Hogs #3 Fort Apache (14 page)

AL
JOUF

25
JANUARY 1991

2350

T
he way A-Bomb
figured it, every hour playing poker was worth two
hours of sleep. The idea of sleep, after all, was to restore your creative
powers and recharge your muscles. Poker did the same thing, only quicker. It
was like taking a sauna, and in fact if you played cards perpetually, you’d
never grow old.

Doberman nonetheless begged off, if “fuck yourself”
could be understood as begging off.

A-Bomb eventually found his way into a game with some
of Klee’s support staff; within a half-hour he was twenty dollars ahead in a quarter-limit
game. They were conservative for commandoes, and had apparently not even heard
of Baseball. He was just explaining the intricacies of the poker variant when a
youngish staff sergeant appeared and called the officers to a meeting with the
Special Ops colonel.

A-Bomb immediately decided that he and Doberman
belonged at the meeting.

“Screw off and drop dead,” grumbled Doberman, when
A-Bomb tried to wake him.

“Yo, Colonel Klee wants to see us.”

“Why, the war over?”

“Could be.”

Doberman turned, but only enough to determine from the
lack of light that it was still nighttime. “Go away,” he growled. “Tell the
colonel to eat shit.”

“He’s standing right here.”

“My ass.”

This was the sort of challenge that made it worth
fetching the colonel and bringing him back, just to see the look on Doberman’s
face when he saw that he actually had cursed out a colonel. But that would take
too long, and he really wanted to check out the meeting. So he settled for
merely shaking the cot.

“Hey, let’s go,” he told Doberman. “Something big’s
got to be boiling. I was playing cards with half the guy’s staff and. . .”

“You’re out of your friggin’ mind.”

“Nah, they’re not that good.”

“Good night, A-Bomb.”

“If there’s anything going down, I want to be there. Maybe
Dixon’s in trouble.”

Doberman rolled over. “Oh fuckin’ hell goddamn all
right. Shit. All I want is ten god-damn minutes of rest in this country.”

“Shoulda come and play cards. Fountain of youth.
That’s what I’m talking about.”

###

By the time the two pilots got there, Klee was talking
with someone on a scrambler phone set. The man obviously outranked him, since
he was being uncharacteristically polite.

A-Bomb’s attention was suddenly snagged by a half-full
Mr. Coffee at three o’clock. He set an intercept vector, jinking past a pair of
semi-hostile-looking majors, arriving at the machine just as the colonel hung
up the line.

“All right, I guess you probably heard that,” the
colonel told his officers. “Riyadh’s tasking an F-111. Don’t bother Wong,” he
added quickly. “I know what you’re fucking going to say but it’s no use. Chris,
you and Cleso get with Wong here and figure out some sort of backup plan. One
that’ll work and that we can do ourselves. Kelly, get Hawkins on the line at
Fort Apache and tell him what the hell is going on. Get our people as far away
from there as you can. Ruth will be compromised by the hit, even if they’re not
poisoned. Put those helicopters to work. Charly, find them a new sector to
sift.”

A-Bomb took a gulp of coffee, then immediately spit it
back into the cup.

Decaf. The ultimate war crime.

He looked up and realized that everyone was staring at
him.

“So what’s our assignment?”

“Assignment?” asked the colonel. “What the hell are
you two doing here?”

“Waiting for an assignment,” said A-Bomb. “Certainly
not drinking coffee.”

“You’re supposed to be resting.” Klee gave a furious
glance behind A-Bomb toward Doberman.

Not nearly as furious as the one Doberman gave to
A-Bomb.

“Ah, we’ll rest on the way,” said A-Bomb. “We bird-doggin’
for the Aardvarks? Or escorting the helos?”

“Who the hell said you had an assignment?”

“Excuse us, Colonel,” said Doberman. “We just thought,
since our guy is up there –”

“Get your butts back to bed,” snapped the colonel, “or
wherever it is you damn Hog pilots go when you’re not blowing up things. Shit,
what are you trying to do, win the war all by yourselves?”

“Only if we have to,” said A-Bomb
—
 whose words,
fortunately for him, were muffled by Doberman’s hand as he was dragged toward
the door.

SUGAR
MOUNTAIN

25
JANUARY 1991

2355

“C
aptain’s
on the
line,” Leteri told Dixon,
holding out the radio handset. “Reception’s in and out, but I think it’ll hold
together.”

Dixon glanced at Winston before speaking. The
sergeant’s face seemed somewhat peaceful; he was snoring.

“This is Dixon.”

“Hey,” said Hawkins. The line clicked on and off, but
the words that did come through were sharp. “We have orders.”

The line died for a second. “. . .Cornfield.”

“Repeat,” said Dixon. When there wasn’t an answer, he
asked again.

“Solo at four,” said Hawkins. He said something else
that was lost, then repeated, “Solo at four. Cornfield.”

It was the command for an evacuation. Four was 0400,
and the Cornfield was the spot where they had first watched the highway.

It was a good location for the helicopters, but would
Winston make it?

“You know our situation?” he asked the captain.

There was a long, empty silence. Finally, Hawkins’
voice snapped onto the line. “They’re flashing the pipe 0500.”

A bombing mission.

“Repeat?” asked Dixon, but again there was no answer.
He tried twice more before Hawkins came back with the bug-out command.

“Acknowledged. We copy. We’ll be waiting,” Dixon told
him, signing off.

###

The scream sounded like something out of a horror
movie, only it didn’t end.

“Put him back. Okay, okay,” said Dixon. He felt his
hands starting to shake. Sweat poured from around his neck as he and Turk lowered
Winston as gently as possible. Leteri was already pushing the plunger on the
morphine as they stood back.

The sergeant continued to scream, then gasped for breath.
Dixon fell to his hands and knees. He stooped over Winston, wondering if he
should give him mouth to mouth.

Or maybe just let him die.

He couldn’t.

As he leaned forward, the sergeant’s breath caught; he
started screaming again, though this time the howl was softer. Dixon took that
as a good sign.

Twenty minutes passed before the morphine finally took
hold. Winston’s groans gradually faded into a soft scat song of pain. Finally,
his mouth loosened and his breathing became more regular.

As soon as they lifted him again, he yelled again.

“Down,” said Dixon. He had the sergeant’s head, and
cradled it gently as they replaced the wounded man on the ground. “We’re going
to have to leave him here,” he told the others.

“Leave him?” said Leteri.

“I don’t mean alone. I’m staying.”

“That’s not a good idea,” said Turk.

“We’re screwing something up just lifting him,” said
Dixon. “I don’t want him paralyzed.”

“Better that than dead,” said Bobby.

Dixon could tell from their expressions that some of
the others weren’t so sure.

“You don’t think he’s paralyzed already?” asked
Leteri.

“He wouldn’t scream if was, I don’t think,” said Turk.
“Maybe if we had a backboard or something.”

Winston turned his head into Dixon’s knee. His eyes
were closed but he seemed to be struggling to say something. Dixon bent to
listen, but the words weren’t intelligible.

His mother had done that a few days before she died.
The image of monitors and their color-coded lines and numbers right next to her
head blurred in his eyes as he leaned over.

What he thought she said was, “Kill me.” But he
couldn’t be sure.

Maybe it was “Save me.” That was what he wanted her to
say. That was what he wanted to do.

“Lieutenant?”

“Here’s the deal,” Dixon said, standing. “I stay with
the sergeant. You guys go up to the Cornfield, get picked up, come back for us.
We have an hour before the bomb strike; that’s plenty of time.”

“I think I should stay,” said Turk. “Me and Bobby.”

“Why don’t we just have the helo pick us all up here?”
Leteri suggested.

“Even if the radio were working right, Apache’s off
the air by now,” said Dixon. “They won’t be listening for us.”

“Fuck, we can get them through Riyadh once the
helicopter’s in the air. Or the AWACS. We can take a shot at it, at least.”

“We don’t know what other contingencies there are,”
said Dixon. “They’re going to be coming through shit.”

“Yeah, but hell, there’s shit and then there’s shit,”
said Leteri. “And splitting up is shit.”

Leteri was right, but something made Dixon shake his
head. “Let’s do it this way. We get in and out without any sweat.”

“Captain, let’s be realistic, okay? You don’t have to
prove anything,” said Turk. “We already know you’re brave. We saw you go into
the minefield.”

“No, you know I’m nuts. Brave is something else.”
Dixon shook his head. “It makes more sense for you guys to be together. You can
move faster without me, and probably handle the weapons better. The sergeant
and I are safe enough here, as long as you guys make it to the helicopters.
That’s where the risk is.”

There was logic to his argument, but the others
insisted that keeping the entire team in one place was the safest plan. Dixon
finally agreed to let Leteri take a shot at getting Apache or Riyadh on the
line to change the pickup site. But the satellite system refused to fire back
up.

“All right,” Leteri said. “We have to get to the
Cornfield. But one of us should stay with you as a lookout.”

Dixon laughed. “You think I’m that bad a shot? I got
half the hill covered, and a minefield besides. I can pin a battalion down from
here.”

“We’re not saying you can’t shoot straight,” said
Turk. “We just don’t want you in over your head.”

Dixon started to laugh. He was so far in over his head
that nothing worse would make any difference. “I’m okay. Seriously. Look, it
makes more sense for you guys to stay together. You’re the ones in danger, not
me.”

“Yeah, but –”

“Look, I outrank you all, and I’m giving you an
order.”

“With all due respect,” said Leteri. “I mean, shit,
don’t go Rambo, you know?”

Dixon didn’t feel quite as nonchalant as he acted, but
he wasn’t lying about thinking it was smarter for them to go.

“Who’s going Rambo?” he told Leteri. “The helicopters
will get me after they pick you up. You don’t think they’re going to leave me
here, do you?”

“No.”

“You guys gonna forget the way?”

“Fuck you,” said Leteri.

“Fuck you back. Think of it this way
—
they’re a hell
of a lot more likely to come back for me than for one of you guys, don’t you
think?”

Leteri didn’t have an argument for that.

###

Dixon turned over the M-16A2, which had an M203 40mm
grenade launcher attached to it. The rifle was still fairly light, though the
bulk made it feel a bit awkward.

“You okay with that?” Leteri asked.

“Just like a shotgun, right?” he said, pointing at the
pump-action on the launcher’s barrel. The grenade mechanism was installed below
the rifle’s main barrel.

“You got maybe four hundred yards range. Better to put
one in front of your target than behind
—
but not too far in front, if you know what I mean.
First time you launch it, your shoulder’s gonna kick a bit.”

“I won’t even need it,” said Dixon.

“Good thing to have.”

“Oh yeah. I agree.”

The grenade launcher and M-16 combo was a standard
configuration but Dixon had never seen one up close, much less used one. A
breechloader that worked, as Dixon had said, much like a A-Bomb, the launcher
was not particularly difficult to use. Still, he wasn’t entirely convinced that
his first salvo wouldn’t land at his feet.

It did make the M-16 look kind of ugly, though. That
was comforting. Hog pilots liked things that looked ugly.

“Take care,” he told them, “see you in a couple of
hours.”

“Sir.” Leteri stood back and snapped off a drill
sergeant salute.

Dixon gave it back. Then he tried to smile, but either
he was too tired or reality was starting to sink in. He couldn’t manage more
than an awkward, off-kilter grin.