“What?”
“Jesus! Bombing Saddam,” she said. “Did you hit your target?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Rosen turned so quickly her face almost smacked his. “No offense, Lieutenant, but we’re busting our butts back here for you guys, and a straight answer wouldn’t hurt now and then.”
Dixon stepped back. “What’s up your ass?”
Rosen turned around to him. “Lieutenant?”
“Why are you riding me?”
“I’m not.” Her eyes were all innocence. “I’m not. Come on, help me get these wires in here. Don’t mind the sheet metal. I had to bend things a little. We’ll straighten that out later. Not by the book, but you want to fly before tonight, right?”
She didn’t mean anything, Dixon thought to himself. She’s just blunt.
“Watch your hands. That end’s sharp. Twenty-seven millimeter went right through here, see? Doberman was flying?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s one lucky son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that. She slapped the side of the plane like she was smacking a favorite horse. “Of course, a Hog can take a lot of shit. But what I’d like to know is how he managed to take triple-A on the top of the plane. I can understand the holes in the belly and the back, but this?”
“Probably he had the Hog on its side, rolling out of the attack,” said Dixon. He motioned with his hands. “The shells would have gotten him like this. There was a lot of triple-A.”
“I thought you guys were supposed to stay above the flak.”
“We were. But the cloud cover was kind of high. Have to see where we’re bombing. And you know… ”
“Anything over five hundred feet you want oxygen, right? That Hog macho anti-snob snobbery shit.” She slammed an access panel closed, then scooped up her tools and slid down the ladder to the ground, half-running to work on another part of the jet. Dixon, still unsure what the hell to make of her, followed tentatively.
“By three. Four the latest,” she said.
“Huh?”
“It’s going to take me a little while to finish. I want to make sure it will work the whole way home. The rest of this we can tidy up back at the aerodrome. The crew here did a kick ass job. Looks like they stamped you out a new rear end. Honest. You’ll be taking off for King Fahd in no time.”
“Great.”
“You sound disappointed. You looking to go back north?”
“Yeah,” he said, his anger stoking up again.
“You’re not scared?”
Scared?
She wasn’t busting his chops. It was a real question.
“Yeah,” admitted Dixon. “I was petrified.”
Her eyes softened. They were pretty eyes, actually, when they looked at you like this.
“Takes balls to admit it,” she said, snapping her game face back on. “Don’t worry, you’ll get another shot. Say listen, Lieutenant, you think you can go steal a really big hammer off that crew over there? A really big one. I have to do some serious banging if we’re going to get you back to Fahd in time for dinner. And don’t tell them what it’s for. Somebody comes over here with a manual and we’re going to bed without supper for three weeks.”
CHAPTER 22
The first refuel was a piece of cake.
It was on the second that Doberman lost control of the plane.
They grabbed a tanker and top priority about three seconds after crossing the Iraqi border. Doberman had a good feel for the plane by then; the damaged Hog didn’t have the most desirable flying characteristics, but he could hold her reasonably steady at five thousand feet. The tanker, though, ordinarily did its business much higher than that. Apprised of the situation, the KC-135 pilot slid down to about ten thousand feet; Doberman coaxed the Hog toward her gently. Even under the best conditions with two engines, it took the underpowered plane an eternity to climb; now it seemed like he was climbing Mount Everest.
The director lights beneath the tanker normally provided a reference for approaching planes. This morning they seemed only to throw him off, juggling back and forth as he eased in. Finally, Doberman got close enough for the boom operator in the back of the tanker to hook his spike into the receptacle. The Hog snorted with pleasure as it sucked up the fuel.
That was the first time. Swinging southeast toward King Fahd, they had to be vectored out the path of a large package of bombers headed north. Doberman’s right hand started shaking uncontrollably as he brought the plane to the proper course heading. At first it was just a twitch in his thumb, and he laughed at it — compared to the immense knot in his back, this torture was amusing.
But as it spread from his thumb to his other fingers, he stopped thinking it was funny. He grabbed the stick with his left hand and shook his right in the air before him, as if he could shoo the problem away. When that didn’t work, he tried stretching his hand out against the top of the instrument panel. Finally, he yelled at it to stop.
It stopped.
“Doberman, you okay in there?” A-Bomb asked. A-Bomb had slid behind him; Mongoose was in the lead.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Doberman.
“You know you’re down to three angels.”
The pilot looked at the altimeter in shock. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I was just looking for a good draw. I got an ace in my hand.”
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m bringing it back up.” Doberman put his right hand back on the stick, holding the control with both hands for a few seconds, not sure he could trust it.
“How are you on fuel?”
“Fine,” he barked.
“Just asking.”
Mongoose called in with the time to tanker and the frequency, then double-checked the course headings with both pilots.
Doberman barely acknowledged. There was so much shit to do, so much blank sky to fly through.
Luckiest dead man, huh? What the hell were the odds of getting all shot to hell twice in one day?
Worse than pulling a full house on a four-card draw. Worse than hitting an inside straight.
Never in his life had he done that.
Nah, he must have. All the years he’d played cards, since his uncle JR taught him at age seven, and he hadn’t gotten one?
Didn’t remember if he did. Shit, it was just that he never tried to do it. A sucker’s move.
Good ol’ JR. Taught him how to play poker, taught him how to smoke cigars, taught him just about everything important.
Ought to call him.
Jesus, that would be a good trick, Doberman realized. JR died two years ago.
Hell of a thing to forget. Son of a bitch got crunched so bad in a car accident they had to close the coffin.
“Doberman, you awake back there? The tanker is trying to reach you on their frequency.”
The pilot gave the com panel a dirty look, as if it were responsible for JR’s death.
“They’re at twenty-four thousand feet,” said Mongoose. “You’re two cars back.”
At 24,000 feet? No way he was getting that high. Hell, even a perfect Hog didn’t like being that far off the ground.
“Devil Four?”
“Yeah, I’m switching to their frequency now,” Doberman snapped. “I need them to come down. Way down.”
The tanker was a KC–IOA Extender, a military version of the three-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-10 adapted to a tanker role. Taking the boom from the jet was similar to grabbing a line from the older KC-135, and in fact Doberman had flown his Hog into the Gulf following a KC–IOA. He could suck up to one blind, and had come close to doing so on several night flights.