Never again would he fly without a reserve supply of Twizzlers. Never.
He sighed, straightening the plane and circling back in a long arc, the target now running toward him in the left corner of his windscreen. A-Bomb kissed the stick with his fingertips, pulling the Hog’s nose onto the radiator of the Zil as he nailed the trigger home. The gun roared as he gave the Gat a good double-pump, a personal signature kind of thing. The cannon’s recoil practically stopped him in midair, the plane jittering as her nose erupted with flames and smoke from the gun.
As he let off on the trigger, A-Bomb realized two things:
One, he’d blown the shot, because the truck was still moving.
Two, things were suddenly awful quiet.
The shock of the recoil had flamed the plane’s one good engine. Under other circumstances, A-Bomb would have undone his seat restraints and given himself a good kick in the rumpus area for flying like such an idiot. But he was down to two thousand feet, not a particularly good place to fly without means of propulsion. And besides, he was already being chewed out sufficiently by the plane’s problem panel. He nosed down for momentum, cursing over the stall warning as he worked to restart the engine. The turbines spun, the fuel combusted, and the GE turbofan on the left side of the hull kicked herself back to life. The Hog lurched and a whole lot of desert flew in front of A-Bomb’s face. He pulled out maybe three seconds before his job description would have changed from Hog driver to backhoe operator.
Any other pilot would have called it a day and set sail for the Saudi border a few miles away. But whatever other characteristics he possessed, A-Bomb was not a quitter. He had a very deep sense of obligation, and realized that his boneheaded, hot-dogging stupidity had just brought serious embarrassment to Hog drivers everywhere. True, he had an excuse— obviously his blood sugar was out of whack. But how could he take his place in the great fraternity of Hog men, to say nothing of tomorrow night’s poker game, knowing that he had missed an easy shot on an unprotected target?
He couldn’t just go in with the cannon, though. It wasn’t simply that he might flame the engine again. Hardly. That could be avoided or at least prepared for by simply climbing higher and attacking with a steeper angle. But doing that would be tantamount to admitting he was unworthy; it would be expected, it would be boring. The stakes had been raised. A-Bomb had to go beyond the mundane. Hog drivers the world over were counting on him to demonstrate élan and ingenuity.
There was, fortunately, a way.
He steadied the Hog at roughly twelve hundred feet over the desert, banking roughly two miles behind the Zil. Nudging his nose into the swirling grit, he picked up speed as he hurtled toward the rear of the truck. The Hog coughed for a second, wondering what he was up to, but A-Bomb kept on, his timing and aim perfect. He caught the Zil and whipped his right wing up in a terrific banking turn directly in front of the windshield, swooping into the driver’s vision so suddenly that the man yanked the wheel hard to the left, toppling the truck and trashing the howitzer behind him.
A-Bomb’s wingtip was two feet off the road before he slapped the plane back level. He belatedly realized he could have smashed the truck’s windshield if he’d popped his landing gear at the right moment.
But that was Monday morning quarterbacking. The truck and its trailer lay sprawled upside down in the desert sand, the howitzer broken in a half.
A-Bomb checked his course for Al Jouf, did a quick instrument check, and then reached down for the Twinkie.
Which, shaken loose by the encounter with the Zil, slid right into his fingers, demanding to be eaten.
CHAPTER 22
Captain Wong cast an eye toward the dark speck in the sky to the west as he continued to talk to its pilot over the satellite system. The Hog was undoubtedly into its reserves and ought to head back to its re-supply base. But Captain Glenon was as stubborn as the dogs he’d been nicknamed for.
“There is no need for us to call a strike in on the mosque,” Wong told Doberman speaking patiently into the Satcom’s retro-black-plastic and steel handset. The radio consisted of the control unit rucksack and an antenna “dish” that looked like a large X fashioned from thin, flat metal blades. “If the Iraqis follow their usual pattern, they will move the missiles as dusk fall, perhaps slightly afterwards. It will then be rather easy to attack them. I would expect an approximate time of 1900 hours.”
“Yeah, all right,” said Doberman. “I’ll be back.”
Wong shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Doberman could get back in time; on the contrary, given the legendary efficiency of the A-10A maintenance crews, not to mention Captain Glenon’s own snappy manner, he could undoubtedly rearm and return with four or five minutes to spare. The Hog, however, was not a night fighter; if the Iraqis deviated from their normal pattern he would have a difficult time locating his target, unless he managed to obtain infrared Mavericks during his reload. He was also flying without a wingman— a dubious situation at best.
Wong’s preferred solution was to request fresh air support. But it was useless to argue with Doberman, who was even more cantankerous and aggressive than the normal Hog driver. Wong had a theory that this was due in large measure to his small stature— so little place to store the bad humors the body naturally accumulated.
He didn’t bother sharing the theory with Doberman, just as he did not bother telling him that he would, indeed, be calling for another flight of bombers. Instead he wished Devil One luck.
“Yeah. Be back,” said Doberman, almost cheerfully.
Wong shook his head at the speck of a Hog in the distance, already disappearing. Then he clicked off the circuit and turned back toward the communications specialist, intending to ask him to contact the AWACS.
The com specialist had his hands spread out wide. A few yards down the hill, six Iraqis were pointing guns at them. One of the soldiers gestured toward Wong, indicating that the captain should raise his hands and step away from the radio.
It seemed expedient to comply, and so he did.
PART TWO
LOST AIRMAN
CHAPTER 23
Air Force Technical Sergeant Rebecca “Becky” Rosen plopped her tired body down against a Spec Ops rucksack and leaned against the inside wall of the shelter. For the first time since parachuting into Fort Apache, she had nothing to do— no Hog to fix, no Army helicopter to rebuild.
Fatigue surged over her like the green-blue waves of the Atlantic, salty and cold, numbing her feet and stinging her nostrils. But as tired as she was, Rosen couldn’t allow herself to fall asleep. The unit was evacuating south as soon as night fell; she was afraid if she dozed off now she’d never manage to wake herself when needed. So she reached beneath her jacket and pulled out the small spiral-bound notebook she’d carried with her since coming to Iraq some weeks back. Rosen had been intending to keep a journal of the deployment but until now had only made three one-word notes, each for a different day, and each confined to the weather — rain, cold, clear, in that order. Folding the book open to a blank page, she retrieved a silver-plated Cross pen from her breast pocket, sliding her callused fingertips across the smooth metal.