One thing he had to say— for a guy who hadn’t sat in a Hog cockpit all that long, Knowlington had kicked butt. You could tell Skull liked to wallow in the mud the way he laughed at the flak on that last run, just went in and kissed it, got three stinking APCs and a truck on one run— not bad for a rookie.
Or an old coot, come to think of it.
Of course, he’d probably flown against those same guns in Viet Nam, and in something not nearly as good as a Hog. So he’d had practice.
“We’re going back south and make sure their flank is clear,” Skull told him. “I don’t want nothing screwing us up now that we’ve worked up a sweat.”
“I’m right behind you,” said A-Bomb. He nudged his stick to get a slightly better angle off his wing, scanned his wedge of the world, and reached into his survival vest for his reserve cache of Good & Plenty. They weren’t his favorite candy to eat while flying. The slick little torpedoes could shoot down your throat if you didn’t pay attention, and then you lost all that flavor. But this was war and you had to take some chances.
CHAPTER 59
He was played. He could feel the desert warming into daylight around him, felt the relentless approach of his enemy, but Mongoose could do nothing but stare upwards at the emptiness. He’d tried to stand but got no further than his knees; he leaned back on them, wanting to collapse back but unable even to do that.
He no longer felt any pain. His consciousness was squeezed into a two inch by two inch rectangle, the space defined by his eyes, which saw only the blank sky.
When the Iraqis found him, they would shoot him. It was only fair.
He hadn’t had a chance to read the letter. He regretted that. It was the only thing he regretted.
Maybe he would die before the soldiers found him. His knee was twisted and his arm broken. He was probably dehydrated beyond belief, and who knew what other injuries he had. He certainly didn’t. All he knew was the blank space above.
Blank space filling with a dark angel.
Death.
The earth roared at the end, he thought, just like he’d heard it would.
Someone shouted at him over the din.
The angel was asking his name.
“James Johnson,” he said.
“Major, you just ease back now, sir; we want to hop you into a stretcher just as a precaution. We got all the time in the world. Your colonel’s blasted the shit out of half the Iraqi army to save you,” said the para-rescueman, squatting with him and helping him move his legs into a sitting position. “We’ll have you home faster than you can say, ‘Kiss my ass Saddam.’”
CHAPTER 60
Skull heard the Pave Low pilot practically yahoo as he got the thumbs-up from the rescue crew. Mongoose was alive.
“Shit yeah,” he acknowledged.
Not precisely military, except that it was, totally.
“Shit yeah,” said A-Bomb.
Knowlington checked the Hog’s dials as he ran a lazy arc south past the two choppers. At spec and with plenty of gas. Damn, he loved this plane.
Two Super Jolly Greens squatted in the hardscrabble terrain, fetching his pilot and making sure the Iraqis were dead.
Big, beautifully-ugly choppers, just like in Nam.
Except, they weren’t the same. They might look it from a distance, but they’d been rebuilt from the ground up— stronger, meaner, much more capable.
More considered. More deliberate. Living by intelligence, not sheer brute force or instinct.
The facts were just the facts, back there, obscured by memory and smoke, fog of war, and all that bullshit. It didn’t change or get negated by the present; it stayed back in the past.
You had to deal with the present. It wasn’t fair to blame his drinking on that ride over Laos. He’d been drinking before that. Laos was what it was— a bad day with bad decisions and some luck for him, not for his buddy. It was back there now, squashed with the remains of bridges and guns and MiGs and APCs he’d wrecked or managed to evade. He had to deal with what was in front of him in the windscreen.
Fact was he still wanted a drink. Fact was the sting of whiskey in his throat would feel great.
But he wasn’t going to taste it. Not today. Today he was going to struggle against it, and find a lot to do back at the base to take his mind off it.
It’d be hard, though.
Knowlington checked his instruments again. He was just a mediocre pilot now, compared to most of the others in the squadron. Hell, this was going to look damn good, but the reality was it had been a turkey shoot; poor slobs had only one AAA gun, and they hadn’t even set it up right.
More time in the cockpit wouldn’t help. His reflexes were a touch slower. And his eyes— his eyes were just normal eyes now.
Probably still had his share of luck, though. Must have, to have gotten the chance to get back up here.
The thing was, he’d traded some of his flying ability for experience, for leadership. He’d figured out where Mongoose was, walked his head through it like a commander should. He didn’t have to prove himself in the cockpit anymore; that wasn’t his job. His job was to get these guys up here— and back.
“Hey, we got a knot of soldiers down here near those trees,” radioed A-Bomb over the squadron frequency as the two planes passed the area. “Kinda huddled down like maybe I won’t see them.”
“What are they doing?”
“Beats me. Maybe they’re having breakfast. Shit, they’re waving.”
“Waving?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
Knowlington began circling back. He gave the plane a smidgen of rudder as he settled on a precise line to the trees.
They were waving all right. And they made a show of tossing away their guns.
“They want to surrender,” Knowlington told A-Bomb.
“Hot damn. Hog-tied prisoners. That’s what I’m talking about. You cannot do this in any other plane. You ever see anybody surrender to an F-16? I don’t think so. F-15. Ha, there’s a joke.”
Skull suppressed a laugh. But sure as hell, those soldiers did want to surrender.
“I accept your surrender in the name of the President of the United States, the commander in chief, and Kevin Karn,” announced A-Bomb.
“Who’s Kevin Karn?” Skull asked.
“My homeroom teacher in tenth grade. He said I ought to go into the Air Force.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do with these guys,” Knowlington told him. “It’s a hell of a long walk back.”
“Hell, stash them in one of the choppers. If they can’t take ‘em, I’ll land and lash ‘em onto the wings,” said A-Bomb.
I’ll bet you will, Skull thought. “Stand by while I talk to the Pave Low.”
CHAPTER 61
Dixon jumped from the helicopter into a whirl of dust and sand, running behind one of the soldiers. He’d meant to stay aboard, but something about the adrenaline of the others pushed him out.
The one thing he hoped was that he didn’t need to use his gun. Because sure as shit, then he was going to fuck up.
No one was firing, though. He ran forward a few steps, then stopped as he caught the silhouette of a Hog low and slow to the south. He turned and saw a second Pave Low landing about fifteen yards south of the chopper he’d just left; one of the commandos on the ground was waving its team out to help secure the area.