Of course, Doberman had no way of knowing exactly what had been launched at him. Nor did he do much in the way of analyzing the odds. He concentrated on pushing the Hog into a series of hard, swaggering turns, lighting off flares as he went.
He might have prayed or wished for luck, but there wasn’t time.
CHAPTER 9
As A-Bomb shouted his warning, Doberman ducked left and tossed flares, obviously in control of the situation. So O’Rourke turned his attention toward meting out the only acceptable punishment for firing on a Hog.
Death. With extreme and radiating prejudice.
The fact that the Iraqis who had fired on his wingmate might have other SAMs at their disposal was irrelevant.
“What I’m talking about here is basic Hog etiquette,” said A-Bomb, as if he had a set of loudspeakers to harangue the Iraqis with, “You have to learn how to be polite.”
Rumor had it that Miss Manners was planning on devoting an entire chapter in her next book to the proper use of 30 millimeter cannon fire at dinner parties. If so, she could have used A-Bomb’s first run as a textbook example — he pushed his nose nearly straight down on the spot where the lingering smoke fingered the guilty party.
The cannon wasn’t really an effective weapon against individual soldiers, who presented a difficult target for an aircraft moving at four hundred miles an hour. Cluster bombs or even old-fashioned iron would have clearly been the weapon of choice, as Miss Manners would undoubtedly note in a well-worded aside at the start of her chapter.
The Iraqis, however, could not afford to wait for the book. The soldiers disappeared in a percolating steam of sand and explosive as A-Bomb rode the trigger for an extra-long burst, the gun’s recoil actually slowing the A-10A’s descent. He worked his rudder pedals to walk the torrent of bullets into a second knot and then over into the troop truck that had accompanied the men, slicing a neat line roughly along the drive shaft, not to mention the rest of the chassis.
There was a bit too much smoke to see the vehicle split in half, and besides, the flames got in the way. Nonetheless, A-Bomb gave himself an attaboy as his crosshairs slipped toward one last knot of soldiers lying in the sand. These men had the audacity to actually fire at him — or at least that seemed to be the implication of the tiny flashes of red coming from their position.
“Definitely not polite,” said A-Bomb, squeezing his trigger. “You gentlemen are going to have to learn not to shoot out of turn. I’m afraid you fall under the jurisdiction of Hog Rule Number 5 — For every action there is an opposite and disproportionate reaction.”
CHAPTER 10
Doberman held the plane steady as a white arrow shot past his canopy. It began to veer across his path but then wobbled and exploded, detonated by its self-destruct mechanism as its fuel gave out. The pilot ducked, though the warhead was too far away to do any damage. He brought the stick back and started to climb, turning around toward the battlefield to get back in the game.
Doberman caught a glimpse of Devil Two diving nearly straight down on the Iraqi truck, smoke pouring from the Gatling gun in its chin. Between the smoke and the glinting sun, the Hog’s dark green skin looked as if she were bathed in perspiration, a magnificent winged beast meting out justice to a parcel of demons escaped from the underworld.
Doberman got back to three thousand feet as he reassessed the battlefield. A-Bomb began recovering at very low altitude, pulling off to the southwest. The Iraqis were either all dead or out of SAMs; Devil Two flew off unscathed.
Which left the T-72 he’d been homing in on when he was so rudely interrupted. The tank commander had taken the course of all intelligent Iraqis — he was turning tail and running away. Dust and sand spewed out behind him.
Doberman eyed his flanks cautiously before attacking. He put the plane into a long but shallow dive, a surfer riding the last wave toward shore. It was a peaceful, gentle maneuver, a glide rather than a plunge, the Thunderbolt II seeming to float downwards on a summer breeze.
Then he blasted the hell out of the bastard with two quick squeezes of the trigger.
The first pack of bullets caught the edge of the tank’s turret like the sharp edge of a crowbar, wedging in and lifting, tossing it off like a discarded bottle cap. The massive sewer cover scraped briefly against the side then plopped into the sand.
The second burst finished off the work, igniting the insides of the Russian-made tank. The heavy slugs of depleted uranium that made up the bulk of the combat mix bounced back and forth in the tank’s interior, but the heavy-lifting had already been done by the very first HE round to slap into the open hull; the three members of the tank crew were incinerated as it ignited a fuel line at the edge of the engine compartment.
Doberman let go of the trigger, shoving his right wing down and pirouetting sharply in the air, turning back toward the border. the other tank lay to his right, the truck to his left. Men lay on the ground around both vehicles. Nothing moved.
The dark shape of A-Bomb’s plane appeared a mile and a half ahead, climbing above him.
“Devil Two, this One,” Doberman said. “You have anything else moving down there?”
“Neg-a-tivo,” said his wingmate. “Clean slate.”
Doberman tensed as he flew toward the position of the soldiers who had called in support. He suspected they were part of the Iraqi plot.
“Rat Patrol to Devil Flight. Shit man, we are sorry about that. Jesus, we’re sorry.”
“Yeah,” said Doberman. He spotted their ditch, or what he thought was their ditch, about a half-mile out at ten o’clock, between his nose and left wing. “A-Bomb, you think these guys are legitimate?” he asked over the short-range frequency, which linked him only to his wingmate.
“AWACS woulda authenticated ‘em,” said A-Bomb.
“Yeah.”
“Got to go with it, Dog,” said A-Bomb.
Glenon scowled beneath his mask but didn’t reply. He hated it when A-Bomb used his serious voice. But his wingman was right — they had to accept that Rat Patrol was authentic.
In theory.
“You got me?” he asked his wingmate.
“I have your lovely effigy within my fierce gaze.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I’m on your ass.”
“Cover me while I buzz these suckers.”
“Dog.”
“Just watch my butt. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” Doberman pumped the throttle and dove the A-10A down, zooming over the American position at all of ten feet AGL. Two round shapes popped up, then hunkered down.
“Shit. What gives, Devil flight?” demanded the soldier.
“Just saying hello,” said Doberman, still not convinced that the soldiers were friends.
A-Bomb in the meantime had hailed the AWACS, filling them in on everything that had happened. The controller assured him that the unit was a legitimate one.
“But what’s that mean, really?” Doberman said to him over the short-range radio as they climbed away from the border. “They have a legitimate frequency and pass words, but that’s it, right? I mean, the controller is sitting in an airplane — he doesn’t know.”