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

  HOGS 5

  Air War in the Gulf

  TARGET SADDAM

  by

  JIM DEFELICE

  Book #4 in the HOGS air war series based on the exploits of the A-10A Warthog pilots in the 1991 Gulf War

  Copyright © 2001 by Jim DeFelice.

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without permission from the author, except for short quotes in reviews or discussions.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TARGET SADDAM

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A-BOMB’S HOG RULES

  PART ONE

  VOLUNTEERS & MANIACS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  PART TWO

  VULTURE DEATH

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  PART THREE

  LAZARUS

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  EPILOGUE:

  WARMING THE SOUL

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  A NOTE TO THE READER:

  OTHER BOOKS BY JIM DEFELICE

  A-BOMB’S HOG RULES

  1. Never leave base without your wingmate.

  2. You can never be too ugly, too low, or too slow.

  3. Pay attention to the plane, not the explosion.

  4. If God wanted you to fly higher than five hundred feet, he’d have given you an F-15.

  5. For every action by the enemy, there is an opposite and disproportionate reaction— be sure to administer it harshly.

  6. The hotter the target, the better the bang.

  7. If you can’t read the sign, you’re not close enough to smoke it.

  8. Never fire your cannon when taking off unless absolutely necessary.

  9. Under no circumstances should you attempt to eat anything with pits during a bombing run.

  PART ONE

  VOLUNTEERS & MANIACS

  CHAPTER 1

  HOG HEAVEN

  KING FAHD ROYAL AIR BASE, SAUDI ARABIA

  27 JANUARY 1991

  0001 HOURS

  Lieutenant Colonel Michael “Skull” Knowlington stepped out from his office in the ramshackle trailer building known as “Hog Heaven”— headquarters for the 535th Tactical Fighter Squadron at King Fahd Royal Air Base in eastern Saudi Arabia. The cold air of the desert night stung his eyes closed; the Devil Squadron commander had to stop and rub them open.

  He began to walk again, ignoring the soft glow of the moon above, pretending he didn’t hear the uneasy murmur that came from the nearby hangar area where his A-10A Thunderbolt II “Warthog” fighter-bombers were resting after a long day of bombing Iraq. A few mechanics tended to battle damage; here an engine was being overhauled, there a wing was being patched. The workers might account for some of the noise, but not all of it— the A-10A had always seemed more animal than machine, and tonight a distinct murmur rose from the parked planes, as if they were rehashing their missions in a late-night bull session. In a few short hours, the planes would be back at it, loaded with missiles and bombs and bullets, jet fuel packed into their arms and bellies. They waited now in the shadows, metal bones shrugging off fatigue, green skins still sparking with the electricity of the day. If any warplane could be said to be more than a simple machine, it was the Hog, a two-engine stubby-winged dirt mover so ugly most pilots argued she had to have a soul. Aeronautics alone would never have gotten anything that ungainly off the ground.

  Knowlington ignored the Hogs. He ignored the moon. He ignored the cold. He ignored the acknowledgment of the security detail. Like the planes and their pilots, he was due a few hours in the sack. More, actually. He’d been strapping planes around his narrow frame for just about thirty years now, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was a bona fide, decorated war hero with tons of friends in high places and could be a serious SOB besides, Michael Knowlington would be retired by now. He was due a long, long rest— the kind of rest where the most important thing you did all day was check the obits to make sure you were alive, then went back to bed.

  Some people wanted him to take that rest. There were reasons beyond length of service, the same reasons that kept him a lieutenant colonel when most of his peers were either long gone or wore stars on their uniforms. But Skull had never been good at resting, much less reading obituaries. He wasn’t even very good at sleeping, especially not when there was a war on, especially not when he had an enemy on his ass and gravity was pinching his face and chest from all directions.

  Which was how he felt now.

  Which was good.

  Something flashed in the sky behind him. The muscles in his neck snapped taut but didn’t flinch. He walked on, moving stiffly through the shadows, pushing toward a large parking garage at the other end of the base. He skirted the edge of Tent City, a mass of tents and temporary housing units where many of the base personnel— and all of Devil Squadron— lived. He walked quickly and with purpose but without fear. More importantly, he walked without desire.

  For Michael Knowlington, fear and desire had often walked together. Not fear of the enemy, not desire for glory. It would be wrong to say that he wasn’t afraid of dying, or that he didn’t like the honor of recognition. But from the very first day in Thailand eons ago when he had wedged himself into the cockpit of a Thud and taken off for Vietnam, neither the enemy nor glory had haunted him.

  The fear he felt was much more basic. He’d been afraid of letting others down. And he had let others down: as a wingman: that time when his mate nearly got shot down by a trailing MiG that Knowlington should have handled; as a leader, when his flight got nailed by a battery he should have scoped out before the mission; as a squadron commander, when one of his boys had gotten in over his head.

  The last had happened three times, once in Vietnam, once in the States, and once last week.

  Fear— and its guilt— fueled a d
eep, unquenchable desire. It was mundane, it was ordinary, but if was very real. For much of his Air Force career, Michael Knowlington desired, thirsted, for alcohol. It had tugged at his athletic frame and dulled his reflexes; it had rounded the sharp edges of his brain. Worst of all, the thirst had fueled the fear, which in turn increased the thirst.

  But it was gone now. He’d been sober for only 22 days, and had come perilously close twelve hours before to falling back. But as he walked across the darkened base, ignoring the moon, ignoring the planes, nose stinging with sweat and jet fuel, he realized he didn’t want a drink.

  And that was good, though nothing to bank on.

  A Hummer carrying two Air Force MPs shot out of the darkness as he finally neared his destination. As the Humvee pulled up alongside him, a sergeant leaned out and spoke in a pseudo whisper, as if raising his voice would wake some sleeping giant nearby.

  “Colonel, excuse me,” he said, “but there’s a Scud alert. Sir, I have to ask you to take shelter.”

  Knowlington nodded but said nothing, continuing to walk. The MP started to repeat himself, but his words were drowned out by a loud shriek in the distance.

  Skull kept walking. The ground rumbled. It was an explosion, but nothing that threatened him. He knew that from experience.

  During his first tour in Vietnam, Knowlington had manned a machine-gun post with a frightened E-5 whose specialty was developing recon photos. Guerrillas had attacked a small base Skull was visiting on a liaison mission; he and the sergeant had worked through ten belts of ammo while ducking at least five grenade attacks. During his second tour in Vietnam, Skull had spent two nights at the Marine base in DaNang when it came under rocket attack— as sure a glimpse into the bowels of hell as ever offered a live human being. Distant explosions didn’t impress him; he kept his pace and ignored the comments from the Hummer, which vanished back into the darkness.

  The two Delta troopers standing guard at the entrance to the parking garage wore the blank expressions of stone statues as he approached. Though both sergeants instantly recognized the Air Force officer, they challenged him as fiercely as if he were an Iraqi infiltrator. For the humble parking garage was the Saudi home of the Special Operations Command; its officers were running a variety of top secret operations north of the border. And while Lieutenant Colonel Michael Knowlington was one of the handful of men permitted access to the “Bat Cave” inside, even General Schwartzkopf himself would have had to withstand the ritual humiliation of passing the Delta boys’ sentry post.

  Not that Schwartzkopf would have done so as quietly— nor as quickly— as Skull. But then, Skull tended to hold the D boys in higher esteem, and the feeling was mutual.

  Cleared through, Knowlington proceeded to the operational headquarters, a collection of sandbags, filing cabinets, and desks in an area that had once housed the car collection of a minor prince. Skull got about as far as the former parking spot of a yellow MG roadster when one of the general’s aides accosted him.

  “Colonel, General’s not available, sir,” said the lieutenant, who despite the hour and locale could have cut himself on the creases in his uniform.

  “Shit-yeah he is.” Skull made sure his gravelly voice carried well through the complex. “I talked to him a half-hour ago. He’s either on the cot over there or sitting at his desk.”

  “God, Mikey, what the hell is it now?” growled the general from beyond the makeshift walls.

  The lieutenant stepped back apologetically. Skull gave him a smirk, then passed into the operations room, where the general was indeed sacked out on his cot. The general had come over to the joint Special Operations command from the Air Force; he and Knowlington went back far enough for Skull not to wince when he called him “Mikey.”

  Which he did again, adding in a few more succinct Anglo-Saxon words.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Skull, standing near the table.

  “Fuck you, you are. What’s up? You still pissed about your girl Rosen going north?”

  “My technical sergeant is a woman,” said Knowlington, emphasizing each syllable because he was, indeed, still pissed. “But we’ve gone over that.”

  “I shipped Klee out. Bang, he’s gone. He should have come to me and he didn’t. That problem is taken care of.”

  Klee was the colonel who was responsible for sending the Devil Squadron’s top electronics whiz north into Iraq. Rosen had returned a few hours before to Al Jouf, a forward operating area in western Iraq where she had been overseeing maintenance on a pair of Devil Squadron A-10As. Needless to say, Rosen had volunteered for the duty north in the combat zone, a direct violation of all sorts of laws, policies, and orders, not to mention common sense. Which merely proved Devil Squadron enlisted personnel were as crazy as the officers.

  “Rosen’s not why I’m here,” said Skull.

  “Okay. Shit, Mikey. I don’t think I’ve had ten minutes of sleep since I came to this stinkin’ country.” The general sighed and sat up. He glanced at Skull, then followed his gaze over toward the sandbags that marked the entrance to the room. “Lieutenant, make yourself scarce.”

  “Sir, yes sir,” snapped the lieutenant.

  “Love ‘em when they’re still wet, don’t you?” said the general as the nugget lieutenant’s steps echoed smartly across the smooth concrete. Skull, for all his love of the service— and he truly did love the Air Force— had never really cared for the snap and starch, nor did he like hazing new officers, so he didn’t answer. He stood stoically as the general hauled himself off the cot and went to the desk, where he turned on a small lamp and sat. He’d been sleeping in his fatigue uniform. He reached under the desk for his shoes. “What’s up?”

  “The intelligence officer who went north with your D boys has a theory.”

  “Wong?”

  “Yes, Captain Wong. There was a special unit of Iraqis in the village where the Scuds were hidden. They weren’t part of the Republican Guard. They weren’t Muslim either. Which he thinks means they were part of an elite unit, probably all related to each other. Those sorts of units typically have very special missions.”

  “I’m not catching the drift here, Mike.” The general stretched his shoulders backwards; his body was so stiff the cracks echoed loudly. “Schwartzkopf is on my butt— on everybody’s butt— about the Scuds. One hit Tel Aviv last night. We have to nail those suckers.”

  “This is bigger than Scuds.”

  “How?”

  “Wong thinks Saddam’s going to be in that village twenty-four hours from now. I want to put together a team to get him.”

  CHAPTER 2

  NEAR RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA

  27 JANUARY 1991

  0300

  At roughly the same time Colonel Knowlington was making his way to the Spec Ops Bat Cave, the man whose report had sent him there was setting out on a perilous journey to the dark side of the international army’s “occupation” of Saudi Arabia.

  Captain Bristol Wong, late of the Pentagon, most recently assigned as an “observer” to assist Scud hunting operations, knew that time would be of essence if Saddam was to be targeted. He had therefore decided to hunt down the one Westerner who, in his considered opinion, knew everything worth knowing about the Iraqi leader. This was itself a mission wracked by difficulties and fraught with dangers and a thousand contingencies, not the least of which was commandeering a helicopter that could deliver him to Riyadh at this ungodly hour.

  A short if expensive private limo ride took Wong from the relative safety of the sophisticated Islamic capital to a fiery wasteland some miles to the south, where he was dutifully deposited in front of a ten-million dollar suburban castle replete with neon flamingos and female car hops tastefully clad from the waist down, and from the top not at all. Wong administered the customary bribes to the Pakistani doorman and his hulking assistant, withstood a rather physical and inefficient weapons check, and passed into the lobby of the club. There he was met by two women whose mid-sections had recently been graced
by staples in major men’s publications; their present attire revealed no evidence of fasteners, though their smiles suggested they were ready to bend any metal Wong offered. He made the tactical mistake of telling them that he was simply here on business; they cooed and clucked, and he had almost to force his way past to the short, marble staircase that led down to the gaming room.

  The man he had come to see, Sir Peter Paddington, was surrounded by a phalanx of women and gamblers as he held court at the thousand-dollar minimum craps table. Paddington worked officially for British MI-5, was attached to at least one other ministry, and did contract work for unspecified “exterior interests.” He held his right hand high over his head, rattling the dice like a wary cobra shaking its tail. With a flick of his wrist he struck, the crisply tailored cuff of his white shirt flashing from his blazer sleeve as his hand jerked above the table, unleashing a pair of threes.

  “Six the hard way,” said the croupier from the side of the table. A salsa band added a flourish in the background.

  Wong snaked through the crowd as the bets were placed. Before he managed to draw alongside Sir Peter, nearly a hundred thousand dollars had been laid out on the table, covering his next throw.

  “Bristol, you have returned,” said Paddington, sipping his martini. He had not re-thrown the dice, believing that the karma of the moment had to specially chosen.

  He also wanted to make sure all of the betting was complete, as the establishment paid him a discreet commission on the house take.

  “I have a business matter to discuss with you,” said Wong.

  Paddington frowned ever so slightly, then turned back to the table. His hand flashed, the ivory cubes rolled.

  “Seven,” said the croupier, honestly surprised.

  Despite the bust, there was audible disappointment as Paddington put down the dice and led Wong toward a side room. Four of the young women who’d swarmed around accompanied him, their nipples highlighted by the taut silk of their dresses.

  “You want?” Paddington asked Wong, pausing at the draped doorway and gesturing toward the women.