Fire erupted from its mouth. The tower shuddered, crumpling above him. Hakim cringed, held his breath, waited for death to come. He felt the grating below him start to give away. He held the missile launcher up, falling as the plane flashed overhead. He pressed the trigger as his life evaporated in a steam of metal and fire.
CHAPTER 19
A-Bomb saw the flash from the tower, saw the rocket shoot out wide, and saw the tower disintegrate, all at the same time. He barked a warning to Doberman and pounded his own plane hard left, shooting flares and giving it gas and pushing his body to the side, trying to add mustard to the evasive maneuvers. Doberman jinked ahead, twisting, diving and climbing behind a shower of flares.
The missile had shot straight out from the tower, perpendicular to the Hog’s flight path. An ordinary SA-7, if it happened to get lucky and catch a whiff of the exhaust, would choke out its engine swinging back and fall harmlessly away.
This one didn’t. This one came around in a tight arc, snorting for Doberman’s turbofan.
“It’s still on you,” yelled A-Bomb.
Doberman sensed the missile before A-Bomb warned him. Something had moved on the tower as he closed in; a sixth sense told him there was a suicidal maniac on the rail with a shoulder-missile. The pilot pushed the Warthog hard in the direction of the launch as he flew past, tossing flares and jinking as wildly as he could. His cannon burst had slowed his momentum, and there wasn’t a huge amount of altitude left to use gathering speed. He danced and shook, shoving the forked-tail of the Hog in a wild streak across the desert, riding a roller coaster of right angles and flares. His stomach rolled into a pea as G forces slammed against his body in every direction. The pilot felt the flesh on his cheeks peeling under the sudden weight of the oxygen mask, plunging itself into his face. But it was a good feeling, blood running away from his head despite the best efforts of his suit. The heady, floating weightlessness told him he was alive.
Doberman had practiced this sort of escape under these sorts of circumstances at least a hundred times. He realized he should be clear now, a few miles and a dozen hard turns from the missile. The Russian-made SA-7 was a good weapon, but couldn’t hang with you on a serious G turn. He kept going a few more seconds just to be sure, pulled one more turn with more flares, being extra cautious, then turned around, looking for his buddies. His eyes shot over to the altimeter ladder on the HUD, focusing on the white numbers as he reoriented himself.
In that second, a sledge hammer hit his right wing.
CHAPTER 20
The next five seconds defied all known physical laws of time and space. Simultaneously, the universe moved at infinite speed and stood completely still. Doberman was paralyzed beyond comprehension.
Hit a bit beyond midway on its right wing, the Hog slumped in the air. Small bits of the wing were sucked into the turbo fan. The GE groaned, its fire quenched by the in-rushing rain of debris.
The engine munched the shrapnel, spit it out, and then, helped by the momentum of the air rushing through the blades as the plane hurtled downwards, kicked itself back to life. Doberman felt the surge in his arms as he coaxed just enough power to stay airborne; stutter-stepping off the ugly brown earth, he managed to hold the plane in a slow but steady climb. He was even going in the right direction, southeast — though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he got that way.
Once the plane was stable, the pilot pitched his head back to look out the right side of the cockpit, back at the wing. The missile had gone straight through, blowing a fair-sized hole en route. A bit of the aileron had been taken away; he couldn’t quite bend his body around far enough to see how much or what other damage had been done.
On the bright side, the missile had missed the fuel tank.
That, or angels really did drive Hogs in heaven.
A-Bomb waited for the canopy to blow, then worried that Doberman had been hit too low, too fast, too hard to save himself. The distance between the two planes closed as quickly as the bile rose in his throat, the empty sickness of seeing a buddy go down.
“Dog man, get out,” he shouted again and again. “Eject. Eject.”
“Now what the fuck am I going to eject for?” growled Doberman. “A-Bomb, would you shut the hell up so I can think?”
Suddenly, the nose of Doberman’s Hog changed direction. The plane began lifting itself off the deck.
A hand reaching down from above wouldn’t have shocked A-Bomb more.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelped. “You are one lucky mother fucker.”
“Yeah, right. You’re going to explain your reasoning as soon as we put down.”
Adjusting his speed, A-Bomb pulled almost directly over the damaged Hog. The wing had a gaping hole, exposing organs and underwear, not to mention the ribs that held it together. But it was intact.
Just another day in the life of a Hog driver, thought A-Bomb. Damn, I love these planes.
The first thing Mongoose did when he realized Doberman was still alive was curse himself for not taking out the water tank first thing with bombs. Better, he shouldn’t even have bothered. The Scuds were the priority, and they were gone. Getting greedy was a good way to get killed.
It was one thing to put himself in danger, and a hell of a different thing to put his guys there. His job was to get them home. Period. Everything else was way second.
Fucking water tower.
“I have a question for you I need a real honest answer on,” he told Doberman as soon as the pilot had the damaged Hog headed toward the border.
“Shoot.”
“How far you think you can fly that thing?”
“Me? Hell, I’ll fly around the world if you want.”
Mongoose took a second before responding. His own arms and legs were tired as hell; Doberman’s must be aching even more. The control surfaces on the right side of the stricken Hog’s wing were shot to hell, and he’d feathered his right engine. Doberman’s fuel situation was strong enough to get him back to Al Jouf with only a little sweat, assuming he didn’t spring a leak. But that meant sailing through Indian territory just about the whole flight.
They could turn and fly directly south, safer if he had to punch out, but that made Al Jouf a stretch. King Khalid, another FOB the Hogs had used this morning to refuel, was even further.
And what did he do once he got there?
Mongoose took another glance at Doberman’s plane. The Hog looked shot to hell. How long could it stay airborne with a football-sized hole in the wing?
But the matter had to be broached delicately.
“Do you think you could tank?” Mongoose finally asked.
“If I have to. Why?”
“What I’m thinking is the tough thing for that Hog is going to be landing. Your flap’s probably not going to set right, and I’ll be honest with you, it’ll be a miracle if your landing gear works right.”
There was silence from the other plane,
“You can go ahead and respond,” he told Doberman.
“You want me to bail out.”
“Not necessarily. But that may end up the only option.”
“You’re also thinking we shouldn’t go straight back to Al Jouf because you think I’m going to have to bail before I get there.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re thinking that.”
“Yeah,” admitted Mongoose. “If we go back to the base we’ll be over Iraq most of the way.”