Hogs #3 Fort Apache Page 5

  “You take us where we’re supposed to be,” said Dixon. “That’s more than fine with me.”

  “Yeah,” said Winston, pulling his SAW to his chest before moving down the line to tell the tail-gunner what was going on.

  Resentment began mixing under Dixon’s fatigue as the team got back underway. He didn’t need to be in charge— didn’t want to be, because frankly he had no damn idea what the hell to tell anybody to do. But he wanted to be respected, or at least accepted.

  At best, they thought he was nuts— and not necessarily good nuts. Staffa Turk, the demo man who was bringing up the rear, had practically sneered at Dixon earlier when he assured him he could handle an MP-5.

  Granted, it was an exaggeration, since he’d never actually fired one before. But they didn’t know that.

  The Delta warriors were all older than Dixon— much— and all were NCOs, a tribe not especially known for tolerating junior lieutenants. He could only guess what they thought of the Air Force. But heck— he’d already shot down a stinking helicopter in combat, and survived some of the thickest antiair fire of the war. Not to mention herded a platoon’s worth of Iraqis into the back of a Pave Low.

  Not that he could tell them that, or even hint that he was angry. Saying anything would have exactly the opposite effect that he wanted.

  Actually, what he really wanted was sleep, and plenty of it. He was so tired the marrow was draining out of his bones. Sooner or later he was going to stumble face-first into the hardscrabble dirt in front of him.

  Which was the last thing he wanted to do. Dixon concentrated on his steps, tightening his grip on the MP-5’s metal stock tightly to keep himself awake.

  ###

  About an hour after they had seen the Bedouin camp, Winston had the team stop. He told them to eat while they rested; Dixon fished out an MRE and wolfed its contents down in a breath.

  “Got a candy bar if you want it, sir,” offered Leteri, who was crouched nearby. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him since boarding the plane.

  “I’d love it,” said Dixon. “Hey, uh, you can call me BJ. Most people do.”

  “I’m Joey.”

  “That’s Joah-ee,” said Winston in an exaggerated Italian accent.

  Leteri tossed him a Snickers bar.

  “I haven’t had one of these since I was in grammar school,” said Dixon. He played it up, holding it to his nose like a connoisseur sniffing at a glass of expensive wine.

  “You’re going to want to take the paper off before you eat it,” said Leteri.

  “Why lose the calories?” Dixon said, unwrapping it. “Maybe I’ll just snort it up my nose.”

  He had just enough self-control to offer Winston half the bar, but not enough to save it for later when Winston waved him off.

  “You keepin’ up, OK?” asked the team leader.

  “It’s a good hike. You?”

  Winston laughed.

  “Be honest with you, BJ,” said Leteri. “No braggin’ or anything, but compared to some of our training gigs, this is like a guided tour of Lincoln Center.”

  “Where’s Lincoln Center?” Dixon asked.

  “Shit, you serious?”

  Dixon felt his face start to burn. “You mean the Monument?”

  “No, shit.” Leteri thought this was the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard. “You never heard of Lincoln Center? You serious?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious.”

  “Where’d you grow up, Lieutenant?” asked Winston.

  “Wisconsin.”

  “No shit,” said Leteri. “Lincoln Center’s a concert hall in New York City. Every school kid in the state’s got to tour it before they’re twelve. The law.” Leteri waited a second before adding. “That’s a joke, sir.”

  “He got it,” said Winston. “If it were funny, somebody would have laughed.”

  “So where in Wisconsin?” asked Leteri.

  “Little town called Chesterville. About two hours away from Milwaukee. More cows than people. Nobody’s ever heard of it.”

  “No shit. I come from a little town called Chester like an hour north of New York City. We got cows there, too.”

  “You have cows in New York?”

  “Hell yeah. It’s pretty far from the city. Just nobody believes you when you tell them.”

  “I thought you were from Brooklyn,” said Winston.

  “Nah. I was born there. I mean, my grandma still lives there and shit. But we moved out of the city when I was three.” Leteri turned back to Dixon. “People look at me funny when I tell them I grew up across the street from a farm. Hear New York and they figure, you know, it’s all city.”

  “All right, break time over,” said Winston, standing up. “Here’s the deal. We got the streambed just over that rise. We follow that into an open area near the road. Obviously they knew we’d have some farm boys with us when they called it the Cornfield. Makes me feel right at home.” The sergeant obviously loved sarcasm; he practically broke his jaw twisting his face into a smile. “On my signal we shake out. Lieutenant, you want to stay kinda near Leteri here until we know what we got. Leteri, you got my ass.”

  “I always take the dirt road.”

  “Yeah, fuck you too, bugger boy.”

  “Better to be the bugger, than the buggee.”

  The troop was soon moving again, stretching into a long line as they proceeded carefully up the side of a large ditch. Shallow water filled the bottom. Shards of ice had formed along the surface, in case any of them needed reminding about how cold it was. Two dry irrigation ditches ran off at right angles ahead; there were others as the main wadi or streambed snaked around a flat plateau with a good view of the highway a half-mile beyond.

  That was the Cornfield. The rise not only gave them a decent view of the road, but there was a good space between some of the ditches that could be used by helicopters if they needed to be evacuated.

  Not that they were planning on being evacuated any time soon.

  By the time they reached the top, Dixon’s limbs and body had congealed into a numb mass. The soft campaign hat he was wearing felt like a curtain around his brain, a permanent static emitter jamming outside reception.

  Sleep would revive him. Sleep would warm his frozen bones, wet his parched lungs. Sleep would fill the hole in his stomach.

  Sleep was a woman waiting for him just a few feet ahead, wrapping her legs around him, her open palms and long fingers sliding slowly across his chest. Electricity sparked as she touched him, soft and warm. Her fingers slipped into the crevices behind his ears, around and across his temples, down his cheeks to his neck, to the thick skin beneath his chin, up to his mouth. She spread herself back on the bed and pulled him into her, open and ready.

  “We stop here,” said Winston.

  Damned if the sergeant wasn’t part ghost, disappearing and reappearing at will.

  “Use the slope here for cover. Hey Lieutenant, you still with us?”

  Dixon grunted an answer as he collapsed butt first in the dirt.

  “Maybe you ought to get some sleep, sir,” said Winston. “Catch a nap before show time. We’ll wake you up when we need you.”

  Dixon nodded, then pushed himself prone.

  “Uh, BJ?”

  Dixon looked up to find Winston grinning in his face. “You probably want to undo your ruck first.”

  Nodding, he fumbled with the straps, barely getting it off before slipping his head back to the ground.

  CHAPTER 10

  KING FAHD

  25 JANUARY 1991

  0455

  His nose tickled.

  A-Bomb bolted upright in the bed, senses at full alert. He took a sniff, then another; quickly, deliberately, he got up and put on his boots. He slept in a flight suit for just this sort of emergency; he grabbed his jacket and hustled out of his small tent, threading his way through the Tent City to follow the faint but aromatic scent. Veering right, he headed in the general direction of “Oz,” the Devil Squadron’s mainte
nance and hangar area.

  It was before dawn, but Fahd was in full gear. Many of the more than one hundred planes quartered here had already left on their missions north. A-Bomb sensed he was closing in as he ducked into a hangar and past a gutted F-16— served the pointy-nose Viper right for wandering onto a Hog base. He soon found himself standing in front of a coffeemaker that had just finished spewing a full pot of black gold. The capo di capo and the Tinman, the squadron’s resident Ancient Mechanic, stood nearby, already sipping from cups.

  “Jamaican,” said A-Bomb, nodding approvingly.

  “Jamaican it is,” said Clyston. “Go ahead, have a cup.”

  A-Bomb realized there would be payback involved, but he was too committed now to stop himself. He grabbed one of the sergeant’s porcelain buckets and chugged.

  “Except for Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said, three sigs later, “this is the best joe I’ve had since the air war started.”

  “Em privake stack,” said Tinman.

  Like everyone else on base, A-Bomb couldn’t understand a word the Tinman said. “Excuse me?”

  “He says it’s his private stock,” said Clyston. “I hear you and Captain Glenon are flying pretty far north today.”

  “Yeah. Gonna play with some Special Ops guys.”

  The capo nodded, then took a long sip of his coffee. “Far to go in a Hog.”

  “We can handle it.”

  “How’s Captain Glenon doing these days?”

  “Doberman?” A-Bomb was genuinely surprised by the question. “He’s fine.”

  “Luck holding out?” said the sergeant.

  A-Bomb laughed. “Dog Man doesn’t believe in luck.”

  “Do you?”

  There was a serious note in Clyston’s voice, a hint that he wasn’t just making conversation. A-Bomb realized the time for payback had come.

  But what the hell. This was real joe.

  “Shit yeah, I’m superstitious as hell,” said A-Bomb. “What’s the matter, Chief? You worried we’re going to break your planes?”

  “You guys? Nah.” Clyston nodded at the Tinman, who bent over an old toolbox below one of the workbenches. He opened it and removed a small, silver cross.

  “Es got, no hurt,” said the Tinman, holding the small piece of metal in front of him as if it were a holy relic.

  “What’s that?” asked A-Bomb.

  “Kind of a good-luck charm the Tinman wants you to have,” explained the capo as the Tinman carefully handed over the small medal to A-Bomb. “St. Christopher’s Cross. Came from St. Peter’s. Blessed by the Pope in 1502.”

  “No shit. Were you there, Tinman?”

  The Tinman said something unintelligible to A-Bomb. Clyston only smiled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.”

  A-Bomb turned the small pieces of metal over in his hand. It was tarnished and worn smooth. It had definitely been around.

  “What’s the deal?”

  The Capo gave him a half-wink. “Karma thing. Morale.”

  “Iff will kept Cap G wholk,” said Tinman.

  Clyston was still grinning. Obviously, this was a morale kind of thing for the Tinman’s benefit, part of some sort of elaborate capo plot to keep the old-timer churning.

  The things you had to do to be top sergeant.

  “He wants you to give it to Captain Glenon,” said the capo. “Go ahead, have some more coffee.”

  A-Bomb eyed the pot but stayed where he was. “That’s going to be a problem,” he told them. “Doberman gets kind of touchy about superstitious stuff. You know him, Chief. He won’t even take souvenirs, right?”

  The Tinman’s face had begun to grow red, and he looked obviously agitated. He started to say something, but Clyston put his hand up, silencing him immediately.

  “Thing is, Captain,” said the Capo, “I’d appreciate it if you talked to him about.”

  “I can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to do,” said A-Bomb.

  “If you say you’ll ask him, that would be enough,” said Clyston, glancing at Tinman to make sure he was in agreement.

  The old-timer nodded.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” A-Bomb told them. Tin Man nodded some more. Obviously satisfied, he drifted off to another part of the shop, while A-Bomb helped himself to another cup of coffee.

  “So where’s my cross?” he asked Clyston. “Don’t I need karma, too?”

  The capo made a face. “You don’t believe in that superstitious crap, do you, Captain?”

  “Nah,” said A-Bomb. “All I need is a good cup of joe. Mind if I fill my thermos? This is the kind of stuff you want to be drinking when you blow something up.”

  ###

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Doberman told A-Bomb when he mentioned the cross an hour or so later. They were suiting up for their mission.

  “See the thing is, Tinman’s kind of superstitious is what I think,” said A-Bomb. “And Clyston has to keep him happy because the colonel’s sending him to Al Jouf. . .”

  “Why does he have to be happy?”

  “Dog, Tinman pretty much bends metal with his eyes, you know what I’m talking about? The guy really knows his shit.”

  “He’s a fucking loony bird.”

  “Yeah, but he’s gonna keep us in the air. Maybe he’s a shaman or something. Yeah, gotta be.”

  “It’s all superstitious bullshit,” said Doberman. “I don’t believe in that crap.”

  “How about that penny you carry around?”

  As the words left his mouth, A-Bomb realized he had made a major mistake, but it was too late to take them back.

  “That’s different.” Doberman’s face was so hot his bristle-top hair seemed to flutter with the heat. “That’s fuckin’ different.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean nothin’.”

  “You think I’m lucky? I got the fuckin’ luck of Job. I busted my ass to learn to fly. I studied and practiced, that’s what I did.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “Haunted crosses, shit.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to keep Clyston happy,” said A-Bomb. “He gave me this thermos full of coffee. Want some?”

  Doberman zipped his flight suit. “Next thing you know, we’re going to have some stinking voodoo priest dancing on the wings. How the hell do you get involved in this crap, anyway?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  CHAPTER 11

  KING FAHD

  25 JANUARY 1991

  0755

  Doberman rechecked the flap settings, then ran his eyes over the Hog’s instrument panel for one final make-sure-I’m-ready-to-go pass. He wasn’t rushing anything, especially today. Laying his hand gently on the throttle bar, he flexed his fingers and loosened his shoulder muscles, willing himself into something approximating a relaxed state. He swung his eyes back around the cockpit, inspecting the paraphernalia of his office: altimeter, fuel gauges, radio controls. These were the desk accessories no Warthog executive could live without.

  At spec and ready to rock.

  The plane whined gratefully as he fed her engines a full dose of octane and began galloping down the runway. Doberman blew an easy breath out of his lungs, pushing the battle-loaded Hog into the sky.

  Designed in the 1970s, the A-10A was conceived as a close-in ground-support plane, built to give a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Partly inspired by the success of the A-1 Skyraider in Vietnam, the plane was an excuse to dump serious iron on an enemy. The two AGM-65Bs Mavericks and four SUU-30s clusterbombs tied to Doberman’s wings represented one of several dozen ordinance variations typically carried by the Hogs. The Mavericks were guided with the help of an optical (in this case) or infrared camera in the missile’s nose; once locked on target by the pilot, the missile flew itself, leaving him free to play with others. A small screen on the right side of the dash was devoted to the Maverick’s display. While originally designed as an antitank weapon, the missile was effective against a variety of targets, as it had proven s
ince the first day of the war.

  “SUU” stood for Suspension Underwing Unit, a nod to the fact that the sophisticated weapons were more like dump trucks than conventional iron bombs. Popularly known as cluster bombs, they packed several hundred explosive and fragmentation devices, releasing them at a pre-set altitude after being dropped. The CBUs were an optimal weapon against “soft” targets, which besides men included unarmored vehicles and tasty treats like radar vans and dishes. The SUU could accommodate specialized loads, depending on the mission; Doberman’s were CBU-58s— which hosted a total of 650 BLU-63 fragmentation/antipersonnel bomblets.

  Besides the AGMs and cluster bombs, the Hog could carry an assortment of conventional iron— unguided, straight-at-you blowup bombs. But in the opinion of most Hog drivers, the plane’s fiercest weapon wasn’t its bombs. It was the GAU-8/A Avenger cannon that sat in the plane’s chin. The Gatling gun could deliver as many as four thousand rounds per minute; during a typical three or four second burst more than a hundred peas of Uranium and high explosive darted from the revolving barrels. The plane had been designed around the huge gun; the weapon was so awesome it could literally make the Hog stand still in the air as it was fired.

  The one thing the Hog couldn’t do was go fast. Doberman had the stops out and he was barely making 350 knots. And without an autopilot, the plane demanded at least a modicum of attention at all times.

  Still, as he climbed through the Saudi sky en route to a pit stop north at King Khalid Military City, the pilot’s mind started to wander. This part of the mission, staging out to Al Jouf before heading into Iraq, was very plain-Jane, as close to boring as you could get in a war zone. Inevitably, his thoughts shambled back to the card game and to Tinman’s idiotic cross.

  A lot of the crew members and even a few pilots were heavily superstitious, he knew, but you had to draw the line somewhere.

  Luck. Luck was some magic BB with his name on it sailing out from Iraq a zillion miles away and managing to nail him. Luck was something flaky happening with the engine in level flight, which in his experience was almost as likely as the magic BB shot.