Preston would be too famous for a Warthog squadron. Hog drivers were blue-collar workers, lunch-pail guys who took the bus to work, not a limousine.
Was that what Skull would do now? Take a bus to work? Where the hell would he work? What would he do?
Did he really have to resign? Should he resign? If he never took another drink — if he never needed another drink?
Bullshit. He’d always need another drink. Always. That was a fact of life.
But what had his sister said?
“So you’re going to quit?”
“I don’t want to hurt these kids.”
“And you wouldn’t be hurting them by quitting?”
“I’m not quitting.”
He was. It wasn’t exactly running away, and it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other guys, plenty, who could take over for him. A lot of them could do better, even if he wasn’t hitting the booze.
Maybe. Maybe not.
That was beside the point. You could always find someone better. And worse, for that matter.
The point was: What should he do?
Walk away. Give up.
Such a loaded phrase. Better to say retire.
Prospective again.
Maybe it was better that he hadn’t bought it. He was walking away while he could still walk. He didn’t have a death wish after alclass="underline" that wasn’t what the drinking was all about.
Somehow that seemed reassuring as he pushed the throttle for more speed, trying to catch the MiG’s thinning contrail.
CHAPTER 57
Hack backed off the throttle gingerly. He still used his right hand, though the pain had gone down quite a bit in his left; he could now manage a fair amount of pressure on the stick with it, his hands crossed awkwardly.
He flexed his left thumb as he grabbed the stick back with his right hand. The thumb itself seemed okay. Maybe that meant the injury was only a bad sprain, not a break.
As if the exact injury would make any difference at all. He switched the stick back to his left hand, working like a contortionist as he reached for the HUD controls, hoping to knock down the ambient light. He had his radar on, though the selectors were both unfamiliar and balky.
The F-14s still hadn’t shown themselves. Granted, he was much lower than planned, only twenty thousand feet. He didn’t want to go any higher with the fudged oxygen connector, though it seemed to be working fine. The radar ought to make it easier for them to find him, even if he wouldn’t work it well enough to find them.
Of course, it would also mean that other Allied aircraft could see him and possibly think he was an enemy plane.
Not if the AWACS was doing its job.
But was the radar working? The display was clean.
That couldn’t be true, damn it. Did he have it on?
Hack fiddled with it some more, but finally gave up. He looked at the MiG’s RWR in the bottom right-hand corner of the dash, just above his right knee. Similar to many Western units, the display was dominated by a crude outline of the aircraft. An “enemy” radar would set off the bottom row of threat lights and then touch off LEDS indicating distance, bearing, and type indicators around the shadow of the plane in the dial.
Never before in his life had Hack wished for a threat indicator to flash.
There should be a pair of F-14s. If they were tangled or diverted, two F-15s would take their place. So where the hell were they?
He wasn’t sure about the Navy guys, but he knew the Air Force pilots would be smart enough to come look for him if they couldn’t find him at thirty thousand feet. Surely someone had told them that he’d gotten off by now; surely the AWACS had seen him get off the ground.
Hopefully Eugene had told them about the mask. Wong would know that was significant.
How many stinking MiGs could there be in the air anyway? On this course? Hell, they’d be all over him if he was a real Iraqi.
Hack laughed. He started an instrument check, looking first at the radar warning receiver. The location of the RWR was not the best, though admittedly a pilot who actually belonged in the plane wouldn’t have to spend much time staring at it till necessary — as with Western models, an alarm tone would alert him that he was being scanned. Not having the proper helmet gear had deprived him of that capability, along with the radio.
He worked across the unfamiliarly panel, eyes flitting back and forth because the instruments were in unfamiliar places.
Otherwise he was doing fine. Burning through too much fuel, maybe, but fine.
The ladder gauge on the fuel flow device was confusing as hell. He’d taken off with four thousand kilos, now had 3,800.
No. 2,800.
Had to be closer to 3,500.
Yes. No more than five hundred pounds to get into the air. They’d gone over that.
Five hundred kilos. Rough one thousand kilos translated into a little more than fifty nautical miles of flight, with a bit of reserve. So with about 150 miles to go, he had plenty to spare.
About 150 miles? No he was further along, much further along. He ought to be in Saudi Arabia any minute.
No. Time was compressing. He’d only just taken off.
When?”
He glanced at his watch. He’d forgotten to set it when he took off.
Now that was a numbskull move.
Hack tapped the throttles back, slowing his airspeed. The poorly designed instrument layout kept tripping him up. He had to look on the left side to get his attitude indicator, one of the most basic checks since it told him whether he was flying right side up or not. Then he had to cross back to the right to check the engines, then go up to the middle of the panel to check compass and navigation. The vertical velocity indicators were also on the right side, turning his usual across the board sweep into a swirling zigzag back and forth across the old-style instrument panel. Too many passes too quickly, he thought, and his head would be spinning.
No need for that. Just truck home. Go south, look for the big ditch, turn left fifty degrees. KKMC would be that big smudge in the center of the windscreen.
Nice if the Tomcats would show up right about now.
Hack glanced down at his knee board. The top page had notes on his contact frequencies. He didn’t need them now — the radio was useless. Nor was the map on the next page of much use, nor the Western coordinates for his course, nor the notes he’d scribbled about some of the instrument settings. But he glanced at the board anyway. Just habit. Reassuring somehow.
Hack had six thousand meters on his altimeter — just over twenty thousand feet, with a forward air speed of 675 kilometers an hour; a bit over 350 knots. He had the heading they had briefed, but he was much lower and going fifty knots faster than they had set out. He eased back on the throttle again, the plane jerking slightly as he fumbled.
If the Tomcats weren’t here and the Eagles weren’t here, something must have happened.
Maybe Saddam had scrambled someone to catch him.
Skull and the others would be sitting ducks in their slow-moving A-10s.
Not his problem.
They were his guys, though. He had to help them. He had the cannon, if nothing else.
Did he even have that?
The armament panel was on the right side at his elbow. Neither of his Western sources had touched on it, but Harry and he had discussed cannon shots at length before taking off a year ago.
Huge slugs. Had to slow down to use the gun. Bitch of a targeting computer. You had to get really close to fire, and hit the speed brakes if you were moving over four hundred knots.