Hogs #4:Snake Eaters (5 page)

FORT APACHE

26 JANUARY 1991

1430

Wh
en Kevin Hawkins
was seven years old, his Irish grandmother came to stay with him. Within her first hour at the house, she had introduced him to stud poker and Earl Gray tea. Hawkins gave up poker when he joined the Army, but the Delta Force captain’s appreciation of the tea had only grown since basic training. Sipping a cup as he crouched at the edge of Fort Apache’s makeshift runway, he felt his fatigue drifting into the nearby sand. The bergamot-scented liquid worked like an amphetamine, pumping him up, restoring him, at least temporarily, more completely than eight hours of sleep.

Hawkins watched as a
dark green vulture approached from the south. Fifty feet off the ground, the vulture began a wide turn to the east, then swung back toward the runway where Hawkins sipped his tea. The wind began to pick up; the vulture stuttered over the desert. It was an ugly bird, ungainly and fidgety, all wing and head.

And then it wasn’t a bird at all
. It was an A-10A Warthog landing with a fresh load of fuel. The long straight wings grew as the plane’s segmented ailerons and flaps deployed; the nose-wheel folded out like a clock pendulum stopping mid-swing.

The plane landed so close Hawkins could feel the heat from the brakes as it screeched past on
the mesh his engineers had laid out to cover holes in the concrete strip. The Hog’s dark hull weaved slightly as the plane halted at the edge of the ravine. It was a reminder that he’d failed.

As good as Hawkins’ team was,
the immense wadis at either end of the concrete strip limited the makeshift strip to exactly 1,607 feet. That made it too short for the C-130 supply and gunships they’d hoped to base here in support of Scud hunters. Without them, there was no sense staying. It was too great a risk for too little reward. More than a dozen American and British Scud hunting teams were now operational, each with Satcom gear that could hook them into airborne command and control units. Having Apache’s two helos handy was nice if they got into trouble– but only if the helos had enough gas to operate; which couldn’t happen without those C-130s.

Besides,
the plan called for a full squadron of AH-6s, with AC-130 gunships and four A-10s. That was the sort of firepower that made the risk worthwhile.

But that wasn’t going to happen.
Better to leave Apache before it was discovered. It might come in handy during the ground war, assuming there was a ground war.

Hawkins sighed and took a long sip from his tea. He expected the order to bug out would come in a few hours. He and his crew would be reassigned, most likely. Hopefully they’d end up doing something more important than playing palace guard for the bigwigs.

The captain took a last gulp of tea and met Doberman as he came down the ladder of the plane. “Nice landing,” he told him.

“Yeah,” answered the pilot. “Fucking short runway.”

Hawkins wasn’t sure exactly how to take that, so he ignored it. “I have two teams about a hundred miles north,” Hawkins told him. “Both have laser designators.”

“Yeah, well, those are useless as shit,” said Doberman. He came to Hawkins’ chest, but his voice was as deep as if he were six-eight.

To say nothing of his attitude.

“What do you mean?” the captain asked.

“I mean we have nothing to drop on what they point to,” said Doberman. “You can have your fuel back, with a little interest. Where the fuck is A-Bomb?”

Hawkins cocked his head to one side, his teeth edging against his lips. “He went out with one of my men to set up an observation post.”

Doberman shook his head. “Fuck it.”

“You got a problem, Captain?” asked Hawkins.

The pilot jerked his head up. “In what sense?”

Hawkins squinted his eyes at the shorter man, trying to figure him out. Doberman seemed to be one of those guys who went through life with a chip on his shoulder
— or at least he came across that way.

He was
cocky and more than a bit arrogant.

While it was true that they were the same rank, Hawkins was in charge of the mission and the Hogs were assigned to work with him
— or at least not against him. The pilot ought to at least make a stab at courtesy. But before he could deliver the overdue etiquette lecture, Hawkins spotted a suspicious cloud of dust rising northwest of the base.

He ran to a sandbagged position a few yards off the concrete, grabbing the binoculars that had been laid at the top of the low wall.

One of his FAVs. Followed by an Iraqi tanker truck.

What the hell?

Hawkins watched as the two vehicles twisted across the scrubby sand toward him. Coors was hanging out the window of the tanker; the FAV was being driven by A-Bomb. By the time they pulled onto the runway, everyone at Fort Apache not manning a lookout post had gathered to see what the hell was going on.

“Captain Hawkins, sorry we’re a little late for tea time,” said Sergeant Coors, jumping from the truck with a grin.

“What is this, Coors?”

“You like milk with your tea, don’t you?” asked
A-Bomb, unfolding himself from the FAV’s driver’s cage.

Hawkins listened as his sergeant explained what had happened.
He was shaking his head vehemently before Coors got halfway through.

“What the hell were you thinking?”
he demanded. “You should have come back here.”

“I figured if there was someone in the truck, he would see the airplane
when it took off or came back,” said the sergeant. “I thought I’d have to do something quick.”

“
Which was what? Get lucky and nail him?”

“Hey, luck had nothing to do with it,” said
A-Bomb.

“You’re starting to bother me, Captain,” snapped Hawkins. “Somebody go get a tarp to cover
the back of this truck. Coors! You get a shovel and you start digging. I want this thing in the dirt. Did you cover your tracks off the road?”

“Jesus, I’m not stupid, sir,” said Coors.

“Well you sure as hell acted like it,” said Hawkins.

The sergeant nailed his eyes to the ground in contrition.

Not A-Bomb. “Milk’s on the house,” he said, opening the spigot control on the back of the truck. He frowned. “Ought to just pour out of this thing here.”

Captain Wong put his hand on his shoulder to stop him from taking a drink.

“In all likelihood, the tank was not properly decontaminated before it was filled,” said Wong. “I believe you’ll discover a proportion of distillate in the liquid, as well as a great deal of water.”

“Ah, don’t cry over spilt milk.”
A-Bomb put his mouth beneath the spigot as he started the flow. He gagged and jumped back. “Wow. That’s worse than Dogman’s socks. Why didn’t they clean the tank out right?”

“Because the truck’s cargo isn’t milk,” said Captain Wong.

Hawkins watched him walk around the tanker, searching for something. Wong waved his hands over the shiny metal surface of the tanker, as if he were a faith healer. Finally he stopped.

“Sergeant Rosen, would you happen to have an acetylene torch handy?” he asked.

The Air Force technical sergeant shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

“The difficulties of operating in contingent circumstances,” sighed Wong. “We’ll have to drain the tank.”

Hawkins had met Wong on a clandestine mission in North Korea two years before; while eccentric, the intel officer was probably among the smartest and bravest guys in the service— certainly in the Air Force, a branch rapidly sinking, in Hawkins’ estimation. But it was often hard to tell what the hell Wong was up to.

“What’s the story?” Hawkins asked him.

“You wouldn’t want to drink this,” Wong told Hawkins as he opened the spigot at the rear and began draining the liquid. “Believe me.”

“No shit.”

Wong nodded.

“You going to explain what’s going on, Bristol?” Hawkins demanded. “Because I’ll be damned if I can make sense of what the hell you’re doing.”

“There will be a compartment at the bottom of the tank, with bladders inside. We can get into through the manhole once the liquid is removed is out. There isn’t much.”

“What are we looking for?”

Wong glanced over at the men, then back at Hawkins. He frowned as the liquid continued to flow, but said nothing.

Hawkins finally guessed what Wong suspected.

“Coors, go get ABC gear on,” he told his sergeant. “You’re going to personally get to the bottom of this.”

“It would be best for everyone to be prepared,” Wong said to him. “And if Sergeant Coors is going inside the tank, a suit over his normal suit would be optimum.”

H
OG HEAVEN

26
JANUARY 1991

1440

It
wasn’t until
he became a squadron commander that Knowlington truly appreciated how hard enlisted personnel worked. Not all the time, of course; just when it mattered. He’d given lip service to the clichés about NCOs being the backbone of the air force, and owing his life to mechanics and crew dogs, etc., etc., but he hadn’t really understood how true the sayings were until the first time he’d been responsible for getting a squadron of F-4 Phantoms in the air.

Partly that was because his first command was so badly screwed up when he arrived. The pilots were mediocre, but the real problem was the planes. The maintenance people were poorly trained, disorganized, and dispirited. And they stayed
that way for exactly five days— which was how long it took him to get Clyston and a few other men he’d worked with over to his team. He called his guys “The Mafia,” and together they kicked enough butt to make their squadron one of the best in the Air Force— his bosses’ opinion, not just his.

Most had long-since retired, except for Clyston. But the new kids who came along to replace them were every bit as good, maybe better
: if not smarter, they were more thoroughly trained and worked with better systems. Standing in the middle of the maintenance area— aka “Oz”— Knowlington marveled as his people overhauled the tailfin of a battle-damaged Hog; in the space of maybe twenty minutes, they had the plane stripped and reskinned.

“A little slow today,” growled Clyston, winking at
Knowlington as he passed to inspect the crew’s handiwork. The colonel waited for the capo’s well-rehearsed grunts to change to grudging approvals before stepping forward himself to tell the men what a kick-butt job they were doing.

“And I
mean
kick-butt job,” he repeated, aware that his voice was a little loud and a little shaky. “This is damn good work.”

“All right, you heard the colonel,” barked the capo. “Everybody take ten. Then I want that flap on six checked out. Let’s go, let’s go! Come on. Don’t you guys know how to take a break, or do I have to send you back to school for that, too?
Jee-zus-f’in hell!”

Clyston grinned at Knowlington as the men scattered.

“You’re getting a little predictable in your old age,” Skull told him.

“Yeah, but they love it.” The sergeant put his arms on his hips and snorted, laughing at himself.

“How are the men reacting to Dixon?” Skull asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they’re pleased.” Clyston
folded his arms together across his chest. “But we’ll get on. He hadn’t been with most of these guys too long. And it wasn’t one of our missions. That makes a difference.”

Skull nodded. Clyston’s cold assessment was undoubtedly correct. War’s inevitable hardening process was well underway.

“How are you taking it?” the sergeant asked.

“Oh, like a wimp.” Skull laughed. Clyston didn’t. The colonel rubbed his neck and realized he hadn’t shaved this morning, an odd thing to forget. “I hate losing kids, Allen. Especially like this.”

“Sucks,” said the sergeant.

More than two decades had passed since he’d met Clyston
, who had been an E-5 or E-3, or maybe even an airman then, crewing on butter-bar-nugget Michael Knowlington’s “Thud,” an F-105 Republic Thunderchief. They’d said hello and shared a cigarette— one of the only two Knowlington ever smoked in his life— shortly before the green lieutenant climbed into the cockpit. Within the hour he had dropped his first bombs and gotten his first air-to-air kill.

On that very same mission, a lieutenant who had flown with Knowlington back in the States went down over Laos. He was the first of many.

Vietnam had been a damn stupid war. But Knowlington didn’t know that then. He didn’t think it was a smart war, particularly, but he did think it was necessary. He figured he was sweating his fanny for something important, something like democracy and freedom, as corny as that sounded.

He still thought that
— mostly. But Vietnam had turned out to be a damn stupid war. Maybe this one would turn out the same way. It hadn’t started all that smart.

“Colonel? You want some coffee or something?”

Knowlington snapped his head up, realizing his face was being scrutinized by the capo.

It was more than that.
The colonel realized he smelled of the Depot, its smoke and its booze.

He resisted the urge to tell the sergeant he was still sobe
r— it would come off phony, making it sound like exactly the opposite was true.

“
Thanks anyway,” Knowlington said instead. “I’m about to start jittering with all the caffeine I’ve had already. I have a bunch of things to take care of back at the office. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t bitten off any heads today.”

“None that didn’t need biting.”

Knowlington nodded.

“We’re open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” said Clyston. “For any reason.”

“I appreciate that, Allen. I appreciate it a lot,” he told his old friend before walking away.