Hogs #1: Going Deep (24 page)

OVER IRAQ

0610

Doberman didn't need
a calculator to know they didn't
have anywhere near enough jet fuel to double back and help
Mongoose and Dixon. In fact, he
suspected they would run themselves dry even if they found the Iraqis and
crashed
them in record time.

Which made it all the harder to leave them. But it was
the only thing to do.

A-Bomb concurred. "I say we kick butt on the refuel,
then go find them."

"You read my mind."

"Damn, I'd like a piece of that," moaned A-Bomb.
"Air-to-air Hog
action. It's what I'm talking about."

Doberman decided to make absolutely certain the AWACS
people knew how low Mongoose and Dixon
were going to be when
they finished their job.

"Cougar, this is Devil Two. Request that you
expedite a
tanker
contact for Devil One and Devil Four. They're beyond
bingo."

It took a while for the E-3 Sentry to respond.

"Affirmative. We will try to assist any way we
can."
The controller
paused, then added, "How's your fuel
situation?"

"We should be at Texaco in ten," Doberman
said. Even with all the stops out, the estimate of the time it would
take to reach the tanker was wildly
optimistic.

"Affirmative. Don't worry about your buddies; we
have some CAP coming up from the south to assist. Should arrive
in three or four minutes."

"Appreciate that," he answered.

"Hey," barked A-Bomb after the transmission
with the AWACS was complete. "How come it's Texaco? Why not Sunoco?
My cousin works for Sunoco."

"I didn't know you were related to a suit."

"What suit? He makes change in a little booth on
the
Jersey shore. You're
ever around Cape May, tell him I sent
you. He'll give you some free window-wash."

"Can't wait."

OVER IRAQ

0614

"
They're firing at
the choppers, not us.”

Dixon had already pulled the Hog down and hit the chaff
and flares before Mongoose's words sank in. Gravity and
momentum whacked him broadside as he
tried to yank the plane
back
onto the intercept course. The leading-edge wing slats
groaned as the Hog literally slid
sideways, engines whining.
The
pilot felt as if he was being stabbed in the chest as he worked the stick and
rudders a hundred feet off the ground. Something whizzed by the canopy— the
missile that had been launched; one of the helicopters; maybe even an angel
.

"You go high, I'll go low," said Mongoose,
unaware that
Dixon's position had changed so
radically.

***

Mongoose didn't wait for the kid to acknowledge as he
angled after the darting grasshopper. He knew now that his opponent was hardly
a utility chopper. Iraq had something
like forty of the Mil M-24 Hind helicopter gunships,
extremely potent warbirds that combined the best features of
the American Apache with the
Blackhawk. Like the Apache, it was primarily a ground attack weapon, but its
nose-mounted
Gatling
cannon was not to be taken lightly by anybody,
Warthog
included.

Mongoose angled upwards, taking the Hog into a banking
turn toward the helicopter's
vulnerable rear as he approached. But the chopper had been waiting for his
move,
and pushed to get
inside him. Mongoose realized it too late to spin
back sharply enough to get a firing
solution. That left him further away as the chopper broke for all it was worth,
running about two inches off the ground.

He lost it in the confusion. Mongoose went into a wide
bank and started sweating. Maybe it
was only a helicopter, but that didn't mean it couldn't shoot him down if it
was in
the right position.

The pilot whirled his head around, eyes flailing the
empty sky. Cursing, he yanked back in
the other direction, then saw the black cricket kicking dust north. It
fluttered
through the
diamond aiming cue on his HUD screen as he
worked to bring his adrenaline— and the plane— back
under
control.

The AIM-9 growled at him, telling him it thought it
could make the shot from here. He
hesitated a second, then
pushed the button.

***

Dixon found himself swimming in the cockpit, as if
trying to get up from the bottom of a very deep lake. His
head pressed back against the seat so
hard it felt like it
was would break through.

Oxygen gulped down his throat, his heart galloped. He
was losing it again.

Look at the throttle, Knowlington had told him.

It was stupid advice. Take your eyes off the windscreen
where they belonged, and look at the
throttle? Maybe back in
Vietnam
they did that kind of thing, but not here. He might
just as well get out of the plane and
kick the tires.

Gravity was an immense piano, smashing down from twenty
stories. His maneuvers robbed his
brain cells of oxygen, robbed him of sensation. He couldn't think, couldn't
see,
couldn't fly.

Look at the god damn throttle, he told himself.

What the hell.

Dixon wrenched his head to the left, forced his eyes
downward, forced a slower
breath into his lungs, saw the
handle pushed all the way to max.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, he said, pulling his head back
to the front
of the
plane, focusing on the HUD. Start from scratch. Slow
down.

Altitude 1250 feet, climbing.

Okay, okay, okay, he told himself, forcing an
excruciatingly
long
exhale from his lungs. You don't have to be calm, just
in control.

Okay, okay, okay, he told himself. Level off. Check your
heading. Find the bastard.

O
kay,
okay, okay. T
he Hind
darted across the upper right
quadrant of his screen, gun flailing at the Pave Lows and
the major they'd come to save.

***

"Fire Fox Two," said Mongoose, announcing the
heat-seeking missile shot as the
Sidewinder clunked down
from
his wingtip. But even as the unfamiliar words left his
mouth, the pilot realized that no
matter what the missile
thought,
he'd fired from too great a range and angle to guarantee a hit. The helicopter
was already whipping hard to
the east, letting off a succession of flares to confuse the
heat-seeker.

It didn't matter now. His job was to protect the Pave
Lows, not collect a kill. Whether the
missile got it or not,
that
Hind was no longer a treat. Mongoose swung back to help
Dixon crash the other bird.

He saw the rescue helicopters first; both were on the
desert floor dead ahead. The Hind materialized on his left,
cannon smoking as it roared into the middle
of his screen.

The Sidewinder growled. Mongoose punched the button, felt
it kick off, and in the same instant realized Dixon was
cutting across from the right toward
the Iraqi, crossing
directly for the path the
AIM-9 would take.

OVER IRAQ

0617

The Iraqi pilot
cursed as the cannon beneath the
helicopter's nose began to rumble.
His gunner had begun
firing much too soon.

No matter. The distance between himself and the two
American helicopters was closing
rapidly. It was only a
matter of ten or
fifteen seconds.

The appearance of the American planes had caused him
only a second's hesitation. He
couldn't blame his companion in the second Hind for turning off; those were,
after all,
their orders.

But it was something Captain Vali would never do. The
two American planes had flown past, obviously trying for a
better position for attack. They were
odd planes, nearly black with forked tails and strangely placed engines. He
guessed that they had decided to concentrate on the other
helicopter first, and would soon be
coming for him.

He had several evasive maneuvers planned. But he would
wait until he had accomplished his
first mission— the enemy
helicopters. 
Galloping forward, he heard his co-pilot shouting something in his com set, and
realized the cannon
was
whirling around on its axis toward another target.

OVER IRAQ

0619

The helicopter's slow
speed crossed him up. Dixon
misjudged his approach and lost any
possibility of a shot,
not
even with his cannon. As he pulled off he saw Mongoose
coming out of the northwest; some
inexplicable pilot's sense
made
him roll the Hog hard to the right even as the launch
warning sparked the radio.

The indium-antimonide in the guidance section of the
AIM-9M Mongoose had fired had its
heart set on the Hind.
Even
so, the proximity of Dixon's exhaust was so tempting
that for a half-second the little
brain couldn't decide what
to do.

In that half second, two things happened: The targeted
Hind shot off flares and changed
course momentarily, away from the Pave Lows. And Dixon rolled the Hog and his
IR
signature away from the missile.

The AIM-9's proximity fuse circuitry got so confused
that it decided it had missed its
target and therefore ought
to
detonate anyway.

Had they been close enough, the fragments would have
done serious damage to a typical, unarmored air frame. In this case, however,
they were just so much more shrapnel
littering the air as Dixon recovered from his swooping
roll
and swung for the
chopper. The Hind splashed out some bullets in his direction, then cranked back
toward the Pave
Lows, guns blazing.

Throttle to the firewall, the Hog moved nearly twice as
fast as the Hind; the pilot was nearly
in front of the helicopter before realizing where the hell he was. He pulled
hard left, knocking the Iraqi off his
course but taking a
wing's
worth of 12.7 mm shells for his persistence.

Orbiting quickly, Dixon took as slow a breath as he
dared, steadying his hand on the stick, glancing at the
weapons panel though he knew the
cannon was ready. This time
he didn't need Knowlington's advice - he felt the stick in his grip,
felt the plane around him, saw the Hind flashing
to the right and knew that it would fall into the
Hog's
crosshairs in a half second.

***

There is no precise formula for becoming a combat
pilot, no clear line to be crossed. A
green newbie passes a
series
of initiations that guarantee nothing and yet are more critical than oxygen. It
happens in various ways at
various
times, sometimes noticeably, most often not.

For Lieutenant William James "BJ" Dixon, it
happened
the second he
pressed his finger on the red trigger,
lighting the A-lOA's GAU-8/A Avenger cannon, and watched
as
the stream of 30
millimeter slugs tore the helicopter in
front
of him to pieces.

ON THE GROUND IN IRAQ

0623

Captain Hawkins shoved
the British pilot to the ground as
the fireball erupted less than a hundred yards from them.
Oil, metal and blood rained through
the air, the Hind spewing its guts as it tumbled into the desert, the biggest
chunk of the wreck just clearing the
second Pave Low, squatting on the ground thirty yards beyond Hawkins' craft.

"Go, let's go," he screamed, spitting sand
from his
mouth. He clawed
the back of the pilot's flight suit, lifting
and dragging him to the door of the waiting chopper. A
crewman helped him pitch the major in,
head-first.

Sergeant Winston and one of the other squad members
crawled over him. The inside of the
giant chopper echoed with shouts. Hawkins felt the floor move beneath his
stomach. He rolled, smacking his arm against
something very
hard as the MH-53 lifted off.

"Rhodes, you okay?" he asked the British pilot
as he got
to his knees.

"Bloody hell," said the pilot, looking up from
the
floor. "I do
believe I've lost my lucky pen."

The Special Forces squad and nearby crew members
exploded with laughter. Hawkins was
practically blinking
away
tears as he scanned the compartment, making sure
everyone had gotten back safely.

"We're all here, sir," smirked Winston.
"Cut it a bit
close,
though. Good thing the Iraqi was off with that first
round of missiles or we'd be walking."

While RAF Major Rhodes searched his various pockets for
the pen, Hawkins patted his own
uniform down - he wasn't
entirely convinced
he'd made it back intact.

He had. Along with the rest of his team.

"Kind of close, huh Captain?" Winston asked,
smirking.
"Our
friends took their time," he added, jerking his finger
toward the window. The two A-lOAs
were disappearing in the
distance.

"Were those Thunderbolts?" Rhodes asked.

"Warthogs," said Winston. "Nasty mothers."

"Quite," said the Brit approvingly. "But
bloody ugly."

"I don't know," said Hawkins. "They
looked kind of pretty to me. Welcome aboard, Major. You want some tea?
It'll be cold by now, but it is Earl
Gray."