Hogs #4:Snake Eaters (16 page)

N
EAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1825

D
irt and pain
pushed Wong’s eyes closed as he fell into the ground. He seemed to fall right through the hill, through the rocks, into hell.

Curious. He would have thought he’d merit assignment to the other destination.

The ground rolled around him as he flailed. He heard the distinctive whine of a pair of A-10A turbofans above him and knew he hadn’t died.

Yet.

His left eye stayed closed; he saw only haze with his right.

On his knees, he felt around him, waiting either to die or see. Dust flew in particles in front of his head. Stones. The ground.

He found two small stubs, felt them gently, pushed his face down into them as his right eye gained focus.

Two fingers.

He pulled his own hands to his face to make sure they weren’t his. As he touched his left cheek a flame erupted there.

His hands were intact. He’d been shot in the face, or near the face. That was why he couldn’t open his left eye.

Burned, not shot. A piece of a red-hot shrapnel had glanced off his cheekbone. He was extremely lucky— the same shell had obliterated the Iraqi captain’s body; parts of the corpse were scattered around him. Wong’s uniform was soaked with the dead man’s blood.

An awful roar rent the air. The A-10A fired its cannon at a target on the highway. There was answering fire, explosions everywhere. Missiles and flames leaped into the air.

Perhaps this really was hell.

Wong worried that he had dropped the dead man’s papers. He began hunting around on the ground in front of him, hands spread wide like a sunbather who’d lost his contact lens in the sand. Finally he remembered he’d
stuffed them in his own pocket— he pounded his chest and found them there, or at least felt something he’d have to pretend were them for now. Still unable to see through his left eye, he heaved himself down the hill toward a large shadow. The figure waved its arms at him, beckoning.

Charon or Sergeant Golden, at this moment it made no difference. He found his balance and began running with all the strength he had left.

O
VER IRAQ

26 JANUARY
1991

1827

U
ntil he’d come
to the Gulf, Doberman hadn’t believed in luck. In fact, he’d hated the idea. Trained as an engineer, he thought— he knew— that you could roll all that BS together— luck, ESP, UFOs, ghosts, angels, Santa Claus— and toss it into the trash heap. The world could be expressed mathematically, with cold numbers and complex equations. Things that appeared random actually occurred within predictable parameters, and no amount of superstition could change them.

But he sure as hell believed in luck now, or at least
he wanted to, ramming his body and hopefully the Hog to the southeast and as low as he could go, trying to get his nose pointed toward the SA-9s’ IR sniffers. The idea wasn’t as crazy as it seemed: the less of a heat signal he presented to the missiles, the harder it would be for them to find him. They were galloping toward him at maybe Mach 1.5; he had all of a second and a half to complete his maneuver.

Doberman got his nose in the direction of the SAM launchers and turned the Hog over, goosing the CBUs from his wings as he did. The plane was far too low for the bombs to explode properly; he just wanted to get rid of the weight.

Except, one of them did explode. And while the air rumbled around him and sweat poured from every pore of his body, the SA-9 sucked in the sudden heat and dove for it.

Doberman felt something ping the rear fuselage, a sharp thud and shake, but his controls stayed solid and he was actually climbing. Tracers whizzed well overhead. The air buffeted worse than a hurricane. He saw light and thought he felt heat, and then found a large telephone pole moving on the road ahead of him. It took another second before he saw that the pole was laid out flat and realized it was a Scud carrier, moving on the highway.

He had to pull back to get it into the aiming cue. The A-10A jerked her nose up and he fired, lead and uranium and blood flowing in a thick hose, splattering the ground and the air. He banked to his right, struggling to reorient himself in the peppery haze as the ground crackled with tracers and muzzle flashes.

The tanks were back on the other side of the hill. The SAM launchers were on his right; he was within range but
he guessed— he hoped— that they’d already shot their wad. He hustled the Hog to the west, trying to keep an eye on the bouncing shadows of black and red. The T-62s were still firing at Wong.

Doberman drew a long breath. You could build a ship with the flak in the air. Fortunately, the tracers were arcing high into the sky, the shells apparently set to explode far above. For all its fury, the triple-A was harmless.

Unless, of course, the bullets actually flew through the plane.

Doberman had a good mark on a tank. He pushed the Hog toward it, judging that he could cut left after firing
and avoid the worst of the antiair. Three hundred feet above ground level, he came in on a T-62 turret as the tank’s machine-gun began to fire toward the top of the hill.

“See you in hell, you son of a bitch,” said Doberman.

In the two seconds his finger stayed on the trigger, more than a hundred rounds spit from the front of the plane. The foot-long shells glowed in the dimness as they sped toward their target, ripping the highway, the metal of the tank, and then the ground beyond. Half a dozen of the 30 mm warheads made their way through the hard metal of the tank, bouncing wildly in a ricochet of death through the cramped quarters of the thirty-six ton tank.

By the time the last of the crew had died, Doberman had already trained the Hog’s GAU-8/A Avenger cannon on a second target and begun to fire. His angle was poor, however, and he didn’t have enough room to stay on the tank and not collide with the hill. He flicked off the gun and wagged his way clear for another run, cutting left and then flicking right to give the people firing at him less of a target.

And they were firing on him. He was at a hundred feet, barely higher than the hill. The Iraqis threw everything they had at him— anti-aircraft guns, rifles, pistols, maybe even a knife or two.

No rational man would have turned back for another run. But Captain Glenon wasn’t rational. He was a Hog driver. And having come this far he wasn’t about to go home.

The Gatling mechanism began pumping beneath his seat as Doberman whipped back toward the hill and immediately found the tank front and center in his HUD aiming cue. He mashed the rudder pedals back and forth, lacing the top of the tank. Two swishes and the tank disappeared, steamed into oblivion.

Dark black spitballs arced past his windshield, spewed by an optically-aimed ZSU-23 posted below the village. Doberman tucked his wing in and got the barrels sighted as they swung toward him. He rushed his shot, the enemy spitballs turning into footballs; he pushed hard on the stick, ramming his stream of bullets down into the target. His wings bounced up and down
. He had a hard time putting the Hog where he wanted it to go, even though he didn’t think he’d been hit. He leaned on the trigger and finally squashed the gun, saw parts of the treads and one of the barrels flying upwards, but no more bullets. He pulled his right wing up, feeling his way back across the village, hugging the ground and looking for something big to shoot at.

Nothing. The anti-air fire seemed to have temporarily exhausted itself. One of the tanks was on fire. He pulled up into the darkness away from the Iraqi positions, quickly scanning his instruments. His heart pounded so fast it sounded like a downpour on a tin roof.

At spec. Controls good. Steady climb.

He’d made it. And hell, he even had a good twenty minutes of fuel to spare.

He was one lucky SOB. A good pilot, maybe even great— but luckier than anyone had a right to be.

Doberman relaxed a little, shoulders sagging ever so slightly as he leaned backwards against the Hog’s ejector seat. His legs were cramping; he rocked his knees toward each other gently.

“Devil One, this is Bro leader,” said the leader of the F-16 two-ship. “Request you stand off while we attack.”

“If you can find something standing down there to hit,” Doberman told the late-arrivers, “be my guest.”

N
EAR AL-KAJUK, IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1830

D
ixon was pinned
there, behind the bodies, by a fury of machine-gun and heavy-weapons fire. The air boiled with explosions and metal and heat. Flames flew in every direction and he had to hunker into the ground, barely aware of anything more than a foot away. He couldn’t even get up to retrieve his AK-47, even though it lay on the side of the hill only a yard or two away. Every time he rose or crawled or leaned in its direction, the ground exploded with bullets.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, or why the Iraqis firing at him didn’t just charge and get it over with. The machine-gun seemed to
be shooting from a good way off, though in the dark he couldn’t really tell. Shells from a tank or artillery piece peppered the top hill, most landing well behind him; even so, they threw up fierce amounts of dirt and grit.

Dixon’s lips pressed into the ground, waiting for something to happen. Images crowded at the corners of his brain, ghosts trying to haunt him
— his mother, the first man he had killed at close range, the Iraqi woman caught in the crossfire below, the baby. He sat in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean; the ghosts clawed the sides from the icy water, reaching for him, crying to be saved. But he knew that if he let one into the boat, if he even reached for one, it would be the end; Dixon himself would sink, swamped by their pain, dragged to his own death. He resisted; he closed his eyes against the tracers and the smoke and the shrapnel and the metal and the gunpowder and the death. He told himself that the Iraqis had killed the woman and her child, not him. He pushed his body close to the dead soldiers, protected by their freshly wasted bones. He slipped his sleeve over his mouth, trying to breathe the last air unpolluted by the hot winds of death that flowed over the battlefield.

One of the bodies before him began to move. It sprung up, laughing in his face, leering over him.

He fought it back down, forcing his eyes to see and his brain to know that the man was truly dead.

The body
collapsed as the foot of the hill exploded with a tumultuous hiss. The red flare of flames shot up toward the sky.

Dixon’s body burned with the heat, though the fire was far away. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He got to his knees, looming over the dead men
, making himself an easy target, not caring that he would soon be dead.

And then he heard a sound in the distance, a low, familiar
whump
— the exact sound a Blackhawk helicopter made as it flew. He heard it over everything, the explosions, the curses, the wails of wounded men. He heard it and knew it was coming toward him.

H
e didn’t know if the Iraqis were still firing or not. He didn’t know if he was pursued by ghosts or bullets or bombs or corpses or curses. He knew only that he was on his feet and he was running, pushing toward the growing but still distant whomp of the helicopter, a heavy, continuous thud that drummed him full of hope.

NEAR
AL-KAJUK, IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1840

B
y the time
Wong reached the roadway, the four Delta troopers had set up the Satcom and were talking to the Blackhawk helicopter detailed to pick them up. The helo— technically an Air Force Special Operations MH-60G Pave Hawk, call sign Dark Snake— had located them with the aid of its FLIR imager and had a calculated ETA under forty-five seconds. The troopers could hear it but not see it; the southwest horizon was now a dark blur. Two F-16s were about to make a run on the Scuds.

“I suggest we request that the F-16s hold off their bombing run until we have egressed,” Wong told Golden. “And in any event, it would be prudent to don our chemical gear.”

Golden tapped the com specialist indicating that he ought to follow the captain’s suggestions. The rest of the men silently reached to their rucksacks, pulling out the moon gear.

Wong had lost his rucksack back on the hill, and thus had no NBC suit to put on. Instead, he pulled out the papers he’d taken from the Iraqi, examining them with the aid of a small penlight he borrowed from Golden.

One of the folded sheets contained two photos, both fairly battered. In one, an older Iraqi woman waved hesitantly. In the second, a younger version of the dead captain waved in front of a stairway to the Chicago El. The paper had some writing on it in Arabic; it was faded and difficult to read, but Wong guessed it was a personal letter or will of some type.

The other papers were two small sheets from a notebook. These had numbers as well as letters on them, instructions or map coordinates. There wasn’t time to study them before the ground started whipping with grit thrown up by the helicopter’s whirlies.

“Incoming!” shouted someone as the team began scrambling for the Pave Hawk.

A shell exploded at least fifty yards short of the highway. Tossed by either a mortar or the light armored vehicle that had harassed them back at the hill, it proved more inspiration than nemesis. The team bolted for the helicopter as one; Wong caught up and leap
ed through the wide open door of the helo, colliding with the gunner as the helicopter pitched away. In nearly the same instant the F-16s launched their attack, pickling their 2,000-ton Mk-84 iron bombs in an impressive send-off.

Wong rolled to his back and sat up, shaking his head as the helicopter’s pilot slid into Warp drive for home.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” Golden asked. For the first time since they had met, the sergeant seemed actually concerned and almost friendly.

Obviously an aberration, thought Wong.

“The aircraft tasked to strike the S1-B or so-called Scud missiles were obviously early model F-16 without precision instruments,” Wong informed him. “Perhaps not as inappropriate as A-10A Thunderbolt IIs, but a bad match nonetheless. We can see evidence of this in the fact that they resorted to dropping Mk-84 bombs, which naturally will result in a tonnage to devastation ratio frighteningly close to that experienced in World War II.”

“What are you saying?”

“A pair of missiles at the lower, less expensive end of the Paveway series, or perhaps even the AGM-65s used by our friends in the Thunderbolt IIs, would have been the weapon of choice. Unless, of course, one belongs to the accounting branch.”

“You think they missed?”

Wong chortled. “Hardly. We saw clear evidence presented by the numerous secondary explosions.”

“So what’s the big deal?”

Wong reached into his pocket for the Iraqi’s notes without answering. People either understood efficiency or they didn’t; there was no use explaining it.

Modified for covert and special operations, the MH-60G Pave Hawk beg
an life at Sikorsky as a plain-Jane UH-60 Blackhawk, the muscular successor to the UH-1 Huey, arguably the most successful military utility helicopter of all time. Powered by a pair of General Electric T700-GE-401 turbo shaft engines that were rated for 180 knots cruising speed, stock Blackhawks had a range of nearly 375 miles. All Pave Hawks, however, were rigged for extra internal fuel; this particular bird also carried two large 117-gallon tanks off her side, increasing not only her range but her ability to linger in the war zone. A long airborne refueling probe stuck out from her nose, making the craft look something like a medieval knight and horse rushing to battle. Mounted on each door was a .50 inch machine-gun. Pintle mounts for 7.62 mm Miniguns were set on the sliding forward cabin windows, though at the moment the posts weren’t manned. The chopper’s equipment set included FLIR or forward-looking infrared, ground mapping and weather avoidance radar, advanced INS and global positioning, and com gear. While similar to the gear in the larger Pave Lows, the avionics set was not quite as advanced or powerful, though the difference would hardly be noticeable on most missions, including this Injun-country extraction. The men manning the craft were hand-picked veterans, trained for a range of missions from rescue to covert action. Painted in a brown chocolate chip scheme somewhat similar to the troopers’ camo fatigues, the Blackhawk bore three white bands around the fuselage behind the cabin, a recognition code for coalition forces.

Wong’s Arabic was rusty and the captain’s handwriting poor. Jostled in the tight cabin, he stared at the scribbles for more than two or three minutes before finally realizing that they were in code. Wong looked up suddenly, realizing that Golden was staring over his shoulder.

“What do you have?” asked the sergeant.

“The first sheet contains a set of coordinates which are useless without the map they refer to,” said Wong. “But the second has hand-copied instructions, I believe. Can you decipher them?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.” Wong took the paper back without asking why everyone thought he was always playing the comedian. “Incidentally, your diversion proved useful, as it sent most of the Iraqi force away at an opportune time. How p
recisely did you acquire the AK-47?”

“What AK-47?”

“You did not fire near the northern base of the hill?”

“The north side? Hell no. We were in the village. We came back up the east slope. I didn’t even know you’d been captured until the shooting started. You saved us, not the other way around.”

“You were never on the northwestern side of the hill? Or on the ground there?”

Wong asked the question, though by now he realized that was impossible. He reconsidered the battle, sorting it into its different components.

Wong rose slowly, grabbing one of the long belts at the side of the bird’s cabin to steady himself as he passed forward. The helicopter’s pilots sat at a pair of well-equipped consoles, separated by a wide console with more dials, buttons, and indicators than the average nuclear power plant.

“Excuse me,” said Wong, bending across the central console. “I’d like to speak to the commander.”

“Yo,” said the pilot on the right.

“I will require immediate transportation to King Fahd Royal Airbase,” said Wong.

“Uh, Captain, first of all, don’t put your hand up there, all right? You’re too damn close to the throttle.”

Wong removed his hand without noting that it had been nowhere near the control in question.

“Thank you,” said the pilot. “Now as for King Fahd— that’s where we’re headed, assuming we cross ten million miles of SAMs, anti-air guns, hostile troop positions and rattlesnakes. I would appreciate it if you took a seat.”

“Very good,” said Wong. “Let me assure you that there are no known species of rattlesnakes in Iraqi, or in Saudi Arabia for that matter. Indeed, they are a New World species exclusively.”

“Ha, ha,” said the pilot. “Very funny.”

At a loss to understand why, Wong merely shrugged and went to the back.