Never forget luck, the under-rated factor in every equation.
Skull’s eyes reached the right wing of his Hog, then slipped upward, repeating the ritual search. He blew a long breath into his mask, nudged his stick just barely left, staying on course. A hundred other missions played at the edge of his brain, memories of mistakes and triumphs that pricked his adrenaline. A list of contingent to-do’s played constantly at the back of his mind: if this, then that; if that, then this. Skull had only the vaguest awareness of the list, knew only that if it was needed his brain would flash it like an urgent bulletin to his arms and legs and eyes. His actions would be automatic.
To fly you had to “think and not think” at the same time. To fly well you had to forget you were flying.
An old instructor had told him that. Skull could still remember nodding solemnly at the time, not knowing what the hell the geezer was talking about. He’d had to shoot down two Vietnamese MiGs before he started to actually understand — before, really, the tension of combat became familiar enough to relax him. Before the jagged rhythm of an over-pumped heart became a thing to live for.
Knowlington would be giving that up, quitting now. It was his duty to resign.
Who wanted to go out that way, sneaking off in the middle of the night? Better to burn out in a last fireball.
That was why he’d gone along with the plan to steal the MiG. One last burst of glory. He wasn’t coming back from this mission. Auger in.
Years from now, people would talk about him in awed tones: Michael Knowlington — Skull — the guy who bought it carrying out the impossible dream.
Arrogance. Vanity.
He tightened his eyes and continued scanning the sky.
CHAPTER 37
A-Bomb wrenched the stick to the right, crunching the rudder pedals at the same time, more for leverage than actual effect. The plane’s wings finally steadied and he started working his nose back up, regaining control. He’d lost nearly three thousand feet in little more than the time it took to chew through a half-stick of red licorice.
That was nothing. He’d dropped the other half of the candy, losing it somewhere on the floor of the plane. That was the kind of thing that hurt your ego, as well as attracted ants.
Cycling through the restart procedure on the starboard engine, he considered that what he really needed right now was a good cup of Joe, something beyond the Dunky in his thermos. Dunkin’ Donuts made a mean batch of caffeine, but in a situation like this there was no beating the takeout at Joltin’ Joe’s Diner in Schenectady, N.Y. A-Bomb had thought several times of arranging a pipeline for just such emergencies, but hadn’t been able to come up with a way of keeping the coffee hot in transport to the Gulf. A cold Jolt didn’t do it.
At the moment, he’d take any jolt, cold or hot. The power plant just wasn’t willing to restart, and nothing he did — including a very unsubtle string of curses and a harsh rap on the instrument panel — worked.
“Hey, Two! Yo kid! I got a situation up here,” he told Dixon. “One of my thinks it belongs in a Ford.”
“One?”
“Left engine died.”
A-Bomb checked his position against the paper map on his kneeboard as Dixon acknowledged. He’d drifted west, edging dangerously close to the SA-2 site, which wasn’t due to be taken out for a good ten minutes. So close, in fact, that a direct course to his target area would take him inside the missile’s envelope.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he told his wingman. “We change the game plan slightly — I’ll go after the SA-9s, then nail the guns with the cluster-bombs.”
“Uh, lost some of that One,” said Dixon. “You’re looking to hit all the targets on one engine?”
“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. “Can’t fly with all this weight under my wings. Might as well get rid of it where it’ll do the most good.”
“Uh, Captain—” Static swallowed the rest of Dixon’s voice. His meaning, however, was clear. A-Bomb was out of his mind to not cut his stores loose and head home.
Maybe if he’d been flying another kind of plane, that might have been true. But in a Hog, A-Bomb’s decision made perfect, logical, conservative sense. At least to him.
“Got to shoot my wad,” explained O’Rourke. This way, I get rid of it quick and leave you a full load to back up the assault team with. Let me get what we know is there, you handle the contingencies. I’ll turn around, you hang out, catch up over the border or back at base, whatever.”
“You’re flying back alone?”
“I think I take a left and keep going until I hit the stop sign, right?” A-Bomb lifted his finger off the mike, remembering he was flight leader and had to make a pass at sounding like one.
What would Doberman do in this situation?
Curse and snarl something nasty.
Couldn’t curse the kid, though. It was tough to be nasty to BJ.
“Unless you’re thinking of pushing, it’s not going to make much difference if you’re on my butt or not going home,” said A-Bomb. “Besides, I don’t want you to miss the show.”
Under duress, A-Bomb might have admitted that he knew vaguely of some sort of standing order — or suggestion or maybe a whimsical thought somewhere — about dealing with engine failures that might, under certain very specific circumstances, be interpreted as advising against proceeding to a target on one engine. He’d also admit, again under heavy duress, that although the plane could fly quite adequately with one engine once properly coaxed and flattered, she wasn’t particularly happy to do so while carrying a full load — a fact she emphasized now by giving him a stall warning.
He traded a little altitude for speed.
“You with me, Two?”
“Your call, Gun.”
“What I’m talking about. One other thing,” he added. “I want you to leave me and track back to our original course. I have to cut a closer line to Splashdown.”
“Uh…” The rest of his transmission was covered with static.
“You got to work on that stutter, kid,” said A-Bomb. “Ruins a really beautiful singing voice.”
“Captain, anything like a straight line is going to take you right through the target area for the SA-2. It’s still live.”
“Our British buddies are going to take it out any second,” said A-Bomb.
There was a pause. O’Rourke knew what Dixon was going to say — it was, after all, exactly what he would say.
“I got your butt,” said Dixon.
“Kid…”
“You really ought to think about upgrading your choice of toilet paper,” said his wingman. “And maybe doing something about that hair.”
“What I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb, nosing onto the course.
CHAPTER 38
BJ kept his eyes nailed on A-Bomb’s good engine, trying to ignore the churning juices that had spit up from his stomach to his lungs and throat. He’d always thought O’Rourke was a little crazy, but this was insane. In approximately ten seconds they were going to cross into the scanning area of one of the most potent missiles in the Iraqi arsenal, a missile that had been downing Western aircraft for something like thirty years.