“Damn. These pilots are not taking care of my planes properly.”
“No, Sergeant, they’re not. Damn sloppy of them,” said Rosen, finishing with the aerial. She rolled off the plane and jumped down to the tarmac. “They have to be scraping the suckers when they’re landing, because there is no way those ragheads could shoot them off. No way.”
Clyston grunted in agreement. “We ready to go?”
“Almost. Have to double-check the ECM pod.” Rosen gestured toward the ALQ-119 on the wing.
“Older than me,” said Clyston derisively of the ECM, the first dual-mode jammer ever put into operation.
“No way, Chief. But I bet you worked on it.”
“Prob’ly,” said the capo. He finally smiled.
A radical breakthrough when first developed, the ECM confused enemy radars by filling the air with noise as well as false signals. It had been around for a very long time, however, and was fairly useless against sophisticated weapons systems like the SA-6. Replacements had been promised, but the A-10s didn’t rate high enough to get them.
“We’ll be ready,” Rosen told her boss.
“I’m counting on it,” said Clyston. He bunched his hands on his hips.
“You selling something, Sergeant?” Rosen asked.
Clyston made a show of glancing around, as if worried that another crew member was within earshot. In actual fact, no one who worked for the Capo would be so foolish as to linger nearby without very good cause, and they would never, ever overhear something he didn’t want them to. Ever.
Rosen sensed what Clyston was going to say and felt her face go red even as he opened his mouth.
“Word has it you were asking after Lieutenant Dixon,” said the chief master sergeant.
“I was inquiring about his health, yes,” she said, trying to make her voice as flat as possible. Anyone else she would have told to screw off, but there was no way in the world to say that to the capo. No way.
Clyston’s large chest heaved upwards in an exaggerated sigh. He shook his head, but said nothing. Rosen found her bottom lip starting to tremble; she tried biting at it but her teeth couldn’t quite clamp down.
Anybody else would have gotten a double-barrel of invective, maybe even a good swing. Anybody else, she probably wouldn’t have cared.
But the Chief was — well, the Chief.
“Chief, is my work unacceptable?”
“That’s not what this is about, Rosen.”
“Sir.” She clamped her mouth shut, unable to say anything else. She steadied her eyes, hoping they wouldn’t water.
Damn, damn, damn. This shit had never happened to her before.
Rosen put her head down, waiting for the inevitable lecture. Clyston was right, of course; enlisted and officers didn’t mix. And she and Dixon had nothing in common — she was older than him, for christsakes.
But damn, damn, damn.
“Sergeant, these planes have to be ready to fly at 1400 sharp,” snapped Clyston. “Then I’d appreciate it if you helped Vincenzi on that F-in’ engine. He’s having a hell of a time.”
“Yes, Chief,” she said, though Hog engines were hardly her specialty. “Be glad to.”
“I appreciate it. Vincy makes a hell of a sauce, but he doesn’t always boil the spaghetti right, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Chief.”
Rosen listened until the scrape of his boots told her he was far away before wiping her wet cheek with her sleeve.
CHAPTER 10
Captain Kevin Hawkins wrapped his hand around the tubular frame of his seat as the British Chinook abruptly jerked itself off the runway, its Lycoming engines whipping the twin rotors in a fury. His SAW — an M249 light machine gun or Squad Automatic Weapon, also known as an FN Minimi — slipped against his leg as the big helicopter bucked forward; he jerked his hand to grab the rifle and nearly spilled his cup of tea.
“I thought you said your aircraft were smooth,” he said to the sergeant next to him on the canvas bench.
SAS Sergeant Millard Burns turned slowly toward Hawkins and nodded in his methodical way, a bob down, a bob up. At fifty feet above ground level the helicopter stopped climbing, leaving her rear end angled slightly as she sped northwards, finally steady enough for Hawkins to sip his tea. The nose of the team’s other helicopter, carrying most of the British commandos, appeared in the window above the opposite bench. The Chinook — or “heli” as the British soldiers tended to refer to the craft — had a splotchy camouflage that blended dark green with pink splashes of paint. Referred to as “desert pink” by the Royal Air Force crew, it was the oddest scheme Hawkins had ever seen.
“Good chaps?” asked Burns, nodding at the six Delta troopers parked along the benches toward the front of the aircraft. Besides Burns, there were three more British paratroopers aboard the Splash One, and a dozen SAS men and their captain aboard the second, Splash Two.
“The best,” Hawkins said. All of the D boys had been with him on missions north of the border before. He’d known three — Jerry Fernandez, Kevin Smith, and Peter Crowley — for nearly five years. Armand Krushev and Stephen ‘Pig’ Hoffman had won medals for their still-classified exploits in Panama right before the invasion. And Juan Mandaro was a five-tools player: a communications and sniper expert with a (civilian) EMT badge and a knack for blowing things up, Mandaro had particularly sharp vision and rated among the best point men Hawkins had ever seen in combat.
“Your guys?” Hawkins asked the British sergeant, taking a stab at conversation only because Burns seemed to need to talk.
“They’ve been in hot water before. Squaddys began in Ireland. Tight after that.”
Hawkins had not-so-distant relatives in Belfast, children and grandchildren of the grandmother who had first turned him on to tea. At least one belonged to the IRA Provos — the SAS’s enemy in Ireland. He grunted noncommittally, turning his attention back to his cup.
“Jundies won’t know what hit them when we go in,” added Burns.
“Jundies?”
“Ragheads. The Iraqis.”
“Oh yeah.”
Burns reached into the pocket of his uniform and took out the map of their target. They’d gone over the plan at least twenty times before taking off, mapping contingencies and psyching out possible Iraqi moves; there was no practical benefit to reviewing it now. But maps, even roughly sketched ones, held almost supernatural power for some guys, and apparently the British NCO was one of them. The trace of his finger across the shallow berm near the road, the double-tap of his thumb against the blocks representing buildings — these were part of a holy ritual that he undoubtedly believed would guarantee success.
Some men preferred to continually check their weapons, making sure ammo belts weren’t kinked, triple-checking the taped trigger spoons on the grenades, testing the sharpness of their battle knives.
Hawkins liked to drink his tea.
“We’ll have the carriage way right off,” said Burns.
He meant the road. Two Apaches would cut off access to the base. Once the Hogs took the Zeus guns out, the plan would be boom-boom, teams at each building, top and bottom. Three stories. Neither had defenses, and it looked from the surveillance “snaps,” as the British put it, that one was completely unoccupied.
You never could tell.
Hawkins leaned his head back against the wall of the helicopter, trying to ignore the vibration as well as the sergeant without success on either front.
“Moons and Puff will move with your men to the second house,” said Burns, repeating a sentence he’d repeated now at least three times since they’d met. “I’ll be with you on the first.”