“As soon as our boys take out the radar site, send him home,” said Hawkins. “I don’t want to have to pick him up too.”
“Yes, sir.”
If he needed it, Hawkins could get a flight of Eagles for CAP and a pair of Spectre gunships up in about ten minutes. The Eagles would take care of enemy fighters. The Spectres were specially designed Hercules C-130s equipped with cannons; they could eliminate a battalion of ground troops in three minutes flat. But they weren’t supposed to come north if the dish was still operating.
“He hasn’t come up on the radio yet, has he?” the captain asked. The last thing he wanted to do was disobey orders for someone who’d already been captured.
“He’s not supposed to for another five minutes. Sandy last talked to him an hour ago,” said the sergeant. “Said he felt chipper, whatever that means.”
“All hell’s breaking loose at that GCI site,” the chopper pilot called back. He continued talking over the crew’s com set as Winston jumped up to find out what was going on. The quiet but tense boredom was replaced by a cacophony of voices, everyone talking at once.
“Three, four aircraft. Hogs — northeast,” reported one of the crew members, relaying the radar information.
“Right on schedule,” shouted Winston. “Hot damn! Radar is fried! AWACS says go.”
“Go, go, go,” Hawkins yelled.
“AWACS is reporting contact to our northwest, too low for a clear read.”
“Ignore it. Go!”
CHAPTER 48
They were like sleigh bells now, shaking in a steady, rhythmic beat. Dixon was entranced by the beauty of the sound, as if he were listening to some heavenly concert.
He wondered where the sound was coming from. His eyes flew over the control panels, but could find no indication of a problem. The airplane vibrated steadily around him in a reassuring hum.
So what the hell was it? Some angel whispering in his ear? An undocumented G effect?
He glanced at his oxygen hose. It seemed unobstructed.
And still the bells rang, growing louder now, slightly more urgent, yet losing none of their beauty.
The nose of the A-10A broke through the last tuft of clouds into the clear air at approximately 5500 feet. Only then did Lieutenant Dixon realize what he was hearing.
Shells were exploding all around him.
The concert turned into a sinister screech. The Hog’s grunts were drowned out by the reverberation of proximity fuses and high explosives. The pilot could see a gun emplacement directly below, centered precisely in his screen. He watched as a black puff erupted from it, and then saw the shell rise, coming for him like a messenger from Hell itself. It grew larger as it neared him, so large that it seemed bigger than the airplane. Suddenly it opened its mouth, and its jaws exploded in a profusion of red and yellow, petals of a spring poppy bursting in the warm sun.
In the next millisecond, Dixon snapped out of his daze. Time began moving at its proper pace as his body reconnected to his brain. He pulled the stick and pumped the rudder pedals, jerking the Hog away from the gunfire, recovering from the dive in time to skim away from the antiaircraft shells. Here was a real G effect — he could feel the bladders in his suit erupting as the plane came around to his eyes, its forked tail bending to his will, the two turbofans pushing themselves to keep up with the pilot’s hands. Dixon jerked to the left, kept accelerating. He nailed his eyes to the horizon bar, making sure he was upright as he ran south as planned, away from the guns.
Mission accomplished — at least the most critical part of it.
He took a breath and made sure he had a good memory of it — coming through the clouds in ultra-slow motion, the light sound of bells, breaking the clouds, realizing it was flak. What part was hallucination and what part was real, he couldn’t say, but he remembered it all.
He hadn’t chickened out.
Where was Mongoose? He did a quick scan and couldn’t find the other silhouette. He could feel the first twinge of panic starting in his throat — he’d lost his leader again.
But no — Mongoose had been behind him. He’d called him off. By now he ought to be somewhere ahead, to the south, as planned.
The dark green shadow of an A-10A Warthog appeared in the upper left quadrant of his windscreen. Its forked tail was like something you’d see at a barbecue, not on an airplane; the round power plants glopped onto the fuselage seemed to have been stolen from a 707.
Dixon had never seen anything so damned beautiful in his life.
“Hey, kid. I thought I lost you there for a second,” said Mongoose, his transmission fuzzed with static. “We’re a little closer than we planned. Hang loose until Doberman gives us the word.”
“Gotcha.”
“You got your Mavericks ready?”
“Copy, uh, affirmative. Yeah.”
“Easy. You’re looking good.”
Dixon’s radio lost half the transmission. He pounded the com panel, but that only made the answering static worse.
“Okay, the big guns are gone and the dish is out,” said Mongoose. “There’s a ZSU-23 off your right wing. You see it winking at you?”
“Got it,” said Dixon, already lining up the Maverick shot.
“All yours. Stay in the orbit after you fire.”
Dixon pushed his lungs slowly empty, then fired the Maverick. It was easy now, easier than in training — Mongoose was floating off his left wing, lining up and firing on his own target. They planned to hold one Maverick back apiece, just in case Doberman and A-Bomb missed the radar dishes.
“How’d you do back there?” said Mongoose as the two planes swung back around to take a look at the damage.
“Okay.”
“Hot shit! Look at the ground.”
Dixon stared through the canopy. The Mavericks had hit, all right. There was smoke all over the place.
And no more winking. Or flak.
The pilot followed the flight leader into a wide, orbiting turn to the east, still climbing. He checked the fuel stores — a good ten minutes of loitering time left at least.
How’d he do back there?
Not horribly. Pretty good actually.
But he wondered about the bell thing. Some sort of weird trick with his mind, or maybe the radio?
Mongoose said something, but it was completely lost in static.
“I’m losing your transmission,” he told the major.
There was no response. He saw Mongoose tucking back toward the GCI site, and pushed his Hog to follow.
CHAPTER 49
Doberman screamed a pair of curses, one at himself, the other at Saddam, as he pulled the stick back with every ounce of strength in his body. The Hog coughed before finally agreeing to change direction, her nose nudging away from the yellow-gray splotch of earth very reluctantly. Sky edged into the top of Doberman’s windshield as the HUD ladder told him he was at five hundred feet.
He eased off on the stick, back in control of his muscles as well as the plane. All hell was exploding around him as he struggled to orient himself. A fresh string of curses tumbled from his mouth when, for a quick second, he thought the engines had stalled because of the sharp pullback. Realizing they were still cooking — his fatigue was playing tricks on him — he began to bank toward his right, which ought to be north and therefore out of most of the heavy triple-A.
I did this yesterday, he thought to himself. I can do it again. I got the lucky penny.
The Hog began bucking as a sold wall of flak appeared right in front of him. Doberman jinked back to his left, unsure now what to do next. He was surrounded by bursts.