Hogs #2: Hog Down (8 page)

OVER IRAQ

21 JANUARY 1991

1843

H
e was thinking
of the hospital. His wife
Kathy was lying in the bed, scrunched up, her face red.

She
was grunting. The doctor was standing at the edge of the bed.

Robby
was being born. He felt himself trembling, worried that something was going
wrong. But the nurse who had been with them was smiling. He trusted her, more
than the doctor.

“You
have to push harder,” the nurse told her. “Get into this one.”

Kathy
looked at him. She didn’t say anything, but he felt fear in her eyes.

“You
can do it,” he told her. He stepped forward and gripped her hand, pushing
confidence into his voice. The wave hit her and she pressed against him, her
muscles contracting to push their baby down the birth canal.

“Here,”
said the doctor. “You can feel his hair.”

Johnson
smiled as he let the doctor guide his fingers. The sensation was wet, oily
even.

“That’s
your son.”

The
idea barely registered. The head slipped back inside Kathy’s body.

“Here
comes another one,” said the nurse.

He
leaned toward his wife, who raised her body with the push. She groaned and
screamed and suddenly the baby squirted out, born, alive, his body all red. He
looked like a wrinkled Martian.

Jesus,
that’s my son, Johnson thought.

* * *

The
vision snapped black. He whirled around, the moving eye of a tornado.

* * *

He
was tumbling.

His
visor and oxygen mask were in place, shielding his face somewhat, but still the
wind was a sharpened icicle, chiseling at his face.

It
was so cold that his nerve inputs couldn’t process it all and told his brain
that he was on fire. He was hot and frozen cold at the same time.

Mongoose
thought about his arms and legs. It was easy to break them getting out of the
plane. He tried to move them closer to his body, belatedly trying to protect
them. The base of his skull hurt and his neck and shoulders burned.

A
stiff, hard hand whacked him backwards. The breath ran out of him; by the time
he could breathe again he saw that the ejection seat’s drogue parachute had
deployed. He was falling, but much slower now.

The
wind was still a bitch. It was whipping cold against him, and dragging him
east. But he was lucky— the seat’s canister of emergency oxygen was making it
easier to breathe, easier for him to clear his head.

The
main chute kicked in. He fluttered, head whirling; he reached his hands to his
chest and blanked again, momentarily.

Now
surplus material, the seat that had saved him fell away. He had a vague notion
that he was still moving forward in the air— he’d come out an angle, propelled
like a performer from a circus cannon, right over the big tent, way out past
the parking lot. The sun shimmered in the hazy edge of the dirt a few yards
away, as if it had gone out three seconds ahead of him and its chute had failed
to open.

Mongoose
felt the harness pulling against his body, his parachute being pulled by a
stiff wind. He felt like he was going faster than the damn airplane.

There
was a way to steer. He knew how to steer, he’d practiced it before.

It
hadn’t been like this. The wind had been calmer and the air warmer, his heart beating
much slower.

Checklist
mode, he told himself. One item at a time.

“There’s
nothing in Iraq worth dying for.”

Who
had said that? General Horner? Colonel Knowlington?

Checklist
mode. Item one— steer the chute away from the enemy. Steer south.

Assuming
the sun still set in the west, he was already headed in that direction. The
chute responded and moved even faster.

For
a second he thought he might actually steer all the way back to Saudi Arabia.

But
then the ground started moving faster than he did.

OVER IRAQ

21 JANUARY 1991

1845

T
he thing was,
there ought to be more
smoke. A Hog going down ought to make a hell of a big splash. Tear a hole in
the desert and send a half-million Iraqis to hell with it.

Here
there was nothing, not even dust. Just a vague whisper of gray in the air
around it, haze only.

Or a
soul, taking one last look at the bent body.

It
was the Hog, all right though, no question. Even with the light fading, A-Bomb
could see the wing section flat against the sand. The end had sheered and
mangled, but a good hunk of it was intact.

Hell,
you could probably dust it off, bang out the dents and put it on another plane,
no sweat.

Couldn’t
do that with the fuselage. It lay in a twisted tumble almost a mile away,
crunched worse than a candy bar wrapper. The plane had been a trooper to the
end, flying nearly ten miles before finally pancaking.

No
way Mongoose would have survived that.

He’d
gone out, though. A-Bomb knew he had. He had a memory of seeing a seat vaulting
in the air.

Or at
least, he saw how it should have happened. And at the moment, that was good
enough for him. Because any other way, his lead was snuffed. They were damn
close to the Euphrates, way far north in bad guy territory at the edge of the
desert, within gum-spitting distance of the Republican Guard. No way Mongoose
was catching it here, no way. Guy was going to live to a ripe old age and
bounce grandkids off his knee.

So
where was he now? The survival radio didn’t seem to be broadcasting. A-Bomb
keyed his own mike a few times, hoping for an answer.

Worst
case, the radio ought to at least be putting out a locator beacon. Mongoose
carried two, so he had a backup.

Nada.

A-Bomb
rode his Hog higher in the sky, scanning the ground for a parachute. By now the
sun had set and the desert was starting to turn into a twilight fog. Wind
whipped the loose dirt below, making it even harder for him to see.

But
hell, anybody could spot a stinking parachute.

A-Bomb
saw a clump of trees and scrub vegetation to his northwest, and another to his
east; he rocked over both in a wide figure-eight but found no one.

A
trio of squat buildings sat about two miles south of the wrecked plane. He
investigated them next, flying low enough to read the number on the mailboxes.

If
there had been mailboxes. All three buildings were in shambles, roofs blown
off. There was a narrow road nearby, not so much a road as a path, dirt of a
different color.

A-Bomb
checked his radio and keyed the mike again.

“Yo,
Goose. How’s it hanging?”

Still
nothing.

Maybe
he hadn’t seen him eject.

Damn
it, Mongoose was alive. Stink-ass Iraqis could not
kill
a Hog driver. No
sir. Hog driver was a serious entity, not quite superhuman but not susceptible
to fingernail breaking crap like this.

Even
if the missile had been a NATO job, better than the Russian crap, it still wasn’t
good enough to take out a Hog driver, especially Mongoose. He was an anal son
of a bitch who played engineer in the cockpit, painting by numbers and more
careful than a goddamn girl scout.

Well,
almost. Point of the matter was, he was a kick–ass pilot and squadron DO
besides and could
not
be taken off the board by the Iraqis.

Most
likely, he was hiking back to the Saudi border by now. Probably halfway home.
Maybe even sitting at the bar in the Depot, ordering a double bourbon.

On
the rocks.

A-Bomb
edged the Hog higher, pointing the nose southeast, as if he really did expect
to find the flight leader hiking in the sand below. There was a town— or at
least a group of buildings that could be a town— six or seven miles further
east, back toward Kuwait. Mongoose would stay away from that, for sure, but
would the people there stay away from him?

“Devil
Two, this is Red Dog. We have two Vipers approaching your location. Stand by
for frequency.”

A-Bomb
waited impatiently for the airborne controller to read off the numbers. He
would have preferred a pair of Hogs instead of the F-16 “Vipers” or “Falcons,”
but the fast movers would have to do. He was running low on fuel and would have
to leave soon to tank.

The
single-engined fighters were using the call sign “Boa,” as in boa constrictor. A-Bomb
snorted when he made contact, but didn’t bother commenting on the cuteness of
the name. You had to expect that sort of thing in a pointy nose.

The
irony of snakes hunting up a Mongoose, well that was a different story. That
was almost karma.

“Boa
One to Devil Two, do you have a location on the emergency beacon?”

“Negative.
I have the plane, but I haven’t made contact.” He ignored their ominous
silence, reading off an INS marker and giving them a vector as he picked up
their location.

“You
sure he got out?” asked Boa One as the two fly–by–wire jockeys approached.

“Bet
your fucking ass he did.”

“Hey,
relax buddy. We’re on your side, remember? We’ll find him.”

A-Bomb
didn’t answer.

The
two F-16s, diverted from another mission, were flying at about eighteen
thousand feet. Using the buildings and the wrecked Hog as landmarks, he
sketched the area out for them. Even though they were pointy-nose types, they
seemed relatively good-natured. They had no problem putting their chins down to
get a good look at things.

Eagle
pilots, though, those guys would cop attitude. Now that would be something to
deal with.

He
checked his fuel. Even an optimistic run at the math left him with two minutes
less flying time than it would take to find a tanker.

But
hell, this was a critical moment. Night was coming on, and no way Mongoose had
thought to pack his flannels. Somebody had to find him and fast.

But
really, if he waited much longer before going for gas, he was going to join him
on the ground. That wasn’t much help.

It
wasn’t like he was leaving Mongoose alone up here. The ABCCC had tasked a force
to sponge the area clean of any more Iraqi missiles hiding in the bushes; the
sky was starting to get busy. A-Bomb knew that the Special Ops troops working
with Air Force Pave Lows had been tasked to air rescue operations. A-Bomb had a
high opinion of the commandos, especially the Green Berets— and their coffee,
which he had helped himself to during a visit to one of their forward airbases
a few days ago.

But
even they couldn’t mount a rescue if the pilot was nowhere to be found. The
crews had orders not to cross into Iraq until the man was found and verified.

One
more pass, then he’d tank. A-Bomb made sure the volume on the radio was full
blast as he edged the Hog down, running along the dark ribbon of a road not far
from the buildings.

Why
the hell didn’t Mongoose use his radio?

“Yo,
Goose, come on buddy, this is A-Bomb. I promise I’ll share my Big Mac pack with
you tonight.”

Boa
One asked if he had something. A-Bomb let the static fuzz in his helmet before
telling the Viper pilot that he thought he’d seen a glint on the ground.

“Roger
that. We’ll take a pass. Controller’s trying to get you,” relayed the pilot.
“They’re thinking you should be returning to base before you run your tanks
dry.”

“Well
screw them.”

“Yo
man, I’m just the messenger,” answered the pilot. “But running out fuel isn’t
going to help your buddy.”

A-Bomb
punched the Hog down for a last peek at the abandoned buildings, hoping he
might find Mongoose doing jumping jacks on what was left of the roof. Beyond
the building, he gave the control yoke an angry yank to put his nose skyward.
The Hog groaned a bit, complaining that it wasn’t its fault its companion had
gone down.

He
spotted another pair of F-16s circling just to the west. They had been sent to
make sure the Scuds were toast, and to mop up any remaining SAMs.

“OK,
guys, I’m going to go tank,” A-Bomb told Boa One. “I’ll be back ASAP.”

“Don’t
sweat it,” said the pilot. “Your guy’ll be back at base draining beers in no
time. And for the record, I prefer a quarter–pounder with cheese.”

“Copy
that,” A-Bomb told him, plotting his course to the nearest tanker.