HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (12 page)

Lars
had notched serious hours in three different training programs and a NATO
exercise at the helm of a Combat Talon MC-130E some years before.

Years
ago. Centuries ago.

He’d
also flown MC-130P tankers.

For
all of two weeks.

“Herk
pilots are at a real premium, especially good ones,” said the general, who
seemed to be slipping into salesman mode. Lars had first met Sherman when he
was a major, but they’d never been particularly close. Sherman tended to play
the hail-fellow-well-met thing a bit too far, but otherwise seemed like a
decent officer.

“Guy
gets sick, everybody’s scrambling,” added Sherman, his voice almost singing as
his tapping grew more complicated. “Things are picking up, huh?”

Lars
managed an affirmative grunt. The tune— a sixties TV show?

“Holdout
for a signing bonus, huh?” suggested Sherman.

F
Troop? Susie watched that on Nick at night.

No
way.

“Get
the Spec Ops boys to take you on permanently? Only a few of us over there; I’m
sure they wouldn’t mind.”

Lars
managed a smile. “Us” was a reference to the fact that they were both
African-American.

If
Sherman had been white, would it have been easier to blow him off?

He’d
never turned down an assignment before, not a real one. Not because he was
scared.

Then
again, he’d never been scared before. This was just weird— the sort of thing he
ought to see a shrink about.

That
would go over big.

Lars
could feel the sweat already pouring down the back of his neck.

Just
say no.

“So,
you up for it?” asked the general.

Against
his better judgment— against everything— Lars’ felt his head bob up and down.

“Great.
Plane’s already being prepped. Your pilot is a nice fella, white guy, but okay.
I’ve flown with him. DiRiggio. Lots of experience with SOC. Hook up with him,
he’ll give you the deal. Uh, watch his breath, though. Real garlic-eater. Knock
you out.”

Sherman
smiled. It was tough for Lars to tell whether he was joking or not.

“Air
Force captain name of Wong— no shit, Wong— he’s in charge of the operation.
He’ll be on the plane. He’s assigned to an A-10 squadron but there’s a lot more
to him than it seems. Let me give you a heads-up,” added the general. “Guy
works for some admiral at the Pentagon and has no sense of humor.”

“Great.”
The word stuck in his throat.

“But
hell, you’ll probably do this with your eyes closed.” Sherman slapped the desk
in a crescendo and stood to walk Lars out. “Easy gig for you.”

“Oh
yeah,” he said, somehow getting his legs in gear.

IRAQ

27 JANUARY , 1991

1420

Dixon
pulled the
boy
along with him as he scrambled along the rear of the house. When he reached the
corner he dropped to his knees and put down one of the two Kalashnikov assault
rifles, pulling the other under his arm as he leaned out to scan the road.

A
battered Zil dodged some of the worst ruts as it lumbered up from the direction
of the village. It slowed, then stopped a few yards from the pickup, whose
front grill and bumper Dixon could just see from the back corner of the
building.

The
truck driver leaned out the window, staring toward the pickup. He yelled
something, then turned his head toward the house.

Dixon
ducked back. Probably, the driver saw the dead men, because he ground the Zil’s
gears and revved the engine.

Kill
him quick!

Dixon
jumped to his feet. By the time he reached the front of the ruined building,
the Zil was a good fifty yards away and gaining speed. He squared to fire but
realized he was unlikely to stop the man, even if he managed to hit the
bouncing truck; all he he’d be doing was confirming any suspicion that he was
still here.

BJ
lowered the rifle and looked back at the house. The Iraqi boy stood by the edge
of the building, holding the other AK-74.

Dixon
motioned for the boy to come forward. The kid hesitated, and for a slice of a
second Dixon worried that the boy had decided to turn against him. But then the
kid smiled and ran to him. When he reached Dixon, the child spun around,
mimicking what Dixon had done as he shouldered the large rifle down the road.

Dixon
put his hand on the barrel of the gun, gently lowering it.

“What’s
your name, kid?” he asked.

The
boy looked at him, not understanding.

“Name?”
Dixon patted his chest. “I’m BJ. BJ. Who are you? Huh?”

“Budge,”
said the boy finally, patting himself.

“Budge?”
Dixon laughed. So did the kid. “Budge, huh? That’s a good name. Budge.”

The
kid patted his chest. “Budge,” he said, laughing.

“So
Budge, what the hell should I do with you, huh? Why were those goons trying to
kill you? Who were they? What’d you do?”

Budge
didn’t understand.

BJ
tried miming what had happened before, but the boy didn’t really understand. He
said something in what Dixon figured was Arabic, but his words were as
incomprehensible to Dixon as Dixon’s must be to him.

“What
the hell are we going to do, Budge?” Dixon asked finally. “Are there other
people around here who want to kill you?”

He
was careful as he mimed that, not wanting to make the kid think that he was
going to harm him. The kid thought it was a joke or a game, laughing.

“One
way or another, there’s plenty who want to kill me,” said Dixon. “If you’re with
me, they may shoot you too. Probably they would.”

Budge
shrugged. He obviously didn’t understand.

“If
I leave you here, will the goons come back and kill you?”

The
boy blinked, then said something, patting his stomach. Probably, he was saying
he was hungry.

“You
know where there’s food?” Dixon asked. He mimed the question, using the boy’s
stomach to start.

Budge
shook his head. The obvious place to find food was in the village, but it
wasn’t as if they could simply show up at the local 7-Eleven and buy a couple
of hoagies.

Or
maybe they could. Dixon had some Iraqi money in his survival kit. He could give
it the kid, send him into whatever passed for a store in these parts. Or even a
house.

What
if somebody asked the kid where he got the money? Or simply followed him back?

Turning
Dixon in would make Budge an immediate hero. He wouldn’t even have to do it on
purpose.

Why
were the men trying to kill him?

Trust
him? He was seven or eight most likely, certainly no older than ten. How smart
was he? Smart enough to trick anyone who was suspicious of him?

Smart
enough to trick Dixon?

Irrelevant.
The question was, would he know to keep his mouth shut?

When
he was nine, Dixon had a full load of chores on the family’s tiny vegetable
truck farm, a separate operation from the corn and soybeans. He manned the
fruit and vegetable stand every day during the summer, handling the tourists
and the local town folks who stopped by. It was more boring than hard; rarely
did he have to help more than two people an hour.

What
if someone had appeared in the middle of the tomato patch behind the stand,
just walked up and saved him from being robbed? What would he have done? Tell
his mom?

Sure,
he’d be happy and grateful.

What
if the guy had been in some kind of trouble himself? Would he have been savvy
enough to keep quiet, sneak him some food?

Maybe.
If he realized the guy was in trouble. But you could be really dumb as a kid,
innocent in all sorts of ways. This kid might be grateful that Dixon had saved
him, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give him away.

He
could leave him. But that was like shooting him, wasn’t it?

He’d
already made that decision.

“What
I think we’re going to do here, Budge,” Dixon said, squatting so he was
eye-level with the boy, “what I think we’re going to do is go into the village.
We have to be very quiet. People there want to kill us. Do you understand?” He
mimed the words, walking with his fingers, shielding his face with his hands,
pretending to be fired at. The boy leaned forward and hugged him.

“That’s
going to have to do for now,” said Dixon, starting toward the road.

HOME DROME

27 JANUARY 1991

1700

Hack
furled his
fingers around the A-10A stick, waiting impatiently for the other pilots to
complete their checks. The F-15’s cockpit wasn’t exactly massive, but the Hog’s
workspace seemed smaller than the trunk of a Honda Civic. The instrument panel
was a solid wall of old-fashioned dials and buttons; the only display was the
small tube below the windshield at the right-hand corner slaved to the Maverick
missiles. It was a miracle the plane even had a heads-up display.

Hack
bounced his feet up and down on the rudder pedals, trying to shake out his
boredom. The Warthog’s GE turbofans were diminutive and almost silent— at least
compared to the F-15, which had a guttural, throat-shaking roar even at rest.

He
had to stop comparing the damn Warthogs to Eagles. He was a driver now, and a
backseat one at that— Knowlington had stuck him with flying wing to Captain
Glenon, the second plane in the second element.

Made
sense, couldn’t argue. Actually, Knowlington seemed a hell of a lot more on the
ball here than he had back in D.C. Had a peculiar way of running a squadron,
but part of that might be because he had less than half the normal complement
of personnel, except for the sections responsible for keeping the aircraft
airworthy.

That
Chief Master Sergeant Clyston was a real piece of work. Hack was going to sit
on his butt good to get him to do things the way they were supposed to be done.
Stinking sergeants thought they ran the frigging service. Straighten him out,
no time.

Can
his ass, once he took over the squadron.

Maybe.

Two
things surprised Hack. One was the fact that Knowlington didn’t seem to be
drinking— or at least was being considerably more discrete about it than he had
been at the Pentagon.

The
other was that Knowlington and his squadron were held in high enough esteem to
have been tagged to work with Delta up north in what had to be a high priority,
not to mention extremely difficult, mission.

Not
that he’d thought Knowlington was a bad pilot. On the contrary, he’d heard the
stories about what he’d done in Vietnam. It’s just that he’d thought the
colonel was an over-the-hill geezer with one foot and half of his head out the
door.

“Devil
leader to Devil flight,” said Knowlington over the squadron frequency. “All
right, let’s get this show on the road.”

One
by one, the others acknowledged. By the time Major Preston pressed his transmit
button, he’d already nudged his Warthog off her brakes and begun to trundle up
toward the starting gate to keep pace with the others. He ran through his
checks one more time, scanning the instruments, glancing at the INS, quizzing
his compass. His stomach began flipping over, and for a brief moment the
veteran Air Force pilot felt like a teenager taking dad’s car to the grocery
store the first time. Then instinct took over; he pulled the double throttle
bars to their stops, spooling out the engines and rocketing down the runway.

After
a fashion; damn Warthog was slow, slow, slow. And while it might not be fair to
compare it to an F-15, there was no way not to as the plane heaved itself up
into the air, chugging along more like a pickup truck with wings than a modern
airplane. Hack’s stomach tightened as he left the ground. He couldn’t get the
feel right and started to jerk to the right, his left wing pitching up in
answer to his awkward pull. But the A-10A was a forgiving sort; she caught a
gust of wind and steadied her wings, rising behind her companions in a slow,
steady march northwards.

A
fresh wave of jitters hit Preston as he searched the dusky sky for his
wingmate. It took three long glances to find Doberman on his left, exactly
where he was supposed to be. He checked his INS; still overly nervous, he went
through the sheet of way-markers on his kneeboard. He was precisely on course,
flying the Hog as smoothly as if he’d racked up a hundred hours in the past
month, but he could feel his heart pounding.

He’d
been like this in the Eagle, too. A lot of time it took until the border for
him to calm down. The first snap vector or the first heads-up from the AWACS or
the first radar contact of an enemy— once something
real
happened, he
was fine. But until then he was just jangled nerves, no matter what he was
driving.