“Hey Yank! Yank!”
Dixon suddenly realized that a man in a green flight suit was doing jumping jacks in front of his right wing. His mouth seemed to be moving; in any event, it was fairly obvious that he wanted to talk to him. Dixon waved the fellow around to the left side of the plane and popped down the cockpit ladder. He soon found a British pilot leaning over the side into his seat. Damned if, through the myriad of fuel and oil smells, the stink of exhaust, sweat, gunpowder and metal, he didn’t catch a strong whiff of Scotch off the man.
The Brit gestured for Dixon to take off his helmet so he could hear better. Reluctantly, Dixon did so. It didn’t help him hear any better, and now he was sure it was Scotch.
“I want to thank you for helping rescue me,” said the visitor.
“When?”
“Just now. Up near Mudaysis.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“What?”
“Wasn’t me,” shouted Dixon. He tried to explain that the Hog had been grounded for the entire afternoon, and had only just been repaired. The Brit nodded at about half of what he said.
“Some of your mates, then,” said the other pilot. “They were definitely A-lOs.”
“There’s a bunch of us.”
“Bloody good crew. They risked their lives. All kinds of radar operating there.”
“Radar?”
The man nodded. “Got us coming in and out. My commander got a clear signal.”
“Commander?”
“Lost we think.” The pilot’s eyes edged downwards ever so slightly, then rose again, as if he had been watching a rowboat on a gently ebbing river. “Thank your friends.”
“I will.”
Dixon waited for the man to jump down and run off before obeying the ground crew’s wild gestures to come the hell forward and take fuel. Cinching up to get ready for takeoff, he wondered if he had heard what the man said correctly.
The GCI site they were supposed to take out that morning was just south of Mudaysis.
His fuckup had cost someone his life.
PART TWO
TENT CITY
CHAPTER 25
When Michael Knowlington was young, the sky was a romantic place, full of possibilities and speed. Then it became a place for defying death; the rush-in-your-face seat-jolt he got nearly every time he went up was like an addict’s fix. For a brief time it was an extension of his mind and body, reaching out into the future and the past in the same motion. Then it became an ugly place, a place that told him how old he was, how useless.
Now it was just the sky, empty and gray. Colonel Knowlington stared at it, alone at the edge of the runway, the only place he had to himself on the massive base.
The truth was, Knowlington had expected to lose at least one pilot, and probably more. They’d all survived, and the preliminary reports on their missions were glowing. Now, the last Hog straggled in. It was Dixon in the A-10A patched together at Al Jouf. He felt himself overcome by emotion. He walked a few feet further along the runway, making damn sure no one else was around.
Tears dripped from his eyes. He bent his legs, lowering himself down in an Indian crouch as the flow became uncontrollable.
He couldn’t have picked out a specific reason. He didn’t know any of these men very well, with the exception of Mongoose, his operations officer. And yet he knew them all too well, as well as the Blazeman, Cat and Clunker.
Each a wingman. Each dead.
An F-4 Wild Weasel Phantom, diverted to the base because of mechanical problems, squealed in behind the Hog. The familiar whine of its engines as it touched down, the squeal of its wheels, the heavy suck of oxygen through the pilot’s mask snapped Skull’s head straight up.
He was back in the Philippines, months after his second ‘Nam tour had ended with his splash in the Tonkin Gulf. Still younger than most of the men he trained, he’d already gotten the hot-shot star tag and the medals to justify it.
Knowlington had been standing at the edge of a strip like this one day when he saw a Phantom smack down, just implode right there on landing. No one really knew why it happened; mechanical failure of some sort, since the landing itself had looked perfect.
He’d been due to take that plane up, but a hangover and a sympathetic duty officer saved him. Only his second hangover in the service to that point, a true accomplishment.
It had taken forever to unlearn the lesson he thought he learned that day.
Knowlington pushed himself past the memories, past regrets, back to the present. A chill whipped across the back of his neck. It startled him; the chill was familiar, though he hadn’t felt it now in a long, long time.
He had a job to do; it was time to stop wallowing and do it.
CHAPTER 26
Captain Bristol Wong jumped from the chopper a good five feet before it hit the ground. He was higher than he thought. A lot. But he was so annoyed at being here he didn’t let it bother him. His legs sprung a bit, absorbing the shock, then steadied as he half-walked, half-ran from the commandeered army Huey. The exasperated pilot mouthed a silent curse — Wong had been a less than ideal passenger, even for an Air Force officer — and skipped away without touching down.
It took Wong several minutes to get himself pointed in the direction of the 535th tactical fighter squadron, and considerably more time for him to arrive at the ugly clump of trailers that served as its headquarters. Scowling at the hand-painted “Hog Heaven” sign nailed near the front door, he barged inside and strode down the hall, looking for Colonel Michael Knowlington, the unit commander. He was surprised to hear laughter coming from the squadron room, and even more surprised to find it dominated by several couches and a large-screen TV.
The fact that none of the officers inside could tell him where Knowlington was stoked his anger higher. He stomped into the hallway, nearly running over an airman who volunteered that he had seen the colonel near the runway some time before. The man was not otherwise helpful; it was only by sheer luck and some desperation that Wong managed to stumble across Knowlington inspecting several A-lOAs in the squadron’s maintenance area. The captain’s ill humor had long since passed from impatience to irritation. By now he knew he would never keep his evening dinner date in the foreign section of Riyadh; the deprivation riled him because he had been unable to contact his friend, which would undoubtedly make future dinner dates a difficult proposition.
Still, this was his first encounter with Knowlington, though he had of course heard of him; Wong coaxed as much energy as he could into seeming polite, giving him a false smile and a smart salute, then asked if they could speak in private.
“Shoot,” said Knowlington.
There were at least a dozen enlisted men, mechanical specialists and other grease monkeys from the look of them, within earshot. As far as Wong was concerned, anyone of them could have a cell phone and Saddam’s home number in his locker.