Mongoose took another gander at his fuel, then glanced back at his watch. Doberman was now a full three minutes late. He didn’t know him very well- the entire squadron had been patched together for deployment only a few weeks before- but it seemed uncharacteristic of the captain, who could be anal-retentive when it came to planning and poker. He was the kind of guy who not only stacked his chips according to color, but made sure they were all facing the same direction.
Which meant you always knew how much you’d won from him. The guy had the worst luck on the base.
A-Bomb replaced the thermos, then ran his hand into another pocket in his flight suit. “Born in the USA” blared from two small but powerful speakers carefully sewn behind mesh patches near his knees. He was thinking he might change the CD — he was in kind of a “Greetings From Asbury Park” mood — when Mongoose reminded him he was supposed to be checking for flak damage.
“You still with me or what?” barked the major, the radio barely audible over Springsteen.
A-Bomb closed in on Devil One and eyeballed the aluminum. The green camo looked completely unblemished.
“Jeez, Goose, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you had that sucker washed and waxed.”
“One of these days you’re not going to get enough oxygen and your brain’s going to fry,” said Mongoose. “We’re pretty damn high to be screwing with your mask.”
“I got a straw goes right through.” By now A-Bomb had passed slowly under Devil One and was surveying the other side. “Cleaner than the day you drove it out of the showroom.”
“Let’s see how you made out,” said the flight leader, winging back to inspect A-Bomb’s A-10A.
“I thought I heard something hit my left wing,” said A-Bomb. “But it feels okay.”
“What the hell is that racket in the background?”
“RWR’s giving me trouble. Just checking the settings,” answered A-Bomb.
“I didn’t realize your threat indicator played guitar.”
“Shit, you wouldn’t believe the things Clyston’s techies can do with a pair of pliers,” said the pilot. “This sucker’s better tuned than a Spark Vark.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe we should just have you fly over the missile batteries and knock out the radar for us.”
“That wouldn’t be any fun. Ahmed has to have something to play with.”
A “Spark Vark” was an F-lll fighter-bomber outfitted with special gear to detect and jam enemy radars. The RWRS in the A-10A were based on technology that dated from Vietnam; while they could detect a variety of radars — usually they couldn’t jam them.
Or play guitar.
Jamming was left to a counter-measures pod carried on the right wing of the plane. The needle-shaped box was many years old and about two generations behind the times. The ECMs worked well against the radars it was designed to work well against, but the Iraqis had plenty of sophisticated defense systems beyond their reach. Devil Squadron hadn’t won whatever lottery was held for the few more advanced versions that had been shipped to the desert. Even those were considered a bit behind the curve.
But hell, a Hog with advanced ECMs? Kind of against the point, in A-Bomb’s opinion.
He held steady while the other Hog came in for an inspection. A-Bomb waved at Mongoose, then glanced at his watch again. Devils Two and Four were now more than five minutes late, an eternity in a war zone.
If it were up to him, he’d head north and find them. But it wasn’t his call.
Mongoose swung under the other plane, consciously trying to take his time and focus on the job in front of him. Doberman could take care of himself.
A-Bomb’s Hog was unblemished. They’d anticipated heavy anti-air, but the truth was, they’d encountered only sporadic fire, most of it unaimed. Still, all it took was one lucky shot to ruin your day.
Just as he was about to tell A-Bomb he was clean, Mongoose heard a hail over the radio from their E-3 Sentry AWACS controller. “Cougar” was flying back behind the border, helping coordinate the air war in this sector. The airborne situation room functioned like the coaching staff in a stadium skybox, calling in plays and alerting the pilots to blitzes and stunts.
“Go ahead, Cougar,” said Mongoose, expecting to be asked why they were playing ring-around-the-rosy in the middle of the desert.
“We’re tracking two Fulcrums headed toward SierraMax. Are you in contact with Devil Two?”
“That’s a negative.” Mongoose felt his voice start to crack, despite his straining effort to keep it level.
“He had an F-l in pursuit when we lost him on radar. We haven’t been able to reach him on any frequency.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Roger. Vector me in.”
“That is a negative. Repeat. Negative. You are to proceed according to your frag. Confirm.”
There were very few times in his life that Mongoose wished he flew a pointy nose, fast-moving fighter, but this was definitely one of them. He gunned the large turbofan engines that sat behind the cockpit, turning the plane northwards in what he hoped was Doberman’s direction.
He knew A-Bomb would follow, so he didn’t bother keying the mike to tell him.
There was no sense answering the E-3. All he’d end up doing was cluttering the airwaves with four-letter words.
CHAPTER 4
Doberman felt the heat seeking missile boring in on him as he flicked out more flares. Jinking toward the ground, he rolled the Hog’s engines away from the Iraqi missile, trying to present as cold a target as possible to the enemy. He couldn’t see what was happening behind him; it was all touch-and-feel, bred by hundreds of drills and simulations. The Hog’s GE power plants were cool for jet engines, and the primitive seeker in the Iraqi air-to-air missile sniffed the air for the plane in vain. It missed the flare as well, continuing harmlessly into the desert — though Doberman had no way of knowing that as he skimmed down as close to the ground as he could get.
Above him, the Mirage pilot gathered his senses and energy for another try. When Doberman realized he was free and began climbing off the deck, he found the F-l diving for him from about five thousand feet in a head-on attack.
The French had built the Dassault-Breguet Mirage F-l during the 1960s. It was a reasonable effort, capable of Mach performance and a variety of roles, with a single engine and a pair of 30 mm machine guns under the fuselage. Its wing area was better suited for low altitude flight than some of Dassault’s other efforts, and perhaps on paper, the plane ought to outmatch an A-10A any day.
But they weren’t flying on paper. Doberman kept on trucking, determined to stuff his nose into the Iraqi’s face. In a close-quarters attack, it was cannon versus cannon, and there the Hog had the advantage.
The Mirage driver poured on the gas, coming at him like a bat out of hell. Suddenly, the underside of his plane began to sparkle. Doberman resisted the impulse to return fire, realizing it was a waste of bullets from this distance. Instead, he continued boring in, expecting the F-l to turn in an attempt to swoop behind the Hog to finish him off. Sure enough, the Iraqi began angling away to the left, no doubt confident that he could outrun the strange and slow American machine.
Doberman executed his own turn into the Iraqi and lit the cannon. It was a textbook maneuver, the angle of separation nearly nonexistent, the Hog right on the Mirage’s rear end.