If there was going to be any air defense, it would be there. His RWR was clean but shit, at this altitude, a guy with a water pistol could get a bead on you.
The pilot blew a long, hard wad of air from his mouth, trying to control his adrenaline. Anger rumbled through his stomach— he wanted to nail the Scuds and wring Saddam’s neck personally.
Bad.
Push the buttons and do your job. Checklist mode. Getting angry got you killed.
He was at two hundred feet, nearly dead on. He kept coming, nose in the dirt, eyes starting to itch, a vague pinch around the edges of his body, partly from the increasing g’s and partly from tension. He edged right slightly, felt himself falling into that perfect space, his spine aligned with the plane’s spine. The missile carriers had grown from distant cigarettes to thick, enticing sausages, and finally into big fat targets filled with very combustible fuel.
Mongoose squeezed the trigger, the gun growling an angry roar as its one-and-a-half pound charges leapt toward the enemy. The pilot leaned into the trigger, his eyes following the smoke. He gave the ship rudder to hold the line of bullets into the rear of the missile truck nearest the road. The force of the gun was so awesome it held the Hog back, slowing it in mid-air so that the plane seemed to hang around him, defying all laws of gravity and motion.
The underpass evaporated beneath the onslaught. He pushed his aiming point to the right without a clear target, searching for the next missile. He fired and he fired and finally the Scud’s rear fin or something was right there, right in the middle of his bullets. He fired some more and thought he could feel the heat of his gun firing. The plane rocked with the cannon, everything jumbling into one tremendous quake. He’d nailed the rear units of both missiles.
Webbed in fine fuzz of total concentration, Mongoose pushed himself and the plane to get away. His throttle was full out as he zoomed away, beyond the attack.
It was a vulnerable moment; he was moving quickly but well framed against the horizon. He pushed his stick, kicked his rudders and bent his body hard to the right. He hit flares as a precaution against a shoulder-fired weapon, and bolted from the bubbling cauldron of fire and burning sand. They were shooting at him. All Iraq was trying to kill him; even if their bullets were puny, a bullet was a bullet. He held it full bore, hell-bent on getting away, skimming the ground low enough to count grains of sand. Finally sensing he was clear, Mongoose started to nose up, grabbing for more sky. He felt his chest muscles relaxing. There was a vehicle now he hadn’t seen here along the highway; they were firing, too, a lot of shit reaching out for him but nothing he couldn’t handle. He pushed the plane to get around, to get back and cover A-Bomb’s run.
He’d smashed the crap of Saddam, nailed both Scuds. Who knew? Maybe the stinking chemical crap the bastard intended dumping on the Americans— or maybe the Israelis— was now wafting below, killing his own men.
Served them right.
Mongoose took a long, relaxed breath, the easiest since they had cross the border, and keyed his mike to tell A-Bomb he could start his pass.
In that second, something thumped behind him, and he felt a flutter in his stomach that extended all the way back to his engines.
CHAPTER 14
A-Bomb shouted when he saw the flash from the far end of the underpass. By then it was far too late for anything he could do to have much of an effect, but he didn’t think about that. He keyed his mike to give the warning, and in practically the same motion he pushed the nose of his plane down and smashed the trigger, hoping that his flailing bullets would suppress any more fire. He couldn’t hold the angle well enough to nail the target, which passed by in a blur; he tried rolling and diving back but even A-Bomb could only bend Newton’s laws so far. He got a good glimpse of the bastard, though— a Roland SAM launcher, sitting atop an AMX tank chassis and just about ready to dish up another missile.
At him.
He yanked the Hog hard to the north, goosing the throttle and hunkering down, wondering why the Scuds hadn’t caused a big enough explosion to take out the Roland. The Hog’s ECM unit was useless against the missile’s Siemens J-band low-PRF tracking radar, which used techniques perfected well after the pod came on line. All he could do was jink and fly like hell.
A-Bomb keyed his mike and shouted his warning to Mongoose again. Then he concentrated on his own plane, his own body, pushing it away. He had the throttle to the firewall. The Hog leapt forward with the lust of a race horse leaving the gate. He let the plane have her head for a few seconds, then took another hard turn, rolling out at the same time and just about cracking the plane’s back as he whacked it sideways, exploring new dimensions in geometry. He flew the Warthog harder than an aerobatics plane, pushing it over, and under, and back again, trying to undo the knot the SAM had tied.
The Roland could move just over Mach 1.6. She had a limited range, though; he could win if he could run just a little further.
He glanced back and saw it coming for him, just about softball size and getting bigger in the rear quarter of his canopy.
Maybe he didn’t see it at all; maybe his imagination was painting it there for him, because no way in real life could you see a Roland this long after it had been fired. He’d gone what? Ten miles at least. And still he felt the damn thing homing in on his head like Saddam had painted a big bull’s eye there.
No way it could still be coming for him. Damn thing weighed less than 150 pounds, and it couldn’t all be fuel.
He jinked again, this time so low to the desert floor he would have had to look up to change the oil on a Jeep. There was a thud or something behind him; the Hog seemed to gain speed. A-Bomb pushed his stick hard and held on, fingers crossed, one more gut-smearing turn before he was finally sure that the cloud of dirt and shrapnel represented the last remains of the French and German missile.
A-Bomb blew a breath and caught a glimpse of Mongoose’s plane, well east and much higher than him, flying in the opposite direction toward Kuwait.
“Jesus, ‘Goose, I thought they got you,” he told his wingmate.
Devil One continued to climb to the east, rising from its run as easily as if were on a training mission. The ugly dark green shades of camo smudged into a black blur, its pudge nose and fat tail as pretty as a black Ferrari steaming around a race track. The late sun gleamed off the front of the canopy, its glint refracted into reddish-white fingers of light.
Then he saw the Hog waddle in the air, its left wing flailing upwards, out of the pilot’s control.
Most of the other wing was gone. One of both of the missiles had blown right through it.
“Bail out, Goose!” A-Bomb called. “Bail the fuck out!”
CHAPTER 15
The emergency indicator lights were on. The engine was screaming. The plane was trying to pull herself over.
Hit.
Engine, must be. Right side.
Checklist mode.
Compensate for the dead engine, push the rudder, hold the stick.
Wing took something, too.
Rudder not responding. Hydraulics out. Go to manual reversion.
Shit, there’s no plane here.
Manual reversion.
Is there time?
Checklist mode.
Caution panel dotted with more lights than a power grid station.