“You ain’t going to jinx it by admitting it,” said Doberman. “Be straight with me.”
“I’m trying.”
“If we refuel, maybe we can coax it all the way back to Hog Heaven,” said A-Bomb. “Bail out in the sand and walk in for a shower.”
“I’m not bailing out,” snapped Doberman. “Period.”
Mongoose worked his lips together, not sure what to say. He would feel the same way. But feelings were irrelevant. What had to be done had to be done.
If it came down to it, would he order Doberman to jump out of the plane? Was it his job to do that?
Absolutely.
Not that ejecting was risk free. The seat manufacturer put survivability at eighty percent.
And they bragged about that.
The flight leader checked his own gauges, calculating distances and plotting a course in his head. There was no sense answering Doberman — what could he say? I’m in charge here?
“Yeah, okay,” said Doberman finally, breaking the uneasy silence. Mongoose couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, or just tired. “Let’s try for a tanker and then on to King Fahd. Line it up.”
CHAPTER 21
Dixon couldn’t find the F-16 pilot, if he existed. There were two F-16s at the base, one of which had been pushed off the side of the runway and left for scrap metal. Neither pilot had been anywhere near Tweedledum — or Taqaddum, the actual name of the Iraqi installation. They didn’t know anything about a lake, but they had seen plenty of things on fire.
Military intelligence at its finest, the lieutenant thought as he returned to the intel Humvee.
Bauer didn’t seem all that broken up about the lack of information. He sent him to debrief a pair of French pilots who had somehow wandered up to Al Jouf in their Jaguars.
Unfortunately, Dixon didn’t speak French. And though the other pilots spoke English, it rolled off their tongues the way a Mk 82 would fall down a flight of stairs at Versailles.
Like the A-10, the aging Jaguar was primarily designed to support front-line troops, but it represented an entirely different philosophy, something more akin to the F-16’s― get in and out as fast as possible. And that was about the only element of their mission Dixon could understand― the two pilots gestured freely as they described an attack on an installation that for all the world sounded like a circus tent. Even more of a mystery was how the pilots had managed to get way the hell out here. They were based at Al Ahsa, back near Riyadh. Dixon hadn’t seen the entire ATO; the air order dictating the first day’s game plan ran hundreds of pages. He knew the Frenchies had started out in the eastern part of the theater.
Every time he asked how they got here, the two pilots began replaying what sounded like a seriously awesome, close-in fur ball gun battle. Their desert-brown ships bore no evidence of a gunfight, however, and Dixon got a firm “no” whenever he used the word “damage.”
Eventually, the lieutenant decided he had as much information as he was ever going to get. He thanked the men, who now began to pepper him with questions about how in God’s name they could get home from here. Dixon nodded cheerfully, answered “yes” as much as possible, then turned and ran for Bauer.
At last he was getting the hang of this intelligence stuff.
The major reinterpreted the pilots’ pigeon English and added a few notes to a thick stack of papers on the Humvee seat. Looking up, Bauer pointed to an F-14 that had swung its wings out wide to land and announced that it belonged to the Saratoga, a carrier in the Red Sea; it had been part of a Navy package striking deep into west Iraq and lost its INS, among other things.
“You want me to go debrief him?” Dixon asked.
“Nah. I’ll get that one myself. Got a cousin on the ship I want to say hi to. Listen, the parts you were waiting for landed about ten minutes ago. Ought to be at the repair area by now. Why don’t you go make sure they get to the right place? Thanks for helping. If you’re ever looking for a job in intelligence, come see me.”
The Hog had been moved several times in the past few hours, and was at the far end of the maintenance areas. A tubular steel ladder had been erected around part of the wing and fuselage, and a small figure was atop it, busily tossing pieces of the plane to the ground. As Dixon got closer, he realized a succession of curses was accompanying the work. He also realized something else; the tech sergeant working on the plane was a woman.
Though he recognized her from his unit, Dixon didn’t know Becky Rosen; in fact, he didn’t know most of the maintenance people besides his own crew chief and one or two of the men who habitually worked on his plane. He’d heard a few things about her though, none of them pleasant. Short, built like a mud wrestler, she had cat eyes and round, freckled cheeks.
She turned around and saw him staring at her from the ground. “Dixon, right? What the hell did you do to this Hog? Drive it through a wheat thresher?”
“I didn’t do anything to it,” he said, taken by surprise. “Captain Glenon was flying.”
“Doberman, huh? I thought he knew better than this. Fuck, did he think we were bored or something?”
“Maybe,” said the lieutenant, not really knowing what else to say.
She scowled. “What the hell happened to yours?”
“My plane? Nothing.”
“Well where is it? Did you walk back from Iraq?”
Dixon felt his entire body begin to burn. His temporary assignment as non-intelligence officer had taken his mind off his failure, but now the guilt shot back in a heavy dose.
But damn it; when did a tech sergeant earn the right to grill an officer?
“Major Johnson bumped me,” he said stiffly.
“Oh.” She looked at him a moment, then turned back to the plane.
There was something in the look that pissed him off even more than her tart tone.
Pity?
He didn’t need that from a stinking technician.
“Say Lieutenant, you think you could hand me up that TACAN aerial cover?”
“What?”
“The big flat doohicky thing by your feet. The radio antenna? The fin?”
“I know what it is.” Dixon was so flustered with anger he couldn’t say anything else. He reached over and picked up the thick blade. Rosen had returned to work on the Hog, and so he had to climb up onto the wing to hand it to her.
“Thanks. Looks like the IFF is fine, but these wires here are toast. You all right, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Get shot at?”
“I guess so.”
He tried to make his voice sound hard, but Rosen laughed as if he were joking. “Hand me the screwdriver out of the bag over there, okay?”
“What, you think I’m your gofer?”
“No, sir, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “But I was under the impression that you wanted to get this airplane back in the air as soon as possible, and helping me out a little will expedite matters.”
“Expedite. Where’d you learn that word?”
“I have a masters degree in English lit,” she said, holding out her hand for the tool.
Dixon couldn’t tell if she was serious. He reached into the large bag Rosen used as a tool carrier and handed her the screwdriver. He noticed that the bag, though covered with grease and dirt, was made of leather.
“My dad gave it to me. Sentimental value,” she said.
“The degree?”
“No, the bag, wise guy. I earned the degree myself. Romance poetry.” She took the tool and went back to work connecting the fin. Dixon couldn’t see what she was doing beneath the access cover and fin, but there were loose parts everywhere. “What was it like?”