He turned back and saw the men from his Pave Low huddled around a man kneeling ahead.
Major Johnson.
He ran forward, the gun almost slipping from his hands. He slid onto his knees and stopped right at Johnson’s chest.
“Mongoose, it’s Dixon. Hey, Major, you okay?”
Mongoose groaned.
“Got a broken arm,” said the sergeant. “Not sure what else. We’re putting him on a stretcher.”
Dixon nodded, leaned back over Johnson. “You’re gonna be okay, Major.”
Johnson blinked his eyes. Dixon looked him over, saw him move his feet. One of the para-rescuemen came up with a med kit; Dixon stepped back and let the man do his job.
“Looks like he shot that guy there,” said the sergeant. He pointed to an Iraqi captain. “Maybe the rest of them, too. Your Hogs must’ve smoked the trucks.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah. You fucking Hog drivers. Jesus, you guys want to win the whole war by yourselves, don’t you?”
Dixon stood back and watched the Special Ops troops secure the area, checking over the dead Iraqis. He trotted over to the truck; he’d never seen the damage an A-10A could do to an enemy before.
The destruction was amazing. The vehicle looked as if it had been ripped in two by a school of metal-eating sharks.
“Hey, you Lieutenant Dixon?” asked one of the helicopter crewmen, running up to him. “Major needs you to take care of something.”
“I’m Dixon.”
The soldier pointed toward the road. “Your guys captured a squad of Iraqis. You have to accept their surrender.”
“What?”
“’Cause you’re an officer and part of their squadron. Major Greer says the pilots wants to make sure the air force gets full credit. Don’t sweat it, these guys’ll go with you.”
Dixon looked over to the highway, thinking that Greer had somehow arranged a practical joke.
Six unarmed Iraqi soldiers, each one fluttering a piece of white cloth above their heads, approached slowly, huge smiles on their faces. A pair of Hogs crisscrossed above them, wagging their wings.
“Fucking Hogs,” said the sergeant, sidling up next to Dixon as the Iraqis came forward. “What the hell are you guys going to do next?”
EPILOGUE
HOMEWARD
BOUND
CHAPTER 62
In the rush that followed his return to base, Mongoose didn’t have a chance to read the letter. He barely had a chance to do anything besides drink water, have his arm fixed and talk to people.
Talk to people mostly. First there were the official de-briefers, including a pair of colonels from General Schwarzkopf’s staff who were anxious to find out everything they could about the soldiers he’d encountered. There were so many Air Force people he lost track of whom he was telling what to. He even gave a short and undoubtedly uninformative brief to a pair of British colonels wondering about the Roland.
Then there were the squadron personnel, and what seemed like every other member of the A-10A community, officers and enlisted, and maybe a few civilians thrown in for good measure. A lot of people, pilots especially, wanted to touch him for good luck.
Not that they were superstitious or anything.
Finally, there was the media, which treated him with more reverence than a four-year-old having a private audience with Santa Claus.
All of which confused the hell out of him, because, after all, he had been shot down. And by his standards, that meant he’d screwed up.
No one else seemed to see it that way, though, and Mongoose was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and not contradict them. He remembered to take his aspirin and had his arm cast signed so much it looked like an ink pad. Finally, he found himself sitting alone in Colonel Knowlington’s office, waiting for the colonel to return from some last-minute detail over at the host squadron commander’s office.
So finally he reached in his pocket for Kathy’s letter.
He found the crinkled photograph that had belonged to the Iraqi captain first. He pulled it out and stared at it, a token that what he had gone through really had happened; it wasn’t part of a surreal dream.
The strangers looked out from their glossy space with unknowing smiles. He ran his finger over the surface of the photograph before returning it to his pocket and retrieving the letter from home. It was crinkled and folded all to hell. The inked address with his name had smeared and faded. Tucking it in the fist of his damaged hand, he slipped his finger under the flap to slit it open.
He stopped halfway.
What if, after all this, it had bad news? What if the one thing that had gotten him home turned out to be a Dear John letter, or worse?
Couldn’t be. Would never be.
He drew his finger all the way through.
Honey:
Well, nothing much happened today. Again. Just a boring day.
Robby’s getting bigger by the minute. He misses you. I show him your picture every day. I tell him you’re thinking about him and doing an important job for us all and that you’ll be back soon.
This morning we saw a pair of hawks circling in Felicia’s yard. I took him outside to see. ‘Pretty birds,’ I said. They swept down and we ran over to see, even though we didn’t have our coats on. It’s been warm.
Then I realized what they were doing. There was a little chipmunk on the ground and they killed it. I took him quick and ran inside. I don’t think he saw.
They were so beautiful and mean at the same time. But of course they were just doing what they had to do.
We miss you so much—
“Am I interrupting you?”
Mongoose was so startled he jumped to his feet.
“Hey, relax Goose,” said Knowlington, folding his arms. “Nobody’s going to be shooting at you for quite a while.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s leg’s okay?”
“Got a mile’s worth of bandage on it. Feels okay. My arm’s another story.”
“You want me to open that for you?” asked Knowlington, pointing to the letter.
“No, no, it’s fine.” He refolded the envelope and slipped it back into his pocket.
“I wish I could say you don’t look the worse for wear.”
“I feel fine.”
“I know that lie.”
“I’d like to stay here with the squadron. Obviously I can’t fly for a while, but I think I can put myself to pretty good use.”
“You don’t want to go back and see your wife and kid?”
“Well…”
“We’ll try to keep the war going for you, but I can’t make any promises. Ol’ Saddam’s a lot more incompetent than anyone thought.”
Mongoose smiled. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? For getting shot down?”
“No, for misjudging you,” said Mongoose. “I wasn’t the easiest guy to get along with at first, I realize that. I was wrong.”
“If I had a complaint I would have told you.”
“Thanks for rescuing me.”
“Aw hell, I didn’t rescue you. You thank A-Bomb and the Special Ops guys.”
“A-Bomb told me you came up with the Mavericks and you ran the mission yourself. I appreciate that. I did misjudge you, Colonel,” he added. “I thought, uh— ”
Knowlington nodded. “That I was a drunk? Yeah, well, maybe you had it right. I am. A sober one, though.”
There was too much there for either one of them to talk about it directly. It didn’t need words, though; they understood each other a lot better today than yesterday.