“What, you think these guys have slingshots?” Mongoose was too busy concentrating on the ground to answer. He’d seen photos of Scuds, but never the real thing. Now he wasn’t totally sure he’d recognize one.
Not that it would matter. Anything down there was going bye-bye.
“There’s a good-sized gun on the roof of that building,” squawked A-Bomb.
Too late to do anything about it. Mongoose felt himself hunkering down into the titanium bathtub that protected the cockpit as he slammed the Hog forward, still trying to get a look at the parking area behind the water tower. Two long trucks sat nose to rear on a narrow driveway. They looked like oil trucks, except that the front of their tanks had coneheads.
There was more ground fire, but it was fairly light; even twelve millimeter stuff wasn’t going to do much damage unless the Hog stayed in one place for a long time. And he wasn’t about to do that.
“They’re right behind the water tank,” Mongoose told A-Bomb. “They have some heavy machine guns and maybe light anti-air.”
“Yeah. I’m past ‘em.”
“Come around with me and let’s take them out.” Mongoose noted several trucks and smaller buildings nearby, and a fair-sized revetment with maybe a half-dozen, khaki-covered vehicles a quarter of a mile or so directly north of the Scuds.
“You take the Scuds and I’ll get the guys on the roof,” said A-Bomb. “Shit, Goose, there’s a battery of something in that half-donut north of the parking lot. Bitch fuck, these guys got peashooters all over the place.”
“You’d think they lived here or something,” said Mongoose, pushing the Hog into position to make a decent bomb run.
Doberman’s arms felt like lead as he pulled off the remains of the second truck. He heard Mongoose call out the location of the two Scud carriers and swung back in their direction.
A quick scan of the instruments showed everything running at spec. The slight pull to the left was still there, but the engines pegged in perfect parallel on the gauge. Plenty of gas, he told himself; plenty of explosives sitting under the wings to eliminate as many Scuds as they could find.
He was still looking for the other Hogs when the terrain ahead erupted with a thick black explosion. A-Bomb was yelling ‘hot shit’ and Doberman pulled his right wing up and pushed straight for the thunderclap of ex-Scud, aiming to mop up what was left. He caught a glimpse of a Hog orbiting back in his direction, off at two o’clock.
“Doberman, there’s a flatbed with two guns at least to the west of the tank. Take it out,” said Mongoose.
“No, I got it,” said A-Bomb.
“Where the fuck are you?” Doberman asked.
“Right here,” said A-Bomb, pulling his A-10 through the smoke cloud. He was well off to Doberman’s right but the roiling dust was so thick Doberman broke off, unable to get a target and not wanting to screw up what was quickly becoming a turkey shoot. He gathered his wits for a better run once A-Bomb cleared.
“What else is down there?” he asked A-Bomb, his back momentarily turned to the action.
A-Bomb’s response was garbled. Someone else jumped on the frequency and Doberman heard an F-16 flight ask if the Hogs needed help.
Meanwhile, Mongoose put himself in a shallow orbit and played quarterback. He had A-Bomb hold off while he directed Doberman in to drop his bombs on a truck park north of the now-demolished Scuds.
The haze made it tough to settle his target in the HUD. As he glared into the screen. Doberman realized the enthusiasm he’d felt this morning — hell, the giddiness, there wasn’t another word — had slipped away. Even the energy he’d just had smoking the trucks was gone. His arms throbbed as he worked the stick, his legs jittered. Time to get rid of the stinking bombs and head home. A thick shadow finally loomed in the center of his HUD. He went for the trigger, pickling his bombs and arcing back toward the sky, looking for his second wind.
“One of us ought to take out that water tank,” said A-Bomb. “Discourage them from coming back.”
“Yeah,” said Mongoose. “Who’s closest?”
“I am,” said Doberman.
“You got bombs?”
“Negative. Cannon’s ready though.”
“Okay. I don’t see any more ground fire,” added Mongoose. “You?”
“They ought to be out of ammo by now. Stinking machine gun bullets won’t do much anyway.”
“Yeah, don’t get too cocky,” said Mongoose. “All it takes is one.”
“I think anyone still alive down there’s hiding in the sand,” said A-Bomb. “They got a bad case of Hog-itis.”
Doberman pushed his Hog around and double-checked his cannon. “A good burst ought to nail it. Unless it’s filled with gasoline. Then one’ll do.”
“If you wait a minute, I’ll come in behind you.”
“I’m lined up now,” said Doberman, rushing a bit, as if getting the tower was somehow a competitive event.
“Doberman, take it out,” said Mongoose. “Then we go home.”
CHAPTER 18
Hakim Ibn Lufti was not religious by nature, but he prayed to Allah nonetheless as he snaked his way onto the catwalk surrounding the water tower. The American invaders were all around him; though he had lived in the desert his entire life, he had never felt more alone. The green-black planes had destroyed the missiles and all of his comrades; as far as he knew, he was the only one left alive.
Yesterday, Private Hakim had confided to another man that if the Americans came, he would most likely surrender; this was Saddam’s war, and he felt no particular fondness for the head of his country. But the man Hakim had told that to lay in the sand several hundred yards away; he’d caught a fist-sized piece of metal in his chest when the planes began dropping their bombs. Hakim’s ambitions had accordingly changed; he wanted nothing more than to extract some revenge on the invaders.
He had carried a missile launcher to the tower to help him do so. He wasn’t entirely sure how to use the weapon, however. It was a new model, an SA-16, and though he had heard others say it was considerably better than the SA-7, in fact he had never been trained to use either. He knew how to push a trigger, however, and had some hope that if the weapon were pointed in more or less the right direction, it could take care of the rest.
Hakim had almost fired at one of the jets zooming at him when he was distracted by a billow of thick smoke. He began to choke. By the time he recovered, the warplane was veering away.
Hakim cursed, and pushed the trigger anyway.
Doberman cursed as he watched his cannon shot spitting wide right, a bad putt on an uneven green. The first two slugs punctured the side of the tower but the plane’s pull and maybe the wind threw him off. He had too sharp an angle and then the smoke got in the way and he had to slide off and try for a better pass.
Damn it, I have to give myself more room this time, he told himself. I may be tired but I can still hit a fucking water tower.
God, he thought, I’ll never hear the end of it if I miss the damn tower.
It took a second for Hakim to realize why the weapon had not fired. The missile had a prime button which kept it from being accidentally launched.
Tears came to his eyes as he realized his error. Cursing himself, cursing his God, he unsafed the weapon and punched its stock against the steel rail in anger. The jet was far away now, and getting further.
And then, God brought it back. It was as if His hand took its nose, drew it up in the sky and yanked it backwards. Its strange, stubby wings straightened as it angled around and flew directly toward him.