For a second he thought he might actually steer all the way back to Saudi Arabia.
But then the ground started moving faster than he did.
CHAPTER 18
The thing was, there ought to be more smoke. A Hog going down ought to make a hell of a big splash. Tear a hole in the desert and send a half-million Iraqis to hell with it.
Here there was nothing, not even dust. Just a vague whisper of gray in the air around it, haze only.
Or a soul, taking one last look at the bent body.
It was the Hog, all right though, no question. Even with the light fading, A-Bomb could see the wing section flat against the sand. The end had sheered and mangled, but a good hunk of it was intact.
Hell, you could probably dust it off, bang out the dents and put it on another plane, no sweat.
Couldn’t do that with the fuselage. It lay in a twisted tumble almost a mile away, crunched worse than a candy bar wrapper. The plane had been a trooper to the end, flying nearly ten miles before finally pancaking.
No way Mongoose would have survived that.
He’d gone out, though. A-Bomb knew he had. He had a memory of seeing a seat vaulting in the air.
Or at least, he saw how it should have happened. And at the moment, that was good enough for him. Because any other way, his lead was snuffed. They were damn close to the Euphrates, way far north in bad guy territory at the edge of the desert, within gum-spitting distance of the Republican Guard. No way Mongoose was catching it here, no way. Guy was going to live to a ripe old age and bounce grandkids off his knee.
So where was he now? The survival radio didn’t seem to be broadcasting. A-Bomb keyed his own mike a few times, hoping for an answer.
Worst case, the radio ought to at least be putting out a locator beacon. Mongoose carried two, so he had a backup.
Nada.
A-Bomb rode his Hog higher in the sky, scanning the ground for a parachute. By now the sun had set and the desert was starting to turn into a twilight fog. Wind whipped the loose dirt below, making it even harder for him to see.
But hell, anybody could spot a stinking parachute.
A-Bomb saw a clump of trees and scrub vegetation to his northwest, and another to his east; he rocked over both in a wide figure-eight but found no one.
A trio of squat buildings sat about two miles south of the wrecked plane. He investigated them next, flying low enough to read the number on the mailboxes.
If there had been mailboxes. All three buildings were in shambles, roofs blown off. There was a narrow road nearby, not so much a road as a path, dirt of a different color.
A-Bomb checked his radio and keyed the mike again.
“Yo, Goose. How’s it hanging?”
Still nothing.
Maybe he hadn’t seen him eject.
Damn it, Mongoose was alive. Stink-ass Iraqis could not kill a Hog driver. No sir. Hog driver was a serious entity, not quite superhuman but not susceptible to fingernail breaking crap like this.
Even if the missile had been a NATO job, better than the Russian crap, it still wasn’t good enough to take out a Hog driver, especially Mongoose. He was an anal son of a bitch who played engineer in the cockpit, painting by numbers and more careful than a goddamn girl scout.
Well, almost. Point of the matter was, he was a kick — ass pilot and squadron DO besides and could not be taken off the board by the Iraqis.
Most likely, he was hiking back to the Saudi border by now. Probably halfway home. Maybe even sitting at the bar in the Depot, ordering a double bourbon.
On the rocks.
A-Bomb edged the Hog higher, pointing the nose southeast, as if he really did expect to find the flight leader hiking in the sand below. There was a town— or at least a group of buildings that could be a town— six or seven miles further east, back toward Kuwait. Mongoose would stay away from that, for sure, but would the people there stay away from him?
“Devil Two, this is Red Dog. We have two Vipers approaching your location. Stand by for frequency.”
A-Bomb waited impatiently for the airborne controller to read off the numbers. He would have preferred a pair of Hogs instead of the F-16 “Vipers” or “Falcons,” but the fast movers would have to do. He was running low on fuel and would have to leave soon to tank.
The single-engined fighters were using the call sign “Boa,” as in boa constrictor. A-Bomb snorted when he made contact, but didn’t bother commenting on the cuteness of the name. You had to expect that sort of thing in a pointy nose.
The irony of snakes hunting up a Mongoose, well that was a different story. That was almost karma.
“Boa One to Devil Two, do you have a location on the emergency beacon?”
“Negative. I have the plane, but I haven’t made contact.” He ignored their ominous silence, reading off an INS marker and giving them a vector as he picked up their location.
“You sure he got out?” asked Boa One as the two fly — by — wire jockeys approached.
“Bet your fucking ass he did.”
“Hey, relax buddy. We’re on your side, remember? We’ll find him.”
A-Bomb didn’t answer.
The two F-16s, diverted from another mission, were flying at about eighteen thousand feet. Using the buildings and the wrecked Hog as landmarks, he sketched the area out for them. Even though they were pointy-nose types, they seemed relatively good-natured. They had no problem putting their chins down to get a good look at things.
Eagle pilots, though, those guys would cop attitude. Now that would be something to deal with.
He checked his fuel. Even an optimistic run at the math left him with two minutes less flying time than it would take to find a tanker.
But hell, this was a critical moment. Night was coming on, and no way Mongoose had thought to pack his flannels. Somebody had to find him and fast.
But really, if he waited much longer before going for gas, he was going to join him on the ground. That wasn’t much help.
It wasn’t like he was leaving Mongoose alone up here. The ABCCC had tasked a force to sponge the area clean of any more Iraqi missiles hiding in the bushes; the sky was starting to get busy. A-Bomb knew that the Special Ops troops working with Air Force Pave Lows had been tasked to air rescue operations. A-Bomb had a high opinion of the commandos, especially the Green Berets— and their coffee, which he had helped himself to during a visit to one of their forward airbases a few days ago.
But even they couldn’t mount a rescue if the pilot was nowhere to be found. The crews had orders not to cross into Iraq until the man was found and verified.
One more pass, then he’d tank. A-Bomb made sure the volume on the radio was full blast as he edged the Hog down, running along the dark ribbon of a road not far from the buildings.
Why the hell didn’t Mongoose use his radio?
“Yo, Goose, come on buddy, this is A-Bomb. I promise I’ll share my Big Mac pack with you tonight.”
Boa One asked if he had something. A-Bomb let the static fuzz in his helmet before telling the Viper pilot that he thought he’d seen a glint on the ground.
“Roger that. We’ll take a pass. Controller’s trying to get you,” relayed the pilot. “They’re thinking you should be returning to base before you run your tanks dry.”
“Well screw them.”
“Yo man, I’m just the messenger,” answered the pilot. “But running out fuel isn’t going to help your buddy.”
A-Bomb punched the Hog down for a last peek at the abandoned buildings, hoping he might find Mongoose doing jumping jacks on what was left of the roof. Beyond the building, he gave the control yoke an angry yank to put his nose skyward. The Hog groaned a bit, complaining that it wasn’t its fault its companion had gone down.