HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (22 page)

“You need help? What?” Hack asked.

“The missile is irrelevant,” said Wong, pulling at
Hack’s shoulder.

“Not to me,” said Hack.

A pair of Chinooks shot overhead, their heavy
rotors shaking the earth. Wong started speaking nonetheless.

“It is an AA-7 Aphid, not an AA-11. The type is
thoroughly understood. Even if we can install it, the missile will only add
needlessly to your weight, and time is short. You won’t need it,” added Wong.

The captain was right.

“Is it fueled?”

“Four thousand kilos, as you directed. That will
cut your range. . .”

“It’s fine. I’m not going to California.” Hack
pushed the ladder back against the plane. His left wrist collapsed but he
ignored the pain, shoving the ladder with his shoulder.

Wong helped, but grabbed Hack as he started up.
“Your left hand?”

“Banged my wrist.”

“Can you fly?”

Hack shrugged. “Let’s see if I can get the damn
thing started. Get the fuel truck out of the way.”

Still holding onto Hack’s flight vest, Wong put
his other hand around Hack’s wrist and squeezed. Even if it hadn’t been
injured, the pressure would have hurt— but Hack did his best not to acknowledge
the pain. He pulled away and climbed the ladder.

By now the cockpit seemed almost familiar, the
ten-degree-canted seat a favorite La-Z-Boy recliner. The parachute harness
attached with a single clasp at the chest. Hack had trouble with it, struggling
to position his body and cinch it at the same time. His left hand was so
worthless, he kept it in his lap as he donned the oxygen mask and mad the
connections on the left side of the cockpit. He checked the brake, took a
breath, and began working through the engine start procedure.

Do your best.

His flight board. He didn’t have it.

Screw it now. He had to go, go, go.

Designed from the very beginning to work under
primitive conditions, the MiG-29 had an admirably austere feel that would not
go unappreciated by an A-10A aficionado. Though a completely different aircraft
with an entirely different mission, the Fulcrum had also been engineered to
rely on mechanical systems— not cutting-edge computers and fly-by-wire gizmos.
One of those systems was the doors that closed off the engine inlets to avoid
ingesting debris when taking off. Another was the auxiliary power unit, which
sent a big breath of compressed air across the left Tumanski R33D turbofan,
spinning until it coughed and clicked and surged.

And died.

If Hack’s left wrist hadn’t been sprained already,
he would have sprained it when he slammed it against the throttle bar, pissed
that he had come this far only to fail. He screamed the whole way through a
second start sequence, but couldn’t get the engine to kick again— he had no
power, in fact, on the panel.

From the beginning, he told himself. Start over.
Slow.

He was already trying to think up a way to have
the tractor puff the Tumanski when the plane’s auxiliary unit managed to wind
the power plant with a small huff of air. This time it coughed loud and whirled
into a steady roar, everything vibrating wildly.

Hack checked the rpm— sturdy, in the middle of the
gauge, but what exactly was the spec?

He’d blanked, but the number didn’t matter. He got
the next engine up anyway. The rumble was firm; there was no doubt he was in
the green.

Was there?

The dials were all over the place — he was sitting
in an F-15 with instruments from an A-10 that had been arranged by a
schizophrenic engineer.

Weren’t all engineers schizophrenic?

Go over the restraints again, check the flight
gear, don’t fuck up. Oxygen— something was wrong, because he wasn’t getting
anything out of the mask.

As he leaned over to examine the panel near his
left elbow, he realized for the first time that the hose had been split between
one of the coils. He’d need to repair it. He pulled it apart, then saw it
wasn’t just split; shrapnel or bullets had blown a series of holes clear
through.

He could just tape it.

No time.

Fly low.

F-14s expected him at thirty thousand feet.

Tough shit on that. Stay at five thousand feet,
lower.

Get nailed by antiair. Forget the Iraqis, the Allies
would nail him.

He would fly low, though not quite so low as that;
it made sense. But it didn’t make sense to fly without an oxygen mask since he
had his own, even if its hose fitting was only a kludge. As the MiG shook
against its brakes, Preston loosened his restraints and leaned over the side of
the plane. Wong and Hawkins were standing a short distance away with another
member of the Delta team, both trying to listen to a single com set.

“My bag!” he screamed. “My bag! My bag!”

They couldn’t hear him over the whine of the
engines. Finally, Eugene saw him and ran over.

“My mask! My mask!” Preston shouted, holding up
the mask he had taken from the Iraqis. “Get the whole bag! The whole bag! I
want my board, too!”

Might as well.

“My bag! Shit!” he screamed.

The engines were too loud. Eugene ran to the get
the ladder.

Hawkins and Wong finally glanced up.

“My bag!” Hack shouted to them. “I need the mask.
And the board.”

Wong pointed to the far end of the runway. At
first, Hack didn’t understand what the hell he was trying to tell him. Finally,
he turned around.

One of the Chinooks had crashed there and was on
fire.

OVER IRAQ

29 JANUARY 1991

0643

Devil Leader, this
is Splash Control.
Buildings are secure and exfiltration is beginning. We have another difficulty.
Please acknowledge.”

Skull had just turned his nose back toward Splash.
A billow of black smoke rose between two Apaches. One of the Chinooks had
crashed after being hit by gunfire.

Knowlington listened to the terse explanation, then
assured Splash Control that he would stay nearby in case he was needed.

He had his own problems, though. The Iraqi relief
column had been neutralized. Three of the helicopters were burning on the
ground and the fourth had scrambled away to the west. But Dixon was still lost
and not answering hails.

As Skull tried to reach the AWACS to request a fix
on his squadron mate, a dark wing crossed behind the smoke wisping from the
carcass of a self-propelled fun at the far end of the highway. He clicked onto the
squadron frequency, hailing Dixon and asking why the hell he hadn’t responded.

He didn’t get an answer.

“Antman, you see him?” Knowlington asked his
wingman.

“Uh, I got him at, uh, call it five miles, four
and a half. He’s heading south of the highway, just passing that open truck I
hit with the gun.”

“I don’t think he has a radio,” Knowlington said.
“Let’s catch up.”

“Four.”

The two Hogs spread out in the sky. Devil Leader
looping ahead and Four angling tighter, aiming to make sure Dixon noticed at least
one of them as he flew. Dixon saw Antman first, wagging his wings slightly,
then starting to climb toward his altitude. By the time Skull swept back around
and drew alongside, Antman had pulled close enough to use hand signals.

“Says he’s all right except for the radio, if I’m
reading his sign language right,” said Antman. “Got to work on his penmanship.”

By even the most optimistic calculation, Dixon
would be well into his reserve fuel by now. He had to get straight home, and he
needed someone to run with him.

Skull knew it had to be Antman; there was no way
he would leave the kid here to take out the MiG y himself. But shepherding a
stricken Hog home wasn’t going to be a picnic either.

Antman was a good, decent pilot with a strong
sense of what he was about. But he was still a kid. Dixon was still a kid.
They’d have to fly more than two hundred miles before putting down; they’d have
to do so over hostile territory at slow speed and relatively low altitude.

Knowlington wanted to go with them— not because he
didn’t think they could do it, but because he felt as if his presence would
somehow protect them, somehow balance against the unpredictable contingencies
and chaos of war.

They weren’t kids, not really. But he felt as if
he ought to be there to protect them.

Hubris. As if he were the omnipotent, not an old
goat with eyes and hands that were steadily slowing.

But that was the way he felt. The closest thing he
would ever feel to a paternal instinct.

“Dixon’s going to be low on fuel,” Knowlington
told his wingman. “You take him south. I’ll hang back and cover Splash.”

“Check, six, Colonel,” said Antman, wishing him
luck with the time-honored slogan of goodwill— and caution.

“Yeah,” Knowlington said. “Check six.”

OVER IRAQ

29 JANUARY 1991

0648

Dixon answered Antman’s
thumbs-up with one
of his own, then settled onto the course heading he had flashed with his
fingers a few moments earlier. The other Hog edged further off his wing, though
it remained so close that BJ thought Antman might be able to hear him if he
popped the canopy up and yelled.

That was the kind of thing A-Bomb would suggest.
Hell, it was the kind of thing A-Bomb might do.

O’Rourke was a damned good flight leader, Dixon
thought as he matched Antman’s slow, steady climb toward the border. He’d laid
out the mission well, kept BJ aware of the situation, responded to his own
problems in a way that guaranteed the mission would succeed. He acted like a
goof-off sometimes, but that was just an act.

The man William James Dixon truly admired was the
old-dog colonel who’d put Antman on his wing as his personal guide dog.
Knowlington was a gray-hair, but there he was, circling back to cover the
Splash team, moving as methodically as a freshly refurbished grandfather clock.

Not long ago, Dixon figured that guys like
Knowlington hung around either out of vanity or in hopes of catching an
adrenaline rush. Now he realized it was neither. After a while, after you went
through enough shit, you didn’t feel any more adrenaline— maybe you didn’t feel
anything. You did your job, and you kept doing it because that was your job. If
your job was the be the gray-haired geezer who knew everything, you did it.

And
his
job?

His job was to get home, to see Becky, feel her
next to him.

As he passed through seven thousand feet, Dixon
spotted a small group of clouds dead ahead. The furls on the left side reminded
him of a kid’s face; it became impossible not to think of the boy who’d saved
his life.

Why had the kid done it? Dixon had saved him a
short while before, but still— to jump on a grenade?

The cloud disappeared as Dixon approached. Perhaps
it hadn’t even been there at all, for the sky before him was about as clear as
he’d ever seen in his life. The Iraqi desert, bleak and cold, spread out below
him. A thick pall hung over the horizon to his left— oil fires in Kuwait, most
likely. Antiair artillery rose up about a mile away, futilely searching the sky
for something to hit.

Why was he here? He could have gone home to
America. Knowlington and the others had made that clear.

The only answer Dixon had was the unlimited sky
and the furling clouds on the ground, the feel of his fingers curling around
his stick, the cold scratch of fatigue at his eyes. There were no answers to
any of his questions about the kid, about his mother, about himself. There was
just gravity and the force of the engines, pushing him along.

That, and the memory of Becky’s body folded
against his.

BJ checked his instruments, then corrected
slightly to keep in Antman’s close shadow.

OVER IRAQ

29 JANUARY 1991

0648

Math had never
been among A-Bomb’s favorite
subjects. While unable to avoid numbers, he nonetheless made it a practice
whenever possible to treat them with the sort of disdain he might show a
month-old French fry.

His loathing of basic arithmetic could not,
however, alter the fact that his fuel gauge was taking a steady and dramatic
plunge toward negative integers. And it didn’t take a quadratic equation to
calculate that there was no way in hell that he was going to make it back to
Saudi Arabia, much less the Home Drome, on his rapidly dwindling supply.

It didn’t make sense— he was flying on one engine
and ought to be using a lot less fuel than normal, which meant the camel’s hump
ought to be at least half full.

Unless, of course, some of those Iraqi gunners had
managed to nick his fuel tanks just right. He had no warning lights. The plane
seemed to be flying just fine. But there was no arguing with the fuel gauge;
A-Bomb had to tank, and soon.

A pair of MH-130s had been tasked with refueling
the helicopters. A Pave Low with a buddy pack was also part of the package as
an emergency backup. Unfortunately, the drogue-and-basket system they used was
incompatible with the boomer receptacle the Hog had in its nose. But as he
glanced at his notes for the nearest tanker track, A-Bomb wondered if there
might be some way to make the system work.

If the A-10 had only had an auto-pilot, he might
have set it, then popped the canopy and crawled on the nose, stuffed the hose
inside the open fuel door and told them to pump away.

Fortunately, Coyote, the AWACS controller
monitoring the area, had a better idea.

“We have a KC-135 on an intercept to you,” said
the controller. “Call sign is Budweiser.”

“What I am talking about,” said A-Bomb, though Budweiser’s
position left him somewhat less enthusiastic— he’d have to climb ten thousand
feet and jog sixty miles west to catch the straw. He turned onto the course,
hoping for the best— and ignoring the math, which showed that even if he did
manage the climb on one engine, he’d run out of fuel about the time the KC-135
came into sight.