HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (7 page)

“Definitely
not polite,” said A-Bomb, squeezing his trigger. “You gentlemen are going to
have to learn not to shoot out of turn. I’m afraid you fall under the
jurisdiction of Hog Rule Number 5— For every action there is an opposite and
disproportionate reaction.”

NORTH OF THE SAUDI BORDER

27 JANUARY 1991

0710

Doberman
held the
plane
steady as a white arrow shot past his canopy. It began to veer across his path
but then wobbled and exploded, detonated by its self-destruct mechanism as its
fuel gave out. The pilot ducked, though the warhead was too far away to do any
damage. He brought the stick back and started to climb, turning around toward
the battlefield to get back in the game.

Doberman
caught a glimpse of Devil Two diving nearly straight down on the Iraqi truck,
smoke pouring from the Gatling gun in its chin. Between the smoke and the
glinting sun, the Hog’s dark green skin looked as if she were bathed in
perspiration, a magnificent winged beast meting out justice to a parcel of demons
escaped from the underworld.

Doberman
got back to three thousand feet as he reassessed the battlefield. A-Bomb began
recovering at very low altitude, pulling off to the southwest. The Iraqis were
either all dead or out of SAMs; Devil Two flew off unscathed.

Which
left the T-72 he’d been homing in on when he was so rudely interrupted. The
tank commander had taken the course of all intelligent Iraqis— he was turning
tail and running away. Dust and sand spewed out behind him.

Doberman
eyed his flanks cautiously before attacking. He put the plane into a long but
shallow dive, a surfer riding the last wave toward shore. It was a peaceful,
gentle maneuver, a glide rather than a plunge, the Thunderbolt II seeming to
float downwards on a summer breeze.

Then
he blasted the hell out of the bastard with two quick squeezes of the trigger.

The
first pack of bullets caught the edge of the tank’s turret like the sharp edge
of a crowbar, wedging in and lifting, tossing it off like a discarded bottle
cap. The massive sewer cover scraped briefly against the side then plopped into
the sand.

The
second burst finished off the work, igniting the insides of the Russian-made
tank. The heavy slugs of depleted uranium that made up the bulk of the combat
mix bounced back and forth in the tank’s interior, but the heavy-lifting had
already been done by the very first HE round to slap into the open hull; the
three members of the tank crew were incinerated as it ignited a fuel line at
the edge of the engine compartment.

Doberman
let go of the trigger, shoving his right wing down and pirouetting sharply in
the air, turning back toward the border. the other tank lay to his right, the
truck to his left. Men lay on the ground around both vehicles. Nothing moved.

The
dark shape of A-Bomb’s plane appeared a mile and a half ahead, climbing above
him.

“Devil
Two, this One,” Doberman said. “You have anything else moving down there?”

“Neg-a-tivo,”
said his wingmate. “Clean slate.”

Doberman
tensed as he flew toward the position of the soldiers who had called in
support. He suspected they were part of the Iraqi plot.

“Rat
Patrol to Devil Flight. Shit man, we are sorry about that. Jesus, we’re sorry.”

“Yeah,”
said Doberman. He spotted their ditch, or what he thought was their ditch,
about a half-mile out at ten o’clock, between his nose and left wing. “A-Bomb,
you think these guys are legitimate?” he asked over the short-range
frequency, which linked him only to his wingmate.

“AWACS
woulda authenticated ‘em,” said A-Bomb.

“Yeah.”

“Got
to go with it, Dog,” said A-Bomb.

Glenon
scowled beneath his mask but didn’t reply. He hated it when A-Bomb used his
serious voice. But his wingman was right— they had to accept that Rat Patrol
was authentic.

In
theory.

“You
got me?” he asked his wingmate.

“I
have your lovely effigy within my fierce gaze.”

“What
the fuck does that mean?”

“I’m
on your ass.”

“Cover
me while I buzz these suckers.”

“Dog.”

“Just
watch my butt. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” Doberman pumped the
throttle and dove the A-10A down, zooming over the American position at all of
ten feet AGL. Two round shapes popped up, then hunkered down.

“Shit.
What gives, Devil flight?” demanded the soldier.

“Just
saying hello,” said Doberman, still not convinced that the soldiers were
friends.

A-Bomb
in the meantime had hailed the AWACS, filling them in on everything that had
happened. The controller assured him that the unit was a legitimate one.

“But
what’s that mean, really?” Doberman said to him over the short-range radio as
they climbed away from the border. “They have a legitimate frequency and pass
words, but that’s it, right? I mean, the controller is sitting in an airplane— he
doesn’t know.”

“You’re
getting paranoid, Dog Man. You got to lighten up. Everybody can make a
mistake.”

“Maybe.”
Doberman studied his map and position on the INS. He plotted a new course for
home.

“Yeah,”
said A-Bomb after he relayed the data. “Looks good.” His voice was nearly
drowned out by the strains of “Rocket Queen,” the last song on Guns ‘n’ Roses’
Appetite
for Destruction
CD.

“I
thought you were laying off the heavy metal,” said Doberman, putting his nose
on the new bearings.

“You
can’t get enough of the classics,” replied A-Bomb, who had to be the only
combat pilot in the world with a flightsuit customized with a full-blown
stereo. “I’m thinking of broadening my outlook, though,” added A-Bomb. “I mean,
a man has to be open to new experiences. You have to move forward.”

“What
do you mean? Rap? More grunge rock?”

“Early
Beatles.”

“Yeah,
yeah, yeah,” said Doberman, as if they’d rehearsed it.

RIYADH

27 JANUARY 1991

1010

Skull
shifted on
the
hard metal chair, sipping the dark black liquid the CentCom staff claimed was
coffee and trying to keep from bitching out loud. He’d caught a total of three hours’
sleep last night, including the ten minutes on the Huey hustling here for the
high-level briefing session on the “Straw” Mission. But fatigue didn’t bother
him— war was a twenty-four hour, do-it-yourself operation, and this particular
product had a serious freshness date on it, due to expire in less than fourteen
hours. Which meant it was exactly the sort of situation he liked; it kicked his
pulse up and tightened his muscles, got his eyes into sharp focus. If anything,
he was too awake.

What
irked him was the attitude of the CinC staff running the show. It wasn’t just
that the Army officers had started frowned the second Wong opened his mouth to
begin the briefing. It was the way they frowned— as if Air Force officers had
no ability to analyze anything below ten thousand feet, let alone propose and
organize a combined ground-air covert operation.

Not
that they treated the Delta folks any better.

Maybe
it was just an Army thing, but Skull got the impression that they saw the whole
thing more as an annoyance than an opportunity. They called it “Strawman”
rather than Straw, hinting at the implication that the intelligence was bogus
or perhaps even planted. Even the conference area they had been assigned— a
basement room in a Saudi government building with two large folding tables for
everyone to crowd around— seemed to signal that the mission had something less
than top priority.

Officially,
the allies weren’t supposed to be targeting Saddam. President George H.W. Bush
had even said they wouldn’t during a press conference. But that was BS and
everybody knew it. So why were they getting the sneers and knowing glances?

Wong,
Knowlington, and the Spec Ops staff had put together a plan for four six-man
teams of Delta troopers to make a high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop at 2000
about three miles southwest of the target area. The troopers would coordinate
with a flight of F-111s, visually IDing the target before clearing the strike.
The fighter-bombers would use laser-guided smart bombs to destroy the convoy.
The ground teams would then escape in a pair of PAVE Lows in the early morning
hours an hour after the attack, covered by four planes from Devil squadron.

Technically,
the A-10s were ill-suited to night-support missions; they’d have to use special
Maverick AGMs as night vision equipment if things got heavy. But it was a
kludge Skull had made do with a few days before when he’d gone north to rescue
one of his men. He expected an argument. He also anticipated that with a target
like Saddam in the offing, the brass might want something a little flashier
than the earth pigs— AKA as Aardvarks, Varks, and One-Elevens— handling the
action. What he wasn’t prepared for was the flat-out statement that the Delta
teams couldn’t be made available.

“We’re
not risking that many men on this,” said Major Booker, an infantry officer from
the CinC staff who was running the meeting. “It means taking away from Scud
hunting and that can’t be done. The Scuds are job one.”

“These
teams are currently in Riyadh. They’re not even technically reserves,” said
Captain Leterri, who was presenting the Delta perspective at the briefing.
Leterri looked like he wanted to say something along the lines of, “All they’re
doing is jerking off.” Instead, he snorted at the air. The highly trained
soldiers in question were, in fact, acting as a bodyguard pool for CentCom and
the CinC— not exactly what they wanted to be doing.

Booker
raised his shoulders and lowered his head, as if he were an eagle looking down
from a craggy perch. The veins popped in his long, sinewy neck. “If the men are
available,” he said, “then they should be hunting Scuds.”

Leterri
was not be cowed. “They can conduct that mission immediately after this. The
PAVE Lows. . .”

“We’re
not risking helicopters that far north.”

“We
had PAVE Lows there last night,” snapped Leterri, exasperated.

“Actually,
the helicopter in question was a PAVE Hawk,” said Wong. “While operating at the
extreme end of it range, it accomplished its mission with typical aplomb.”

“Irrelevant,”
snapped Booker. “Anti-aircraft defenses have picked up in the area. We are not
risking either PAVE Lows or PAVE Hawks there. The assets are too precious.”

“Aw
bullshit, Major,” said Leterri, no longer able to control his frustration.
“What the fuck do we have them for if we don’t put them to use? Shit, they got
in last night, they’ll get in tonight, they’ll get in tomorrow.”

“We
have fresh satellite data,” said Booker. He sounded almost triumphant, and
waved to a sergeant near the door, who stepped forward and put the photos on
the long table. Wong took them and began studying them. Paddington, one of the
two British representatives at the session, leaned over his shoulder and
whispered something.

It
seemed clear to Skull that Booker’s job was to rain on the parade, scuttling it
if possible. He couldn’t let that happen— not because he wanted to nail Saddam,
but because he saw the mission as the only chance to search for Dixon.
Officially, his lieutenant had been listed as KIA; nobody was going to send a
search team looking for him, especially this far north, without very solid
evidence that he was alive. This was their best— maybe only— shot at getting
him back.

So
it was time to take over the meeting.

“Here’s
the thing,” he said, speaking in the deceptively soft tone that he had honed
through years of maneuvering with the brass. “With all due respect to the other
services represented, we have a serious opportunity here, based as much on luck
as good intelligence. We only get one shot. The ground team is important,
because the planes may need to be directed in at the last minute, depending on
what’s going on. We considered using a Pave Penny TSL system, lazing the
specific vehicle, and we can still do that if that’s what you’d prefer. But the
F-111s can do the targeting on their own if we have the ground team directing.
. .”

“We
can’t spare F-111s,” said Booker.

“Why
don’t we let Tommy tell us that?” said Skull. He kept his contempt veiled as he
motioned to the Black Hole planner officially representing the Air Force
theatre commander at the session. Black Hole ran the air war, assigning hit
lists to squadrons in a daily briefing or task order known as the ATO, for air
tasking order. Knowlington was well-connected with the planners and their
bosses, and would never have included the planes in the game plan without
having checked to see if they were, indeed, available.

“We
can have a flight of F-111s on target whenever you want,” said the captain, Tom
Marks.