HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (4 page)

Airborne,
gear stowed, Doberman walked his eyes across the wall of gauges in front of
him, checking his sense of the plane against the cold data of the indicators. A
small TV screen used to target Maverick air-to-ground missiles sat in the upper
right-hand corner of the dash; without any AGMs aboard, it would remain blank
the entire flight. Below the screen were two sets of gauges monitoring the
General Electric turbofans that hung in front of the tail. Relatively quiet as
well as efficient, the TF-34s hummed at spec, propelling the A-10A toward its
387-nautical-miles-per-hour cruising speed, which Doberman would achieve at
five thousand feet, give or take an inch.

“Devil
One, this is Two. I have your six,” said A-Bomb, drawing his plane into trail
position behind Doberman.

“One,”
acknowledged Doberman over the short-range Fox Mike or FM radio.

“Kick
butt sun,” said A-Bomb.

Doberman
grunted at the scenery and checked his INS guidance system. Preprogrammed way-points
helped the pilots make sure they were on course as they flew. Hog drivers also
carried old-fashioned paper maps, though by now Doberman and A-Bomb had so much
experience flying over northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq that they could almost
tell where they were by looking at the dunes.

Almost.

“So
Dog Man, what’s the first thing you’re going to do as squadron DO?”

“Who
says I’m going to be squadron DO? I’m only a captain.”

“You’re
a high-time Hog driver, the squadron’s longest in service pilot, and all-around
peachy-keen guy,” answered A-Bomb. “Besides, Skull loves your ass.”

“They’ll
probably bring somebody in from the outside.”

“Nah.
You da man.”

“I
don’t want the headaches.” Doberman snapped off the mike button and rechecked
his instruments. DO stood for Director of Operations. Traditionally, the DO
rated as the number-two man behind the squadron commander. Devil Squadron
wasn’t particularly traditional— it had been thrown together from a bunch of
discarded planes, its pilots shanghaied and “volunteered” from other units. It
had an extremely bare support structure, with a short chain of command and a
relatively thin roster of fliers. But it also had an amazingly high sortie rate
and had already dropped more than one million pounds of bombs, missiles, and
curses on the enemy. A lot of bang for the buck, as A-Bomb would put it.

All
of which meant Devil Squadron’s DO worked twice as hard as he would in another
unit. The last DO, Major James “Mongoose” Johnson, had been sent home after
being shot down, injured, and rescued. Doberman had never gotten along with
him; from his point of view, Johnson tended to be a bit of a prig and was
always on his butt for little bullshit things. It wasn’t just Doberman, either.
He seemed to think he had to be everywhere, looking over everything. He rode
the maintenance people especially hard; Glenon couldn’t go near the hangars
without hearing somebody bitch about him. But Mongoose hadn’t been the worst DO
Glenon had ever served with, and Doberman could have put up with the jerk for
as long as necessary, especially if it meant he didn’t get tagged with the gig.

“Ah,
you’re bullshitting me,” said A-Bomb. “Once you’re DO, you’re on your way.
Stepping stone to general. Shit, with that shootdown, you’ll be wearing stars
next week. Just remember me when you’re in the Pentagon. Score some tickets for
a RedSkins game, okay?”

“
Seeing
stars, maybe.”

“General
Dog Face. Probably have your own box at RFK, right?”

“Who
the hell said I ever, ever wanted to be a general?” blustered Doberman. “And I
thought we were flying silent com.”

“Silent
com? Can you do that in a Hog?”

A
call from the AWACS controller monitoring their sector ended the banter.

“Devil
Flight, this is Coyote,” said the controller, who was aboard the Boeing E-3
Sentry aircraft orbiting to the south.

Doberman
acknowledged, verifying their course and status.

“Can
you handle a detour?” asked the controller. “Army unit near the border has a
situation and needs some support. You’re the closest flight.”

“Give
us the coordinates,” answered Doberman, touching Tinman’s medal with his thumb
before nudging the Hog northward.

APPROACHING KING FAHD

27 JANUARY 1991

0530

Captain
Lars Warren
took
a deep breath— his fifth in perhaps the last twenty seconds— and fixed his
glare on the runway in the distance. It was his second approach to King Fahd;
he’d aborted his first landing attempt when he realized he was going too fast
to land safely.

That
was an excuse. He’d aborted it because he’d panicked. And it was happening
again. Even worse than before.

His
pinkie began to quiver. Lars glanced at his hands on the steering yoke of the
big four-engine plane. His fingers’ light-brown flesh had turned violet from
the pressure he was exerting. Lars pushed his right elbow further into his
stomach, trying to keep the tremor from extending to the rest of his fingers.
It was terrible flying posture— it was terrible posture, period— but he wasn’t
thinking about that; all he was trying to do was land his Hercules C-130 in one
piece.

The
thing was, he’d landed Herks maybe a thousand times before. He’d landed this
very plane at least twenty times, including twice on this long, sturdy, and
accommodating strip. It wasn’t difficult— the high-winged transport was an
extremely stable and generally forgiving aircraft. In many respects it was
actually easier to fly than the 737 he had been flying three days ago when his
Air National Guard Unit was ordered into the Gulf to spell other units.

Lars
was a good pilot. In fact, he was better than good; he’d been up for an assignment
as a training supervisor at the airline before the Gulf War complicated things.
He had had flown 707s and Dash-8s and C-141s and a KC-10 and so many C-130s he
could do it all in his sleep.

But
he was having trouble landing. He was having trouble flying. And everyone on
the flight deck knew it.

“Gear
set,” said his copilot. His tone was gentle, but part of Warren bristled as if
the man had cursed him for being a failure and a coward.

The
rest of him trembled, just afraid.

Afraid
of what?

Afraid
of flying.

Hell
no. No way. Flying was walking, with a checklist. Shit. He could fly in his
sleep.

Afraid
of being shot down?

He
was flying a transport, for christsake. He was behind the lines— he always flew
behind the lines. Way, way, way behind the lines. No one was going to shoot at
him. He’d been here for two whole days and last night’s random Scud attack was
the closest he’d come to anything remotely warlike.

But
that had unnerved him. He’d been preparing to take off when the alert came in.

The
warhead had landed on the other side of the country, but it had shaken him up.
Still, when the all-clear came they went ahead with the mission, a routine
supply hop. He’d done okay, though little things had bothered him. He’d
forgotten to ask the copilot for the crosswind correction— not a big deal. He’d
bounced a little on takeoff to come back— something he never, ever did, but no
big deal.

Now
though, this was a big deal. Lars felt his legs turn to water as the edge of
the runway loomed ahead. Hot air rose in waves from the concrete. In just a few
seconds it would be buffeting his wings.

If
he let it.

Shit.
All he had to do was skim in. Everything was perfect. Let the plane land.

Give
it to his copilot.

No!

His
copilot was talking to him. The tower was talking to him. A plane— a loaded
Warthog— was on the runway, on the runway.

In
the way.

What
the hell?

Abort.

Abort!

“Captain?”

Lars
snapped his head toward his copilot. As he did, he realized the A-10A wasn’t
moving on the runway. It was well off to the side in the maintenance area,
being prepared for a morning mission.

Nothing
was in his way. His brain had done a mind flip, constructing bogies to spook
him.

God,
help me, he thought to himself. I’m losing it.

A
pain shot through his chest, striking so hard he lost his breath mid-gulp.

Heart
attack.

It’s
just panic, he told himself.

“Captain?”

“Yeah,
I’m landing,” Warren said, not caring how ludicrous it sounded. He pushed his
elbows in and closed his eyes— actually closed his eyes— as the wheels skipped
and screeched but finally rolled smooth against the tarmac. For a second his
entire world turned black; for a second his addled mind completely lost its
grip, furling and swirling in a darkness filled with bullets and missiles,
Scuds and MiGs and SAMs. Then slowly, very, very slowly, the fog lifted. He was
able to open his eyes; he realized he had already begun applying brakes. His
copilot was busy on his side of the console; they had landed in one piece.

“No
offense, Lars,” said the copilot as they found their way toward the hangar
where they were assigned, “but, uh, you okay?”

Warren
bit back the impulse to ask if the man— a young, white captain whom he didn’t
know very well— was going to report him.

What
would he report? That he came in too fast? That he seemed to hesitate at the
last second?

That
he closed his eyes?

That
Lars Warren was petrified, twenty-three years after his first solo. That Lars
Warren, who as a fourteen-year-old had single-handedly broken up an armed bank
robbery by tackling a robber, had suddenly become a coward at forty-three. All
because of a random Scud attack that had been thwarted by Patriot missiles
miles and miles away.

Or
because he’d always been a coward, deep down.

Lars
said nothing, blowing air out through his clenched teeth and nodding instead.

NORTH OF THE SAUDI BORDER

27 JANUARY 1991

0650

Doberman
scanned the
ripples in the sand, mechanically moving his eyes back and forth across the
terrain as he pushed Devil One toward the trouble spot just over the Saudi
border. Intelligence and the mission planners divided the desert into neat kill
boxes, subdividing Iraq into a precise checkerboard that could be measured to
the meter. But the nice clean lines got wavy as soon as you pushed your plane
low enough to actually see anything. Distances blurred, coordinates began to
jumble. For all the high-tech paraphernalia, war in the desert still came down
to eyeballs and pilot sense. Glenon had a healthy helping of both— but he
wasn’t Superman, and he felt himself starting to get pissed as he stared down
at the area where the American troops should have been. The pilot had a
notoriously short fuse, but even he knew he was in a particularly bad mood all
of a sudden. Maybe it was because he hadn’t had that much sleep; maybe he was
angry with himself for getting tongue tied with Rosen.

Or
maybe it was what A-Bomb would call PBS— Pre-Blowup-Syndrome.

The
ladder on the HUD altimeter display notched steadily downward as Doberman
hunted for the slightest sign of the conflict the AWACS had sent them to contain.
He kicked below three thousand feet without any sign of the unit that had
called for air support— without, in fact, seeing anything but yellowish blurs
of sand. Finally, a thick scar edged against the earth in the right quadrant of
his windshield. Doberman nudged his stick, steadying the A-10 toward what
he thought was the thick trench that marked the Saudi-Iraqi border for much of
its length. But the manmade trench was actually a British army position two
miles back from the border and not precisely parallel to it; when he realized
his mistake he cursed over the open mike.

“My
eyes are screwing me this morning,” he told A-Bomb.

“Sun’s
wicked. I got dust bunnies, northwest, uh, off your nose at eleven o’clock, no,
let’s call it five degrees on the compass. Could be our friends.”

A-Bomb
was behind him by a mile and at least two thousand feet higher. But sure
enough, when Doberman looked in the proper direction he found a small bubble of
dust.

“How
the hell did you see that?” he asked, snapping onto course.

“Carrot
cake,” said A-Bomb. “No better source of Vitamin E. Enhances your vision rods.
As a matter of fact, I was thinking of grabbing another bite, so long as I’m
playing Tonto back here.”

“You’re
eatin’ carrot cake?”

“Hey,
man’s got to have breakfast,” replied A-Bomb. “I figured the bacon would have
been cold by the time I got a chance to eat it. One of these days, I’m figuring
out how to get a microwave in here. Course, nuked bacon tastes like cardboard.
What I really need is a deep fryer. Could slot it in over the radio gear, if I
can get one of Clyston’s techies to order the parts.”