Hogs #3 Fort Apache (9 page)

OVER
IRAQ

25
JANUARY 1991

1723

“T
hat’s
the kind
of thing that really pisses
me off,” said A-Bomb as the ZSU began chewing up the air in front of Doberman.
The Iraqi gunner was firing without his radar, but that arguably made him more
dangerous, since nothing short of a high-explosive sandwich could jam the
bastard’s eyesight. A second unit began spinning its turret two hundred yards
to the west, and A-Bomb whistled. He might be pissed that anyone dared fire at
a Hog, let alone his wingmate, but he had to admit that the scummers at least
had some balls in their pants, trying to go after the A-10s without using their
radars and in a nice, isolated, and easy-to-hit spot besides. Granted, their
flak was falling in a useless though artistic pattern across the desert as
Doberman jinked away, but you couldn’t hold that against them.

Well, actually he could and would. A-Bomb fell into
the attack, adrenaline pumping. For the briefest second he contemplated taking
the Hog in and using the cannon; this was exactly the sort of down-in-the-dirt,
no-holds-barred mud fight the Hog was built for, flying into Adul’s 23mm
shells, tickling proximity fuses, and laughing at the shrapnel spiking the air.
Mano a mano
, sweat versus sweat, my dad can take your dad, and your
mom’s ugly, too. It had been almost twenty-four hours since A-Bomb had revved
up the gat, and he felt like he was going through withdrawal.

But, truth be told, that would take too long and might
give the Iraqis the idea that firing at a Hog was an acceptable thing to do. So
he sighed, dialed in his Mavs and push-buttoned the mobile anti-air batteries
to hell.

The AGMs’ flights to target were short and sweet. The
penetration of the flat, tank-like turrets and the all-too-thinly armored
bodies of the ZSU-23s was a thing of beauty, erotic in a way, shaped-charge
warheads slicing in and the guns bursting in an orgasmic riot of flames, smoke
and debris.

A-Bomb loved art as much as anybody, but he pried his
eyes away, turning his attention to the long trailer in the middle of a group
of vehicles beyond the tanks. He pushed his Hog into a hard, sharp angle
downwards, near sixty degrees
—
the theory being that the closer to straight down, the
less chance for error. This was actually a math thing, having to do with
cosines and angles, the sort of thing that Sister Carmella had made such an
issue of back in high school. A-Bomb had a soft spot in his heart for Sister
Carmella, but didn’t particularly like math, so he fudged the wind correction
and just let the cluster bombs go when the feeling struck him. He pulled his
stick back hard, recovering from the dive and pushing to track back into the
figure-eight Doberman ought to be cutting above their target. The vehicles
disappeared in a flash of black and red, the four bombs smashing perfectly on
target.

“Good shooting,” said Doberman as A-Bomb reached
altitude. “You leave anything for me?”

“Tried to,” said A-Bomb. “See now, you could shoot
like this if you had one of the medals.”

“What medal?”

“Tinman’s cross.”

“You still pushing that?”

“Told him I would.”

“I can shoot better than you with my eyes closed.”

“Oh man
—
you mean we’re supposed to fly with them open?”

After dodging the triple-A, Doberman emptied his CUs
on the two clumps of vehicles at the far end of the party. A-Bomb took his
plane in an arc around the pluming smoke. Nothing was moving.

“Everything’s good and broken,” he told Doberman.

“I think that Rover or whatever it was stayed on the
highway,” he told him.

“Nah.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Got ya,” said A-Bomb, reaching into his customized
flight-suit to pull out a celebratory Twizzler. Nothing like red licorice to
top off a good bomb run.

Doberman led him back along the road. They spotted a bus
and some sort of small truck, but not the Land Rover. Then Cougar cut in.

“Break ninety degrees,” the AWACS controller told
them. “Bogies coming off A-1. Break.”

A-Bomb listened to Doberman’s curse as the jets
snapped onto the new coordinates south. They were nearly at bingo anyway. The
two Iraqis were quickly ID’d as a pair of F-1 Mirages and just as promptly
chased back to base by F-15s. By the time they disappeared from the tracking
screens, Doberman had told the AWACS crew that they were heading back to Al
Jouf for the night.

His mood reflective as he headed for home, A-Bomb
treated himself to a second Twizzler, then clicked his CD changer to dish up
Guns & Roses.

IRAQ

25
JANUARY 1991

1825

T
he
commandos waited
until dusk to cross
the road. They chose a spot near a short run of rock outcroppings, which would
give them a staging area and some protection in case of traffic. The last
fifteen minutes were the worst
—
Dixon’s eyes were weighted with the fatigue of
slogging the rucksack and communications gear on his back, not to mention the
long day and night before. Two or three times he felt his mind wander off into
the null space of pre-sleep. If it hadn’t been so cold, he might have fallen
completely asleep and not woken up for at least a week.

Two vehicles passed during that time: a Mercedes panel
truck, probably though not necessarily civilian, and a small car which bore a
Red Cross.

Dixon wondered about the Red Cross car, thinking that
maybe it might be carrying a prisoner. At least one allied pilot had gone down
over Iraq during the last two days.

For a fleeting moment he wondered if he should give
the order to stop it, and then whether the troopers would have obeyed it.

It was their job to find Scud transports and
launchers, nothing else. They had already let a score of other military
vehicles go.

But rescuing a pilot was different. That was worth
blowing their mission for, wasn’t it?

Shit yeah. He could explain it to them
—
he’d have to,
since they still thought of him as an outsider.

But it was too late now. The vehicle was by them and
gone. And besides, he was just an observer, not the boss.

###

In the dull blueness of the fading day, the
countryside looked vaguely familiar, almost American, a desert scrubland just
beyond farmland. Look carefully and the illusion evaporated. At any moment an
Iraqi troop truck, or tanks, or helicopters could materialize and kill them.
They had a ton of ammo, but eventually they would be outgunned
—
they were, as
Jake Green had said three times during the last hour, in Saddam’s backyard.

It would be better, infinitely better, to die fighting
than to be captured, Dixon decided. If captured, he would surely be tortured
and killed anyway. Better to go quickly.

Besides, if they didn’t kill him, it would be worse.
He’d be used for propaganda. That was his real fear. To be tortured to the
point where he would agree to anything they said
—
that was the worst horror.

In survival school, they told pilots it was no
disgrace to go along if you had to. Bend so you didn’t break. The people who
counted back home would realize that you were being coerced. Your mission was
survival, not playing hero.

But Dixon didn’t entirely accept that. The shame of
being a prisoner, of being helpless
—
it would be more than he could stand.

He’d learned that lesson flying in combat the first
time. Bitterly. He remembered how failure felt.

“Lieutenant? You coming?”

Dixon jumped as Leteri tapped him. He followed across
the open ground to the roadway. After two strides he felt the weight of his two
backpacks balance him; by the fourth he felt as if he could run forever,
adrenaline surging. He gripped his MP-5 with both hands, trotting with it
before him as if it set out a force field of protection.

“You’re looking like a Goddamn Delta trooper now, BJ,”
mocked Winston as he approached the team leader’s position beyond the roadway.

Dixon was too tired to tell if he was mocking him. He slid
down on his knee and waited as the rest of the patrol crossed and scouted
ahead.

“Okay,” said Winston after his scouts reported back.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. We got the old quarry a mile ahead. If those trucks
stopped anywhere around here, it was there.”

“I’ll go with who’s ever scouting it,” said Dixon.

“Not so fast.”

“I got to be close to call a bomber in. I can use
this, don’t worry,” said Dixon, holding out his gun.

“Relax. We’re staying together.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” said Winston. “I
don’t want to lose the radio.”

“Yeah, I thought you sounded a little sentimental.”

The comeback surprised Dixon as much as Winston. It
was the sort of thing he would have expected A-Bomb or Doberman to say,
something that would have come out of the mouth of a guy who’d seen hell a few
hundred times and learned to laugh at it.

Winston laughed lightly, shaking his head. “Fuckin’
Hog pilots. You guys think you’re going to win the war all by yourselves, don’t
you?”

“If we fucking have to,” said Dixon.

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to. We’re moving forward
as a team. Stay close to Leteri, OK?” Winston gave him a chuck and moved out.

Fucking?
Had
he said
fucking?
Dixon pulled himself to his feet, moving ahead on sheer
amazement alone.

AL
JOUF FOA, SAUDI ARABIA

25
JANUARY 1991

1900

N
o
question about
it: Wong was
definitely allergic to something in the desert. He sneezed into his
handkerchief, at the same time muffling a curse that the half-dozen officers
assembled around the table pretended not to hear.

It had to be an allergy. Sand maybe. Or the air.

Then again, it could be Major Wilson who insisted on
punctuating his briefing on the Fort Apache mission with historical notes on
the formation of Delta Force and commando operations in general. Wong wouldn’t
have minded this so much if the major didn’t get every third fact wrong.

Captain Wong had actually served with Delta Force
twice, once as an advisor on Russian weaponry and, briefly, as something called
an “attached adjunctive administrative officer.” This was a cover for an
assignment to handle a clandestine drop into the northern Vietnamese jungles, a
CIA-inspired mission where he went along to assess the wreckage of what was
supposed to be a Chinese super weapon – and which turned out, as Wong knew it
would, to be merely the latest version of the F-7, a Chinese copy of the MiG-21.
The base model was an antiquated deathtrap Wong wouldn’t allow even his worst
enemy to fly. His inspection showed that the Chinese had succeeded in making it
even more hazardous.

During that mission he had worked with several
outstanding troopers, including a Green Beret Captain named Hawkins, who
encouraged him to believe that occasionally the army bureaucracy lucked into
choosing the right men for the right job. But in general, Wong held almost as
low an opinion of the Special Ops bureaucracy as he held of the rest of the
defense establishment, Air Force partly excepted. Major Wilson’s droning on
about “clandestine implants” was doing nothing to disabuse him of his opinion. The
man’s knowledge of enemy weaponry and the role of air support were rudimentary,
in Wong’s opinion, although he at least recognized that the Hogs would be
operating beyond their preferred parameters. Wong was about to second the point
when his nose tickled again; he barely managed to pull a fresh handkerchief
from his pocket and cover his face in time.

“You wanted to say something, Captain?” asked Colonel
Klee, who was in charge of supplying Apache and the infiltration teams
associated with it.

Wong nodded as he finished blowing his nose. He had
reserved judgment on Colonel Klee; his khakis were fairly crisp, no small
accomplishment in this wilderness.

He was also admirably short on patience.

“Well?” asked the colonel. “What is it?”

“I was going to suggest that if we want the Apache
Forces to work in conjunction with our attack planes, we institute combat-area
refueling procedures. A pair of C-130s flying over Iraqi territory–”

“That’s on hold,” snapped the colonel. “Go on, Major.
And skip the history bullshit, will you? These people can get to the library
themselves.”

The major unfolded a large map across three easels at
the front of the room. Fort Apache had been sketched in about a third of the
way from the top left corner; various Iraqi air defenses and other
installations were diagrammed in below.

“We want to add a lifeboat contingency,” said the
major. “As well as local firepower.”

Between sneezes, Wong listened as Wilson updated the
plan to base a pair of “sterile” Little Bird McDonnell Douglas AH-6Gs at Fort
Apache. Descendants of Vietnam War-era Loach, the Defenders were special “black”
versions of the versatile helo known in official circles as the Cayuse. The small,
light choppers were equipped with machine guns and rocket packs. They were
excellent support aircraft, could greatly extend Fort Apache’s operating area,
and
—
this is where “lifeboat” came in
—
could possibly be used to evacuate teams and even the
base if necessary.

There was only one problem: the choppers’ loaded range
was barely over two hundred miles, and the plan called for them to be loaded to
the gills when they went north. Even with a stop to refuel right at the border,
that was a stretch. Not even the Special Ops people thought they could make it
in a straight line.

A big PAVE-Low could make it, of course. But no way
anyone in their right mind would authorize flying an aircraft that valuable
that far north. In fact, nothing valuable could go up there.

Which was why the Hogs had been assigned the support
mission, obviously.

Finally, thought Wong, the reason I am here. He raised
his hand, sneezed, stood, blew his nose and then cleared his throat.

“You want a safe route to Fort Apache, I assume,” he
said.

“I have a route to the airfield,” bristled the major,
pointing to the line.

Wong took Wilson’s pen and began drawing parabolas
around some of the defenses.

“Besides sneezing, what are you doing?” asked the
colonel.

“The different performance envelopes of these defenses
have not been adequately charted,” he explained. “And I notice that several of
these sites are misidentified. This here is an SA-2 battery, a problem for an
older support aircraft flying at medium altitude and above, but it should be essentially
oblivious to a helicopter running at night, which I assume is how penetration
is planned. Additionally, some of your information is incomplete and/or out of
date. You have not noted the defenses in this sector. This GCI site was listed
as only thirty percent destroyed in the latest assessment. Experience shows
that it is best to assume that is optimistic.”

“Meaning?”

“A halfway competent operator would have no trouble
frying your helicopters,” said Wong. “Approached from this angle, however, the
detectable envelope shrinks dramatically.”

“Are you sure?” asked the major.

Wong sighed. “I assume I was asked to come to this
sand trap because I am the world’s expert on Russian defense systems. If you
are willing to take great risks, fly in a straight line. I haven’t done the
math, but it undoubtedly offers no lower a coefficient of probable success than
your course does. And with wing tanks–”

“We don’t have wing tanks, and even if we did, there’s
not enough weight left for them,” said one of the helo pilots, a warrant
officer named Gerry Fernandez. “We were supposed to be refueled.”

“I did not see that contingency outlined on the map,”
said Wong.

“That’s on hold as well,” said the colonel without
further explanation.

“We’ve already dropped fuel at Apache,” said Major
Wilson. “There’s plenty of fuel for you, once you get there.”

“We’re going to have to lighten the load to get
there,” said Fernandez. “A hell of a lot. And carry fuel with us besides. With
all due respect to the Major, I’d like to hear what course this captain
recommends.”

“Go ahead, Wong,” said the colonel.

Wong went back to sketching a safer course. Wilson
started to object again, but this time was stifled by an impromptu dissertation
on the effective range of the pulse band radars emitted by the Roland mobile
batteries.

The secrecy of the mission imposed a further
constraint on Wong’s planning. It was necessary for the helicopters to avoid
not only know anti-air defenses, but places where any sizable number of troops
might congregate. Wong’s final route, to be flown about six feet off the
ground, minimized the helicopter’s exposure to everything but sand mites.

It also totaled close to four hundred miles and was
more convoluted than a drunk’s stagger.

Which the pilots promptly pointed out.

“It is necessarily intricate,” said Wong, intending to
suggest that if the pilots couldn’t follow it, he knew several who could. But
he was cut off by a stout sneeze.

“We can follow it,” said Fernandez. “The question is
range.”

The colonel leaned over to hear some advice from one
of his lieutenants. Major Wilson whispered on the other side. Finally, the
colonel shook his head reluctantly.

“There’s no sense taking this kind of risk if we’re
not going to deliver usable supplies,” said the major, straightening. “It makes
no sense to fly them all the way to Fort Apache without enough bullets and
rockets to fend off an attack. We won’t be able to arrange for a new drop until
tomorrow night. By then, we ought to have a new C-130 cleared as a tanker. And
if not, we’ll rig something similar to what we did to get the fuel down at
Apache. The prudent thing is to wait.”

“What if they need us before then?” said Fernandez.

“I’m not going to send you up there empty,” said Klee.

Wong sighed. He glanced at the colonel, who could only
be waiting for him to point out the obvious. Surely both he and the major had
realized the solution by now. This charade could only be meant to make him feel
more comfortable and withdraw his transfer request. A worthy gesture on the
colonel’s part. Perhaps there was hope yet.

Wong walked back to the map and marked an X roughly
halfway through the course he had laid out.

“There. They can land and pump the gas in themselves.”

“And just how do we get it there?” said the major.
“That’s a hundred miles due south of Apache. Our troops have no way to deliver
it. Not to mention they’d have to go through at least one known Iraqi troop
placement.”

“Two additional helicopters with fuel drums
—
.”

“Unavailable,” said the major. “It’s impossible unless
we cut the supply load. The whole thing has to be scrubbed.

“Air drop it.”

“How? I don’t have any planes, Wong.”

Wong shook his head. No one could be quite this dense.
Clearly, Wilson had adopted the role of devil’s advocate.

“You could use the same method you employed for
dropping fuel at Apache,” said Wong. “Of course, you would wish to have some
redundancy, so I would suggest. . .”

“We won’t have those planes again for another two
nights,” said the major smugly.

 “Then adapt other planes for the role,” said Wong.

“What? The A-10s?”

Wong shrugged. “The configuration will require
creative thought, but if we examine the. . .“

That doable, Captain?” Klee asked quickly.

“Of course.”

“I like you Wong,” said the colonel. He turned to the
lieutenant. “Jack, get the captain some antihistamines, then go find the A-10A
maintenance people and see if this can be done. Better yet, Wong, go with him.
Get as creative as you can before you sneeze your brains out.”