Going Deep

CHAPTER 39

“Here’s my point,” said A-Bomb, trying to pinch his belly back far enough to pull the stiff charcoal flight suit over it, “What are the odds of getting scudded in a Hog? You think Saddam’s going to waste his chemicals on me?”

“Hell no,” said Doberman, already dressed in the protective undergear. “He’ll just poison your coffee.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said the pilot, struggling with the suit. He momentarily lost his balance and fell back against his locker. The rebound helped loosen the zipper. “Goddamn carpet makes it tough to take a leak.”

“I thought you never had to pee,” countered Doberman.

“Never say never.” A-Bomb paused in his struggle to get dressed, reaching over to his extra-large coffee sitting on the table. Steam poured from the Styrofoam cup, which had a large Dunkin’ Donuts logo on the side. “The secret to flying is to be prepared for any contingency. First flight instructor told me that.”

“Did he tell you to drink a gallon of coffee before you took off?”

“Shit, you wouldn’t believe what he drank before he took off.” A-Bomb took a slurp from the cup and went back to suiting up. “Guy was a barnstormer, that’s what I’m talking about. But man, he knew his shit.”

Dixon kept to himself as he put on his G suit across the room. With nearly everyone else in the squadron either sleeping or scrambling to get the Hogs ready for their mission, the three pilots had the shop completely to themselves.

The G suit wasn’t just an over-tailored air hose, designed to counter the effects of high-speed maneuvers. Its pockets were a pilot’s suitcase, stuffed with maps, survival gear, extra water and candy bars for energy. As he triple-checked his leg straps, Dixon ran his fingers over the breast pocket where he’d stuffed Lance Corporal Simmons’ letter. Sitting next to it was a set of rosary beads his mother had given him years before as good luck.

Not that he — or she, for that matter — was Catholic, but some things went beyond religious beliefs.

Dixon next pulled on his nylon mesh survival vest. This was more an excuse for pockets than a garment. It held his survival radio, compass, flares and a first aid kit, not to mention one of the sharpest knives he’d ever owned.

And ammo for his gun. Dixon had a standard-issue, old-style .38 caliber revolver that he had fired exactly once.

Over the vest came a parachute harness. This would be attached to the chute in the plane, where it was housed in the ejection seat.

“‘Gun, is that really Dunkin’ Donuts coffee?” asked Doberman.

A-Bomb just smiled.

“Let me smell it.”

“Hey, get your own,” said A-Bomb, grabbing the cup away. “Next you’re gonna be stealing my Tootsie Roll Pops.”

“You’re awful quiet this morning, Dixon,” said Doberman, looking over at him. “You awake?”

“Yeah,” he said, trying to force some of the adrenaline rampaging in his stomach up into his voice.

“What do you think, real Dunkin’ Donuts or what?”

“Probably real,” Dixon told Doberman. “He had a Big Mac last night.”

“Jesus, kid, thanks a lot,” A-Bomb barked in mock anger. “Why don’t you just tell the whole base? Dog man here would kill his own mother for Mickey D fries.”

“They weren’t real,” said Doberman.

“The hell it wasn’t,” said A-Bomb. He had finally managed to get his protective suit on and was pulling on his custom-designed G suit. It was the envy of the squadron, if not the entire Air Force. A-Bomb’s bulk made it possible to cram an incredible number of compartments into it, and every inch of real estate was packed with extra equipment — though a high proportion might be considered extra-military, if not downright bizarre. A lot of guys carried a Walkman with them on routine flights; A-Bomb had wired his suit for sound, with a CD changer somehow stored in one of the crannies. And he habitually carried more candy with him than a well-stocked vending machine.

“What’s today’s music?” Doberman asked.

“The Boss. *Darkness on the Edge of Town.’”

“Appropriate.”

“Plus Pearl Jam. Ever hear of them?”

“Rap?”

A-Bomb spit derisively. “Yeah, that’ll be the day. I also have Guns ‘n’ Roses. You really don’t want to fly without them.”

“Yeah, how could you?”

“Only question is, what do I listen to on the bomb run?” said A-Bomb, dead serious. “I’m kind of leaning toward Springsteen and ^‘Candy’s Room,’ because of the beat and all, but there’s a certain ontological dissonance with the words.”

Doberman rolled his eyes nearly out of his head.

“How can you concentrate?” Dixon asked. “I mean, seriously, doesn’t it throw you off?”

“Nah. It’s kind of like having a sound track. Theme music, you know. Kind of like Apocalypse Now, where the helicopters attack to the Ride of the Valkyries.”

“Next you’ll want to mount speakers on the wings,” sneered Doberman.

“I’ve thought about it.” A-Bomb took his helmet and adjusted it over his ears — checking not the fit but the volume control on his stereo.

“You’re one of a kind, A-Bomb,” said Doberman. “Thank God.”

“How’s that?” said the pilot, removing his helmet.

“Never mind. Come on, kid, you ready?”

“Uh-huh,” said Dixon, waddling over toward them. The chem suit tended to cut into his crotch, and walking could be a little tough at first.

“We got to come up with a better name for him,” said A-Bomb. “BJ’s too tame.”

“BJ’s fine,” said Doberman.

“Nah. He needs something with balls.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to come up with something all night. Everything I think of is obscene or taken,” said A-Bomb. “We could call him Balls. What do you think?”

“Nah,” said Doberman. “Then you’d have these radio transmissions — where are your Balls?”

A-Bomb began laughing uncontrollably, as if it were the funniest joke in the world.

Mongoose nearly ran Dixon down outside the hangar where the last Hog was being readied.

“Sorry, Major,” said the pilot. “I didn’t see you.”

“I wasn’t watching where I was going,” Mongoose told him, determined to be as conciliatory and up-beat as possible. “Here, come with me just a second.”

Dixon followed him around a corner. The reflected light threw odd shadows on the ground, and made the young pilot, dressed in his survival gear and ready for flight, look like Frosty the Snowman on safari.

“Look, we’re going to do things a bit differently than we choreographed before. Same plan, just different people — you and me are going to tease the defenses, instead of you and A-Bomb.”

“Okay.”

“It makes sense to pair the most experienced guy with the least,” he explained. “I should have done that yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Dixon didn’t say anything.

“You okay, kid? I have to go tell the others.”

“I’ll be fine,” sputtered Dixon.

“I know you will. Otherwise I wouldn’t have you covering my ass, right?”

Dixon nodded. Mongoose was grateful he didn’t ask why the switch hadn’t gone the other way, with him in Doberman’s place bombing the dishes. He had a namby-pamby answer — too many people changing position, with Doberman moving up into A-Bomb’s slot because of rank and experience. But that was so obviously bullshit that the kid would instantly realize he didn’t trust him to make the bomb run right.

He might already. But at least he didn’t say it.

“Clyston rolled up Tommy Corda’s Hog for you,” he told the young pilot. “We’re running a little tight on time, so we figured we’d shuffle around the planes.”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather have the Hog I flew yesterday morning. I know its personality.”

“It’s already armed.”

Dixon’s disappointment was obvious.

Mongoose glanced at his watch. “Hey look, if they get your plane up in time, you can take it. But we’re tight — you got that?”

“Yes, sir, I do. Thank you.”

“Sure.” Mongoose took a quick look into the kid’s eyes. They told him exactly what he expected — nothing.

He chucked Dixon on the shoulder and went to find A-Bomb and Dixon.

Did the kid just use the word, “personality,” he wondered to himself as he walked away. God damn A-Bomb was infecting everybody.

Finished dressing, Doberman took a step in the direction of the door. A shiny piece of copper caught his eye. It was a penny, right side up.

Hadn’t seen one of those in a while.

He scooped down and snapped it up.

“Whatcha got?” asked A-Bomb.

“Penny,” he said sheepishly. “See a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.”

“Aw, you don’t believe in that crap, do you?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Doberman, looking at the coin. It was from 1981. Had that been a good year?

“You going to step on all the cracks out to the runway?” A-Bomb asked.

“Hey, you’re the guy who said I was lucky.”

The other pilot snorted. “Want a Tootsie Roll Pop?” “You’re out of your mind,” said Doberman, sliding the penny into his glove.

CHAPTER 40

Dixon had never seen anything like it. What seemed to be the entire squadron’s worth of maintenance experts were working on the plane, slapping parts in and out, checking and rechecking equipment, fueling, arming and maybe even buff-waxing. The lieutenant had always heard that the Air Force technical experts, the people who handled the planes, were without peer in the world, but this was unbelievable. They were going at the plane like a team of surgeons doing a heart transplant. Not only had the wing been completely repaired, but it looked as if it had been repainted. It was hard to imagine this was the plane that had barely made it back to the base less than twelve hours before, a basketball-sized hole in its wing.

Someone stuck a cup of coffee — black — in Dixon’s hand. It was far too hot to drink, even if he had wanted to, but it somehow seemed wrong to refuse it.

Sergeant Clyston materialized in front of him. “Yeah, I know Lieutenant — you want your Hog, right? I don’t blame you. We’re kicking ass, but no guarantees, okay?” He pointed at the coffee. “You’re not going to drink that, are you? You’ll be peeing all the way to Baghdad.”

Dixon shook his head. He started to pour it out, then felt a powerful hand grab the cup.

“No sense letting it go to waste,” grinned the sergeant. Clyston took a slug, winked, then turned back to his crew. “Pull that F-ing dragon back up here and get the damn Hog loaded while Rosen finishes up,” he shouted. “Come on, come on. Let’s look alive. What the hell, you guys looking to join the Navy? Get moo-ving!”

The dragon was pushed into place beneath the Hog’s belly. A large flatbed with a special treadmill, it loaded the A-lOA’s cannon with bullets.

Things looked chaotic, but Dixon could tell that even with the rush, the crew was still dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

“Rosen, kick butt up there,” Clyston called. “I need you done in five minutes. Got that? Five! No, that’s too long. Make it three. Hey, Larry — what the hell are you doing up there, sawing fucking wood? Let’s go, people — we have some Iraqis to bomb! This ain’t a goddamn high school play we’re putting on!”

Suddenly, all of the techs were doing rolls off the plane. Equipment was trundled away and the crew fell silent.

“Lieutenant, let’s preflight,” barked Clyston — more an order than a request. The gray bear loomed in front of the pilot. A smile broke on his grizzled lips. “Now you take your time, sir. Anything you want fixed, it gets fixed. You just go at this like you have all day, you hear? Don’t let us rush you.”

Dixon nodded and started toward the nose of the craft. He liked to touch the very tip of the Gatling gun before he began his walk around — it was a superstitious thing, and he sure as hell didn’t want to miss it this morning.

As he leaned forward to touch the weapon, he realized he had an audience. The squadron’s entire mechanical crew was looking over his shoulder, worried that he had found a problem.

“It’s okay,” he explained sheepishly. “I just like to touch it. For good luck.”

A murmur of approval passed through the techies.

The crew members followed him around the plane, silently shuffling along as he examined the belly, the weapons, the flaps. Clyston hovered at his shoulder, silent, nodding, sometimes frowning, once or twice ducking in to take a look at something himself. Dixon moved deliberately, trying not to rush things and yet be as thorough as possible given the time limits.

The bottom line was that he had to trust the people who had just given over the plane to him. But it seemed somewhat disrespectful not to look closely at their work, not to nod or pat the part and move on. Once or twice he thought he saw something; each time, three or four crew members would leap to the plane and help make sure there wasn’t a problem.

Dixon had done many preflights; certainly he had done more thorough examinations of the airplanes he was to fly. But he had never felt so confident climbing into the cockpit.

“Kick ass job, Sergeant,” he said, swinging onto the ladder. “I’ll say hello to Saddam for you.”

“You beat the living shit out of them, you hear me?” said Clyston, slapping the pilot on the rear.

From the crowd, Dixon heard a throaty female voice yell out, “Hey lieutenant. Break a leg up there, huh? Just make sure it ain’t yours.”

He turned down and saw Rosen, gave her, gave everybody, a salute.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get going. And don’t break my god damn plane,” snapped Clyston. “All right, everybody, party’s over — we got eight more planes to work on. Get your F-ing butts moo-ving!”

CHAPTER 41

For a long, long second, Doberman thought he lost the plane fifty feet off the runway. It was still dark, and as the Hog roared off the concrete he felt a touch of weightlessness. He started to bank as planned — they had choreographed just about every foot of this mission — and felt his right wing coming up too fast. He began to correct, then felt he was over-doing it, then felt a queasy hole in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure where the hell he was. The dark night loomed out in front of him, vast and empty; clouds covered the stars. The wind rushed around his head, spinning it, confusing him. He saw the earth, an old mistress, trying to lure him back to her bed.

Doberman’s head swam. He was back under the tanker, trying to connect. He was playing cards, getting creamed again.

Lucky my stinking ass, he told himself. I got the luck of Job.

Somehow his eyes found the artificial horizon in the center of his dash. Somehow his brain managed to tell him he was precisely at the proper angle. Somehow his hand held the stick steady, calming the rest of his body.

I’m okay, he told himself. It’s vertigo because of the dark.

Fly your instruments, not your eyes.

He flexed his fingers inside their Nomex gloves, felt the lucky penny in the palm of his hand, frowned at himself for being superstitious, and put the Hog on course.

Mongoose could feel the fatigue riding behind his eyes. He hadn’t gotten any real sleep, undisturbed, head sinking below-the-horizon sleep, for nearly a week now. He promised himself he would have a full eight, ten, twelve hours at the end of this mission.

But none until then.

The pilot had a small pill box in a pocket on his leg; he hoped not to have to use any of the pills inside, but he would if absolutely necessary.

He envied A-Bomb. The guy could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, doze ten minutes and then go another twenty four hours. Not only that, but he could then go party his butt off, snooze twenty minutes on a pile of bombs, and come back fresher than a flower the next morning. Truly amazing.

Of course, he drank coffee like it was water. But damn if he never had to pee.

Inhuman. No wonder he’d become a Hog driver.

Mongoose checked the INS, hoping to hell it would work more accurately than usual.

KKMC was now just under an hour away. The crews there had been alerted to perform the fastest hot pit they had ever attempted.

They’d be over their target fifty-five minutes after taking off from KKMC. Assuming the planes cruised well, didn’t run into an unexpected head wind, and didn’t suddenly run low on fuel.

It was all doable. Mongoose had worked the calculations himself. But that was on paper. This was for real.

On paper, everything always went precisely according to plan. Everyone followed the dotted lines. The Iraqis swallowed the bait and Doberman and A-Bomb went in unscathed. Dixon didn’t get lost on the quick jink toward the guns, then followed him out to safety and the tanker.

In real life, Mongoose hoped like all hell the kid hung in there. He’d never forgive himself if he lost him.

A-Bomb rocked off the strip, feeling a little like he was straddling his first Harley, unwinding the big old bastard up the Pennsylvania mountains on 1-81, wind cutting into his face as the road narrowed for a bridge through the fog.

The crew had done something special to the Hog tonight, goosed her engines or something — maybe even juiced the plane with super-unleaded. She was cranked and she was cranking.

“There’s a darkness on the edge of town,” wailed Bruce Springsteen in his ears.

The man knew what he was talking about.

The plane wrapped itself around him like a familiar coat, taking him in its arms as it leapt into the Saudi sky. It was as if it had been waiting for him, counting the hours until Lieutenant Billy James Dixon would return to the cockpit and push its nose toward the dark shadows of Iraq. There was no logic to it, but this A-lOA felt very different than the one he’d ferried back from Al Jouf only a few hours before. It felt different than the others he^’d flown, more familiar than any plane, even the old T-38 he’d spent so much time in. There was definitely something particular, something personal about this particular arrangement of sheet metal.

Everything was going to be perfect on this flight. He had Mongoose’s butt pasted to his windshield and wasn’t going to lose him.

Step by step by step.

Screw the major if he didn’t think he could handle it. Everybody else did. Everybody in the squadron was cheering him on.

Dixon walked his eyes through the cockpit, triple-checking the gidgets and gadgets. Fuel was good, airspeed was fine, even the INS seemed perfect. The weapons hung low and ready on his wings, each one signed and sealed with a personal kiss for Saddam.

I’m going to make it, Dixon told himself. I’m going to help rescue the pilot and make up for my fuck up. I’m going to be brave this time.

I’m going to redeem myself.

CHAPTER 42

The first hop went smoothly enough. Mongoose led the group off from King Fahd and headed north to King Khalid Military City, changing course only once, and even that was minor; they lowered their altitude to accommodate a pair of transports heading across their flight path. The KKMC ground crew did the hot pit with engines idling on the tarmac; the four Hogs cranked it up and headed into the night sky ten minutes ahead of schedule.

Five minutes out of KKMC, running parallel to the Saudi-Iraqi border, Mongoose spun his eyes around the cockpit on a routine instrument check. At first glance, everything seemed to be fine― temperature, fuel, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. But when he returned his eyes to the large navigational display in the center of the front panel, he realized something was wrong― way wrong. The INS numbers marking his exact location hadn’t changed since he lifted off from KKMC.

That shouldn’t have been possible. It was like a car odometer not moving while the car was doing sixty on the highway.

Mongoose gave it the old car mechanic’s fix: he pounded it with his fist.

Didn’t move. He quickly double-checked the compass heading against the dial that sat at the top of his windshield. They agreed — until he tilted the Hog a few degrees north.

The INS was whacked beyond belief. Big problem.

The game plan called for Devil flight to fly parallel to the Saudi-Iraqi border until they were almost due south of their target. They would then angle hard north, flying nearly in a straight line to their target. The one serious jog was an angling maneuver around the edges of the radar belonging to a suspected mobile SAM site.

Making the turns without a reliable INS wasn’t particularly advisable. Especially since the rest of the group would be keying off him.

Mongoose blinked at the display a few times, hoping he’d made a mistake. When he finally admitted he hadn’t, he felt as if he’d taken a shot directly in the stomach.

There were exactly two options: abort the mission, or have someone else take his slot as pathfinder.

And the most logical person to do that was Dixon.

Back in his plane, Dixon concentrated on not screwing up.

It was easy, really. All he had to do was keep the dim glow of exhaust from Mongoose’s plane in his eyeballs. Every so often he marched his attention around the cockpit, making sure the Hog was running normally. Flying at night, especially on silent com, had a special loneliness to it. It was all glow and hum. The plane hulked around you; depending on your particular mood, it could feel tremendously huge or tremendously small and fragile.

Dixon didn’t want it to feel anything. He cleared his mind of all emotion and extraneous thought. He focused entirely on where he was.

All he had to do was follow Mongoose and he’d be fine.

Mongoose hesitated before hitting the speak button. It came down to trust.

He’d chosen the kid to go on the first day’s mission because he had seen something in him. A lot of people had.

And Knowlington believed in him. That meant something.

Did he believe in him? Or had he only said he deserved a second shot?

The major keyed the mike. “Dixon, you awake back there?”

“Devil One?” The startled voice sounded as if it had just been woken from a deep sleep.

“Look kid, I’ve got a situation here with my navigational system. What do you say we trade places?”

The static that followed his transmission seemed to last forever. Finally, the voice came back.

“No problem.”

There was no time to analyze if the words sounded confident or worried. Mongoose told the rest of the flight that they’d close up the trail a bit, but otherwise would proceed as planned.

With Dixon leading them to the target.

CHAPTER 43

As he made the turn to head over the border, Doberman took a careful break from flying, flexing each arm and then each leg methodically, hoping to ward off cramps. The Hog didn’t have an automatic pilot, so he couldn’t exactly do a yoga routine. Still, he liked to stretch to keep the kinks away.

According to his watch, they’d fallen three minutes behind schedule. Doberman frowned as he rechecked his instruments. The one interesting obstacle in their course lay ten minutes ahead, and he wanted to be ready.

With no time or fuel to get fancy, the line to and from the target had been drawn as straight as possible. Unfortunately, the straight line went almost directly over an SA-6 site. The mobile missile launchers were fairly impressive pieces of machinery, with radar the Hog’s primitive electronic counter-measures pod couldn’t hope to jam. Once a plane had been acquired by a ground battery’s Straight Flush radar, the missile was difficult to lose; it could mid-course correct and used its own semi-active system to score a kill. It loved high-G maneuvers, moved faster than greased lightning and had a much more potent warhead than the puny shoulder-launched weapon that had given Doberman so much grief yesterday. With a range of about ten miles and an effective altitude above twenty thousand feet, it could barbecue a Hog any day of the week.

They had planned three tight course corrections to skim around the outer edges of its radar coverage while maintaining as direct a course to the target as possible. Doberman visualized the Iraqi radar groping through the early morning sky with long, slender fingers. It reached desperately, a blind man in a cluttered room, trying to find the doorway.

Not the doorway, exactly. Just his plane.

Doberman laughed at his fears. It was a nervous laugh all the same. He longed to key his mike and ask A-Bomb what music he was listening to.

This was the worst part of a mission, knocking down the miles until things got hairy.

Finally, the INS and his math told him it was time to turn. But Mongoose, flying dead ahead, didn’t make the angle.

Had he lost Dixon? Or was the kid’s INS also screwed up, Doberman wondered.

Every second would take them closer to getting nailed.

The RWR would at least warn him of the launch. But it couldn’t save him.

He’d never see the missile coming for him in the dark. It would be worse than yesterday. He’d writhe violently, ducking and weaving, thinking at last he had escaped. Then he would hear a last-second hush, a vacuum of noise just before the wallop.

Bail out in the dark, deep in Indian country. Now that was where luck was involved.

But hell, nobody could be as unlucky as he had been yesterday. Getting banged around twice? What were the odds?

The small circles of blue exhaust dead ahead smeared into oblong cylinders and disappeared. Doberman took the cut, checked his watch, realized his heart was starting to race.

The next angle was the hairy one. Because of the configuration of the enemy radar, they would be turning and flying directly toward the missile site. In theory, there was a hole in the coverage there, allowing the Hogs to slingshot towards their target with their final cut.

In theory. Reality was never as neat as the carefully calculated clouds showing optimum radar detection envelopes.

Doberman held his breath. His INS said it was past time to cut back, but once more Mongoose was lagging.

Jesus, he thought, a tiny mistake here is going to take me right over the stinking god damn site. Let’s go.

Hell, maybe the missiles are destined to hit me. Maybe my card’s overdue.

The pilot saw the SAMs in his mind’s eye, wheeling around on their truck. Their noses swung upward, hit the stop, came back.

Something creaked in the cockpit. It was nothing — a strap on his seat, maybe, shifting with his weight. But Doberman jumped, nearly bringing the stick with him. If he hadn’t been belted in, he might have gone through the glass.

Mongoose was gone. Doberman yanked his stick hard, taking the turn, correcting to bring it back to the proper heading. His heart became a race car, surging in his chest.

Settle down, he told it, settle down.

He checked the INS. They weren’t where they were supposed to be, but now he wasn’t sure about the coordinates. Was the difference the same as when Dixon made the first turn?

There was only blank sky in front of him. Blank darkness, and a trio of missiles waiting dead ahead.

A-Bomb reached to his chest and poked the CD player. Springsteen’s “Candy’s Room” kicked back to the beginning.

“Driving deep into the night” he sang, echoing the Boss.

He glanced at the compass and INS. If the instruments were to be believed, they were tracking a bit north, flying closer to the missile site and its radar than planned.

What the hell; stinking Iraqis couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.

Besides, he was flying behind the luckiest SOB in the Air Force. Some amount of that luck had to wash off on him.

Time for a Tootsie Roll, thought the pilot, slipping his fingers into his vest. They were hell to chew with the mask on but worth every sticky moment.

Sweat funneled behind Doberman’s ears and down his neck, tingling as it ran across his shoulders. He saw the missiles clearly now, saw the cluster of them turning on their rail as the radar waited for the optimum moment to fire.

The RWR was clear. But their ECMs were worthless against such advanced missiles.

The AWACS would warn them if the radar came on. But by then, it would probably be too late.

Relax, Doberman told himself. There’s a good cushion around the site. And hell, the damn SAMs were probably moved during the night.

You’re running scared. Not like yesterday. Luck wasn’t involved — you are a kick ass pilot. Nothing is going to touch you. Nothing.

But his heart kept pounding despite the pep talk. He couldn’t see Mongoose. His eyes flailed through the sky.

Nowhere.

This close to the missile site, he didn’t dare use the radio. He was completely on his own, not just now but for the rest of the flight. He couldn’t even be sure A-Bomb was where he was supposed to be.

Doberman squinted at the compass heading. The bearing was right. By his watch, he had another thirty seconds on this course.

But the navigational system disagreed. It was telling him to stay on course ten seconds beyond that. He ran the equations back and forth through his head. That translated into about a tenth of a mile which would be compounded by the angle of the turn into roughly a fifteen-to-forty-eight second error, south or north or God knew what of the target.

What will it feel like to die?

God damn hell, he shouted at himself. Screw the math, screw the numbers. Forty-five seconds isn’t going to make one bit of stink ass difference.

See the raise and get on with the game.

Doberman took the Hog in toward the SA-6 site the extra ten seconds to prove to himself that, despite the water pouring down his back and chest, he wasn’t scared. Even so, he gulped air as he yanked onto the new course.

And then he saw the soft blue glow of Mongoose’s rear end dead ahead, right where it was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 44

The helicopter’s heavy whomp rattled Captain Hawkins’ teeth as it took off, making it difficult for the Special Forces officer to sip from the canteen of tea. Fortunately, the Earl Gray had cooled somewhat; it didn’t burn as it sloshed around his mouth and dribbled onto his chin. You could say a lot of things about the MH-53J Pave Low IIIE helicopter, but smooth wasn’t one of them.

Not that he necessarily wanted it to be. The craft’s hulking presence was somehow reassuring. Though officially an Air Force helicopter, the special forces troops considered that a mere technicality, and looked on the nimble linebacker as a flying version of the Bradley fighting vehicle.

Only not quite as pretty.

The captain capped the canteen and glanced over the gunner’s shoulder into the dark morning, low clouds mixing with a dusty haze. The basic reality here was desert, unending and unrelenting.

Approximately ninety miles ahead, a downed RAF pilot was staring up at the sky, freezing his butt off, waiting for this helicopter to materialize and pick him up.

Assuming no one had found him during the night.

“Iraqi border coming up in two,” said Sergeant Winston, a wiry young non-com from the South Bronx. Looking at Winston, you wouldn’t think he was Special Forces material, but he was pound for pound one of the toughest soldiers Hawkins had ever come across. Yesterday, Hawkins had seen him pick up a 250-pound Special Forces corporal — not exactly a wimp himself — and lug him back to the helicopter after he’d been hit and knocked unconscious.

“What do you think? They hit those guns yet or not?”

Hawkins shrugged. “Not supposed to for a half hour yet.”

“Going to cut it close.”

The captain nodded. If the site wasn’t taken out, the mission would be difficult. Their helicopter and the one following right behind as a backup would be sitting ducks not only for the guns, but for anybody the Iraqis scrambled into the area. The British major had had the bad luck to go down not only near Iraqi air defenses but an air field and army barracks as well.

Hawkins had the option of turning back if the base hadn’t been hit at five minutes past six.

He didn’t plan on doing that. But he didn’t plan on getting shot down either.

The captain opened the canteen for another swig of the Earl Gray. “From what I hear, those A-10 pilots like to play it close to the vest,” he told Winston. “Otherwise they don’t look like heroes.”

The sergeant scoffed. “As long as they show up.”

“Oh, they’ll show up. Planes that ugly can’t afford to miss a date.”

CHAPTER 45

The clouds were incredible. Dixon stared down at them from fifteen thousand feet. They seemed as thick as an overloaded chocolate shake. The lieutenant leaned against his shoulder harness, urging the Hog forward. They had a little less than two minutes worth of flying time before their stubby wings and dolphin noses would kick off the ground radars.

A little less than two minutes before the most important part of their job, and the most dangerous, was done.

The radar warning system would alert him that the radar had snapped on and the guns had found him. Then he^’d be able to breathe again.

He couldn’t breathe now. Dixon felt his throat tightening, pulling back into his chest. Don’t wimp, he told himself, pushing the plane through the cloud over.

Eighty seconds. Maybe less. But the radar detector still hadn’t tripped off.

Come on, come on. Wake up down there. Just shot at us already.

What a thing to wish for.

He heard something that very second. It was faint, delicate almost; he thought it had come over the radio, but the sound itself was nothing he had ever heard on a Hog communications set; nothing he’d ever heard in an airplane before, period.

It was a bell, a vague tinkle of a ring, as if the clapper of a small hand chime had gently kissed its metal mouth.

Silence followed in the next second and the next.

Then another.

He glanced at the RWR. Nothing.

He glanced at the other indicators. All were at spec. Nothing wrong, no alarms.

Time was moving in ultra-slow motion. He heard the sound again — gentle, almost quiet.

It was nothing like an alarm, or anything else in the A-10A cockpit.

A muffled church bell?

Except that it wasn’t muffled, exactly, nor distant. It was as if a small bell were whispering.

And again and again and again.

As soon as Mongoose followed Dixon into the cloud bank, he realized they were already being fired at. Shells were popping all around him.

Doberman yelped on the radio that they had their targets, bright and shiny.

“Go, BJ. Break,” he barked. “Good show. Turn off.”

He put the Hog in a hard pull over his right shoulder, wrestling the spitting airplane away as he realized they had flown in a little closer to the guns than originally planned. Otherwise, the kid had done perfectly.

The Iraqis hadn’t bothered to turn the big radar dish on, or at least if they did, it hadn’t activated the RWR. A thousand thoughts shot through his mind, propelled by the onrush of images and the plane’s momentum. He held the Hog steady, kinetic energy devoted entirely to gaining speed, altitude still dropping. He set a spot where he would start recovering, orbiting back to wait for word from the other element. He felt the Hog shake in the air, buffeted by the violence Saddam’s guns were wrecking on the atmosphere. He pulled back, rolling and yanking and turning, zipping off the chaff, bundles of the metallic, radar-confusing tinsel spreading out from his wings as he pressed the Hog into retreat, diversion accomplished.

The sounds grew closer together, as if they belonged to a song he could not hear, a triangle twanging on a solitary track as the orchestra wailed away on the main line. Dixon held his plane steady; he knew he had only to fly this straight line and no matter what else happened today, no matter what Major Johnson might say, he would have done his job. That was all he was interested in, all he had to prove — that he belonged.

Each second of his life equaled about five hundred feet. So why was he still in the clouds? He had been diving through them for whole minutes, not seconds. How thick could a cloud bank be, anyway? A few thousand feet, max?

But there were still clouds all around him, and the light tinkle of the bell, a church bell.

Johnson’s voice chased them away.

Break off, he was saying. Break off. They’re shooting at us.

I’m not running away, Dixon thought to himself. Not this time. I’d rather get shot down.

He held the stick steady, descending through the angry gray chocolate. The damn clouds couldn’t last forever.

CHAPTER 46

As Doberman pushed toward the top of the cloud cover, he felt something in his eyes tighten. He took a quick breath and glanced at the Maverick television screen over his right knee. Until the guns started firing, he couldn’t be quite sure of his target. His fingers felt as if they were on fire.

There was plenty of time for this. Still, he wanted it to start already.

Done with waiting, A-Bomb lined himself up off Doberman’s wing and went for it. He had one eye on the screen, one eye on the HUD, and one eye on his stinking CD cartridge, which had managed to leap out of his flight-suit stereo as he took the Gs pitching toward the target.

The cartridge smashed into at least three pieces. And he just knew the CDs were going to be trashed by the time he got home.

Son of a bitch. That was his only copy of “Darkness at the Edge of Town.”

Fucking Saddam. Now he was really mad.

The Maverick targeting screen suddenly lit up like a video game.

“Hot shit!” Doberman said — or thought he said. He was so busy guiding his hands that he couldn’t pay attention to his mouth. Nearly instantaneously, two Mavericks shot out from his wings, gunning for the two gun emplacements further south. In nearly the same motion, he pushed his right wing down and started looking for the radar dish he’d missed yesterday morning.

A-Bomb had to wait until Doberman fired and cleared his path before he could launch his own Mavericks. It seemed to take his flight leader all day. Finally, the second missile kicked off Doberman’s plane, bucking like a wild bronco before putting its nose down and getting to work. Doberman cranked right, clearing his path. A-Bomb had already locked on a target; he squeezed off the Maverick and dialed up a second, pushing the crosshairs fat into the last of the truly dangerous big caliber guns they had targeted.

“Nothing like a high-explosive enema to start your day, eh, boys?” he shouted as the missile winged toward the ground.

Doberman scanned the ground through the windscreen.

Nothing. Was that because he was confused about where he was, or because the dish didn’t exist?

The Hog was screaming toward the earth. Sitting in his office, Doberman worked his head around the problem, checking the front corner of his screen for a large concrete building they’d picked as a good landmark. Sure enough, that was missing, too. He realized his mistake — he’d flown further north than he thought — then slammed the Hog nearly upside down in a twist back in the other direction, gravity sharpening its claws as he accelerated in a violent plunge.

Suddenly, the RWR screeched. The Iraqi operator had snapped on the dish to see what was coming for them.

And damn if that big, ugly catcher’s mitt didn’t smile for Poppa, front and center in the Maverick’s TV screen. The phosphorus glow warmed his belly as Doberman got a lock and slammed the missile out. He let off another for good luck, then took the stick hard left for his second priority target.

He’d been so focused on finding the dish in the small television screen that he hadn’t quite been aware how low he was. The pilot reacted with shock as the rapidly approaching earth caught his full attention. Two thousand feet lay between him and the roof of the building he was auguring toward.

A-Bomb lost Doberman through the clouds. He was at ten thousand feet, just barely in range of any of the heavy stuff the Iraqis had lefts, but they could have fired bulldozers at him at this point and A-Bomb wouldn’t have noticed. He put the A-10A on its wing, winced as a piece of a CD flew by him, then got a lock on his prime target, one of the trailers housing the GCI equipment. He fired; as the missile left the plane, he realized there was only half a trailer there. No matter; he was already lined up perfectly on the microwave transmitter, and that sucker was intact.

Not for long.

CHAPTER 47

The powerful sensors in the Pave Low caught the Iraqi ground intercept radar as it snapped on.

Captain Hawkins glanced back at his squad members, then up toward the cockpit. Concerned, he looked at his watch for the thousandth time in the last five minutes. His eyes followed the second hand as it crept across the dark face. He hated digital watches, even if they were considerably more accurate and disposable. Digital watches didn’t bring you luck, though at the moment he didn’t need luck, he needed the damn Hog drivers to do their job, wherever they were.

He glanced over at Sergeant Winston. He was wearing a headset, with one hand on his gun.

“Sun’s coming up,” muttered Winston.

Hawkins nodded. His eyes remained pasted on his watch.

“Think the radar means they’re hitting it?” Winston asked.

Hawkins shrugged.

“Can’t afford to wait much longer,” said Winston. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to find our British friend.”

“How’s our Sandy doing?” Hawkins asked. “Sandy” was an A-10A assigned to maintain contract with the downed flier and chase away any bad guys on the ground.

“Still hanging in there. Gas is getting tight, though,” said Winston.

“As soon as our boys take out the radar site, send him home,” said Hawkins. “I don’t want to have to pick him up too.”

“Yes, sir.”

If he needed it, Hawkins could get a flight of Eagles for CAP and a pair of Spectre gunships up in about ten minutes. The Eagles would take care of enemy fighters. The Spectres were specially designed Hercules C-130s equipped with cannons; they could eliminate a battalion of ground troops in three minutes flat. But they weren’t supposed to come north if the dish was still operating.

“He hasn’t come up on the radio yet, has he?” the captain asked. The last thing he wanted to do was disobey orders for someone who’d already been captured.

“He’s not supposed to for another five minutes. Sandy last talked to him an hour ago,” said the sergeant. “Said he felt chipper, whatever that means.”

“All hell’s breaking loose at that GCI site,” the chopper pilot called back. He continued talking over the crew^’s com set as Winston jumped up to find out what was going on. The quiet but tense boredom was replaced by a cacophony of voices, everyone talking at once.

“Three, four aircraft. Hogs — northeast,” reported one of the crew members, relaying the radar information.

“Right on schedule,” shouted Winston. “Hot damn! Radar is fried! AWACS says go.”

“Go, go, go,” Hawkins yelled.

“AWACS is reporting contact to our northwest, too low for a clear read.”

“Ignore it. Go!”

CHAPTER 48

They were like sleigh bells now, shaking in a steady, rhythmic beat. Dixon was entranced by the beauty of the sound, as if he were listening to some heavenly concert.

He wondered where the sound was coming from. His eyes flew over the control panels, but could find no indication of a problem. The airplane vibrated steadily around him in a reassuring hum.

So what the hell was it? Some angel whispering in his ear? An undocumented G effect?

He glanced at his oxygen hose. It seemed unobstructed.

And still the bells rang, growing louder now, slightly more urgent, yet losing none of their beauty.

The nose of the A-10A broke through the last tuft of clouds into the clear air at approximately 5500 feet. Only then did Lieutenant Dixon realize what he was hearing.

Shells were exploding all around him.

The concert turned into a sinister screech. The Hog’s grunts were drowned out by the reverberation of proximity fuses and high explosives. The pilot could see a gun emplacement directly below, centered precisely in his screen. He watched as a black puff erupted from it, and then saw the shell rise, coming for him like a messenger from Hell itself. It grew larger as it neared him, so large that it seemed bigger than the airplane. Suddenly it opened its mouth, and its jaws exploded in a profusion of red and yellow, petals of a spring poppy bursting in the warm sun.

In the next millisecond, Dixon snapped out of his daze. Time began moving at its proper pace as his body reconnected to his brain. He pulled the stick and pumped the rudder pedals, jerking the Hog away from the gunfire, recovering from the dive in time to skim away from the antiaircraft shells. Here was a real G effect — he could feel the bladders in his suit erupting as the plane came around to his eyes, its forked tail bending to his will, the two turbofans pushing themselves to keep up with the pilot’s hands. Dixon jerked to the left, kept accelerating. He nailed his eyes to the horizon bar, making sure he was upright as he ran south as planned, away from the guns.

Mission accomplished — at least the most critical part of it.

He took a breath and made sure he had a good memory of it — coming through the clouds in ultra-slow motion, the light sound of bells, breaking the clouds, realizing it was flak. What part was hallucination and what part was real, he couldn’t say, but he remembered it all.

He hadn’t chickened out.

Where was Mongoose? He did a quick scan and couldn’t find the other silhouette. He could feel the first twinge of panic starting in his throat — he’d lost his leader again.

But no — Mongoose had been behind him. He’d called him off. By now he ought to be somewhere ahead, to the south, as planned.

The dark green shadow of an A-10A Warthog appeared in the upper left quadrant of his windscreen. Its forked tail was like something you’d see at a barbecue, not on an airplane; the round power plants glopped onto the fuselage seemed to have been stolen from a 707.

Dixon had never seen anything so damned beautiful in his life.

“Hey, kid. I thought I lost you there for a second,” said Mongoose, his transmission fuzzed with static. “We’re a little closer than we planned. Hang loose until Doberman gives us the word.”

“Gotcha.”

“You got your Mavericks ready?”

“Copy, uh, affirmative. Yeah.”

“Easy. You’re looking good.”

Dixon’s radio lost half the transmission. He pounded the com panel, but that only made the answering static worse.

“Okay, the big guns are gone and the dish is out,” said Mongoose. “There’s a ZSU-23 off your right wing. You see it winking at you?”

“Got it,” said Dixon, already lining up the Maverick shot.

“All yours. Stay in the orbit after you fire.”

Dixon pushed his lungs slowly empty, then fired the Maverick. It was easy now, easier than in training — Mongoose was floating off his left wing, lining up and firing on his own target. They planned to hold one Maverick back apiece, just in case Doberman and A-Bomb missed the radar dishes.

“How’d you do back there?” said Mongoose as the two planes swung back around to take a look at the damage.

“Okay.”

“Hot shit! Look at the ground.”

Dixon stared through the canopy. The Mavericks had hit, all right. There was smoke all over the place.

And no more winking. Or flak.

The pilot followed the flight leader into a wide, orbiting turn to the east, still climbing. He checked the fuel stores — a good ten minutes of loitering time left at least.

How’d he do back there?

Not horribly. Pretty good actually.

But he wondered about the bell thing. Some sort of weird trick with his mind, or maybe the radio?

Mongoose said something, but it was completely lost in static.

“I’m losing your transmission,” he told the major.

There was no response. He saw Mongoose tucking back toward the GCI site, and pushed his Hog to follow.

CHAPTER 49

Doberman screamed a pair of curses, one at himself, the other at Saddam, as he pulled the stick back with every ounce of strength in his body. The Hog coughed before finally agreeing to change direction, her nose nudging away from the yellow-gray splotch of earth very reluctantly. Sky edged into the top of Doberman’s windshield as the HUD ladder told him he was at five hundred feet.

He eased off on the stick, back in control of his muscles as well as the plane. All hell was exploding around him as he struggled to orient himself. A fresh string of curses tumbled from his mouth when, for a quick second, he thought the engines had stalled because of the sharp pullback. Realizing they were still cooking — his fatigue was playing tricks on him — he began to bank toward his right, which ought to be north and therefore out of most of the heavy triple-A.

I did this yesterday, he thought to himself. I can do it again. I got the lucky penny.

The Hog began bucking as a sold wall of flak appeared right in front of him. Doberman jinked back to his left, unsure now what to do next. He was surrounded by bursts.

He asked himself which way he should go? Left? Right? Forwards? Back? The possibilities froze him.

Maybe it was luck, going one way or the other.

Good luck? Or bad luck?

Damn it to hell, he told himself. Luck had nothing to do with it.

He decided left, but as he began to pull the plane in that direction, he saw that his maneuvering had put his nose nearly head-on with a trailer.

“Here’s some good luck for you, Saddam!” he screamed, bringing his cannon to bear. The trailer disintegrated in a haze of smoke that seemed to magically part as he flew into a patch of sky completely clear of flak. He brought the Hog around quickly and served up another Maverick to the dish he had hit the day before.

By the time Doberman called the shot on the infamous first dish, A-Bomb had seen the explosion. He was at eight thousand feet and hadn’t seen any flak yet. Suddenly, Tower Two and its Tonka Toy-like trailer appeared smack in the middle of the Maverick targeting tube.

Tower Two was supposed to be Doberman’s — and even for him it was a low-priority, secondary, hit-it-if-you-got-it, left-at-the-end-of-the-war, what-the-hell-we’re-going-home-anyway shot. But this was way too good to miss. A-Bomb pressed the trigger to kick out the Maverick.

The exact second the Maverick fell off his wing, the damned tower went boom.

“Damn it, Dog Man,” A-Bomb yelled, dipping his wing back to look over the remains of the CGI site. “You’re taking all my shots.”

“Stop screwing around then.”

There was a pile of rubble where the hidden dish had been. The one Doberman had gotten yesterday, further south, was now twice-fried meal. Running out of real estate — and feeling more than a little frustrated — A-Bomb pushed off his last Maverick at a trailer and began climbing back into the clouds to get into position for a cannon run. Doberman was already overhead, reorienting himself for a fresh attack.

“What do we have left down there?” he asked the element leader.

“There ought to be a couple of trailers back near that second dish,” said Doberman.

“Negative,” said A-Bomb. “They’re crispy critters. I just passed that way.”

“Uh, copy, uh, how about that microwave transmitter out near two?”

“You got it and I got it. That’s two gots.”

“The bunker then. How’s the flak?”

“They still have some peashooters, but nothing too serious that I saw.”

“Follow me in.”

A-Bomb had only a vague notion of where the target was, but how hard could it be to find a bunker? Besides, Doberman had a sixth sense about these things. A-Bomb followed him around, dipping his wing into the plunge.

The busted CD cartridge slid across the floor as he poked the A-10A back toward the target. Doberman screamed something along the lines of “got it,” only with a lot more curses. A-Bomb followed into a thunder-burst of flak, the plane bucking like an out-of-balance washing machine. Doberman was gone and the bunker had disappeared in a cloud of cement dust.

Shifting slightly to the south for a fresh target, A-Bomb found a huge gun battery almost smack dab in the middle of his HUD aiming cue. He started to pull the Hog onto it, but miscalculated somehow; it slipped out of the crosshair and then fell totally out of view. There wasn’t time to screw around — flak was flying all around him. A-Bomb pulled left, found a truck in his screen, and pushed the trigger. The two-second burst hit. As he continued through his banking turn he saw another gun emplacement, and fired, but missed badly. There was so much antiair now, he looked like he was dodging through a snowstorm.

The Hog was in exactly the kind of environment it had been designed for — hot and dirty. The pilot hulked down in his seat, cradled by the plane’s titanium plates, and wheeled toward a row of antiair guns on tank-type chassis. He was so low now that had he hopped out of the plane, he could have hit the ground and bounced over the cockpit.

“Turkey shoot!” A-Bomb shouted. The airplane’s Gatling exploded with so much energy he felt the Hog move backwards in the air. His first two shells missed low, but the rest drew a thick line through the guns, metal evaporating as the pilot worked his rudder to literally dance sideways through the sky, erasing the Russian-made weapons in one violent smear. Barrels, turrets, trucks erupted as he whipped by.

“You do not shoot at Hogs, no sir,” A-Bomb told them, pulling that A-10A into a bank to come back for anything he’d missed. As he turned, the Springsteen CD tumbled from behind his seat, cracking into pieces as it flew through the cockpit.

I really ought to make those bastards pay for that, he thought to himself. But there didn’t appear to be anything left to hit. Most of the ground fire had stopped, and the radar intercept complex was now a former radar intercept complex, with emphasis on the “former.”

Damn, A-Bomb thought. I was just getting going.

Out of the corner of his eye, as he turned, he saw a small building with a gun emplacement on its roof just to the south. The glimpse was so fleeting, he couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but he knew he hadn’t hit it before.

What the fuck, the pilot said to himself as he pushed the Hog’s nose back. I still have bullets.

This one’s for the Boss.

Doberman, back on top of the clouds, took stock of his airplane as he looked for his wingman. As far as he could tell, the plane was running Dash-1, exactly according to spec. He practically bumped his helmet on the canopy glass craning back to make sure his wings and fuselage were still there.

The attack had taken a bit longer than they’d planned, but they’d taken out everything they’d come for and more. The problem now was getting home — or rather, to the tanker that would give them enough fuel to make it home.

“Devil One, we’re done,” he told Mongoose. “Dishes are down, we’ve blown up every trailer we could find, and I think A-Bomb got a hot-dog wagon on the last run. Time to go home now. Copy”

He scanned the sky as he waited for an answer, still looking for the black shadow of A-Bomb’s Warthog. But his wingman was still somewhere below the ever-thickening clouds.

“Devil One, do you copy?” he asked Mongoose, wondering where the flight leader was.

“Affirmative. Saddle up. We’ll meet you at BakerCharles after the refuel.”

“Gotcha,” snapped Doberman. He put his eyes out of the plane again, craning his neck for a sign of A-Bomb. “Devil Three, this is Two. We are out of time. A-Bomb, what you doin’, boy?”

The thing was, the ZSU-23-4 was a very good gun. While its radar could be distracted, even by eye the cannon threw serious lead at you. The stripped-down version had done in quite a number of pilots, dating back to Vietnam. You had to five it to the gun’s Russian manufacturers — once they got something right, it stayed right.

A bit of A-Bomb’s bravado, though not his courage, began leaking away as the shells whipped past. He realized that the Iraqi gunner was shooting high, and that this particular set of buzzing bees were probably not going to strike him. But he guessed smaller-caliber weapons nearby would be firing any second now, and given the general hail of bullets, one of two had no choice but to hit his plane. Titanium hull or not, the Warthog was not invincible.

Still you couldn’t, on general principals, break off an attack this easily. An American taxpayer back home in Duluth had just written his congressman asking for some bang for the buck. It was A-Bomb’s job to deliver.

The building jumped into his gun sight. Square and squat, the cement structure was just the sort of thing that could be used as a command and control center.

Or an outhouse.

A-Bomb pushed the magic button. The GAU barrels rattled around, spitting 1.6-pound shells of spent uranium — augmented by the occasional round of high explosive — from the plane’s nose. The ground in front of his target opened: a trench seemed to consume the building and its gun. It was as if the Devil had decided to reach up and pull it down to Hell where it belonged.

Springsteen properly avenged, A-Bomb decided discretion was the better part of valor — or however the saying went — and kicked butt in the opposite direction.

“Lost airman, A-Bomb,” Doberman was saying on the radio. “Yo — acknowledge me, asshole. Where the fuck are you?”

“Who you calling lost?”

“What the hell are you firing at down there?”

“A cement outhouse.”

“Yo, we’re bingo.”

“Damn, and I just bought this card. How come I never win?”

Winging southeast of the site, out of range of the antiair weapons, A-Bomb pointed the Hog’s nose upwards. He found Doberman skimming the cloud ceiling, heading back in his direction.

“Are you out of your mind?” Doberman yapped, twisting his Hog due south for the tanker?

“You have to ask?”

“Didn’t you hear me calling you? Why the hell didn’t you acknowledge?”

“I just did.”

“We should be halfway to the refuel by now. Sometimes I think all that candy goes to your brain.”

“Man, you are a boring date.”

Starting to feel the fatigue of the mission and the long day before, A-Bomb dug into his vest for a Three Musketeers Bar. The A-10A accelerated as it hunted for its companion’s wing and the route back to the tanker.

CHAPTER 50

The clouds suddenly broke. Mongoose turned and looked through the canopy, out across the clear sky toward Dixon’s plane. The second Hog was still climbing to take its position on his wing, its black-green body none the worse for its dash at the ground cannons.

From what Doberman had just told him, there was nothing left to fire the Mavericks at. Mongoose decided to hold them back, either for targets of opportunity on the way home or for a future mission. It was time to go home.

The kid had done okay, no doubt about it. Mongoose told himself he’d overreacted yesterday: he owed the kid one. HE keyed the mike and gave Dixon an ataboy.

“Repeat, Devil One, you’re scratchy,” answered Dixon over the Fox Mike radio.

“Good work,” he repeated. “Now get up front and dial us a course for that tanker.”

Mongoose eased the Warthog toward the south, waiting for the younger pilot to overtake him. He couldn’t help but glance at the INS, which was still stuck back in Saudi Arabia somewhere.

How hard could it be, he wondered, to stick a state-of-the-art geo-positioner in the plane? More to the point, how much could it possibly cost? Bureaucrats and congressmen were screwing with defense appropriations and contract bids and all that crap while people’s butts were on the line.

But then, the Warthog had always been the Air Force’s forgotten stepchild. Low, slow, and ugly, the A-10A Thunderbolt II was supposed to be a limited plane with a limited mission, a throwback unsuited to modern warfare.

This group of Hogs — and the hundred or so that had flown during Desert Storm’s first hours — had proved that was all bullshit. The naysayers were wronger than wrong.

Check That. They were right about one thing. The A-10A Thunderbolt II was a kind of a throwback, a blue-collar tough guy with an old-fashioned work ethic who could get all hell pounded out of him and still come at you. Maybe the Thunderbolt moniker the brass had stuck it with — a nickname no one used — was right after all. The P-47 Thunderbolt was a kick-your-butt fighter in World War II, a hell of a ground-attack machine.

But maybe the B-17 was a better parallel. Now there was a plane that could get sawed in half and still make it back to the airfield. The comparison seemed sill until you considered that a Hog could carry twice the bomb load as the World War II bomber. The Flying Fortress was damned ugly too. But ugly pretty.

Like the Hog.

Mongoose checked over his instruments, looked carefully at the artificial horizon in front of him, and made sure his furel was okay. They had a very good margin for error to the tanker, at least ten more minutes than he’d planned.

Dixon gave his wings a gentle wag as he set his course. At least, Mongoose assumed he did that on purpose; because of the Hog’s trim controls, you never could be sure. The old joke was that if you took you hand off the stick when you were under fire, the plane would jink and jive for you.

“I got your wing,” Mongoose told him. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

Dixon exhaled loudly. His heartbeat was back to normal, his adrenaline already drained. His body felt as if it were covered with cement. A hundred different muscles ached, and his eyeballs were squeezed dry.

But he’d done it. He’d fought through the panic and made it.

He was who he’d hoped to be.

Except. Except that he’d lied to Major Johnson, to everybody, about what happened yesterday.

That was the part he hadn’t made up for.

Mongoose had just stretched a cramp out of his legs when the long-range radio crackled.

“Devil Flight, this is Cougar,” said the AWACS controller. “Devil One, acknowledge.”

“This is Devil One. Go ahead.”

“Devil One, we have a situation.”

The calm voice ignited a fire in Mongoose’s chest. Every part of him snapped back to attention. He leaned forward unconsciously as he told the E-3 Sentry crew to fill him in.

“We have two low-level contacts on an intercept to Buddy Boy,” said the controller. “We believe they are helicopters, probably transports, possibly Mi-8’s.”

“Copy. You want them driven off?” Mongoose asked, completing the controller’s sentence.

“Affirmative. Sandy bingo’d a few minutes ago. First Team CAP was diverted and the backup is five minutes off.”

“Give me a heading,” snapped the pilot.

CHAPTER 51

Like most of his peers, Captain Feroz Vali hated his country’s president and family, blaming them for the ruinous war with Iran and the difficult situation they now found themselves in with America. And like most of his peers, Captain Vali left his politics and preferences outside of the cockpit.

A good thing, since the cockpit was cramped as it was. Vali’s helicopter swarmed around him, a massive flying tank. Propelled by over-sized TV3-117A engines, the Mi-24D Hind could dart through the sky like an avenging angel. With four ground-attack rocket packs mounted on its plane-like wings and a four-barrel 12.7 mm machine-gun under its chin, the Hind was as deadly an attack helicopter as any in the world.

The problem was the helicopter was considered so valuable by the regime that Vali had been instructed to avoid combat. And to underline that instruction, he and the Hind following behind him had been posted here, far behind the lines in western Iraq.

Vali cursed his coward’s role. Yesterday, the Americans had begun their long-awaited air offensive. The official news reports said that it had been a glorious victory for Iraq, with hundreds of American planes downed. Even as he doubted the details, Vali wished for a part of glory. Heading out on his routine training mission, he toyed with the notion of taking the chopper south toward the Saudi border, well within its range. The only thing that stopped him was the realization that the desert there was most likely empty.

Captain Vali studied the gray overcast sky as he steadied the helicopter toward its patrol point on the Amman-Baghdad Highway. A trainee could accomplish this make-work mission.

The voice of his weapons operator snapped in his ear.

“Captain, I have two helicopter contacts directly ahead.”

Vali glanced forward toward the operator’s cockpit, directly below him in the Hind’s nose.

Two helicopters? As far as he knew, his two-chopper flight should be the only one in the sky for at least fifty miles.

Before he could key his mike to acknowledge, the operator added, “Captain, I believe the Intercept Station G-5 is under attack.”

Vali threw his hand to the throttle, nudging the big warship toward its 180-mile-an-hour maximum speed.

God had smiled upon him.

CHAPTER 52

Smoke furled from the GCI site, now fifteen miles away. Captain Hawkins steadied himself near the door of the big Pave Low, his teeth rattling with the whomp from the Super Jolly Green Giant’s rotor. Somewhere beyond the smoke British RAF Major Clinton Rhodes was hunkered on the ground, waiting for the big green rescue choppers to appear.

“Says he could do with a spot of tea,” laughed Sergeant Winston, mocking the pilot’s accent. He had the British major on the UHF rescue band.

“Tell him to keep transmissions to a minimum,” said the captain, just barely loud enough to be heard. ^“We still got a ways to go.”

If you stared at it long enough, the desert sand revealed endless varieties of shades, everything from yellow to gray to black and even green. Roads blurred; buildings, vegetation merged into the terrain. You lost a sense of where you were, forgot how much danger you were really in.

Someone yelled up front. A crew member barked in reply.

“He’s waving. Yeah, we got him. It’s him, it’s him,” shouted Winston, talking to the pilot and his captain simultaneously. “He sees us. Damn! We got real contacts on the radar.”

Hawkins folded his fingers around the metal bar he had steadied himself on. The Sikorsky angled herself for the approach, skimming even lower.

“Enemy helicopters are coming right for us,” Winston told him. “They’re moving pretty fast.”

“Let’s hope we move faster.” Hawkins cinched his helmet and checked his rifle, narrowing his eyes for the job at hand.

CHAPTER 53

Dixon snapped the mike button angrily. “No way I’m backing off, Major. You can’t go home blind.”

“I can make it back. Besides, these are just transport helicopters.”

“Let me do my goddamn job.”

There was no answer. Mongoose really had the lead out, pushing his Hog as fast as it could go along the heading Cougar had broadcast. Dixon did a quick check of his six, his hand glued to the stick and throttle.

“Stay with me,” barked the lead pilot.

Mongoose dipped his wing toward the thick overcast between them and the ground. Dixon followed, his Hog plunging through the curtain of tufts and wind drafts. The plane bucked, then shrugged it off, slipping toward the earth like an Olympic-class diver, smooth and poised.

Breaking into the clear, Dixon realized for the first time that their path was dangerously close to the GCI site. Though at the moment he was out of range of any antiair left down there, he had to keep it in mind if things got complicated.

Hell, he’d have to keep a lot of things in mind. Like the fact that they would almost surely end up with less than enough jet fuel in the tanks to get home.

It took a second for Mongoose’s brain to register the helicopters, and another long second after that for it to realize they were the Pave Lows.

“Those are our friendlies,” he told Dixon, just in the case the kid had the same trouble.

“Roger that.”

“We want positive visual IDs before we take the boogies out,” Mongoose told him. The rules of engagement issued for the start of the air war were not quite that stringent, but the major didn’t want to take any chances, even though the AWACS had already identified the contacts as Iraqi. “Make sure the bastard’s Iraqi before you blow him away.”

“Roger that.”

Three or four other voices overran the rest of the transmission. Mongoose pushed the confusing babble to the side of his brain and steadied the Hog, giving the MH-53s as good a berth as possible. If they were talking to their downed flier he didn’t hear it; at this point, the only voice that was going to make it through the filter of his brain was Dixon’s…

And God’s. In that order.

Air to air tactics weren’t exactly his forte. The truth was, you practiced getting away from things in a Hog, not shooting them down. But Mongoose had a rough plan mapped out in his head. Once he had the enemy choppers in his face, he’d swing around to make a rear attack with the Sidewinders; the helicopters’ exhaust would give the heat-seekers a good target to aim at.

He double-checked the armament panel, making sure the Sidewinders on the double-rail at station one on the left wing were armed and ready. The missiles needed to cool their noses a bit, so their heat-seeking gear would work right. Once ready and in the thick of things, the missiles would cue the pilot for launch with an audible growl that meant “shoot me, shoot me.”

Assuming he could find the enemy birds. The blank sky wasn’t giving them up easily.

Finally, he spotted a black fur ball about seven o’clock off his left shoulder. He had just pitched his stick slightly, willing the Hog toward it, when he saw a much larger black shadow considerably higher and directly in line with the bearing the AWACS had given.

“We got one high, we got one low,” he barked over the radio. “Follow me through. We want to get them from behind their three-nine.”

“Roger that.”

Dixon stared at the immense black beetle growing in the bottom left corner of his windscreen. That was no utility chopper out on a picnic run. It was immense, with stubby wings projecting toward the ground like muscled shoulders. And the damn thing was moving.

Big-time Hind, he thought; he wasn’t sure what model. It would — or at least could — have air-to-air.

Dixon’s AIM-9 Sidewinders had been on long enough for the heat-seeking gear in their noses to cool down. But the major was right — they had to attack from behind. The missiles needed the heat signature from the engine exhaust to home in for the kill.

The helicopters weren’t going to make it easy. Something sparked from the wing of the angry bug as it suddenly whipped out of Dixon’s screen.

CHAPTER 54

Doberman didn’t need a calculator to know they didn’t have anywhere near enough jet fuel to double back and help Mongoose and Dixon. In fact, he suspected they would run themselves dry even if they found the Iraqis and crashed them in record time.

Which made it all the harder to leave them. But it was the only thing to do.

A-Bomb concurred. “I say we kick butt on the refuel, then go find them.”

“You read my mind.”

“Damn, I’d like a piece of that,” moaned A-Bomb. “Air-to-air Hog action. It’s what I’m talking about.”

Doberman decided to make absolutely certain the AWACS people knew how low Mongoose and Dixon were going to be when they finished their job.

“Cougar, this is Devil Two. Request that you expedite a tanker contact for Devil One and Devil Four. They’re beyond bingo.”

It took a while for the E-3 Sentry to respond.

“Affirmative. We will try to assist any way we can.” The controller paused, then added, “How’s your fuel situation?”

“We should be at Texaco in ten,” Doberman said. Even with all the stops out, the estimate of the time it would take to reach the tanker was wildly optimistic.

“Affirmative. Don’t worry about your buddies; we have some CAP coming up from the south to assist. Should arrive in three or four minutes.”

“Appreciate that,” he answered.

“Hey,” barked A-Bomb after the transmission with the AWACS was complete. “How come it’s Texaco? Why not Sunoco? My cousin works for Sunoco.”

“I didn’t know you were related to a suit.”

“What suit? He makes change in a little booth on the Jersey shore. You’re ever around Cape May, tell him I sent you. He’ll give you some free window-wash.”

“Can’t wait.”

CHAPTER 55

“They’re firing at the choppers, not us.”

Dixon had already pulled the Hog down and hit the chaff and flares before Mongoose’s words sank in. Gravity and momentum whacked him broadside as he tried to yank the plane back onto the intercept course. The leading-edge wing slats groaned as the Hog literally slid sideways, engines whining. The pilot felt as if he was being stabbed in the chest as he worked the stick and rudders a hundred feet off the ground. Something whizzed by the canopy — the missile that had been launched; one of the helicopters; maybe even an angel.

“You go high, I’ll go low,” said Mongoose, unaware that Dixon’s position had changed so radically.

Mongoose didn’t wait for the kid to acknowledge as he angled after the darting grasshopper. He knew now that his opponent was hardly a utility chopper. Iraq had something like forty of the Mil M-24 Hind helicopter gunships, extremely potent warbirds that combined the best features of the American Apache with the Blackhawk. Like the Apache, it was primarily a ground attack weapon, but its nose-mounted Gatling cannon was not to be taken lightly by anybody, Warthog included.

Mongoose angled upwards, taking the Hog into a banking turn toward the helicopter’s vulnerable rear as he approached. But the chopper had been waiting for his move, and pushed to get inside him. Mongoose realized it too late to spin back sharply enough to get a firing solution. That left him further away as the chopper broke for all it was worth, running about two inches off the ground.

He lost it in the confusion. Mongoose went into a wide bank and started sweating. Maybe it was only a helicopter, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t shoot him down if it was in the right position.

The pilot whirled his head around, eyes flailing the empty sky. Cursing, he yanked back in the other direction, then saw the black cricket kicking dust north. It fluttered through the diamond aiming cue on his HUD screen as he worked to bring his adrenaline — and the plane — back under control.

The AIM-9 growled at him, telling him it thought it could make the shot from here. He hesitated a second, then pushed the button.

Dixon found himself swimming in the cockpit, as if trying to get up from the bottom of a very deep lake. His head pressed back against the seat so hard it felt like it was would break through.

Oxygen gulped down his throat, his heart galloped. He was losing it again.

Look at the throttle, Knowlington had told him.

It was stupid advice. Take your eyes off the windscreen where they belonged, and look at the throttle? Maybe back in Vietnam they did that kind of thing, but not here. He might just as well get out of the plane and kick the tires.

Gravity was an immense piano, smashing down from twenty stories. His maneuvers robbed his brain cells of oxygen, robbed him of sensation. He couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t fly.

Look at the god damn throttle, he told himself.

What the hell.

Dixon wrenched his head to the left, forced his eyes downward, forced a slower breath into his lungs, saw the handle pushed all the way to max.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, he said, pulling his head back to the front of the plane, focusing on the HUD. Start from scratch. Slow down.

Altitude 1250 feet, climbing.

Okay, okay, okay, he told himself, forcing an excruciatingly long exhale from his lungs. You don’t have to be calm, just in control.

Okay, okay, okay, he told himself. Level off. Check your heading. Find the bastard.

Okay, okay, okay. The Hind darted across the upper right quadrant of his screen, gun flailing at the Pave Lows and the major they’d come to save.

“Fire Fox Two,” said Mongoose, announcing the heat-seeking missile shot as the Sidewinder clunked down from his wingtip. But even as the unfamiliar words left his mouth, the pilot realized that no matter what the missile thought, he’d fired from too great a range and angle to guarantee a hit. The helicopter was already whipping hard to the east, letting off a succession of flares to confuse the heat-seeker.

It didn’t matter now. His job was to protect the Pave Lows, not collect a kill. Whether the missile got it or not, that Hind was no longer a treat. Mongoose swung back to help Dixon crash the other bird.

He saw the rescue helicopters first; both were on the desert floor dead ahead. The Hind materialized on his left, cannon smoking as it roared into the middle of his screen.

The Sidewinder growled. Mongoose punched the button, felt it kick off, and in the same instant realized Dixon was cutting across from the right toward the Iraqi, crossing directly for the path the AIM-9 would take.

CHAPTER 56

The Iraqi pilot cursed as the cannon beneath the helicopter’s nose began to rumble. His gunner had begun firing much too soon.

No matter. The distance between himself and the two American helicopters was closing rapidly. It was only a matter of ten or fifteen seconds.

The appearance of the American planes had caused him only a second’s hesitation. He couldn’t blame his companion in the second Hind for turning off; those were, after all, their orders.

But it was something Captain Vali would never do. The two American planes had flown past, obviously trying for a better position for attack. They were odd planes, nearly black with forked tails and strangely placed engines. He guessed that they had decided to concentrate on the other helicopter first, and would soon be coming for him.

He had several evasive maneuvers planned. But he would wait until he had accomplished his first mission — the enemy helicopters. Galloping forward, he heard his co-pilot shouting something in his com set, and realized the cannon was whirling around on its axis toward another target.

CHAPTER 57

The helicopter’s slow speed crossed him up. Dixon misjudged his approach and lost any possibility of a shot, not even with his cannon. As he pulled off he saw Mongoose coming out of the northwest; some inexplicable pilot’s sense made him roll the Hog hard to the right even as the launch warning sparked the radio.

The indium-antimonide in the guidance section of the AIM-9M Mongoose had fired had its heart set on the Hind. Even so, the proximity of Dixon’s exhaust was so tempting that for a half-second the little brain couldn’t decide what to do.

In that half second, two things happened: The targeted Hind shot off flares and changed course momentarily, away from the Pave Lows. And Dixon rolled the Hog and his IR signature away from the missile.

The AIM-9’s proximity fuse circuitry got so confused that it decided it had missed its target and therefore ought to detonate anyway.

Had they been close enough, the fragments would have done serious damage to a typical, unarmored air frame. In this case, however, they were just so much more shrapnel littering the air as Dixon recovered from his swooping roll and swung for the chopper. The Hind splashed out some bullets in his direction, then cranked back toward the Pave Lows, guns blazing.

Throttle to the firewall, the Hog moved nearly twice as fast as the Hind; the pilot was nearly in front of the helicopter before realizing where the hell he was. He pulled hard left, knocking the Iraqi off his course but taking a wing’s worth of 12.7 mm shells for his persistence.

Orbiting quickly, Dixon took as slow a breath as he dared, steadying his hand on the stick, glancing at the weapons panel though he knew the cannon was ready. This time he didn’t need Knowlington’s advice — he felt the stick in his grip, felt the plane around him, saw the Hind flashing to the right and knew that it would fall into the Hog’s crosshairs in a half second.

There is no precise formula for becoming a combat pilot, no clear line to be crossed. A green newbie passes a series of initiations that guarantee nothing and yet are more critical than oxygen. It happens in various ways at various times, sometimes noticeably, most often not.

For Lieutenant William James “BJ” Dixon, it happened the second he pressed his finger on the red trigger, lighting the A-lOA’s GAU-8/A Avenger cannon, and watched as the stream of 30 millimeter slugs tore the helicopter in front of him to pieces.

CHAPTER 58

Captain Hawkins shoved the British pilot to the ground as the fireball erupted less than a hundred yards from them. Oil, metal and blood rained through the air, the Hind spewing its guts as it tumbled into the desert, the biggest chunk of the wreck just clearing the second Pave Low, squatting on the ground thirty yards beyond Hawkins’ craft.

“Go, let’s go,” he screamed, spitting sand from his mouth. He clawed the back of the pilot’s flight suit, lifting and dragging him to the door of the waiting chopper. A crewman helped him pitch the major in, head-first.

Sergeant Winston and one of the other squad members crawled over him. The inside of the giant chopper echoed with shouts. Hawkins felt the floor move beneath his stomach. He rolled, smacking his arm against something very hard as the MH-53 lifted off.

“Rhodes, you okay?” he asked the British pilot as he got to his knees.

“Bloody hell,” said the pilot, looking up from the floor. “I do believe I’ve lost my lucky pen.”

The Special Forces squad and nearby crew members exploded with laughter. Hawkins was practically blinking away tears as he scanned the compartment, making sure everyone had gotten back safely.

“We’re all here, sir,” smirked Winston. “Cut it a bit close, though. Good thing the Iraqi was off with that first round of missiles or we’d be walking.”

While RAF Major Rhodes searched his various pockets for the pen, Hawkins patted his own uniform down — he wasn’t entirely convinced he’d made it back intact.

He had. Along with the rest of his team.

“Kind of close, huh Captain?” Winston asked, smirking. “Our friends took their time,” he added, jerking his finger toward the window. The two A-lOAs were disappearing in the distance.

“Were those Thunderbolts?” Rhodes asked.

“Warthogs,” said Winston. “Nasty mothers.”

“Quite,” said the Brit approvingly. “But bloody ugly.”

“I don’t know,” said Hawkins. “They looked kind of pretty to me. Welcome aboard, Major. You want some tea? It’ll be cold by now, but it is Earl Gray.”