Target Saddam

CHAPTER 38

Dixon pushed Budge down, and in the same motion swung the rifle on his right shoulder around to level it at the glowing cigarette ten yards away. The dot of red blurred into an oval meteor, flaring to the right. Dixon slid his trigger finger into the AK-74, his stomach pinching tight. His entire body jerked against his finger, pushing his life and hope into the quick burst it commanded, but there was no rumble at his side, no pull upwards from the front of the barrel, no bullets flying across the darkness into his enemy.

In his haste and fear he had put his finger against the guard, not the trigger.

The cigarette disappeared. The smoker miraculously had not noticed them.

Dixon waited for the air to come back into his lungs. When it finally did, he unfolded his finger as deliberately as he could and placed it where it belonged. The boy lay curled on the ground next to him, his neck on the other rifle.

Dixon reached over and gently removed the gun. He put his finger to his lips then held it up, wagging it to tell him he must be quiet and wait.

“I’ll be back,” he whispered, patting Budge reassuringly. The child bobbed his head, seeming to understand.

Moving silently, the second rifle slung over his left shoulder, Dixon clambered across the slope toward the spot where the cigarette had flared. He bent his head forward, eyes peering into the dimness to try and sort the shadows into shapes.

A dozen steps and he entered a patch of light thrown by the moon; he inched back, eyes adjusting well enough to see the edge of a wall eight feet away around the slope. In the dimness the enemy position looked as if it were made of books, immense dictionaries or encyclopedias stacked on their side. BJ hugged the ground, eyes pinned on a narrow globe at the middle of the row of books — the head of a soldier, who leaned against the sandbags, peering down the hillside through a pair of binoculars or a starscope.

A red dot flaring behind and to the left of the globe showed Dixon where the cigarette smoker was. The dot moved further back, behind the bend, out of his sight and aim.

Were there others? Dixon narrowed his mouth, stifling his breath into long, quiet pauses so he could hear. If there were other Iraqis, they were silent, not even fidgeting.

The man with the binoculars said something to his companion. He stretched back and the other man got up, took the glasses. They jerked into action.

Now was the time to fire. He could get them both with the same burst — get them both with the same bullet.

Trucks approached in the distance below, driving from the south in the general direction of the hill. The men began speaking excitedly, tapping each other. They leaned forward across the wall, trying to share the viewer.

Best to sneak away, Dixon realized. He and the kid could slip down the hill while their attention was drawn to the trucks.

He took a step back, kicking loose rocks.

One of the Iraqis jerked his head around. Dixon’s finger snapped, this time against the trigger.

CHAPTER 39

Doberman mashed his throttle, urging the turbofans to give him every ounce of thrust they could. The wind had shifted to kick the Hog in the face, holding her back at precisely the wrong moment. The pilot cursed and strained against his seat restraints, as if his weight might make a difference to the aircraft’s momentum.

If stinking Preston hadn’t screwed up his first attempt to hook into the flying tanker they’d be there by now.

Stinking rusty major who thought he was hot shit just because he’d flown pointy-nose teenagers.

“Keep up with me, Four,” Doberman snapped to his wingman.

“Four,” grunted Preston. He sounded as if he’d gotten out of the plane and was pushing it uphill.

Actually, Doberman’s indicated air speed was four hundred and sixty-five knots — close to an all-time Hog record for level flight with a combat load. But he was still a good two or three minutes away from getting into target range.

Once there, it could take considerably longer to find the convoy.

“I’ll call the targets,” Doberman said. “The station wagon’s our priority. Screw any SAMs or Zsu-Zsus — leave them for the Tornadoes. Wolf has them right behind us.”

“Four.”

Stinking Wong. Why the hell couldn’t he get the goddamn time right?

Doberman glanced at the Maverick targeting screen. He had the outline of a highway at the top right corner. It was the highway that led to Al Kajuk and intersected with the one Strawman was on. Swinging along it would make it easier to find his target.

But it would also take him through the lip of the remaining SA-11s’ radar coverage. Flying at medium altitude, he’d be an easy target.

Worth the risk.

“Follow my turn,” he barked to Preston, hanging a hard right, eyes glued on the Mav screen to guide him.

“Four. We’re moving off the briefed course, into —”

“Follow my turn.”

“Four.”

Wolf, the mission controller, called back, asking for an ETA.

“In target range in zero-two,” said Doberman, afraid that wouldn’t be good enough.

The highway cut a sharp line in the middle of the screen. He plotted the target zone in his head, decided he’d look for the T, then pivot; the station wagon would sit to his right, roughly in the center of the screen if he could hold this course.

More speed, more speed.

Ninety seconds.

“Wolf acknowledges. We have live bait. Ground team attempting to tie them down.”

The controller said something else but Doberman lost it. Before he could ask him to repeat it his RWR went crazy. The SAMs had woken up, and they were angry.

Somewhere to the south, the electronic warfare operators aboard the two Tornadoes tasked to the mission licked their lips and lit the wicks on their spanking new BAe ALARMS; the high-tech radar killers burst from beneath their bellies, streaking upwards as their integrated circuits calculated the surest way of quashing the offending defenses.

But the speeding missiles were of small comfort to Doberman. The Iraqis had already launched their SA-11s missiles, and there was nothing he could do but fly toward them.

CHAPTER 40

Salt felt the grenade pop from the blunt nose of the launcher like a paint ball phiffffing into the air. He didn’t bother firing another, knowing the projectile would nail the lead truck. He turned quickly, bending his head as he tried to sight the Mercedes through the M-16’s starscope. He couldn’t find the target at first, and by the time he dished a grenade in its direction the first one had exploded, distracting him enough to screw up his aim. Davis yelled something behind him. He’d left the Satcom and grabbed the SAW, opening fire in the direction of the convoy.

The earth turned into a barbecue pit, flames bursting all around them, rockets streaking upward, the tank beginning to fire, the armored car — actually an armored personnel carrier with a special cannon — thumping the ground. Men poured from the troop trucks. At least two heavy machine-guns flailed.

Salt popped another grenade, but in all the confusion it was impossible to tell where it hit. He threw himself down over the sniper rifle, pulling his body back over the long gun as the ground reverberated. It was all a matter of being patient, as impossible as that seemed — you took your shot only when it was there, and to get it there you had to move deliberately. He squirmed around behind the sight, swinging the light fifty on its tripod. He moved the crosshairs across the vehicles, past the truck and the muzzle flash of the APC. He got the station wagon first, saw a driver but no one else, slipped his aim back toward the Mercedes.

Empty.

Davis screamed something. Salt ignored it, scanning the ground near the Mercedes. The car began to move; he picked his shoulder up slightly and put a round into the front tire. The round blew the tire and wheel apart, but the vehicle kept moving. He pushed his shoulder down, zeroing his aim on the thick, bulletproof glass at the driver’s window, waiting for the man to raise his head so he could see where he was going. The Mercedes bumped forward, aiming to get behind one of the trucks for cover. Just as Salt was about to swing toward the engine compartment the man raised his head. Salt squeezed.

The car’s thick glass was advertised as bulletproof. What the manufacturer meant was that it was bulletproof against ordinary bullets and guns. The weapon Salt fired was anything but ordinary, with its 12.7 mm armor-piercing bullet hand-finished and loaded by the marksman himself. Still, the glass altered the bullet’s shape and trajectory, knocking it off its mark.

Unfortunately for the driver, that meant it entered not his neck but his skull. The blast took off the top quarter of the Iraqi’s head.

The gun’s heavy recoil momentarily cost Salt his aim; by the time he sighted again the car had jerked to a stop in the middle of the road. Davis yelled again and Salt felt something wet and hot hit the side of his face, the ground trembling with the impact of a 125 mm T-72 shell less than twenty yards away.

CHAPTER 41

Knowlington watched the PAVE Low helicopter rear upwards from the mass of black shadows, jerking nearly straight up with the motion of a champion weight lifter cleaning five hundred pounds. Its dark shadow hovered a second, then slashed forward across the black wilderness, heading for the fresh flare launched by the Frenchman. He looked to be about two miles from them, perhaps less.

Knowlington replotted the fuel reserves while A-Bomb asked the downed Frenchman something about cafes. It was cutting it close, but there was just enough to run back to Kajuk, fire the Mavericks and then tank.

As long as they met the tanker at the northern extreme of its track. And they got a tailwind.

Hell, if they got a tailwind there’d be two gallons to spare. Maybe three.

Let’s get on with it, he urged the helicopter silently.

Knowlington pushed the Hog onto her wing, sliding through the orbit around the Frenchman. Wolf gave an update on Kajuk in staccato: Doberman and Preston were attacking, the RAF Tornadoes were launching their radar-killing missiles at a SAM site.

“Boss, he’s hearing something,” said A-Bomb, breaking in. “And it ain’t le hélicoptère.”

Knowlington started to ask for a direction when the air in front of him burst into flame.

“Leander Seven, hold off, hold off!” he barked, whacking his stick hard to the right as he pulled the Hog out of the worst of the anti-aircraft fire. The plane began shaking like a pickup dragging four shot-out tires over a dried out stream bed. Skull rolled into a chest-squeezing turn that took him nearly ninety degrees from his original path, looping out under the stream of gunfire.

One consolation — if he’d been hit, the maneuver would have torn the plane in two.

“Fuckin’ Zsu-Zsu in the shadow of that road, uh, half-mile, three-quarters north of the Frog,” said A-Bomb. “Shit. Something else.”

“Yeah. I’m on the son of a bitch,” said Knowlington, trying to get it into his targeting screen. The four-barreled mobile anti-aircraft unit was one of three vehicles hiding in a shallow area of shadows near a roadway. Before he could get the flak dealer onstage, its red spit turned to narrow points as Skull closed in; the gun was turning in his direction.

Knowing he’d be unable to climb quickly enough to avoid the spray, Knowlington pushed his nose down and twisted his wings, shaking off the g-forces as he sticked and ruddered into a nearly ninety-degree turn, clear of flak about two hundred feet from the ground and dead on target at one mile.

Michael Knowlington had had less than twenty hours in an A-10A cockpit when he was assigned to command Devil Squadron. At the time, it was only going to exist on paper, a bureaucrat’s accounting for planes en route to the boneyard. But the war — and Schwartzkopf — had intervened, plucking not just the allegedly obsolete Hogs but their supposedly washed-up commander off the discard pile.

His first few flights had been tentative. He’d had to unlearn a dozen habits better suited to the high-powered aircraft he’d grown old with. In a way, Skull’s past glories held him back; the differences between the Hog and the other planes made him think too much about what he was doing, made flying a hair-twitch more intellectual than it needed to be when shit was raining hot and heavy. But the stream of unguided anti-aircraft fire that had caught him off-guard had changed that. He didn’t think now, he flew. As he snapped clear of the flak he nailed the Maverick’s targeting cue onto the Zeus and let go of the missile. The AGM-65 slid through the air to the left as it was dropped, momentarily riding out the Hog’s momentum. But as her engine ignited she cleared her head, setting her chin on the ZSU-23 flak gun. She struck exactly 3.2 seconds later, ending the hail of bullets.

“Trucks moving on the road. I got people,” said A-Bomb.

“Yeah,” said Knowlington, pushing the Hog to the east as his AGM crashed into the tin armor below the flak dealer’s four-barreled turret. “You sure that Frenchie’s real?”

“Authentication checked out,” said A-Bomb. “And the guy knows his restaurants. I’m talking serious snails. Targeting one of the trucks.”

“I got your butt,” said Skull, pulling the Hog around south of his wingman’s.

“Just don’t kiss it,” said A-Bomb. A Maverick dropped from his wing, its solid-fuel motor igniting with a red sparkle.

Had these guys been here all along? Even if the authentication procedure checked out, there was no guarantee someone wasn’t holding a knife to the Frenchie’s throat.

“Splash one Zil,” said A-Bomb as the ground flared with his missile strike. “Bonus shot — one slightly used pickup. Hope high explosives damage is a warranty repair.”

The AWACS cut in, informing them that a pair of F-15s had been diverted to help.

“What the hell are they going to do?” blustered A-Bomb. “They get nose bleeds under twenty thousand feet.”

“A-Bomb, I’m going to take it low and slow over our Frenchman. Tell him to get his butt out in the open. I want to see him alone.”

“He’s got people shooting at him, Boss.”

“Just tell him.”

Knowlington dropped the Hog down in a buzzard’s swoop into the shadows. He felt his way through the grayness, slipping the Hog to sixty feet. He leaned Devil One gently on her keel, improving his view out the side of the cockpit window. But it was just too dark to see a man cowering on the ground. He pushed around, fiddling with the IR head on the Maverick, hoping the glow of the Frenchman’s body would show up somewhere. But the viewer was just too narrow or perhaps not sensitive enough to see the pilot.

Served him right. When he was at the Pentagon, Knowlington had helped kill a proposal to outfit A-10s with night-fighting equipment.

“Says you flew right over him.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Skull told A-Bomb. The trucks O’Rourke had hit were still burning; they would be big blotches on the IR if he could ever get the damn thing oriented right.

Which didn’t make sense, because hell, now he had them right in his face and the screen was still blank. No matter how he pointed the FLIR head on the Mav, he had nothing.

Seeker head wasn’t working right.

Oh.

Skull banked the Hog through another turn. Leander asked what the hell was going on.

“We’re hosing these guys,” answered A-Bomb. “Be with you in two shakes.”

Knowlington gave the shadows one more look with his Mark-One eyeballs. All he could see were shadows dancing on shadows and an eerie reddish glow cast by the fires A-Bomb had started when he hit the trucks.

Only thing to do was fire off one of his LUU-2 illumination flares.

It was a very dangerous move. The flare might help the Iraqis see the Frenchman. It could also make the Hog an easy target as he ducked low to make sure the pilot was for real and alone. But Skull couldn’t clear the helicopter into an ambush.

“Leander Seven, I’m going to drop a log,” Skull said over the rescue frequency. “Hold back. A-Bomb, get between the Iraqis and the helo, just in case there’s more we missed. I’ll take some turns, knock down anybody left by the trucks and look for our guy.”

“Two,” snapped A-Bomb. “Give me three seconds.”

Knowlington needed more than that to get into position. He saw a few pinpricks of red on the ground, but couldn’t tell if the Iraqis were firing at him or the downed airman. He goosed off the flare, accelerated, then slammed back to take a look. The stark effervescent light cast by the lou-two as it slowly descended on its parachute swing turned the world into a scene from a Grade B sci-fi movie, earth devastated after a nuclear accident.

Still couldn’t see.

Screw it.

Skull tucked his wing, swooping toward the flare and charging in the direction of the Frenchman. He plunged so low he got beneath the slowly descending LUU-2; the light silhouetted the dark hull of the plane and made it an obvious target, but Knowlington didn’t worry about that — he was too busy flying. He skimmed along the ground and found three Iraqi soldiers blinking assault rifles toward him.

Skull blinked back, teasing his GAU-30. The soldiers disappeared in the swirl of erupting dirt, uranium and explosives. He nosed upwards, continuing his path toward the trucks A-Bomb had hit. Shadows scattered — he fired at them, realizing they were Iraqi soldiers. He fired high and there wasn’t time to bring his aim down as he winged over the position, wheeling back around at the edge of the bright circle of light.

As he churned back around, he spotted a stick figure about fifty yards from the spot where he’d obliterated the first group of Iraqis. He began crawling as Skull approached, moving toward the south.

Had to be the Frenchman.

“I’m on that other truck,” announced A-Bomb.

It took Skull a few seconds to spot the vehicle a quarter-mile ahead on his left, a six-wheeler that looked more like a boat than a truck. A moment after he saw it, A-Bomb’s missile turned its hull into molten steel and foam.

Skull turned back toward the first group of trucks, looking for the soldiers he’d seen. They were gone, obviously hiding from the Hog and its monster cannon.

“Leander Seven, the heavy stuff is cleared away,” Skull told the SAR helicopter. “Few ground troops by the burning vehicles. We’ll walk you in if you feel up to it.”

The PAVE Low pilot replied with a string of curses indicating he was more than up to it. The big Sikorsky popped up, racing forward into the bright arc of the still-burning flare. As Skull banked behind her one of the crewmen lit up the mini-gun at the door, spraying the area near the destroyed trucks. Meanwhile, the Eagles that had been tasked to help out announced that they had arrived with a swoop down to a thousand feet. Their massive engines shook the ground like lightning bolts from the Norse god Thor.

Which just happened to be their call sign.

The French pilot shouted something over his radio. Skull caught a glimpse of him running to the helicopter.

“Said we’re magnificently ugly,” explained A-Bomb as the PAVE Low abruptly lifted up and began heading south. “Those French know beauty, let me tell you.”

“Thor Flight, appreciate it if you can run Leander home,” Skull told the F-15s. “We have a prior engagement.”

“Thor Leader copies. Thank you, Devil Flight; thumbs up to you.”

Skull had already snapped his Hog onto the course for Kajuk. A-Bomb acknowledged that he, too, was on the proper heading.

“Say boss, not that I’m complaining, but we’re out past bingo, aren’t we?” A-Bomb added, referring to their fuel situation. Bingo was the not all together theoretical turnaround point, the spot where you had to fly home or risk running out of gas.

“Might be,” said Skull, making sure he had the throttle at maximum.

CHAPTER 42

Wong felt the first shell of the T-72 explode in the distance. The tremble knocked him into the dirt; by the time he managed to get back up and grab the suitcase with the explosives, another round had landed. This one landed parallel to him but well to the east, a good hundred or more yards away from where he’d left Salt and Davis. But the tank had to be neutralized, or sooner or later his men would be killed.

Perhaps sooner — a third salvo landed behind him, close enough to lift him off the ground and deposit him chest-first six or seven feet away. The explosives case landed square on his back, knocking the air out of his lungs. As he struggled to breathe, Wong rolled over and tore open the case. He hastily wired three of the C-4 charges for firing; reaching for another he heard the whiz of a fresh shell heaving through the air. He froze, waiting for the explosion he sensed would be less than twenty yards away, more than likely fatal. But the shell apparently landed with a dull plop, burying itself in the ground without exploding; still cringing, Wong grabbed the remote detonator, leaving the set charges on top of the open case. He ran as fast as he could toward the tank, the wireless detonator cupped against his body. As the T-72 launched another shell, he detonated the explosives.

His idea was to use the explosives to create a diversion and at the same time cloud the tank’s laser range-finder; he hoped to get close enough to the tank to draw its attention as the smoke cleared, giving Davis and Salt more time to pin down the convoy for the scrambling A-10s. Had Wong calculated the gambit according to his usual coefficient of probabilities, he would have been presented with an alarmingly small coefficient — but sometimes even he preferred not to do the math.

Of course, had he done the math, he would have taken a few more steps before igniting the explosives. The C-4 was not particularly suited to the task at hand, but it was nonetheless true to its inherent explosive nature — it made a nice, big boom as it was ignited, filling the air with grit, dirt, and pulverized rock. The force of the explosion knocked Wong flat, slamming his face against the hard surface. His cheekbone cracked — technically, the zygomatic cranial bone on his right side suffered a clean fracture — but Wong hardly felt it; the shock of the blast had already knocked him unconscious.

CHAPTER 43

Doberman could see the dark shadow as it rode up toward him in the distance, a knife poking into the sky. His own ECMs were useless against the missile, and he had no way of knowing if the fuzz being thrown by the electronic warfare craft to the south was working. He tossed some chafe and pressed on, trying to keep his eyes on the targeting screen, where he had only blurs.

He needed to see the goddamn highway. He needed to see it before the SAM nailed him.

It was going to come right through the windscreen any second.

Nothing but blur in the screen.

The SA-11 would have been launched at long distance, would be blind and unguided because surely the radar-seeking missiles had nailed the ground radar and the ECM support craft had fried its on-board guidance system.

No, it was there ahead, a shining silver blur coming for him. He was an easy target, straight and level at ten thousand feet, struggling to see the god damn car.

He was just about onto of the damn intersection. Should be right there.

Doberman took his eyes off the targeting screen for a second. Pinpricks of red and green light dotted the ground ahead of his wings. A wall of anti-aircraft fire rose from around the village. The radar warning receiver was still going ape shit. Someone — Preston — yelled a missile warning.

He was about to get nailed. He could feel it.

Served his damn butt right for wearing that stinking BS good-luck medal.

Doberman rolled his wings into a knifing dive, pushing the Hog as close to straight down as possible and swooping for the spot where the parade ought to be. The RWR freaked and Preston screamed and the Iraqi missile homed in.

Doberman put his helmet nearly on the Mav screen. The shadow of a truck materialized.

Finally.

He nudged the Hog’s nose sideways, pushing her along the highway as she plunged. He saw a truck, saw another truck, saw a car, saw a big Mercedes, saw a troop truck, saw a nice, long, long station wagon.

Just your typical madman dictator out for a midnight stroll through suburbia.

“Bing-bang-boing,” Doberman said aloud, his thumb dancing over the trigger in his old shooting ritual.

“Bing-bang-boing.”

The Maverick kicked out from the launcher, barely separating from the plane. The two-stage Thiokol TX-633 solid-fuel rocket motor ignited, jerking the eight-foot long missile out ahead of its mothership. A half-second later, another thunked into the air behind her, the cruciform delta wings at the rear whipping around ferociously as the guidance system put the missile on course.

CHAPTER 44

The gun jumped in Dixon’s hand, propelled upwards by the momentum of the gases that sent a dozen bullets into the two Iraqis in front of him. By the time he jerked it down the soldiers had crumbled to the ground. Dixon kept squeezing, shaking the gun up and down before realizing he’d burned the clip. He threw the rifle to the side and pulled up the other Kalashnikov, flinching as something seemed to move just beyond the sandbagged position he’d fired into. But there was nothing, or at least nothing that shot at him. He crouched down, leaning away from the hillside, still unsure if he was safe.

Budge was holding onto the back of his shirt, an anchor pulling him down toward the ground. Dixon reached his left hand around calmly, reassuring the kid as he scanned the hillside, still expecting someone or something to attack. He stayed crouched like that for an eternity, his senses perfectly focused, his whole world narrowed to a sphere no larger than five feet around.

Then he realized the air behind him had begun to hum. Dixon slid around quickly, knocking the boy to the ground accidentally. There was an enormous flash in the distance beyond the hill, a sudden geyser of red steam, a pipe bursting under tremendous pressure.

And over the explosion, the faint hum of a Hog swooping upwards after firing, hungry for another target.

Gunfire below. Vehicles on fire, explosions. A firefight.

On the ground.

There had to be a Delta team down there, or British SAS troopers, commandos, allies — friends of some kind. People who could get them the hell out of here.

Dixon reached over to the huddled, trembling shape of the kid, lifting him under his arm like a loaf of bread. He left the empty AK-74 and began sliding down the hill on his butt.

“We’re getting out of here, kid,” he said as they slid. “We’re going home.”

CHAPTER 45

Salt put a slug through the door of the sedan as it started to open. In the next moment a massive flash behind him threw him to the ground amid a whirling storm of dirt. He rolled over and spit out a mouthful of cordite, blood, and pulverized rock, then began to retch, puke pouring like water from his mouth. Somehow he got to his feet, grabbing his combination M-16/grenade launcher and running toward the highway. Davis had taken a position behind some rocks a few yards ahead, pumping rounds from the SAW into the armored car.

“He was in the Mercedes. Come on, come on,” Salt yelled, tapping Davis as he ran but not stopping. He managed to load the M203 as he ran; having the grenade in the gun somehow calmed him, helped him run even faster.

A shell from the tank hit near the spot he had run from. Bullets whipped around him, crisscrossing the night with green, yellow, and red streaks. He seemed to be in a movie, outside his own body — not untouchable, not immune to being hit or killed, but removed from it, as if he could die and watch it all happen, analyze it and even shake his head over what a fool he’d been. Because he was being a fool — he ran directly toward a fierce stream of tracers, kept running as an APC launched a shell over his head, kept running as he saw two figures thirty or forty yards away cross from the highway and duck behind a small rise in the terrain. The Mercedes was twenty yards away on his right, one of the troop trucks ten yards off to his left. He realized as he ran that the Iraqis had lost track of him in the confusion, though surely that could change in a moment.

The SAW ripped behind him; AK-47s answered to his right. Salt leveled his grenade launcher and kicked a 40 mm grenade into the yellow sparkle. He took another step and threw himself to the ground. A half-second before the grenade exploded, he heard a sharp, howling whistle from above, a wolf calling to its mate — or a Maverick, an instant before hitting its target.

CHAPTER 46

Lars blew another long breath from his mouth, shaking his head, swallowing back the salvia flooding his mouth. He checked his altitude and bearing for the fifth time in the past sixty seconds — on course at one hundred feet, chugging steadily through the long arc carefully planned to keep the MH-130 from active radars. He had his protective helmet and night-vision gear back on and he’d moved to the pilot’s seat — if he didn’t feel more comfortable there, at least it was more familiar.

One of the British RAF Tornadoes tasked with suppressing the SAM sites announced that it had launched its missiles. Lars glanced nervously toward the window on the right side of the cockpit, as if he might see the strike, then turned his attention to the throttle console, tapping each lever in turn though not changing the settings. He wanted to seem calm to the others. He had to — not because he thought they might rebel if they realized he was nervous, but because it was his job to reassure them so they could do their own tasks without worrying. You couldn’t do your job if you were worrying about your commander. He knew that from his own experience.

It was probably irrelevant, because already they must hate him. Major DiRiggio, the real pilot, their boss, was lying a few feet behind him on the other side of the bulkhead, barely breathing, possibly beyond survival. Lars had made the right decision — surely DiRiggio would have said himself that the mission came first. But the fact that Lars’s hands were shaking and he was gulping for air didn’t help matters.

“Herky Bird, this Wolf. Advise your status.”

Lars started to answer, then realized the flight engineer was handling the communications. They spoke over each other for a second, and again as Lars apologized. He glanced up at the switch panel above him, examining the settings as if there were a possibility that something had been changed without him noting it. He worked as slowly as he could, deliberately, hoping to project an aura of assurance. If he couldn’t fool the others, perhaps he could fool himself.

Meanwhile, the mission controller brought them up to date. Strawman was being attacked; the Tornadoes were suppressing the SAMs. They were to proceed as briefed, though obviously well ahead of schedule.

They hadn’t had a chance to tell Wolf about DiRiggio’s heart attack, but now the controller in the ABCCC asked to speak to him. The navigator laid out the situation.

“Can you complete your mission?” asked the controller.

Lars felt his lungs cough for air.

“We will complete our mission,” he said between gulps.

He had talked over the engineer again. This time, however, their words chorused together, exactly the same.

CHAPTER 47

Major Preston watched the black-green hull of Devil Three plunge downwards, blurring into the raging hell fires. The dark night sky seemed to fold over itself as the Russian-made triple-A hunted through the sky for the intruders. One of the SAM operators had managed to launch two missiles; both were in the air somewhere ahead. Preston felt naked. His A-10’s ALQ-119 electronic counter measures pod was older than the airplane and incapable of confusing an SA-8, let alone the SA-11s.

But Doberman flew right into the teeth of the defenses, despite Hack’s warnings. All he could do was follow as his leader pitched downward almost directly over the target area, single-mindedly hunting for Strawman. He had a hell of an attitude but he had balls, no question about it.

Doberman snapped out something over the radio. Preston’s brain worked in slow motion, processing the words.

He’d launched the Mavericks.

Now it was Hack’s turn. Someone blurted something over the radio; he only half heard it, trying to find a target in his screen.

The Tornado commander had just assured the Hogs that they had launched their ALARMS at the other SAMs, the ones that hadn’t turned on their radar. Unlike American HARMs, the homing missiles could loiter above until the SAMs came back on-line.

Somehow, the idea of four or six missiles flying around overhead didn’t comfort him. Hack slid his eyes over to the small screen at the upper right quadrant of his dash. He had the highway in the middle of the screen, no vehicles. The screen blurred, the IR head temporarily overwhelmed by the flash of Doberman’s Maverick striking the station wagon.

There’s a way to compensate for that, Hack thought. What the hell is it?

Close your eyes?

A second flash. Doberman had taken out the APC as well.

Cocky little son of a bitch was one hell of a pilot.

Past tense. He spotted the Hog pitching left in front of a looming shadow — one of the SA-11s.

Poor son of a bitch.

Poor nasty son of a bitch.

Something exploded in the sky a mile ahead to the east, obliterating the darkness Doberman had just flown into. Hack gaped at the curling red circles that mushroomed into yellow and black spheres. The fireball crinkled at its edges, as if it were made of paper. Then it flashed white and disappeared, its only trace the shadow it had burned on his retina.

Jesus, he thought. I’ve never seen someone die before.

Poor nasty son of a bitch.

He started to turn his attention back to his targeting screen when Doberman’s voice came over the radio.

“Preston, you’re up. Go for the tank by the hill.”

What?

“Three, are you okay?” he said.

“What the fuck are you talking about, asshole? Take your shot. You’re almost on the god-damn highway.”

“I just saw your plane blowup.”

“You just saw the missile miss me and explode. Take your fucking shot. Then wheel if you can manage it and cover me. And watch it — there’s one more warhead in the air.”

Before Hack could respond, there was a second explosion in the sky, this one much higher and at least four miles further away.

“Take your fucking shot!” screamed Doberman.

Hack, partly angry, partly incredulous, and partly relieved, tore his attention back to the TVM. He pushed his right leg gently against the rudder pedal, nudging the plane ever so slightly through an eddy of turbulence. Somehow he overcorrected, elbow suddenly cramping as he moved the stick; he came back too hard and felt the beginning of a serious yaw, the plane pitching back and forth as it tried to follow the pilot’s over-anxious control inputs. He stopped moving the stick, told himself that it was going to have to be okay if he blew the attack — he’d be embarrassed but there’d be a next go-around, assuming the Tornadoes hadn’t missed any SAMs and none of the arcing yellow and green flares of anti-air perforated his wings.

Maybe he’d underestimated the Hog drivers, not just Doberman but every last one of them, willing to fly way the hell up here and hang their butts out where everybody in the world could hit them.

No longer confused by the jerks on her control stick, the Hog straightened herself out, pushing her tail up and sticking her chin down, smelling a ripe and ready piece of Iraqi meat on the ground ahead. Hack glanced at the HUD screen, noted the altimeter ladder falling through six thousand feet, then put his eyes back on the Maverick monitor. A big brick with a lollipop stuck on the top of it appeared in the left-hand corner; the brick reared back and flared into a glow so bright he thought the monitor would catch fire. The targeting cue jumped as Hack moved it toward the blur, sucking itself in.

But it didn’t lock, instead jittering away as Hack nudged his stick in the tank’s direction. Had he been flying an F-15, his touch would have been perfect; the plane would have bucked her nose ever so slightly in the proper direction. But Hack wasn’t flying an F-15, and as he felt a whisper of resistance from the controls, he pushed harder. Confused but obedient, the A-10A jerked her nose upwards to follow his command; Hack felt his stomach get weak again with the first hint of another yaw.

Do your best, he reminded himself, and this time he resisted the temptation to over correct. The plane’s momentum carried it into off the path he’d plotted, but he worked the cursor down as the tank reappeared in the upper quadrant of the screen. The cue slipped one way and then the other; Hack cursed and then realized with a shock he was down to two thousand feet.

As he went to jerk himself skywards, he saw the cursor plant itself square on the center of the lollipop.

CHAPTER 48

The black turned deep blue and a wedge of yellow appeared above, morphing into a triangle of pure, perfect whiteness, a gleam that grew and consumed everything else. Wong felt the edges of the triangle sear his face, bursting with the heat of a phosphorus grenade. It burned straight through his skull, his ears tingling with the sensation not of heat but cold; freezing cold. The triangle turned from white to black, the sides of his skull folded into it. His body followed in a rush, vacuumed inside out, skin to organs, molecule by molecule. He was at the end of a long, geometric tunnel cut from an infinite prism, glittering with a blue-blackness that seemed the inverse of light, as if it were capturing all colors to enhance its own nature. As he stood and stared, the crystal flared, then began to vibrate, pulsing with its blackness.

“Interesting,” Wong said aloud. “The metaphysical implications of this experience challenge a great deal of my essential beliefs regarding the nature of existence. But I have a considerable amount of work to do. Perhaps we can continue this at another time.”

And in that moment he was flung down on his back, his head bouncing off the hard rocks. He opened his eyes to an enormous headache and the flash of missiles and shells exploding all around him, bullets flying everywhere in the air.

He could see it all, but he heard nothing. The explosion had rendered him deaf.

In some ways that was a blessing, because he was in the middle of an enormous racket. Wong’s explosive charges had indeed thrown the tank’s aim off, but the T-72 crew was still firing. Wong turned to look back in the direction of Davis and Salt when his eye caught a wavering shadow above the highway; a red and yellow burst below it, followed by the quick flash of a gas tank exploding. A second flash, a second fireball, this one not quite as high. The long barrel of a howitzer or light tank gun somersaulted into the sky.

Obviously, the Hogs had arrived. And if, as was their wont, the A-10s were blowing up the biggest things they could find, the T-72 would be next.

Wong turned began running about ten seconds before the AGM-65 hit the top of the tank, crushing it with the wallop of a hammer hitting the side of a soda can. He slid into the crater created by the C-4, narrowly avoiding a spray of heavy machine-gun fire.

As he swung himself around on his haunches, Wong realized he had lost his MP-5 somewhere along the way. He had carried two pistols — a .44 magnum Desert Eagle and a SIG P226. Both were admirable weapons with slightly different applications, not to mention limited utility in the present situation. The Desert Eagle carried only seven rounds, though admittedly these were monster magnum slugs capable of stopping anything smaller than a rhinoceros. The heavy gun’s demanding kick made it more suitable to close encounters of the one-on-one kind, and Wong therefore chose the SIG, whose utter dependability and fifteen 9 mm rounds were enhanced by a nature that could only be described as “sweet,” even by someone like Wong who was not given to such imprecise and abstract descriptions. Pistol in hand, he got up and began running in the direction of the Delta team. Alternately ducking, diving, running, and spinning, it took Wong several minutes to spot Sergeant Davis hunkered behind his SAW. As the M249 Minimi spit a fresh mouthful of 7.62 mm toward the highway, Wong yelled to the sergeant, sliding in behind him as the light machine-gun clicked through the last of the rounds in its plastic feeder.

Davis shouted something in response, but Wong still couldn’t hear.

“I’m deaf,” he yelled, or thought he yelled — he couldn’t even hear himself.

Davis nodded vigorously, then reloaded the gun.

There were two knot of Iraqis firing at them. One was toward the north end of the highway, beyond the truck Salt had taken out with his grenade. They were firing willy-nilly, beyond the effective range of their weapons but not daring to move up.

The other knot was directly ahead, with better aim and more guns.

Wong realized that there must be more soldiers, but they were either dazed by the attack or prudently waiting until they had clear and obvious shots.

“Where’s Sergeant Salt?” he asked Davis.

Davis spoke and made a kind of looping gesture with his hand; Wong took it to mean that Salt had decided to try flanking around the Iraqi’s position.

“The A-10s didn’t know to hit the Mercedes,” said Wong. “They would have gone for the station wagon. Is the Mercedes still intact?”

Davis didn’t know.

“We have to get Strawman,” Wong said. “Come.”

Wong jumped up, running to his right in a diagonal toward the curving highway, intending to flank the stalled convoy. A DShKM “Dushka” heavy machine-gun roared to their left, spitting its monster 12.7 mm shells into the night, fortunately behind them. A shadow loomed dead ahead. Wong extended his arm and pumped two slugs from the Sig in its direction, then threw himself down into a roll to duck any return fire. He rolled back to his stomach and got up into a crouch. The Dushka raked the night again, this time considerably closer to Wong and Davis, who had thrown himself to the ground a few feet away. The Russian-made heavy machine-gun was being fired from the lip of the road about forty yards away on the left; he had an unobstructed field of fire and sooner or later one of his sprays was going to nail them. Wong reached to his web belt for his M26 fragmentation grenade; his fingers had just touched it when he saw Davis rearing back and pitching one of his own.

Forty yards was a good toss under fire, but the sergeant had a right fielder’s arm. Fused to detonate on impact, the M26 sprayed its fragments through the air, killing the two men who had been operating the machine-gun. Meanwhile, someone with an AK-47 fired a burst at them from the edge of the road. Wong sighted across the top of his pistol but all he could see was darkness. He took a handful of dirt, tossing it to the left; as the soldier began firing in the direction of the noise Wong fired a single shot.

The Iraqi screamed, his anguish cascading over the battlefield. Wong crawled to his right a few yards, then picked himself up and began running toward the highway.

The Mercedes sat to his left off the road. There was a troop truck just beyond it. Wong still had the grenade in his hand and considered tossing it at the truck; he didn’t though, not knowing where Salt was.

A second vehicle sat about ten yards down the highway to his right. Its motor wheezed; Wong threw himself down as a shadow ran behind it.

Davis skidded in behind him, huffing; he’d lost his SAW along the way and like Wong was armed only with his pistol.

“Someone behind the truck,” said Wong. “Moving left to right.”

The Delta trooper said something, but Wong still couldn’t hear.

“Could be Salt,” he guessed, and Davis nodded his head.

An AKSU Russian submachine-gun declared that they wrong, a statement underlined by a half-dozen 5.45 mm bullets that ripped through Sergeant Davis’s arm and leg. And just in case there was any doubt, bullets from a much larger Dushka roiled the dirt nearby, the impact of its bullets so strong that Wong could feel the earth vibrating beneath him as he pressed into the soil.

CHAPTER 49

“Got it! Shit! Shit!” yelped Preston over the radio, sounding like a nine-year-old who’d just nailed a tin duck at a church bazaar.

Doberman, flying in a wheeling pattern that had him roughly opposite his wingman’s path, glanced at the ground and saw the T-72 guarding the turnoff to Kajuk explode in a red-white geyser of frying steel. Preston was coming straight on for the hill behind it.

“Up, get up! Get the fuck up! You’re too damn low! The hill! The hill! Jesus get up!” yelled Doberman.

He cut his turn to try and keep Hack in view, but lost the dark-hulled airplane in the shadows near the hill. Doberman pitched his Hog downward, cursing the idiot and repeating his warning to pull away from the hill. Preston might be a jerk, but no one should pay the ultimate price for target fascination.

Pay attention to the plane, not the boom. Hog Rule Number Three.

And never run into hills.

Hack hadn’t acknowledged, but Doberman didn’t see a flash either. Now he was running right for a fresh stream of anti-air coming from a battery west of the village. Doberman cut south, tossing some flares and chaff in case any of the SAM sites were still working. He temporarily lost his sense of where he was, swinging at too wide an angle to get back on his original target area. His low altitude — he’d ducked to five hundred feet to avoid the SA-11 — made sorting things somewhat harder. He also had to watch out for the hills.

Doberman pushed back westward, climbing slightly and scanning for his wingman, trying not to pay too much attention to the AAA bursting behind him. Wolf cut in with something to the effect that Skull and A-Bomb were on their way; Doberman didn’t have a chance to acknowledge, finally getting a bead on where he was and cutting back with the idea of launching another Maverick and then putting the cannon to work.

As he turned, his RWR bleeped a warning, then went off; in the next instant a gray streak of lightning flashed toward the earth three or four miles to the northeast. It was one of the RAF ALARM missiles nailing the last of the Iraqi SAM installations. The missile had needed only the slightest flick of the on-off switch to memorize its enemy’s location; before the Iraqis could juice up again the British warhead landed, sending hot shards of metal into the nearby SAM as well as the destroying the radar van. A narrow thread of yellow flame rippled on the ground, then erupted brilliant red as the poised SS-11s caught fire.

A pair of yellow and black flame puffs rode skywards, framed by the light of the explosion. Two more followed in quick succession. Doberman guessed they were a flock of heat-seeking SA-9s, launched in desperation. The short-range missiles were not a threat, since they had been launched at long range and lacked all-aspect targeting; they simply had too far to go to get a sniff of his engines.

The quartet of missiles rising now out of Al Kajuk, just ahead of his left wing and nearly parallel to him — those were a different story.

Doberman yanked and banked, goosing flares and trying to whip his turbofans away from the heat-seekers’ noses. One of the SAMs, moving at Mach 1.5, shot out behind him then veered upwards, utterly confused; it exploded in mid-air more than a mile from the Hog’s hull. Another sucked in one of his flares and detonated instantly, bouncing a shock wave but no shrapnel against Doberman’s tail.

But two others, launched in a fresh volley after he began his evasive maneuvers, stayed with him. Each sucked a different engine, lions working a tired zebra from both flanks. Doberman could feel them panting behind him; he goosed more flares and tucked right, tucked left, tucked right, very low now — so low in fact that he was at least ten feet below the summit of the hill that was growing in his front glass.

The missiles kept coming, gaining on him as he gave the stick a hard push left. An elongated football shot by his canopy, so close Glenon could see the thrust surging from its rear end. He nearly took the control column out of the floor trying to turn toward it as it passed, away from the other missile. The air in front of him shuddered as the missile detonated; the Hog skipped sideways with the turbulent shock, more a brick than an airplane, succumbing to several of Newton’s Laws at once.

The second missile exploded on his left, close enough to singe part of the tail fin. Doberman struggled to gain control of the plane, both hands on the stick, his head swimming. With his forward speed plummeting toward stall level, the right wing flipped out from under him; in the back of his mind he thought he’d flamed an engine. He worked to correct but the wing was insistent; he spun through an invert so close to the ground that the wing ip seemed to scrape dirt. But despite the spin and the ground he somehow managed to actually pull stable and begin to climb. He hadn’t lost the GE’s, or if he had it was only temporary, because they were cranking their turbofans now. Head scrambled, legs weak, he somehow managed climb over the highest hill, clearing the scrubby summit by perhaps six inches. The Hog lifted her nose with a snort as she flew into clear air; Doberman’s heart pounded so hard he could hear Tinman’s medal clanging on his chest.

Good luck or not, that sucker was now part of his flight gear. Doberman caught his breath, checked his instruments, and banked south to return to the battlefield. His fuel was a little low; it was possible he’d gotten nicked by shrapnel and had leaked a bit before the Hog’s self-sealing bladders choked shut. Even if that was the case, the situation wasn’t critical.

“Devil Three this Four. Glenon, where the hell are you?”

Preston sounded like a flight leader scolding a nugget for getting outside the formation.

“Where the hell are you?” Doberman responded.

“I’m two miles south of the highway,” said Hack.

“Which fucking highway? There’s two.”

Preston didn’t answer. Obviously he’d meant the east-west highway.

“I’m coming over Kajuk from the northeast,” Doberman told him. “Orbit where you are. I’ll come to you.”

“Four.”

The battlefield lay in a vector that perfectly split the intersection of Doberman’s left wing and fuselage at forty-five degrees. The village sat in the crook of a hill. A line of triple-A installations made a staggered “C” to the east of the village in the direction of Kuwait; only two were still firing, their spew of red and black streaming harmlessly into the air some miles away. Doberman turned his attention to the TVM; he quickly found the tank Preston had hit half-hidden by the shadow of the hill as he approached. Beyond it, several vehicles in the convoy were still burning. Nothing was moving, and there didn’t seem to be any armor left intact.

Doberman tried contacting the ground team but got no response; Wolf didn’t immediately answer his hails either.

“Preston, you talk to Wong and his boys while I was fooling with those SAMs?”

“Negative. Uh, friends call me Hack.”

“Three.” Doberman realized he was being an asshole, but Preston rubbed him the wrong way. “I’m banking west, trying to raise them. I have two more Mavs; I want to hold onto them until I know their situation. The convoy is definitely stopped.”

When two more hails failed to reach Wong and his men, Doberman went back to Wolf. The ABCCC hadn’t heard from the ground team either. The Herk that was supposed to make the pickup had suffered a casualty aboard — apparently a heart attack — but was proceeding anyway.

There was some good news. The Iraqis were desperately trying to radio about a dozen units; the controller took that as a hopeful sign.

Doberman didn’t. It meant there’d be no chance for the ground team to linger. The whole operation had moved so quickly he doubted there had been time to find Dixon.

Son of a bitch. As far as he was concerned, that was the whole reason for the mission.

Son of a bitch.

And now they had other things to worry about — the AWACS monitoring the area spotted two Iraqi fighters taking off from an air base about seventy miles away. At the same time, two SA-2 SAM sites thought to have been eliminated suddenly came back to life.

The SAMs would only be a problem going home, and then only if the Tornadoes or somebody else didn’t splash them. The Iraqi jets were another story. Tentatively ID’d as MiG-29s, they could get within missile range in roughly three minutes. Without a head start, the Hogs would never get away.

The AWACS controller prudently directed Doberman and Preston to snap onto an escape vector away from the Iraqi planes and out of the battle.

“Negative,” answered Doberman. “We’re staying on station.”

The controller’s response — undoubtedly not pretty — was conveniently overrun by another transmission. Doberman tried the ground team again without getting an answer. He turned his full attention to the Maverick screen as he swung back south, as if he might somehow be able to see Wong through the tiny aperture.

“Devil Three, this is Four,” said Preston. “Bandits are positively identified and heading this way.”

“My radio’s working fine,” Doberman told him. It took a superhuman effort not to add something to the effect that Preston was welcome to run away if he was scared.

“I have your six,” said the major.

A-Bomb would have said something funny, but at least Preston didn’t try and pull rank. And, in fact, he had given the proper Hog response — screw the enemy, I’m staying here until my job is done.

Which didn’t make him all right, just slightly less of a jerk.

“Okay, Hack,” Doberman said. “Your old buddies in the Eagles’ll take care of the MiGs.”

“We’ll nail them if they don’t.”

Okay — that was something A-Bomb could have said.

Doberman eyed the village with the Mav’s infra-red eye; he caught a grayish blur at the left edge of his screen that came into focus as a large vehicle, possibly an APC though it didn’t have the wedge-shaped Dog associated with the Iraqi vehicles. No matter — there was something else behind it, a truck big enough to be a troop transport. And another. Doberman nudged his stick to try and get the lead vehicle back into his targeting scope; he slid his whole body to urge the plane around. He coaxed the pipper on target, locked and fired as he muttered his ritual “Bing-bang-boing.”

“I got trucks moving out of the village,” he told Preston. “I targeted a personnel carrier, or what looked like a personnel carrier.”

The Maverick smashed the vehicle as Doberman paused for a breath. As the explosion flared, the ZSU-23s to the east began firing, this time nearly straight up. Doberman banked west immediately; Preston said something but it was garbled.

A thick spray of red tracers arced for his nose as he turned, frothing in his path.

CHAPTER 50

Salt pressed his chin against the dirt. The world had become a sharp buzz, the air above him on fire. He wasn’t wounded, he was sure of that, but he was equally sure that if he moved, if he twitched, he’d get fried. Things were burning, things were exploding, but he couldn’t see anything except for a hazy gray mist, the shroud they threw over you before dumping your body into the earth. He waited for it to clear, but instead of lifting it drifted downwards, its electric tingle moving closer and closer. Salt pressed himself further and further into the earth, dirt filling his nose and throat and lungs as he breathed. The sky flashed white with heat so intense he could feel every hair on his body singe. Only then did the mist start to evaporate.

He lifted his head, saw nothing in front of him. The wreckage of the Mercedes, a twisted collection of burned metal, fabric, and plastic, sat to his left. The door was open.

Salt pushed forward like a sprinter lining up for a race. He took the M-16 and awkwardly sprung forward, unbalanced, low to the ground, legs propelling him forward in something like a stuttering dive rather than a trot or run. He pushed himself sideways, stumbling for three or four yards before collapsing in a roll. Something moved to his right. He got back to his feet and went in that direction, six yards this time, falling down a shallow hill, sliding like a kid belly-whopping without a sled down a snowy incline.

Two Iraqis huddled ten feet away. Either they were surprised by him or thought he was on their side, because neither moved as rose to his knees and aimed his gun at them. Or perhaps the rest of the world was moving in slow motion. The Iraqi on the right moved his hand, down towards his belt; it got about halfway before Salt put three 5.56 mm slugs in the man’s heart. The Iraqi reeled to the side, stood straight, then collapsed straight forward like a plank pushed from the top, all the time moving at what seemed to Salt one-quarter speed.

The other man stood and raised his hands out to surrender. He took a step forward, and in the dim light of the battlefield Salt saw the grubby bearded face of Saddam Hussein.

You bastard, he thought, aiming his gun at the dictator’s belly.

CHAPTER 51

The Iraqi heavy machine-gun sputtered its bullets in the dirt about ten feet from Wong. He could tell that the gunner couldn’t actually see him, but the bullets were still close enough to make him cautious. Sergeant Davis lay on the ground a few feet away, writhing in obvious pain. Wong still couldn’t hear anything.

There was no way to aim at the Dushka without exposing himself to return fire, a nasty proposition. The man with the AKSU Russian submachine-gun had him pinned in a cross fire. Sooner or later, Wong feared, the Iraqis would use their superior numbers to advance under the cover of the fire. So he had had two choices — retreat and flank, or charge forward. In either case, he would be a target. It seemed better to go forward.

The odds of getting shot depended on the ability of the Iraqi gunners, of course. Still, a rough estimate might put them in the three-to-one range, the three lying in the favor of the enemy. Wong took a breath, remembering a koan from an old Zen master that translated roughly as, “The bullet you see is not the bullet you hear is not the bullet you feel, unless it is.” Failing to make sense of the mystery, he jumped up and rushed for the truck where the man with the light machine-gun was hidden.

Either his sheer audacity or pure luck protected him as he ran the twenty or so feet. Bullets from both guns whizzed past. The flash of an explosion nearby almost blinded him, then silhouetted his nearest enemy at the front of the cab.

Wong squeezed three shots from the SiG then flung himself down, rolling beneath the chassis just in front of the rear wheel. The Iraqi soldier had stopped firing, though Wong wasn’t sure he’d hit him. He crawled under the truck, fired the SiG again in the man’s direction, then pushed out and began running. He’d lost track of exactly where he was, and when a figure appeared to his right he stopped, thinking it was Sergeant Salt. The man, perhaps five yards from him, was running toward the road carrying a rifle. Wong stared intensely and realized the gun was a Kalashnikov. He steadied his aim, fired twice, missing both times. The man stopped and turned to fire at him; Wong aimed again and hit him in the chest. The rifle flew to the side but it took two more slugs for the Iraqi to go down.

Wong thought of grabbing the man’s gun and took a step toward him when a muzzle flash ahead caught his attention. He threw himself down into the dirt, then realized the flash had been about fifteen yards away, down a small incline. He pushed back up, his knee jerking sideways out from under him as he started running again. He winced away the pain and reached the hill in time to see Sergeant Salt standing on the left, holding his M-16 on an Iraqi who held his hands upright.

A bearded, pot-bellied Iraqi who could only be the Strawman.

Salt raised his gun to fire.

“Sergeant!” shouted Wong. “Sergeant!”

Salt gave no sign that he had heard Wong.

“Sergeant, do not fire!” said Wong. “That is a direct order.”

Salt’s gun remained level but did not fire. Wong’s knee balked as he worked down the hill.

“I cannot hear you if you’re talking,” Wong said. “I appear to be deaf.”

The Iraqi’s face was stained with sweat or tears.

“I’m going to kill the bastard,” said Salt. “I’m going to kill this son of a bitch for starting this god-damn fucking war. He deserves to die.”

Salt raised his rifle to fire.

“You may be right,” Wong told him. “But we’re not the judges and you cannot shoot him.”

“Our mission was to fucking kill him.”

“Indeed,” said Wong. “But he has surrendered.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“Sergeant, you must realize that I am giving you a lawful order. The welfare of the prisoner is now of prime concern.”

The Iraqi’s hands were trembling but he did not move.

“You gonna fuckin’ kill me if I shoot him?”

“You will not shoot him,” said Wong. His pistol was now aimed at Salt.

“Dyin’d be worth it to nail the son of a bitch,” said Salt.

“I should not think so,” Wong said. “And such a calculation is besides the point. My order is lawful and must be obeyed. I would note also that this is not Saddam. It is an impostor, a lure.”

“What?”

“Saddam Hussein is taller and older. This man is in his twenties. Frankly, he is a poor substitute, though obviously he would confuse a crowd when viewed from a car.”

Salt didn’t change his aim. “I really ought to kill the bastard then. All this for fuckin’ nothing.”

Wong gently placed his left hand on Salt’s weapon and lowered it. The Iraqi collapsed on the ground.

“You did a good job capturing him,” Wong told him. “He will be invaluable.”

“More valuable than your pilot?”

Salt’s question was more to the point than he knew. The rigs that they were to use to leave allowed only two men to be taken; there were or would be only two rigs. So if he found Dixon, someone would have to be left behind.

A decision he would have to make when all the contingencies had played themselves out. The plan had been to make the pickup with an hour of the attack — would Wolf hold to that?

“The prisoner is of more value than any of us.” Wong walked over and pushed the man flat onto the ground. He quickly patted him down, retrieving a small revolver and a knife attached to his leg. The man also had a vial taped to his leg — probably for suicide, as well as some pills in a pocket bottle.

“Quaaludes, I believe,” said Wong, tossing the bottle and pulling the man up by the back of his fatigue shirt. “He does appear somewhat calm.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t hear,” said Salt.

“I couldn’t. Your curses apparently jarred my senses back into working order. I am obliged.”

Salt began laughing. “Fuckin’ comedian.”

Wong told the ersatz Saddam in his poorly accented Arabic that he would allow the sergeant to execute him if he gave the slightest hint of trouble. The man nodded, then began telling him that he was only a poor farmer from the north.

“We will conduct a proper interview at another point,” said Wong, first in English, then in Arabic. The man babbled on, even after Wong pushed him up the hill.

“Where’s Davis?” Salt asked.

“On the other side of the highway, in that direction,” said Wong. While his hearing had returned, he had a peculiar ringing in his ears that made it seem as if he had his head in a fishbowl. “He’s been wounded.”

“Why are we going this way then?”

“Because he is pinned down by a heavy machine-gun approximately thirty yards from here,” Wong explained. “And unless we disable it we will not be able to rescue the sergeant. Will you take point or shall I?”

“Fuck you,” snapped Salt, moving out ahead of him.

CHAPTER 52

Hack winced as Doberman turned directly into the tracers he’d been trying to warn him about. He’d already pickled a Maverick at the Zeus; cursing, he dished another one out at the same target, the AGM falling off the rail just as his first hit.

He realized as the rocket motor flashed that he’d made a nugget mistake, the kind of thing a greenhorn scared shitless lieutenant might do, not a veteran combat flier who was supposed be DO of a squadron. For he’d just lost his night vision gear, as primitive as it was.

He was also out of position, swinging in the wrong direction as Doberman bucked and weaved. Hack swooped lower, back in Doberman’s direction. The only surviving guns now were well to the west and north.

Something flickered across the thin quarter of the moon; Preston nudged left and found the dark hull of a Hog sailing just ahead, apparently none the worse for wear.

“There’s a troop transport trying to get around the APC,” Glenon told him. “Take it out.”

“Can’t. I’m out of AGMs.”

Doberman said nothing, but the static that followed was more than enough to convey his displeasure.

“I used them on the gun that almost brought you down,” Hack said finally.

There was dead air for a second.

“Bank and follow me back to the pickup zone. I have a fuel leak in two of my tanks but I’ve isolated them. I want to make sure I get the STAR pods down, assuming it’s clear.”

Hack followed along dutifully, sliding out on Doberman’s flank. The prime pickup area lay two miles to the southwest of the village at the top of what looked like a succession of long steps leading back in the direction of Saudi Arabia.

Devil Three orbited once then skipped low. While dropping a flare would have made it easier to see, it might also draw the attention of nearby troops. Hack couldn’t see the over-sized gift packs slide off the Hog, nor could he see the chutes, though he had his helmet against the glass, trying to.

“All right, check your fuel,” said Doberman. “And stay in formation. We’re going back and doing a box, like we briefed.”

“I thought you had a leak.”

“I’ve taken care of it,” Doberman said. “I got movement on the highway four miles west of here. Follow me.”

CHAPTER 53

Doberman nudged the Hog’s nose into a thirty-five degree dive, straight on the lead truck — or at least he figured it would be straight on the target, since he was transposing from the TVM, triangulating with the dark shadows before him. He wanted to keep his last Maverick in reserve and didn’t want to risk a flare, figuring it might help the Iraqis find the ground team.

Besides, the GAU tracers would light up the night.

A shadow moved into the middle of his HUD. Doberman centered his targeting cue, waiting while the shadow grew fat. Something kept him from pulling the trigger — the man who normally calculated everything, who did the math on every shot backwards and forwards before pressing the trigger, hesitated because it just didn’t feel right yet.

Damn. A-Bomb was rubbing off on him.

The shadow didn’t move. He was looking at a house or something.

No, it was the truck, but it had stopped. Two others were pulling around it to the right, live targets.

He shifted in his seat, as if merely moving his fanny would move the Hog onto the new targets. Somehow it did — Doberman squeezed the trigger and the black night flashed with the fire of death, the bullets slashing through the thinly protected side hatch of an armored car, up into the turret just to the right of the gun before flailing through the engine. Doberman rode the hot stream into the second vehicle, obliterating it with a long burst. He still had enough of an angle and altitude to get his gun onto a third vehicle approaching down the highway, but he was moving too fast and had come too low to do more than spit a few shells in its general direction before flailing off to the south to regroup.

“Three, I don’t have a target.”

“Yeah, just hang with me, Hack. That’s all I want,” Doberman told him, swinging a wide circle. “You just keep cool.”

“Four.”

He checked his fuel. Sealing off the flaky tank had worked. The game plan had called for them to fly all the way back to KKMC; even if he hadn’t lost a bit he’d be close to bingo by now. He could change that easily enough, though; just run south and hit the tanker.

What about Preston, though? He’d had trouble before and he’d be tired now.

Whack a few more ground vehicles, or walk Preston home?

What Doberman really wanted to do was scoop up Dixon. It wasn’t his job — Wong and the others were doing that — but he’d do anything to get the kid back, including landing and tossing him on the back of the plane. The kid was like his little brother — exactly like him, which was why he was in trouble in the first place, as a matter of fact.

He hailed Wolf, but they hadn’t heard from the ground team either. He told the controller that the pods had been put down and mapped out the trucks they’d just hit. Wolf told him a pair of F-16s were coming north to assist. In the meantime, a flight of F-111s out of Turkey had been rerouted to hit the stranded convoy one more time.

From Turkey?

Doberman acknowledged, setting his nose back toward the convoy area, still unsure how long they were going to stay there. Hack radioed that he had just passed bingo. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, the way a Hog driver’s ought to be.

He could just send Hack home alone.

Might get lost.

Had to take him back. And give the devil his due, he had taken out the Zeus and he had ignored the MiG warning.

Which, come to think of it, had evaporated.

“Devil Three this is One. Doberman, what’s your situation?”

Skull’s voice, unexpected and a bit tinny, nonetheless had a tone that permitted nothing but a full set of the facts, including a layout of the positions as well as their fuel and ammo stores.

“Go south,” Skull told him. “You and Preston head back. We’ll stay here until the Vipers arrive.”

Doberman had heard Knowlington tell Wolf about the downed Frenchman. There was no way he and A-Bomb had more fuel than they did. Even without doing the math, he doubted Devils One and Two could linger more than two minutes before heading desperately for the tanker.

But there was also no way of disobeying Skull’s directive.

“Glenon,” said Skull.

“We’re setting course now,” he told him.

CHAPTER 54

Dixon shepherded Budge down the hill, trying to move as quickly as he could without running into the Iraqis. It took forever and longer, every step slowed by caution and speeded by anticipation. The battle unfolded on the plain before them as they descended, flaring and dying and then flaring again. Several times they hunkered down and watched for falling debris as missiles erupted overhead. Installations to the north and east reverberated, hit by bombs or long-range surface-to-air missiles.

There were definitely Hogs involved. Their target seemed to be trucks or buildings about a half mile down the highway, perhaps further; there was gunfire there, and Dixon guessed that must mean the commandos were in that area. There was also a tank and an Iraqi outpost that had been struck on the left foot of the hill. He and Budge found a path and began running, nearly to the bottom now. Dixon picked up the boy and carried him about a hundred yards until he saw a truck sitting at the bottom of the slope, thirty feet ahead.

BJ nudged Budge to the right, aiming to get around the vehicle. Something flashed as they moved on the sloping soil of the hillside — a lightning bug flickering in the dark.

No, a man on the back of the truck, squeezing off a single, almost silent rifle shot. The truck was a Land Rover, sitting pug-nosed in the dark a few feet from the roadway.

Dixon pointed his rifle at the man. As he took aim, he realized another Iraqi vehicle sat less than five yards to the left of the Land Rover, obscured from Dixon’s view by a bluff at the edge of the hill. It was thick and long, with a gun at the top — a tank or more likely a BMP, a tracked armored personnel carrier exported by the Russians.

The man in the Land Rover fired another round. He seemed to be trolling for a response, unsure what if anything was out there. He moved too deliberately to be panicked, yet seemed to be shooting randomly.

It wouldn’t take much of a shot to hit him. But the BMP was probably loaded with men. The bluff would prevent it from training its turret up the slope, but Dixon and Budge would be quickly outnumbered.

Infinitely safer to keep sneaking to the right, flank the position and then cross the road. At that point, he could swing toward the firefight, maybe help out by coming up behind the enemy.

Assuming, of course, the Iraqis were shooting at something more than ghosts.

“Okay, Budge,” he told the kid. “This way.”

“Budge,” agreed the boy. He got up and walked with BJ across the slope, then slid down toward the road with him. A trench ran along the highway; Dixon stopped Budge for a moment and pointed to it.

“Go, Budge,” he said, pushing him forward.

“Budge!” yelled the kid.

They’d gone only a few yards when the boy yelped. As Dixon moved to clamp his mouth shut he realized there was an Iraqi with a gun a few yards away.

Tugged from behind by Budge, he tumbled back into the ditch as the Iraqi began to fire.

CHAPTER 55

Salt saw the Dushka and its crew about ten yards to his left, set up behind the wrecked chassis of a truck. Mounted on a thick tripod, the DShKM was a thing of austere beauty, from its double-circle muzzle brake to the wooden pegs of its rear handles. Capable of spitting just over nine rounds of 7.62 mm ammo a second, the gun was as rugged and dependable as any machine-gun ever used, and at least as deadly.

Salt had a shot on only one of the three men behind the gun. If the others managed to swing the weapon around at him, he’d be dead meat — he had no cover himself.

Carefully, he began moving to his right, trying to flank the position from the rear, hoping to get into position where he could hit the entire crew with one burst. The wreckage of the truck helped camouflage him, but it also made it impossible to see the gunners. The Dushka’s metallic thud sent him diving to his right; it took a moment for him to realize the Iraqis had fired not at him but at whatever was in front of them — Davis, most likely.

As a general rule, Salt didn’t like officers, especially those giving him orders. He’d been willing to put up with Wong because his bonafides were there — the guy had, after all, done a HALO jump a few nights ago with some buddies of Salt’s. But the bullshit about Saddam pissed him off.

Not that Wong didn’t have a point. It was the way he expressed it that pissed him off.

That and the fucking SiG he’d pointed at his neck. He had half a mind to just drop back and let Wong deal with the machine-gunners — more than likely they’d fry him, and he could whomp Saddam in revenge.

Not to overvalue revenge. He began crawling on his belly, paralleling the wrecked truck. He paused parallel to the rear of the truck; he could spring up and be behind them with two steps.

Three guys, three slugs. Didn’t need cover.

Unless they were behind something themselves.

Sneak close to the truck, take a peak before he attacked.

The machine gun stopped firing with a jerk and a metallic snap. They’d run through the clip.

Salt’s brain was still processing the sound as his instincts took over, propelling him to his feet with a leap. He took a step, brought the rifle to his side, took another step and fired point-blank, the first burst catching the actual gunner, the second catching the man to his right, the third the man on the left.

Except that it didn’t. He’d run through the clip, leaving the third man unharmed.

Salt cursed his stupidity, cursed his shit luck, cursed the world. He ejected the cartridge and reached for another. But as his fingers fumbled the Iraqi drew a pistol, and before Salt could reload there was a tremendous boom in his ears, the sound of a massive bullet hitting home.

Hitting the Iraqi, not him. Captain Wong had run up behind Salt and now stood over him, a Desert Eagle smoking in his hand.

“Shit,” said Salt. “Shit.”

Wong said nothing, turning quickly and running to grab the Saddam impersonator from the ground a few feet away; it wasn’t clear if Wong had left him there or if the man had been trying to escape by crawling away. He dragged him over to the machine-gun position. He scanned the ground, then knelt next to it. By the time Salt got there he had disabled the weapon.

“They were out of ammunition,” the captain told him. “Sergeant Davis is this way.”

“Hey, uh, Captain — thanks. You saved my butt.”

Wong gave him a quizzical look, as if he didn’t understand or his hearing had once more gone on the fritz. But maybe that was just his way of saying “you’re welcome” — the Air Force captain was an odd duck.

“Sergeant Davis is this way,” said Wong, pushing the prisoner ahead.

They found Davis huddled over his leg, half-conscious. He’d been hit by three bullets, one of which had shattered his bone. Wong quickly bandaged the leg and gave Davis a hit from the morphine syringe. The D boy had been fortunate — the wounds had come from the submachine-gun, not the Dushka. The big machine-gun would have taken his limb right off.

“At least he got the bastard,” said Salt, who could see the body on the ground behind the nearby truck.

“Actually, I eliminated the soldier wielding the sub-machine gun,” said Wong.

“You know, Captain, you talk kind of funny.”

Again, Wong gave him a goggle-eyed stare. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

Salt started to laugh.

“I will never understand why everyone in the Gulf has such a bizarre sense of humor,” Wong told Salt. Then he turned to the Iraqi and asked him to carry Davis.

To Salt’s surprise, the Iraqi was actually able to get him over his shoulder.

They ran back across to the road to the spot where Davis had left the com gear. Wong immediately went to work on it, fingers flying over the controls like a mad typist finishing up the last bit of paperwork before a long weekend. Salt scanned northwards. The tank had been taken out by one of the planes. There were two vehicles to the east right at the foot of the hill, guarding the highway. They were maybe a half-mile from them. Salt couldn’t remember now whether they were there when all of this started — it seemed like eons ago.

“Strawman was an impostor,” Wong told Wolf when he succeeding in contacting the ABCCC craft. “We are proceeding to rendezvous site.”

The controller apparently said something the captain didn’t like; he frowned and said only, “understood,” before ending the transmission.

“Take the Satcom and go to the pickup site,” Wong told Salt. “The STAR pod will have been dropped by now.”

“You think Davis will make it?”

“If he’s placed in the harness,” Wong said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“My medical knowledge is limited,” said the captain. “Obviously he cannot survive here and must be evacuated.”

“Where are you going?”

“I am going to complete my assignment,” Wong told him. “If I am not there for the pickup, leave without me.”

“What? When?”

“The plane is on its way. You will recognize the spot from the photos we reviewed after takeoff; set up near the highest elevation and present yourself southwards. Quickly; you have no more than twenty minutes. Apparently the Iraqis are scrambling every force at their disposal into this area.”

“Shit. What about him?” Salt gestured to the Iraqi.

“He won’t give you trouble. Place him in the second set of harnesses. The Hercules will make two passes.”

“You trust me not to kill him?”

“Of course, Sergeant. You have your orders.”

“Yeah.” Salt frowned, then looked over at the Iraqi, who was bending forward under Davis’s weight. The man seemed to have lost the glaze in his eyes; maybe Wong had sobered him up. “You understand what I say, fuckhead?”

“He doesn’t speak English,” Wong said. “Simply point.”

Wong picked up Davis’s SAW and several cases of ammunition.

“Hey, Captain. Thanks,” Salt told him.

This time, Wong nodded and actually seemed to smile.

“All right you, move out,” Salt told the Iraqi, gesturing. “Go.”

Davis groaned as they started. Salt figured that was a good sign, and ignored the fresh explosions and gunfire in the distance.

CHAPTER 56

In 1943, a U.S. Army paratrooper stood under a set of extremely high poles as a Stinson light observation aircraft trundled overhead. The Stinson dipped slightly, then held steady; a hook off its fuselage caught the wire at the top of the poll and the paratrooper shot nearly straight up into the air. Attached to a modified parachute harness, the paratrooper was pulled along behind the plane at roughly a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour before being cranked inside the craft. It wasn’t particularly pretty, but when the paratrooper finally clawed his way in, he became the first American successfully scooped from the earth by an airplane.

Not counting the sheep that had been strangled in the earlier experiments.

After the war, Robert Fulton improved the ground-hook system considerably, stepping up from sheep to pigs for his trials. On August 12, 1958, Marine Staff Sergeant Levi Woods attached himself to a thin harness tethered to a helium balloon and waited as a Navy P2V Neptune approached on wavering wings. The plane snagged a line held by the balloon and the sergeant was airborne. The tug that propelled him upwards supposedly felt lighter than the pull of a parachute opening, though it should be noted that on being winched into the P2V the pigs tended to attack the crew.

Streamlining behind the patrol craft, Woods extended his arms and legs, literally flying as he was pulled toward the plane. When he reached the hold, he had successfully demonstrated the Fulton surface-to-air recovery (STAR) system, and proven once and for all that Marines are crazier than most normal human beings.

The Air Force adopted the STAR system for Spec Ops during Vietnam. Air Force personnel being somewhat less crazy than Marines, the system was not actually used in combat during the war. But it continued to be a favorite of Spec Op troops, or more accurately their commanders, who frowned on risking small and slow helicopters in hostile situations when much larger craft like lumbering transports could be sent instead.

By the time Saddam decided to push into Kuwait, improvements in the C-130 meant that a covert team could be picked up by an aircraft nearly impossible to track. Compared to earlier versions as well as other transports and helicopters, the MC-130 variants were sneaky fast, avoided snoopy radars, and could make quick and effective forays into enemy territory without needing a sixty-plane escort. In theory, the STAR system gave the U.S. an almost invincible covert retrieval capability.

That was the theory. To Captain Lars Warren, stroking the control column to avoid yet another Iraqi SAM site, the reality was very different. As long as he stayed where he was — fifty feet above the increasingly bumpy and varied terrain — his Herk couldn’t be seen by radar. It could be heard, however, and the night wasn’t nearly so dark that it couldn’t be seen — as a row of tracers erupting to his left vigorously demonstrated.

“We’re okay,” said the navigator, presumably meaning that the gun was being fired simply by sight, and not very well.

Lars didn’t answer. He held his flight path steady, passing the tracers without getting hit.

Or at least, without knowing if he was hit.

“The A-10s have engaged the target vehicle,” Kelly told him. “Destroyed. Everything’s moving ahead, just with the timetable pushed up. Two Hogs coming west to cover us. F-16s en route as well.”

Lars grunted. He didn’t want a play-by-play. He didn’t want to hear anything except for the loud drone of the Herk’s four-bladed engines.

“Thirty-five minutes to show time,” said the navigator.

“Okay.”

“GPS looks good.”

“Okay.”

They were headed toward the Euphrates, not far from the heart of the country. They’d take one more turn, get on a direct course to the target area. They’d pop up about sixty seconds before hitting the target area and take a hard turn southwest. The balloon ought to be right in front of him, sitting pretty at five hundred feet.

Right.

They’d hook the line with the prong at their nose. A guideline ran from the wingtips to the forward fuselage to protect the line from the propellers. After the rope was snared, the crew would winch in the first two members of the team. He’d then come around and repeat the process for the last man. It would take between six and ten minutes to get them in.

Right.

There were a million Iraqis below, every single one of them armed to the teeth. There were a million anti-aircraft weapons of every description — 23mm, 56mm, shoulder-fired heat seekers, high-altitude SA-2s, Rolands, SA-6s, SA-9s, machine-guns, and pistols. Even a stinking slingshot could nail them this low, this slow, this straight.

At least one flight of MiGs had taken off earlier and was still inexplicably unaccounted for. The AWACS and the interceptors scrambled to meet them lost them near their air base. Did that mean they had landed — or were they simply flying low like Lars was?

Lars heard himself give the crew a briefing on the situation. They were on course and in the green.

“Cool,” he said. “Everything’s cool.”

Where the hell did that BS come from?

He checked his course again, careful to keep an eye on the terrain-following radar. The flight engineer went through the systems readouts. The navigator counted down to the turn. They hit the way-marker and he banked, fighting off some unexpected turbulence. His hands turned to jelly. He told himself he was sticking with it, and heard the pilot gasping for air.

He was the pilot now. He was the one who couldn’t breathe.

“Thirty minutes,” said the navigator.

“Thirty,” said Lars. “Everything’s cool.”

CHAPTER 57

A-Bomb began closing the distance between himself and Skull as they came up on the initial target area south of Kajuk. The ground team had finally checked in with the controller; Devils One and Two were going to take a pass and knock down any units that might try and follow Wong and the boys back to their pickup spot.

The way A-Bomb saw it, the mission had been among the most boring he’d ever flown. Sure, they’d hit a heavily armed SAM site and saved a French guy, but he personally hadn’t done much more than wreck two trucks. Hell, he could have gotten that at home.

Often had, come to think about it.

But that was the way your luck went. Sometimes you got the short straw and diddled around with pickup trucks and a ZSU that couldn’t hit a BUFF flying at a thousand feet with four engines out. Other days you got to nail down a Scud, fry a dozen T-72s and duck a battery of SA-6s, all before you finished drinking your coffee.

Would be nice to nail the Mercedes, he thought, focusing in on the sedan with his IR viewer. The doors were open, it was off the side of the road, and it was obviously not a threat, but there was nothing like poking holes in over-priced German sheet metal to puff up your chest. Frenchie woulda liked it, too.

“A-Bomb, I got some vehicles on that highway at the base of the hill. You see ‘em?”

“Not yet,” he told Skull, pulling the viewer back out to what passed for wide-screen.

“Some sort of gun on one of them. I’m not sure if it’s a tank or what, but it seems to be the only thing big left down there. Armored car or BMP, maybe.”

“Could be,” agreed A-Bomb, still trying to find them.

“I’m going to sweep around and run south toward those vehicles Doberman hit before they left. If you can’t find anything else, take out the gun.”

“It’s what I’m talkin’ about,” said A-Bomb.

“Watch your fuel.”

“Always.”

“Vipers claim they’ll be here in zero-five.”

“Tell ‘em to take their time.”

A-Bomb checked his position against the INS and his paper map. He knew which hill Skull meant — it ought to be just left of center at the bottom of his windscreen, which should put the road right across the center of the Maverick’s targeting video. But damned if all he had there were a few rocks.

Problem was, he was too high — eight thousand feet. Hog didn’t like to fly this stinking high. Eight hundred, now that was an altitude to fly at.

A-Bomb did the ol’ tuck and roll, plummeting toward the earth as the plane squealed with delight.

And hot damn, there were the vehicles Skull had told him about, definitely a BMP and something smaller, transport or an oversized pickup. Hot spots on both suddenly flared, guns blazing away on the ground.

A-Bomb wanted to reserve one missile so he’d be able to see the ground without resorting to a flare if things got hot again. On the other hand, it looked to be impossible to hit both with one shot; they were separated by five yards.

Hit the side of the BMP and go for the bounce.

He dialed in the Maverick and fired. Something on the ground blinked as the AGM’s motor lit. Gunfire sparkled all around.

Iraqis couldn’t be firing at themselves.

Shit. His guys must have wandered up there where they didn’t belong. They were going to be damn close to the BMP went it went boom.

All he could do was watch.

CHAPTER 58

Dixon grabbed for his rifle as he fell backwards into the trench, expecting the Iraqi who had just opened fire to run forward spraying his automatic rifle. But the man’s first shots had been mistaken by the troops near the BMP as the enemy’s and they began shooting. The armored vehicle rolled forward a few yards from its hiding spot, splattering bullets from its machine-gun and 73 mm cannon. Dixon squirreled around to his stomach, clutching Budge as the gunfire crescendoed; a small truck parked ten yards beyond where the man had been burst into flame. Only then did the shooting stop. There were shouts, screams — two Iraqis ran from the BMP, talking and huffing for breathe. Dixon looked at Budge as they passed, then back at his rifle. The tone of the men’s words turned harsh and then anguished as they neared the truck; they realized they had just killed their own men.

As they ran back toward the BMP and Land Rover, one of the men seemed to be crying. They were almost in front of Dixon and Budge when a quick burst of light machine-gun fire took them down; the BMP began firing again, its two weapons clattering like over-sized typewriters as they raked the ground in front them. A dozen shadows moved from behind the personnel carrier toward the road.

No, into the ditch. They were sidling in his direction.

Dixon let off two quick bursts from his AK-74, then pulled the boy with him as he threw himself forward across the highway. He tried to hug the ground while moving at the same time; above all he kept his fingers tight on the boy’s tattered shirt. He saw two rocks ahead, barely higher than cement blocks. He swung Budge around as he dove for them, keeping him sheltered as the bullets whipped around him.

If the rocks deflected anything it was by pure chance. The light whhisssh of rifle fire gave way to the throaty thump of the cannon, the shells moving inextricably closer.

BJ choked on the smoke and dust, praying for a miracle, praying to hear a familiar sound from above — the throaty whoosh of an A-10A closing on its target. He prayed and then in his confused desperation swore he heard it; he pulled Budge beneath him, expecting, knowing that he had finally lost his mind and was ready to die.

In the next second a short, shrill whistle announced the impending arrival of one hundred and twenty-five pounds of explosive on the top of the Iraqi BMP. A ferocious wind slapped Dixon deeper into the ground as a piece of flaming steel from the personnel carrier ignited the gas tank on the nearby Land Rover, turning the vehicle into a three-quarter ton Molotov cocktail. The four or five Iraqis who hadn’t been killed when the Maverick hit were fried as the truck’s shell vaporized. Their ammo cooked off in a burst of Fourth of July finales.

And then there was a hush, the flames eating themselves into oblivion. Dixon felt the oxygen run out of his own body, as if sucked into the fire. He fought to get it back, gagging in the dust as his lungs began working again.

Something kicked underneath him. Dixon pushed himself sideways, fearing he had crushed Budge. He looked at the small body writhing on the ground, lost his breath again — then realized the kid was laughing, maybe out of fear or frustration, but no, he seemed to find the whole thing a gag or joke staged just for him. The boy giggled and cackled. Dixon, too, started laughing, as if they were in the middle of a giant amusement park, as if they were at Disney World and Goofy had just done a pratfall for their benefit.

“We’ll go there when we get out of this, kid,” Dixon told the boy, and the kid nodded vigorously, as if he’d read his mind about Disney World and going to America. “Come on — let’s get the hell out of here.”

Dixon hooked his arm around the boy’s back and side, clutching him as he began running toward the light machine-gun that had cut down the two Iraqis a few moments before. Having wished the Hog there, he now wished his countrymen to materialize before him; he ran forward, convinced it would happen, convinced the first miracle wouldn’t have happened without this one being preordained, too.

“We’re American! We’re American!” he shouted as he ran. “American! American!”

“Ammorican, Ammorican!” yelled the boy. “Budge! Budge!”

Dixon, half-running, half-dragging, started to laugh again. He was a kid himself, running through a bizarre fun house, trotting through an endless dream, his head spinning wildly. Days of hunger and almost no sleep, of thirst, stress — of every bizarre thing that war was — spun like a tornado in his chest, holding him up, propelling him.

“I’m an American!” he yelled, and he heard something pop on his left, and he heard a voice, vaguely familiar, yelling from a few yards away on his left, “Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” And the thing popping on his left flared into the dragon mouth of a machine-gun mounted on the rear of a truck, its breath flaming the ground in front of him and the air overhead, its tongue leering from between teeth dripping with blood. The dragon roared and lurched, snapping at him, trying to bite the tornado he had become. And all Dixon could do was run and laugh, run and laugh, shouting again and again, “We’re American! Don’t shoot! We’re American, me and the kid. Don’t shoot.”

CHAPTER 59

“Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” screamed Wong as the canvas at the back of the Iraqi truck flew off. He’d seen Dixon running forward from the road just after the A-10 struck the BMP, but had been unable to warn him away from the Iraqi truck a few yards away.

As he had feared, the Iraqis had mounted a heavy machine-gun on the back of the vehicle, and had shown amazing patience in not revealing it until they had a target. And now they did, bullets beginning to spit even as the canvas was pulled away. Wong leveled Sergeant Davis’s SAW at the truck and blew through a good portion of the ammo box, raking the side of the vehicle but failing to stop the machine-gun, which was protected by a low wall of sand bags or something similar. He did, however, succeed in drawing the gunner’s attention — Wong ducked as a barrage of bullets whipped in his direction, pinning him to the ground.

Under other circumstances, he might have felt some satisfaction that he had been right about Dixon — that he had beaten the odds and found the lieutenant. But a fresh spray of bullets made it clear that the gunner on the truck was well-supplied with a long belt of ammunition, and as the line of exploding earth danced inches from his face, he realized his had been a Pyrrhic victory.

CHAPTER 60

A-Bomb had never felt so bad about smacking an enemy vehicle in his life. He actually stuffed six red licorice pieces into his mouth instead of his usual three as he pulled the Hog around to inspect the damage.

Nailed the sucker good. Land Rover looked smashed, too.

He turned back to the small, fuzzy Maverick screen, viewing the wreckage. Glowing hot stuff, not moving. Little like a fish bowl with all the water run out.

Or maybe not.

A-Bomb pushed the Hog southwards as he scanned with the Maverick’s IR head, trying to search the area where he figured the D boys would be — or at least where he hoped they had escaped to. He still had his STAR pods; they’d only be dropped if the ground team had trouble with Doberman’s. They added weight and resistance to the plane, but he didn’t notice it much as he banked and came around above the main highway, the Mav’s head trained on the area he’d just hit. His eyes had begun to fuzz from fatigue — a good thing, he realized, since it blurred the numbers on the fuel gauges.

Something sparkled in the lower corner of his glass.

Machine-gun.

Shooting at somebody on the ground.

Big machine-gun, so it had to be Iraqi.

Damn, if that wasn’t the best news he’d had all day. If they were still shooting at somebody, his guys were still alive. He hadn’t nailed them accidentally.

Without really thinking about it, A-Bomb slammed his Hog into a nose-first dive, tossing four or five g’s in a full-body slam toward the earth. Air brakes screamed, flaps groaned, and the thick flare of a heavy machine-gun, probably a Dushka, made a perfect X in the middle of his targeting screen.

And wouldn’t you know it? Bruce Springsteen was on the CD player, just dishing up “Born in the USA.”

O’Rourke lit his cannon as the Boss wailed, the GAU grabbing the bass, rhythm and drum lines with its own particular take on slash and burn rock ‘n roll. The enemy machine gun disappeared beneath an onslaught of 30 mm shells, vanishing along with its truck in a frothing white powder that turned red and black as the vehicle’s gas tank blew.

Unfortunately, the tank had been less than half-full; the explosion barely lit up the night, throwing only a lackluster fireball across A-Bomb’s path as he veered off. The fire wasn’t even strong enough to sear his wings.

“I keep telling you idiots, keep your gas tanks full,” A-Bomb admonished the Iraqis as he recovered from the steep dive. “Woulda had a 10 on the Boom Scale if you’d just held up your end of the bargain. Losing the war’s one thing, but at least score some style points while you’re at it.”

CHAPTER 61

As the machine-gun swung its dragon-like fangs back toward Dixon, a hawk flashed above it. The Iraqi gun disappeared upwards in a furious windstorm. Flames shot everywhere; dirt, dust, shrapnel, bits of plastic and rubber swirled through the air. A ball of fire shot off at an angle. Thunder roared with a massive, ear-shattering pop. Then silence returned, the night hushed by the faint whisper of two turbofans churning in the distance.

Dixon jumped to his feet.

“That was a Hog, kid,” shouted Dixon, pulling the boy to his feet. “We’re saved. We’re saved. Shit — we were about an inch from getting creamed. Holy Jesus. Holy, holy Jesus.”

“Lieutenant Dixon?”

Dixon looked up and saw a soldier running toward him carrying a light machine-gun.

“I’m Dixon,” he said. “Thank God you rescued me.”

“We’re not rescued yet. I’m Captain Wong.”

“Lieutenant William James Dixon, 535^th Attack Squadron. Wong? You?”

“Yes. A pleasure to meet you in person.” Wong had joined the squadron after Dixon was assigned to Riyadh, but had spoken to him briefly over the phone several times. Then as now, he spoke in a bored monotone, as if he were on a train platform waiting for the 6:03 to arrive. “We have a rendezvous to make,” said Wong. “It’s two miles away and scheduled to take place in five minutes.”

“I guess we better get going.”

Wong took a step then stopped. “What’s this boy?”

“Budge. I saved him.”

Wong gave him a quizzical look, then bent to examine the child. He said something in Arabic. Words flooded from the kid’s mouth.

“Your name is Budge,” Wong told Dixon, translating a bit of what the boy had said. “BJ, I assume. Budge. He misunderstood. He thinks you’re an angel sent from God. He doesn’t understand who we are.”

“What’s his name then?”

“Nabi.”

The boy nodded.

“Some Iraqi soldiers were going to kill him,” Dixon told Wong.

“His parents were taken away. I believe he saw his father shot. My Arabic is not optimum,” said Wong. “Most likely, the father was executed, along with the rest of his family. I believe we’ll find he was a Shiite Muslim and-or part of the resistance, though there are other possibilities.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” said Dixon.

“He can’t come with us, Lieutenant. We have to run two miles; I suspect our transport is already approaching. They won’t wait.”

“He is coming,” said Dixon.

Wong shook his head again. “We can’t take him back.”

“Are we going to make the rendezvous or not?” Dixon asked.

Wong frowned but said nothing. Turning, he began trotting to the southwest. Dixon started to follow, tugging the child to come.

They’d gone perhaps ten yards when the kid fell. He’d slipped well behind; it was obvious he couldn’t keep up.

“Come on,” said Dixon, running back to him. He picked Nabi up and took a few steps, but couldn’t carry both the AK-74 and the kid, not and run at the same time.

He threw down the rifle, pushed Nabi across the top of his shoulder, and set off behind Wong.

“It’s okay,” he told the boy between his labored breaths. “We’re going home. God must want us to, because there’s no way we would have gotten this far without Him. Yeah,” he said, running. “You don’t mind if I still call you Budge, okay? It kind of sounds cool. That okay?”

The boy murmured something.

“Thanks,” Dixon said. “Shit Jesus — to make it back after all this. We’re going home. Home.”

And though his legs were liquid and his lungs wheezing, though he had a dozen bruises and maybe broken ribs and a bum arm and a banged up head, he knew they were going to make it.

CHAPTER 62

His Maverick’s IR head remained out of commission, but Skull had no problem seeing the splashed trucks; one of them was burning rather spectacularly. Two other vehicles were stopped nearby, also damaged or destroyed. A pair of vehicles were coming down the highway from the west, maybe a mile and a half away. From what he understood of the layout on the ground, they weren’t an immediate danger to his guys, but that didn’t mean he was going to let them continue merrily along.

He warned A-Bomb even though he was back by the main battlefield, then pitched to climb and let off his last LUU flare. They popped at roughly nine hundred feet, lighting the sky like a bank of high-powered stadium lights as Knowlington continued upwards before spinning around to attack. A little anxious, he started firing from 3,000 feet, the shells falling in a bent arc toward the earth to catch the first vehicle, a six-wheeled truck, right across the grill. Two dozen uranium-enriched slugs made short work of its engine compartment, stalling it in a heap of steam.

Skull kept coming, riding his rudder to put his nose across the path of the second vehicle. He let loose with more cannon but could tell he missed; he jabbed the pedals and nudged his stick, but just couldn’t hold the plane in the right position, altitude and speed burning off and the light of the flare distracting him. He pulled back and got a chop warning, the plane hinting that he had pushed things a bit too far and was in danger of losing all forward momentum.

Knowlington ignored it, rearing the plane up by her nose and dipping around, goosing the throttle. The Hog divvied the air currents with her wing, skipping tightly back toward the target with an appreciative giggle, her nose centered on the truck. Knowlington clicked out a three-second burst, more than fifty rounds of combat mix flaring from the business end of the Gat. He saw another shadow to his right and pushed toward it, aware that he was getting precariously low but still calculating that he could get off a burst. His aim was short; he zeroed again and nailed his trigger but missed wide and now had to pull off.

As Skull banked, he saw a new group of shadows fleeing south from the vehicles Doberman had smashed earlier. But as he began to push the Hog in their direction, the flare inexplicably burnt itself out. He fired anyway, hoping he might at least scare the bastards. It was a waste and he berated himself as he began to climb away, the Warthog gradually picking up speed.

“Devil Two, what’s your situation?” he asked A-Bomb.

“Geez, Skip, I was just about to ask you,” answered his wingman. “Got a Devil Dog underway, and Bruce is poundin’ in the earphones.”

“You’re a piece of work, A-Bomb. What about the BPM?”

“Gone. Ditto a truck, and a flatbed or something they were using for a machine-gun nest. Took the machine-gun out too. Shame. Probably a Dushka. You ever shoot one of those, Boss?”

“Splash it or shoot it?”

“Shoot it.”

“Negative. You see the ground team?”

“Negative. But I’m pretty sure I saw some fire being returned against that machine-gun,” added A-Bomb.

Knowlington checked back with Wolf. The ground team had checked in, saying they were proceeding to Silo, the prime pickup point. Doberman had dropped his two pods there earlier.

The controller didn’t mention Dixon. It’d been a long shot, too long — no right to hope for it, Skull told himself.

Wolf said the Herk seemed to be running behind a few minutes, but everything was shaping up nicely.

Except that the F-16s that were supposed to relieve them had been delayed.

“Can you remain on station?” the controller asked.

“We’re going to have to,” replied Knowlington. “Have our tanker move further north so we don’t have too far to fly.”

“What’s your fuel situation?” asked Wolf, suddenly concerned. He paused to let Skull respond, but he didn’t. “Maybe you should go south now,” said the controller, probably doing the math himself.

“Negative, negative,” said Skull. “Bring the tanker north and tell him to stand by.”

“I don’t know if we can do that.”

“Then scramble the SAR assets to pick us up. We’re not leaving these guys hanging.”

CHAPTER 63

Salt’s GPS told him he’d reached the spot, but he couldn’t see the pod containing the STAR kit. He was starting to get a little concerned — the Herk was due ten minutes ago, and he wasn’t sure it would hang around. Walking home was not an option.

A light flared in the distance. One of the Hogs had lit a massive flare four or five miles to the west.

As Salt turned his gaze from it back toward the Iraqi holding Davis, he saw a dead body lying in the shadow ahead, a blanket over his head.

Poor dead bastard, he thought. Wind ripped his blanket off.

He took a step forward, instinctually moving to restore the corpse’s decency, even if it could only have been an Iraqi. Then he saw it wasn’t a body at all, but the pod he’d been searching for. The second lay a few yards away.

“There. Stop!” he told the Iraqi, gesturing with his rifle. “Put Davis down.”

The man stopped but didn’t understand enough to put the wounded sergeant down. Without time to explain or bother, Salt dropped the com pack and ran to the long metal canister. He pried it open, fingers desperate. The fall had jolted the cover, making it more difficult for him to separate the latched casing. Finally, he got it open just as he heard a plane in the distance.

One of the Hogs? Or the MC-130?

Salt fumbled with the gear, dragging the poles upright, setting them in the ground right there instead of running up to the high point of the area. He screwed in the connector for the helium inflator, cursing his bum luck, cursing everything. Where the fucking hell was Wong?

“I am right here, Sergeant,” announced Captain Wong, running down the short hill that led to the rendezvous point. “There is no need to get overly flustered — the approaching plane is an A-10, not the MC-130.”

Salt spun around as the captain ran directly to the pod, placing his gun on the ground. He removed two suits, which looked like padded olive green ski gear. The hoods had fur fringe around them.

“Dress quickly, and prepare Sergeant Davis,” said Wong. “I will prepare the prisoner.”

“Fuck the prisoner,” said Salt.

“He is more valuable than you or I,” said Wong, going to the second canister. “He will go on the harness set with Lieutenant Dixon,” he added, gesturing up the hill. “I trust he will be here shortly. He does not run quite as fast as I.”

“Dixon?”

“My other assignment. Have you radioed to initiate the pickup?”

“I just got here.”

“I’ll make the transmission once the gear is set,” said Wong. “The Hercules is supposed to proceed to Silo even if we do not broadcast.”

“How are you getting back, Captain?” asked Salt.

“The future is not our present concern,” said Wong. “Quickly now. The Hercules should arrive at any moment, and I believe I hear a vehicle in the distance.”

CHAPTER 64

If the Hercules had been equipped with an ejector seat, Lars would have pulled the handles by now. The blare of the RWR warnings, the flak, and the explosions had drilled into his skull from all directions, carbon-tipped bits eating right through to the bone.

Yet not one of the threats, real as they were, had been anywhere near the Hercules as it flew. MiGs, SAMs, a flight of F-15E Strike Eagles inbound to Baghdad crossing his path — everything had been miles and miles from his plane. He knew from Wolf that all hell was breaking lose near his target zone, but couldn’t see it, flying too low and too slow; nonetheless, every flicker of pink, of red, of green, panicked him. Somehow he managed to hold the control column steady as he flew on; somehow the big plane kept herself precisely on the path for the rendezvous point. They were making bad time — they were roughly twenty-five minutes behind schedule and getting worse — but there was nothing he could do about that, and it was decidedly better than being off course.

They were now inside ten miles of their pickup spot, not yet in contact with the ground team. Wolf had confirmed that the commandos were alive, at least, and proceeding toward Silo, the code name for the prime pickup point. But the team had not checked back.

“I think we ought to go right in,” said the navigator. “Hit our mark in case they’re there but can’t use the radio. This low, we’re going to have trouble hearing them.”

Going straight in was the briefed procedure, and Lars knew what the navigator said might be true. Still, Wolf ought to be able to get them on the air, or contact them through the A-10s flying cover. Lars opened his mouth to tell Kelly to contact the ABCCC again, but nothing came out. He worked his tongue around his lips and teeth, swallowed, trying to force some saliva toward his dry throat.

“Try another hail,” he managed.

“Wolf would have told us if they’d come up. You’re on course,” added Kelly, leaning over his shoulder. The flight engineer was looking at the radar unit, or maybe just pretending to. “Everything’s cool,” added the sergeant, patting his shoulder.

“Yeah,” said Lars, seeing his left hand shake but powerless to stop it. “Cool.”

The assistant jumpmaster and the winch-operator and the tail-position operator reported that they were ready. Someone else in the back said something, then there was another voice Lars couldn’t make out. After they snagged the line they’d have to get it to catch it then clamp it then release it then winch it then hook it then release it then grab the men.

No, he had the order wrong. Hook clamp release pull.

No…

Just fly the plane. That was tough enough.

The Herk’s GPS NAVISTAR computer projected a crosshair over the target zone as they approached, just as if they were making a covert drop in hostile territory. Lars felt his body hitching, weighed down by the helmet and heavy flak jacket. As he hit his turn and brought the Herk up off the deck, he caught a glimpse of the moon; it was nowhere near full but it would be bathing them in light, making them an easy target.

A flare lit in the distance off their right wing.

We’re going to fry, he thought. Fry.

“Wolf hasn’t heard from them. A-10s say we’re clear and Wolf concurs. Go for it,” said Kelly.

“Going for it.”

“Going to take a first pass to get the lay of the land?” asked the navigator.

Lars realized he was too high and too fast as he came out of the turn that was supposed to get him right in front of the balloon.

“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” he said, though he wasn’t sure whether he expected sympathy or outrage.

He backed off power, got a little more crosswind than he expected but compensated. He was doing too much; he couldn’t handle all of this. He needed to be at five hundred feet; he was at seven hundred, sliding down slowly.

“Forty seconds. Confidence high,” said the navigator. They were on course and somehow at the right altitude.

“Thirty second slow down.” Lars cut his airspeed again, holding his altitude at a perfect 500 feet above the ground. The flight engineer said something but he missed it.

There was no flak in the air, nothing. Just like a picnic.

“Five second slow down,” he said, but stopped himself as he went to cut more power. The big plane was already down to 140 knots indicated, and its speed was still creeping downward.

Too slow and he’d stall. Then he’d really lose it.

Keep it steady. That was the key.

No way he could do this. No way.

“Do we have them on radio? What’s the story?” he blurted.

“Pencil flare ahead,” Kelly shouted, practically jumping from his perch behind the pilot to point out the window.

The flare arched upwards, slightly off to the right.

That wasn’t the protocol, wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

Was it?

“Shit, they’re off — I’m replotting,” said the navigator, trying to update the computer. “Damn it — was it them or what?”

Lars didn’t need the computer, didn’t need the terrain radar or even the FLIR. He nudged the big plane as gently as he could manage, edging slightly off-keel, speed dropping low. The plane’s airframe had been modified to increase its stability at low speeds and altitudes, but it was still a struggle, still a battle just to keep it in the air, get it to where he needed to get it.

Had the small flare come from their guys or Iraqis luring them to their deaths?

“Shit, there! There, dead ahead!” shouted the flight engineer.

Lars pushed his head toward the windshield but instead of looking ahead for the mylar blimp that would show him where the line was, he closed his eyes.

CHAPTER 65

A little less than a year before the Gulf War began, BJ Dixon’s mother had died. She had suffered a massive coronary and gone into a coma, briefly revived, only to plunge into a fugue state, teetering on death. Besides the severe heart condition she was found to have several aneurysms of the brain. After a second, milder heart attack, her doctor said her time left measured in hours, not days, but she somehow hung on for weeks.

The night before she passed away, he sat in a chair next to her bedside, praying. He had never been particularly religious, and the words were mostly haphazard snippets of things he remembered from childhood, interspersed with simple pleas for his mother’s life. He had begun praying simply because his mother asked him to, but as he went on, he started to believe more and more in the words, and then in their power. Finally he somehow came to think that his mother — who had been healthy and even strong all her life, who wasn’t yet fifty — would live. When he finished his last prayer, he was convinced God would save her.

His mother died a short time later.

He didn’t blame God exactly, nor did he lose faith — he hadn’t had a vast reservoir of faith to lose. But the religious inclinations that he might have had drifted away. By the end of the funeral service, the biblical passages that his mother had picked out — intended actually for his father, who had been bed-ridden for nearly twenty years — were no more than vaguely ironic words with references to faith and an afterlife. He was like millions of other men and women, neither believing nor disbelieving.

The war had done nothing to change his attitude. His panic during his first air mission, his triumphant shoot-down of an enemy helicopter, his free fall into Iraqi territory, his decision to sacrifice himself so another man would live, his wandering through the desert — none of these things had made him more or less of a believer.

But as he ran with the boy over his shoulder behind Wong, BJ Dixon felt strongly that God had saved him. It was the only explanation that made sense. His miraculous recovery might be explained by wild luck and chance — not to mention the heroic efforts of Wong and the other men who had landed here. But the Iraqi heavy machine-gun had been aimed directly at him from less than twenty yards away. Wong had distracted it, the Hog had finished it, but only God himself could have sheltered Dixon and little Nabi from the fusillade. Dixon felt gratitude and exhilaration — he literally felt grace.

By the time Dixon reached Wong and the rest of the ground team, he was spinning out a cable mechanism near what looked like a pair of football goal posts. Two men in parkas were sitting between the poles, one slumping against the other.

“What’s all this?” Dixon asked as Wong finished.

Wong reached over to the ground and tossed what seemed to be a green sleeping bag at him. “Into this suit.”

“What is this?”

“The suit is part of the harness system. We’re using a STAR retrieval system to board an MC-130. Please, Captain, prepare yourself. It will keep you somewhat warm and may help if you bounce along the ground.”

Another man, short, somewhat fat, stood in another suit nearby; he watched Wong but did not say anything.

An airplane dipped nearly overhead. It had to be a Hercules — nothing else in the Gulf had such a throaty, turbine roar.

“He’s too high and we are in the wrong position,” said Wong. He held up a pencil flare dispenser and fired, frowning as the small rocket disappeared. He stared northwards as the drone grew louder, then shook his head. “I’ll have to tell him to make another pass.”

He ran to Satcom rucksack.

“Shit,” said one of the men between the goal posts.

In the next second the Hercules passed directly overhead, so low Dixon thought it would land in the dirt a few feet away. He jumped on top of the boy, who’d already thrown himself down. Above the roar Dixon heard the sound of a guitar string breaking; there was a scream and a whoosh. The plane was gone — and so were the two men, literally plucked from the ground by the system.

Wong hunkered over the Satcom, shouting; his words were drowned out by the airplane. Finally he jumped up and ran the few steps back to Dixon.

“Quickly,” said Wong, gesturing at the suit. “We have six minutes while they recover the men and turn.”

“We’re getting snapped up?” Dixon asked, standing.

“Quickly. The suit has the harness sewed into it.”

“Where’s a suit for the boy? And where’s yours?”

“The boy is not going. We cannot kidnap an Iraqi child,” said Wong. He went to a large metal container and took out more poles. With a hiss, he inflated a blimp-like balloon and began reeling it upwards.

“I’m not kidnapping him. I saved him,” said Dixon, holding the boy to his side. “Where’s your suit?”

“There’s no time to argue, Lieutenant. I will order you into the suit if you wish.”

“Captain, no way I’m leaving him.”

Dixon threw the suit down on the ground, anger welling inside of him. As it landed, the man who had been sitting on the ground in the other suit leaped up, pushing Wong aside and slamming into Dixon.

Dixon flailed back, unsure exactly what was going on. Worn down by everything that had happened over the past forty-eight hours, tired and hungry, BJ pushed and punched, but it was all he could do to simply hold on to the shorter man. He jabbed the man’s chin, then his shoulder, anger exploding in him, anger and instinct — he was fighting to save the kid. Dixon grabbed at the man’s head, then saw his face in the shadows.

He was wrestling Saddam Hussein himself.

Dixon’s shock was all the man needed. He rammed his head into BJ’s chest, slamming against his ribs. Jolted by the pain, Dixon reeled on the ground; in the next second the man leaped back with something in his hand.

He’d grabbed the other grenade BJ had taken from the dead Iraqi that afternoon.

The Iraqi took three steps away. He pulled the pin, took another step, dropped the grenade.

Wong took one step forward.

The boy dropped to his knees, three inches from the grenade, covering it with his body, his short legs curled at his chest, his back to Dixon and Wong.

Time became light. It became sound, a piercing cry of anguish that resounded in the desert, drowning out the drone of the approaching airplane.

Dixon saw himself at his mother’s deathbed again. He looked down at her, stared at her face. The dead were supposed to find peace, but her mouth had contorted in a last gasp of pain.

“Lieutenant. Lieutenant. Quickly. We must go.”

Dixon opened his eyes to find Wong over him. He took a hard breath, felt his ribs flame. Wong disappeared; Dixon felt his head slip back, blackness beckoning.

Up, he told himself. Save the kid.

He opened his eyes again, took another breath. This time, the pain helped him focus.

Wong had pulled the suit over him.

“I have to save Budge,” he said.

“The boy is dead. So is the Iraqi,” said Wong. “Here, quickly. More Iraqis are coming from the west.”

Something flared to his left. Dixon turned, thinking he would hear the gunfire, but instead he heard the cry again. He closed his eyes.

Wong dragged him toward the pole, pulled on the harness.

“You’re staying on the ground?”

“I intended to before the Iraqi took matters in his own hands.” Wong looped himself into the special suit, snapping the restraints. “The shock should be no greater than a parachute opening. Of course, it depends on which parachute we are referring to. In my experience —”

A howl drowned out Wong’s words, dirt flying in Dixon’s face. As he blinked his eyes closed, he realized the sound didn’t come from the Hercules but bullets being fired a short distance away.

CHAPTER 66

He could see it all. His eyes were as good as they’d been twenty years ago. But Colonel Knowlington wasn’t just seeing with his eyes — saw everything with his head, knew where it all was. He could feel himself flying, feel the Hog following as he banked five hundred feet above the ground, the big Hercules dipping back in his direction as it came back for the second pickup.

Dixon would be there. He knew he would.

Something moved in the open scrubland beyond the rendezvous point. Knowlington pushed his Hog to take care of it, knowing it was Iraqis, knowing he was going to nail them just before the Herk got there.

“Herky Bird, assets are taking fire,” Skull said over the radio. “I’m clearing them out for you.”

The MC-130 didn’t respond, but it didn’t matter. Knowlington had them — he could see every little goddamn thing, A-Bomb in trail on the right wing, closing quickly to help; the bastards on the ground, flailing at his men; his guys, Wong and Dixon, waiting to get picked up; the Hercules coming in cool and calm like she was landing at an airport in North Dakota.

He aimed the nose of the Hog at the pinpricks of light on the ground and lit the cannon.

CHAPTER 67

For a moment, everything was pitch black and quite, consumed by the flaring hum of a fire burning itself out.

Then Captain Lars Warren opened his eyes.

A dervish slashed in front of him, spitting blood from its mouth.

Someone shouted at him, screaming that he was a failure, a coward, that he’d blown it big-time, that he’d wimped and screwed up and what the hell right did he have being in the cockpit and who said he could fly a plane — who said he could lead or even live, dare to breathe in a combat zone where millions of better men had been killed and maimed?

His hands trembled. Sweat poured from every inch of his body. He was on line, he was right there, at the spot, the balloon materializing before him like a bubble floating up in a glass of champagne. The whiskers snared it and it smacked against the glass panel. It bounced in front of him, splattering and growing, covering the entire forward area of the plane, a shroud thrown over the entire plane. It was bigger than the earth itself. The only thing Lars could do was hold the plane as tightly as he could, keep his hands on the control column, shaking and all, hold the plane for an eternity, hold the plane at a hundred knots, ninety-eight, ninety-six, its back-end wide open, men screaming all around him, bullets flying. It was impossible to do this — it was impossible just to breathe.

“We’re good, Captain! We’re good!” said the navigator. “Shit yeah. Shit yeah.”

“Just steady,” Lars said. “Just steady.”

The men in the back humped their own bricks, grabbing the guide rope, winching, then pulling their passengers aboard.

More shouts. Someone brought the engines up. The rear bay snapped closed.

“We’re good back here,” said the loadmaster over the plane’s interphone or internal communications system. “We’ve got four happy passengers. Kick ass, Captain. Kick fucking ass!”

Four passengers?

Shit — had he already done it twice?

Shit.

Four? Not three?

Had they done this twice already? He couldn’t remember.

Twice?

“Four?” he said.

Someone was cheering. Lars felt a hand slap him on the shoulder — the flight engineer.

“Looking good,” said the navigator. “Looking A-fucking-one-good. We are on course and heading home. Falcons arriving at two o’clock. There’s our escort. Oh, Mama, this is great.”

“We’re secure,” said Kelly, relaying information from the crew chief in the back who had supervised the pickup. “We have an extra passenger aboard — Lieutenant William Dixon, U.S. Air Force, assigned as a forward ground controller with Delta, lost two days ago. Kick ass, we’ve rescued the dead. Dixon was KIA. Kick ass. Kick fuckin’ ass. The guy’s a fuckin’ hero and we pulled him out. Lazarus returns. Shit. Major DiRiggio says well done. He’s conscious; medic says he’s doing better. Great going, Captain. Kick ass.”

But sweat kept pouring from Lars’ hands and they wouldn’t stop shaking, even as he checked his course for home.

CHAPTER 68

“They got them!” screamed A-Bomb over the short-range radio. “They got them! It’s what I’m talking about!”

“One,” said Skull.

“Shit yeah! Shit yeah!” A-Bomb shouted, his voice nearly drowned out by the blare of rock music.

That or one of his engines was going funky.

“Hell of a call sign,” said Skull.

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” said A-Bomb.

Skull could swear the comment had been accompanied by a slurp from a mug.

“Maybe I should get you to rig me up a stereo system,” said Knowlington. “Or a refrigerator.”

“Just drinking coffee,” said A-Bomb.

“All right. We have about zero-five to the closest spot the tanker can meet us,” Knowlington told him.

Wolf had managed to vector the tanker further north than originally intended. A flight of F-15s providing air cover had already flown ahead, a welcome committee for a job well done.

Or escorts for the SAR crew that would be needed if they botched the tank.

“Gonna leave me with two minutes of fuel,” said A-Bomb. “Plenty of time.”

“Two minutes? You’ve been holding out on me,” said Skull.

“Drop back and I’ll drip some in your tanks.”

“Just watch my butt,” Skull told his wingman. “I shaved it for you and everything.”

“See, Boss, now you’re talking like a Hog driver.”

“It’s what I’m talking about,” replied Knowlington.