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

  Preston gave them all a quick nod. “Actually, I wanted to get myself on the roster to fly ASAP. Tomorrow, if possible.”

  “All the slots are filled,” said Skull.

  “There are four planes that aren’t listed,” said Preston. “There are plenty of low priority targets available. I’ll find a wingmate and take one. Maybe A-Bomb’ll fly with me,” added Preston, trying to make his voice sound chummy. “A-Bomb and I go back to Germany. Used to plunk Volkswagens.”

  “Those planes are spoken for,” Doberman said.

  “What exactly is going on, Colonel?”

  Skull scratched his forehead, rubbing the edges of his eyebrows with his thumb and middle finger, thinking. Preston had been flying combat since the beginning of the air war, and while it had been a while since he’d sat his fanny in a Hog, he had tons of experience. He’d be an obvious choice to take the mission— after days of orientation, or reorientation, flights.

  No time for that.

  “Colonel?” repeated Preston.

  Why was he hesitating? Because he didn’t like him?

  Because Preston had tried to screw him when they both worked at the Pentagon a year or so ago?

  Maybe he was a jerk, but he was a good pilot. He’d already nailed a MiG.

  “You ever use Mavericks to fly at night?” Skull asked.

  “You’re not supposed to,” said Hack. “Specifically advised against that. I’ve done plenty of night flying, though.”

  “In a Hog?” said Doberman.

  “Of course. We used to drop logs and drill with CBUs and Mavs. Problem is the damn screens have such a small angle it’s hard to get your bearings, so using them to do more than find your target can be disorienting. Right A-Bomb?”

  O’Rourke smiled but said nothing.

  “What’s this about, Colonel?” asked Preston.

  Fly the number one and number two guys on the same mission? Along with the squadron’s best pilots?

  Why the hell not? You had to use your best weapons, no?

  “Colonel?”

  “All right. Come with us into my office, Major. Assuming you’re up for flying tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If you’re too tired or don’t feel up to it –”

  “Of course I’m up for it,” said Hack.

  “And you got to like long shots,” added A-Bomb. “And Devil Dogs.”

  Preston’s chin twitched for a second, but only for a second.

  “I like long shots,” he said.

  CHAPTER 18

  KING FAHD

  27 JANUARY , 1991

  1400

  The easiest thing in the world was to say no.

  The general looked at him expectantly. Jack Sherman was so heavy the desk he was sitting behind groaned as he shifted his elbows.

  “It’s a classified mission,” repeated Sherman. He put his hands down and drummed his fingers, the beat vaguely reminiscent though difficult to place. “So you can work things out from that. I’m not authorized to say anything else and to be honest, I don’t know much more. You’ll be briefed fully if you volunteer. I mean, obviously it’s going to be hazardous.”

  Lars nodded. A voice inside was telling him to walk away— not just from the request to fill in for a sick copilot, but from the whole Gulf War. From everything.

  General Sherman’s round, light brown face broke into a smile. He obviously thought he was doing Lars a favor, pushing an assignment that would. . .

  That would what? Get him promoted? Get him a medal?

  He didn’t need no damn medal. He needed to get home, go see his daughter Susie again.

  “Some of your experience will come in handy,” added Sherman, still tapping. “That was one of the considerations in asking you.”

  Experience?

  “It’s nothing you haven’t done before,” said the general. “And it is in a C-130. An MC-130”

  I’m not a coward, Lars thought. But I can’t even land the damn plane a hundred miles behind the lines. And an MC-130 wasn’t going to be running toilet paper across Saudi Arabia. The Herks were equipped for low-level penetration of hostile territory. They could perform a variety of missions, none of them exactly easy.

  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.

  CHAPTER 19

  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.

  CHAPTER 20

  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 jit
ters 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.

  Shit. Thinking like a Hog driver already.

  Hack flipped through the sheets on his kneepad, studying the frequencies, the way-points, the notes on fuel burn and the rest. Finally he lifted the last page and exposed the two items he’d pasted to his board on his very first solo years ago— a Gary Larson cartoon and something his father always said.

  He laughed at the cartoon, just as he had on every flight he’d ever made. Then he repeated the saying:

  Do your best.

  Do your best. That’s all you ever needed.

  Preston checked his throttle, shifted a bit on the ejector seat, nudged the Hog to slide a little further out, just off Doberman’s wing.

  Like the others, Preston carried four Maverick AGM-65Gs, one each loaded in the LAU-117 launchers that flanked the main wheels. The G-model Mavericks were serious weapons, featuring three-hundred-pound warheads, more than twice the size of the “standard” B model and extremely adept at pounding armor. But the real value of the missiles was the infra-red imager in their golden noses; A-10A pilots in the Gulf had discovered that the IR gave the plane a primitive night-time capability.

  Primitive indeed. It would be looking at the ground through a straw. But the others had already used the missiles to fly night missions; if they could do it, Hack could too.

  Besides the missiles, A-Bomb and Doberman each had a pair of what looked like napalm containers slapped to the hard points on either side of their bellies. The pods held the STAR Fulton retrieval systems the ground team would use to escape.