Tasking Order that pertained to a specific unit, in this case the 535^th Attack Squadron (Provisional), which made up its own wing and was under Colonel Knowlington’s command. The unit had been thrown together from planes headed for the scrap heap and hustled to the Gulf. So far, it had done a hell of a job bashing Saddam.

But finding some planes to fly more than a hundred miles into Iraq on less than twelve hours’ notice?

Not easy.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Knowlington. “We were originally talking about twenty-four hours.”

“Things change,” said the general. “I’m getting your best guys?”

“We agreed on volunteers.”

The general smiled. The agreement was that Knowlington would ask his best men first, and both officers knew or at least suspected they would volunteer. They were, after all, Hog drivers.

“I’d like to get a special maintenance team at Al Jouf,” added the general.

“Wait a second,” said Knowlington. “There are some good people there already. Plenty, from what I hear. We’re running full sorties out of there.”

“We want to keep the Apache force separate. Security.”

“Aw come on. That’s just bullshit.”

Knowlington would have made the same response even if he and the general hadn’t been through some butt-wrenching times together over the years— one of the reasons Knowlington was still only a colonel. The general gave him a just a hint of a disapproving stare, then folded his hands outward as if he had no choice.

Which Knowlington knew was complete bullshit.

“We don’t need your entire squadron,” said the general. “But I want people we can count on. Right now we’re screwed on the helicopter maintenance side. I have one person to keep two helos in the air. That’s an accident waiting to happen, don’t you think?”

Of course it was, and Knowlington couldn’t argue. But it wasn’t necessarily relevant. There were plenty of A-10 specialists from other Warthog squadrons out at Al Jouf, which was on the other side of Saudi Arabia much closer to the border. As a matter of fact, a crew of them had patched one of his planes together just the other day.

“I don’t want one of my pilots flying in a plane that’s not one hundred percent,” added the general.

“Those are my pilots,” said Knowlington.

“Our pilots,” said the general, about as diplomatically as he ever managed.

That was a bad sign, thought Knowlington, realizing he was going to have to concede. “What do you need?”

“Well, we can pick up the survival shop out there.”

The survival specialists were in charge of, among other things, making sure the pilots had working parachutes.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Work with me, Tommy. I just want to make sure the planes are ready to go.”

“I have the same problem here,” said Knowlington.

“Ah, your guy Clyston’s put together a Super Bowl team. Come on. I’m not asking for everybody, just a few key guys.”

“I’ll see who we can spare.”

The general gave him a look that implied he better spare at least a few of his best technical wizards, but said nothing more.

“You have up-to-date intelligence on that strip you want to use?” Knowlington asked, changing the subject as a tactful surrender.

“The last satellite picture shows it there, with no guards, no nothing. Improving it to the point where we can put in C-130’s still a long shot. Now if we had gotten the J’s though congress…”

“I wasn’t part of that,” said Knowlington, who had heard the pointed lament at least twice in the past three days. He was fudging a bit. Knowlington’s most recent Pentagon assignment had included “briefing” Congressmen. He had been asked unofficially to help lobby for the special-edition cargo planes, which could land fully loaded on even shorter strips than the normal models; 1,500 feet was the supposed spec. But Knowlington’s boss was opposed to the program because of other funding priorities. The issue was one of the few where the colonel had strictly obeyed orders.

“I better get going,” said Knowlington when the general didn’t respond. “I have to get your volunteers.”

“Thanks for your help.” The general got up and walked with him to the boxes that marked the sit-room door. “And thanks for Dixon, too.”

“What do you mean, Dixon?”

“Lieutenant Dixon. The assignment you cleared.”

“I didn’t clear any assignment. You mean the trip with the helicopter crew that picked up Mongoose? I’m still pissed at that.”

“No,” said the general. “The ground FAC assignment. You didn’t clear it?”

“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

The general stifled a laugh. “Typical Hog pilot.” he shook his head. “You didn’t tell Lieutenant Dixon to see Jeff Marg in Riyadh?”

Marg was one of the colonels in charge of the infiltration teams.

“No way,” said Knowlington. “I sent him over to Black Hole to cool his heels for a week or two, but I want him back eventually. If only to spank his behind. He got hooked up in that rescue mission on his own.”

“Jeez, go easy on the kid. Marg told me he shot down a helicopter. And a whole platoon of Iraqis surrendered to him.”

“They surrendered to me and my wingman,” said Knowlington. “I’m not saying the kid’s not a good pilot,” he added. “Or that he’s not brave. Or stupid. But he’s still green. Shit, Dixon’s barely old enough to have a beer.”

“Ah. You were young once.”

“Not naive, though. Where the hell is he?”

“Parachuting into Iraq.”

“Parachuting? Into Iraq? Dixon is parachuting?”

“Well, yeah. We needed someone who could talk to pilots and he volunteered. Marg thought you cleared it. Dixon’s not a skydiver?”

“As far as I know, he’s as much a skydiver as I’m a skateboarder.”

“Well I sure as shit hope you’re world class,” said the general.

CHAPTER 3

Doberman took another swig from the soda can and squirreled his eyes into something he hoped would look like a perplexed squint.

“Hey Dog Man, you betting those threes or what?” asked A-Bomb, who was sitting across from him at the poker table.

Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke was Captain John “Doberman” Glenon’s wingman in Devil Squadron, a Hog driver with considerable experience in the cockpit and even more playing cards.

“Yeah, I’m in.” Doberman kicked in a chip to meet the bet. He was showing a pair of threes, separated by a king and a ten. It looked like a dumb move and, truth was, it wasn’t a percentage play at all.

The thing was, though, both the king and the ten were spades. And his first two cards, dealt face down in this game of seven-card stud, were also spades.

An ace and a queen, as a matter of fact. Ordinarily Doberman would run the odds through his mental computer and reject any possibility of winning with a flush or a straight, let alone a royal flush. But he was so far ahead tonight, he could afford to play a wild long shot. In fact, he’d been doing that all night, a complete reversal of his usual poker operandi, which had brought completely unexpected results: He was winning.

The pilots were playing in a back room of the Depot, an off-base club located in what seemed to have been an old bomb shelter literally yards from the King Fahd runway. Who ran it, let alone who had built it, was unknown. Some guys said it sprung whole from the desert after too many GIs had too many wet dreams; you didn’t have to take more than a step into the hazy interior to believe that was true. The uniforms the waitresses wore covered less than the average postage stamp. There was a floor show, a cage show, and a ceiling extravaganza — not to mention several rooms that even A-Bomb advised weren’t to be entered.

The official attitude toward the club was difficult to gauge. On the one hand, it was the epitome of everything prohibited in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, at least one two-star general was known to be among the frequent “guests.” The Devil Squadron Commander, Colonel Knowlington, didn’t approve but didn’t censure, either. The other squadron commanders were equally ambiguous.

“I’ll see Wong’s raise, and go five more,” snapped the player to Doberman’s left, Kevin Sullivan. Captain Sullivan had three fours on the table. Normally, his cherubic expression could be counted on to give his hold cards away. But he had worn a consistent scowl from the very first hand, and for the past hour had growled nearly as sharply as the plane he piloted, an AC-130 mean-ass gunship armed with a variety of cannons and a very nasty temper. Sullivan was a particularly poor loser, and like everyone else at the table except Captain Bristol Wong, was down heavily to Doberman.

Who had been advertised as the night’s pigeon.

“You guys are too rich for me,” said A-Bomb, folding. Richie Stevens did the same. Wong, who was showing two pair, aces high, pushed forward five chips. The intelligence officer, on loan from the Pentagon G2 staff, had been advertised as the night’s pigeon. He’d proven anything but: only Doberman’s incredible string of luck had held him in check.

Not that Doberman thought it was luck exactly.

“Out,” said Hernandez, throwing down his cards.

The bet was back to Doberman. Statistically speaking, his best hope was to land another three, and that wouldn’t even beat what Sullivan was showing. The way he read the table, Sullivan and Wong were both riding full houses; all he was doing was making the pot fatter for them, something he’d been doing all night.

And yet, if he pulled a jack of spades, how sweet that would be. The odds on getting a royal flush were astronomical: well into the millions. On the other hand, having been dealt the four cards to start with, the odds really weren’t that ridiculous. In fact, they were no worse than 1 out of 32, since Doberman already knew the card he needed wasn’t lying face up on the table.

Still a long shot. But he’d never had a night like this before.

“Call,” he said, pushing forward a five-dollar chip.

“Feeling lucky?” mocked A-Bomb. “Oh, I forgot, you don’t believe in luck. So how come you’re in?”

“Just deal the cards,” Doberman told him.

“For somebody that doesn’t believe in luck, he’s sure riding high,” said Sullivan.

“I got the luck of Job,” said Doberman.

“Anybody want a beer?” Hernandez asked.

“I’ll take one,” said A-Bomb. “See if you can get some of those scorcher wings. I showed Manny or whatever his name is in the back how to pep them up with that hot sauce I got the other day.”

“When did you have time to do that?” asked Hernandez. Like A-Bomb and Doberman, he was a Devil Squadron Hog driver. “Don’t you sleep?”

“Shit, I sleep all the time,” said A-Bomb. “Hell, we’re flying and things are slow, I take a nap in the cockpit. Right, Dog Man?”

“The snores are unreal,” said Doberman. “Now deal the fuckin’ cards.”

“You want a beer, Wong?” asked Hernandez.

“He ought to pay for a round,” suggested Sullivan. ”He’s the new guy.”

“I am not drinking beer,” said Wong. “And I will not contribute to your dereliction by purchasing any. It is against the custom and law of the country.”

“Shit, Wong, are you for real?” asked Hernandez.

“He’s busting your chops. Go ahead, it’s on him,” A-Bomb said. “He’s got a tab.”

“Why does everyone on this base think I’m making jokes?” Wong asked. “And since when do I have a tab here?”

“I set it up,” said A-Bomb. “You can thank me later.”

“Hey, are we playing cards or what?” demanded Doberman.

“You’re pretty antsy for somebody who’s got butkus,” said Sullivan. “Or do you suddenly believe in luck?”

“Fuck you.”

“Dogman ain’t lucky at planes or cards,” said A-Bomb.

“Shit, yeah, he is,” said Sullivan. “Nobody in the world could take so many bullets and keep flying.”

“Hell, that ain’t luck. Hog loves to take bullets,” said A-Bomb. “Holes in the wing make it fly faster.”

“Just because I know what I’m doing and you don’t, doesn’t mean I’m lucky,” said Doberman.

“Yeah, right,” Sullivan said.

“You ever fly your crate home without hydraulics?”

“Last card down,” said A-Bomb, dishing Wong’s card to begin the final round.

The plastic beads walling off the room parted, revealing Lieutenant Jack “Happy Face” Gladstone, who, contrary to his nickname, perpetually frowned.

“Colonel needs to see you right away, Captain,” he told Doberman. “Wants you, too, sir,” he told Wong.

Wong immediately pushed his chair back and rose.

“Whoa! Wait a second. We got a hand to finish here,” said Sullivan.

“Guess I might as well come, too,” said A-Bomb, putting the deck down and standing. “What’s going on, Smile Boy?”

“Hey come on, let’s finish the hand,” said Doberman. “Where the hell are you guys going? Wong, get back here. A-Bomb.”

“Colonel’s pissed about something,” said Gladstone. “The capo told me he was over in the Bat Cave a little while ago. That’s all I know.”

“Uh-oh,” said A-Bomb. The “capo” was the wing’s top sergeant, Chief Master Sergeant Allen Clyston, a man wise in all things and with more sources than the CIA. A-Bomb scooped up the pot.

“Hey,” said Sullivan. “We can finish the hand.”

“Colonel wouldn’t be asking to see us this time of night unless it was real important,” said A-Bomb. “I’ll cash out everybody on the way over to Hog Heaven.”

“Shit, he doesn’t want all of us,” said Doberman. He had already decided this must be an administrative thing; the squadron DO was due to be shipped home, and Doberman was among those in line for the job.

Not that he wanted it.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere without your wingman watching your butt,” said A-Bomb. “I’m trusting you guys to remember what you bet that last round,” he added, stalking away.

Sullivan cursed and tossed his cards down. Doberman took a deep breath and rose, the last one in the room.

His next card was lying face down on the top of the pile.

He hesitated for a second.

More than likely, it was a five or a seven or even another king or queen, something in diamonds or hearts.

More than likely, Gladstone had just saved him a bundle.

He started to walk out the room, got as far as the beads, turned back. Doberman reached down and flipped over the card.

Jack of spades.

CHAPTER 4

The first thing Dixon felt was overwhelming numbness.

The next thing he felt was a severe yank against his chest.

The chute had opened.

Already? It should have taken at least twenty seconds to fall down to 30,000 feet. He’d only just stepped out of the plane.

Dixon glanced upwards, aware that he was supposed to check the canopy to make sure it was properly deployed, but damned if he could remember what the hell it was supposed to look like.

It was too dark to see anyway. He had a flashlight somewhere, but he wasn’t supposed to use it unless it was an emergency.

Or was that the flares?

Fuck it. If the chute was screwed up he’d be tear — assing downward. And he didn’t seem to be.

Dixon actually felt himself relax a little. Now that the chute was open, all he had to do was steer to his landing spot.

Which wasn’t necessarily impossible. Hell, all he really had to do was land. Let the commandos worry about finding him.

They would, wouldn’t they?

Dixon reached up for the steering togs in place on the rig above each of his hands. He was so surprised to find them that he pulled down a hell of a lot harder than he intended.

His chute flared, exactly as the tug told it to. Unfortunately, since the still-deploying chute hadn’t had enough time to adequately slow his momentum, and since he was swaying besides, the canopy began to wrap.

Which, in layman’s terms, meant things were starting to get pretty screwed up. Dixon was in danger of becoming a QPO — a quickly plummeting object.

Whether it was the shock of the spin, instinct, or his long-forgotten skydiving lessons, Dixon managed to ease back and open the ram-air chute enough to stabilize. But before he did every muscle in his upper body went ballistic; his arms got more rigid than a corpse’s. There was no way was ever going to steer the rig like that.

He tried relaxing by thinking relaxing thoughts. But all he could think of was how pissed Colonel Knowlington was going to be if he pancaked into the Iraqi countryside.

Somehow, the image of Knowlington’s furling lips relaxed his muscles— or scared them into pliability. Dixon began to feel almost comfortable in his parachute rig, finally confident that he was gliding and not falling. He turned his head to read the night-glo altimeter strapped to his left wrist.

Instead, his attention was grabbed by the dark shadow of a large parachute just beyond his arm, close enough for him to touch.

Dixon held his breath and tried to keep his arms relaxed, worried that anything he did to steer away would only take him closer. He lifted his legs, remembering at the last second to keep them together, so he wouldn’t change his momentum abruptly.

Gradually, the distance between him and the shadow opened. The other parachute slipped three, four, then five yards away, barely visible. It seemed to hang there, as if kept close by magnetic attraction.

Dixon was too damn close for safety in the dark.

On the other hand, it probably meant he wouldn’t be lost when he landed.

Dixon was supposed to yank off his oxygen mask at twelve thousand feet. He looked again at the altimeter, but couldn’t make out the reading. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he could see the dial.

What he could see were green-yellow streaks off to his right.

Pretty things. Delicate and thin, flares in the night.

Tracers.

Guns being fired at someone or something.

Maybe even him.

The colors told him who was firing. NATO guns almost uniformly packed red tracers.

Russian-made weapons carried green.

Green means bad, red means good.

Oh shit.

Actually, it wasn’t that hard to steer the chute, once his arms flexed and he got used to it. And Dixon finally figured he wasn’t going to suffocate if he just went ahead and yanked off the oxygen mask, no matter how high or low he was.

Granted, it was pitch black, he had no idea where the ground might be, and he was colder than an icicle on a polar bear’s nose. But the lieutenant even managed to put a few more yards between him and whoever was piloting the nearby chute, while still staying close enough to make it out in the dark.

All he had to do was land and this nightmare would be over. He finally realized that his altimeter had somehow gotten twisted around on his arm during the jump, and somehow wouldn’t stay put where he could see it without gyrating contortions. But he knew he was getting close to the ground. He figured he’d see something when the time came.

If nothing else, his rucksack— hanging off his rig below his feet— would hit the desert a second or so before him. That was probably all the cue he needed, or wanted.

Dixon knew how to land. That was easy. You relaxed and you walked, as if you were coming off the last step of an escalator.

No, that was the way the pros did it. He was still a newbie. Newbies relaxed and walked and rolled. The roll took all the energy out of the jump. You went down easy so you didn’t break something.

Yeah, right. What about the rucksack tied to his butt? What if it bounced and smacked him in the head?

Serve him right, that.

Dixon looked over and realized that he had lost the other parachute. He saw a much longer shadow, a blanket almost, in its place.

The ground. Must be.

He pushed his left tog down, starting to turn into the wind. Then he realized he’d set it too hard and backed off, but not before his body and the parachute had pitched sharply to the right. Trying to straighten himself out he flared the chute hard, once again hitting the brakes in midair. His legs whipped forward unexpectedly, and he felt like a kid about to fall out of a swing.

Dixon knew that nine-tenths of what he had to do was just relax his arms and shoulders, but his muscles weren’t cooperating. The parachute suddenly seemed to have a mind of its own. His neck felt as if it had a steel boxcar spring wrapped around it.

Somehow he got his arms loose enough to regain some control over the parachute. And then he saw that the sky in front of him wasn’t moving any more.

The ruck hit behind him. His left leg hit the ground. The next thing he knew he was twisting his face in the dirt.

Dixon’s first thought was that he had broken every bone in his body from the neck down.

His next thought was: Hot damn! I made it.

He rolled his legs under him, then released the parachute. He got to his knees and nearly fell over, as dizzy as an out-of-control carousel.

He was still dizzy when a short man with a very large gun materialized directly in front of him. The gun barrel poked into his shoulder.

“Hey, Lieutenant, shit, why didn’t you land into the wind?”

It was Sergeant Winston.

Dixon’s head finally stopped spinning. He stood slowly. His ribs felt crushed but not quite broken. There was a stitch in his lungs, and his left knee felt wobbly, but nothing had been damaged too badly.

“Were you trying to show off?” asked the sergeant.

“Show off?”

“Trying to beat everybody to the ground?”

“No.”

Winston obviously didn’t believe him, and made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “Well, you did. And you scored a perfect bull’s-eye. Come on, let’s round up the rest of the team and get our butts in gear,” added the sergeant, helping Dixon pull in his parachute. “I thought I saw something moving on the highway just before we landed.” He shook his head. “Shit. I figured you’d be off a mile at least. Fucking Hog pilots. You probably think jumping out of a plane in the dark’s fun, huh?”

CHAPTER 5

“The kill boxes are here,” Knowlington told Doberman, A-Bomb and Wong, pointing to a map on an easel in Cineplex, Devil Squadron’s multipurpose ready room, hangout space and briefing area. It was called Cineplex because there was a large-screen TV with a satellite hookup on one end, courtesy of Chief Master Sergeant Alan Clyston and his unending supply line.

“You’re pointing at the Euphrates,” said Doberman.

“I know,” said Knowlington.

“Pretty damn far for us to be flying in daylight,” Doberman told him. “Going to drain time on target to nothing. Be there for what, ten minutes, then have to go home?”

They’d have more than ten minutes— the colonel had figured it at nearly thirty minutes and maybe more, depending on their load configuration— but it was just like Doberman to complain about that, rather than the problem of actually flying so far behind enemy lines in an airplane built to stay close to the front. Even from Al Jouf, a small, forward operating area on the other end of Saudi Arabia, it would take about an hour at nearly top speed, through some of the best anti-air defenses in the world, for the Hogs to reach the area where the commando teams were operating. Granted, allied Weasels had whacked most of the SAM batteries pretty hard. But all it took was one to nail you.

“Hey, time on target’s no big deal as long as they got the targets picked out,” said A-Bomb. “What we need is a good ground controller calling the shots. Somebody who’s familiar with Hogs, you know what I’m talking about?”

“Well, we’ll have one,” said the colonel. “In fact, he’s one of our guys.”

“One of our guys? No shit,” said A-Bomb. “Who?”

“Dixon. He parachuted in with one of the commando teams a few minutes ago.”

Both men couldn’t have looked more surprised if he had told them the world was actually flat.

“Dixon?” said Doberman.

“The lieutenant apparently volunteered,” said Knowlington.

“He’s just a fucking kid,” said Doberman.

“No shit,” said Knowlington.

“Hey, BJ’ll do fine,” said A-Bomb. “He knows what it’s about.”

“He’s a fucking kid,” Doberman told him.

“Whatever he is, he’s on the ground in Iraq now,” said Knowlington. “And it’s too goddamn late to get him back. Wong, you’ve been awful quiet. What’s your opinion?”

Knowlington felt lucky to have snagged Wong for his team. Hijacking him just after he had come to the Devil Squadron on a weapons assignment for CENTCOM. Wong was the self-professed expert in Russian weapons. But for Knowlington, his real asset was the drollest sense of humor he had heard since his days in Vietnam. Sometimes it was so subtle, only the colonel could pick it up, and even he couldn’t always tell whether Wong was goofing or being serious.

He was serious now, definitely.

“The entire operation is a waste of time,” said Wong. He gave a sigh so deep that it sounded like it came from a draft horse. “The so — called Scud or Russian — made SS-1 presents a minimal military threat, even if fitted with chemical warheads. As we saw during the Afghanistan War— ”

“You were there?” asked Doberman, about as sarcastic as a reporter questioning a congressional junket.

“For a time,” said Wong without missing a beat. “Even when massed with the most accurate targeting radars and intelligence available, the SS-1 family was of scant use against the rebel insurgency, with an ineffective damage ratio and a destructive envelope that is frankly less intimidating than the average grenade attack. The Iraqi targeting and launch capacity is even less organized. The parabola of probable destruction has the slant of an inchworm at rest. Given the infrastructure and resources necessary to support the infiltration, targeting and disposal of these minor annoyances, it would make much more sense to —”

“It’s not our job to argue yea or nay,” said Knowlington. “We just have to hit what they want us to hit.”

Wong’s mouth and throat contorted, as if the rest of what he was going to say had been written on a sheaf of paper and he swallowed it whole.

“Yeah, all right, what the hell. I volunteer,” Doberman told Knowlington.

“I wasn’t going to ask you to volunteer.”

“I volunteer anyway.”

“Me, too,” said A-Bomb. “There’s your two-ship. When do we leave?”

With Mongoose due to be shipped back to the States, Doberman and A-Bomb were, at least arguably, the best two pilots in the squadron; by asking them, Knowlington had fulfilled his promise to the general.

Now he proceeded to try and talk them out of it. Both had seen more than their share of action in the past few days and were due serious rests. Doberman especially looked a little ragged around the edges. And with Mongoose going home, the squadron needed a new DO — one who was here at Home Drome, not out in the desert.

“That’s no argument to get me to stay,” said Doberman. “Listen Colonel, no offense intended, but I want to fly, not sit behind a desk.”

“Major Johnson didn’t sit behind a desk,” he told him. “Mongoose flew as much as anybody.”

“Yeah, but I can do without the bullshit, you know? Besides, it screws up your head.”

Knowlington nodded. Doberman was more right than he knew. The downside of the job wasn’t paperwork or bureaucracy or even so much the dealing with the personnel matters that inevitably fell in the DO’s lap. It was the worrying. You felt responsible for everyone, and it weighed on you, began to eat you away. It had only been as a commander that Knowlington himself had come to feel real pressure; only as a professional worrier that he had fallen into despair, and worse.

And, truth was, he’d known these guys would volunteer.

“All right,” Knowlington told them. “Go get some sleep.”

The two pilots left, but Wong remained.

“Captain?”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but I wonder if we could discuss the aspect of my transfer.”

“Which aspect is that?” Knowlington asked. He was tired and not particularly in a mood to enjoy Wong’s usual routines.

“The aspects of its existence. I’m of no use here,” continued Wong. “My role is reduced to fetching people and pointing out the mistakes in incompetent estimates.”

Knowlington started to dismiss him when a light went off in his head: Wong was angling to get involved with Fort Apache.

He should have realized it immediately. Poor guy probably felt insulted that he hadn’t been asked to volunteer. For someone with Wong’s record and abilities, it was a real put-down not to be included. But what the hell could he do at Al Jouf? Help coordinate the bombing missions?

Probably. But the commandos had their own intelligence guys. Not as good as Wong, but damn good.

Still, it might make sense to have Wong out there, scoping the air defenses for Doberman and A-Bomb. Special Ops people weren’t going to be experts on SA-6s or Rolands, and there were plenty of them where they were heading. Wong knew his shit, even if he used phrases like “parabolas of probable destruction” and compared missiles to inchworms.

Damn ball-buster.

“I need you around, Wong,” Knowlington told him. “Your insights are important. Seriously.”

“With all due respect, sir, a trained monkey could perform the services you require.”

Typical Wong-style exaggeration— the whole reason Knowlington kept him around.

But didn’t his guys deserve the best?

“All right, Wong. Look, I have to go talk to Chief Clyston. Hook up with the team he puts together and get out to Al Jouf ASAP. You have my blessing. Just remember, you’re still my guy, not theirs.”

Wong turned purple, or at least reasonably close.

“Al Jouf?”

“That’s where they’re running this from.”

“Colonel…”

“Yeah, I know,” Knowlington said, slapping him on the back as he started away. “You owe me big time.”

CHAPTER 6

Chief Master Sergeant Clyston’s quarters at the home drome were a testament not merely to the role of the squadron’s first sergeant, but to the entire institution of the noncommissioned officer. Clyston’s tent was located in the heart of Tent City, placing him in the very midst of the people he led. Outwardly, it was unostentatious to a fault, a billboard that said to the entire squadron of techies, specialists, ordies, candymen, crew dogs, and wizards that their premier sergeant, their first among firsts, their man, their capo di capo, their CHIEF (as he preferred to be called, capitalization included) was, on some admittedly imperceptible level, one of them.

Inside, it was better equipped than a Pentagon suite, and a hell of a lot more comfy.

Some noncoms, having reached the exalted heights that Chief Clyston had, let it get to their heads, thinking that just because they really ran the show, they had to make sure everyone, officers especially, knew it. Some sergeants, having extended their careers into the rarefied air of chiefdom, not only lorded it over their airmen and lower NCOs, but let their commanders know who was really in charge at every turn. But a major part of the sergeant’s success was his subtlety as well as his efficiency. Just as he was approachable by the lowliest of airmen (assuming, of course, the capo di capo had already had his first cup of morning coffee), so the ostensible commander of Devil Squadron, Colonel Knowlington, felt he was entering the tent of an old friend, albeit an extremely important one, as he knocked at the door. And, in truth, he was. The two men had been a pair since Clyston helped get Knowlington’s Thud ready for a flight over the Ho Chi Ming Trail in the Dark Ages: a flight that earned the then-lieutenant his first air-to-air kill.

“Disturbing you, Alan?” he asked Clyston, who was sitting in a recliner, eyes closed, stereo headphones on.

“Colonel. You surprised me.” Clyston took off the headphones and pushed the recliner closed.

Knowlington plopped himself into one of the over-stuffed chairs nearby. How Clyston had managed to get such decidedly non-military furnishings into the middle of Saudi Arabia hardly ranked among the panoply of Clyston-esque achievements.

“I was just listening to Chopin,” he said. “London Symphony bootleg.”

Knowlington nodded.

“Root beer?” Clyston asked. “I have some from Schmmy’s.”

Schmmy’s was a small, old-fashioned soda-fountain in a small upstate town where a friend of the sergeant’s lived; it was, in the opinion not merely of the capo but of half the squadron, the creator of the world’s best root beer. Knowlington found himself agreeing, despite his intention to go grab some sleep as quickly as possible. The sergeant reached into one of his refrigerators — he had several of various sizes and purposes — and retrieved a small hose and spigot. He then took a frosted mug from an ice chest and pumped the colonel a glass.

“You just wanted to talk?” asked the sergeant as he handed him the glass.

“I wish. We need to send a few people over to Al Jouf.”

“How many?”

“Enough to keep two Hogs in the air indefinitely.”

“Geez, I don’t know if I can spare anybody.”

“It’s important.”

In theory, Clyston wasn’t on the very short list of people with a need to know about Fort Apache, and so the colonel had not told him about it. But Clyston was a five — star member of the Pipeline, and the look and slight nod that he gave the colonel confirmed that he knew all about it, quite possibly in greater detail than the men who had planned it.

It was also obvious that he had already given the matter some thought.

“Going to have to send Tinman,” said the sergeant. “I hate to, but there’s no one who knows metal better than him. He’ll take three places.”

Knowlington nodded, as he did at the other names— until the last.

“Rosen? Again?”

Clyston shrugged. “Colonel, she’s the best on the base at all the avionics crap. And not just on Hogs.”

“She’s a pain in the ass.”

“True. But the thing is, she knows what she’s doing. I’ve seen her make radios work that had half their parts. Besides that, she can strip and reassemble three-quarters of the engines we got in half an hour, and that’s not even her specialty. She’s also a certified parachute packer. Hell, I saw her take an f-ing OV-10 Bronco completely apart and put it back together last year. You know, when she first joined the Air Force…”

“It’s not her ability I’m worried about,” Knowlington interrupted. “She’s an Einstein. But she’s got the personality of the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“That’s not precisely fair,” said Clyston. He nodded to himself, as if considering his words, though Knowlington had heard most of this speech before.

Several times.

“She just gets involved in difficult situations,” said Clyston. “People try to hit on her.”

Knowlington rolled his eyes. In fairness to Rosen, some officers did make unwanted advances toward her; it was a problem for all women in the military. But Rosen wasn’t particularly discriminating about what exactly constituted an “unwanted advance.” And her way of dealing with them wasn’t exactly by the book. A few days before a captain had shown up in Knowlington’s office sporting a badly bruised kneecap and ribs.

Rosen’s defense? She was wearing new shoes or she would have broken them.

As a general rule, Knowlington didn’t interfere with Clyston’s “suggestions” on assignments. No one in the Air Force knew their personnel better than the capo.

Still…

“You sure, Alan?”

“I’ll kick her butt around a bit and make sure she keeps her f-in’ nose in line,” said Clyston. He crossed his heart with his finger.

“It’s not her nose I’m worried about. She slugs the wrong person and even I won’t be able to get her out of it.” Knowlington drained his glass and set it down, then got up to leave. “Somebody ought to stick a gun in her hands and send her after Saddam.”

“Hey, you never know,” said Clyston, putting his earphones back on.

Aside from one of his sisters, about the last person Skull expected to be waiting for him as he walked back to Hog Heaven was Major James “Mongoose” Johnson.

“You’re supposed to be back in Buffalo by now, aren’t you, ‘Goose?” he asked.

“I missed the plane,” said the major. “Mind if I talk to you a second? It’s kinda… I’d really appreciate it.”

Even though Mongoose was the squadron’s director of operations and Knowlington’s second in command, the two men hadn’t known each other very long and had never gotten along particularly well. Knowlington couldn’t imagine why he was suddenly being called on as a confidante, even though he had risked his neck, and A-Bomb’s, to snatch the major out of an Iraqi troop truck only a few days before. But he led the major into his spartan quarters anyway, waving him toward the only seat in the small room, a trunk at the foot of the cot. Knowlington sat on the cot.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I don’t want to go home,” Mongoose said.

Knowlington laughed, thinking there was a punch line.

There wasn’t.

“I’m serious,” said the major.

“Why don’t you want to go home?”

“I belong here. There’s a lot to be done.”

Nearly thirty years in the Air Force, including a shitload of time in Vietnam, and this was a first. Major Johnson had his arm in a cast, to say nothing of a few less visible injuries. He was in line for umpteen medals and due some major R&R. Knowlington shifted uncomfortably on his cot. “Major… listen, Goose, you deserve to go home. You earned it.”

“I didn’t earn anything. I got shot down.”

“Bullshit. You did a kickass job in that airplane. Hell, you took on those bastards who captured you.”

“No, you guys took them on. I got lucky.”

Knowlington shook his head. Mongoose wasn’t a particularly good person to argue with— as he knew from experience.

“Orders are that you’re heading home,” Knowlington said simply.

“You can get around them, though. I know you can. You’ve got connections coming out your… ”

He stopped short of saying “ass,” which struck Skull as funny, though he didn’t laugh. “I don’t know if I have enough connections to get around that. Hell, Major, don’t you want to see your kid?”

“Yeah, I do. More than anything. But I belong here. It’s my job. You need me.”

“No one’s irreplaceable.”

“Come on, Colonel. Don’t send me home.”

“You can’t fly. What are you going to do? Saw that cast off?”

Johnson ignored the question. “There’s a lot I can do. Please. I’ve never asked you for anything.”

What the pilot didn’t say, though clearly meant, was that Knowlington owed him big time. Major Johnson had taken care of a lot of things— a hell of a lot of things— before Knowlington finally managed to control himself and put himself on the wagon.

The grand total time of which now amounted to twenty-one days, twenty hours and fifteen minutes, by his watch.

Of course, tallying it made him want a drink more than ever.

“I really think you belong with your family, Goose. You just had a kid.”

“Colonel? I want to do my job.”

Tired, surprised with a request he hadn’t expected, Knowlington searched his mind for something to say.

Johnson was nuts.

But he did owe him. And maybe the guy knew something he wasn’t saying.

He’d never pegged Johnson as a drinker or a druggy, but maybe that was what he was afraid of. Or maybe there was something with his wife. Or the kid. Some sort of personal thing that needed time or something. Knowlington had never married and he really wasn’t good at figuring that kind of thing out, except to know for some guys, a lot of guys, it was important.

But damn. The Air Force had an interest in making sure pilots who’d gone through hell got a decent reprieve.

Even if they didn’t want it?

“Colonel?”

“You know what, Major? I’m going to have to think about this. I just don’t know.”

“I do know, sir. I belong here.”

“I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

The major’s face lit with an enormous smile. “Thanks.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” said Knowlington.

“I know that,” said Mongoose, but he was still smiling as he left the tent.

CHAPTER 7

Lying in his cot after volunteering to go on the mission, Doberman found it impossible to sleep. It wasn’t because he was worried about flying so far into enemy territory. He was thinking about the stupid card game.

He had nearly been dealt a dream hand, unarguably the best seven cards he had ever had with a pot fatter than he could have wished.

No, he hadn’t come close to being dealt it— he had been dealt it. He just hadn’t had a chance to play the damn thing.

The dream hand to top off the dream night. Over four hundred bucks was tucked under the mattress.

What a run. Too bad that it had been cut off.

And that was the problem. Because if things had gone on, the odds would have balanced out. He would have started to lose. That was the law of averages, the way statistics worked, the way of probabilities. You could describe it with math. Bing-bang-bam.

Unless there was something else involved, like luck. And what did Sullivan say— lucky at flying, unlucky at cards, and vice versa.

Bullshit. He didn’t believe in luck.

Except a little.

But if he had any luck, it was all bad. Luck of Job. Bullshit luck.

Doberman hadn’t believed in luck or any such superstitious bullshit until the war started. Now he did kind of believe— a little. He had to admit he had been just a little lucky to make it back the second time his plane got hit.

And the first.

The sergeant who inspected his plane called him the luckiest dead man alive.

More skill than luck was involved in getting those planes back. Way more.

Though he had found a lucky penny.

Bullshit. He had a goddamned engineering degree, for Christ sake. There was no such thing as luck.

If he hadn’t gotten the stinking card— if he hadn’t peeked at it— he’d be sleeping by now.

Did the fact that he’d been stopped from playing the hand mean anything?

Maybe he had only a certain amount of luck and couldn’t use it up playing cards. So God or Fate or the Easter Bunny had stopped him from playing it.

Right.

Or maybe his luck was running out.

There were X number of possibilities such a hand would come up; he had played Y times. He’d had a million crappy hands. The pendulum had to swing back at some point. The two curves of probability met at the axis point, bing-bang-bam, the best hand of his life. No luck involved. Only probability.

Was there another curve that had to do with flying?

If there was such a thing as luck, if he had been lucky, he’d have to admit something was going on. Fate or some other superstition which he didn’t believe in. Because if there was such a thing as luck then there would be things like omens, and then the hand might mean truly that he was screwed.

Or not. Because it was all bullshit and superstition. A man succeeded because he busted his ass. Doberman had learned that lesson from his Uncle JR, the guy who’d taught him everything important. Luck was bullshit.

There were only two kinds of pilots. Guys like A-Bomb who were somehow naturals, who just kind of fell into things somehow and made them work. Those guys could fly no matter what happened.

And then there were guys like him, who studied it like a book, worked and worked themselves until they had everything so precise you could describe their flights with mathematical models.

If one somebody like A-Bomb wanted to be superstitious, well what the hell? The guy was already so whacked out one more thing wasn’t going to make any difference. But a pilot like Doberman, a pilot who relied on being exact in everything he did— throw superstition into the equation and that pilot was in serious trouble.

There was no such thing as luck, only probability.

But Doberman just couldn’t get the stinking idea out of his head. As desperately as he needed sleep, the best he could do was play the game in his head, over and over.

CHAPTER 8

Captain Kevin Hawkins stopped and checked the geo-positioner in his hand. They were allegedly less than a quarter-mile from the abandoned stretch of concrete the Bat Cave planners had designated Fort Apache, but he couldn’t see it. Like the other members of the team, Hawkins had a set of AN/PVS-7 night vision goggles, known as NODs or night observation devices, attached to his helmet. The high-tech devices gave a dim green glow to the surrounding terrain, making it possible to see large objects several hundred yards ahead. But the Iraqi desert was real desert here, with shifting dunes and blowing sands. While they were working off satellite photos little more than thirty-six hours old, Hawkins was worried that the concrete had been swallowed whole.

He also worried that the flat surface nearly a thousand feet long was simply a mirage. The intelligence folks had not been able to come up with a plausible reason that the Iraqis would start an airport here, nearly five miles from a highway, nor had they explained why they had suddenly abandoned it.

Not that Hawkins really cared what the explanation might be. He only cared that he found the damn concrete, secured it, and then made it into an airfield. If he succeeded, a pair of Special Ops helos would fly in tomorrow night with supplies, and stay for more than just dinner. He’d also start getting serious parachute drops with enough equipment to turn this little sidewalk in the middle of the desert into Saddam’s worst nightmare.

Assuming he could find it. Hawkins double-checked the positioner again. The line display on the unit, dubbed by its makers “Magellan”, told him his target lay straight ahead.

His eyes told him there was nothing there. What should he believe?

The positioner relied on information supplied by a set of dedicated satellites high overhead. The system had not been completed before the start of the war, and there were grumbles about its accuracy. But it had always worked perfectly for him.

So he trusted it, more or less.

“All right, we move north. Let’s go,” he told his team of Delta Force troopers. His voice sounded confident, and he knew anyone hearing it might think he had spotted the base.

Or not. These guys were pretty much on to his style by now, which was straight-ahead, no-turning-back, no matter the insanity.

“Captain, building at two o’clock.”

Sergeant Nomo’s warning— which somehow managed to sound like a whisper though it was nearly as loud as a shout— stopped the team. Hawkins trotted up to his position on the northeast flank of the unit.

A jagged wall stood over a low dune two hundred yards ahead. Nomo had found Apache’s lone structure, a twenty-by-twenty poured-cement foundation the analysts said stood about three feet high.

Quickly, Hawkins had the team reorient into groups to surround their target. The team’s lone infra-red viewer, more precious than gold in the Gulf, revealed no warm bodies in the chilly night. But this deep in Injun country, they were taking no chances. The men moved out slowly, the lead troopers in each group armed with silenced MP-5s. While not absolutely silent, the submachine gun was difficult to hear more than a few yards away.

Which was why the loud report of a gun a few minutes later sent every member of the team diving into the dirt.

The shot came from the left flank, near the end of the runway. There was no possibility it had come from the troopers, at least as far as Hawkins was concerned. When no other shots fired, he began making his way in that direction, one hand on his viewer as he scanned to see where the Iraqis were positioned.

“What do we have, Vee?” Hawkins asked as he reached the flank team leader without spotting anything.

Sergeant Olhum Vee pointed toward a ditch with the end of his M-16A2. The rifle had a grenade launcher attached to the barrel. “Got to be in the ditch,” he said. “Teller and Garcia are swinging around. We have them covered.”

“How many?” Hawkins asked.

“Don’t know,” said Vee. “Nobody saw anything. There’s no place to hide besides that ditch; can’t be more than four men, tops. Maybe just one or two.”

“There’s a culvert on the other side,” Hawkins told him, gesturing toward the other end of the runway. “But it’s empty. We’ll move in slow

It took Teller and Garcia five long minutes to get into position. By then, the rest of the team had the area well covered: nothing else was moving.

Hawkins watched as Teller and Garcia bolted upright behind the ditch where the shot had come from. They jumped into it without firing.

Were they trying to take the Iraqi’s alive? Hawkins and Lee leapt up, running to assist their men— who were leaning against the edge of the ditch, laughing their butts off.

There were no Iraqis.

“What the hell?” said Vee.

“Relax,” said Garcia. “It’s a crow banger.” He held up a handful of spent cartridges and pointed to a small device near his feet. “See the wires? One of us must’ve got the last one, ‘cause it’s empty now.”

Hawkins bent down to examine the device as the rest of the team gathered at the top of the ditch. Similar to ones used on some American farms, the miniature cannon was intended to scare off animals. Activated by trip wires in the desert, it fired blanks.

“Damn fucking lucky it wasn’t a mine,” said Hawkins, which stopped the laughter. “Let’s make sure this place is secure. And watch where the hell you step from now on. You may end up with more than camel poop on your boot.”

CHAPTER 9

Dixon’s legs felt like they were going to fall off. He dragged them forward, desperate to keep his momentum up. The number five man in the team, Jake Green, kept looming behind him, and Dixon felt him sneering every time he had to cut his pace to keep from running over the Air Force lieutenant.

The thing was, Dixon thought he was in excellent shape. He had run and won a 10K race just before coming over to Saudi Arabia, and had managed to work out nearly every day since the deployment began. He thought he shouldn’t have any trouble keeping up with them.

But the Special Forces soldiers practically galloped through the desert, even with their overstuffed rucksacks. Each member of the team, Dixon included, carried more ammo on him than a good-sized gun store. Dixon’s brown desert camo suit was covered by a vest stuffed with smoke grenades and clips for his MP-5; his pockets were so jammed with extra bullets for his Beretta that he couldn’t sit properly. Each trooper had a gas mask in a leg pocket; a full chem suit sat at the top of his ruck. The rest of the gear varied, depending on the team member’s assigned role. The point man and the tail gunner both carried silenced Berettas and MP-5s. The team’s pathfinder worked with a geo-positioner from the number two slot in the line. All but Dixon carried a pair of “night eyes”— AN/PVS-7 goggles, which could be attached to a helmet and turned the terrain a fuzzy but viewable green.

Maybe there was something in the goggles that made them move so damn fast, Dixon thought to himself, struggling into a trot to keep his place. He was behind the jumpmaster turned communications specialist, Sergeant First Class Joey Leteri, the number-four man in line. The trooper packed an M-16 with a grenade launcher, and humped not only his own ruck but the satellite com gear as well. But just like the others, he was moving quicker than a race horse threatened with the glue factory.

Suddenly, Leteri stopped short. Dixon felt himself being pushed into the ground by Green.

“Tents,” whispered the trooper, who was the team’s medic. He pointed over Dixon’s shoulder toward the left; in the dim twilight the only thing Dixon could see was the shadow of hills that were part of an old quarry some miles away.

Sergeant Winston came back to them. “Aren’t supposed to be any Bedouins this far north,” he told them. “But we think that’s all they are. They got camels. We have to take a jog east near here anyway. Cornfield’s about four miles on. That OK with you, lieutenant?”

It was the first time anyone had made even a glancing reference to the fact that Dixon, though an observer, technically outranked everyone here. There was no question from Winston’s tone that it had better be okay.

“You take us where we’re supposed to be,” said Dixon. “That’s more than fine with me.”

“Yeah,” said Winston, pulling his SAW to his chest before moving down the line to tell the tail-gunner what was going on.

Resentment began mixing under Dixon’s fatigue as the team got back underway. He didn’t need to be in charge— didn’t want to be, because frankly he had no damn idea what the hell to tell anybody to do. But he wanted to be respected, or at least accepted.

At best, they thought he was nuts— and not necessarily good nuts. Staffa Turk, the demo man who was bringing up the rear, had practically sneered at Dixon earlier when he assured him he could handle an MP-5.

Granted, it was an exaggeration, since he’d never actually fired one before. But they didn’t know that.

The Delta warriors were all older than Dixon— much— and all were NCOs, a tribe not especially known for tolerating junior lieutenants. He could only guess what they thought of the Air Force. But heck— he’d already shot down a stinking helicopter in combat, and survived some of the thickest antiair fire of the war. Not to mention herded a platoon’s worth of Iraqis into the back of a Pave Low.

Not that he could tell them that, or even hint that he was angry. Saying anything would have exactly the opposite effect that he wanted.

Actually, what he really wanted was sleep, and plenty of it. He was so tired the marrow was draining out of his bones. Sooner or later he was going to stumble face-first into the hardscrabble dirt in front of him.

Which was the last thing he wanted to do. Dixon concentrated on his steps, tightening his grip on the MP-5’s metal stock tightly to keep himself awake.

About an hour after they had seen the Bedouin camp, Winston had the team stop. He told them to eat while they rested; Dixon fished out an MRE and wolfed its contents down in a breath.

“Got a candy bar if you want it, sir,” offered Leteri, who was crouched nearby. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him since boarding the plane.

“I’d love it,” said Dixon. “Hey, uh, you can call me BJ. Most people do.”

“I’m Joey.”

“That’s Joah-ee,” said Winston in an exaggerated Italian accent.

Leteri tossed him a Snickers bar.

“I haven’t had one of these since I was in grammar school,” said Dixon. He played it up, holding it to his nose like a connoisseur sniffing at a glass of expensive wine.

“You’re going to want to take the paper off before you eat it,” said Leteri.

“Why lose the calories?” Dixon said, unwrapping it. “Maybe I’ll just snort it up my nose.”

He had just enough self-control to offer Winston half the bar, but not enough to save it for later when Winston waved him off.

“You keepin’ up, OK?” asked the team leader.

“It’s a good hike. You?”

Winston laughed.

“Be honest with you, BJ,” said Leteri. “No braggin’ or anything, but compared to some of our training gigs, this is like a guided tour of Lincoln Center.”

“Where’s Lincoln Center?” Dixon asked.

“Shit, you serious?”

Dixon felt his face start to burn. “You mean the Monument?”

“No, shit.” Leteri thought this was the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard. “You never heard of Lincoln Center? You serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

“Where’d you grow up, Lieutenant?” asked Winston.

“Wisconsin.”

“No shit,” said Leteri. “Lincoln Center’s a concert hall in New York City. Every school kid in the state’s got to tour it before they’re twelve. The law.” Leteri waited a second before adding. “That’s a joke, sir.”

“He got it,” said Winston. “If it were funny, somebody would have laughed.”

“So where in Wisconsin?” asked Leteri.

“Little town called Chesterville. About two hours away from Milwaukee. More cows than people. Nobody’s ever heard of it.”

“No shit. I come from a little town called Chester like an hour north of New York City. We got cows there, too.”

“You have cows in New York?”

“Hell yeah. It’s pretty far from the city. Just nobody believes you when you tell them.”

“I thought you were from Brooklyn,” said Winston.

“Nah. I was born there. I mean, my grandma still lives there and shit. But we moved out of the city when I was three.” Leteri turned back to Dixon. “People look at me funny when I tell them I grew up across the street from a farm. Hear New York and they figure, you know, it’s all city.”

“All right, break time over,” said Winston, standing up. “Here’s the deal. We got the streambed just over that rise. We follow that into an open area near the road. Obviously they knew we’d have some farm boys with us when they called it the Cornfield. Makes me feel right at home.” The sergeant obviously loved sarcasm; he practically broke his jaw twisting his face into a smile. “On my signal we shake out. Lieutenant, you want to stay kinda near Leteri here until we know what we got. Leteri, you got my ass.”

“I always take the dirt road.”

“Yeah, fuck you too, bugger boy.”

“Better to be the bugger, than the buggee.”

The troop was soon moving again, stretching into a long line as they proceeded carefully up the side of a large ditch. Shallow water filled the bottom. Shards of ice had formed along the surface, in case any of them needed reminding about how cold it was. Two dry irrigation ditches ran off at right angles ahead; there were others as the main wadi or streambed snaked around a flat plateau with a good view of the highway a half-mile beyond.

That was the Cornfield. The rise not only gave them a decent view of the road, but there was a good space between some of the ditches that could be used by helicopters if they needed to be evacuated.

Not that they were planning on being evacuated any time soon.

By the time they reached the top, Dixon’s limbs and body had congealed into a numb mass. The soft campaign hat he was wearing felt like a curtain around his brain, a permanent static emitter jamming outside reception.

Sleep would revive him. Sleep would warm his frozen bones, wet his parched lungs. Sleep would fill the hole in his stomach.

Sleep was a woman waiting for him just a few feet ahead, wrapping her legs around him, her open palms and long fingers sliding slowly across his chest. Electricity sparked as she touched him, soft and warm. Her fingers slipped into the crevices behind his ears, around and across his temples, down his cheeks to his neck, to the thick skin beneath his chin, up to his mouth. She spread herself back on the bed and pulled him into her, open and ready.

“We stop here,” said Winston.

Damned if the sergeant wasn’t part ghost, disappearing and reappearing at will.

“Use the slope here for cover. Hey Lieutenant, you still with us?”

Dixon grunted an answer as he collapsed butt first in the dirt.

“Maybe you ought to get some sleep, sir,” said Winston. “Catch a nap before show time. We’ll wake you up when we need you.”

Dixon nodded, then pushed himself prone.

“Uh, BJ?”

Dixon looked up to find Winston grinning in his face. “You probably want to undo your ruck first.”

Nodding, he fumbled with the straps, barely getting it off before slipping his head back to the ground.

CHAPTER 10

His nose tickled.

A-Bomb bolted upright in the bed, senses at full alert. He took a sniff, then another; quickly, deliberately, he got up and put on his boots. He slept in a flight suit for just this sort of emergency; he grabbed his jacket and hustled out of his small tent, threading his way through the Tent City to follow the faint but aromatic scent. Veering right, he headed in the general direction of “Oz,” the Devil Squadron’s maintenance and hangar area.

It was before dawn, but Fahd was in full gear. Many of the more than one hundred planes quartered here had already left on their missions north. A-Bomb sensed he was closing in as he ducked into a hangar and past a gutted F-16— served the pointy-nose Viper right for wandering onto a Hog base. He soon found himself standing in front of a coffeemaker that had just finished spewing a full pot of black gold. The capo di capo and the Tinman, the squadron’s resident Ancient Mechanic, stood nearby, already sipping from cups.

“Jamaican,” said A-Bomb, nodding approvingly.

“Jamaican it is,” said Clyston. “Go ahead, have a cup.”

A-Bomb realized there would be payback involved, but he was too committed now to stop himself. He grabbed one of the sergeant’s porcelain buckets and chugged.

“Except for Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said, three sigs later, “this is the best joe I’ve had since the air war started.”

“Em privake stack,” said Tinman.

Like everyone else on base, A-Bomb couldn’t understand a word the Tinman said. “Excuse me?”

“He says it’s his private stock,” said Clyston. “I hear you and Captain Glenon are flying pretty far north today.”

“Yeah. Gonna play with some Special Ops guys.”

The capo nodded, then took a long sip of his coffee. “Far to go in a Hog.”

“We can handle it.”

“How’s Captain Glenon doing these days?”

“Doberman?” A-Bomb was genuinely surprised by the question. “He’s fine.”

“Luck holding out?” said the sergeant.

A-Bomb laughed. “Dog Man doesn’t believe in luck.”

“Do you?”

There was a serious note in Clyston’s voice, a hint that he wasn’t just making conversation. A-Bomb realized the time for payback had come.

But what the hell. This was real joe.

“Shit yeah, I’m superstitious as hell,” said A-Bomb. “What’s the matter, Chief? You worried we’re going to break your planes?”

“You guys? Nah.” Clyston nodded at the Tinman, who bent over an old toolbox below one of the workbenches. He opened it and removed a small, silver cross.

“Es got, no hurt,” said the Tinman, holding the small piece of metal in front of him as if it were a holy relic.

“What’s that?” asked A-Bomb.

“Kind of a good-luck charm the Tinman wants you to have,” explained the capo as the Tinman carefully handed over the small medal to A-Bomb. “St. Christopher’s Cross. Came from St. Peter’s. Blessed by the Pope in 1502.”

“No shit. Were you there, Tinman?”

The Tinman said something unintelligible to A-Bomb. Clyston only smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.”

A-Bomb turned the small pieces of metal over in his hand. It was tarnished and worn smooth. It had definitely been around.

“What’s the deal?”

The Capo gave him a half-wink. “Karma thing. Morale.”

“Iff will kept Cap G wholk,” said Tinman.

Clyston was still grinning. Obviously, this was a morale kind of thing for the Tinman’s benefit, part of some sort of elaborate capo plot to keep the old-timer churning.

The things you had to do to be top sergeant.

“He wants you to give it to Captain Glenon,” said the capo. “Go ahead, have some more coffee.”

A-Bomb eyed the pot but stayed where he was. “That’s going to be a problem,” he told them. “Doberman gets kind of touchy about superstitious stuff. You know him, Chief. He won’t even take souvenirs, right?”

The Tinman’s face had begun to grow red, and he looked obviously agitated. He started to say something, but Clyston put his hand up, silencing him immediately.

“Thing is, Captain,” said the Capo, “I’d appreciate it if you talked to him about.”

“I can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to do,” said A-Bomb.

“If you say you’ll ask him, that would be enough,” said Clyston, glancing at Tinman to make sure he was in agreement.

The old-timer nodded.

“I’ll see what I can do,” A-Bomb told them. Tin Man nodded some more. Obviously satisfied, he drifted off to another part of the shop, while A-Bomb helped himself to another cup of coffee.

“So where’s my cross?” he asked Clyston. “Don’t I need karma, too?”

The capo made a face. “You don’t believe in that superstitious crap, do you, Captain?”

“Nah,” said A-Bomb. “All I need is a good cup of joe. Mind if I fill my thermos? This is the kind of stuff you want to be drinking when you blow something up.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Doberman told A-Bomb when he mentioned the cross an hour or so later. They were suiting up for their mission.

“See the thing is, Tinman’s kind of superstitious is what I think,” said A-Bomb. “And Clyston has to keep him happy because the colonel’s sending him to Al Jouf…”

“Why does he have to be happy?”

“Dog, Tinman pretty much bends metal with his eyes, you know what I’m talking about? The guy really knows his shit.”

“He’s a fucking loony bird.”

“Yeah, but he’s gonna keep us in the air. Maybe he’s a shaman or something. Yeah, gotta be.”

“It’s all superstitious bullshit,” said Doberman. “I don’t believe in that crap.”

“How about that penny you carry around?”

As the words left his mouth, A-Bomb realized he had made a major mistake, but it was too late to take them back.

“That’s different.” Doberman’s face was so hot his bristle-top hair seemed to flutter with the heat. “That’s fuckin’ different.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“You think I’m lucky? I got the fuckin’ luck of Job. I busted my ass to learn to fly. I studied and practiced, that’s what I did.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Haunted crosses, shit.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to keep Clyston happy,” said A-Bomb. “He gave me this thermos full of coffee. Want some?”

Doberman zipped his flight suit. “Next thing you know, we’re going to have some stinking voodoo priest dancing on the wings. How the hell do you get involved in this crap, anyway?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

CHAPTER 11

Doberman rechecked the flap settings, then ran his eyes over the Hog’s instrument panel for one final make-sure-I’m-ready-to-go pass. He wasn’t rushing anything, especially today. Laying his hand gently on the throttle bar, he flexed his fingers and loosened his shoulder muscles, willing himself into something approximating a relaxed state. He swung his eyes back around the cockpit, inspecting the paraphernalia of his office: altimeter, fuel gauges, radio controls. These were the desk accessories no Warthog executive could live without.

At spec and ready to rock.

The plane whined gratefully as he fed her engines a full dose of octane and began galloping down the runway. Doberman blew an easy breath out of his lungs, pushing the battle-loaded Hog into the sky.

Designed in the 1970s, the A-10A was conceived as a close-in ground-support plane, built to give a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Partly inspired by the success of the A-1 Skyraider in Vietnam, the plane was an excuse to dump serious iron on an enemy. The two AGM-65Bs Mavericks and four SUU-30s clusterbombs tied to Doberman’s wings represented one of several dozen ordinance variations typically carried by the Hogs. The Mavericks were guided with the help of an optical (in this case) or infrared camera in the missile’s nose; once locked on target by the pilot, the missile flew itself, leaving him free to play with others. A small screen on the right side of the dash was devoted to the Maverick’s display. While originally designed as an antitank weapon, the missile was effective against a variety of targets, as it had proven since the first day of the war.

“SUU” stood for Suspension Underwing Unit, a nod to the fact that the sophisticated weapons were more like dump trucks than conventional iron bombs. Popularly known as cluster bombs, they packed several hundred explosive and fragmentation devices, releasing them at a pre-set altitude after being dropped. The CBUs were an optimal weapon against “soft” targets, which besides men included unarmored vehicles and tasty treats like radar vans and dishes. The SUU could accommodate specialized loads, depending on the mission; Doberman’s were CBU-58s— which hosted a total of 650 BLU-63 fragmentation/antipersonnel bomblets.

Besides the AGMs and cluster bombs, the Hog could carry an assortment of conventional iron— unguided, straight-at-you blowup bombs. But in the opinion of most Hog drivers, the plane’s fiercest weapon wasn’t its bombs. It was the GAU-8/A Avenger cannon that sat in the plane’s chin. The Gatling gun could deliver as many as four thousand rounds per minute; during a typical three or four second burst more than a hundred peas of Uranium and high explosive darted from the revolving barrels. The plane had been designed around the huge gun; the weapon was so awesome it could literally make the Hog stand still in the air as it was fired.

The one thing the Hog couldn’t do was go fast. Doberman had the stops out and he was barely making 350 knots. And without an autopilot, the plane demanded at least a modicum of attention at all times.

Still, as he climbed through the Saudi sky en route to a pit stop north at King Khalid Military City, the pilot’s mind started to wander. This part of the mission, staging out to Al Jouf before heading into Iraq, was very plain-Jane, as close to boring as you could get in a war zone. Inevitably, his thoughts shambled back to the card game and to Tinman’s idiotic cross.

A lot of the crew members and even a few pilots were heavily superstitious, he knew, but you had to draw the line somewhere.

Luck. Luck was some magic BB with his name on it sailing out from Iraq a zillion miles away and managing to nail him. Luck was something flaky happening with the engine in level flight, which in his experience was almost as likely as the magic BB shot.

He thought that, he frowned, and in the next second the right engine stopped winding its turbine. He saw the indicator zeroing out of the corner of his eye as he tightened his grip on the stick, body jumping to work the plane and compensate for the loss of power. Something unconscious took over, something that felt rather than thought.

His mind whipped through his contingencies; it would be best if he could make it back to the Home Drome but he had plenty of divert fields closer if he couldn’t. His heart pounded and he could feel something in his scalp tingling, as if his brain had gotten a quick shot of adrenaline.

He also felt himself suddenly out of kilter in the cockpit.

But not because the Hog had slumped from losing the engine. His body was compensating for something that hadn’t happened.

The engines were humming perfectly. There hadn’t been a malfunction. In fact, everything was at operating manual specification.

Son of a bitch.

Doberman twisted backwards in the seat, craning his neck to look out the cockpit glass. He couldn’t actually see the GE turbofans mounted on either side of the fuselage in front of the Hog’s double-tail. But he had to look anyway.

Just as he had to tap each one of the engine instruments when he turned back.

Maybe they had flaked out for a second.

No. Everything was fine. It was all this thinking about superstition and luck and that crap that was putting him over the edge.

“Devil Two this is One,” he said, calling A-Bomb. His wingman was flying about a quarter mile back, off his wing in a trail. “How’s our six?”

“Clean,” said A-Bomb. “You ducking flies?”

“Negative. Just staying awake.”

“Ought to drink more coffee.”

Air speed, attitude, rpms, fuel— everything at spec. No way his engine had even burped.

It was just that he was tired. Damn royal straight stinking flush had cost him a good night’s sleep.

“Something up?” A-Bomb asked.

If he didn’t know better, Doberman would swear this was something A-Bomb and the capo had rigged up to teach him a lesson.

But which lesson would that be?

“Just wanted to make sure you were with me,” Doberman told his wingmate. He glanced at his watch and did some quick math. “We have ten minutes, twenty seconds to the Emerald City.”

“Yeah, I’m unwrapping my last pocket-pie now.”

CHAPTER 12

A dried-out but very deep wadi formed a semi-circle around the abandoned runway. Hawkins, kicking at the erosion at the southeastern end of the runway, theorized that the Iraqis had found the tributary too rough to deal with, the seasonal rains eating at the ground they needed to stay solid under the long expanse of concrete and asphalt. Why they wouldn’t have realized that before laying out several hundred feet of concrete, though, he had no idea.

It was nice of them to tear up the road leading out to the highway, though. That made sneaking up on Fort Apache a little more difficult.

Hawkins’ men had set out a good defensive perimeter and studded it with a variety of weapons; still, a concentrated armor attack could easily overrun them until they got their AH-6G gunships in. With luck, they would get them in tonight.

Hawkins turned and began walking carefully down the center of the cement. Except for minor crumbling around the expansion joints, the concrete was smooth and seemingly solid. He could certainly land his helos.

He wanted a lot more. Like an MC-130, loaded for bear. But to get the big four-engine gunship in and back up in the air again, they needed two thousand feet.

Six of the twelve men who’d come in on a second parachute drop once Fort Apache was secure were combat engineers. They’d landed about ten minutes before dawn; a few seconds later he’d gotten them to work plotting an extension that would add nearly six hundred feet to the northwest end of the runway. Steel mesh was due to parachuted in as soon as the sun went down. But that would get them only to the edge of the streambeds. Without a bulldozer and cement culverts, the runway wasn’t getting any longer.

Still, all things considered, Hawkins had only relatively minor problems at the moment. One of the men on the second team— an inexperienced jumper who had no business being on the team, volunteer or not— had broken his leg and arm during the drop, their only casualty so far. He was in decent enough condition to stay on, but he was their lone helicopter mechanic.

Team Blue, operating north of the Euphrates since the night before, hadn’t checked in on schedule, though that might just be due to problems with the satellite communications system. But the team he’d been most worried about, Team Ruth, was in position and ready to work several hours ahead of schedule.

Sent to an area thought to be one of the main Scud highways, Team Ruth would be vectoring in bombers by late afternoon— assuming they found something to target. Hawkins had put some of his best men on the squad, including Master Sergeant Eli Winston, who was leading the team. And Ruth included the lone Air Force officer assigned to the entire Injun country operation, a ground FAC who was supposed to sweet talk the iron onto the Scud trailers. A pair of A-10As had been attached to Apache; for now, they were at Team Ruth’s beck and call, though Hawkins could change that if he needed to.

The captain took a wistful glance down the runway. It was good to know the Warthogs were on the job, but he couldn’t wait for his own helicopters to get here.

He turned back toward the command bunker. There was just enough time for a cup of Earl Grey tea before the scheduled call to his colonel at Al Jouf.

CHAPTER 13

Doberman glanced through the clear Perspex bubble overhead, scanning the light blue sky. Somewhere above him, a pair of F-15C Eagles flew like guardian angels, swift police dogs ready to nail any Iraqi who dared take flight. Just to the southeast, the back-seater in a Phantom F-4 Wild Weasel scanned his radar warning screen, ready to point a homing missile into the dish of any air defense system foolish enough to turn itself on. To the north, a package of attack planes and electronic jammers streaked toward the outskirts of Baghdad, loaded down with bombs and defensive weapons. Far to the south, an Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS plane coordinated the entire air war, scanning for threats and potential threats, moving planes to meet them like a chess champion throttling an opponent.

And yet, Doberman felt alone in the cockpit, accompanied only by A-Bomb flying now a half-mile back. Both Hogs were at 17,110 feet. The ride up from Al Jouf had been free and easy, but it had been long, and they still had nine and a half minutes to go before they flew in range of the Special Ops unit they were tasked to assist.

If you were waiting for a stagecoach in the middle of Dodge City, nine and a half minutes wasn’t that long. If you were riding into Dodge with all kinds of bad guys eying you from the roadside, it was an eternity.

While not completely defenseless, the planes were hardly bullet or missile proof. The AlQ-119 radar-jamming pod on its right wing was a near-revolutionary dual mode jammer, when it was first introduced back in the Stone Ages. While it still provided protection against the older elements of Saddam’s multi-layer air defense, it was hardly an invincible shield. The A-10A’s more robust radar warning receiver or RWR could find and track more than a dozen threatening radars in several bands, telling the pilot that he was staring in his own radar show. But that was hardly a guarantee that he wouldn’t be shot down.

Among Saddam’s varied arsenal, Soviet-made SA-6’s and German Rolands were particularly effective weapons, posing more than a theoretical threat even to the fast movers. While the Devils had been briefed on the known positions of the SAM batteries throughout Iraq, both the SA-6— NATO code-named “Gainful”— and the Roland sat on mobile launchers that could pretty much be moved at will.

A pair of Sidewinders sat in a double-rail on Doberman’s left wing. Excellent heat-seeking weapons, they were meant for close-in air-to-air defense. They’d be handy if an enemy plane managed to get by the Eagles, but any MiG that could do that was a damned serious threat. It would have probably already launched longer-range weapons from far outside the Sidewinder’s scope.

But maybe nobody even knew they were here. The A-10As were too high to be heard from the ground. Most Iraqi radar operators who had survived the first day of the air war had realized the best way to stay alive was to leave their knobs in the off position. And besides, the desert and scrubland below the Hog’s wings was mostly empty, and hardly worth protecting.

Doberman checked his position on the INS, worked himself slowly through the routine checks of his instruments. He was like a Western marshal, buckling his gun belt before the big showdown, checking each bullet in his gun carefully, spinning the revolver more for luck than to make sure it was working properly.

Luck.

Doberman flushed his brain of trivia, concentrating on his mission. Once on station, they’d take it down closer to the ground and look for Scuds. The missile carriers were said to move along the targeted highway in mid- to late-afternoon, en route to their launching spots. The commandos and Dixon would spot them; the A-10s would blow them up.

There were only so many highways the Scud trucks could use. That was one curve of probability. Time was another. Even assuming the intel was good, their small time on target because of fuel considerations meant there was a bit of luck involved.

Luck again.

I am an engineer, Doberman told himself. Planes do not fly on luck, bridges are not built on luck, Scud carriers are not splashed on luck.

He checked his instruments and steadied his hand around the stick, precisely on course and on time.

CHAPTER 14

Dixon woke up with a kink in his neck the size of Iowa. Both hands were numb. He had to take the worst leak of his life. And as he got up, he felt something hard and heavy push him back down.

“Truck.”

Leteri’s hoarse voice brought Dixon back to reality. He rolled over, scooped his gun from the ground, and began following Leteri up the hill on his hands and knees to a dug out position just below the crest of the hill.

“What do we have?” he whispered as Leteri peered over the top of the ridge they were using as a lookout post. “Should I call in the planes?”

The sergeant shook his head, holding up his finger to tell Dixon to wait. Turk and Winston lay against the top of the ridge, watching the road through his binoculars. Dixon heard the distant sound of a truck approaching. The sound got louder, then began to fade.

“Just a pickup,” said Winston, slipping down. He gave Dixon his binoculars.

The Steiner 7x40’s brought the roadway into sharp relief, making it somehow seem more real. The yellow-gray haze of the distance melted into crisp shades of brown and blue. The moving finger with its trail of dust sharpened into a white pickup.

A Chevy, as a matter of fact. About ten years old.

Winston’s scowl deepened. “They may be checking the roadway, scouting it to see if it’s safe,” he said finally.

“This deep in Iraq?” asked Dixon.

The sergeant shrugged. “I would. Then again, it could be another civilian truck. We’ve seen three since you fell asleep.”

The sergeant resumed scanning in the direction the pickup had come from. Dixon followed Leteri back down the hill to a small, dug-out position at the foot of the slope.

“Latrine’s anywhere in that direction,” said Leteri, pointing a few yards beyond.

“You have ESP?”

“Yeah— ESPP, extra sensory pee perception.”

Dixon took care of business, then returned to check out the communications system, which Leteri had put together while he was sleeping. It consisted of two parts. One was the unit itself, contained in a rucksack; the handset and controls lay at the top. The other part was a small, folding radar dish that looked something like the folding circular clothesline Dixon’s mom used to use in her backyard. The sergeant had oriented the dish so that its signal could be picked up with a minimum of static by an orbiting satellite. With the push of a button, they could talk with Apache or the air support units or a command center in a Riyadh bunker, and from there, literally to the world. The short-burst, coded transmissions were nearly impossible for anything but the most sophisticated equipment to intercept.

“Here we go,” said Winston above. He chortled a bit, as if he had laid a bet that was now paying off. “Yeah, here we go.”

Dixon climbed back to the top of the ridge.

“It’s a truck, but I don’t think it’s a Scud carrier,” said Turk.

“There’s another truck right behind it,” said Winston.

Dixon could hear the engines now. Two tiny ants approached, winding their way across the distant highway.

“Just trucks, Sarge,” said Turk.

“Here, Lieutenant, you take a look,” said Winston, handing him the binoculars. “You got pilot’s eyes, right?”

Dixon’s pilot’s eyes took a second to adjust to the glass: the silver and green blurs turned into a pair of tractor-trailers. He caught a Mercedes emblem on the front of the leading vehicle as it took the long curve toward them.

“Sorry,” he said. “They’re not missiles.”

Winston frowned and took the binoculars back. The trucks might be carrying military supplies or they might not. In any event, there was no sense telling the Hogs to hit them.

“Bus or something coming the other way,” said Turk. His dark mahogany cheeks began glowing cherry red. “Hey now, here we are. That, my friends, is a Ural 375 flatbed, built by Ivan just for our obnoxious friend. That’s a crane, I do believe, and here we go, here we, here we go. You tell me lieutenant, what’s under those tarps? Huh?”

Dixon took Turk’s binoculars and quickly focused on the road. The lead truck was a common Warsaw-pact export, as ubiquitous as a U.S. M35 6x6. On its back was a long crane, the type that could be used to erect a derrick or even a modular house in the States. But the two tractors following behind it indicated the crane might have a much more sinister purpose: the Zil-157 long haulers were known Scud ferries, with large tarps curled around suspicious shapes at the back of each truck.

“Aren’t they going in the wrong direction?” asked Dixon. “They’re heading East.”

“Don’t worry about what the intel people told us,” said Winston. “Just get your guys on the horn. Now. Uh, sir.”

Dixon was already scrambling down the hill to do just that.

CHAPTER 15

“Devil Flight this is Ground Hog. Are you up?”

He’d been expecting to hear Dixon eventually, but even so Doberman actually turned and looked out the cockpit canopy, as if BJ were gunning a Hog next to him.

“We’re here,” Doberman told him.

“Captain Glenon. Doberman? Is that you? Geez, how the heck are you?”

“I’m fine,” said Doberman. There was no need for an elaborate authentication procedure— only Dixon would say “heck. The kid was way behind in the mandatory cursing unit of Hog training.

“Yo, War Hero,” said A-Bomb. “How the fuck are you? Blow up any helicopters today?”

“Listen, Devil Flight,” snapped Dixon, suddenly all business, “we have three targets for you. Proceeding east on the highway, uh, two, three miles now from Point Super Zed-Three. You copy?”

Doberman glanced down at the grid map on his knee, which overlaid the Special Forces checkpoints against the Iraqi terrain. Zed-Three was a point along the highway. They were, by his quick calculations, exactly 8.75 miles southwest of it.

“I have the position,” said Doberman. He swung the Hog back toward the north, calculating an intercept with the vehicles, which he figured would be moving along at 50 miles an hour, or thereabouts.

Doberman spotted the highway about a minute later. As he began to close, he saw a vehicle. But the truck was moving in the wrong direction. His eyes strained past the bulletproof persiplex glass of the canopy, working the grains of sand into lines and ants.

Nothing except for the truck going the wrong way. Zed-three was ahead to the northeast, about two o’clock. He pushed on, the plane level at 8,550 feet. It was somewhat high for IDing moving targets, but their instructions were to fly no lower than 8,000 feet, unless absolutely necessary, which would keep them safe from all but the most persistent antiair guns. Doberman had a clear view and figured once he spotted a likely candidate for Dixon’s trucks they could move lower.

But at the moment, he couldn’t see anything. He double-checked the map to make sure he had the right highway, not that there were many choices. Then he asked A-Bomb what he was seeing.

“Not even camel turds.”

“Let’s take it this way another forty-five seconds, then crank back,” Doberman told him.

“Forty-five seconds? Why not forty-four? Or forty-three.”

He was just about to tell A-Bomb to fuck off when the AWACS controller shouted a warning over the radio.

“Devil Flight, snap ninety south!”

Doberman jerked to comply, putting the Hog almost literally onto a right-angle. As he juiced the throttle, the AWACS operator filled in the reason for the emergency evasive maneuver: a pair of MiGs had just taken off from an airbase to their north.

With pedals to the metal, the Russian-made interceptors could reach the Hogs in under two minutes. And splash them soon thereafter.

A flight of Eagle interceptors scrambled to fry the MiGs. Doberman’s instinct was to punch the Hog into the ground fuzz at twenty feet, then say screw the MiGs and get back to Scud hunting. But this far inside enemy territory, that wasn’t a particularly wise thing to do. Instead, he and A-Bomb had to settle for a wide turn a good thirty miles south of the action.

By then the MiGs had disappeared from the AWACS radar— probably by landing back at the base they had started from, though the controller wasn’t immediately sure. Doberman angled the Hog back toward the highway, but he knew that by now the trucks would be long gone. Worse, the Hogs were down to ten minutes of loiter time, thanks to all the maneuvering.

“What’s going on up there?” Dixon asked over the ground radio just after Doberman and A-Bomb had crossed over the road without, of course, spotting the Scuds.

Tersely, Doberman explained that they had been shunted off the trail by the AWACS. And that they were almost bingo fuel.

“Did you pass the location on to the AWACS?” BJ asked.

“Fuck no,” said Doberman. “We fucking couldn’t find them.”

“Aw shit.”

“Yeah, copy,” said Doberman. “Shit-damn fucking hell in a whore house.”

“Bad news, Dog Man. I’m bingo,” said A-Bomb. “Bingo” meant he had used up the fuel allocated for loitering. He now had only enough left to get home, with a modest amount left over for emergencies.

“Yeah,” muttered Doberman. The two planes had to stay together and in any event, he was pretty low himself. He blew a deep sigh from his mouth, cursed some more, then finally reoriented the Hog for the long, dreary trip home. He was so pissed he didn’t bother answering when A-Bomb joked that Special Ops obviously agreed with Dixon, since the lieutenant had finally used a four-letter word on the radio.

CHAPTER 16

“Son of a shit. We could have blown the goddamn things up ourselves,” said Winston. He looked at Dixon as if Dixon had been the one flying the planes. “How the hell could they have lost it?”

“I don’t know that they ever saw it.”

“Well fuck. They’re in goddamn airplanes, right? How the hell hard can it be?”

The truth was, it wasn’t easy picking out moving targets from the altitudes the brass had the Hogs flying. The planes weren’t carrying super-enhanced videos, or extra-perceptive radars, or anything beyond Mark-One standard-issue eyeballs. The MiGs had been the real problem. Since the Hogs were sitting ducks against any interceptor, their only defense was to run away, and even that hardly guaranteed safety.

But it was tough to explain all that to someone on the ground— especially when the ground was in central Iraq.

“What the fuck is the sense of our being here if they’re not going to squirt the damn things when we point them out?” Winston insisted.

“They’ll get them,” said Dixon. “Give them a chance.”

Winston grunted, and turned his binoculars back toward the highway. Dixon slid back down the hill to the radio, though there was little reason to at the moment. It would take the Hogs close to two hours to refuel and return. By then they would be limited by the available light.

Dixon had just decided to brave an MRE when Leteri came sliding down the hill, nearly landing on his back.

“Patrol,” hissed the corporal. “They’re on the side of the road and they’re moving slow. Stay down.”

Dixon spun back around, pressing himself into the dirt and pulling his gun under his arm. If they came under fire, his job was to stay with the radio; they might need air support, which he could get through the AWACS controller. But holding the MP-5 made him feel safer.

Leteri continued to the very base of the hill, crawling into a shallow trench the commandos had dug and camouflaged so it could be used as an observation post. The far end of it gave him a good view of their flank as well as the road. Dixon watched him work along it slowly. Moving that slowly must be an exercise in great will power, he thought; the temptation to rush would be almost overwhelming, but doing so might expose you to the enemy. Patience was such a difficult thing in war— in life, for that matter. It was the one trait he didn’t have.

Leteri reached his post, stayed flat against the side of the trench a minute, then leaned back and gave a thumbs up. The others had relaxed as well. Curious, Dixon scrambled up the hill, flopping between Winston and Turk.

“They’re staying put, at least for now. They’re on the other side of the highway,” said Winston, handing the binoculars over. “Got their backs to us.”

Dixon peered through the glasses. Four men in tan fatigues were walking a staggered line beyond a troop truck.

“What are they doing?” Dixon asked. “Looks like they lost something.”

“They may have seen the planes,” said Turk. “The idiots probably think they mined the road. They did the same thing about a mile north.”

Winston took the smallest of sips from his canteen, rolling the water around and around the inside of his mouth before swallowing. “Crazy fucks.”

“They use their own men to trip mines?” Dixon asked.

“Saddam doesn’t give a shit,” said Winston. He screwed his canteen closed. “We’re going to have to move off this hill.”

“Why?” asked Dixon.

“It’s the tallest feature on the landscape, the most obvious place to check the road from. If they really are looking for mines, even if they’re fucking picking up litter, they’re paranoid enough to figure out that someone on the ground brought the planes here. Besides, maybe the trucks turned off down the road a bit. They may be setting up to bomb Tel Aviv right now.”

“Trucks were headed east,” said Turk. “Are we going to follow them to Baghdad?”

“Shit, why not?” said Winston. “Let the Lieutenant get a chance to practice his Arabic.”

“I don’t know Arabic.”

“Fuck no,” said Winston in mock horror. “And here I thought you went to college.”

Turk laughed.

Dixon couldn’t think of a comeback. He waited a bit, and when Turk changed the subject, he slid back down the hill. When the time came to move out, he told Leteri he’d take a turn humping the com gear, then did his best to ignore the trooper’s surprise as he shouldered the ruck and got into line.

CHAPTER 17

Two hours and one record-time tanking later, Doberman found himself clicking his mike button and getting nothing but a steady stream of static. They’d been trying to find Dixon for the past five minutes without any luck. He was about to try hailing the Delta unit again when A-Bomb beat him to it.

“Devil Flight to Ground Hog. Yo, Dixon, where the fuck are you?”

“Real military,” Doberman told A-Bomb over the short-range fox mike radio, tuned to the squadron’s private frequency.

“Yeah, well you try.”

“Just keep their frequency open. I’m going to have Cougar double check for us, in case we’re out of range or something.”

Cougar was the call sign for the AWACS. The controller told them— as he had only a few minutes before— that the ground unit had not come back on the air after signing off to change position. This wasn’t unusual, implied the operator, who all but directed the Hogs drivers to just “chill.”

“Man, I’ll tell you something. I’m getting a little fed up with Cougar,” said A-Bomb. “Kinda like havin’ my fourth-grade teacher lookin’ over my shoulder. Hangout. Break. Run away. We need somebody back there who’s a Hog driver, you know what I’m talking about? Like, here’s a couple of tanks to splash while you’re waiting.”

Doberman let A-Bomb rant on as he examined the map unfolded in his lap. The two Hogs were at 16,675 feet, flying a wide, perfect circle around the coordinates where the ground team had spotted the trucks. As they swung through the northern arc, the Euphrates edged into their windscreens, a thick brown line in the distance.

Doberman had read somewhere that civilization started along the Euphrates. The Sumerians had built an impressive empire well before the Egyptians, taming the wiles of the river with massive irrigation projects. They had enjoyed tremendous wealth, building cities of gold.

Hard to imagine that now. This was supposed to be part of the country’s fertile area, but the terrain looked blotchy at best. Doberman had flown over Iowa cornfields — now those looked like something, orderly lines of green extending out as far as you could see.

Part of the problem was, they were too stinking high, as per their orders to maintain a safe altitude. Safe for whom? Might just as well be on the moon as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t get a very clear view of the highway, let alone make out what exactly might be moving on it. Scud launcher or a milk truck looked the same from here — smaller than an ant’s behind.

“Getting kind of dark,” A-Bomb hinted.

“Copy,” said Doberman. “Let’s take a run over the highway down where we can see something bigger than a fucking battleship.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” snapped A-Bomb.

Doberman pushed his wing over and threw the Hog into a tear-ass dive, plunging downwards so fast even the A-10 seemed to have been caught by surprise. He moved his stick until the gray line of the road fell into his windshield. He was below five thousand feet before he started to recover, pulling the Hog back level in a smooth, precise arc, his wings leveling. The GE power plants hummed behind almost gently, their steady rhythm a subconscious soundtrack as he flew.

Some pilots flew by making the plane an extension of their bodies. They moved their arms and legs and the plane moved; they felt the wind curling in a slipstream around their bodies and their eyes were part of the radar nosing ahead. At some point the line between man and plane blurred; they flew as much by instinct, by stomach or gut, as they did by carefully accumulated knowledge and deliberate action.

Doberman considered himself more a director, or maybe a sitter— he sat on top of the plane, pushing its levers the way an experienced heavy equipment operator might move a bulldozer through a construction site. The plane went where he wanted it to, not the other way around.

No luck involved in that. You knew the data, worked with it. Wind had a certain effect, depending on the altitude and angle of your attack; you calculated it, you compensated for it, you pushed the button to drop your load. Anything else was bullshit.

“Six is clean,” called A-Bomb.

Doberman eased his stick right, following the road’s curve northward. Now he could see damn well. A bus appeared ahead, a Matchbox-sized vehicle with a light-brown color. A half-mile in front of it was something that looked more military; grayish-brown waves of camo flopped over the back of a medium-sized truck. Might be a troop carrier.

Drawing closer, he saw that the tarp was pulled up over some ribbing, and the exposed bed was empty. But his disappointment quickly melted as he saw two flatbeds further along, carrying tanks. They were behind two long tractor-trailers and a tarp-covered flatbed. A pair of armored personnel carriers cruised in front of them. Further ahead, something similar to a Land Rover led the procession.

Hot damn! Something worth hitting.

Doberman banked to the right, pulling into a quick orbit while he consulted his map. The two A-10s were a few miles east of the point where they had lost the Scud carriers earlier. It seemed to him possible, if not entirely probable, that these vehicles might be going wherever the Scuds had gone. He checked his fuel: he and A-Bomb had about a half-hour more of linger time.

“Let’s follow these guys for a ways and see if they take us anywhere,” he told A-Bomb. “Peg your altitude at seven thousand feet where they can’t hear us. We’ll give Dixon ten minutes to come back on the air. They’re still sleeping, we take these guys.”

“I’m counting the seconds,” replied his wingman.

Doberman walked his eyes slowly across his instruments as he rode his Hog back around to the road. He had good fuel and a clean threat indicator.

Doberman put the road just above his left wing-root. He lowered his neck slightly, drew a long breath, gathering himself exactly as if this was an exercise over Germany. The tail end of the Iraqi convoy nosed into his screen, a small blur the size of a cockroach’s foot. Gradually, it started to grow. He thought he recognized the roadway and figured the trucks were now beyond the point where they had started looking for the Scuds. The road curved and straightened for nearly two miles in an arrow toward the river. Then it came almost due east, heading in the direction of Iran.

No way the damn Scud carriers could have outrun them. They had to have turned off somewhere. On the other hand, the briefings had the Scuds going the other way, so who knew what the story was. He wondered if Dixon had dished him the wrong location or marker.

The convoy was now the size of fat cockroaches. Doberman hesitated a moment, scouting ahead, rechecking his compass heading and then the altimeter, making sure his gas was still good. He couldn’t see a turnoff and certainly no Scuds.

“Stay with me,” he told A-Bomb, marking his INS for a reference point before tacking north with a tight turn. This time he kept his eyes trained on the ground, trying to sort the shadows and shades into something, anything that would tell him where the Scuds had gone. He saw a rock quarry and beyond that a group of buildings which seemed to be abandoned, but nothing thick enough to be a missile. From the air, the Scud carriers looked like longish milk trucks; the dedicated launchers looked like soap dishes with turds on top. He saw neither. The long shadows were starting to play tricks; even if they didn’t go bingo soon they were going to have to head home.

“Our friends must have seen us,” said A-Bomb.

Doberman pulled the Hog around and saw the vehicles kicking up a storm of dust to their south. They’d left the highway.

“How’s your fuel?” he asked his wingmate.

“Twenty-something to bingo, give or take,” replied A-Bomb. “You still want to wait?”

“Fuck it. Let’s shag ‘em,” Doberman told him. “I have the tanks.”

“Just leave something for me,” said A-Bomb.

The procession had stopped about three hundred yards off the roadway. The two tank carriers— long, narrow crickets on broken leaves— sat on the western flank. Doberman eyeballed them, then pushed his face almost into the Maverick’s targeting screen where the cursor was already flat on a turret.

The long shaft of a 125 mm smoothbore pointed down from the back of the tank, the stick of a lollipop stuck to the cockroach’s back. Doberman flicked his thumb back and forth over the stick— it was a habit he’d picked up just a few days before, a tick that was now part of his routine before pushing the trigger. Bing-bang-bam, he told himself, and pickled. As one AGM-65 dropped from his wing he quickly dished up a second, hurrying the cursor into the meat of the second tank as the screen flashed with Saddam’s latest hamburger special.

Bing-bang-bam. The second Maverick clunked from its firing rail, the Tikol motor catching with a whomp that sent the missile in a direct line toward the image burned into its brain. As it neared the T-72, the Maverick suddenly pulled up, arcing so that it could nail the target at the exact weak point of its armored hull, the turret top.

By then, Doberman was no longer paying attention to the tanks or the truck near them. For A-Bomb had shouted a warning about something much more interesting: one of the armored personnel carriers had stopped and set up a position on a slope near the highway.

Except that it wasn’t an armored personnel carrier; it was a four-barreled ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun, an old but effective flak dealer that had already started to fire at him.

CHAPTER 18

“That’s the kind of thing that really pisses me off,” said A-Bomb as the ZSU began chewing up the air in front of Doberman. The Iraqi gunner was firing without his radar, but that arguably made him more dangerous, since nothing short of a high-explosive sandwich could jam the bastard’s eyesight. A second unit began spinning its turret two hundred yards to the west, and A-Bomb whistled. He might be pissed that anyone dared fire at a Hog, let alone his wingmate, but he had to admit that the scummers at least had some balls in their pants, trying to go after the A-10s without using their radars and in a nice, isolated, and easy-to-hit spot besides. Granted, their flak was falling in a useless though artistic pattern across the desert as Doberman jinked away, but you couldn’t hold that against them.

Well, actually he could and would. A-Bomb fell into the attack, adrenaline pumping. For the briefest second he contemplated taking the Hog in and using the cannon; this was exactly the sort of down-in-the-dirt, no-holds-barred mud fight the Hog was built for, flying into Adul’s 23mm shells, tickling proximity fuses, and laughing at the shrapnel spiking the air. Mano a mano, sweat versus sweat, my dad can take your dad, and your mom’s ugly, too. It had been almost twenty-four hours since A-Bomb had revved up the gat, and he felt like he was going through withdrawal.

But, truth be told, that would take too long and might give the Iraqis the idea that firing at a Hog was an acceptable thing to do. So he sighed, dialed in his Mavs and push-buttoned the mobile anti-air batteries to hell.

The AGMs’ flights to target were short and sweet. The penetration of the flat, tank-like turrets and the all-too-thinly armored bodies of the ZSU-23s was a thing of beauty, erotic in a way, shaped-charge warheads slicing in and the guns bursting in an orgasmic riot of flames, smoke and debris.

A-Bomb loved art as much as anybody, but he pried his eyes away, turning his attention to the long trailer in the middle of a group of vehicles beyond the tanks. He pushed his Hog into a hard, sharp angle downwards, near sixty degrees— the theory being that the closer to straight down, the less chance for error. This was actually a math thing, having to do with cosines and angles, the sort of thing that Sister Carmella had made such an issue of back in high school. A-Bomb had a soft spot in his heart for Sister Carmella, but didn’t particularly like math, so he fudged the wind correction and just let the cluster bombs go when the feeling struck him. He pulled his stick back hard, recovering from the dive and pushing to track back into the figure-eight Doberman ought to be cutting above their target. The vehicles disappeared in a flash of black and red, the four bombs smashing perfectly on target.

“Good shooting,” said Doberman as A-Bomb reached altitude. “You leave anything for me?”

“Tried to,” said A-Bomb. “See now, you could shoot like this if you had one of the medals.”

“What medal?”

“Tinman’s cross.”

“You still pushing that?”

“Told him I would.”

“I can shoot better than you with my eyes closed.”

“Oh man— you mean we’re supposed to fly with them open?”

After dodging the triple-A, Doberman emptied his CUs on the two clumps of vehicles at the far end of the party. A-Bomb took his plane in an arc around the pluming smoke. Nothing was moving.

“Everything’s good and broken,” he told Doberman.

“I think that Rover or whatever it was stayed on the highway,” he told him.

“Nah.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Got ya,” said A-Bomb, reaching into his customized flight-suit to pull out a celebratory Twizzler. Nothing like red licorice to top off a good bomb run.

Doberman led him back along the road. They spotted a bus and some sort of small truck, but not the Land Rover. Then Cougar cut in.

“Break ninety degrees,” the AWACS controller told them. “Bogies coming off A-1. Break.”

A-Bomb listened to Doberman’s curse as the jets snapped onto the new coordinates south. They were nearly at bingo anyway. The two Iraqis were quickly ID’d as a pair of F-1 Mirages and just as promptly chased back to base by F-15s. By the time they disappeared from the tracking screens, Doberman had told the AWACS crew that they were heading back to Al Jouf for the night.

His mood reflective as he headed for home, A-Bomb treated himself to a second Twizzler, then clicked his CD changer to dish up Guns & Roses.

CHAPTER 19

The commandos waited until dusk to cross the road. They chose a spot near a short run of rock outcroppings, which would give them a staging area and some protection in case of traffic. The last fifteen minutes were the worst— Dixon’s eyes were weighted with the fatigue of slogging the rucksack and communications gear on his back, not to mention the long day and night before. Two or three times he felt his mind wander off into the null space of pre-sleep. If it hadn’t been so cold, he might have fallen completely asleep and not woken up for at least a week.

Two vehicles passed during that time: a Mercedes panel truck, probably though not necessarily civilian, and a small car which bore a Red Cross.

Dixon wondered about the Red Cross car, thinking that maybe it might be carrying a prisoner. At least one allied pilot had gone down over Iraq during the last two days.

For a fleeting moment he wondered if he should give the order to stop it, and then whether the troopers would have obeyed it.

It was their job to find Scud transports and launchers, nothing else. They had already let a score of other military vehicles go.

But rescuing a pilot was different. That was worth blowing their mission for, wasn’t it?

Shit yeah. He could explain it to them— he’d have to, since they still thought of him as an outsider.

But it was too late now. The vehicle was by them and gone. And besides, he was just an observer, not the boss.

In the dull blueness of the fading day, the countryside looked vaguely familiar, almost American, a desert scrubland just beyond farmland. Look carefully and the illusion evaporated. At any moment an Iraqi troop truck, or tanks, or helicopters could materialize and kill them. They had a ton of ammo, but eventually they would be outgunned— they were, as Jake Green had said three times during the last hour, in Saddam’s backyard.

It would be better, infinitely better, to die fighting than to be captured, Dixon decided. If captured, he would surely be tortured and killed anyway. Better to go quickly.

Besides, if they didn’t kill him, it would be worse. He’d be used for propaganda. That was his real fear. To be tortured to the point where he would agree to anything they said— that was the worst horror.

In survival school, they told pilots it was no disgrace to go along if you had to. Bend so you didn’t break. The people who counted back home would realize that you were being coerced. Your mission was survival, not playing hero.

But Dixon didn’t entirely accept that. The shame of being a prisoner, of being helpless— it would be more than he could stand.

He’d learned that lesson flying in combat the first time. Bitterly. He remembered how failure felt.

“Lieutenant? You coming?”

Dixon jumped as Leteri tapped him. He followed across the open ground to the roadway. After two strides he felt the weight of his two backpacks balance him; by the fourth he felt as if he could run forever, adrenaline surging. He gripped his MP-5 with both hands, trotting with it before him as if it set out a force field of protection.

“You’re looking like a Goddamn Delta trooper now, BJ,” mocked Winston as he approached the team leader’s position beyond the roadway.

Dixon was too tired to tell if he was mocking him. He slid down on his knee and waited as the rest of the patrol crossed and scouted ahead.

“Okay,” said Winston after his scouts reported back. “Here’s what I’m thinking. We got the old quarry a mile ahead. If those trucks stopped anywhere around here, it was there.”

“I’ll go with who’s ever scouting it,” said Dixon.

“Not so fast.”

“I got to be close to call a bomber in. I can use this, don’t worry,” said Dixon, holding out his gun.

“Relax. We’re staying together.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” said Winston. “I don’t want to lose the radio.”

“Yeah, I thought you sounded a little sentimental.”

The comeback surprised Dixon as much as Winston. It was the sort of thing he would have expected A-Bomb or Doberman to say, something that would have come out of the mouth of a guy who’d seen hell a few hundred times and learned to laugh at it.

Winston laughed lightly, shaking his head. “Fuckin’ Hog pilots. You guys think you’re going to win the war all by yourselves, don’t you?”

“If we fucking have to,” said Dixon.

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to. We’re moving forward as a team. Stay close to Leteri, OK?” Winston gave him a chuck and moved out.

Fucking? Had he said fucking? Dixon pulled himself to his feet, moving ahead on sheer amazement alone.

CHAPTER 20

No question about it: Wong was definitely allergic to something in the desert. He sneezed into his handkerchief, at the same time muffling a curse that the half-dozen officers assembled around the table pretended not to hear.

It had to be an allergy. Sand maybe. Or the air.

Then again, it could be Major Wilson who insisted on punctuating his briefing on the Fort Apache mission with historical notes on the formation of Delta Force and commando operations in general. Wong wouldn’t have minded this so much if the major didn’t get every third fact wrong.

Captain Wong had actually served with Delta Force twice, once as an advisor on Russian weaponry and, briefly, as something called an “attached adjunctive administrative officer.” This was a cover for an assignment to handle a clandestine drop into the northern Vietnamese jungles, a CIA-inspired mission where he went along to assess the wreckage of what was supposed to be a Chinese super weapon — and which turned out, as Wong knew it would, to be merely the latest version of the F-7, a Chinese copy of the MiG-21. The base model was an antiquated deathtrap Wong wouldn’t allow even his worst enemy to fly. His inspection showed that the Chinese had succeeded in making it even more hazardous.

During that mission he had worked with several outstanding troopers, including a Green Beret Captain named Hawkins, who encouraged him to believe that occasionally the army bureaucracy lucked into choosing the right men for the right job. But in general, Wong held almost as low an opinion of the Special Ops bureaucracy as he held of the rest of the defense establishment, Air Force partly excepted. Major Wilson’s droning on about “clandestine implants” was doing nothing to disabuse him of his opinion. The man’s knowledge of enemy weaponry and the role of air support were rudimentary, in Wong’s opinion, although he at least recognized that the Hogs would be operating beyond their preferred parameters. Wong was about to second the point when his nose tickled again; he barely managed to pull a fresh handkerchief from his pocket and cover his face in time.

“You wanted to say something, Captain?” asked Colonel Klee, who was in charge of supplying Apache and the infiltration teams associated with it.

Wong nodded as he finished blowing his nose. He had reserved judgment on Colonel Klee; his khakis were fairly crisp, no small accomplishment in this wilderness.

He was also admirably short on patience.

“Well?” asked the colonel. “What is it?”

“I was going to suggest that if we want the Apache Forces to work in conjunction with our attack planes, we institute combat-area refueling procedures. A pair of C-130s flying over Iraqi territory—”

“That’s on hold,” snapped the colonel. “Go on, Major. And skip the history bullshit, will you? These people can get to the library themselves.”

The major unfolded a large map across three easels at the front of the room. Fort Apache had been sketched in about a third of the way from the top left corner; various Iraqi air defenses and other installations were diagrammed in below.

“We want to add a lifeboat contingency,” said the major. “As well as local firepower.”

Between sneezes, Wong listened as Wilson updated the plan to base a pair of “sterile” Little Bird McDonnell Douglas AH-6Gs at Fort Apache. Descendants of Vietnam War-era Loach, the Defenders were special “black” versions of the versatile helo known in official circles as the Cayuse. The small, light choppers were equipped with machine guns and rocket packs. They were excellent support aircraft, could greatly extend Fort Apache’s operating area, and— this is where “lifeboat” came in— could possibly be used to evacuate teams and even the base if necessary.

There was only one problem: the choppers’ loaded range was barely over two hundred miles, and the plan called for them to be loaded to the gills when they went north. Even with a stop to refuel right at the border, that was a stretch. Not even the Special Ops people thought they could make it in a straight line.

A big PAVE-Low could make it, of course. But no way anyone in their right mind would authorize flying an aircraft that valuable that far north. In fact, nothing valuable could go up there.

Which was why the Hogs had been assigned the support mission, obviously.

Finally, thought Wong, the reason I am here. He raised his hand, sneezed, stood, blew his nose and then cleared his throat.

“You want a safe route to Fort Apache, I assume,” he said.

“I have a route to the airfield,” bristled the major, pointing to the line.

Wong took Wilson’s pen and began drawing parabolas around some of the defenses.

“Besides sneezing, what are you doing?” asked the colonel.

“The different performance envelopes of these defenses have not been adequately charted,” he explained. “And I notice that several of these sites are misidentified. This here is an SA-2 battery, a problem for an older support aircraft flying at medium altitude and above, but it should be essentially oblivious to a helicopter running at night, which I assume is how penetration is planned. Additionally, some of your information is incomplete and/or out of date. You have not noted the defenses in this sector. This GCI site was listed as only thirty percent destroyed in the latest assessment. Experience shows that it is best to assume that is optimistic.”

“Meaning?”

“A halfway competent operator would have no trouble frying your helicopters,” said Wong. “Approached from this angle, however, the detectable envelope shrinks dramatically.”

“Are you sure?” asked the major.

Wong sighed. “I assume I was asked to come to this sand trap because I am the world’s expert on Russian defense systems. If you are willing to take great risks, fly in a straight line. I haven’t done the math, but it undoubtedly offers no lower a coefficient of probable success than your course does. And with wing tanks—”

“We don’t have wing tanks, and even if we did, there’s not enough weight left for them,” said one of the helo pilots, a warrant officer named Gerry Fernandez. “We were supposed to be refueled.”

“I did not see that contingency outlined on the map,” said Wong.

“That’s on hold as well,” said the colonel without further explanation.

“We’ve already dropped fuel at Apache,” said Major Wilson. “There’s plenty of fuel for you, once you get there.”

“We’re going to have to lighten the load to get there,” said Fernandez. “A hell of a lot. And carry fuel with us besides. With all due respect to the Major, I’d like to hear what course this captain recommends.”

“Go ahead, Wong,” said the colonel.

Wong went back to sketching a safer course. Wilson started to object again, but this time was stifled by an impromptu dissertation on the effective range of the pulse band radars emitted by the Roland mobile batteries.

The secrecy of the mission imposed a further constraint on Wong’s planning. It was necessary for the helicopters to avoid not only know anti-air defenses, but places where any sizable number of troops might congregate. Wong’s final route, to be flown about six feet off the ground, minimized the helicopter’s exposure to everything but sand mites.

It also totaled close to four hundred miles and was more convoluted than a drunk’s stagger.

Which the pilots promptly pointed out.

“It is necessarily intricate,” said Wong, intending to suggest that if the pilots couldn’t follow it, he knew several who could. But he was cut off by a stout sneeze.

“We can follow it,” said Fernandez. “The question is range.”

The colonel leaned over to hear some advice from one of his lieutenants. Major Wilson whispered on the other side. Finally, the colonel shook his head reluctantly.

“There’s no sense taking this kind of risk if we’re not going to deliver usable supplies,” said the major, straightening. “It makes no sense to fly them all the way to Fort Apache without enough bullets and rockets to fend off an attack. We won’t be able to arrange for a new drop until tomorrow night. By then, we ought to have a new C-130 cleared as a tanker. And if not, we’ll rig something similar to what we did to get the fuel down at Apache. The prudent thing is to wait.”

“What if they need us before then?” said Fernandez.

“I’m not going to send you up there empty,” said Klee.

Wong sighed. He glanced at the colonel, who could only be waiting for him to point out the obvious. Surely both he and the major had realized the solution by now. This charade could only be meant to make him feel more comfortable and withdraw his transfer request. A worthy gesture on the colonel’s part. Perhaps there was hope yet.

Wong walked back to the map and marked an X roughly halfway through the course he had laid out.

“There. They can land and pump the gas in themselves.”

“And just how do we get it there?” said the major. “That’s a hundred miles due south of Apache. Our troops have no way to deliver it. Not to mention they’d have to go through at least one known Iraqi troop placement.”

“Two additional helicopters with fuel drums—.”

“Unavailable,” said the major. “It’s impossible unless we cut the supply load. The whole thing has to be scrubbed.

“Air drop it.”

“How? I don’t have any planes, Wong.”

Wong shook his head. No one could be quite this dense. Clearly, Wilson had adopted the role of devil’s advocate.

“You could use the same method you employed for dropping fuel at Apache,” said Wong. “Of course, you would wish to have some redundancy, so I would suggest…”

“We won’t have those planes again for another two nights,” said the major smugly.

“Then adapt other planes for the role,” said Wong.

“What? The A-10s?”

Wong shrugged. “The configuration will require creative thought, but if we examine the…“

That doable, Captain?” Klee asked quickly.

“Of course.”

“I like you Wong,” said the colonel. He turned to the lieutenant. “Jack, get the captain some antihistamines, then go find the A-10A maintenance people and see if this can be done. Better yet, Wong, go with him. Get as creative as you can before you sneeze your brains out.”

CHAPTER 21

They were calling it Oz West, but compared to the Devils’ maintenance area at the Home Drome, the facilities at the forward operating area were bare-bones at best. Even without the Clyston-supplied amenities of elaborate test benches and gourmet coffee— Sergeant Rosen wasn’t sure which she’d rather do without— she and her “boys” could completely strip down and rebuild a Hog in under twenty-four hours. Twelve, even, if she broke into her stock of the Tinman’s special coffee brew. Hell, with that coffee and the Special Ops people as inspiration, they could probably do it in under six, and wax the landing gear to boot.

The Hogs were designed for battlefield maintenance. Rosen had to hand it to the engineers for keeping things very basic. But it was also true that her skeleton crew of Jimmy, Elephant and most of all the Tinman were the best crew-dog technical expert ground wizards in the Air Force. The fact that the Capo had put her in charge of the operation made her determined to bust twenty more guts than normal; she was good and damned if she wasn’t going to be better.

So if the truth be told, when the two Devil ships came back to base looking like they’d spent the day in an auto dealer showroom, she was a little disappointed. It wasn’t that she was looking for something to do. They were going to be here for a while and had a ton of organizing to do, not to mention the fact that their talents could always be used helping the base detachment with other planes. It was just that she felt like there ought to be something more challenging.

And, since she’d heard that Lieutenant Dixon had been assigned to this mission, she was more than a little disappointed he hadn’t shown up.

Which was part of the reason she went to report the detachment status to Captain Glenon personally. Glenon and Captain O’Rourke were still debriefing in the makeshift intelligence area, a sandbagged tarp not far from the runway.

“Captain, just wanted you to know, both Hogs are good to go.”

“Jesus. We landed ten minutes ago,” said Glenon. He seemed annoyed. Rosen was used to that, having dealt with the squadron’s DO, Major “Mongoose” Johnson, a world class ball-buster.

Still, they’d just busted their butts getting the planes ready. She’d worked with Glenon a few times and never had any trouble with him before; for an officer, he’d seemed all right. But that was then, and this was now. Stinking officers were all the same.

“I’m sorry if you expected them sooner, sir,” she said, her lips pressed together tightly.

“No, that wasn’t what I meant. Relax, Sergeant.”

“Relax, sir?”

“Yeah, you don’t have to kill yourself,” said the captain. “We won’t be flying until tomorrow morning.”

“Speak for yourself,” said A-Bomb. “I was thinking of going camel hunting.”

Rosen recognized that that was supposed to be a joke. She laughed politely, and looked back at Glenon. All right, so he was okay. For an officer. Short guy, all muscle, quick temper, but okay. Kind of guy you could trust.

“The planes will be ready the second you want them, sir.”

“Okay. Get some sleep or food or whatever.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Rosen, but she didn’t move.

“Something up?” asked Glenon.

“Oh, um, nothing sir, just— I was wondering about Lieutenant Dixon.”

“Dixon? What about him?”

“I hadn’t seen him, but I heard he was assigned to this mission.”

“BJ’s uptown with the commandos,” said A-Bomb. “Crazy fuck parachuted down with them last night. They went out at like 35,000 feet— you believe that?”

Rosen nodded and stepped back to let the men pass. She felt her side stitch up, as if she had been running for a half-hour. She massaged it gently, but knew it wasn’t going away.

CHAPTER 22

“You want to drum up a card game after dinner?” A-Bomb asked Doberman as they walked from the briefing area.

“Nah,” said Doberman. He was feeling tired and a little beat-up from the two long runs north. “I’m just going to bed.”

“Bed? Shit, are you kidding me? Bed? Instead of cards?”

“Screw off.”

“Oh man, you’re making a big mistake,” insisted A-Bomb. “I’m tellin’ ya, that cross of Tinman’s gonna be hot-shit at the poker table.”

“I’d be careful about playing cards with these Special Ops types if I were you,” said Doberman. “You win too much they may bury you in the desert.”

“Yo, look who’s here,” said A-Bomb, spotting Wong walking toward them. “Hey Braniac, where’s the food at?”

“Food. Right,” said Wong.

“Seriously, there a place where we can get something to eat?” Doberman asked.

“There are several, though I wouldn’t advise any of them. Before you eat, Colonel Klee wants to see you.”

“What’s up?”

Doberman listened with disbelief to the scheme to drop fuel for the helicopters.

“That’s impossible,” said Doberman.

“Merely difficult,” said Wong. “If it were easy they wouldn’t be interested.”

“How’s that air strip coming?” asked A-Bomb. “You think we can use it soon?”.

“Don’t be crazy,” Doberman told his wingman. “It’s just about in Baghdad.”

“Baghdad is quite a distance away,” said Wong. “Given the layout of the Iraqi defenses as well as their overly centralized command structure, the base might as well be in Riyadh. This is a classic outgrowth of the Soviet philosophy, the inherent flaws that were first pointed out by Herman Dedorf in his 1951 report and subsequently demonstrated by a little-known project entitled—”

“Spare me the dissertation,” said Doberman. “No matter where it is, a thousand feet isn’t long enough to land anything. Let alone take off.”

“Shit, Dog, that’s doable,” said A-Bomb. “What do you say, Braniac?”

Wong seemed not to understand why he had suddenly been nicknamed after a character in the Superman adventures. But it didn’t prevent him from spewing forth.

“They wish to double the length and land C-130s there. That will require considerable work and earth-moving equipment, a most inefficacious contingency though they seem undeterred by such considerations,” the captain told them. “If they can achieve that, then by all means your planes could operate there was well, assuming reduced weights and combat schemes. In fact, with the modest extensions to the present configuration that are already planned, the Fort Apache strip would be theoretically accessible to an A-10A, as you already undoubtedly are aware.”

To Doberman, Wong sounded like a kid on a quiz show who wouldn’t shut up. And A-Bomb egged him on, bobbing his head up and down like a toy on a dashboard.

“If you operated at forward combat weight of approximately 32,771 pounds, you would need just 1,450 feet to take off,” continued Wong. “Of course, there are several contingencies, including the wind and, in Captain O’Rourke’s case, how much candy he happens to be chewing at the time.”

“And whether I got the stereo cranked,” said A-Bomb, grinning.

“But the idea of placing American warplanes so far behind the lines where they would be open to a concerted ground attack is itself insane,” said Wong.

“Thank you,” said Doberman.

“It’s not that crazy,” A-Bomb told Doberman after they finally managed to get Wong to point them in the colonel’s direction. “If we could refuel there we wouldn’t have to go home every time the AWACS calls out a snap vector. Shit, we’re flying so goddamn far north as it is, what difference is landing going to make?”

“Strip’s only a thousand feet,” said Doberman.

“Yeah, but Wong said they’re extended.”

“Wong.”

“Guy’s a brain, Dog Man. He’s the world’s expert on Russian weapons.”

“And what does that have to do with lengthening airstrips?”

“Hey, you look at him, you say: there’s a guy who knows concrete.”

“Only because he’s going to end up buried in some.”

Even though the idea of landing a Hog two hundred miles deep in Iraq sounded crazy, Doberman realized that there was a certain logic to the insanity. It would immensely increase their time on station— hell, they would always be on station. And while the actual bomb runs were no picnic, the most perilous part of their missions were actually the long legs to and fro. Flying high made them immune to triple-A, but if the wrong SAM site picked the wrong second to come on line, a dozen Weasels couldn’t take out the radar quickly enough to protect them. Even the old SA-2s— flying telephone poles which had been around since Vietnam— were potent weapons against a slow, heavily laden Hog. And a Roland or SA-6— forget about it.

So Doberman didn’t immediately punch A-Bomb when he mentioned using Apache to the colonel in the command bunker.

Actually, the reason he didn’t had more to do with the fact that A-Bomb was across the room.

Even the Special Ops colonel could tell landing the Hogs at Apache was crazy. His mouth and cheek worked up and down, as if he’d gotten something caught in one of his back teeth.

“You know, son, I used to fly Hueys up Ho Chi Ming’s butt,” he said finally. “You don’t have to impress me.”

“I’m not pushing a permanent Home Drome,” said A-Bomb. “What I’m talking about is a fuel depot, and maybe get some gun dragons up there, load up the cannon between shows. Dump in a few hundred iron bombs while we’re at it. Nothing big. That’s what I’m talking about.”

The colonel gave Doberman a look that said, he’s crazy, right.

Doberman shrugged. Klee turned back to A-Bomb.

“You boys just do this fuel drop tonight, all right? We’re going to be goddamn lucky to have it work,” said the colonel.

“Excuse me, colonel, can I get a word in here?” said Doberman.

“I wish you would, Captain.”

“I’m not saying we can’t do this, assuming those tanks don’t explode when we drop them.”

“They tell me they won’t,” said Colonel Klee. “We’ve made similar drops from MC-130s. Assuming your people rig them right.”

“If they can be rigged, our guys will do it,” said Doberman.

“Then it’s in your court.”

Doberman clamped his teeth together, trying to choke back his bile. He didn’t like being treated like a flunky. The colonel’s dismissal of the problems involved in the mission was, in his mind, reckless.

But it was difficult for him to say that without exploding.

“Damn straight it’s in our court,” he finally managed. “Damn straight. We’re going to do a kick-ass job and you can count on it. But realistically, Colonel, realistically we’re not equipped for night fighting. Our navigation systems are not exactly state of the art. This drop has to have a pretty wide margin of error. Unless we use flares, we’ll be bombing blind.”

“No flares,” said Klee. “We’ll live with whatever margin of error you give us.”

“Skull and I used Maverick G’s when we rode up and grabbed Goose,” said A-Bomb. “If we can round up a couple of those suckers, we’ll be able to see the ground at least.”

“Get them,” said the colonel. “If you have to put X-ray machines in those planes, do it. But nothing that gives the helicopters away before they get there.”

Doberman blew another long breath, this one calm enough to exist through his mouth without rattling his teeth. He told himself he was just pissed about the colonel’s personality, which wasn’t an important thing to be pissed about.

The gig was impossible, but what the hell. They’d done harder shit. As long as it was him and A-Bomb taking it, they’d figure something out. And if it weren’t for the fact that Dixon’s neck was on the block up north, he wouldn’t give a flying turd’s crap what happened to this jerk-ass of a colonel’s command. If he wanted to risk stranding two helicopters so deep in Iraq that it took the entire Army and Air Force and maybe the Marines to rescue them, what the hell.

“When are the helos taking off?” A-Bomb asked.

The colonel glanced at his watch. “They should be in the air by now. They’re refueling at the border. According to Wong’s timetable, they needed a good head start. You have a little over three hours to meet them. You miss them, don’t bother coming back.”

CHAPTER 23

It was Leteri who realized the ground between the two hills was mined. Something about the neatness of it tipped him off just in time to grab Dixon’s arm and yank him physically backwards.

“Stop!” yelled the sergeant. “Everyone freeze right where you are.”

He didn’t use the word “mines.” He didn’t have to.

Winston and Green were nearly twenty yards deep in the minefield, which lay below the sheer rock of the old quarry. Staffa Turk was five yards behind Dixon, himself maybe seven or eight yards deep. The others were stretched out in a jagged line either ahead or over toward the road on the rocks, apparently safe.

Maybe. It was fairly dark and difficult to tell.

“What we’re going to do is go back exactly the way we came in,” Winston told the others. He pulled the flashlight from his vest; the others did the same. “We’re going to do it one person at a time, and we’re going to move slowly no matter what happens. Turk, you go, then the Lieutenant. Use your lights to check the marks on the ground. Watch for mine nubs, if you can.”

It seemed to take forever for the Trooper to back out. Finally, he shouted for Dixon to come.

Dixon had only the roughest idea of where he had stepped. He started to turn. Leteri yelled at him to stop.

“Exactly the way you came, BJ. Backwards if you can. Lean back with your right foot. That was the step you took.” He directed him with his light. “I can tell by the way you’re standing. See that mark there?”

“You’re right. Thanks.” He put his leg backwards, trying to pretend he was a character in a rewinding video. He found a foothold, shifted his weight, and took the backwards step. Whether he had found the exact footfall or just got lucky, nothing happened.

Three more steps and he was still intact. It would take four or five more to reach the boundary, where large boulders strewn on the gentle slope showed they’d be safe.

Probably.

“Go as slow as you want, Lieutenant,” said Winston. “No rushing here.”

Dixon flexed his upper leg muscles and studied the ground. He resisted the dash back to the line that was supposed to mean safety, tried to remember how he had walked, and saw the shadow of a boot print.

Or was it the top of a mine?

He moved his foot at the last second, planted, moved back another step, then another.

When he was finally far enough away, he let the com gear and his ruck sack slide off his back in a heap. Dixon rolled his head backwards on his neck and let out a breath of air so huge he nearly fell over.

Leteri came back next. Only Green and Winston were left. Green was ahead of Winston but the team leader insisted that he come back first.

“Just do what I fucking tell you to do,” he growled when Green protested. “Can’t you hear I’m getting hoarse?”

Dutifully, the medic began to retrace his steps. The arc he had followed took him near Winston’s position; they exchange a sardonic glance as he passed. Green took a step back, then rested, flexing as much as he could without moving his feet. He was about ten yards, no more, from safety, near where Dixon had been.

Practically home.

He took another step back, and exploded.

CHAPTER 24

It was a movie he was watching. The camera panned back from a wide shot, moving away from the brief flash and burst of dirt. Two dark bodies jumped against the dull shadows behind them, one twisting forward in a macabre dance, the other falling straight over from the side, like a tree axed by a woodsman. As the dust and smoke settled into the twilight, a figure ran toward the dancer. Its steps were awkward and fitful, as if following an unheard music score.

The camera view changed, zooming on the second body, closing in on the sand-colored motley of his uniform, the odd shapes of brown and yellow and tan blurring as the lens momentarily lost focus. The camera swirled, and then showed the ground, hard-pressed dirt and sand galloping by in an artistic effect, pitching in a way that made him slightly seasick, and seemed at the same time to weigh down on his back.

Finally the lens fell on a black boot stained with a spatter of blood brighter than the red of a spring poppy plant. It stayed there for a moment, drinking in the color and finely lined pattern, then moved to another spot of red, another perfect splotch, this one on a dull yellow and black fabric. The camera moved forward and the fabric was revealed to be an arm, the hand gripping something tightly, its long, slender fingers curled so tightly the small veins popped greenish-blue against the knuckles.

And then the camera moved back again, beginning a pan as its movement stopped; something fell slowly through the frame, another body, the same body the shot had begun with. The lens moved up and found a thick, pained face, creased with lines and the stubble of a day-old beard. The mouth moved with a groan or a curse; it was impossible to say.

“Green’s dead,” said Leteri, still huffing.

Turk was leaning over Winston. “Don’t talk, Sarge. Let me get this around your leg.”

Winston’s protest contorted into a groan as Turk pulled the bandage around the open wound. Bits of muscle and gore splayed out; Dixon saw what he thought was the thigh bone, white gray amid the sea of blood.

“He’s trying to tell you that was a stupid thing, running into the minefield,” Leteri told Dixon.

“If I only did smart things I wouldn’t be here,” said Dixon.

Turk rolled Winston onto his side. The back of his uniform was already dark with blood.

“We’re gonna have to look at this real careful,” said Turk.

Dixon realized the others were looking at him, expecting him to say something, even if it was the most obvious thing.

Which was?

“We’re exposed here,” Leteri said. “Let’s find some cover.”

“You think we ought to move him?” asked Turk.

The sergeant’s moans had faded into one continuous semi-screech. Dixon knelt next to him and gently placed his two fingers along the sergeant’s neck.

“Weak pulse, but with us,” Dixon said.

For a moment, the words jangled in his mind, reviving a memory of the last time he’d felt for someone’s pulse. It was his mother’s, nearly a year ago, and the result had been very different— he’d been feeling for himself, the last time, to make sure what the machines were saying, what the doctor and nurses were saying, was true, that she was dead.

“We shouldn’t move him, probably.” Dixon stood up quickly. “But we have to have better cover than this. Those rocks up there. Leteri, can you check them out? Mo, Staffa, scout the road and then cover us. Bobby and I will move the sergeant as gently as we can, once Leteri gives us the all clear.”

The men jumped into action. It was only later, after they set the sergeant down, that Dixon realized he had given orders and they’d followed them without question.

CHAPTER 25

They looked like Warthogs with tits.

Two five hundred gallon tanks, with elaborate air-drop chutes custom-welded around them, had been slapped to the number five and seven hard-points beneath the A-10As’ wings. The basic drop tanks had been borrowed from RAF Tornadoes— an accomplishment in itself, since as far as Doberman knew there were none at the base. Tinman had worked out the modifications himself, with help from Wong and Rosen. They were equipped with parachutes that worked off altimeter settings; apparently these included a pair of more-or-less-standard Special Ops chutes and three smaller drag “foils” from British bombs ordinarily used to crater runways.

Rosen had explained the mechanics of the chute-and-baffle system to Doberman, but the setup seemed as much of a marvel as the MRE A-Bomb was wolfing down. The bottom line was that she said it would all work.

Probably.

Wong seemed to agree. Which in itself made Doberman nervous.

“You really ought to try one of these MREs,” said A-Bomb. “This sole in vermouth with a touch of lemon— it’s what I’m talking about.”

“Sole in vermouth?” asked Rosen.

“Sorry, finished. I got lobster bisque with crabmeat and a squeeze of saffron left. You want it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You got to buddy up with the Special Ops guys if you want decent grub,” said A-Bomb, opening the plastic packet and pouring it into a drab green cup. “They got connections.”

Doberman nearly fell over from the stench of the simmering concoction wafting across the desert. He shook his head.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said A-Bomb. “Should have gone with the soup course first, right?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.” Doberman shook his head. “You ready?”

“I was born ready.”

Doberman turned to inspect his airplane. Rosen followed. One think he had to give her— these planes couldn’t have been in better shape than if they’d just rolled out of the factory.

“Listen, Captain, don’t forget, you have to drop from thirty-five hundred feet so the chutes can fully deploy and the landing is soft. All right?”

Rosen was about the only crew member in the squadron— maybe the only person in the Air Force— who physically looked up at the five-foot-four Doberman. Maybe it was just the angle of her face that made her look less severe than she’d ever seemed before.

For just a second.

“I’ll give it a shot,” he told her.

Rosen smiled. “Kick butt, Captain.”

She chucked him on the shoulder harder than a linebacker.

Forty-five minutes worth of butt-grinding Hog driving later, Doberman checked his map against the INS and his watch. They were thirty seconds off, close enough for anyone but him. He edged his power forward infinitesimally, recalculating and adjusting until he had the thing nailed.

Wong had sketched the Hogs a route to the fuel drop points that was considerably more direct than the path the helicopters were taking. Even so, the timetable was tight and the course was not the easiest; they still had one known Iraqi position to overfly.

The Air Force had once planned to upgrade the A-10A with things like ground-avoidance radar and night-seeing equipment— reasonably necessary items, given the Hog’s primary mission to work with ground troops. But the A-10 was always treated like a forlorn stepchild at budget time; the pointy nose fast jets got all the fancy gear, and the Hogs had to make do with leftovers, hand-me-downs, and wishful thinking.

Still, even something as basic as an autopilot would have been nice, Doberman thought. For one thing, it would make it easier to pee, which he suddenly had to do.

No way he was braving the piddlepack until after the drop.

They went over the Iraqi position without drawing any fire; without, in fact, a hint that there was anything besides sand beneath their wings. Doberman adjusted his course as he planned the next way marker— he had it tight this time, and he edged the plane’s nose below five thousand feet, angled perfectly to hit 3,500 feet in exactly two minutes and twenty seconds at the drop point.

He checked the Maverick screen. As a primitive night-vision device, it was far from perfect, but at least he could make out the road Wong had marked on his map just south of the target.

Perfect. Doberman keyed his mike to make sure A-Bomb hadn’t fallen asleep.

In the next second, the sky in front of him erupted orange-green, the flak so thick it looked like a psychedelic waterfall.

CHAPTER 26

They dug a shallow grave at the edge of the minefield and buried Green, making sure to get a good read from the geo-positioner so they could retrieve the body when the mission was over.

The men looked to Dixon to say something, or at least he thought they did. He stepped up and asked them to bow their heads. Standing solemnly at the head of the medic’s grave, he remembered his mother’s funeral, and a passage flew into his head: a reading from Job about God’s justification for mankind’s trials:

That was as far as the reading had gone at the funeral. Dixon’s voice fell silent. But after a few seconds, Staff Sergeant Staffa Turk, demolitions expert and tail gunner, filled out the verse:

Winston’s back had been peppered with shrapnel and bits of Green. The bleeding was difficult to gauge; Dixon worried that some of the wounds had hit his spine and the nerves around it. They made the sergeant as comfortable as they could, hiding him in a crevice along the rock ledge that gave them a reasonably good view of the road, the minefield, and the next hill, though not the rest of the quarry. They could fight from here, if they had to.

Each trooper carried a syringe of morphine. They debated whether to give it to Winston or not. He was moaning and certainly in some pain, but if they used it they’d have nothing else to give him. And they couldn’t be sure how long it would be before they could be evacuated.

Once again, the men looked to Dixon to decide. It seemed to him that the best thing to do was call Fort Apache, the forward base that was supposed to be their support link, and see what could be arranged. Once they knew helos were on the way, they could give him the shot.

“If he starts screaming, then we absolutely have to knock him out,” said Leteri.

“Definitely,” agreed Dixon.

The radio had been hit by something when the mine exploded. Leteri set up the antenna, sure that he could get it to work somehow. The other members of the fire team began searching the quarry, trying to figure out why the mines were there. Dixon, meanwhile, looked after the wounded man, trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

There wasn’t much he could do, except wad a shirt as a pillow and cover him with a blanket. Dixon felt as helpless as his last days in ICU, watching his mother fade into the night. Weird thoughts had gone through his head then; one moment he’d see himself yanking out the tubes, another moment his eyes would flood with tears and he’d conjure wild promises and deals with God to keep her alive.

“Radio’s pretty screwed, Lieutenant,” said Leteri. “It’s the power, I think. The battery got whacked. I’ll keep trying.”

“Makes sense,” said Dixon.

“How’s Winston?”

Dixon shrugged. He wanted to be objective— he wasn’t a doctor and he had no idea what the extent of the wounds were. The sergeant’s pulse was strong. But there were at least three big wounds along his spine.

Turk appeared at the ridge before Dixon could find a way to diplomatically say he was afraid the sergeant might be paralyzed.

“Hey Lieutenant, you want to come look at this right away,” he said. “I think I found what those mines are all about.”

CHAPTER 27

Doberman whacked the Hog hard left as the fingers of fire seemed to reach for his windshield. He twisted the plane back, feeling her buck because of the unfamiliar tanks tied to her wings. He lost his balance, felt his left wing coming around and got down on his rudder pedals as well as his ailerons, muscling the plane stable with his nose pointed toward the ground. He started to recover, then realized the altimeter was winding down faster than he thought. His engineer’s brain spat out a series of equations with bad variables; he ignored them and pulled back on the stick, leveling off at two thousand feet, headed in the wrong direction and damn-shit confused.

To say nothing of pissed. He wondered where in hell the flak guns had come from, and felt his bladder backing up into his kidneys.

“Hey,” said A-Bomb.

“Hey back.”

“You hit?”

“Nah.” Doberman gave the instrument panel a quick once over just to be sure.

A-Bomb read him his position, but Doberman had already figured out where his wingman would be. He brought his plane back into a slow bank north, sliding around in an arc that kept the flak— stir firing intermittently— well off his right wing. He was still low at 3,500 feet, but since he had to get low to make the drop, decided to keep it there.

“You got screwed up?” asked A-Bomb.

“Fucking fuel tanks threw me off.”

“Still got them?”

“Shit, A-Bomb, what do you think?”

“Man, you’re testy. You know what it is, you didn’t have anything to eat. Blood sugar’s all whacked out. You got to take better care of yourself. When you eat’s as important as what you eat. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“What the fuck was shooting at me? I didn’t get a radar warning or anything.”

“I couldn’t see it with the Mavericks, but it looked like something dug in near the road. Shot real high. Got to be a bunch of ZSU-57s, don’t you think? Would have taken a lucky shot to nail you.”

“Lucky for who?”

“Good point. Want to go back and waste ‘em?”

“Hold on.”

Doberman checked the positions out on the map. Wong’s course had the helicopter coming in from the north, which meant the battery was well out of range. Besides, the helos would be almost at the refuel point by now. The Hogs were better off saving the guns for the return flight, if they even bothered.

The guns stroked up again. There had to be several of them, and A-Bomb was probably right about them being ZSU-57s or something similar— their tracers seemed to extend fairly high. The guns were usually mounted on vehicles like ZSU-23s; they might be attached to a convoy or positioned to defend something intel hadn’t yet picked up. In any event, they were firing blind and almost straight up. Most likely they had heard either the Hogs in the distance and gotten spooked.

Firing blind in the night was stupid, since it gave your position away and was unlikely to bring any results, but Doberman could understand the ground crews’ frustration. You could only sit and get pounded for so long before you lashed out.

“Looks like your friend Wong missed some pretty serious guns,” said Doberman as he plotted a new course to the drop point.

“Hey, I didn’t say Brainiac was perfect. Besides, those old suckers, shit, it would have taken a really lucky shot to get you. One in a hundred. You know what I’m talking about?”

“All right.” He gave A-Bomb the new course and got back into gear. He was back in control; even his bladder eased up a little.

“You could go Italian, you know.”

“What are you talking about, A-Bomb?”

“Pasta is very high in you carbohydrates,” said the wingman. “Instant energy. And versatile. You got your marinara, your Abruzzi, your Alfredo…”

“Just watch my back.”

“Six is as clean as spaghetti right out of the pot,” said A-Bomb.

CHAPTER 28

A-Bomb eased his Hog back, giving Doberman plenty of room to make his drop cleanly. While he had a huge amount of trust in the ground crew’s ability to improvise, even he was curious about whether this fudge would really work.

It had better. He had the choppers coming on now four miles away, so low they could be trucks.

His Maverick viewfinder was selected at what passed for wide-field magnification: six degrees. The ground battery was well off to the rear, and no longer firing; they’d either run out of bullets or hit themselves with their falling shells.

The Hogs “target” was a set of coordinates that translated into a hunk of sand about a half-mile beyond an impressive collection of bushes; the brush was probably considered an oasis, though A-Bomb was hardly an expert on that sort of thing. The only oasis he was familiar with featured topless dancers. The gray shadows of the bushes looked like an undulating test bar in his screen as he banked to follow Doberman on his approach.

One of the test bars morphed into a mountain.

Then mountain changed into bodies.

A couple of dozen bodies. All running west right into the drop zone.

“Hold off, hold off,” A-Bomb shouted into his radio, alerting Doberman. “Shit. Cisco freeze. Cisco Freeze,” he added, quickly switching to the frequency the helicopters were monitoring. The code meant for the helicopters to stop immediately.

A-Bomb thumbed the Maverick’s screen down to a narrow angle, which magnified the scene. He waited for the viewer to flash up an entire herd of Iraqi infantry.

That or some very strange bushes.

“Devil Two, this is One? What’s the problem?” asked Doberman.

“Don’t you see them?”

“See what?”

“Hang tight.” A-Bomb banked his plane, temporarily losing his angle. The Maverick screen showed nothing but empty desert.

A malfunction?

Hell no. The screen filled as he came back around, but now A-Bomb saw that the bodies streaming westward weren’t Iraqi troops or weirdly mobile fauna.

They were camels. At least two dozen of them.

He might have laughed, except it wasn’t funny. The animals were still moving toward the area where the tanks were supposed to be dropped.

Doberman cursed in his headset. Obviously he had seen them, too.

A-Bomb made out a man’s shadow, and what might be a tent. Some Bedouins were putting up for the night at the oasis. In fact, they were the oasis.

Jeez, you’d think they lived here or something. And wasn’t there a leash law? The damn camels were trampling all around the target area.

“All right, I’m going to set up a course toward Cisco,” said Doberman. “Let them improvise.”

“I got a better idea,” said A-Bomb, pushing the Hog down toward the dirt.

The big warplane hesitated a moment, then realized what her pilot was up to. She snorted, and answered A-Bomb’s whoop with one of her own. A salvo of flares, ordinarily used to defeat heat-seeking missiles, burst from her wingtips.

Startled, the camels turned their heads as one and stared at the meteor that had appeared from nowhere.

Then they ran like hell, their masters in hot pursuit.

CHAPTER 29

“Yee-fucking-haw!” shouted A-Bomb over the radio. He had the camels on the run.

Doberman slipped the Hog onto the proper coordinates for the tank drop. His thumbs danced back and forth — bing-bang-bam. He pickled and felt the plane jump beneath him, glad to be free of the unfamiliar tanks.

Doberman banked and pushed forward in his seat, anxious to see how he had done. But it was far too dark outside and at the moment there was nothing but a bleary blankness in the Maverick’s screen.

He keyed his mike and told the helicopters they could proceed in zero-one minutes; in the same instant he saw the outline of a small parachute in the corner of the TVM, then another and finally a third, all holding up the same fat canister of fuel.

Finished spooking the camels, A-Bomb pulled off and swung in for his own drop.

Doberman began to climb in a spiral intended to keep him away from both the helicopters and his wingman; in the dark good flight discipline was particularly important and he hit his marks precisely, climbing quickly, for a Hog, to ten thousand feet. Their straight-forward plan called for the two Hogs to remain in the area for thirty minutes, which hopefully would be long enough for the two helos to refuel and get underway.

Once the helicopters cleared, they could waste the triple-A battery and go home, where bed was waiting. Doberman’s body ached for rest, even if it was on a cramped cot stolen from the Special Ops Forces troops.

There had been no fireballs. That was a good sign.

If you believed in luck, this was exactly the sort of gig that depended on it. Rigging a bizarre plan, flying to a point on the map with a notoriously inefficient INS system, then hooking up with helos that had already been flying for hours on a course so convoluted they were coming south— only to have the whole thing almost screw up because of a group of wayward camels.

Luck?

Bullshit. How about giving credit to tons of skill, with great technical people coming up with a creative solution to an impossible problem? How about great navigational skill on his part, making mid-course corrections and dealing with an unexpected glitch in the shape of an anti-air gun? And give a little credit to impromptu finesse from A-Bomb, scaring the crap out of the camels to herd them away from the drop zone.

Luck was bullshit.

Doberman felt his leg starting to numb from inactivity. He danced it up and down, twisted his muscles and shook his knees around, trying to ward off the pins and needles.

Rosen and Tinman had done a hell of a job, conjuring up this drop-tank thing. Of course, Tinman had probably done this sort of thing before, like maybe for the Wright Brothers.

Silver crosses. Jeee-zus.

Rosen, though, she was pretty damn smart for a girl.

Check that. For a woman.

She was a woman. There was something sincere in her eyes, something warm, as if she really cared if they made it on their mission.

The refuel took longer than planned, and Doberman decided to wait until the helicopters were in the air before moving on. He played with the variables, but couldn’t quite squeeze enough time and fuel to allow the A-10s to splash the batteries after the choppers left. Reluctantly, he spun the Hogs onto their go-home course.

“Six is clean as a scared camel’s rear,” said A-Bomb.

“Very funny. You watch I don’t put you up for a medal for that.”

“Hey, I got the only medal I need, courtesy of Tinman. You notice that gun opened up on you, not me.”

“How’s your fuel?” snapped Doberman.

“Not a problem,” said A-Bomb. His words were almost lost in what seemed to be an uncontrolled chortle.

“You laughing at me, A-Bomb?”

“Hell no,” said A-Bomb. “I’m just thinking of those helicopter crews when they landed. There must have been a ton of camel shit everywhere. Got to be more toxic than anything Saddam could load into a Scud.”

CHAPTER 30

The more Dixon walked, the less tired he felt. Whether it was because he was so far beyond fatigue that he’d become numb, or whether something biological had kicked in, Dixon couldn’t say. All he knew was that he was more awake and alert than he’d ever been in his life. The night was a little lighter than last night had been; whether because of that or some shift in his senses, he could see Turk and the way down to the road almost as if it were high noon.

The sergeant led him back to the road, then across and parallel to it. After about a tenth of a mile, he pointed out a rock that marked the edge of the minefield on the far side. Just beyond it was a dirt road that curved between two crags in the hills.

“The entrance off the road is down further,” the sergeant explained. “But this is shorter.”

Dixon followed silently. They quickly came to a pass and walked about twenty yards into the quarry. A rock face loomed ahead; they’d seen the top from the position where they’d taken the sergeant, but hadn’t been able to see its base because of the angle.

And the base was definitely worth seeing. There was a large metal door, the kind that might be used on a factory or warehouse.

“Old mine?” Dixon asked.

“Check it out,” said Turk, handing the lieutenant his NOD. “Brand new combo lock. Got to be hiding something, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t just a combo lock— it had a high-tech digital face and a massive panel.

“Probably booby-trapped,” said Turk. “Got a slot for a key, so you can’t just fudge the combination either.”

Dixon’s mind conjured up different possibilities: the Mother of All Scud Bases, Saddam’s own secret palace, or a vast underground base for the Revolutionary Guards. He saw the same end for each— a raid by Devil Squadron to send the bastards to hell.

Another vision mixed with the others: the memory of his mother’s funeral. It had been a bright, sunny day, perfect in every way but the most important.

She’d chosen the Job reading herself. For years his mother had cared for his dad, who suffered just like the biblical figure. Cancer had long ago left him an invalid; by the time he was twelve Dixon had reconciled himself to his father’s death.

Yet his father hadn’t died and in fact was still living at the nursing home Dixon had put him in when his mother suffered her first stroke.

His mother never talked of death, not the countless times it seemed likely that his father would pass away, and certainly never of her own. And yet he found the passages all noted in her top drawer, written perhaps years before, too long for any premonition, surely.

“What do you think?” Turk asked.

Dixon handed the viewer back.

“Underground bunker, or some sort of storage facility,” said Dixon. “Way out here, my bet would be a chemical or biological warehouse. Maybe even nuclear. NBC.”

He started to take a step forward but Turk caught him.

“Could be mined,” said the trooper. “The way I’m thinking about it, that minefield we stumbled into is set up for defense, so they don’t need too many men to guard the place, see? Things get tricky, you send a team in. You can locate your posts there and there, not worry about your flanks. And this way, too.”

Dixon nodded. He took the viewer back and began scanning the rocks, looking for a ventilation pipe. As he did so, he remembered that the trucks had been heading in this direction.

A coincidence?

You couldn’t drive them through the door; it was too small. The shadows thrown by the rocks might hide them temporarily, though.

Hard to tell. He scanned first for another entrance, then for a ventilation system. Finally he spotted a thin pipe a good forty yards back on the hillside, around in the opposite direction from the hill where they had placed the sergeant. He oriented himself, realizing that the bunker’s hill was connected by a long ridge to theirs.

“Intelligence people don’t know about this,” said Turk. “Otherwise they’d have told us. Hill wasn’t even named on our maps. Nothing special to them.”

“Yeah,” agreed Dixon. “But it’s real special now.”