“Our priority is to survey the airplane,” Wong interrupted. “I am primarily interested in the avionics. And any missiles. You should concentrate on any upgrades to the control system. Our British sergeant will examine the fuel capacity and type, in an attempt to ascertain performance levels. The type is regularly de-tuned to extend maintenance intervals, which naturally affects its performance. After that, he will survey the flight control surfaces. The flaps…”
“I need the gear to fly,” Hack told him. “My connectors are kludges, and even if they work I won’t have a radio.”
“Taking the plane is secondary to our main objective of intelligence gathering.”
Hack curled the rifle beneath his arm. He’d blast his way into the stinking hangar single-handedly if he had to. Screw Wong and the Delta jerks.
A flak vest hit him in the chest, nearly knocking him down.
“Gear up,” said Fernandez. “Both of ya. You’re gonna wanna pee before you get on the helicopter. Otherwise you’re pissin’ out the door, which means into the wind, which usually means in your face.” He snickered. “No sense peein’ yourself until the fun starts.”
CHAPTER 35
A-Bomb did a quick check of his instruments, then reached down to his Twizzlers pocket for a piece of licorice. He and Dixon were running a good ten minutes ahead of schedule and in fact a simple flick of the wrist would put him practically on the planned IP or ingress point for the attack. Ten seconds beyond that he’d be able to cursor in his first SAM and reach for a celebratory Three Musketeers bar.
In just about any other line of work, running ahead of schedule was a good thing. But here being ten minutes early was nearly as bad as being ten minutes late. Striking now might cost the assault teams the advantage of surprise they were counting on. Worse, the ten minutes they had to wait was ten minutes’ worth of fuel they wouldn’t have to support the commandos and Delta boys when the fun started.
At least his stock of candy was strong. He had two more packs of Twizzlers, a full complement of Tootsie Rolls, three bags of M&Ms and four over-sized Three Musketeers bars in his specially designed candy pockets. And that didn’t count the pastry in his vest, nor the backup Peppermint Patties and gumdrops taped under the dash. Of course, if things got really desperate, A-Bomb could always dig into the survival stash attached to the seat. But you didn’t want to get into your contingencies if you could help it.
“Yo, Devil Two, we’re going to keep this orbit another few minutes. Splash is on time,” he assured his wingman.
“Two,” acknowledged Dixon.
The sharp click reminded O’Rourke of Doberman, very businesslike as tee time approached. Dixon had some of the Dogman’s moves as well, and while he wasn’t yet the marksman Glenon was, he still had acquitted himself well enough to nail an Iraqi helicopter with his cannon during the early hours of the air war. Of course, no one had Doberman’s explosive temper, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. BJ was a kickass Hog driver; A-Bomb’s six would be well covered when they made the attack.
Still, O’Rourke felt slightly unsettled — not uneasy and certainly not worried, just slightly out of whack. The thing was, he wasn’t used to playing lead guitar. He was more like Miami Steve, humping in the background. Oh yeah, doing very important work, but not actually fronting the band. Hitting the notes, setting the rhythm, working the solos even — but not the Boss. Playing lead had a different head to it.
Splash had grown so complicated that it was now being coordinated by its own control plane, code named Head, flying behind the lines somewhere. It was mostly referred to as Splash Control by the others in the package — another little thing that p’d A-Bomb off, because what was the sense of having a call sign if you weren’t going to use the thing.
Head came over the circuit, counting down the time to Splashdown — thirty minutes away.
“Devil One acknowledges, Headman,” said A-Bomb. “On station.”
On station. On station. If he were the wingman, he could have said something like, “Got your butts covered” or “Cheery-oh” and asked after the Queen. Because a wingman could do that kind of thing.
Flying lead, you had to be serious.
No wonder Doberman was such a grouch.
The Tornado tagged with nailing the SA-2 radar site southwest of the target area checked in. They were running five minutes late. So were the Splash Apaches, which according to the support craft had had trouble refueling. The helicopters themselves did not actually come on the circuit; given that they were much more vulnerable to the Iraqi defenses, they were on radio silence until the attack began. Besides, they were flying so low — roughly six feet above the desert floor — that it would have been difficult for the command ship to communicate with them directly.
Six feet above ground level. That was where A-Bomb’s Hog wanted to be. She was getting a nosebleed up here at eighteen thousand feet. Other planes flew such altitudes routinely; most might even consider it low in a war zone. But an A-10 pilot this high looked around for asteroids to avoid.
A-Bomb’s A-10 grumbled as they took a bank to avoid the outer reaches of the SA-2’s radar. He patted the throttle, trying to soothe her.
“I’ll take you down soon,” he said. “I promise. Think of it this way — the higher we are, the faster we dive.”
Unimpressed, the A-10 continued to stutter. It was subtle perhaps, but it was definitely coughing when it had no reason to cough.
A-Bomb glanced at the instruments — the temp was rising on engine two. His oil pressure was good, but there was something wrong with the power plant, whose rpms were fluctuating. He throttled back gently, lightly trimming the rest of the plane to compensate.
The temp edged higher. Then the oil pressure began whipping up and down, with the turbine’s rpms doing the same.
A wingman with a full complement of bombs and Twinkies could have ignored the readings as either a product of misplaced sensitivity on the gauge’s part, or his own overworked imagination. But a pilot leading an important element of the attack had to assess them coolly and coldly and conclude that, against all odds, against all human experience, one of the A-10’s engines was actually threatening to quit.
The engine sputtered.
“Shape up,” he told his plane, smacking the fuel panel switches as if the problem were due to indigestion.
The Hog responded by surging nearly sideways, the engine suddenly back in the green, all indicators at spec. Then A-Bomb heard a soft pop behind him and felt a shudder. By the time the warning light told him the engine had put in for early retirement, he was muscling the stick to keep the heavily laden plane from spinning toward the ground.
CHAPTER 36
Skull moved his eyes carefully, using them as an astronomer might use a telescope to examine an uncharted part of the sky. Nudging them across the reddish-blue band of the horizon, he studied the thin wisps of clouds for black specks and odd shifts, looking for enemy fighters that might somehow have managed to avoid the comprehensive Allied radar net.
That was virtually impossible for a primitive air force like the Iraqi’s. But Knowlington had learned to fly against a supposedly primitive air force. The Vietnamese MiGs had been outdated, outmoded, and son of a bitchin’ good. They came at you from a cloud or caught your tail or suckered you into a turn where their wingman popped up behind you. They hid in the sun, or the blind spot of your inattention. They waited until you were out of missiles or low on fuel. They took advantage of your arrogance and sloppiness, your failure to hit the marks just so. It was more the men than the machines — but that had always been the case, back to the very beginning over the trenches in France and Belgium. Skill and machine and luck.