Hogs #2: Hog Down (11 page)

Better
to save the letter. A treat, make it. When he really felt down and couldn’t go
on.

Carefully,
he folded the envelope in half and the half again. He kept it in his hand as he
started to walk from the small copse, kept it between his fingers for a long
time before finally tucking it away.

__PART TWO__

HOME FRONT

Upstate New York

21 January 1991

1300

(2100, Saudi Arabia
)

O
rdinarily, Robby took
a nap now. Kathy Johnson
counted on it; she used the hour-long break from her infant son to take a
shower and, sometimes, to sneak a cigarette on her mother-in-law’s porch. It
wasn’t like she had to sneak out to smoke, exactly, but she’d made such a big
thing about giving them up during her pregnancy that she felt she’d be letting
people down if they knew she had gone back. And as welcoming as her husbands’
parents were toward her and the baby, they were still parents. It was an odd
feeling, now that she was a parent herself.

But
today Robby didn’t seem to want to nap. He was nearly four months old, born
only a few weeks before her husband had gotten the news that he was leaving for
the Gulf. She tried rocking him and singing; when that didn’t work Kathy gave
him her breast again, swaying gently in the overstuffed old chair in their
room. Finally, his eyes stayed closed. She waited until his arms went limp
before getting up slowly and gently placing him inside the crib.

Stepping
back, she suddenly felt very cold, as if wrapped in ice. She began to shudder.
Her mother-in-law kept the thermostat at 72 degrees, and had double-insulated
panes behind the storm windows, but Kathy felt the chill deep in her bones. She
stood shivering for nearly a minute before it passed, and kept her arms wrapped
tightly around her as she tiptoed from the room and headed down the hall toward
the bathroom.

She
had just started the water when the phone rang. She and the baby were alone in
the house; there was an answering machine but she was afraid the noise would
wake Robby and she rushed to take the call, even though it meant going all the
way downstairs to the kitchen in only her robe.

Her
brother Peter’s voice leapt from the receiver.

“Kathy?”

“Peter?”

“Go
turn on CNN.”

She
knew, then. The shudder she had felt a few minutes before returned with a fury;
her body trembled so hard her robe fell open.

“Kath?
I’ll stay on the line. Just turn on the TV.”

The
phone was cordless. Kath carried it with her as she walked through the smallish
Cape Cod to the living room as deliberately as she could manage.

Though
she’d been here for weeks, she still hadn’t mastered the cable layout and the
remote control. The screen flashed with a picture of a talk show host cajoling
some guest into accepting a fashion makeover. Kathy had to go through channel
by channel until finally the all-news network appeared.

Two
men were talking. She thought she recognized the man on the right, a retired
air force officer, though she couldn’t decide whether it was because she had
actually seen him before on the channel or because he had a generic, bland sort
of face.

They
flashed up a picture of an A-10A Thunderbolt II, the plane her husband flew,
the plane he and the other pilots called the Warthog, or more simply, “Hog.”

She
waited for the rest. There was a map of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. An airbase
supposedly used by the Hogs was marked out near the Gulf on the Saudi side of
the border. She realized that the location of the air base was incorrect,
though she wasn’t sure whether it was a mistake or something done deliberately
so the Iraqis wouldn’t know where the Hogs were.

She
knew it was supposed to be Jimmy’s base. All the Hogs flew from the same one.

“Kathy?”

She
looked at the phone in her hand, unsure how it had gotten there.

“Kath?
Are you still there? I hear the TV.”

She
stared down at the worn, golden tufts of the freshly washed carpet, her eyes
trailing slowly around the perfectly kept living room and its carefully
arranged knickknacks and icons: the photographs of the Johnson’s three sons and
two wives and their three, now four grandchildren; the souvenir from Disney
World and the trophy that Jimmy had won for graduating second in his class and
a medal that had been presented to his younger brother during an amateur
olympics competition three years ago; and a photo in a pewter frame of the
entire Johnson clan last summer at a picnic. Her eyes caught her just-rounding
belly, apprehension clearly marked on her face. And then her eyes slipped over
to her husband, so proud next to her, so ready to be a father after all these
years of trying, so into it, having read every book as if having a child was
like reading instruction manuals on a new kind of airplane. He was in his
shorts and yes, he had nice legs, with sharp, thick muscles. His chest and arms
were well–sculpted, too, but she’d always liked his legs and his eyes the best.

“Kathy?”

And
finally, she returned her attention to the television screen, where another
photo of her husband was being shown, a still from a video clip apparently
taken a day or two earlier by coincidence. Beneath the scratchy frame were the
words, “Believed down in Iraq.”

King Fahd, Saudi Arabia

21 January
1991

2103

C
hief Clyston had
just entered the building
when he saw his colonel charge through the hallway from the squadron room into
his office. The door flew open and slammed shut; almost immediately there was a
loud roar as Colonel Knowlington barked at some hapless military operator to
get him a so-and-so and so-and-so line to such-and-such in Riyadh, and
so-and-so now!

Clyston
hadn’t seen the colonel like this in a long, long time— in fact, he couldn’t
remember him ever being this pissed off. He realized that it must have to do
with Mongoose, but couldn’t quite figure out what would have sent Knowlington
ballistic.

The
chief master sergeant eased his 267 pounds gingerly down the hallway as the
tirade reached new heights.

“Who
the fuck gave out the fucking information!” the colonel shouted. “What the hell
were they thinking? Using his name! Get me that scumbag because I am going to
tear him three new fucking assholes! Johnson has a goddamn wife and a little
fucking baby. Shitting hell!”

The
stream of curses continued unabated for at least five minutes. Clyston felt
himself actually shudder when the colonel hung up the phone. It had been a long
time since anything Knowlington did actually scared him. Hell, it had been eons
since
anything
scared him. But here he was, graybeard and all, standing
in the hallway and feeling not a little like newbie private on his first
assignment. He actually knocked on the door.

“Who
is it?”

“It’s
me. Chief Master Sergeant Clyston.”

“Come,”
snapped Knowlington.

“Colonel?”

“Alan.
What the fuck’s up? You hear this bullshit?”

“Major
Johnson being shot down?”

“It’s
on fucking CNN. Every fucking detail.”

“CNN?”

“Some
douche bag with his head up his ass talked to the fucking network! I can’t
fucking believe it. They confirmed his name and everything. They could just as
well have given the fucking Iraqis a map. Wait until I find out who it was.
Just wait.”

There
was little doubt in Clyston’s mind that his boss would tear the person in two,
no matter what his or her rank was— even if it had been the President himself.
Knowlington wasn’t a particularly big man, but at the moment he looked like he
could wipe the floor with Mike Tyson.

“Well,
what the fuck’s up?”

“I
wanted you to know that Devil Three has a clean bill of health,” said Clyston.
“And the rest of the squadron is primed and ready, so you’re not going to need
any backups sitting back here in the hangars. They can take off at first light.
Sooner, if you want.”

Knowlington’s
heart rate descended to merely apocalyptic levels. “You read my mind,” he said.

“I
thought you’d want us in the mix.”

Knowlington
nodded. He was staring beyond the chief master sergeant, as if he could see
through the walls all the way to Iraq. “I hate those motherfucking newspeople, Alan,”
he said finally. “They screwed us in ‘Nam. Man, they screwed us bad.”

The chief
gave him an all-purpose “yup.” This wasn’t Vietnam, though he wasn’t about to
point that out. He also had a somewhat different view on the media– in his
opinion, it was the brass and politicians who had fucked up; a lot of the
newspeople who weren’t jerks were just trying to show how it was from a grunts’
eye-view. Nothing wrong with that. But Skull had personal reasons for his
interpretation, and the Capo respected that.

“I
got to find Goose’s wife’s phone number,” Knowlington told him.

“You’re
going to call her?”

“Wouldn’t
you?”

“Wouldn’t,
uh, wouldn’t be my place.”

“Yeah,
well, I have to take care of this myself. She’s probably watching the fucking
television right now. Jesus H. Christ. Do me a favor, would you? A-Bomb stayed
north to try and help the search. He hadn’t gotten back to King Khalid last
time I checked. Find Wong and tell him I want to talk to A-Bomb as soon as he
lands there. Tell him I don’t care if he has to go up to KKMC himself and lasso
him, I want to be talking to him within the hour.”

“Wong?”

“Yeah.
He’s got a screwy sense of humor but he’s exactly the kind of guy you can count
on in the clutch with something like this. Got those intel and Pentagon
connections. Wong’s OK.”

Clyston
nodded.

“How’s
the crew taking it?” Knowlington asked.

“Everybody
wants to do what they can to get him back.”

“You
tell them we’re bringing him back if I have to fucking hike up to Baghdad
myself and carry him out on my back.”

“Yourself?”

“Yeah.
Me.”

“This
mission approved by Black Hole?”

“You
know, Chief, with all due respect, I can’t remember making you officer of the
day, let alone director of operations.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Knowlington’s
frown and silence indicated he expected the Capo to tell him what was on his
mind, no matter whether it was something he wanted to hear or not.

“Well,
uh, taking the mission yourself,” Clyston told him.

“You
think I’m too old?”

“No.
You’re just, you’re getting a little excited. Usually, you’re ice.”

“Yeah,
well I’m pissed. The CNN crapola. I’ll calm down, enough to nail these fuckers
anyway.”

“You
sound like A-Bomb,” Clyston told him.

Knowlington
didn’t answer. His eyes were back in their far-away stare.

The
colonel actually sounded like another pilot Clyston had known–
Captain
Knowlington, Thud and Phantom pilot extraordinaire. The captain had been a hell
of a stick man, a balls-out jock as lucky as he was skilled, and smarter than
both. That wasn’t a combination you found in a lot of officers.

Brash
as all hell, though; forgot to use his smarts and got himself into situations
where he needed every ounce of that skill and more than his share of luck.

Clyston
liked Captain Knowlington, admired the hell out of him. Captain Knowlington had
balls the size of watermelons and a will to match. But even back in Vietnam,
the chief had enough experience to know that wasn’t the sort of man who should
command a fighter squadron, even during a war. He was too hot headed, too quick
to react, too close to the situation to think slowly and carefully. Leading by
impulse got a lot of people killed.

Colonel
Knowlington had his faults,
but Colonel Knowlington was one hell of a boss. Saying he was like ice didn’t
cover a quarter of it. Hell, he was as cold and calculating as a goddamn
computer, and twice as smart. And he not only cared about his people, but
trusted them to do their jobs without his hand on their shoulders. He even
asked NCOs what they thought– and admitted taking their advice once in a while.

Since
coming to Saudi Arabia, Knowlington had somehow gotten beyond the booze and
doubts that had dogged him for years. Something had clicked, and all his
experience and the better parts of his personality just fell into place. Maybe
the war had brought out the best in him.

They
needed Colonel Knowlington to lead the squadron, not Captain Knowlington. They
needed cold, well-thought-out decisions that would keep everyone alive while
still doing the maximum hurt to Saddam. Morale-boosting respect for even the
lowest airman, respect that was genuine, not bullshit, the kind of thing that
got a homesick nineteen-year-old out of his tent in the morning determined to
check every bolt twice just because the old man was counting on him.

But
there was no way to talk about that now.

Damn–
was he kidding about flying north himself?

“Something
else?” Skull asked.

“Not
that I can think of,” Clyston told him. “I’ll see if I can find Captain Wong
for you.”

Knowlington
didn’t bother answering, already reaching for the phone on his desk.