Hogs #3 Fort Apache (11 page)

ON
THE GROUND IN IRAQ

25
JANUARY 1991

1920

I
t was
Leteri
who realized the ground
between the two hills was mined. Something about the neatness of it tipped him
off just in time to grab Dixon’s arm and yank him physically backwards.

“Stop!” yelled the sergeant. “Everyone freeze right
where you are.”

He didn’t use the word “mines.” He didn’t have to.

Winston and Green were nearly twenty yards deep in the
minefield, which lay below the sheer rock of the old quarry. Staffa Turk was
five yards behind Dixon, himself maybe seven or eight yards deep. The others
were stretched out in a jagged line either ahead or over toward the road on the
rocks, apparently safe.

Maybe. It was fairly dark and difficult to tell.

“What we’re going to do is go back exactly the way we
came in,” Winston told the others. He pulled the flashlight from his vest; the
others did the same. “We’re going to do it one person at a time, and we’re
going to move slowly no matter what happens. Turk, you go, then the Lieutenant.
Use your lights to check the marks on the ground. Watch for mine nubs, if you
can.”

It seemed to take forever for the Trooper to back out.
Finally, he shouted for Dixon to come.

Dixon had only the roughest idea of where he had
stepped. He started to turn. Leteri yelled at him to stop.

“Exactly the way you came, BJ. Backwards if you can.
Lean back with your right foot. That was the step you took.” He directed him
with his light. “I can tell by the way you’re standing. See that mark there?”

“You’re right. Thanks.” He put his leg backwards,
trying to pretend he was a character in a rewinding video. He found a foothold,
shifted his weight, and took the backwards step. Whether he had found the exact
footfall or just got lucky, nothing happened.

Three more steps and he was still intact. It would
take four or five more to reach the boundary, where large boulders strewn on
the gentle slope showed they’d be safe.

Probably.

“Go as slow as you want, Lieutenant,” said Winston.
“No rushing here.”

Dixon flexed his upper leg muscles and studied the
ground. He resisted the dash back to the line that was supposed to mean safety,
tried to remember how he had walked, and saw the shadow of a boot print.

Or was it the top of a mine?

He moved his foot at the last second, planted, moved
back another step, then another.

When he was finally far enough away, he let the com
gear and his ruck sack slide off his back in a heap. Dixon rolled his head
backwards on his neck and let out a breath of air so huge he nearly fell over.

Leteri came back next. Only Green and Winston were
left. Green was ahead of Winston but the team leader insisted that he come back
first.

“Just do what I fucking tell you to do,” he growled
when Green protested. “Can’t you hear I’m getting hoarse?”

Dutifully, the medic began to retrace his steps. The
arc he had followed took him near Winston’s position; they exchange a sardonic
glance as he passed. Green took a step back, then rested, flexing as much as he
could without moving his feet. He was about ten yards, no more, from safety,
near where Dixon had been.

Practically home.

He took another step back, and exploded.

ON
THE GROUND IN IRAQ

25
JANUARY 1991

1927

I
t was a
movie
he was watching. The camera
panned back from a wide shot, moving away from the brief flash and burst of
dirt. Two dark bodies jumped against the dull shadows behind them, one twisting
forward in a macabre dance, the other falling straight over from the side, like
a tree axed by a woodsman. As the dust and smoke settled into the twilight, a
figure ran toward the dancer. Its steps were awkward and fitful, as if
following an unheard music score.

The camera view changed, zooming on the second body,
closing in on the sand-colored motley of his uniform, the odd shapes of brown
and yellow and tan blurring as the lens momentarily lost focus. The camera
swirled, and then showed the ground, hard-pressed dirt and sand galloping by in
an artistic effect, pitching in a way that made him slightly seasick, and
seemed at the same time to weigh down on his back.

Finally the lens fell on a black boot stained with a
spatter of blood brighter than the red of a spring poppy plant. It stayed there
for a moment, drinking in the color and finely lined pattern, then moved to
another spot of red, another perfect splotch, this one on a dull yellow and
black fabric. The camera moved forward and the fabric was revealed to be an
arm, the hand gripping something tightly, its long, slender fingers curled so
tightly the small veins popped greenish-blue against the knuckles.

And then the camera moved back again, beginning a pan
as its movement stopped; something fell slowly through the frame, another body,
the same body the shot had begun with. The lens moved up and found a thick,
pained face, creased with lines and the stubble of a day-old beard. The mouth
moved with a groan or a curse; it was impossible to say.

###

“Green’s dead,” said Leteri, still huffing.

Turk was leaning over Winston. “Don’t talk, Sarge. Let
me get this around your leg.”

Winston’s protest contorted into a groan as Turk
pulled the bandage around the open wound. Bits of muscle and gore splayed out;
Dixon saw what he thought was the thigh bone, white gray amid the sea of blood.

“He’s trying to tell you that was a stupid thing,
running into the minefield,” Leteri told Dixon.

“If I only did smart things I wouldn’t be here,” said
Dixon.

Turk rolled Winston onto his side. The back of his
uniform was already dark with blood.

“We’re gonna have to look at this real careful,” said
Turk.

Dixon realized the others were looking at him,
expecting him to say something, even if it was the most obvious thing.

Which was?

“We’re exposed here,” Leteri said. “Let’s find some
cover.”

“You think we ought to move him?” asked Turk.

The sergeant’s moans had faded into one continuous
semi-screech. Dixon knelt next to him and gently placed his two fingers along
the sergeant’s neck.

“Weak pulse, but with us,” Dixon said.

For a moment, the words jangled in his mind, reviving
a memory of the last time he’d felt for someone’s pulse. It was his mother’s,
nearly a year ago, and the result had been very different
—
he’d been
feeling for himself, the last time, to make sure what the machines were saying,
what the doctor and nurses were saying, was true, that she was dead.

“We shouldn’t move him, probably.” Dixon stood up
quickly. “But we have to have better cover than this. Those rocks up there.
Leteri, can you check them out? Mo, Staffa, scout the road and then cover us.
Bobby and I will move the sergeant as gently as we can, once Leteri gives us
the all clear.”

The men jumped into action. It was only later, after
they set the sergeant down, that Dixon realized he had given orders and they’d
followed them without question.

AL
JOUF FOA, SAUDI ARABIA

25
JANUARY 1991

2050

T
hey
looked like
Warthogs with tits.

Two five hundred gallon tanks, with elaborate air-drop
chutes custom-welded around them, had been slapped to the number five and seven
hard-points beneath the A-10As’ wings. The basic drop tanks had been borrowed
from RAF Tornadoes
—
an accomplishment in itself, since as far as Doberman
knew there were none at the base. Tinman had worked out the modifications
himself, with help from Wong and Rosen. They were equipped with parachutes that
worked off altimeter settings; apparently these included a pair of
more-or-less-standard Special Ops chutes and three smaller drag “foils” from British
bombs ordinarily used to crater runways.

Rosen had explained the mechanics of the
chute-and-baffle system to Doberman, but the setup seemed as much of a marvel as
the MRE A-Bomb was wolfing down. The bottom line was that she said it would all
work.

Probably.

Wong seemed to agree. Which in itself made Doberman
nervous.

“You really ought to try one of these MREs,” said A-Bomb.
“This sole in vermouth with a touch of lemon
—
it’s what I’m talking about.”

“Sole in vermouth?” asked Rosen.

“Sorry, finished. I got lobster bisque with crabmeat
and a squeeze of saffron left. You want it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You got to buddy up with the Special Ops guys if you
want decent grub,” said A-Bomb, opening the plastic packet and pouring it into
a drab green cup. “They got connections.”

Doberman nearly fell over from the stench of the simmering
concoction wafting across the desert. He shook his head.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said A-Bomb. “Should
have gone with the soup course first, right?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.” Doberman shook
his head. “You ready?”

“I was born ready.”

Doberman turned to inspect his airplane. Rosen followed.
One think he had to give her
—
these planes couldn’t have been in better shape than
if they’d just rolled out of the factory.

“Listen, Captain, don’t forget, you have to drop from
thirty-five hundred feet so the chutes can fully deploy and the landing is soft.
All right?”

Rosen was about the only crew member in the squadron
—
maybe the only
person in the Air Force
—
who physically looked up at the five-foot-four
Doberman. Maybe it was just the angle of her face that made her look less
severe than she’d ever seemed before.

For just a second.

“I’ll give it a shot,” he told her.

Rosen smiled. “Kick butt, Captain.”

She chucked him on the shoulder harder than a
linebacker.

###

Forty-five minutes worth of butt-grinding Hog driving
later, Doberman checked his map against the INS and his watch. They were thirty
seconds off, close enough for anyone but him. He edged his power forward
infinitesimally, recalculating and adjusting until he had the thing nailed.

Wong had sketched the Hogs a route to the fuel drop
points that was considerably more direct than the path the helicopters were
taking. Even so, the timetable was tight and the course was not the easiest;
they still had one known Iraqi position to overfly.

The Air Force had once planned to upgrade the A-10A
with things like ground-avoidance radar and night-seeing equipment
—
reasonably
necessary items, given the Hog’s primary mission to work with ground troops.
But the A-10 was always treated like a forlorn stepchild at budget time; the
pointy nose fast jets got all the fancy gear, and the Hogs had to make do with
leftovers, hand-me-downs, and wishful thinking.

Still, even something as basic as an autopilot would
have been nice, Doberman thought. For one thing, it would make it easier to
pee, which he suddenly had to do.

No way he was braving the piddlepack until after the
drop.

They went over the Iraqi position without drawing any
fire; without, in fact, a hint that there was anything besides sand beneath
their wings. Doberman adjusted his course as he planned the next way marker
—
he had it
tight this time, and he edged the plane’s nose below five thousand feet, angled
perfectly to hit 3,500 feet in exactly two minutes and twenty seconds at the drop
point.

He checked the Maverick screen. As a primitive
night-vision device, it was far from perfect, but at least he could make out
the road Wong had marked on his map just south of the target.

Perfect. Doberman keyed his mike to make sure A-Bomb hadn’t
fallen asleep.

In the next second, the sky in front of him erupted
orange-green, the flak so thick it looked like a psychedelic waterfall.

CHAPTER 26

ON
THE GROUND IN IRAQ

25 JANUARY
1991

2050

T
hey dug
a
shallow grave at the edge of the
minefield and buried Green, making sure to get a good read from the
geo-positioner so they could retrieve the body when the mission was over.

The men looked to Dixon to say something, or at least
he thought they did. He stepped up and asked them to bow their heads. Standing
solemnly at the head of the medic’s grave, he remembered his mother’s funeral,
and a passage flew into his head: a reading from Job about God’s justification
for mankind’s trials:

Gird up now thy loins
like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

Wilt thou also disannul
my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?

Hast thou an arm like
God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?

Deck thyself now with
majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty.

That was as far as the reading had gone at the funeral.
Dixon’s voice fell silent. But after a few seconds, Staff Sergeant Staffa Turk,
demolitions expert and tail gunner, filled out the verse:

Cast aboard the rage of
thy wrath, and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on everyone that is
proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked in their place.

Hide them in the dust
together, and bind their faces in secret. Then will I also confess unto thee
that thine own right hand can save thee.

###

Winston’s back had been peppered with shrapnel and
bits of Green. The bleeding was difficult to gauge; Dixon worried that some of
the wounds had hit his spine and the nerves around it. They made the sergeant as
comfortable as they could, hiding him in a crevice along the rock ledge that
gave them a reasonably good view of the road, the minefield, and the next hill,
though not the rest of the quarry. They could fight from here, if they had to.

Each trooper carried a syringe of morphine. They
debated whether to give it to Winston or not. He was moaning and certainly in
some pain, but if they used it they’d have nothing else to give him. And they
couldn’t be sure how long it would be before they could be evacuated.

Once again, the men looked to Dixon to decide. It
seemed to him that the best thing to do was call Fort Apache, the forward base
that was supposed to be their support link, and see what could be arranged.
Once they knew helos were on the way, they could give him the shot.

“If he starts screaming, then we absolutely have to
knock him out,” said Leteri.

“Definitely,” agreed Dixon.

The radio had been hit by something when the mine
exploded. Leteri set up the antenna, sure that he could get it to work somehow.
The other members of the fire team began searching the quarry, trying to figure
out why the mines were there. Dixon, meanwhile, looked after the wounded man,
trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

There wasn’t much he could do, except wad a shirt as a
pillow and cover him with a blanket. Dixon felt as helpless as his last days in
ICU, watching his mother fade into the night. Weird thoughts had gone through
his head then; one moment he’d see himself yanking out the tubes, another
moment his eyes would flood with tears and he’d conjure wild promises and deals
with God to keep her alive.

“Radio’s pretty screwed, Lieutenant,” said Leteri.
“It’s the power, I think. The battery got whacked. I’ll keep trying.”

“Makes sense,” said Dixon.

“How’s Winston?”

Dixon shrugged. He wanted to be objective
—
he wasn’t a
doctor and he had no idea what the extent of the wounds were. The sergeant’s
pulse was strong. But there were at least three big wounds along his spine.

Turk appeared at the ridge before Dixon could find a
way to diplomatically say he was afraid the sergeant might be paralyzed.

“Hey Lieutenant, you want to come look at this right
away,” he said. “I think I found what those mines are all about.”