Target Saddam

CHAPTER 1

Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington stepped out from his office in the ramshackle trailer building known as “Hog Heaven” — headquarters for the 535^th Tactical Fighter Squadron at King Fahd Royal Air Base in eastern Saudi Arabia. The cold air of the desert night stung his eyes closed; the Devil Squadron commander had to stop and rub them open.

He began to walk again, ignoring the soft glow of the moon above, pretending he didn’t hear the uneasy murmur that came from the nearby hangar area where his A-10A Thunderbolt II “Warthog” fighter-bombers were resting after a long day of bombing Iraq. A few mechanics tended to battle damage; here an engine was being overhauled, there a wing was being patched. The workers might account for some of the noise, but not all of it — the A-10A had always seemed more animal than machine, and tonight a distinct murmur rose from the parked planes, as if they were rehashing their missions in a late-night bull session. In a few short hours, the planes would be back at it, loaded with missiles and bombs and bullets, jet fuel packed into their arms and bellies. They waited now in the shadows, metal bones shrugging off fatigue, green skins still sparking with the electricity of the day. If any warplane could be said to be more than a simple machine, it was the Hog, a two-engine stubby-winged dirt mover so ugly most pilots argued she had to have a soul. Aeronautics alone would never have gotten anything that ungainly off the ground.

Knowlington ignored the Hogs. He ignored the moon. He ignored the cold. He ignored the acknowledgment of the security detail. Like the planes and their pilots, he was due a few hours in the sack. More, actually. He’d been strapping planes around his narrow frame for just about thirty years now, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was a bona fide, decorated war hero with tons of friends in high places and could be a serious SOB besides, Michael Knowlington would be retired by now. He was due a long, long rest — the kind of rest where the most important thing you did all day was check the obits to make sure you were alive, then went back to bed.

Some people wanted him to take that rest. There were reasons beyond length of service, the same reasons that kept him a lieutenant colonel when most of his peers were either long gone or wore stars on their uniforms. But Skull had never been good at resting, much less reading obituaries. He wasn’t even very good at sleeping, especially not when there was a war on, especially not when he had an enemy on his ass and gravity was pinching his face and chest from all directions.

Which was how he felt now.

Which was good.

Something flashed in the sky behind him. The muscles in his neck snapped taut but didn’t flinch. He walked on, moving stiffly through the shadows, pushing toward a large parking garage at the other end of the base. He skirted the edge of Tent City, a mass of tents and temporary housing units where many of the base personnel — and all of Devil Squadron — lived. He walked quickly and with purpose but without fear. More importantly, he walked without desire.

For Michael Knowlington, fear and desire had often walked together. Not fear of the enemy, not desire for glory. It would be wrong to say that he wasn’t afraid of dying, or that he didn’t like the honor of recognition. But from the very first day in Thailand eons ago when he had wedged himself into the cockpit of a Thud and taken off for Vietnam, neither the enemy nor glory had haunted him.

The fear he felt was much more basic. He’d been afraid of letting others down. And he had let others down: as a wingman: that time when his mate nearly got shot down by a trailing MiG that Knowlington should have handled; as a leader, when his flight got nailed by a battery he should have scoped out before the mission; as a squadron commander, when one of his boys had gotten in over his head.

The last had happened three times, once in Vietnam, once in the States, and once last week.

Fear — and its guilt — fueled a deep, unquenchable desire. It was mundane, it was ordinary, but if was very real. For much of his Air Force career, Michael Knowlington desired, thirsted, for alcohol. It had tugged at his athletic frame and dulled his reflexes; it had rounded the sharp edges of his brain. Worst of all, the thirst had fueled the fear, which in turn increased the thirst.

But it was gone now. He’d been sober for only 22 days, and had come perilously close twelve hours before to falling back. But as he walked across the darkened base, ignoring the moon, ignoring the planes, nose stinging with sweat and jet fuel, he realized he didn’t want a drink.

And that was good, though nothing to bank on.

A Hummer carrying two Air Force MPs shot out of the darkness as he finally neared his destination. As the Humvee pulled up alongside him, a sergeant leaned out and spoke in a pseudo whisper, as if raising his voice would wake some sleeping giant nearby.

“Colonel, excuse me,” he said, “but there’s a Scud alert. Sir, I have to ask you to take shelter.”

Knowlington nodded but said nothing, continuing to walk. The MP started to repeat himself, but his words were drowned out by a loud shriek in the distance.

Skull kept walking. The ground rumbled. It was an explosion, but nothing that threatened him. He knew that from experience.

During his first tour in Vietnam, Knowlington had manned a machine-gun post with a frightened E-5 whose specialty was developing recon photos. Guerrillas had attacked a small base Skull was visiting on a liaison mission; he and the sergeant had worked through ten belts of ammo while ducking at least five grenade attacks. During his second tour in Vietnam, Skull had spent two nights at the Marine base in DaNang when it came under rocket attack — as sure a glimpse into the bowels of hell as ever offered a live human being. Distant explosions didn’t impress him; he kept his pace and ignored the comments from the Hummer, which vanished back into the darkness.

The two Delta troopers standing guard at the entrance to the parking garage wore the blank expressions of stone statues as he approached. Though both sergeants instantly recognized the Air Force officer, they challenged him as fiercely as if he were an Iraqi infiltrator. For the humble parking garage was the Saudi home of the Special Operations Command; its officers were running a variety of top secret operations north of the border. And while Lieutenant Colonel Michael Knowlington was one of the handful of men permitted access to the “Bat Cave” inside, even General Schwartzkopf himself would have had to withstand the ritual humiliation of passing the Delta boys’ sentry post.

Not that Schwartzkopf would have done so as quietly — nor as quickly — as Skull. But then, Skull tended to hold the D boys in higher esteem, and the feeling was mutual.

Cleared through, Knowlington proceeded to the operational headquarters, a collection of sandbags, filing cabinets, and desks in an area that had once housed the car collection of a minor prince. Skull got about as far as the former parking spot of a yellow MG roadster when one of the general’s aides accosted him.

“Colonel, General’s not available, sir,” said the lieutenant, who despite the hour and locale could have cut himself on the creases in his uniform.

“Shit-yeah he is.” Skull made sure his gravelly voice carried well through the complex. “I talked to him a half-hour ago. He’s either on the cot over there or sitting at his desk.”

“God, Mikey, what the hell is it now?” growled the general from beyond the makeshift walls.

The lieutenant stepped back apologetically. Skull gave him a smirk, then passed into the operations room, where the general was indeed sacked out on his cot. The general had come over to the joint Special Operations command from the Air Force; he and Knowlington went back far enough for Skull not to wince when he called him “Mikey.”

Which he did again, adding in a few more succinct Anglo-Saxon words.

“Sorry to disturb you,” said Skull, standing near the table.

“Fuck you, you are. What’s up? You still pissed about your girl Rosen going north?”

“My technical sergeant is a woman,” said Knowlington, emphasizing each syllable because he was, indeed, still pissed. “But we’ve gone over that.”

“I shipped Klee out. Bang, he’s gone. He should have come to me and he didn’t. That problem is taken care of.”

Klee was the colonel who was responsible for sending the Devil Squadron’s top electronics whiz north into Iraq. Rosen had returned a few hours before to Al Jouf, a forward operating area in western Iraq where she had been overseeing maintenance on a pair of Devil Squadron A-10As. Needless to say, Rosen had volunteered for the duty north in the combat zone, a direct violation of all sorts of laws, policies, and orders, not to mention common sense. Which merely proved Devil Squadron enlisted personnel were as crazy as the officers.

“Rosen’s not why I’m here,” said Skull.

“Okay. Shit, Mikey. I don’t think I’ve had ten minutes of sleep since I came to this stinkin’ country.” The general sighed and sat up. He glanced at Skull, then followed his gaze over toward the sandbags that marked the entrance to the room. “Lieutenant, make yourself scarce.”

“Sir, yes sir,” snapped the lieutenant.

“Love ‘em when they’re still wet, don’t you?” said the general as the nugget lieutenant’s steps echoed smartly across the smooth concrete. Skull, for all his love of the service — and he truly did love the Air Force — had never really cared for the snap and starch, nor did he like hazing new officers, so he didn’t answer. He stood stoically as the general hauled himself off the cot and went to the desk, where he turned on a small lamp and sat. He’d been sleeping in his fatigue uniform. He reached under the desk for his shoes. “What’s up?”

“The intelligence officer who went north with your D boys has a theory.”

“Wong?”

“Yes, Captain Wong. There was a special unit of Iraqis in the village where the Scuds were hidden. They weren’t part of the Republican Guard. They weren’t Muslim either. Which he thinks means they were part of an elite unit, probably all related to each other. Those sorts of units typically have very special missions.”

“I’m not catching the drift here, Mike.” The general stretched his shoulders backwards; his body was so stiff the cracks echoed loudly. “Schwartzkopf is on my butt — on everybody’s butt — about the Scuds. One hit Tel Aviv last night. We have to nail those suckers.”

“This is bigger than Scuds.”

“How?”

“Wong thinks Saddam’s going to be in that village twenty-four hours from now. I want to put together a team to get him.”

CHAPTER 2

At roughly the same time Colonel Knowlington was making his way to the Spec Ops Bat Cave, the man whose report had sent him there was setting out on a perilous journey to the dark side of the international army’s “occupation” of Saudi Arabia.

Captain Bristol Wong, late of the Pentagon, most recently assigned as an “observer” to assist Scud hunting operations, knew that time would be of essence if Saddam was to be targeted. He had therefore decided to hunt down the one Westerner who, in his considered opinion, knew everything worth knowing about the Iraqi leader. This was itself a mission wracked by difficulties and fraught with dangers and a thousand contingencies, not the least of which was commandeering a helicopter that could deliver him to Riyadh at this ungodly hour.

A short if expensive private limo ride took Wong from the relative safety of the sophisticated Islamic capital to a fiery wasteland some miles to the south, where he was dutifully deposited in front of a ten-million dollar suburban castle replete with neon flamingos and female car hops tastefully clad from the waist down, and from the top not at all. Wong administered the customary bribes to the Pakistani doorman and his hulking assistant, withstood a rather physical and inefficient weapons check, and passed into the lobby of the club. There he was met by two women whose mid-sections had recently been graced by staples in major men’s publications; their present attire revealed no evidence of fasteners, though their smiles suggested they were ready to bend any metal Wong offered. He made the tactical mistake of telling them that he was simply here on business; they cooed and clucked, and he had almost to force his way past to the short, marble staircase that led down to the gaming room.

The man he had come to see, Sir Peter Paddington, was surrounded by a phalanx of women and gamblers as he held court at the thousand-dollar minimum craps table. Paddington worked officially for British MI-5, was attached to at least one other ministry, and did contract work for unspecified “exterior interests.” He held his right hand high over his head, rattling the dice like a wary cobra shaking its tail. With a flick of his wrist he struck, the crisply tailored cuff of his white shirt flashing from his blazer sleeve as his hand jerked above the table, unleashing a pair of threes.

“Six the hard way,” said the croupier from the side of the table. A salsa band added a flourish in the background.

Wong snaked through the crowd as the bets were placed. Before he managed to draw alongside Sir Peter, nearly a hundred thousand dollars had been laid out on the table, covering his next throw.

“Bristol, you have returned,” said Paddington, sipping his martini. He had not re-thrown the dice, believing that the karma of the moment had to specially chosen.

He also wanted to make sure all of the betting was complete, as the establishment paid him a discreet commission on the house take.

“I have a business matter to discuss with you,” said Wong.

Paddington frowned ever so slightly, then turned back to the table. His hand flashed, the ivory cubes rolled.

“Seven,” said the croupier, honestly surprised.

Despite the bust, there was audible disappointment as Paddington put down the dice and led Wong toward a side room. Four of the young women who’d swarmed around accompanied him, their nipples highlighted by the taut silk of their dresses.

“You want?” Paddington asked Wong, pausing at the draped doorway and gesturing toward the women.

Wong rolled his eyes.

“Sorry girls,” said Sir Peter, waving his hand. “I’ll be with you presently.”

Wong followed Paddington through the thick brown drapes into a room made up like a private London club. Dark leather chairs sat in small clusters in front of Hunter green walls lit by soft lamps and barrister’s bookcases stacked with hunting guides and royal lineages. But the most impressive element of decor was the smell: a kind of tweedy dankness surely imported direct from Cambridge. A man stood before a portable bar at the far end of the room, looking at them expectantly. Behind him stood a pair of imposing portraits of unimposing kings.

“Spell yourself, my good man,” Paddington told him expansively, “after you supply me with a martini, of course.”

The bartender nodded. “And you, sir?” he asked Wong.

“My American friend doesn’t drink when he’s working,” said Paddington. “And as he is always working, he doesn’t drink.”

“A slight exaggeration,” said Wong. “But I do not wish a drink.”

The bartender mixed a martini, very light on vermouth, two olives, a sliver of lemon, then removed himself through a door somewhat disguised as a panel at the side of the room.

“So what brings the world expert on Russian weapons system to the notorious Club Habanas Saudi?” Paddington asked after the waiter had left.

“I need to confirm a theory,” said Wong.

“About Saddam, I suppose.”

“Perhaps,” said Wong cautiously. “We’re dealing with code-word material.”

“Naturally.” Paddington sniffed the air, as if the dampness had suddenly run out.

“Speculative code-word material,” added Wong.

“Quite.”

Wong knew that the MI-5 intelligence expert had all of the necessary clearances to receive Pentagon and CentCom briefings on every aspect of the war. He was also well aware that mentioning that the material was classified would insult Paddington somewhat, as it vaguely called into question his ability to keep a secret. But that was his point. In Wong’s experience, Sir Peter worked at his peak only when insulted.

The summary Wong proceeded with left out many details — including the existence of Fort Apache, the behind-the-lines support base recently abandoned by U.S. special operations troops. He was also vague about the exact location of Al Kajuk, the village in Iraq where he had been just a few hours below, noting only that it was near the Euphrates and within “a fifty mile parabola” west of Baghdad.

“You still like those big words,” said Paddington. “Why can’t you say, ‘circle’?”

“That would not be precise,” said Wong. “I was referring to the intersection of…”

“Yes, quite. I remember my grammar school geometry.” He swept his hand contemptuously. “You want to know if it’s within the area he uses to hide? Of course it is.”

Wong nodded and told him about the Iraqis he had come across outside the village. The men had been Christians and seemingly related — they looked like cousins if not brothers. The commander had been carrying documents that indicated someone or something named Straw would be at the site at midnight January 26.

At the word “Straw,” Paddington put down his drink. “I see. Yes.”

“I thought it was one of their code words.”

“I didn’t say it was,” noted Paddington.

“Of course not,” said Wong.

“This couldn’t have been a very elite unit if you escaped, eh, Bristol?” Sir Peter laughed and put down his martini glass on the bar. “Christians. Well, they are undoubtedly one of the small special groups Saddam uses, beyond doubt. Yes. You have unit identification?”

“They had sanitized uniforms.”

“Oh, quite interesting. Yes. But their purpose could be one of several. Not least of which would be guarding the Scuds which I presume you had actually be sent to investigate.”

“There was a regular unit and a Republican Guard attachment handling that,” said Wong.

“Eh,” said Paddington with a noncommittal swagger of his head. “The more the merrier, eh?”

“There’s been a marked pick up in coded radio transmissions from the area in the past twenty-four hours,” said Wong, who had checked before delivering his report to Knowlington. “And one with the word ‘straw’ in it.”

“Humph,” said Paddington.

“My question is this: If Saddam were planning on staying at the village, would an attack on the Scud missiles there deter him?”

“A reasonable question,” admitted Paddington. He stared at the wall, as if visualizing the Iraqi leader. Then he reached to the bar and took up his drink, draining it. “Let me tell you something about this area of Iraq.” Paddington frowned at the empty glass. “Saddam has had trouble ensuring the loyalty of some of his, shall we call them lesser government ministers? And so he taken to holding some of their families hostage. And in other cases, not bothering to hold them hostage. He has also had revolts among his Shiite brethren, and is treating them with even less delicacy.”

“I saw no signs of a slaughter,” said Wong.

“You wouldn’t, would you? Unless you knew what to look for. And in any event, I suspect you were occupied with other matters. He uses units from diverse areas, basically as far away and as uninvolved as possible. He is not, as you Americans would put it, a schmuck. That would be my first suspicion here. Though I admit the area, so close to Baghdad, makes me suspicious. Most of the Shiites are located elsewhere, and the ministers are in Baghdad and to the north. But, of course, generalities. From the intercept and these notes, yes, it is possible.”

“How likely?”

“Always looking for your percentages, eh?”

“You’re the one who calculates the odds.”

“Fifty-fifty. Perhaps higher in your favor. But I would say it is also possible that it is a decoy. He has several and the procedures are exactly the same.”

“What would you look for?”

“His Mercedes,” said Paddington. “And then, if you find it, I would look in exactly the opposite direction. He doesn’t use the official car outside the capital — except when he does. No schmuck, as I say.” Paddington got up and went over to the bar, where he opened a bottle of dry vermouth, set it down on the bar top, then carefully ran his overturned martini glass around the mouth of the bottle to catch the fumes. Satisfied, he plopped in two olives from a tray and filled the glass to the rim with gin. He waved a lemon peel over it and then held the glass to his lips.

“Cheers,” he told Wong.

“Your health.”

“Nothing like a martini,” Paddington said after a long sip. “I would look for a station wagon with a red crescent, international aid vehicle, inside a small military convoy. That will be where he is, ordinarily. No tanks, perhaps an armored car or two. Mostly he fears a single assassin or a demonstration, an attack that would be best handled by foot soldiers traveling in trucks. He has experience.” Paddington took a delicate sip from his glass, not quite finishing it. “He might travel with upwards of a company’s worth of men. He does not want to draw too much attention to himself, of course. On the other hand, there would be forces where he was going.”

“Would he avoid a place that had just been bombed?”

Paddington smiled. “The key question.”

“And the key answer?”

“You don’t mean that as a joke, do you Bristol?”

“No,” said Wong.

“Pity.” Sir Peter finished his martini. “My estimation is that Saddam would think that was just the place to be. He is very superstitious. And, I must say, the pattern of your bombing so far bears him out, except in Baghdad itself. The more you attack a place, the safer he feels it is. Logical, in a way.”

“What about the ambush of his advance people?”

“That is trickier.” Paddington stepped back to the bar. “The Iraqis seem to be aware that there are commandos operating in their territory, but their responses are a puzzle. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of bombing the C-3 network so efficiently is that there are fewer broadcasts to intercept. Human intelligence is worthless. I’m honestly not sure. He might think it a good sign, he might not. It would depend on whether the Iraqis felt it was related. If they thought it was part of an earlier attack, it might not change things.”

“To the best of my knowledge we wiped out the unit. They don’t know who attacked.”

“Even the Iraqis would realize it wasn’t Mickey Mouse,” said Paddington.

“You’ve told me in the past that these units have their own enemies,” Wong said. “An attack on them might be classified as an uprising.”

Sir Peter was unimpressed. As he began mixing a fresh drink, he detailed more of Saddam’s highly variable routine. Despite all of the efforts being made to track him — and the British as well as the Americans had devoted a great deal of resources to the project — Saddam disappeared for long stretches. He was maddeningly unpredictable.

“My personal suspicion is that he is as apt to turn up at a spot like your village as anywhere. I can tell you, greater odds have been tried.” Paddington took another sip. “But that is not an official estimate.”

“Understood,” said Wong.

“I’ll have to pass some of this along,” said Sir Peter. “I’m afraid the chaps above me will feel it interesting.”

Wong nodded. “Would you like to be involved?”

“What? Go over the border?” Paddington blanched. “Do you think I’m mad?”

“Just wanted to make sure.”

“I’m not like you, Bristol. I purged my system of that sort of silliness years ago. Years ago.”

“If we had a briefing, would you be available?”

Paddington sighed. “You know how I detest meetings.”

“There is another wrinkle,” said Wong.

“Being?”

“An American is on the ground near the village.”

“You left one of your men?”

“No. He’s officially listed as KIA. But I believe he’s alive.”

“That isn’t like you, Bristol,” said Paddington. “Leaving a man behind?”

“He wasn’t in my unit,” said Wong, realizing this was a rather lame excuse. “He had been in action several miles away the day before. His team was overrun and he was seen dead from a helicopter.”

“Lazarus.”

“I believe the initial report was exaggerated.”

“And he just materialized at Al Killjoy? Quite a story, Bristol.”

“Kajuk,” said Wong. “He could have walked from the area where he was last seen. It’s less than ten miles and along a highway. I did not actually see him; I surmised his presence from some unaccounted-for gunfire.”

Sir Peter’s eyes flashed. “You want an excuse to look for him.”

“No,” said Wong. “Saddam is the primary mission.”

“Already declared dead?” Paddington pursed his lips, thinking. “A Lieutenant Dixon, I believe. Working with one of your Delta Force teams. Oh, now I understand — he was with your A-10A squadron. Ah. Very sentimental of you, Bristol. Uncharacteristic. Hmmm. Happens in a war zone, I suppose.”

“If the opportunity presents itself, I will look for him,” said Wong. “But that would not be the focus of the mission.”

Paddington shook his head and concentrated on his martini. This time he merely passed the glass in front of the vermouth bottle.

“Will you participate in a planning session with CentCom?” asked Wong.

“Surely I don’t owe you that, do I?”

“There was Rumania.”

Paddington sighed. “If my commander orders it.”

“He already has,” said Wong.

“As I feared.” He eyed his freshly poured drink, then took a sip. “Pity,” he said, addressing the glass. “I seem to have put in a touch too much vermouth.”

“Happens in a war zone,” said Wong.

“Quite.”

CHAPTER 3

Captain John “Doberman” Glenon stepped back from the nose of his A-10A Thunderbolt II fighter-bomber, preparing to administer a preflight up-and-at-‘em good luck slap to the business end of its 30 mm Avenger Gatling gun. Before he could do so, however, he was thrown off balance by a blow to his shoulder blades so severe it could only have come from a concussion grenade.

Or his wingmate and best friend, Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke.

“Yo, Dog Man, you ready to kick this dump or what?” demanded A-Bomb, grinning behind a steaming cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

And it definitely was Dunkin’ Donuts, since it was in an oversized Big Gulp cup.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that, especially this early in the morning,” said Doberman, shaking off A-Bomb’s chuck.

“Touchy,” said A-Bomb, gurgling his coffee. “Gotchya good luck charm, I see,” he added nodding at the small silver cross Doberman had pinned to the chest of his flightsuit.

Doberman felt his face flush. Until a few days ago, he wouldn’t have been caught dead believing in good luck charms, let alone pinning one to his chest. But the last few days had taught him not to spit Fate — or superstition — in the eye.

Still, he didn’t like to admit that he might actually believe in luck or good fortune, not even to A-Bomb.

“Ain’t nothing,” he said.

“Shit, Tinman says its voodoo. Or whatever the hell he says in that accent of his. His own personal language.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s good luck and maybe it’s not,” said Doberman. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“What I’m talkin’ about,” said A-Bomb.

“Looks good to go, yes sirs?” said Tech Sergeant Rebecca Rosen, ducking out from under the wing on the other side of the plane.

Sergeant Rosen, a technical wizard and crew chief of considerable standing, posed the question as a stated and accepted matter of fact. Indeed, though Rosen was operating with a minimal support team — and even less sleep — she had thoroughly examined the aircraft prior to the pilot’s arrival at the maintenance pit, which amounted to a small piece of tarmac nudged against the sand at the forward operating area in northwestern Saudi Arabia. “We’re going to schedule that right engine for a complete overhaul when you get back to the Home Drome,” she added. “But it’s fine for now, assuming you don’t do something stupid like suck some sand through it. You won’t, will you?”

Coming from the mouth of any other sergeant in the Air Force, the words would have seemed like an insult to Doberman, whose temper was even shorter than his five-four frame. But the captain was hopelessly in love with this sergeant, though he hadn’t been able to tell her yet. And in fact, he was increasingly tongue-tied around her — which explained why all he could do was stare into her eyes.

“I’ll set up the maintenance on it myself,” added Rosen. “I’m supposed to be catching a flight back to Home Drome in a few hours. Assuming I can’t talk the Capo out of it.”

“Capo” was Chief Master Sergeant Allen Clyston, capo di tutti capi, and wizard of wizards. He ran Devil Squadron. The unit was commanded by Colonel Knowlington and staffed by a fine collection of officers, but like any efficient military organization the chief master sergeants ran things. And Clyston was the CHIEF, with all capital letters — the squadron’s master of fate and minder of souls.

Rosen smiled, and Doberman felt his knees starting to tremble.

No shit.

“Relax, Captain. I’m just being cautious,” she said. “Plane can go at least another hundred hours without fiddling with the motor or anything else. I promise. Honest. It’s showroom pretty.”

“Planes look weird,” said A-Bomb.

“Captain?” asked Rosen.

“No bombs. No Mavs,” said A-Bomb, shaking his head sadly. “No rockets. Nothing. Naked. What I’m talking about here is nude. Out of uniform. Obscene. Got to be a reg against it.”

“We’re flying straight to Fahd,” snapped Doberman. “What do you want to do, bomb Riyadh?”

“If it needs bombing, I’m up for it,” said A-Bomb. He slapped the front of Doberman’s Hog. “Even the Gat’s empty.”

“Begging your pardon, but your cannon has been reloaded,” said Rosen in a tone that suggested she wasn’t begging anything. “As is Captain Glenon’s. And he has fresh Sidewinders.”

Her voice softened ever so slightly when she mentioned the air-to-air missiles, and she glanced back at Glenon. Last night, Doberman had made Hog history by using the Sidewinder in a dogfight — even better, he had managed to nail a MiG in what had to rate as the most lopsided battle since open cockpit P-26s tangled with Japanese Zeroes at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Doberman had, in fact, saved Rosen’s life — as well as the lives of three other people aboard a small AH-6 fleeing Iraqi air space.

But as far as the world was concerned, Doberman’s exploit hadn’t occurred. Command had declared that the need to keep ground operations north of the border secret extended to the aircraft supporting those operations. In other words, Doberman’s flight hadn’t happened, and therefore the shoot-down hadn’t happened — officially.

Unofficially, every member of the A-10 community either knew about the shoot-down or would shortly. Glenon wouldn’t get a medal or headlines, but he’d be stood plenty of beers. And knowing he’d save Rosen felt loads better to Doberman than taking salutes from a dozen dumbass generals.

As for kissing her…

That would have to wait. Doberman sighed as the sergeant turned her attention back to A-Bomb, who was whining about not getting a full complement of Mavericks, or at least cluster bombs, beneath his wings for the routine ferry flight home. The tech sergeant demonstrated her experience in grade by restricting herself to a single smirk as she walked away, leaving the two jocks to saddle up and get on with the morning flight.

From a pilot’s point of view, flying the Warthog was a relatively straight-forward operation. The A-10A personified the concept of no frills flying. Its cockpit would have been familiar to the P-26 pilot.

Well, some of it, at least. No P-26 pilot ever dreamed of a heads-up display, and even though it was slightly underpowered and agonizing slow by contemporary standards, its twin turbos pumped Doberman into the sky at a pace that would have left the P-26 pilot gasping.

Glenon eased his stick back gently, the Hog’s fuel-filled wings lifting the plane easily into the sky. Unlike nearly every other jet designed after the 1940s, the A-10A’s wings were not swept back, part of a design strategy to enhance low-speed/low-altitude maneuverability. The fuselage’s rather odd shape — it looked like a beached whaleboat with wings — was the result of two other design strategies: survivability and maximum firepower. A good hunk of the front end weight came from a ring of titanium that protected the pilot’s sides and fanny from artillery fire. The rest came from the Avenger 30 mm cannon, arguably the most important feature of the plane. The Gatling-style cannon spat a mixture of incendiary and uranium-tipped slugs custom-designed to unzip heavy armor — and not incidentally obliterate everything else.

Airborne, gear stowed, Doberman walked his eyes across the wall of gauges in front of him, checking his sense of the plane against the cold data of the indicators. A small TV screen used to target Maverick air-to-ground missiles sat in the upper right-hand corner of the dash; without any AGMs aboard, it would remain blank the entire flight. Below the screen were two sets of gauges monitoring the General Electric turbofans that hung in front of the tail. Relatively quiet as well as efficient, the TF-34s hummed at spec, propelling the A-10A toward its 387-nautical-miles-per-hour cruising speed, which Doberman would achieve at five thousand feet, give or take an inch.

“Devil One, this is Two. I have your six,” said A-Bomb, drawing his plane into trail position behind Doberman.

“One,” acknowledged Doberman over the short-range Fox Mike or FM radio.

“Kick butt sun,” said A-Bomb.

Doberman grunted at the scenery and checked his INS guidance system. Preprogrammed way-points helped the pilots make sure they were on course as they flew. Hog drivers also carried old-fashioned paper maps, though by now Doberman and A-Bomb had so much experience flying over northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq that they could almost tell where they were by looking at the dunes.

Almost.

“So Dog Man, what’s the first thing you’re going to do as squadron DO?”

“Who says I’m going to be squadron DO? I’m only a captain.”

“You’re a high-time Hog driver, the squadron’s longest in service pilot, and all-around peachy-keen guy,” answered A-Bomb. “Besides, Skull loves your ass.”

“They’ll probably bring somebody in from the outside.”

“Nah. You da man.”

“I don’t want the headaches.” Doberman snapped off the mike button and rechecked his instruments. DO stood for Director of Operations. Traditionally, the DO rated as the number-two man behind the squadron commander. Devil Squadron wasn’t particularly traditional — it had been thrown together from a bunch of discarded planes, its pilots shanghaied and “volunteered” from other units. It had an extremely bare support structure, with a short chain of command and a relatively thin roster of fliers. But it also had an amazingly high sortie rate and had already dropped more than one million pounds of bombs, missiles, and curses on the enemy. A lot of bang for the buck, as A-Bomb would put it.

All of which meant Devil Squadron’s DO worked twice as hard as he would in another unit. The last DO, Major James “Mongoose” Johnson, had been sent home after being shot down, injured, and rescued. Doberman had never gotten along with him; from his point of view, Johnson tended to be a bit of a prig and was always on his butt for little bullshit things. It wasn’t just Doberman, either. He seemed to think he had to be everywhere, looking over everything. He rode the maintenance people especially hard; Glenon couldn’t go near the hangars without hearing somebody bitch about him. But Mongoose hadn’t been the worst DO Glenon had ever served with, and Doberman could have put up with the jerk for as long as necessary, especially if it meant he didn’t get tagged with the gig.

“Ah, you’re bullshitting me,” said A-Bomb. “Once you’re DO, you’re on your way. Stepping stone to general. Shit, with that shootdown, you’ll be wearing stars next week. Just remember me when you’re in the Pentagon. Score some tickets for a RedSkins game, okay?”

“Seeing stars, maybe.”

“General Dog Face. Probably have your own box at RFK, right?”

“Who the hell said I ever, ever wanted to be a general?” blustered Doberman. “And I thought we were flying silent com.”

“Silent com? Can you do that in a Hog?”

A call from the AWACS controller monitoring their sector ended the banter.

“Devil Flight, this is Coyote,” said the controller, who was aboard the Boeing E-3 Sentry aircraft orbiting to the south.

Doberman acknowledged, verifying their course and status.

“Can you handle a detour?” asked the controller. “Army unit near the border has a situation and needs some support. You’re the closest flight.”

“Give us the coordinates,” answered Doberman, touching Tinman’s medal with his thumb before nudging the Hog northward.

CHAPTER 4

Captain Lars Warren took a deep breath — his fifth in perhaps the last twenty seconds — and fixed his glare on the runway in the distance. It was his second approach to King Fahd; he’d aborted his first landing attempt when he realized he was going too fast to land safely.

That was an excuse. He’d aborted it because he’d panicked. And it was happening again. Even worse than before.

His pinkie began to quiver. Lars glanced at his hands on the steering yoke of the big four-engine plane. His fingers’ light-brown flesh had turned violet from the pressure he was exerting. Lars pushed his right elbow further into his stomach, trying to keep the tremor from extending to the rest of his fingers. It was terrible flying posture — it was terrible posture, period — but he wasn’t thinking about that; all he was trying to do was land his Hercules C-130 in one piece.

The thing was, he’d landed Herks maybe a thousand times before. He’d landed this very plane at least twenty times, including twice on this long, sturdy, and accommodating strip. It wasn’t difficult — the high-winged transport was an extremely stable and generally forgiving aircraft. In many respects it was actually easier to fly than the 737 he had been flying three days ago when his Air National Guard Unit was ordered into the Gulf to spell other units.

Lars was a good pilot. In fact, he was better than good; he’d been up for an assignment as a training supervisor at the airline before the Gulf War complicated things. He had had flown 707s and Dash-8s and C-141s and a KC-10 and so many C-130s he could do it all in his sleep.

But he was having trouble landing. He was having trouble flying. And everyone on the flight deck knew it.

“Gear set,” said his copilot. His tone was gentle, but part of Warren bristled as if the man had cursed him for being a failure and a coward.

The rest of him trembled, just afraid.

Afraid of what?

Afraid of flying.

Hell no. No way. Flying was walking, with a checklist. Shit. He could fly in his sleep.

Afraid of being shot down?

He was flying a transport, for christsake. He was behind the lines — he always flew behind the lines. Way, way, way behind the lines. No one was going to shoot at him. He’d been here for two whole days and last night’s random Scud attack was the closest he’d come to anything remotely warlike.

But that had unnerved him. He’d been preparing to take off when the alert came in.

The warhead had landed on the other side of the country, but it had shaken him up. Still, when the all-clear came they went ahead with the mission, a routine supply hop. He’d done okay, though little things had bothered him. He’d forgotten to ask the copilot for the crosswind correction — not a big deal. He’d bounced a little on takeoff to come back — something he never, ever did, but no big deal.

Now though, this was a big deal. Lars felt his legs turn to water as the edge of the runway loomed ahead. Hot air rose in waves from the concrete. In just a few seconds it would be buffeting his wings.

If he let it.

Shit. All he had to do was skim in. Everything was perfect. Let the plane land.

Give it to his copilot.

No!

His copilot was talking to him. The tower was talking to him. A plane — a loaded Warthog — was on the runway, on the runway.

In the way.

What the hell?

Abort.

Abort!

“Captain?”

Lars snapped his head toward his copilot. As he did, he realized the A-10A wasn’t moving on the runway. It was well off to the side in the maintenance area, being prepared for a morning mission.

Nothing was in his way. His brain had done a mind flip, constructing bogies to spook him.

God, help me, he thought to himself. I’m losing it.

A pain shot through his chest, striking so hard he lost his breath mid-gulp.

Heart attack.

It’s just panic, he told himself.

“Captain?”

“Yeah, I’m landing,” Warren said, not caring how ludicrous it sounded. He pushed his elbows in and closed his eyes — actually closed his eyes — as the wheels skipped and screeched but finally rolled smooth against the tarmac. For a second his entire world turned black; for a second his addled mind completely lost its grip, furling and swirling in a darkness filled with bullets and missiles, Scuds and MiGs and SAMs. Then slowly, very, very slowly, the fog lifted. He was able to open his eyes; he realized he had already begun applying brakes. His copilot was busy on his side of the console; they had landed in one piece.

“No offense, Lars,” said the copilot as they found their way toward the hangar where they were assigned, “but, uh, you okay?”

Warren bit back the impulse to ask if the man — a young, white captain whom he didn’t know very well — was going to report him.

What would he report? That he came in too fast? That he seemed to hesitate at the last second?

That he closed his eyes?

That Lars Warren was petrified, twenty-three years after his first solo. That Lars Warren, who as a fourteen-year-old had single-handedly broken up an armed bank robbery by tackling a robber, had suddenly become a coward at forty-three. All because of a random Scud attack that had been thwarted by Patriot missiles miles and miles away.

Or because he’d always been a coward, deep down.

Lars said nothing, blowing air out through his clenched teeth and nodding instead.

CHAPTER 5

Doberman scanned the ripples in the sand, mechanically moving his eyes back and forth across the terrain as he pushed Devil One toward the trouble spot just over the Saudi border. Intelligence and the mission planners divided the desert into neat kill boxes, subdividing Iraq into a precise checkerboard that could be measured to the meter. But the nice clean lines got wavy as soon as you pushed your plane low enough to actually see anything. Distances blurred, coordinates began to jumble. For all the high-tech paraphernalia, war in the desert still came down to eyeballs and pilot sense. Glenon had a healthy helping of both — but he wasn’t Superman, and he felt himself starting to get pissed as he stared down at the area where the American troops should have been. The pilot had a notoriously short fuse, but even he knew he was in a particularly bad mood all of a sudden. Maybe it was because he hadn’t had that much sleep; maybe he was angry with himself for getting tongue tied with Rosen.

Or maybe it was what A-Bomb would call PBS — Pre-Blowup-Syndrome.

The ladder on the HUD altimeter display notched steadily downward as Doberman hunted for the slightest sign of the conflict the AWACS had sent them to contain. He kicked below three thousand feet without any sign of the unit that had called for air support — without, in fact, seeing anything but yellowish blurs of sand. Finally, a thick scar edged against the earth in the right quadrant of his windshield. Doberman nudged his stick, steadying the A-10 toward what he thought was the thick trench that marked the Saudi-Iraqi border for much of its length. But the manmade trench was actually a British army position two miles back from the border and not precisely parallel to it; when he realized his mistake he cursed over the open mike.

“My eyes are screwing me this morning,” he told A-Bomb.

“Sun’s wicked. I got dust bunnies, northwest, uh, off your nose at eleven o’clock, no, let’s call it five degrees on the compass. Could be our friends.”

A-Bomb was behind him by a mile and at least two thousand feet higher. But sure enough, when Doberman looked in the proper direction he found a small bubble of dust.

“How the hell did you see that?” he asked, snapping onto course.

“Carrot cake,” said A-Bomb. “No better source of Vitamin E. Enhances your vision rods. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of grabbing another bite, so long as I’m playing Tonto back here.”

“You’re eatin’ carrot cake?”

“Hey, man’s got to have breakfast,” replied A-Bomb. “I figured the bacon would have been cold by the time I got a chance to eat it. One of these days, I’m figuring out how to get a microwave in here. Course, nuked bacon tastes like cardboard. What I really need is a deep fryer. Could slot it in over the radio gear, if I can get one of Clyston’s techies to order the parts.”

Anybody else would have been kidding.

Doberman reached to the armament panel, readying the cannon. He could now see two distinct smudges on the ground. One seemed to consist of a dozen ants surrounding a small pickle they’d stolen from a picnic. The second, behind them by about a mile, looked like two large and angry bees.

He nudged toward the bees, setting up for a straight-in dive across their path. They were tanks, moving at a fair clip.

“Rat Patrol to Devil Flight, Rat Patrol at frequency ten-niner looking for Devil Flight. Understand you are in our box. Please acknowledge.”

“Devil Flight,” answered Doberman. “I have two enemy vehicles in sight. I’ll be on them in about ten seconds. Keep running.”

“Negative, negative. We’re stationary. We see you. We’re southeast of you, a mile directly south of the truck and the men,” said the soldier. “They’re not the problem. Repeat, they’re not the problem. Don’t hit them.”

Before Doberman could ask what the hell was going on, the tanks stopped moving. A large mushroom appeared near the truck and its attendant ants. They veered off to the right, followed by another mushroom.

“T-72s or maybe Chinese 69’s in that second group,” announced A-Bomb. “What’s the deal, Dog Man?”

“I don’t know. I see the tanks but I don’t have Rat Patrol. Let’s take a turn while we sort this out. Cover my butt.”

“Butt’s cleaner than the floor of the Route 17K diner in Monroe, New York,” said A-Bomb.

Doberman took that for a compliment.

“Rat Patrol,” added A-Bomb. “I like that. Nothing like taking your inspiration from a sixties TV show.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Better than Ozzie and Harriet. Or My Mother the Car.”

As Doberman swung the Hog around, he nudged the GAU to its high setting, the preferred choice for breaking serious armor; roughly 65 slugs a second would pour from the nose when he pressed the trigger. Though it allowed for a more potent burst with less time on target, the higher rate also increased the amount of gas expelled by the powerful cannon, not insignificant at low altitude because it was possible to choke the engines. Besides, the high rate was overkill for soft targets, where the normal 30 bullets were second were more than enough to guarantee obliteration.

“Devil One to Rat Patrol. I see tanks firing on a truck. Are these both Iraqis? Explain to me what the hell’s going on,” he told the ground unit.

“They’re both Iraqis, yes. The first group is trying to surrender to us,” the ground unit’s com specialist explained. “Armor’s trying to stop them. We’re not sure exactly what’s after them. They started out talking to us on the radio but we’ve lost contact. They’re about to get nailed.”

“I don’t have your position,” Doberman warned.

The last thing he wanted to do was whack good guys. But the coordinates the soldier started feeding him only made him more confused, and there wasn’t time to pull out the paper map and sort the whole damn thing out. He had dropped through 1,500 feet and was lined up perfectly to cross the path of the lead tank — he had to go for it now or bank around, let the tanks get off another four or five shots.

Doberman pushed his stick, putting the Hog into a shallow dive. He saw something on his left, a U with dots in the sand, a mile and half away, closer to the tanks than the truck.

Had to be Rat Patrol.

Balls.

A pair of mushrooms erupted on the ground about two hundred yards from the truck. It veered to the right, then stopped moving.

“Okay, Rat Patrol. Hang tight. I got ya,” said Doberman. “A-Bomb, the Ural is surrendering to our guys, so leave him alone. I got the tank.”

A-Bomb’s acknowledgment was lost in the fuzz of another transmission overriding the squadron frequency. Doberman wouldn’t have heard it anyway — he was all cannon now, the targeting bulls-eye centered on the front end of the Russian-made T-72. While not to be taken lightly, the 40-ton tank was at a severe disadvantage against the Hog; having stopped to get a better shot at the fleeing deserters, it was an even easier target. Doberman nudged his stick gently to the right, then squeezed the trigger. The first shells, fired at just under 750 meters away, missed low, but that was merely a technicality — the stream moved up, following Doberman’s stare and the plane’s momentum, uranium and high explosive dancing through the steel plates as if they were paper. The T-72’s gun retracted, then burst apart, choking on its own charge. The turret opened like a rose bursting to meet the morning sun.

Doberman jammed his pedals, swinging his tail hard to the left as he tried to yank the Hog around and line up on the other tank. He’d come all the way down to five hundred feet, still descending, but wanted the other T-72. He was so close he could see the gunner at the top cursing as he splayed shells from the twin 7.62 mm machine-gun in his direction. Something plinked against the Hog’s armored windscreen as Doberman pushed his trigger to fire. He flinched, then tightened his grip on the stick, nailing down the trigger. The bullets spat off to the right, drifting with his momentum. Doberman worked the rudder pedals, giving a little body English with his shoulder as he tried to walk the cannon fire onto the target. He got a few rounds near the front fender but then just had to give up, the desert yawning up at him.

Doberman pulled back, jerking four g’s as the Hog angled her wings upwards. He cleared the ground by about fifty feet — too close for comfort, but not as close as he thought he’d cut it.

He was just starting to climb when A-Bomb shouted a warning in his ear.

“Missile launch! Missile launch from the Ural! Those fuckers weren’t giving up, Dog Man!”

CHAPTER 6

He woke up thirsty, his throat hard, his mouth hot.

Lieutenant William “BJ” Dixon stared for a minute at the hazy blue sky, sore, cold, tired, but more than anything else thirsty. He remembered the small canteen of water on his belt and reached for it, his arm and shoulder joints cracking. The bottle felt like ice, and he realized he, too, must be freezing, though all he could feel was his thirst and the scorching heat in his mouth. Fingers fumbling, he rolled himself onto his stomach and got on his knees, then finally managed a drink. The water fell across his teeth to his tongue and into the back of his mouth; he began to choke. His body wanted water and it wanted air both — he choked and he gasped and he tried to drink, and the only thing he could manage was to fall forward against the rock-strewn side of the ditch where he’d spent the night, stomach heaving, body retching. He had nothing to give, nothing to puke except mucus and viscera, the scrapings of his soul. He curled in the dust, muscles spasming, chest and stomach wrenching against the hard Iraqi soil. A metallic taste mixed with the vaguely bloody flavor of vomit in his mouth.

When it was over, Dixon lay against the rocks. He stayed there a long while. His knee hurt and his shoulder had been whacked out of joint and maybe he’d broken a rib and his head felt like it had been squeezed into sardine tin, but considering the other possibilities, it wasn’t that bad. Two hundred miles inside of enemy territory, without hope of getting out, it wasn’t that bad.

He stayed there a while longer.

Not bad at all.

“When did I begin lying to myself?” he asked finally, speaking the words in a whisper. He pushed himself upright and took a tiny sip of the water, then another, then a third.

There was a sound in the distance. Trucks.

Dixon recapped the water and reached down to grab his desert chip campaign hat, a “present” from the Delta unit he’d parachuted into Iraq with as a ground FAC helping coordinate strikes on Scuds. BJ grabbed the AK-47 he’d taken yesterday from a dead Iraqi and clambered up the side of the dry streambed, staring across the scratchy terrain toward the highway.

Two Iraqi troop trucks approached from the west. The trucks moved steadily though not quickly. They were traveling in the direction of a missile launching site that American fighter-bombers had attacked yesterday. The highway swerved southwards, toward Dixon, to skirt a hill. There were no houses or other buildings in sight; the area was apparently used as farmland, crisscrossed with irrigation ditches, though BJ guessed it wasn’t particularly productive. The local population seemed confined to a small village on the other side of the hill; there had been Iraqi troops there yesterday, and he hadn’t gotten close enough to see more than the minaret of a mosque.

As the trucks followed the highway, turning in his direction, Dixon flopped against the ditch, ducking from view. But as he lay against the rocks he asked himself why. Hiding just delayed the inevitable.

He wasn’t going to surrender, nor was he going to allow himself to be captured. But it was senseless to think he might somehow make it back to allied lines. A huge desert lay between him and Saudi Arabia.

So there were two choices. Kill himself, or make the Iraqis kill him.

Better to make the Iraqis do it. At least he might take a few of them with him.

BJ stood, pulling the rifle up, cocking it under his arm. But by now the trucks were past him. He swept his aim to follow, squeezed the trigger — a bullet sailed from the rifle, skipping into the dirt less than fifty feet away.

The trucks kept moving, oblivious. The highway was nearly a mile away; if the drivers heard the crack of the gun over their engines they chose to ignore it. Dust billowed in a thin swirl behind them, funneling over a shallow rise as they disappeared. There was another highway as well as a turnoff for a village somewhere beyond the rise, but it seemed as if the trucks had been swallowed by the blue fringe at the edge of the universe.

As Dixon stared at the disappearing film of dust, he realized he was yelling, screaming at the Iraqis to come back and fight. He pointed the AK-47 upwards and kicked off a short burst, then let the gun hang down. Slowly, he craned his head left and right, twisting it nearly 360 degrees. He was alone.

His stomach reminded him of his hunger with a low rumble, a gurgle that sounded more like a gasp for help. With nothing to eat, he took another swig from the canteen instead, then another. He had about half the bottle left, a few ounces — it would be gone before noon.

So that was his deadline.

Better to take a few of them out when he went.

Slowly, Dixon looked left and right, turning his whole body this time. Satisfied that he was truly alone, he began to walk toward the left side of the hill, heading in the direction of a ramshackle road that led to the village.

CHAPTER 7

Major Horace Gordon Preston hopped out of the small C-12 Huron that had ferried him across from Tabuk to his new squadron. After flying F-15s, anything was likely to seem slow, but the bare-bones two-engined Beech — essentially a Model 200 with Air Force insignia — had trudged across the Saudi peninsula, its three-pronged propellers huffing and puffing the whole way. He was a terrible passenger to begin with, but sitting in the C-12 was like rolling a heavy rock up Purgatory Hill.

An apt transition to his new assignment, Preston thought as he stepped away from the plane and got his bearings.

Yesterday, Hack had nailed an Iraqi MiG and damaged another. His reward came swiftly: a long-awaited promotion to squadron commander.

Except, not quite. Because the hot-shot pointy-nose fast-mover zipper-suit jock had been made only second in command — director of operations — not squadron commander.

Worse, far far far worse, he had somehow been placed with an A-10A squadron.

Preston bit back his bile and asked an enlisted man near the parking area where the 535^th was located. The man pointed toward an A-10 maintenance area on the other side of the base, and said the trailer unit that served as its headquarters was located just beyond it.

“They call it Hog Heaven,” said the airman enthusiastically, as if he were pointing out Old Faithful.

Hack grunted and began walking in that direction. He had his gear in a small overnight bag — the rest was to follow him to the base.

His new assignment offered two consolations. One was the fact that, on paper, the squadron was actually listed as a wing. While at present this didn’t fool anyone — Saddam especially — he had been told more A-10s were expected to be added in the near future, in essence creating a new squadron. He’d be in line for that command.

The other consolation was a rumor that the present commander wasn’t cutting the mustard, in which case Hack would get his slot. In fact, a friendly general had hinted that was the whole reason for his appointment. Of course, the general worked in Washington, so there was no telling what, if anything, the hint was worth.

But why would Preston want to command a unit of Hogs?

He wouldn’t. Preston had flown A-10s for two of the worst years of his life. He had angled and pleaded and connived the whole time to get out of them to a real airplane. And now he was back.

A Humvee sat near a short fence beyond a low-slung building on his left. Two airmen sat inside, their backs turned away from the ramp area. Preston went to the Hummer, opened the rear door and hoisted himself and his small bag inside.

“Uh, excuse me,” said the driver sharply.

“Take me over to the headquarters for the 535^th,” Preston said, settling into his seat.

“Uh, sir?” said the other airman.

“That would be Major. Come on, let’s go.”

The men — clearly not here for him — stared at him from the front of the vehicle. Preston returned their glare, confident that they would comply with his order without further instruction.

And so they did. The driver slapped the vehicle into motion, smashing the gas pedal and wheeling it around sharply, obviously trying to call attention to the fact that he wasn’t happy. But then again Preston wasn’t either, and so he ignored the bumpy ride.

Hack had never been to King Fahd before, and after the relative order of his Eagle base at Tabuk, the place looked cluttered and confused. Besides hosting every Warthog in the Gulf, Fahd was home port to an assortment of Spec Ops and SAR craft — C-130s, PAVE Low helicopters, and the like. An odd assortment of support craft and stragglers had also found their way here: a Navy A-6 that had suffered battle damage and couldn’t make it back to its carrier, a pair of OA-6 Broncos training with Delta troops as advanced scouts, even an ancient civilian Constellation that had taken refuge after escaping from Kuwait. Preston stared at the planes, unimpressed; slow movers all, they reinforced his sense of exile. The ride took him through the area where the 535^th‘s Hogs were stored and maintained — it was easy to spot, with a large banner across the top of the largest metal building declaring it “Oz: Home of the 535^th ‘Devil’ Squadron.”

A slightly smaller banner hung beneath it: “Eat This, Saddam.”

Preston shook his head. That would have to go.

“Hog Heaven, sir,” announced the driver as the Humvee skidded to a stop a few yards from a patched-together trailer complex off the side of the main area of the base. Closer to the planes and the Spec Ops areas than the other A-10A commands, the ramshackle building looked like a carny camp without the charm.

Preston pulled himself out of the Humvee, which jerked away before he could properly close the door. Hack walked across the patched concrete and climbed up the rickety stairs. Inside, the building seemed to sway as he passed down the hallway.

In the civilian world, seven o’clock in the morning was relatively early; most people would still be making their way to work. Hog squadron was experiencing a lull as well — but only because most its planes had already left on the morning missions assigned to it by the “frag” or fragment of the Air Tasking Order that laid out the allied game plan for the air war. The squadron shared quarters with an intelligence group at the far end of the hallway; Preston, with no signs on the doors to guide him, walked toward the buzz. As he passed a room on the right he stopped short — it was a large lounge dominated by a massive projection-screen TV. The set was tuned to CNN, where Bernard Shaw flashed his impressive eyebrows as he spoke into a microphone.

The CNN screen changed. It was night. Hoses of red tracers filled the sky. Preston stepped into the room as words appeared in the lower right. “Downtown Baghdad.” Suddenly light flashed in the lower right corner of the screen — a bomb or missile hitting. The camera jumped. More explosions, secondaries most likely. Fire filled the sky.

The scene changed. It was morning. “Live,” according to the words at the bottom.

Buildings. “An Iraqi Factory” claimed the words.

Undoubtedly a lie, Hack thought.

“Excuse me,” said a gravelly voice behind him.

Preston stepped to the side to get out of the way. The other man walked inside, past the large, overstuffed couches to the side the room. Three large refrigerators and bins of junk-food snacks sat along the wall, next to a long wooden table. There was a coffee machine there — next to a bean grinder. The officer poured himself a cup without glancing at him.

It was Michael Knowlington. Hack had worked with him, briefly, during an assignment at the Pentagon about a year before. They hadn’t gotten along particularly well.

“You’re early,” said Knowlington without looking up. “Good.”

Before Preston could answer, the colonel had replaced the coffee pot and begun striding from the room. All Hack could do was follow down the hall to a small office on the right. The colonel took no notice of him, and in fact had reached to close the door behind him when Preston pushed himself into the doorway.

“Colonel, I —”

“Come in if you’re coming,” said Knowlington.

In contrast to the room with the TV, the squadron commander’s officer was as spartan as a porta-john on a remote campsite. There were exactly three pieces of furniture — a three-drawer metal desk pushed against the wall and two metal folding chairs, neither of which had any padding. The walls were blank; a set of blinds hung down over the window. Knowlington sat in the chair behind the desk, turning it to face the other seat, which was against the wall near the door.

Guy was so low on the totem pole, Preston thought to himself, he couldn’t even get furniture. Obviously the rumors must be true.

“I understand you helped out near Apache yesterday evening,” said Knowlington. “Thanks.”

“Apache? You mean the MiG that attacked the helicopter?”

Knowlington nodded. Preston and his wingmate had actually been involved — though at the last minute, and then largely as spectators to the main event. While they tangled with several MiGs that had apparently been launched as decoys, two Hogs had somehow managed to fight off a Fishbed closing in on a Spec Ops helo.

More than fought it off — one of the Hogs had nailed the SOB, an incredible feat in the slow moving A-10.

“Those were your planes?” Preston asked.

“Two of my best pilots. They should be back soon. They’ll be here for your coming out party.”

Anyone else would have said the last words with a smile. Knowlington said them as if he were reading off a list of numbers on an engineering chart.

Hack nodded. On the flight out he’d considered whether he ought to say something about burying the hatchet or getting along or letting bygones be bygones — make some reference, at least, to their “disagreement” in D.C. But now that he was here, sitting two feet from Knowlington, he didn’t know what to say.

At least he didn’t smell like booze.

“I’d like to get to work,” Hack told him. “First thing, I think, is review the duty roster, then look over the maintenance. I want to make sure the planes are ready to go. Right off, I thought I would —”

“I believe you’ll find that Chief Master Sergeant Clyston has everything under control.”

“Clyston?”

“You know Allen?”

“No. But who’s the officer in charge of…”

“If there’s a readiness problem with the planes, it comes straight to me,” said Knowlington. “Clyston oversees the maintenance sections. He reports directly to me.”

“Ordinarily…”

“We’re not fully staffed,” said Knowlington. His voice remained as neutral as ever. “That’s an advantage, because it means we don’t have a lot of extraneous bullshit and red tape. We have just enough people to get our job done. Most days.”

Not a laugh, not a hint of humor.

“Well I’m not in favor of extraneous bullshit either,” started Hack. His “but” never got out of his mouth.

“Good. I’m due in Riyadh in two hours and I have some details to look after,” said Skull, standing and opening the door for him. “We’ll introduce you formally at 1300 or thereabouts. Bernie’ll get you situated. He’s down the hall with the Intelligence people; we share resources.”

There was just the hint of irony in Knowlington’s voice. Angry at being brushed off but not exactly sure what to do or say, Preston got up as deliberately as he could, only just managing not to slam the door behind him.

CHAPTER 8

Doberman cursed himself as he whacked the Hog engines to maximum power, goosing the throttle for all he was worth. Diversionary flares shot out of their wingtip dispensers, bursting in the path of the shoulder-fired missile.

Truth was, he’d been caught flat-footed, at very low altitude without a lot of flight energy or momentum to help him escape. He hadn’t expected someone to be sitting down there behind him with a heat seeker.

Stupidity.

No, worse: Pilot arrogance, one of the seven deadly sins. He’d flown like he was invincible and now had to pay the piper. The only question was whether he’d pay with sweat or blood.

The SA-7 the Iraqi soldier had launched at him was a relatively primitive heat-seeking missile. Its nearest Western equivalent was the Redeye missile, a 1960s’ man-portable weapon outclassed by contemporary SAMs like the Stinger and the Russian SA-16, to say nothing of systems like the British Blowpipe or the Swedish RBS 70. Still, the SA-7 flew at just under 1,000 miles an hour and had a range of two miles; the Hog was well within its lethal envelope. About the only thing Doberman had going for him was its fuse — a direct-action device that required the missile to actually hit something before detonating the RDX/AP explosive.

Of course, Doberman had no way of knowing exactly what had been launched at him. Nor did he do much in the way of analyzing the odds. He concentrated on pushing the Hog into a series of hard, swaggering turns, lighting off flares as he went.

He might have prayed or wished for luck, but there wasn’t time.

CHAPTER 9

As A-Bomb shouted his warning, Doberman ducked left and tossed flares, obviously in control of the situation. So O’Rourke turned his attention toward meting out the only acceptable punishment for firing on a Hog.

Death. With extreme and radiating prejudice.

The fact that the Iraqis who had fired on his wingmate might have other SAMs at their disposal was irrelevant.

“What I’m talking about here is basic Hog etiquette,” said A-Bomb, as if he had a set of loudspeakers to harangue the Iraqis with, “You have to learn how to be polite.”

Rumor had it that Miss Manners was planning on devoting an entire chapter in her next book to the proper use of 30 millimeter cannon fire at dinner parties. If so, she could have used A-Bomb’s first run as a textbook example — he pushed his nose nearly straight down on the spot where the lingering smoke fingered the guilty party.

The cannon wasn’t really an effective weapon against individual soldiers, who presented a difficult target for an aircraft moving at four hundred miles an hour. Cluster bombs or even old-fashioned iron would have clearly been the weapon of choice, as Miss Manners would undoubtedly note in a well-worded aside at the start of her chapter.

The Iraqis, however, could not afford to wait for the book. The soldiers disappeared in a percolating steam of sand and explosive as A-Bomb rode the trigger for an extra-long burst, the gun’s recoil actually slowing the A-10A’s descent. He worked his rudder pedals to walk the torrent of bullets into a second knot and then over into the troop truck that had accompanied the men, slicing a neat line roughly along the drive shaft, not to mention the rest of the chassis.

There was a bit too much smoke to see the vehicle split in half, and besides, the flames got in the way. Nonetheless, A-Bomb gave himself an attaboy as his crosshairs slipped toward one last knot of soldiers lying in the sand. These men had the audacity to actually fire at him — or at least that seemed to be the implication of the tiny flashes of red coming from their position.

“Definitely not polite,” said A-Bomb, squeezing his trigger. “You gentlemen are going to have to learn not to shoot out of turn. I’m afraid you fall under the jurisdiction of Hog Rule Number 5 — For every action there is an opposite and disproportionate reaction.”

CHAPTER 10

Doberman held the plane steady as a white arrow shot past his canopy. It began to veer across his path but then wobbled and exploded, detonated by its self-destruct mechanism as its fuel gave out. The pilot ducked, though the warhead was too far away to do any damage. He brought the stick back and started to climb, turning around toward the battlefield to get back in the game.

Doberman caught a glimpse of Devil Two diving nearly straight down on the Iraqi truck, smoke pouring from the Gatling gun in its chin. Between the smoke and the glinting sun, the Hog’s dark green skin looked as if she were bathed in perspiration, a magnificent winged beast meting out justice to a parcel of demons escaped from the underworld.

Doberman got back to three thousand feet as he reassessed the battlefield. A-Bomb began recovering at very low altitude, pulling off to the southwest. The Iraqis were either all dead or out of SAMs; Devil Two flew off unscathed.

Which left the T-72 he’d been homing in on when he was so rudely interrupted. The tank commander had taken the course of all intelligent Iraqis — he was turning tail and running away. Dust and sand spewed out behind him.

Doberman eyed his flanks cautiously before attacking. He put the plane into a long but shallow dive, a surfer riding the last wave toward shore. It was a peaceful, gentle maneuver, a glide rather than a plunge, the Thunderbolt II seeming to float downwards on a summer breeze.

Then he blasted the hell out of the bastard with two quick squeezes of the trigger.

The first pack of bullets caught the edge of the tank’s turret like the sharp edge of a crowbar, wedging in and lifting, tossing it off like a discarded bottle cap. The massive sewer cover scraped briefly against the side then plopped into the sand.

The second burst finished off the work, igniting the insides of the Russian-made tank. The heavy slugs of depleted uranium that made up the bulk of the combat mix bounced back and forth in the tank’s interior, but the heavy-lifting had already been done by the very first HE round to slap into the open hull; the three members of the tank crew were incinerated as it ignited a fuel line at the edge of the engine compartment.

Doberman let go of the trigger, shoving his right wing down and pirouetting sharply in the air, turning back toward the border. the other tank lay to his right, the truck to his left. Men lay on the ground around both vehicles. Nothing moved.

The dark shape of A-Bomb’s plane appeared a mile and a half ahead, climbing above him.

“Devil Two, this One,” Doberman said. “You have anything else moving down there?”

“Neg-a-tivo,” said his wingmate. “Clean slate.”

Doberman tensed as he flew toward the position of the soldiers who had called in support. He suspected they were part of the Iraqi plot.

“Rat Patrol to Devil Flight. Shit man, we are sorry about that. Jesus, we’re sorry.”

“Yeah,” said Doberman. He spotted their ditch, or what he thought was their ditch, about a half-mile out at ten o’clock, between his nose and left wing. “A-Bomb, you think these guys are legitimate?” he asked over the short-range frequency, which linked him only to his wingmate.

“AWACS woulda authenticated ‘em,” said A-Bomb.

“Yeah.”

“Got to go with it, Dog,” said A-Bomb.

Glenon scowled beneath his mask but didn’t reply. He hated it when A-Bomb used his serious voice. But his wingman was right — they had to accept that Rat Patrol was authentic.

In theory.

“You got me?” he asked his wingmate.

“I have your lovely effigy within my fierce gaze.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I’m on your ass.”

“Cover me while I buzz these suckers.”

“Dog.”

“Just watch my butt. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” Doberman pumped the throttle and dove the A-10A down, zooming over the American position at all of ten feet AGL. Two round shapes popped up, then hunkered down.

“Shit. What gives, Devil flight?” demanded the soldier.

“Just saying hello,” said Doberman, still not convinced that the soldiers were friends.

A-Bomb in the meantime had hailed the AWACS, filling them in on everything that had happened. The controller assured him that the unit was a legitimate one.

“But what’s that mean, really?” Doberman said to him over the short-range radio as they climbed away from the border. “They have a legitimate frequency and pass words, but that’s it, right? I mean, the controller is sitting in an airplane — he doesn’t know.”

“You’re getting paranoid, Dog Man. You got to lighten up. Everybody can make a mistake.”

“Maybe.” Doberman studied his map and position on the INS. He plotted a new course for home.

“Yeah,” said A-Bomb after he relayed the data. “Looks good.” His voice was nearly drowned out by the strains of “Rocket Queen,” the last song on Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction CD.

“I thought you were laying off the heavy metal,” said Doberman, putting his nose on the new bearings.

“You can’t get enough of the classics,” replied A-Bomb, who had to be the only combat pilot in the world with a flightsuit customized with a full-blown stereo. “I’m thinking of broadening my outlook, though,” added A-Bomb. “I mean, a man has to be open to new experiences. You have to move forward.”

“What do you mean? Rap? More grunge rock?”

“Early Beatles.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Doberman, as if they’d rehearsed it.

CHAPTER 11

Skull shifted on the hard metal chair, sipping the dark black liquid the CentCom staff claimed was coffee and trying to keep from bitching out loud. He’d caught a total of three hours’ sleep last night, including the ten minutes on the Huey hustling here for the high-level briefing session on the “Straw” Mission. But fatigue didn’t bother him — war was a twenty-four hour, do-it-yourself operation, and this particular product had a serious freshness date on it, due to expire in less than fourteen hours. Which meant it was exactly the sort of situation he liked; it kicked his pulse up and tightened his muscles, got his eyes into sharp focus. If anything, he was too awake.

What irked him was the attitude of the CinC staff running the show. It wasn’t just that the Army officers had started frowned the second Wong opened his mouth to begin the briefing. It was the way they frowned — as if Air Force officers had no ability to analyze anything below ten thousand feet, let alone propose and organize a combined ground-air covert operation.

Not that they treated the Delta folks any better.

Maybe it was just an Army thing, but Skull got the impression that they saw the whole thing more as an annoyance than an opportunity. They called it “Strawman” rather than Straw, hinting at the implication that the intelligence was bogus or perhaps even planted. Even the conference area they had been assigned — a basement room in a Saudi government building with two large folding tables for everyone to crowd around — seemed to signal that the mission had something less than top priority.

Officially, the allies weren’t supposed to be targeting Saddam. President George H.W. Bush had even said they wouldn’t during a press conference. But that was BS and everybody knew it. So why were they getting the sneers and knowing glances?

Wong, Knowlington, and the Spec Ops staff had put together a plan for four six-man teams of Delta troopers to make a high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop at 2000 about three miles southwest of the target area. The troopers would coordinate with a flight of F-111s, visually IDing the target before clearing the strike. The fighter-bombers would use laser-guided smart bombs to destroy the convoy. The ground teams would then escape in a pair of PAVE Lows in the early morning hours an hour after the attack, covered by four planes from Devil squadron.

Technically, the A-10s were ill-suited to night-support missions; they’d have to use special Maverick AGMs as night vision equipment if things got heavy. But it was a kludge Skull had made do with a few days before when he’d gone north to rescue one of his men. He expected an argument. He also anticipated that with a target like Saddam in the offing, the brass might want something a little flashier than the earth pigs — AKA as Aardvarks, Varks, and One-Elevens — handling the action. What he wasn’t prepared for was the flat-out statement that the Delta teams couldn’t be made available.

“We’re not risking that many men on this,” said Major Booker, an infantry officer from the CinC staff who was running the meeting. “It means taking away from Scud hunting and that can’t be done. The Scuds are job one.”

“These teams are currently in Riyadh. They’re not even technically reserves,” said Captain Leterri, who was presenting the Delta perspective at the briefing. Leterri looked like he wanted to say something along the lines of, “All they’re doing is jerking off.” Instead, he snorted at the air. The highly trained soldiers in question were, in fact, acting as a bodyguard pool for CentCom and the CinC — not exactly what they wanted to be doing.

Booker raised his shoulders and lowered his head, as if he were an eagle looking down from a craggy perch. The veins popped in his long, sinewy neck. “If the men are available,” he said, “then they should be hunting Scuds.”

Leterri was not be cowed. “They can conduct that mission immediately after this. The PAVE Lows…”

“We’re not risking helicopters that far north.”

“We had PAVE Lows there last night,” snapped Leterri, exasperated.

“Actually, the helicopter in question was a PAVE Hawk,” said Wong. “While operating at the extreme end of it range, it accomplished its mission with typical aplomb.”

“Irrelevant,” snapped Booker. “Anti-aircraft defenses have picked up in the area. We are not risking either PAVE Lows or PAVE Hawks there. The assets are too precious.”

“Aw bullshit, Major,” said Leterri, no longer able to control his frustration. “What the fuck do we have them for if we don’t put them to use? Shit, they got in last night, they’ll get in tonight, they’ll get in tomorrow.”

“We have fresh satellite data,” said Booker. He sounded almost triumphant, and waved to a sergeant near the door, who stepped forward and put the photos on the long table. Wong took them and began studying them. Paddington, one of the two British representatives at the session, leaned over his shoulder and whispered something.

It seemed clear to Skull that Booker’s job was to rain on the parade, scuttling it if possible. He couldn’t let that happen — not because he wanted to nail Saddam, but because he saw the mission as the only chance to search for Dixon. Officially, his lieutenant had been listed as KIA; nobody was going to send a search team looking for him, especially this far north, without very solid evidence that he was alive. This was their best — maybe only — shot at getting him back.

So it was time to take over the meeting.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, speaking in the deceptively soft tone that he had honed through years of maneuvering with the brass. “With all due respect to the other services represented, we have a serious opportunity here, based as much on luck as good intelligence. We only get one shot. The ground team is important, because the planes may need to be directed in at the last minute, depending on what’s going on. We considered using a Pave Penny TSL system, lazing the specific vehicle, and we can still do that if that’s what you’d prefer. But the F-111s can do the targeting on their own if we have the ground team directing…”

“We can’t spare F-111s,” said Booker.

“Why don’t we let Tommy tell us that?” said Skull. He kept his contempt veiled as he motioned to the Black Hole planner officially representing the Air Force theatre commander at the session. Black Hole ran the air war, assigning hit lists to squadrons in a daily briefing or task order known as the ATO, for air tasking order. Knowlington was well-connected with the planners and their bosses, and would never have included the planes in the game plan without having checked to see if they were, indeed, available.

“We can have a flight of F-111s on target whenever you want,” said the captain, Tom Marks.

“What are they tasked for now?” said Booker.

“There are two flights. One is doing RR, bridges and railroads, north of Baghdad, and the other just a generic Scud hunting mission down near…”

“There are no generic Scud missions,” said Booker. “Every damn Scud in the Gulf has to be eliminated.”

“With all due respect,” said Skull, “don’t you feel nailing Saddam is more important than going after the Scuds? Hell, the damn things can’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

“Tell that to the people in Tel Aviv,” said Booker.

“Eliminate Saddam and the war ends.”

“I doubt it. In any event, assassinating world leaders is not one of our war aims.”

“Right,” laughed Skull derisively. Even he had his limits. “What priority do we have, exactly?”

“You have no priority,” said Booker. “This is a high-risk mission.”

“You’re vetoing it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Booker, finally called out, physically stepped back. He glanced at his two aides and gave his shoulders another heave. “The CinC wants it to proceed, if feasible, but with minimal resources. The Scuds must remain a priority. We can’t divert from any other missions.”

“Minimal resources means what?” said Skull.

“No diminishment of the Scud mission. No diminishment of other priorities,” said Booker.

They might have taken a few more turns around that circle had Wong not interrupted.

“The air defenses have definitely been increased,” he said. “And in a most interesting way. Possibly with SA-11s. Very interesting.”

“SA-11s?” said Marks.

“What’s the significance?” asked Booker.

“SA-11s are not known to have been deployed in Iraq since experimental use at the behest of the Soviets during the so-called Iran-Iraq war,” said Wong. He slid the pictures to the center of table and identified three revetments obviously prepared for missile launchers; he explained as an aside that there should be a fourth, though it was not discernible. He then zeroed in on one of the vehicles in the revetments, showing the circumstantial evidence that had led him to conclude it was an SA-11 battery.

“These are clearly placements for two vehicles.” He pointed at the small wedge which represented a parking spot. “Typically, an SA-11 battery would consist of two vehicles, one a radar van located here, the other a four-missile turntable providing 360-degree coverage. The wide envelope would also make sense given this configuration, for the parameters of the acquisition radars would be covered, as you can see.”

Wong quickly traced squiggly circles extending out from his wedges, forming a neat hedge completely covering the approaches to Al Kajuk. A wedge of open space covered the right northwestern corner — obviously where the other battery must be.

“I don’t see a van,” said Tommy.

“Yes, precisely,” said Wong. “It hasn’t been moved in yet. This vehicle here, obscured by the tarp as it moves along the area, is most likely the radar unit. But we can’t be sure. That is why my conclusion is tentative. There is the possibility that they are bluffing. There is also the possibility that this has been established for different missile defenses.” Wong began a dissertation on the amount of space typically cleared for radar trucks and support vehicles, concentrating on the one site which had been worked over by a bulldozer or other earthmover. He could not rule out SA-6s or SA-8s, or even other potentially portable defenses. Skull kept nodding and signaling to him to wrap it up; as usual, Wong was delivering much more detail than necessary.

“No matter what they put there,” said Knowlington finally, cutting him off, “we should prepare for the more capable missiles.”

“Getting Weasels might be a problem,” said Marks, referring to SAM killing Phantoms. “But there’s a flight of Tornadoes available.”

“The Tornadoes would be appropriate,” said Wong. “Their ALARM missiles could accommodate the threat.”

“I agree with Bristol,” said Paddington. “Quite.”

Knowlington had caught a sniff of gin on the British intelligence expert’s breath when they were introduced. Even if he hadn’t, he recognized the pale eyes, twitchy gestures, and most of all the sweat as characteristics he used to have when he went too long without a drink. Shaking Paddington’s hand, he had stared briefly into his eyes. He hadn’t seen himself there; a good sign.

Nonetheless, the British agent knew his stuff. He added a few comments about how the defenses were likely to be arrayed, Wong nodding along in the background. He also noted that the British ALARM missiles, designed to be used against advanced anti-aircraft systems like the SA-11, could linger above the battlefield until the radar was activated — a distinct advantage compared to the HARM missiles carried by the Phantoms.

To the Army people, the discussion of the missile types was clearly academic. To Skull, it was anything but. The SA-11 was more capable than the SA-6 it was designed to replace. And the SA-6 was, in the words a Hog driver might use, a real son of a bitch.

“It would be reasonable to expect that SA-11 would be deployed as point defense weapons guarding a high-priority asset,” noted Wong, “such as Saddam.”

“That doesn’t change the mission’s priority,” insisted Booker. “This is still speculative.”

“It does change the targeting,” said Tommy. “We have to take out those batteries if we’re going to fly up there.”

“If the attack were carried out at low altitude, I believe we could make do with one or two, at least at the start,” said Wong. “This corridor would provide access to the roadway south of the village. Hitting just one several hours to Straw’s arrival would lessen the likelihood that he would seek other quarters.”

“Possibly,” said Paddington.

“If he’s going to go somewhere else, why even bother?” asked Booker.

“A logical question,” said Paddington, “even from a blackguard. The answer is that our friend is very superstitious. He has also taken the time to study allied bombing plans. His conclusion is that you never strike the same place twice.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” said Booker.

Paddington shrugged.

“This seems like an even longer shot than I thought,” said Booker.

Skull listened vaguely as the Delta representatives argued with Booker, the discussion threatening to degenerate into a shouting match. To be honest, Booker did have a point — the mission was a long shot, even if the payoff was astronomical. Assuming the information was correct, assuming the profiles of Saddam were correct, assuming, assuming, assuming — the odds of actually nailing a moving vehicle in the middle of the night were very high.

“All right, so it’s a long shot,” Knowlington said finally. “What’s the largest ground force we can authorize?”

Booker turned and looked at him. “The smallest force necessary to identify the vehicle. Two men. That’s all I’m authorized to approve. That’s all the chief will approve.”

“That’s way too little,” said Leterri.

“That’s two men who may be dead in the morning,” said Booker.

“Sure, if that’s all we send.”

“What about searching for my pilot?” said Skull. “We need a full team.”

“With all due respect,” said Booker sharply, pointedly repeating Knowlington’s own phrase, “Lieutenant Dixon has been declared KIA.”

“But he’s not.”

“The speculation put forth by Captain Wong is unpersuasive.”

“Bullshit, Captain,” said Skull. “Bullshit.”

“Two men,” said Booker. “There is still the problem of inserting and retrieving the team.”

“C-141 high altitude jump,” said Leterri.

“The SA-11s make that problematic,” said Wong. “Better to use an MC-130 infiltrating at low altitude and making the drop in the clean corridor once the missiles hit. The mission can be accomplished with three men, two to handle the vehicle and another to act as scout. I, of course, will take the latter role.”

Knowlington stared at Booker, silently fuming. He expected Booker or someone to argue with Wong, but apparently everyone in the room knew of the intelligence officer’s extensive background with covert operations.

“How do you get back?” asked Marks.

“If helicopters are not permitted north, a STAR-Fulton pickup would be the only logical option,” said Wong.

“At night?” asked Booker.

“We can do it if we have to,” said Leterri.

STAR stood for surface-to-air recovery; Fulton was the name of the man who had pioneered it. A Hercules flying at just under a hundred knots snagged a line suspended from a balloon at five hundred feet. The line propelled the man or in some cases two upwards, streaming him behind the airplane. He was then winched into the rear of the plane.

Not pretty, but doable. In theory, at least.

“There’s one thing I want to get clear,” said Knowlington. “Dixon has to be a priority.”

“Neither Strawman nor Dixon is a priority, Colonel,” said Paddington dryly. “Obviously, his Cincship sees this as a mission for volunteers and maniacs.”

“Screw off,” Knowlington told the British agent.

Paddington shrugged. No one else spoke.

“We’re getting Dixon back,” Knowlington said, standing and pointing at Booker.

“If he’s there,” said the major. “And if you find him, within the other parameters of the mission. And if we can arrange a package. And if the commander in chief approves it.” He glanced menacingly at Paddington, who merely smiled, obviously secure in the knowledge that he could not be touched. Booker nearly spit at him as he continued. “Frankly, my opinion on this whole escapade is lower than the general’s I can assure you.”

“And I can assure you we’re getting Dixon back,” said Knowlington. He crossed his arms and glared at the rest of them before slowly retaking his seat.

CHAPTER 12

The corpse lay in a rut a few steps up the hill, arms thrown over the back of its head as if Death had held the body prisoner before taking the soul.

Dixon stared at him for a moment. The Iraqi soldier had killed by the Delta team yesterday as they escaped after finding the missile launch area and calling in A-10s and F-16s to strike it.

Or maybe he’d shot him himself. Dixon couldn’t remember.

BJ felt as if a dark cloud had descended around his neck, dread trying to strangle him from behind. He felt something like compassion, something like sorrow, and even guilt as he looked at the man.

But the soldier was an enemy.

More importantly, there was a weapon near his body; that meant more ammunition, bullets to replenish the ones Dixon had foolishly wasted earlier.

Bullets that would mean he could kill more men.

More enemies.

He lowered himself on wobbly knees, reaching to take the dead man’s AK-47. The rifle lay less than twelve inches from the Iraqi’s face. As Dixon grabbed its barrel he felt something on his knuckles, a breath — he jerked his hand away, snapping upright, swinging his own rifle down to aim at the Iraqi.

Impossible. The soldier couldn’t be more dead. The back of his shirt and his pants down to his thighs were caked solid with blood.

BJ lowered himself more quickly this time, then closed his eyes when he took the gun.

The clip, the rifle, were empty.

A thick web belt circled the dead man’s waist.

A cartridge holder.

The heavy, pungent odor of rotting meat drifted up from the corpse as Dixon stared at him from his knees. The soldier was dead; he had to be dead. There was nothing to fear.

“You’re beyond fear,” BJ told himself. He repeated it, then got up, walking cautiously around the man. He kicked the corpse’s side with his boot.

How disrespectful, he thought.

“Disrespectful,” he repeated out loud. Then he kicked it again.

Truly dead. Dixon lowered himself on his haunches, balancing by using both rifle butts as a skier might do. Then he dropped the dead man’s gun, let it bounce against the earth. He gripped the dead Iraqi’s shirt. His fingers dug into the man’s flesh, soft and pudgy, like a girl’s.

Dixon gave a heave and pushed the man over.

Thick pockets sat at the front of the belt, the top of each secured by string looped around a long, narrow wooden knob. Two held banana-style clips of 7.62 mm ammunition. A metal clasp and ring topped a third pocket. Dixon reached for the ring and starting to tug on it before realizing he was holding the trigger mechanism of a Russian hand grenade. He stared at his fingers for a moment, then gingerly pulled the small grenade — an old but deadly RGD5 — out of the flap.

It was wet with blood. There was at least one more in the ammo pocket. He teased it out, gently feeling along the tube at top, past the fuse lever, to the smooth round body before gripping it. BJ pulled it out and placed both grenades next to each other on the ground. He reached into the belt again and felt something sharp and jagged, his fingers flinching back against the blood-saturated webbing material.

It was part of the man’s pelvic bone, smashed out of place by one of the bullets that had killed him.

Slowly, Dixon pulled his hand away. He took another breath, then retrieved the gun clips. He slid the grenades into his chest pockets.

As he stood back, the corpse began to move.

He took another step back, trying to raise his gun. But the rifle suddenly felt heavier than three bags of cement.

The corpse jumped to its feet, arms extending over its head in victory, Death vanquished. It danced and flung itself in a swirl around the desert.

Dixon’s breath caught. He closed his eyes and willed the cloud and its black noose away. He felt the gun hanging from his hand, felt the strain in his shoulders and his neck. He felt the pain in his leg and in his ribs, felt each bruise and scrape, felt the air slowly emptying from his lungs.

When he opened his eyes, the corpse lay back on the ground, head off kilter, its mouth pasted in a sad frown.

Dixon curled the rifle under his arm and pushed on.

CHAPTER 13

“There’s no place like Home Drome. There’s no place like Home Drome — Wow, look at that Dog. Oz!”

“Oh, you’re a fuckin’ riot, A-Bomb,” answered Doberman as they trundled into the Devil Squadron parking area in front of the hangars, an area affectionately dubbed “Oz” because of the wondrous things the maintenance wizards did there. As the two planes wheeled into their assigned spots, a large bear emerged from one of the hangars and began ambling in their direction — the Capo di Capo was gracing them with a personal welcome. Crewmen genuflected and fell over themselves to get out of his way.

Powering their mounts down, the Hog drivers descended to the tarmac. Chief Clyston waited a short distance away, his presence evident in the quick snap of the men scurrying to secure the planes.

“Hey, Capo, what’s shakin’,” said A-Bomb, walking over.

“You better not have broken my airplane,” growled the chief.

“Geez, who bit you in the ass?” said A-Bomb. By common consensus, he was the only member of the squadron, officer or enlisted, who could get away with a remark like that to the capo.

Clyston harumphed in response, then turned to Doberman.

“Captain Glenon, sir, I heard what you did with that MiG. Kick-ass flying, sir. I’m f-in’ proud of you, and every member of this squadron is f’-in’ proud of you, even if they don’t officially know what you did.”

“You mean they don’t know, or they don’t know that they know,” laughed A-Bomb.

“Yeah, thanks, Chief. I appreciate it,” said Glenon, who wanted desperately to get out of his gear and grab something to eat.

That and take a leak.

Clyston took a measured step backwards and did something that nearly knocked Doberman over: He lifted his hand up for a salute.

Glenon hesitated; truth was, he’d never seen Clyston salute before. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen any chief master sergeant in the Air Force salute before, certainly not to him.

But here was Clyston, grizzled bear of grizzled bears, seriously waiting for him to snap off a salute in return.

“Okay,” said Doberman. He gave his best impression of a parade color guard — in truth not a very good one — and returned the salute. “Thanks. Your guys, I mean, Rosen and Tinman and the rest out at Al Jouf, they were kick ass, too.”

“Thank you, sir.” Clyston remained at attention.

“I appreciate the sentiment, really. But, you know.”

“Yeah. I know. You got a bullshit deal. But these guys appreciate what you did. They won’t forget.” Clyston glanced over Doberman’s shoulder toward the crews examining the planes. He morphed back to his old self with a loud growl at one of his men. “Grimsley, you start on the other side of that first, for christsake. Geeee-zus-f-ker-eye-st.”

Doberman started shagging along toward the life support shop, where he could change. He and O’Rourke would have to gather their thoughts for a round of reports on both the border incident and their time north at Fort Apache; he wasn’t looking forward to intel debriefings but they were a necessary part of the job. Inevitably, he’d forget some vital thing that somebody else would remember and he’d have to answer a ton of questions about it, trying to stretch his memory when all he’d be interested in doing was playing cards or catching Zs. He started outlining what had happened with the tanks and the SA-7 as he walked; he had the play-by-play more or less summarized before realizing Clyston was tagging along with them.

“Something up, Chief?” he asked.

“Couple of things,” said Clyston. “New D.O. is a certified asshole, for starters.”

“New D.O.?” said A-Bomb. “I had ten bucks on Dogman here getting the post.”

Clyston’s scowl deepened. “Between you, me and the lamp post, sirs, I truly wish he was. I’m sorry if this is news to you, Captain.”

“I don’t want to be D.O. anyway,” said Doberman.

“A Major Horace Gordon Preston,” said Clyston, answering the obvious question. “You can tell he did time at the Pentagon. For my money, he belongs back there.”

Coming from Clyston, the pronouncement was libel. And his next sentence explained why:

“Fucking zippersuit wants us to take down our Saddam sign.”

“Eat shit, Saddam? Oh man, you can’t do that,” said A-Bomb. “That’s, like, our motto. It’s what I’m talking about. You have to leave that up. You have to leave that up.”

“I didn’t say it was coming down,” said Clyston slowly. “Only that Preston wants it down.”

“What’s the Colonel think?” asked A-Bomb.

Clyston shrugged.

“Skull wants it down?”

“I haven’t talked to him about it,” said Clyston. “Not my place.”

“Well, I will,” said A-Bomb.

Clyston turned his head slowly to O’Rourke. “I’d appreciate that, Captain.”

More than the sign was obviously at stake. The chief was by far the closest man, regardless of rank, to Colonel Knowlington on the base. Rumor had it they had served together when the Air Force was still using biplanes. If Clyston mentioned it to Knowlington himself, the odds were overwhelming that Knowlington would make sure the sign stayed.

So it must be that the chief saw Preston as a threat, and not to him.

“I’ll speak to the colonel, too,” said Doberman. “And we’ll watch out for him. He’s a good commander. A-Bomb and I were just telling some clods from the CinC’s staff at Al Jouf that, as a matter of fact.”

“Thank you, Captain.” The chief’s smile extended slowly. “There’s a meeting scheduled for 1300 hours to introduce the new DO, pilots, senior NCOs, and probably an f-in’ cheerleading squad if Preston has any input on it. In the meantime, you sirs might want to run into Major Wong.”

“Wong’s back?” asked A-Bomb.

“And last I saw, headed for lunch,” said Clyston. “You really, really want to talk to him, Captain,” he added, turning to Doberman. “You’ll be glad you did.”

CHAPTER 14

Skull stared at the top sheet of the lined pad on his desk. He’d sketched a backwards “7” in the lower left-hand quadrant; atop it was a sideways, script “v.” Two small squares sat like ink blots at the top stem.

Anyone glancing at it would have thought the hieroglyphics meaningless. In fact, it was the outline of his mission.

A maniac’s mission, as Padington had put it. And obviously the reason CinC wasn’t willing to dedicate more than a few Hogs and an old C-130 to it.

Not true. The Hogs were backing up four F-111s, and the C-130 wasn’t old. There were a dozen other planes involved, counting the CAP that would be orbiting nearby, the ABCCC command and control plane, the electronics-warfare craft, the SAM suppressers, and the rest of the support team.

But truly, it was a shot in the dark. And truly, finding Dixon was going to take more than a little luck.

If anyone could do it, Wong could. Skull knew that. But still — a long shot.

And the slingshot they planned to use to get them out — that wasn’t even worth thinking about. The best hope was that helo flights would be cleared into the area by the time the mission took off — possible, but not likely.

Best to worry only about his part of the mission. Because he wasn’t allowed to disrupt his other missions, Knowlington’s planes would be over hostile territory for as much as six hours, from the drop to the pickup. They had to stay low to avoid being picked up by the sophisticated Iraqi defenses — and they had to remain unseen (and unheard) to avoid tipping off anyone of the ground team’s presence. At the same time, they had to back up the F-111s and drop the pods containing the STAR gear. To do all this, he’d have only four planes — assuming Chief Clyston lived up his promise that he could have four ready without disrupting the other missions.

Easy. For a maniac or a Hog driver.

If the mission succeeded — if they got Saddam — Skull and the others were going to be world class heroes. Every last one of them could run for President.

But Saddam wasn’t why he’d sketched the 7 and V on the pad, or why he’d pushed so hard to get the mission approved, or why he’d decided he was flying it himself. He wanted Dixon back. If there was even a small chance that he might be able to get him — an infinitesimally small, minute chance — he had to go for it.

No MIA bracelets in this war.

It was an arrogant, foolish thought. Guys got killed, guys got captured, guys got lost. Who the hell was he to wipe that out? What gave him the right to risk somebody’s else’s neck on a wild goose chase for a corpse?

Rank gave him the right. He made these kinds of judgments every day.

All the more reason to be sane now, to assess the odds carefully, calmly — like the CinC and his staff. Not a word they had said at the meeting had been out of line or wrong. The odds were long, long, long.

“We’re here to volunteer.”

Skull snapped around, startled by Doberman’s voice at the door. He hadn’t heard the door being opened, much less a knock.

“We’re going,” said A-Bomb, entering the small room behind Glenon. “What’s the game plan?”

“Where is it you’re going?” Knowlington asked them.

“Don’t bullshit us, Colonel,” said Doberman. His face was tinged red; his voice snapped with the bark that had earned him his nickname. “We just talked to Wong. We’re in.”

“Wong?” Skull folded his arms into his chest. Both Doberman and Glenon had just gotten back from an incredibly taxing gig supporting Scud hunting operations north of the border. By rights, they deserved at least a few days off.

If not months.

“You guys get any sleep last night?”

“We slept like babies,” said Doberman. “When we taking off?”

“Close the door,” Knowlington said. He sat back, examining the two men standing side by side in front of him. They couldn’t be more different physically. Doberman was short even for a pilot and probably weighed no more than one-twenty. A-Bomb loomed over six feet; his burly frame had to be at least twice as heavy as Doberman’s.

They were different temperamentally as well: Doberman ready to go off like a bomb fuse set too high; A-Bomb about as laid back as a human could be, at least until he was diving on his target.

Typical Hog drivers, though, each in his own way.

“You giving us the deal, or do we have to torture it out of you?” asked A-Bomb finally.

“Our end’s straightforward,” said Skull. “Four planes total, two elements. Take off from here around dusk. Zig out from KKMC around one or two SAM sites, then northwest to a point about sixty miles south of Kajuk, the village you hit yesterday. Two planes go up toward Kajuk to cover a drop about three miles south of the village; two hold back as reserves. Most of that is at fifty feet to hide from some serious missiles Wong’s worried they’re movin’ in.”

“Twinkie material,” said A-Bomb. “Piece of cake.”

“That’s sixty miles at fifty feet, in the dark,” said Knowlington.

“Devil Dogs,” said A-Bomb. “Cream filling on the inside.”

“We wait for word from the controller, then we move up and check an LZ southwest of the village,” continued the colonel, “make sure it’s clean, then clear an MC-130 in. At the same time, F-111s take out two of the SAM sites. We drop retrieval pods, then circle south in case we’re needed. We don’t want to be too close or we draw attention to the ground people. On the other hand, we don’t want to be too far away. Our linger time is what gets us in the picture. Nobody else can stay up there that long. Other element comes north, we swap jobs. Keep going back and forth as long as we have to. Drop should happen right at 2100; pickup should be four hours later. That’s two tanks apiece; could be less, depending on how we manage our fuel and what else happens. Could be more.”

“Lota flyin’ time,” said A-Bomb, nodding. “I like it.”

“What’s happening on the ground?” Doberman asked.

“MH-130 drops three men — two Delta boys and Captain Wong. They wait for Saddam and they look for Dixon. Saddam’s due at midnight.”

“What if he’s late?” said A-Bomb.

“Wong says if he’s late he’s not coming,” Skull told him. “From our perspective, that just gives us a little more time to find Dixon.”

“That’s a long time to fly up there,” said Doberman. “A lot of tanking.”

“Could be,” Skull admitted.

“A-Bomb and I can handle it.”

“The only thing I want you guys handling is sleep,” said Knowlington.

“Screw sleep.”

“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. “We don’t need sleep.”

“I don’t know. You both look dog tired.”

“I’m going,” said Glenon.

A-Bomb put his hand on Glenon’s shoulder. “It would make sense for us to fly the mission,” he said. “We’ve been back and forth across this terrain a couple of times now.”

That was the thing about A-Bomb. One second he was carrying on about food and making junior high jokes and pretending he was the world’s biggest bozo. Then all of a sudden he got more serious than Johnny Quest.

“I know you guys haven’t much sleep lately,” Skull said. “And I don’t want that to be a factor.”

“Shit, all we did at Al Jouf was sleep,” said A-Bomb.

“I’m flying,” said Doberman.

“You guys both look like you’re for shit,” said Skull.

“Hey, you ain’t winnin’ no beauty contest yourself, Colonel,” said A-Bomb.

“Dixon’s a friend of ours, Skull,” said Doberman. “You have to let us go. We’re you’re best guys and you know it. You need us.”

The truth was, Knowlington knew they’d both volunteer. Because they were Hog drivers. And he knew that what Glenon had said was true — he did need them.

But he hadn’t necessarily admitted it to himself yet, at least not officially.

“Let me think about all this,” he told them.

“Shit yeah,” said A-Bomb, punching the air.

“I haven’t decided anything, except that I’m getting something to eat,” said Knowlington. He got up out of his chair then stopped, realizing he hadn’t told them about the new D.O. “Look, one other thing. We have a new pilot in the squadron. His name is Major Horace Gordon Preston. He’s a good pilot and a good office. He’s going to serve as Director of Operations. If you don’t need the rest, we’ll have a hello meeting at thirteen hundred in Cineplex.”

“We’ll be there,” said Doberman.

Glenon’s face tinged red again, and Skull wondered if he knew Preston from somewhere. But that was neither here nor there.

“All right,” said the colonel. “I’ll tell you my decision after that. Nothing is decided, A-Bomb. You just cool your jets.”

“What I’m talking about,” said the pilot. “Question is, where am I going to find Devil Dogs on such short notice?”

CHAPTER 15

As approved, the mission bore only the slightest resemblance to the one Wong had originally proposed. Not that it was impossible, just that it was far less than optimal. And even optimal was a hard play against the odds.

Wong and two troopers would make a parachute drop two miles southwest of a bend in the highway leading to Al Kajuk. Unfortunately, the drop could not be conducted as a high altitude, high opening HAHO jump from a C-141B as most other Iraqi infiltration missions were; there wasn’t a plane available. Besides, the SAMs would have an easy time picking out the planes — and possibly notice the chutes along the way.

Instead an MC-130 would be pressed into service, flying a low-altitude course right up to the LZ, where it would pop up for the drop from a relatively low eight hundred feet. The pop-up would have to come just seconds after F-111s hit the SAM site; between their bombing and the jamming provided by a Spark Vark, the Hercules should have an ample window to proceed undetected. It would then fly south, using its extra load of fuel to orbit in a “dark” area devoid of enemy defenses until needed. While this added to the mission difficulty, it couldn’t be avoided. There were only a small number of MC-13 °Combat Talons equipped with the snagging gear in the Gulf — in the world. Even without the stranglehold on available resources, it might not have been possible to line up another plane.

In the meantime, Wong and the ground team would proceed on their mission, establishing a lookout post to observe the convoy. They would also prepare a diversion, which might be needed to slow or stop the vehicles. Mission complete, they would hike approximately two miles back to the drop point, where A-10s would have dropped the STAR retrieval pods.

Officially, Dixon wasn’t part of the plan.

While the Fulton retrieval system had been used on Spec Op missions in the past, it was admittedly far from routine. Wong had never tried it at night, and in fact had only attempted a Fulton STAR pickup once, during a training mission. The results of that attempt were not worth dwelling on.

Which was why he had avoided the direct question posed by Sergeant Davis, one of the two Delta Force volunteers he was briefing on the mission.

“Hey, answer the question, Major,” said the other sergeant, an E-5 whose last and seemingly only name was Salt. “How did that pickup go?”

Wong cleared his throat. The two Delta Force Green Berets had already seen duty north and had been involved in Panama. Davis was a demolition and com specialist; Salt was reputed to be the best sharpshooter in the Gulf.

“After being dragged fifty feet, the line was released,” said Wong.

“Shit,” said Davis.

“It happens. The second pickup went more smoothly. In any event, my experience isn’t relevant. As long as the weather is clear, the pilot should have no trouble making the pickup.”

“Unless he drags us.”

“That is why I have located the pickup on a slight rise,” noted Wong. “The direction of the plane will take us over low ground.”

“I’ve done this twice,” said Salt. “It ain’t pretty.”

“It needn’t be pretty,” Wong told him. “This is purely voluntary. If you wish to reconsider…”

“Screw that,” said Salt.

“As you wish.” Wong turned back to Davis. “Any other questions?”

“How many people are going to be with the bastard?” Salt asked.

“Assuming that you are referring to Saddam,” said Wong. “That is unclear. There could be as many as a full company or even a battalion. I personally anticipate something along the lines of a platoon. But our concern is not with them. We have merely to spot his vehicle and illuminate it.”

“What happens if they object?”

“We will have a flight of A-10A’s at our disposal. They can provide additional firepower if necessary.”

“Hogs. Okay,” said Salt.

“They don’t fly at night,” said Davis.

“Shit, what’s the difference?” Salt spit on the hangar’s concrete floor. They were alone; Wong had taken the precaution of posting a guard at the entrance. The mission had need-to-know code-word clearance.

“The sergeant is correct,” Wong admitted. “But the A-10s will be equipped with missiles that have infra-red targeting capability. In any event, our job will be a covert one. The enemy should never be aware of our presence.”

“Shit happens,” said Davis doubtfully.

“Shit, from what I’ve seen, Hogs’ll blow up anything you tell them to,” said Salt. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worrying. I’m just wondering why there aren’t more of us going,” said Davis. “If we had a full team, we could take the bastard out ourselves.”

“Decisions on manpower allocation were not delegated to me,” said Wong.

“Ah, we can still nail him,” said Salt.

“That is the last contingency,” said Wong. “If the F-111s fail to arrive, the A-10s will fill in. Our mission is to remain as clandestine as possible.”

“Clandestine. I like that,” said Salt.

Wong quickly outlined the rest of the package’s responsibilities, noting that the operation would be coordinated by a specially equipped MC-130 ABCCC plane with the call-sign “Wolf.” Electronics jamming and fighter escort would also be available, but were being arranged in a manner that wouldn’t tip off the Iraqis to the operation.

“Just tell us when we go,” said Salt finally.

“We will board the Hercules Combat Talon at 1700,” said Wong. “In the meantime, I have some operational details to review with the air crews.”

“We’ll be ready,” said Davis.

“There is one other facet of the operation that I cannot brief you on,” Wong told them.

“Why not?” Davis asked.

“To do so may jeopardize other aspects of our mission. What I can say is this — at some point, I will have to separate myself from you while you carry out your job.”

“That’s it?” asked Davis.

Wong nodded.

“Where are you going to be?” asked Salt.

“In the vicinity,” said Wong. “Beyond that, I cannot say.”

“You gonna pull that need-to-know bullshit on us?” said Salt.

Wong had debated whether to tell them about Dixon or not; the option had in fact been left up to him. He decided not to. It wasn’t because that would jeopardize Dixon if the team was captured. It was because he realized the men would be reluctant to leave Iraq without Dixon if they knew he was still alive. And it might be necessary to do so.

In fact, it might be necessary for them to leave him. For he had already decided he wasn’t leaving without the young lieutenant.

But there was no need to tell them that.

“I assure you, any decision regarding operational details that I make is only the result of careful consideration,” said Wong. “For everyone’s own good.”

“My father used to say that right before he reared back and whacked us,” said Salt.

“I won’t whack you,” said Wong. “That I guarantee.”

CHAPTER 16

The dirt road dipped and twisted after it slid off the highway, skirting the edge of the hill. Dixon walked along it, not caring that he might be seen — he kept hoping for a sound, for a truck to materialize behind him.

He had seen dilapidated farm buildings down this road yesterday. On one side of the road there had been a fence and a rundown building; opposite it, across the road, was the tiny house where he had stopped to find food. Thinking they were only a hundred yards in from the highway, he kept expecting them to appear, glancing first for the wall, then across the road for the house. He began walking faster, less and less sure of himself — a hundred yards in, two hundred, three hundred, a full mile. His whole sense of direction was thrown off, his sense of reality jumbled. Where was the damn wall? Had he imagined the house? Was he even where he thought he was?

He’d killed several men here. No way could he have imagined it.

When he finally saw the low pile of rubble marking the start of a wall on the left side of the road he felt a jolt of excitement, almost as if he had spotted the spire of his hometown church over the trees on the highway leading to his town. He’d hidden behind that wall yesterday.

Seeing the house sobered him up. Half of it was gone, the roof wrecked and the walls blackened where they weren’t simply rubble.

It had been whole yesterday. He’d gone there for food, only to be chased by a small squad of Iraqis. They’d missed him at first when he hid across the street; then the woman got caught in the crossfire. He’d killed the first group but barely escaped a second, which didn’t bother hunting him down — they simply blew up the house.

There had been a baby in the back room. Dixon left him to escape, figuring the Iraqis wouldn’t harm him. A moment after he jumped out the back of the building, it exploded.

Dixon took a step toward the house but stopped; he couldn’t face it. Yet his curiosity was overwhelming — he climbed slowly up the opposite hill to the wall, trying to find a vantage point that might somehow let him see into the ruins. He stood on the wall but lost his balance, dropping off behind it on the slope.

Tiny little kid, buried under the back end.

His fault. He could have saved the kid.

Or if he’d never existed, maybe the kid wouldn’t have been killed.

A small truck revved in the distance, turning off the highway. Dixon got to his feet.

The wall would protect him, or at least prolong the battle. He’d shoot, they’d stop; he’d pin them down. Sooner or later, they’d overwhelm him. He’d save the grenades until the very end.

Or he’d kill them all, and wait for the next truck. Or the next.

BJ took out his canteen, gulped the last of the water. His stomach felt like a worn stone; he’d been hungry so long it no longer hurt.

He tensed when he saw the truck. It was a pickup, not a troop carrier, not what he expected. Two men were in the cab; two more in the back. They weren’t civilians, though; they wore yellowish-brown khakis.

As he pulled his gun to aim at the driver, the pickup veered off the road into the dirt in front of the house. Dixon froze, thinking for a moment they had seen him, waiting for them to grab guns and fire.

But he could have been a ghost as far as the Iraqis were concerned. The two men in the back grabbed something, someone, from the bed of the truck. He struggled as they dragged him — he was short, two feet shorter than them at least. They pulled him along the ground to the front of the burnt-out building.

It was a boy, a kid somewhere between seven and nine years old. The child crumbled to the ground. One of the men scooped him up, trying to make him stand against the wall.

Shit, they’re going to shoot him.

As the idea flashed into his head, a shot rang out, then another, and another. The man to the right of the boy fell down.

Dixon didn’t realize he had been the one who fired until the hollow metal click of the clip emptying shook through his fingers and reverberated up through the bones in his arms. He grabbed for a new clip, fumbling as he cleared the rifle, fumbling as he ducked behind the wall.

He wanted to live now, long enough to stop them.

The soldier with the boy was crouched down, one hand on the ground, wounded, returning fire with his pistol. The two men in the truck were scrambling to get out.

Dixon burned the fresh clip. The two men from the truck folded in the ground, writhing and bouncing with his gunfire. By the time BJ turned his attention back to the man with the pistol, he’d disappeared.

The boy was curled up on the ground. Dixon couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.

He needed to get the other man.

Reloading, BJ began walking sideways behind the wall, half-stooping, eyes pasted on the front of the building. The hillside behind the house was dotted with scraggly bushes and vegetation, but there was nothing big enough to hide behind.

Dixon walked until he had the rear corner of the house in sight. He moved a few more yards to his left, then stopped again, watching for any sign of movement from the building. He put his hand on the stones carefully, gradually shifting his weight as if testing to see if it would hold. He rose, then raised his leg to step over the wall.

A shot came from the house. He dove forward as the Iraqi soldier fired a second round, dust kicking up as he rolled and tumbled toward the road. He winced as something hit the ground nearby, then pushed himself to his feet. Despite the surge of adrenaline he ignored the impulse to fire blindly. The sound of a shot whizzing near his ear sent him diving back to the ground, then he launched himself almost like a sprinter, plunging across the road toward the pickup. Bullets flew near him, but if he was hit he didn’t feel it. When he was within five feet of the pickup he tripped; as BJ flew forward glass from the mirror splattered over him, broken by the Iraqi’s errant gunfire.

The man had to be inside the ruins, shooting from the front of the building close to the corner. But Dixon couldn’t see the Iraqi, nor could he get a good shot at him without coming out from behind the truck. BJ pulled his legs up, trying to squeeze himself into the tiniest target possible. He swung the rifle up toward the building; a bullet ripped through the side of the truck a few inches from the barrel. Lowering the gun, BJ began edging along the ground toward the front of the cab. Another round sailed into the side of the vehicle, passing through the metal with a loud crackle.

The house was about ten yards away. Dixon leaned his head away from the truck, craning his neck as he tried to see the building. The edge of the road a few feet away popped with a fresh slug. Sooner or later the Iraqi would manage to get a bullet through the truck and hit him.

Dixon looked down the side of the truck for the gas filler, thinking he might set the gas tank on fire and use it as a diversion. But it wasn’t on his side of the pickup.

A shot sailed into the cab of the truck, spitting out near the dirt a few feet away.

He might be able to toss a grenade into the house.

If he missed, or even if he didn’t, the explosion could kill the boy he was trying to save.

Dixon crawled along the ground behind the truck, trying to see the kid. The slight slope up toward the house, which was probably helping shelter him, made it impossible to see where the child was.

Another shot ripped through the pickup, almost exactly where he’d been huddled.

Dixon took the grenade from his pocket, holding it in his hand. Jacketed in painted steel, it weighed about half a pound with a diameter about as wide as a matchbook. The smooth skin and elongated shape made it very different than the pineapple grenades he’d seen in World War II movies.

And those movies were as close as he’d ever come to a real grenade.

The round pin hung off the side. Pulling it released a clamp at the top; the mechanism wasn’t difficult to figure out, though Dixon wasn’t sure how long the delay was.

In the movies, there had been scenes of grenades being thrown, landing, and then thrown back before they exploded. The actors solved that by setting the fuse, counting, and then throwing.

They had dummy grenades, though.

He leaned the AK-47 against his knee and rocked his body back and forth, grenade in his right hand, left forefinger looped into the pin. He pulled as he swung away from the truck, but the pin didn’t budge; Dixon just barely kept himself from tossing the grenade without setting it.

A bullet ricocheted off the truck bed two feet away. He pulled desperately, but the ring still held. He yanked, trying to lever his weight against the catch. The rifle fell over in the dust, his right hand flew against the truck.

The pin was in his left hand.

Panicking, he wailed the grenade into the air, throwing it well beyond the house. He grabbed for the rifle, scooping up dirt and rocks as well as the stock, fumbling it into his hands as he levered himself to his feet. Dixon caught his balance and dove around the bumper of the truck, raising the rifle to fire blindly. A bullet passed so close to his head he felt the breeze.

As he pushed the trigger on the gun the grenade exploded on the hill behind the house, sending dirt and serrated metal in a wide spray. Dixon squeezed off a three-burst round at the corner of the building, then began running forward full-speed, expecting the Iraqi to nail him at any second. He smashed against the wall of the house, rolling from his right shoulder to his back to his left shoulder, pushing along to an opening that had held a window until yesterday. He pulled flush with the space, firing as he did, working it like he truly was a commando and not a misplaced pilot, assigned here by mistake and then stranded in the confusion of a mission gone way wrong.

His bullets burst in the dusty rubble, dragonflies snapping their wings. He stopped firing, seeing the Iraqi on the floor just below the window, dead.

Letting go of the trigger on his rifle somehow made Dixon lose his balance; he stumbled backward, caught himself, then whirled around with the thought — the fear, really — that one of the men he’d shot in the front yard wasn’t really dead and might be holding a gun on him.

But the three bodies lay where they’d fallen, arms akimbo, heads jerked at bad angles in the ground. One man’s eyes caught him as he sank slowly to one knee. The corpse watched him force a slow breath into his lungs, glared at him as he stood and began checking each body carefully, making sure his enemies were truly dead. After he did so, he returned to each man, searching their bodies quickly for anything that might be useful. He found only a knife, but in the truck bed were four rifles similar to his; along with two full boxes of clips. It was only when he tried to load one of the clips into his gun that he realized the guns were actually different models — AK-74s, which used smaller caliber bullets. BJ left his and took two of theirs, stuffing banana clips into his pocket and belt. He fired off one of the guns, making sure it worked.

As he lowered the rifle, he heard a sound behind him. He spun quickly.

The Iraqi boy stood six or seven feet away, trembling.

“It’s okay,” Dixon told him. He shook his head. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

The boy’s white pants were torn and badly stained. His T-shirt was a faded yellow, entirely intact and fairly clean, though he’d obviously been wearing it a long time. He wore a pair of sneakers at least two sized too big; they seemed to be Nikes, though their markings were missing.

“You’re all right?” Dixon lowered the rifle. “You okay, kid?”

The boy opened his mouth but said nothing. He started to cry.

“It’s all right,” Dixon told him.

It surely wasn’t all right, but what else could he say? What could he do?

“Why did they want to kill you?” Dixon asked. “What were they doing?”

The Iraqi boy took a step toward him, then another. Fear leaped inside Dixon’s chest — what if the child was booby-trapped or had a weapon or saw the strange American who had appeared from nowhere not as his rescuer but as his enemy?

Before Dixon could do anything else, the boy threw himself into him, clamping his arms around his neck as he draped himself across BJ’s chest. Tears streamed from the kid’s body, soaking through Dixon’s shirt, mixing with his dried sweat and coursing down the side of his chest and stomach.

“It’s all right,” the lieutenant told the boy, patting his awkwardly with the gun still in his hand. “It’s all right. You’re okay.”

The boy began to wail, his voice starting as a low moan and quickly rising. Dixon started to push him away but the child held on tightly, his body shaking with his cries. There was nothing Dixon could do but pat his back, hoping somehow that would calm him.

Grief ran from the kid like water from a busted pipe. Dixon felt his own eyes swelling; he remembered his mother dying, tried steeling himself against it, walling himself off, but finally there was no stopping the tears. He let the rifle fall and took hold of the kid as he sobbed. The first few drops felt like ice, but those that followed were like warm oil, soothing the corners of his face, soothing the aches of his body.

BJ lost his sense of place. He lost his sense of himself. His hopelessness, his fear — most importantly, his determination to die here in a blaze of gunfire — slowly ebbed away. The frightened William James Dixon — the one who trembled before battle; who froze at one point in every combat sortie; the one that was paralyzed by confrontation, the part of him that wanted to give up, the self that had closed his eyes the night his mother died instead of taking one last look — left his body with a shudder and a sigh.

The man left behind wasn’t beyond fear, but he understood it in a different way now; he neither welcomed it nor ran from it, he simply accepted it as a fact.

His tears eventually stopped. Dixon lifted the boy and gently placed him on the ground. The kid, too, had stopped crying. He took a step back, looking at him with an expression of shock, as if he had finally realized that Dixon was an enemy soldier. He cringed and threw his arms around his thin chest, holding his tattered shirt.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Dixon told him.

The kid shook his head. It wasn’t until the boy pointed in the direction of the road that Dixon realized the kid was scared not of him but the sound of a vehicle approaching down the road from the direction of the village.

CHAPTER 17

Skull tried to keep his face military neutral as Major Preston continued his speech. Any other guy new to an important post in a combat squadron would keep his remarks — if any — briefer than hell. But this was vintage Preston, the full-of-himself officer Knowlington remembered from their stint together at the Pentagon a little more than a year ago. People who knew him then said the major could out-talk a congressman; Skull now had proof.

The worst thing was, he kept telling the assembled Hog drivers that, even though he was a pointy nose fighter jock pukehead, he was really one of them. Really.

Not in so many words, of course, but the drift was clear. And it went over like a Big Blue fuel bomb tumbling out the back of a Combat Talon I.

Being a pilot in the Air Force meant that you were one of a very select minority, the cream of chocolate milk. Being a fighter pilot — any fighter pilot — meant you were the cream of the cream.

And yet, there was a severe prejudice against Hog drivers because of the planes they flew. Unlike the sleek F-15 Eagles and F-16 Vipers, A-10As couldn’t come close to the sound barrier. They could pull maybe half the g’s a pointy nose could. Now granted, they were kick-ass at the job they were designed for — close-in ground support, tank busting especially. And the first few days of the ground war, which saw them flying far behind the lines and doing things their designers never dreamed of, proved not just the mettle of the planes but the skills and sheer balls of their pilots. Given all that, there was definitely a feeling out there that A-10s and their drivers were second-rate. Hog drivers definitely tended to react to it in various ways, none of which were particularly pretty.

They were reacting now, grinding their teeth as Preston told them once again they had nothing to be ashamed of.

“Uh, hey, no offense, Major,” said Lieutenant Jack Gladstone finally, “but we ain’t ashamed of nothing.”

“Damn straight,” murmured a couple of the other lieutenants. “We’re not second-rate at nothing.”

“I didn’t mean you were,” said Preston.

“Yeah, but you’re making it sound like we are,” said Gladstone.

“No. I didn’t mean that.” Fortunately for Preston, nearly all of the squadron’s front-line pilots were out on missions. Even so, the audience was pretty riled. Doberman, studiously trying to ignore the proceedings in the back, was frothing. Wong was his usual nonplused self — he wasn’t a pilot, so apparently he didn’t care.

And A-Bomb was stuffing his face with what looked like an apple pie, though God only knew where it came from.

Doberman’s lips started moving. A bad sign.

Skull cleared his throat, getting up from the folding chair near the side of the squadron room. “We’re all glad Major Preston is aboard,” he said. “Now we have some work to get done. Hack, I think one of those newspaper people is waiting outside to talk to you about that MiG you shot down yesterday.”

Preston hadn’t mentioned the fact that he had nailed a MiG — probably he thought everyone knew already — and Knowlington’s seemingly offhand comment was enough to temporarily calm the rising tide of dissension. The new D.O. had enough sense to finally shut his mouth after a line about how much he was counting on everyone to help him out. He nodded to Knowlington, then joined the men filtering out of Cineplex.

“Class A farthead,” Doberman said as he approached Knowlington.

“Relax, Captain,” said Skull.

“Come on, Dog, he ain’t that bad. I was in a unit with him couple of years back,” said A-Bomb. “Good pilot. Very clean turns.”

“Very clean turns? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Very clean turns?”

“Doesn’t spill coffee when he pumps the rudder,” said A-Bomb. “What I’m talking about.”

“Captain Glenon informed me that he and Captain O’Rourke will be on the mission,” said Wong, bringing toddler time to a close. “Who are the other two pilots?”

“Oh they did, did they?” said Skull, frowning at them. “Yeah, they’re coming. If they don’t fall asleep.”

“I might catch some Z’s on the way back,” said A-Bomb. “I’m thinking of packing a pillow, just in case.”

“The other pilots?” asked Wong.

“I’m flying this mission,” Skull said. “I have Bozzone in mind to take the last slot. I told him to be ready to fly tonight but I haven’t given him the details.”

“Billy’s kind of low-time,” said Doberman.

“True,” said Skull. Lt. Bozzone was a good pilot, but had only been on one mission since the Gulf War started. He hadn’t flown much before coming to the Gulf, either. On the other hand, he had been training for night flights and was used to using the AGMs to read targets. Skull didn’t doubt his abilities, but there was no arguing with the fact that he didn’t have a lot of cockpit time.

“What about Duck?” A-Bomb asked. “He’s always up for an adventure.”

“I need Captain Dietrich to lead a mission in the morning,” said Skull. “He’s taking four Hogs out to Al Jouf after a bombing run. If both of you guys are going, he can’t.”

“Billy’s just a kid,” said Doberman.

All of them were to Skull. But he didn’t say that.

“I’ve been reviewing the latest satellite data and other intelligence,” said Wong. “The missiles we spoke of have been positioned. I have a ninety percent confidence that they are SA-11s. There are also several triple-A batteries, and positionings of low-altitude heat seeking batteries. The information has been relayed to the F-111 commander. One group of the heat-seeking weapons will have to be targeted in the initial attack, and of course you must keep the others in mind during your operations near the village.”

A few squadron members drifted toward them from the other end of the room, obviously interested in what was going on. While Skull hated keeping his people in the dark, the mission was code-word secret.

“Let’s talk about this in my office,” he told them, ushering Wong and the others toward the hallway.

“Colonel, what newspaper reporter?” asked Preston, intercepting them outside.

“Hack.” Skull shook his head but decided not to bother explaining that he’d only said that to bail the idiot out. He continued down the hall.

“Uh, Colonel, could I have a word?” Preston asked.

Skull stopped. “Sure.”

“In private?”

“Is it a private thing?”

“Well…”

Skull gestured to the others. “You’ve met Glenon and O’Rourke, right? This is Captain Wong.”

Preston gave them all a quick nod. “Actually, I wanted to get myself on the roster to fly ASAP. Tomorrow, if possible.”

“All the slots are filled,” said Skull.

“There are four planes that aren’t listed,” said Preston. “There are plenty of low priority targets available. I’ll find a wingmate and take one. Maybe A-Bomb’ll fly with me,” added Preston, trying to make his voice sound chummy. “A-Bomb and I go back to Germany. Used to plunk Volkswagens.”

“Those planes are spoken for,” Doberman said.

“What exactly is going on, Colonel?”

Skull scratched his forehead, rubbing the edges of his eyebrows with his thumb and middle finger, thinking. Preston had been flying combat since the beginning of the air war, and while it had been a while since he’d sat his fanny in a Hog, he had tons of experience. He’d be an obvious choice to take the mission — after days of orientation, or reorientation, flights.

No time for that.

“Colonel?” repeated Preston.

Why was he hesitating? Because he didn’t like him?

Because Preston had tried to screw him when they both worked at the Pentagon a year or so ago?

Maybe he was a jerk, but he was a good pilot. He’d already nailed a MiG.

“You ever use Mavericks to fly at night?” Skull asked.

“You’re not supposed to,” said Hack. “Specifically advised against that. I’ve done plenty of night flying, though.”

“In a Hog?” said Doberman.

“Of course. We used to drop logs and drill with CBUs and Mavs. Problem is the damn screens have such a small angle it’s hard to get your bearings, so using them to do more than find your target can be disorienting. Right A-Bomb?”

O’Rourke smiled but said nothing.

“What’s this about, Colonel?” asked Preston.

Fly the number one and number two guys on the same mission? Along with the squadron’s best pilots?

Why the hell not? You had to use your best weapons, no?

“Colonel?”

“All right. Come with us into my office, Major. Assuming you’re up for flying tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“If you’re too tired or don’t feel up to it —”

“Of course I’m up for it,” said Hack.

“And you got to like long shots,” added A-Bomb. “And Devil Dogs.”

Preston’s chin twitched for a second, but only for a second.

“I like long shots,” he said.

CHAPTER 18

The easiest thing in the world was to say no.

The general looked at him expectantly. Jack Sherman was so heavy the desk he was sitting behind groaned as he shifted his elbows.

“It’s a classified mission,” repeated Sherman. He put his hands down and drummed his fingers, the beat vaguely reminiscent though difficult to place. “So you can work things out from that. I’m not authorized to say anything else and to be honest, I don’t know much more. You’ll be briefed fully if you volunteer. I mean, obviously it’s going to be hazardous.”

Lars nodded. A voice inside was telling him to walk away — not just from the request to fill in for a sick copilot, but from the whole Gulf War. From everything.

General Sherman’s round, light brown face broke into a smile. He obviously thought he was doing Lars a favor, pushing an assignment that would…

That would what? Get him promoted? Get him a medal?

He didn’t need no damn medal. He needed to get home, go see his daughter Susie again.

“Some of your experience will come in handy,” added Sherman, still tapping. “That was one of the considerations in asking you.”

Experience?

“It’s nothing you haven’t done before,” said the general. “And it is in a C-130. An MC-130”

I’m not a coward, Lars thought. But I can’t even land the damn plane a hundred miles behind the lines. And an MC-130 wasn’t going to be running toilet paper across Saudi Arabia. The Herks were equipped for low-level penetration of hostile territory. They could perform a variety of missions, none of them exactly easy.

Lars had notched serious hours in three different training programs and a NATO exercise at the helm of a Combat Talon MC-130E some years before.

Years ago. Centuries ago.

He’d also flown MC-130P tankers.

For all of two weeks.

“Herk pilots are at a real premium, especially good ones,” said the general, who seemed to be slipping into salesman mode. Lars had first met Sherman when he was a major, but they’d never been particularly close. Sherman tended to play the hail-fellow-well-met thing a bit too far, but otherwise seemed like a decent officer.

“Guy gets sick, everybody’s scrambling,” added Sherman, his voice almost singing as his tapping grew more complicated. “Things are picking up, huh?”

Lars managed an affirmative grunt. The tune — a sixties TV show?

“Holdout for a signing bonus, huh?” suggested Sherman.

F Troop? Susie watched that on Nick at night.

No way.

“Get the Spec Ops boys to take you on permanently? Only a few of us over there; I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

Lars managed a smile. “Us” was a reference to the fact that they were both African-American.

If Sherman had been white, would it have been easier to blow him off?

He’d never turned down an assignment before, not a real one. Not because he was scared.

Then again, he’d never been scared before. This was just weird — the sort of thing he ought to see a shrink about.

That would go over big.

Lars could feel the sweat already pouring down the back of his neck.

Just say no.

“So, you up for it?” asked the general.

Against his better judgment — against everything — Lars’ felt his head bob up and down.

“Great. Plane’s already being prepped. Your pilot is a nice fella, white guy, but okay. I’ve flown with him. DiRiggio. Lots of experience with SOC. Hook up with him, he’ll give you the deal. Uh, watch his breath, though. Real garlic-eater. Knock you out.”

Sherman smiled. It was tough for Lars to tell whether he was joking or not.

“Air Force captain name of Wong — no shit, Wong — he’s in charge of the operation. He’ll be on the plane. He’s assigned to an A-10 squadron but there’s a lot more to him than it seems. Let me give you a heads-up,” added the general. “Guy works for some admiral at the Pentagon and has no sense of humor.”

“Great.” The word stuck in his throat.

“But hell, you’ll probably do this with your eyes closed.” Sherman slapped the desk in a crescendo and stood to walk Lars out. “Easy gig for you.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, somehow getting his legs in gear.

CHAPTER 19

Dixon pulled the boy along with him as he scrambled along the rear of the house. When he reached the corner he dropped to his knees and put down one of the two Kalashnikov assault rifles, pulling the other under his arm as he leaned out to scan the road.

A battered Zil dodged some of the worst ruts as it lumbered up from the direction of the village. It slowed, then stopped a few yards from the pickup, whose front grill and bumper Dixon could just see from the back corner of the building.

The truck driver leaned out the window, staring toward the pickup. He yelled something, then turned his head toward the house.

Dixon ducked back. Probably, the driver saw the dead men, because he ground the Zil’s gears and revved the engine.

Kill him quick!

Dixon jumped to his feet. By the time he reached the front of the ruined building, the Zil was a good fifty yards away and gaining speed. He squared to fire but realized he was unlikely to stop the man, even if he managed to hit the bouncing truck; all he he’d be doing was confirming any suspicion that he was still here.

BJ lowered the rifle and looked back at the house. The Iraqi boy stood by the edge of the building, holding the other AK-74.

Dixon motioned for the boy to come forward. The kid hesitated, and for a slice of a second Dixon worried that the boy had decided to turn against him. But then the kid smiled and ran to him. When he reached Dixon, the child spun around, mimicking what Dixon had done as he shouldered the large rifle down the road.

Dixon put his hand on the barrel of the gun, gently lowering it.

“What’s your name, kid?” he asked.

The boy looked at him, not understanding.

“Name?” Dixon patted his chest. “I’m BJ. BJ. Who are you? Huh?”

“Budge,” said the boy finally, patting himself.

“Budge?” Dixon laughed. So did the kid. “Budge, huh? That’s a good name. Budge.”

The kid patted his chest. “Budge,” he said, laughing.

“So Budge, what the hell should I do with you, huh? Why were those goons trying to kill you? Who were they? What’d you do?”

Budge didn’t understand.

BJ tried miming what had happened before, but the boy didn’t really understand. He said something in what Dixon figured was Arabic, but his words were as incomprehensible to Dixon as Dixon’s must be to him.

“What the hell are we going to do, Budge?” Dixon asked finally. “Are there other people around here who want to kill you?”

He was careful as he mimed that, not wanting to make the kid think that he was going to harm him. The kid thought it was a joke or a game, laughing.

“One way or another, there’s plenty who want to kill me,” said Dixon. “If you’re with me, they may shoot you too. Probably they would.”

Budge shrugged. He obviously didn’t understand.

“If I leave you here, will the goons come back and kill you?”

The boy blinked, then said something, patting his stomach. Probably, he was saying he was hungry.

“You know where there’s food?” Dixon asked. He mimed the question, using the boy’s stomach to start.

Budge shook his head. The obvious place to find food was in the village, but it wasn’t as if they could simply show up at the local 7-Eleven and buy a couple of hoagies.

Or maybe they could. Dixon had some Iraqi money in his survival kit. He could give it the kid, send him into whatever passed for a store in these parts. Or even a house.

What if somebody asked the kid where he got the money? Or simply followed him back?

Turning Dixon in would make Budge an immediate hero. He wouldn’t even have to do it on purpose.

Why were the men trying to kill him?

Trust him? He was seven or eight most likely, certainly no older than ten. How smart was he? Smart enough to trick anyone who was suspicious of him?

Smart enough to trick Dixon?

Irrelevant. The question was, would he know to keep his mouth shut?

When he was nine, Dixon had a full load of chores on the family’s tiny vegetable truck farm, a separate operation from the corn and soybeans. He manned the fruit and vegetable stand every day during the summer, handling the tourists and the local town folks who stopped by. It was more boring than hard; rarely did he have to help more than two people an hour.

What if someone had appeared in the middle of the tomato patch behind the stand, just walked up and saved him from being robbed? What would he have done? Tell his mom?

Sure, he’d be happy and grateful.

What if the guy had been in some kind of trouble himself? Would he have been savvy enough to keep quiet, sneak him some food?

Maybe. If he realized the guy was in trouble. But you could be really dumb as a kid, innocent in all sorts of ways. This kid might be grateful that Dixon had saved him, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give him away.

He could leave him. But that was like shooting him, wasn’t it?

He’d already made that decision.

“What I think we’re going to do here, Budge,” Dixon said, squatting so he was eye-level with the boy, “what I think we’re going to do is go into the village. We have to be very quiet. People there want to kill us. Do you understand?” He mimed the words, walking with his fingers, shielding his face with his hands, pretending to be fired at. The boy leaned forward and hugged him.

“That’s going to have to do for now,” said Dixon, starting toward the road.

CHAPTER 20

Hack furled his fingers around the A-10A stick, waiting impatiently for the other pilots to complete their checks. The F-15’s cockpit wasn’t exactly massive, but the Hog’s workspace seemed smaller than the trunk of a Honda Civic. The instrument panel was a solid wall of old-fashioned dials and buttons; the only display was the small tube below the windshield at the right-hand corner slaved to the Maverick missiles. It was a miracle the plane even had a heads-up display.

Hack bounced his feet up and down on the rudder pedals, trying to shake out his boredom. The Warthog’s GE turbofans were diminutive and almost silent — at least compared to the F-15, which had a guttural, throat-shaking roar even at rest.

He had to stop comparing the damn Warthogs to Eagles. He was a driver now, and a backseat one at that — Knowlington had stuck him with flying wing to Captain Glenon, the second plane in the second element.

Made sense, couldn’t argue. Actually, Knowlington seemed a hell of a lot more on the ball here than he had back in D.C. Had a peculiar way of running a squadron, but part of that might be because he had less than half the normal complement of personnel, except for the sections responsible for keeping the aircraft airworthy.

That Chief Master Sergeant Clyston was a real piece of work. Hack was going to sit on his butt good to get him to do things the way they were supposed to be done. Stinking sergeants thought they ran the frigging service. Straighten him out, no time.

Can his ass, once he took over the squadron.

Maybe.

Two things surprised Hack. One was the fact that Knowlington didn’t seem to be drinking — or at least was being considerably more discrete about it than he had been at the Pentagon.

The other was that Knowlington and his squadron were held in high enough esteem to have been tagged to work with Delta up north in what had to be a high priority, not to mention extremely difficult, mission.

Not that he’d thought Knowlington was a bad pilot. On the contrary, he’d heard the stories about what he’d done in Vietnam. It’s just that he’d thought the colonel was an over-the-hill geezer with one foot and half of his head out the door.

“Devil leader to Devil flight,” said Knowlington over the squadron frequency. “All right, let’s get this show on the road.”

One by one, the others acknowledged. By the time Major Preston pressed his transmit button, he’d already nudged his Warthog off her brakes and begun to trundle up toward the starting gate to keep pace with the others. He ran through his checks one more time, scanning the instruments, glancing at the INS, quizzing his compass. His stomach began flipping over, and for a brief moment the veteran Air Force pilot felt like a teenager taking dad’s car to the grocery store the first time. Then instinct took over; he pulled the double throttle bars to their stops, spooling out the engines and rocketing down the runway.

After a fashion; damn Warthog was slow, slow, slow. And while it might not be fair to compare it to an F-15, there was no way not to as the plane heaved itself up into the air, chugging along more like a pickup truck with wings than a modern airplane. Hack’s stomach tightened as he left the ground. He couldn’t get the feel right and started to jerk to the right, his left wing pitching up in answer to his awkward pull. But the A-10A was a forgiving sort; she caught a gust of wind and steadied her wings, rising behind her companions in a slow, steady march northwards.

A fresh wave of jitters hit Preston as he searched the dusky sky for his wingmate. It took three long glances to find Doberman on his left, exactly where he was supposed to be. He checked his INS; still overly nervous, he went through the sheet of way-markers on his kneeboard. He was precisely on course, flying the Hog as smoothly as if he’d racked up a hundred hours in the past month, but he could feel his heart pounding.

He’d been like this in the Eagle, too. A lot of time it took until the border for him to calm down. The first snap vector or the first heads-up from the AWACS or the first radar contact of an enemy — once something real happened, he was fine. But until then he was just jangled nerves, no matter what he was driving.

Shit. Thinking like a Hog driver already.

Hack flipped through the sheets on his kneepad, studying the frequencies, the way-points, the notes on fuel burn and the rest. Finally he lifted the last page and exposed the two items he’d pasted to his board on his very first solo years ago — a Gary Larson cartoon and something his father always said.

He laughed at the cartoon, just as he had on every flight he’d ever made. Then he repeated the saying:

Do your best.

Do your best. That’s all you ever needed.

Preston checked his throttle, shifted a bit on the ejector seat, nudged the Hog to slide a little further out, just off Doberman’s wing.

Like the others, Preston carried four Maverick AGM-65Gs, one each loaded in the LAU-117 launchers that flanked the main wheels. The G-model Mavericks were serious weapons, featuring three-hundred-pound warheads, more than twice the size of the “standard” B model and extremely adept at pounding armor. But the real value of the missiles was the infra-red imager in their golden noses; A-10A pilots in the Gulf had discovered that the IR gave the plane a primitive night-time capability.

Primitive indeed. It would be looking at the ground through a straw. But the others had already used the missiles to fly night missions; if they could do it, Hack could too.

Besides the missiles, A-Bomb and Doberman each had a pair of what looked like napalm containers slapped to the hard points on either side of their bellies. The pods held the STAR Fulton retrieval systems the ground team would use to escape.

The other two Hogs were carrying illumination flares in rocket launching canisters. Preston hadn’t actually used the launchers for anything but rockets — and as a matter of fact, he wasn’t even entirely sure he had done that. But the principle was fairly simple. The LUU-2 would spit out, opening its chute and igniting. The hot air would hold it up and it would descend, lighting the night like a set of klieg lights for five minutes or so. The “lou-twos” or logs would only be used if things got sticky and the Hogs needed to use their cannons.

Two other important weapons were attached to the planes. Every A-10 carried a pair of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles at the left edge of their wings for air defense. An ECM pod sat on the opposite hard point. The counter measures in the ALQ-119 were older than Hack; the device was next to useless against the SAMs the F-111s were going to hit. In fact, even the F-15 Hack had just been flying would have been pushed to the limit dealing with it.

Do your best, he reminded himself, trying to push the negative thoughts away. He rechecked his position and twisted his head, scanning the sky for the millionth time even though they were far behind the lines.

All things considered, Preston had the easiest job of the mission. After a quick refuel at KKMC, the planes would fly together across the border, as if coming in for an attack. The dance would begin at a coordinate they called “Wendy’s” — A-Bomb had supplied the nicknames — about fifty miles due south of their actual target area. The planes would make a show of turning west toward a GCI or ground radar site that had been hit two days before; the maneuver was supposed to make anyone watching think they were going to attack it again. After about two minutes of flying time, they would reach “Krisp.” Knowlington and A-Bomb would hit the deck, diving to fifty feet and starting a zig-run north to scout the LZ for the Hercules. Doberman and Hack would continue toward the GCI for about a minute and a half before breaking off turning back south to refuel. Assumed all went as planned, they’d relieve the first two planes in a staging area about fifteen miles south of the LZ, orbiting there until — if — needed. They’d be about a two minute scramble from the hot zone. The A-10s would trade back and forth, waiting and refueling, until they were needed to cover the pickup. Then they’d go home.

Two pairs of F-111s were doing the heavy lifting — one taking out the SAM site and the other, several hours later, going after Saddam’s car. The Hogs would back them up.

“Four, you’re supposed to be further back in trail.”

Glenon’s ferocious yap jerked Hack physically; he slammed the stick of his Hog to the left, pitching the plane on its wing to fall back before realizing that he needn’t have taken such drastic action. He swooped back level, cursing Glenon as well as himself — he hadn’t been that close, for christsakes, just a little tighter on Devil Three than they had briefed. No reason to bark at him.

“Four,” he said, acknowledging. He let the distance work out to a mile and a half, in the meantime pulling closer to the axis of the flight. You could waste a lot of fuel getting too close, because then you’d be making constant adjustments on the throttle.

In theory, anyway. Damn Hog throttle was just an on-off switch.

“Devil Leader to Devil Flight. Ease up, boys,” snapped Knowlington. “The night is young. We have our first way point in zero-two. Nice, gentle turn.”

The colonel’s voice had the smooth, suave assurance of an all-night deejay spinning golden oldies in the wee hours. Hack eased his fingers, rolling his neck and trying to snap some of the tension out with the cracks of his ligaments against the vertebrae. The sky ahead darkened as he flew, blue hazing into a gray that slid into blackness. He took the turn and then the next course correction, now on a direct line for Iraq. The planes had climbed all the way to 18,000 feet. It was high for a Hog — and the lowest altitude he’d ever been at crossing the border.

They were going a hell out of a lot lower before the night was through. Fifty feet in the dark.

Damn long time since he’d done that. Had he ever actually done that, even in an exercise? He wasn’t sure.

Hack blew a wad of air through his nose and worked his eyes around the cockpit, determined to keep his shit together. Nail this and everyone in the squadron was going to respect him, no questions asked.

He hadn’t even thought of that when he’d volunteered. But it was true — a bonus he hadn’t counted on.

Assuming he made it.

“Wendy’s,” said Knowlington.

The transmission startled Hack; it felt like it was too soon, though a glance at his instruments told him they were dead on.

One by one, the planes acknowledged and took the turn. A-Bomb’s acknowledgment seemed garbled, and for a half-second Hack felt a mixture of anticipation and actual fear, desire to step up into the tougher slot mixing with the fear that he might screw up the harder job.

But there was nothing wrong with Devil Two or its radio. A-Bomb’s voice hadn’t been garbled so much as consumed by another sound.

Bruce Springsteen, it seemed, singing, “Born to Run.”

Snap out of it, Hack told himself. You’re wound so tight you’re starting to hear things. Nobody listens to music on the way to a bomb run over enemy territory, not even a Hog driver.

CHAPTER 21

Skull’s yellow pad had it nice and neat, a quick cut to the northeast followed by a dogleg south, a dive and then a 160-degree turn and a jog north to the money.

Real life was messier, with the RWR warning that an Iraqi radar that shouldn’t be there was trying to acquire him before they reached Krisp. There had been a GCI or ground radar site due west, but if the RWR was to be believed, that wasn’t what was targeting them now; the radar was in a different band.

If the warning was to be believed, in fact, they were being hunted by a Roland mobile SAM battery, probably the most deadly anti-air weapon the Iraqis had outside of the SA-11s Wong had spotted further north.

“Radar,” said Knowlington tersely. “Hang with me and stay on course.”

As he let go of the mike button to end the transmission, the warning indicator went clear. Skull’s eyes hunted the dark shadows below for a sign of the threat. They were more than a hundred miles inside of Iraq, heading toward the heart of the country. They were beyond the worst of the desert; the ground was more hard-packed here, hard-scrabble scrub as opposed to sifting mounds of sand. But no matter what the earth was made of, it would have been hard to pick anything out of the dusky shadows from this altitude.

Their planned zig would take them through the direction the radar waves seemed to have come from; the way they’d chalked it up, they’d pass right through the missile’s prime acquisition envelope as they dove to fifty feet.

The German-made missile system, which Iraq had a good number of, had a range of roughly four miles. Designed for low and medium-altitude protection, it was extremely nasty once locked on a target.

“I have no radar,” said A-Bomb. “Been clean.”

“One,” acknowledged Skull.

It had been roughly thirty seconds since the warning. They were one and a half minutes away from Krisp.

The safest thing to do was change course to skirt the missiles. But that might change their time on target, which would mess everything up — this was a delicate dance between the F-111s, the Hogs, and the Herk. Throw the schedule off a minute and he risked having the Hercules spotted.

Better, though not safer, to dive sooner, steeper, get under the Roland as well as the SA-11. That meant a much longer drive at fifty feet.

Lose some speed, eat more fuel.

Knowlington quickly looked at his paper map, double-checking the elevations in their path to make sure there weren’t any surprises.

Doable.

“Krisp in sixty seconds,” Knowlington told the rest of his flight. “Devil Three, I’m figuring that Roland at about two o’clock, four miles from Krisp, maybe a little further. You want coordinates?”

“I can do the math,” snapped Doberman.

“We’re going to break on my signal. A-Bomb, you and I are going to dive down to fifty feet and get under it. Doberman, you avoid the site when you come north.” He left it to Doberman to decide how.

“Two. I’m ready when you are, Skip,” said A-Bomb.

“Three. I’ll call in the position on the SAM.”

Skull took one last look at his gauges, making sure he had plenty of fuel. His preflight calculations had been pessimistic; the Hog was sipping daintily.

Maybe he was being overly cautious. No way Black Hole would have left a working Roland out here. Probably just an ECM glitch.

No way to tell.

“Krisp,” Skull said, tipping his wing as he rolled the Hog into a steep dive.

CHAPTER 22

“If I get the chance, I’m nailing him.”

“Who says you’re getting the chance?”

Salt glanced toward the front of the cargo hold, where Captain Wong was consulting with one of the Herk’s crewmen. “If I get the chance, I’m nailing Saddam,” he repeated to Davis.

Davis shrugged. “Planes’ll get him. We’ll be a mile away.”

“I’m not saying they won’t get him.” Salt edged his toe against his weapons rucksack on the floor of the plane. He wouldn’t completely suit up until ten minutes to drop time, set for 2002. And he’d wait until precisely then; it was a superstition thing, and no matter how much it bugged everyone else, he stuck to it. By contrast, all Davis had to do was slap on his helmet and he was good to go. “I’m saying if I get the chance, I’m nailing him.”

“Sounds fair.”

“What else you figure he’s up to?”

“Who?”

“Captain Wong. That need-to-know bullshit.”

“Couldn’t even guess.”

“You got enough explosives to blow the road?” Salt asked.

“I got enough to blow up Saddam’s ever-lovin’ bunker.”

Salt laughed. Unlike most troopers — unlike most soldiers, period — Davis rarely used profanity. “Ever-lovin’” was about as bad as he cursed.

“I wish this crate would hurry up,” said Salt. “I’d like to have the road mined already.”

“Probably won’t even get a chance to blow it.”

“We will.”

“I will,” said Davis.

“Yeah, fuck, you will.” Salt had known the black sergeant almost since basic training; they’d saved each other’s butts a few times — in bars, not combat. The two operations they had been on together, once in Panama and once before the start of the air war scouting targets, had gone as easily as visits to a church fair.

“I hate these low jumps,” said Davis.

Surprised, Salt jerked his head toward his friend. “You scared?”

“You bet I am.”

“Ah. Fuck you.”

“I am scared,” said Davis.

“Yeah.” Salt patted Davis’s leg. “Me fuckin’ too.”

CHAPTER 23

The ground intercept station betrayed no sign of life as Doberman leveled Devil Two off at five thousand feet. But the station wasn’t the point — Doberman continued toward it, holding the plane at an altitude that not only made it visible on radar but also fairly easy to hear from the ground. If the Iraqis were looking for Hogs up here, they had two very visible ones to track.

But there was no indication that he was being tracked. The AWACS had discounted Skull’s Roland read; there was nothing between here and Kajuk that could see them, let alone harm them. And the GCI site — just now visible in the Maverick’s IR viewer — looked like a kid’s squashed Erector set.

Doberman knew from bitter experience that the moment you thought you were safe was the moment you were most likely to get whacked. The Iraqi missile men had learned to keep their radars off-line until they were absolutely ready to fire; the handful of operators who had survived the early days of the war were good enough to flick the set on, fire within seconds, then shut down to lessen the odds of a wild Weasel or Tornado sending them to la-la land. Just because his RWR was quiet, just because the AWACS said he was clean, didn’t mean he was safe. On the contrary, it meant he had to sit at the edge of his seat, as wary as ever. The threat could come from any direction.

He missed having A-Bomb on his butt. Frankly, Preston didn’t exactly impress him. For one thing, the guy hadn’t flown an A-10 in years; Doberman didn’t understand why Skull let him join a mission where he’d not only be flying far behind the lines but at night. Better to take Bozzone, even if he was a kid. Billy had the moves and the stuff; all he needed was a little experience and he’d be a kick butt driver.

Plus, Preston didn’t like the A-10. Anyone could see he thought he ought to be back flying Eagles. Why the hell had he been sent here? Punishment?

Had to be something serious. A guy didn’t just fall into the A-10 community after flying Eagles. Hell, no. Especially a guy who’d nailed a MiG.

Doberman checked his INS. The units had a bad habit of drifting while you were flying, throwing everything off. Naturally, it only happened on a mission when precise timing and location were important.

Like tonight’s.

“Devil Three, this is Four. Uh, we still turning?”

Doberman cursed before hitting the mike button. “Turning,” he said, angry with himself for letting his thoughts drift, even though he was only about two seconds off the mark.

“Four,” acknowledged Hack.

Not like him to be late. Preston had him all out of whack.

As he banked south, Glenon began pulling back on the stick, beginning a gradual climb that would take them to just about fifteen thousand feet as they crossed the border. The tanker should be in a track about two miles further south.

Flying through enemy territory at “high” altitude went against everything a Hog driver was taught. The plane didn’t seem to like it either; she didn’t buck, exactly, but she did seem to be dragging her wings, taking her time on the long climb. She might also be wondering why she was heading south with unfired missiles.

Right about here, Doberman thought to himself, A-Bomb would chime in with something funny. But Preston stayed quiet.

Which was, after all, how they’d briefed it — silent com, talk only when necessary.

Damn, he missed flying with A-Bomb.

As Doberman’s radar picked up a pair of approaching F-15s, a voice on the long-distance radio frequency demanded that he and Hack identify themselves. As he went to acknowledge, Preston beat him to it.

“Hey assholes, we’re on your side,” said Hack.

If A-Bomb had said that — and it was the sort of thing he might have said — Doberman would have laughed. But somehow Preston’s remark pissed him off.

“Devil Three to Piranha Seven,” he told the interceptor pilot who had queried them. “We’re A-10As from the 535^th Devil Squadron, heading for a refuel. You got a problem with that?”

The Eagles carried electronics gear to identify friendly aircraft; the FOF “tickled” equipment in the Hogs and painted them on the displays as good guys. That should have been done by now. The AWACS controller would also have given them information about the planes, since it was responsible for tracking flights in the sector.

So why were they being challenged?

“Yo, Blaze, it’s Hack. What the fuck are you doing?” said Preston.

“Hack? Major Preston? No way. I’m looking at a pair of flying pickup trucks. Hack’s a real pilot.”

“Stop busting our chops, Piranha,” snapped Doberman. “If this is a real fucking challenge, then get your goddamn ident gear fixed. Stand the fuck down.”

“Hey, relax Devil Flight,” answered the fighter pilot. “Just trying to giggle your nugget wingman.”

“You don’t bust chops by targeting me with your radar,” said Doberman.

“Negative. Negative. You weren’t targeted. Jesus,” said the Eagle jock. “Relax.”

“We have not targeted you,” said the other Eagle pilot. “Radars are not targeting you.”

Doberman, still playing righteous, didn’t even acknowledge. The planes rocked off to the east, back to whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

“Devil Three, I have your six,” said Preston over the squadron frequency. “Blaze is okay. He’s just a ball buster.”

“How the fuck did he know you were here?” shot back Doberman.

“How would I know? Probably the AWACS sent him to make sure we were who we were supposed to be.”

“This mission is secret.”

“Well they know we’re here, for christsakes,” answered Preston. “Besides —”

“Yeah. Tanker,” snapped Doberman, ending the exchange.

He began correcting to fall in behind the KC-135, which had turned south. The director lights in the belly were just visible.

Man, he missed A-Bomb.

CHAPTER 24

Major Ronald “Wick” Durk had always believed he could sense a mission’s karma right out of the gate. Not that he believed in any of the Eastern mysticism crap that went with the karma thing. But he could sense a winning streak when it was coming.

And one wasn’t, not tonight.

The F-111 pilot had nearly been diverted about five minutes after taking off from Taif in western Saudi to hit allegedly “live” Scuds found by a Delta team in western Saudi. He’d nearly had to scream at the AWACS trying to order him off his assignment. Not that it was the controller’s fault — for all he knew, Wick’s two-plane element was going after the low-priority bridge as originally posted in the ATO. Clearing up the misunderstanding without revealing the nature of his mission had not been easy.

And now his wingman had severe engine trouble, bad enough to knock him out of the game.

Hell of a time. They were less than five minutes away from their IP, the initial point or starting line for their bomb tossing.

He glanced at his weapons system operator next to him before contacting the ABCCC plane coordinating the mission. Mo had his head pressed to the cowling around the radar unit, seemingly oblivious to everything except the screen a few inches from his eyes. Two Paveway II two-thousand pound bombs were sitting on the wings waiting to be launched; a Pave Tack targeting set in the belly of the plane was even now hunting down their target. The pod head rotated as the turret flexed, the forward-looking infrared radar examining the terrain ahead.

“Wolf, this is Bad Boy leader,” said Wick, contacting the command plane. “I’ve just sent Two home. He’s limping but he thinks he’ll make it.”

“Wolf acknowledges. We heard that.” The controller was an Air Force Spec Ops captain sitting in the back of a specially equipped C-130 flying just over the Saudi-Iraq border. He was part communicator, part coach, part mother hen for the complicated mission. “We’d like you to continue into target as planned.”

That answered that question. Not that he expected anything different.

“Bad Boy acknowledges.”

He flipped the radio to its interphone circuit, allowing him to speak to Mo. “Sixty seconds.”

His bombardier grunted. Mo didn’t like to talk when he was working.

“We have the SA-11s. They’ll have to get someone else on the SA-9s.”

“Uhgg”

“You comfortable with a ramp toss?”

“Uhgg.”

“Green Bay ever going to win the Super Bowl?”

“Uhgg.”

“Your mother a whore?”

“Uhgg.”

Wick turned his full attention back to the plane, confident that they were going to get a good splash. Mo had everything under control.

CHAPTER 25

Flying at fifty feet above ground level, the hairs on your forearms and wrists became small pieces of ice, sticking into your skin. Your knees locked, the joints pinched by a mass of cold iron. The fabric of your flightsuit got heavier and heavier, weighted by a fog of sweat and adrenaline. And still you flew faster, your left hand resting on the throttle, as if its mere presence there might coax a few more ounces of thrust from the turbofans nailed to your spine. You held the plane’s stick firmly in your right hand, your consciousness centered in that the grip. Your eyes ran ahead, not so much seeing as absorbing the sky and ground, bleeding into its shapes and shadows. You were the plane and you were the pilot and you were the space where you were flying. And you knew that at any second if you lost just a fraction of your concentration, if you flicked your wrist the wrong way at the wrong moment, you’d pile into the earth.

Something twitched; Skull nudged left, lifting the Hog to stay with the contour of the land. Something else twitched and he took his turn right, precisely on his mark, thirty seconds from the landing zone. The village lay further northeast, to his right as he flew; the highway where Saddam would be hit sat further to the east.

And the SA-11s were dead ahead. There was a battery of the advanced Soviet-made missiles right where Wong said it would be. He could actually see the shadows without using the Maverick’s nine-inch targeting screen.

The Iraqi radars were inactive. As long as they stayed at fifty feet, however, the Hogs would be obscured in the ground clutter, even if it turned on. The angle of the radar waves and the reflections off the earth surface made it impossible for the targeting devices to see them.

Or rather, difficult; Wong had warned that there was a theoretical possibility that the Russian-made radars could be arranged in a way to guard against exactly this type of attack.

He pushed the seeker head around, scanning the scraggly ground beyond the SAM site. It wasn’t Iowa loam, but the land below was close enough to the Euphrates for farming, or so he’d been told. In any event, it wasn’t sandy desert; more like hard-packed dirt interrupted by rocks and occasional vegetation. The hill where Wong believed Dixon was holed up was on his right; Skull avoided the temptation to scan in that direction, concentrating on his job, which was to his left.

“Wolf to Devil Leader. One, we have a wrinkle.”

“One. Go ahead Wolf,” he snapped.

“Bad Boy Two is scratched. Bad Boy One has prime target. Can you mop up?”

The controller was asking them to strike the SA-9 site immediately south of the SA-11 the Aardvark targeted. The short-range heat-seeking SAMs could target the Herk when it made the pickup a few hours from now. Hitting them would necessitate quick action — Skull was less than three miles from the target, closing at roughly four hundred knots. Minimum range was around 3,000 feet, maybe twenty seconds from now.

Not a problem.

“One.” He nudged his stick slightly, pushing the targeting cursor at the same time to slide the Mav’s IR head over in the direction of the Iraqi missile launcher, which lay to the west of the SA-11 due west of Kajuk.

He started to tell A-Bomb about the change in plans, but O’Rourke cut him off.

“Two, yeah, I got ya, Chief. I’m looking at the LZ.”

Knowlington took one last read on the altimeter — sixty feet above ground — then turned his eyes to the blur of the Maverick screen, pushing the targeting cursor into the thick hull of the lightly armored vehicle where the missiles were mounted. The day’s sun had left the truck’s metal skin hot, making for a nice, fat blob in the monitor. He locked the target, then poked his nose up slightly, a bit over-anxious about letting go of the missile so close to the ground.

And then he launched.

If he told A-Bomb he had fired — and most likely he did, because he had intended to — he couldn’t remember later. Nor could he have detailed exactly how he dialed the cursor for the next AGM as a second SA-9 launcher — unbriefed — appeared in the screen roughly seventy yards to the north. But he had a good memory of pressing the trigger, and an even better memory of what happened next — the air in front of him turned into a wall of red streaks.

Flak, said a voice that belonged neither to A-Bomb nor to Skull. It came from behind an iron wall in a F-4 Phantom twenty years in the past, his old “bear” growling out a warning on a mission long since forgotten.

Now as then, Skull ignored the warning, sticking to his game plan. He tacked to the left, right through the exploding shells, swinging around as he scanned the target site with his AGM-65G. He had nothing but blurs — then his eyes caught a leaping tongue of flame on the ground, the result of a large Paveway series laser-guided missile launched from the F-111 striking the SA-11 launcher. Another roman candle erupted a half-second later — probably the van that provided targeting data. Then everything was red and white.

Skull whacked the Hog hard to left, then hit the transmit button.

“Door is Open,” he said over the long-range frequency, alerting Wolf that the SAMs had been knocked out.

As he lifted his finger, something rapped his right wingtip so hard it nearly rolled the plane.

CHAPTER 26

The village was smaller than Dixon had imagined, laid out along one main road that had been cut into the saddle of three hills. The road jagged away from a sharp rock outcropping at the entrance; by climbing the rock Dixon had been able to scout the town before going in.

A mosque sat at the center, elevated on a narrow plain in front of one of the hills; the other buildings were small, mostly made of concrete or something similar, their sides shadows in the dim evening light. Industrial buildings, either warehouses or factories, were wedged into the slope to his right; he couldn’t see much of them from the rocks.

Worried about being seen, he moved slower than a turtle across the sloping scrubland behind the village. The boy seemed caught up in the game his rescuer was playing; he moved behind him like a shadow, ducking when Dixon ducked, rising when Dixon rose. He made no sign that he knew the village. They huddled together as the sun set, waiting for the long shadows to make it easier to move. But the night wasn’t nearly as dark as Dixon wanted. Or perhaps he was just getting more paranoid.

They moved ever more slowly, stopping any time there was a sound or odd shadow ahead. They drew a semi-circle around the village without seeing anything remotely resembling a store. At three spots along the street clusters of men stood around vehicles; otherwise there was no sign of life. They were too far away to see for certain whether the men were soldiers or not. The vehicles they stood around seemed to be civilian, but Dixon knew that meant nothing.

Gradually, he and the boy worked back around the hillside, inching closer to a group of houses that lay below the rock he’d climbed earlier. Finally, they came to a flat, open space less than twenty yards behind three small buildings. A faint light shone through one of the windows of the house on the left. Dixon decided to send Budge there to ask for some food.

He mimed it out for the kid, who nodded.

“You really understand, Budge?”

The boy nodded again. “Budge,” he said.

Dixon patted his shoulder. He considered simply waiting a few more hours and break in, steal what they needed. But something inside him was uncomfortable with that — as if he truly were back in Iowa, as if this weren’t a matter of life and death.

“Yeah, all right,” he told the kid. “Go for it.”

A rattle echoed off the hills, the sound of a rattlesnake about to strike. Dixon dove forward, grabbing the boy as a bomb hit somewhere to the northwest, not terribly far from the hill. A second explosion followed, then the sky behind them turned red, fiery hands waving across the horizon. Anti-aircraft rumbled, tracers arcing into the sky overhead. The closest gun was a half-mile away; the rest were scattered around in a vast semi-circle that seemed to form a fist around them.

“This way,” he told Budge, jumping back to his feet. “This way.”

Dixon picked the boy up under his arm, hauling him along as he ran up the slope to the rock, hoping he might see what was going on from there. The ground shook like the floor of an old auditorium where a rap group played. Dixon ran as fast as he could manage, clutching the kid and the guns to him, stumbling as much as climbing.

The thunder of the flak guns stopped. A truck or some other vehicle started its engine in the distance, but otherwise everything was quiet. The sky beyond the village to the northwest was red; whatever the American bombers had hit was on fire.

When Dixon reached the rock he hoisted Budge up first, then clambered behind him. But the topography made it impossible to get a clear view; whatever had been hit lay beyond or on the side of the short hill opposite the road they’d walked down. Dixon faced it, trying to orient himself north-to-south; it seemed the target lay a mile or more north of the highway, commanding an open plain just before the hills.

Probably another Scud launching site.

If that was true, it was possible it had been pointed out by a Delta team. They’d be around somewhere, maybe waiting for pickup.

Go in that direction and see what was going on? He could skirt the house by walking around the slope, get down to the highway and walk along it. He could go to the spot where the Black Hawk had appeared last night — it was an easy place for a pickup.

The Iraqis might have it guarded.

Scout it first.

If not there, where? Back to the Cornfield? The kid would never be able to walk that far without food.

Maybe it better to sneak back to the village, go ahead and get some food and water. The attack might divert attention for a while.

Or it might make the villagers doubly suspicious.

Dixon looked at the boy, trembling on the ground, curled around his leg. Dixon saw a shadow on his pants and realized the child had pissed himself.

“Hey, it’s okay, buddy,” he told him, pulling him up. “Happens to the best of us.”

His father used to tell him that, didn’t he? When he was three or four?

Dixon couldn’t really remember much his father had told him. It didn’t matter, one way or another.

“It’s okay, Budge, come on.” He stood the kid up. “Let’s go see what all this fuss is about, okay? We’ll move around to the other side of this hill and see what we can see. We’ll get something to eat later. Moving’s better than standing still. Remember that.”

He repeated the advice, as if he expected Budge to take it to heart.

CHAPTER 27

A-Bomb’s stomach twitched. It wasn’t hunger — Skull had twisted his plane directly into a spewing fountain of yellow lava, seemingly oblivious of the ZSU-23 anti-aircraft guns even though A-Bomb had broadcast two warnings about them.

O’Rourke cursed, leaning against his restraints as the cascading sparks enveloped the lead plane. At the same time, he nudged the aiming cursor of his first Maverick toward the bank of ZSU-23s, the image jumping around and refusing to lock on target. It took so long that before he finally nailed the cursor the air around him had begun to bubble with the hot steam of exploding 23 mm shells. As the Maverick dropped off her rail, A-Bomb tapped his throttle for luck and yanked the Hog into a tight dip that would take him to the west and out of the Zeus’s line of fire.

Had to give it to the Iraqis — they had lined the stinking flak guns up damn good. And they had a million of them here, more than last night, or so it seemed.

Tracers arced over his left wing as he pushed the Hog into its bank. He felt the plane rumble as he flipped the wings hard the other way, trying to dart north into a piece of open air. The violent maneuver tugged the hell out of ailerons, not to mention the wings and the rest of the plane, but the Hog didn’t seem to mind, not even bothering to groan as her pilot shoved her over into a roll, gamely holding her rudder straight despite the violent g forces and exploding artillery fire. Finally clear, A-Bomb leveled out, running due west as briefed, his eyes hunting for Knowlington.

His stomach twitched again. Devil One ought to be right in front of him, but it wasn’t.

CHAPTER 28

Captain Wong stood at the edge of the MC-130 ramp, waiting in front of the open doorway. He had his arms linked with the two Delta troopers who were jumping with him, not wanting to take even the slightest chance of mistiming the jump. The combat transport dipped suddenly, turning and rising so sharply that the sergeant on his right slipped toward the opening. Wong tightened his arm, pulling the man back.

“Not yet,” he said, though it was unlikely the sergeant could hear him.

Red flashes began sifting through the sky behind the plane, followed by violent greenish-yellow sprays.

Good, thought Wong.

In the next second, the jump light flickered and Wong stepped forward into the rushing air. He spread his arms and in the same instant, the ripcord pulled. The chute of his low-altitude rig popped open as Wong pushed his arms back into his chest. They’d gone out below five hundred feet, even lower than planned — Wong barely got himself situated when his rucksack hit the dirt behind him. He got his legs ready, the ground coming up hard; as he hit the ground he rolled to his right, turning his body into a shock absorber. He sprang up, undoing the harness that had held his rucksack below him on the jump. As he furled his chute, he noted a group of convenient rocks; he was able to stow the darkly colored chute beneath one of them.

The two troopers came down within a few yards of him. They gathered their chutes silently, shouldering their gear and then joining Wong near the rocks to hide their chutes as he checked their location on his GPS.

They had landed ten feet off the mark. The inaccuracy irked Wong, but was within the acceptable margin of error for the mission.

“I’m jumping at 32,000 feet from now on,” grouched Salt. “We couldn’t have been over a hundred fuckin’ feet. Fuckin’ pilot shoulda warned us.”

“I believe we were lower than planned,” agreed Wong. “But nonetheless we were on target. Your knee?”

“Ain’t nothing,” said the sergeant. “I ain’t no fuckin’ pussy.”

“Wrap it as a precaution,” said Wong. He reached into his belt and removed a piece of ace bandage he kept handy for precisely such contingencies. Salt frowned but took the bandage, diligently winding it around his knee. He continued cursing, apparently unable to go more than thirty seconds without using at least one expletive.

In the meantime, Davis unfolded his AN-PRC-119 and its keyboard to transmit a short, coded message indicating that they were on the ground in the proper location. Though bulky, the unit ensured that the transmission could not be intercepted and give their presence away.

Transmission sent, the sergeant repacked his equipment. As he shouldered his rucksack, the earth shook with a violent explosion, undoubtedly a fresh secondary from the attack that had been launched as the Hercules approached the drop point. A gush of red lit the sky to the northwest, throwing a pinkish shadow in the direction of the hills surrounding Kajuk, which lay to its right. Both Delta troopers turned toward it.

“Sergeants, no one admires a good explosion more than I, but our task lies this way,” said Wong, pointing to the east. “And I would prefer to reach the highway before the trucks.”

“What trucks?” asked Davis.

“You’ll hear them presently,” said Wong, starting off.

CHAPTER 29

Lars felt the Herk hop upwards as the rear door snapped shut. He hit the transmit button, radioing Wolf that their passengers had disembarked, then held on as the pilot began a sharp bank west, at the same time pushing the nose to get back close to the terrain. Besides the heavy flak vest, he was wearing a full helmet and night vision gear; their weight seemed to triple the effect of the g’s the plane pulled as it whipped through its finely choreographed paces. They had popped up to five hundred feet to make the drop, lower than they had planned when a blip of the radar detector forced a last-second deviation in the game plan. But the strike aircraft had done their job well, for the MC-130E’s sophisticated equipment gave no indication that they were being tracked.

No radars were active as they descended, flying toward the earth’s nap. They had more to fear from bullets than missiles — antiaircraft fire cascaded into the sky to the north and east as the Herk banked to turn southwards. Lars’s hands began to shake as the pilot continued to descend.

“Turbulence,” remarked the pilot.

Lars grunted. He tightened his grip on Herky Bird’s control yoke, trying to will his hands steady. Anyone with a rifle on the ground could hit them, even with his eyes closed.

Lars pushed his helmet to the side, trying to scratch an itch without removing it or the night goggles, which magnified the outside starlight enough so he could see. He felt his head growing woozy, and took a breath. The hum of the plane and the dampened, surreal glow of the cockpit’s instrument panel pummeled his senses, trying to convince him he was in a dream, not reality.

“We made the drop too low,” said DiRiggio.

No one answered. They hadn’t been off by that much, thought Lars, and besides, the commandos could handle it. He read their present altitude — falling through 300 feet above ground level. The terrain-following radar showed a clear, unobstructed flight path — nothing to run into.

He looked toward the FLIR screen on the left near the pilot, then jerked his head to the left to glance through the pilot’s side window. An immense fireball shot into the sky from the direction of the SAM battery that had been hit to darken the alley for their drop. The yellow-white flames turned inside out, blackness erupting from the inside as the fire burned through its fuel.

“Wow,” he heard himself say.

“Got to be the missiles frying,” said DiRiggio. “How’s that temp?” he asked the flight engineer, who was perched like a wise man in a seat directly behind the two pilots. The seat was elevated, ostensibly to give him a better view, though a few wags thought for sure the men who had designed the flight deck had been former sergeants intent on telling pilots who really ran the Air Force.

“Green,” replied Kelly, the engineer. They’d seen some spikes in the temp on two earlier in the flight, and three’s oil pressure had flickered just before the airdrop. “Gauge was flaky a second, I think. We’re fine.”

Lars managed a long, slow breath, lowering his eyes to the horizon indicator. His heart began to slow. He checked the altimeter clock again, still gathering himself, then pulled himself back up in his seat, helping the pilot with a crosswind correction as they hung tight on their course.

They were safe now, out of the radars’ detection area. A few more minutes of flying time at low altitude and they’d be free to climb — they were entering a dark zone in the Iraqi radar coverage.

The worst was over, for now at least. Granted, they had nearly three hours to kill before the extraction — and that was going to be sheer hell — but for now things were fairly easy. All they had to do now was orbit in the dead zone and wait.

“Not like flying a slick, huh?” DiRiggio said to Lars, using Herk slang for a “normal” C-130. Compared to the heavily modified Combat Talons and other special operations craft, the transport models had smooth or slick skins.

“It’s the flak vest I can’t get used to,” he said, coaxing what he hoped was a jocular note into his voice.

“Probably a good idea, though.”

“Uh-huh.”

Because the mission was classified, the crew had been told just the bare outlines, the absolute minimum they needed to do their jobs. Lars and DiRiggio knew that the Delta team was targeting a caravan of vehicles for F-111s. Lars figured that the target was a high-ranking Iraqi — possibly Saddam himself, given the location where they’d made the drop. Lars guessed that DiRiggio thought that too, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if the rest of Herky Bird’s crew had figured it out. But their code called for ignorance, and to a man they practiced it, concentrating on their job and pretending to know nothing beyond what was in front of them.

DiRiggio hit his mark and began angling into a slight turn eastward. They double-checked their indicators. They were still clean; the terrain before them empty desert. Lars listened for the transmission from Wolf that would tell them the landing team was down and in the right spot. Their MC-130E carried the latest high-tech communications gear, but radio transmissions could still be problematic, hampered by everything from low altitude to atmospheric vagaries to interference from jamming craft. In theory none of those things were supposed to matter, but somehow communications remained as much an art as a science. Lars remembered an old Philco monster radio his great-grandpa had had in his Bristol, Connecticut row house. It managed to pull in Yankee games from New York City, crystal clear, even day games — once you hit the knob right. Took a certain flick, though.

“Jerry? Three? God. God!”

Lars snapped his head toward DiRiggio, unsure whether he was worried about engine three or something else. The major’s face seemed to glow white in the dim cockpit, as if he were made of white marble instead of flesh. His eyes were round, large circles that stared at Lars, stared at him for a long moment, as if DiRiggio had woken from a dream and wondered how he’d gotten there. Then they rolled back in his head, the pilot’s body flailing against the restraints, his arms snapping taut. The plane jerked to the right so hard the control yoke pulled out of Lars’ hand.

“Somebody help me.”

Lars wasn’t sure whether the words came from DiRiggio or himself. He grabbed at the controls desperately, struggling to right the Hercules as its right wing pitched toward the ground barely fifty feet away.

CHAPTER 30

Skull brought the Hog level at just under a hundred feet, not sure exactly where he was and half-suspecting that he was going to slam into a hill any second. He stepped through the last of the blurring tracers and found himself in the open air, though dangerously low. The plane quickly responded as he pulled back on the stick, plucking its nose upwards toward the sky. If he’d been hit — and surely the odds had favored it — the Hog had shrugged it off. The plane responded crisply to his control inputs.

Not wanting to believe his luck, he hesitated before checking the row of warning lights on the dash.

Clean and green.

What had the rattle been? Shock waves from the exploding shells? Or was he flying with holes in his sides?

Knowlington craned his neck around, checking the exterior of the plane through the Perspex. It was too dark to see, of course, but he had to look, just as he had to recheck his indicators once more, working through them slowly.

If anything, he had a bit more fuel than the preflight calculations had predicted.

He’d always been good. But he hadn’t been this lucky since the old days — the really old days, back in the Thud.

“Devil Two to Devil One. I’m having trouble locating you, Boss,” said A-Bomb.

“One,” said Skull, keying his mike to let A-Bomb use the radio signal as a primitive direction-finding beacon. In the meantime, he got out his small flashlight and pulled the paper map off his flight board, shaking it out with his left hand as he got his bearings with the help of the plane’s nav gear. He’d flown slightly to the northwest of where they had planned, but was more or less in the right place.

He saw A-Bomb before the pilot saw him — bearing straight at him from the east, less than a mile away.

“A-Bomb, you’re on me,” he said, tucking his wing in an evasive and hopefully attention-getting roll. “Time for glasses,” he added as he recovered.

“What I need is one of those NOD doohickeys,” complained A-Bomb. “Night vision. What I’m talking about.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t traded for one yet,” said Knowlington. While he was still a bit put off by some of A-Bomb’s personal habits — not to mention the music he played — Skull had come to respect O’Rourke and his skills. A-Bomb goofed around a lot, except when the shit started to fly; then he was the sort of no-nonsense, can-do pilot Knowlington wanted watching his six.

“I almost had one off these Green Beret dudes at Al Jouf,” replied A-Bomb. “Went for a FAV instead.”

“A FAV being what, exactly?”

“Fast Attack Out-of-my-way Vee-hicle,” said A-Bomb. “The ‘O’ is silent. Your basic dune buggy.”

“You strap it to your wing?”

“Geez, Colonel, why didn’t I think of that?”

“That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Knowlington. He leaned the Hog into a wide bank, now precisely on the course they had laid out before the mission. They were approximately twelve miles from Kajuk, south of a highway that ran west to east over mostly empty scrubland. They were far enough away not to attract attention, but close enough to ride in to the rescue if things went sour. He dialed in Wolf and asked for an update.

The F-111 had done its job well, taking out one of the SAMs. There was still some doubt as to whether the missiles had been SA-11s or not; their radars had never been activated. A pair of Tornadoes had been tasked to sit on the remaining sites in case they flickered to life. While the sites would present a danger to the F-111 tasked with actually nailing Saddam, Wong had felt that taking out all of the SAMs would have caused the dictator to go elsewhere.

Which he might just do anyway, Skull realized. But you took your shots where you found them.

Skull advised Wolf that he and his wingman would orbit for another forty-five minutes, then go and tank as the other two A-10As came north.

“Wong ought to be finding Dixon right about now,” said A-Bomb after the exchange with the command ship was finished.

Skull shrugged to himself, not sure what to say. He hoped O’Rourke was right, but knew better than to be so wildly optimistic.

He should have pulled strings and insisted on the original plan. He cursed himself for not being more forceful.

Honestly, though — what more could he have done?

If anyone could find Dixon, it was Wong. But damn it — they should have launched a full-blown SAR mission. The hell with Saddam — any American was worth twenty, a hundred dictators.

Not true, not even close. And he’d done the best he could as far as getting the mission authorized. This was a lousy compromise, but if Wong brought something harder home than a long-shot hunch, they’d be back.

Skull checked his instruments as he continued southward, easing off on the throttle to conserve fuel. The Maverick IR head painted the terrain empty and lonely in his screen, a green-hued plain of desolation.

“Turning,” he said, cueing A-Bomb as he began a fresh bank.

There was no way to do this part of the mission comfortably. You flew and you waited, you flew and you waited. It was worse than the interminable ferry flight he’d made from the States to the Gulf, surrounded by darkness, waiting for something to happen, partly wishing it would and partly hoping it wouldn’t. Skull tried not to let his mind wander, concentrating on his airplane as he came back north, nudging the Maverick viewer around in what he knew was a fruitless attempt at widening the area he could see.

At least there was no temptation to drink.

Maybe he was over that now. Maybe getting back into the adrenaline rush of combat was the shock therapy he’d needed.

The idea of bourbon in his mouth seemed mildly nauseating.

“Turning,” he told A-Bomb again, reaching the northern end of their racetrack pattern. The Hog seemed to anticipate him, pushing her wings down and gliding through the smooth bank as if she were showing off for the crowd at a Sunday afternoon air show. The plane looked ugly — hell, it didn’t look like even belonged in the sky. But sitting in her cockpit putting her through her paces, it was hard to imagine a prettier aircraft. She went where her pilot wanted; she could walk through a standing wall of triple-A; she could carry a heavier bomb load than most World War II bombers. Every plane should be so ugly.

Skull checked his watch. They had a half-hour to go.

Waiting sucked.

Wong had a pair of fancy binoculars that let him see heat sources, basically hand-held IR. Still, finding the kid was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. The search area was more than a mile from the point where the two Delta boys were going to watch the highway for Saddam or Strawman, as everyone on the mission now referred to him.

Boys. Kid. Dixon was twenty-three. Old enough to fly a Hog well enough to nail a helicopter on the first day of the air war, no mean feat.

But still a kid.

Skull had nailed three MiGs and hit the silk once by the time he was twenty-three. He’d seen two of his close friends go down, never to come back.

Had his commanders thought of him the same way?

“Vulture Three, Vulture Three,” said a distant voice in the faint crackle of Knowlington’s radio.

At first he thought it was a transmission from a flight overriding their frequency. Then Skull realized it was a distress call on Guard, the emergency band.

“Vulture Three,” said the voice again. Static crashed over it like an ocean wave.

Was he identifying himself or talking to another airplane?

“Any allied airplane, please respond,” said the voice as the channel cleared. “Vulture Three, requesting assistance from any allied plane.”

“Vulture Three, this is Devil leader. What is your location?” answered Skull.

The response was garbled, but Knowlington heard coordinates approximately ten miles directly west of their position. His head turned that way, as if he might catch a glimpse of the stricken plane.

There were no other allied planes in the area. Detouring his orbit would add a little more than a minute to his response time back to the ground team.

“A-Bomb, you catch that?”

“Catch what?”

“The transmission on Guard,” said Knowlington.

“Negative.”

“Not at all?”

“Nothing but static.”

“Hang with me,” he told his wingman. “We’re going west. Come to 255 on my signal.”

“On your back,” said A-Bomb.

Skull tried hailing Vulture Three again before telling Wolf what was up. The controller acknowledged, volunteering to alert the AWACS control plane in the area and hurry up the two Devil flight Hogs that were tanking.

It was only after he snapped the mike off and found his new course that Skull realized Vulture Three was the call sign of one of the buddies he’d lost in Vietnam.