As they ran back toward the BMP and Land Rover, one of the men seemed to be crying. They were almost in front of Dixon and Budge when a quick burst of light machine-gun fire took them down; the BMP began firing again, its two weapons clattering like over-sized typewriters as they raked the ground in front them. A dozen shadows moved from behind the personnel carrier toward the road.
No, into the ditch. They were sidling in his direction.
Dixon let off two quick bursts from his AK-74, then pulled the boy with him as he threw himself forward across the highway. He tried to hug the ground while moving at the same time; above all he kept his fingers tight on the boy’s tattered shirt. He saw two rocks ahead, barely higher than cement blocks. He swung Budge around as he dove for them, keeping him sheltered as the bullets whipped around him.
If the rocks deflected anything it was by pure chance. The light whhisssh of rifle fire gave way to the throaty thump of the cannon, the shells moving inextricably closer.
BJ choked on the smoke and dust, praying for a miracle, praying to hear a familiar sound from above — the throaty whoosh of an A-10A closing on its target. He prayed and then in his confused desperation swore he heard it; he pulled Budge beneath him, expecting, knowing that he had finally lost his mind and was ready to die.
In the next second a short, shrill whistle announced the impending arrival of one hundred and twenty-five pounds of explosive on the top of the Iraqi BMP. A ferocious wind slapped Dixon deeper into the ground as a piece of flaming steel from the personnel carrier ignited the gas tank on the nearby Land Rover, turning the vehicle into a three-quarter ton Molotov cocktail. The four or five Iraqis who hadn’t been killed when the Maverick hit were fried as the truck’s shell vaporized. Their ammo cooked off in a burst of Fourth of July finales.
And then there was a hush, the flames eating themselves into oblivion. Dixon felt the oxygen run out of his own body, as if sucked into the fire. He fought to get it back, gagging in the dust as his lungs began working again.
Something kicked underneath him. Dixon pushed himself sideways, fearing he had crushed Budge. He looked at the small body writhing on the ground, lost his breath again — then realized the kid was laughing, maybe out of fear or frustration, but no, he seemed to find the whole thing a gag or joke staged just for him. The boy giggled and cackled. Dixon, too, started laughing, as if they were in the middle of a giant amusement park, as if they were at Disney World and Goofy had just done a pratfall for their benefit.
“We’ll go there when we get out of this, kid,” Dixon told the boy, and the kid nodded vigorously, as if he’d read his mind about Disney World and going to America. “Come on — let’s get the hell out of here.”
Dixon hooked his arm around the boy’s back and side, clutching him as he began running toward the light machine-gun that had cut down the two Iraqis a few moments before. Having wished the Hog there, he now wished his countrymen to materialize before him; he ran forward, convinced it would happen, convinced the first miracle wouldn’t have happened without this one being preordained, too.
“We’re American! We’re American!” he shouted as he ran. “American! American!”
“Ammorican, Ammorican!” yelled the boy. “Budge! Budge!”
Dixon, half-running, half-dragging, started to laugh again. He was a kid himself, running through a bizarre fun house, trotting through an endless dream, his head spinning wildly. Days of hunger and almost no sleep, of thirst, stress — of every bizarre thing that war was — spun like a tornado in his chest, holding him up, propelling him.
“I’m an American!” he yelled, and he heard something pop on his left, and he heard a voice, vaguely familiar, yelling from a few yards away on his left, “Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” And the thing popping on his left flared into the dragon mouth of a machine-gun mounted on the rear of a truck, its breath flaming the ground in front of him and the air overhead, its tongue leering from between teeth dripping with blood. The dragon roared and lurched, snapping at him, trying to bite the tornado he had become. And all Dixon could do was run and laugh, run and laugh, shouting again and again, “We’re American! Don’t shoot! We’re American, me and the kid. Don’t shoot.”
CHAPTER 59
“Get down! Get down! I see you! Get down!” screamed Wong as the canvas at the back of the Iraqi truck flew off. He’d seen Dixon running forward from the road just after the A-10 struck the BMP, but had been unable to warn him away from the Iraqi truck a few yards away.
As he had feared, the Iraqis had mounted a heavy machine-gun on the back of the vehicle, and had shown amazing patience in not revealing it until they had a target. And now they did, bullets beginning to spit even as the canvas was pulled away. Wong leveled Sergeant Davis’s SAW at the truck and blew through a good portion of the ammo box, raking the side of the vehicle but failing to stop the machine-gun, which was protected by a low wall of sand bags or something similar. He did, however, succeed in drawing the gunner’s attention — Wong ducked as a barrage of bullets whipped in his direction, pinning him to the ground.
Under other circumstances, he might have felt some satisfaction that he had been right about Dixon — that he had beaten the odds and found the lieutenant. But a fresh spray of bullets made it clear that the gunner on the truck was well-supplied with a long belt of ammunition, and as the line of exploding earth danced inches from his face, he realized his had been a Pyrrhic victory.
CHAPTER 60
A-Bomb had never felt so bad about smacking an enemy vehicle in his life. He actually stuffed six red licorice pieces into his mouth instead of his usual three as he pulled the Hog around to inspect the damage.
Nailed the sucker good. Land Rover looked smashed, too.
He turned back to the small, fuzzy Maverick screen, viewing the wreckage. Glowing hot stuff, not moving. Little like a fish bowl with all the water run out.
Or maybe not.
A-Bomb pushed the Hog southwards as he scanned with the Maverick’s IR head, trying to search the area where he figured the D boys would be — or at least where he hoped they had escaped to. He still had his STAR pods; they’d only be dropped if the ground team had trouble with Doberman’s. They added weight and resistance to the plane, but he didn’t notice it much as he banked and came around above the main highway, the Mav’s head trained on the area he’d just hit. His eyes had begun to fuzz from fatigue — a good thing, he realized, since it blurred the numbers on the fuel gauges.
Something sparkled in the lower corner of his glass.
Machine-gun.
Shooting at somebody on the ground.
Big machine-gun, so it had to be Iraqi.
Damn, if that wasn’t the best news he’d had all day. If they were still shooting at somebody, his guys were still alive. He hadn’t nailed them accidentally.
Without really thinking about it, A-Bomb slammed his Hog into a nose-first dive, tossing four or five g’s in a full-body slam toward the earth. Air brakes screamed, flaps groaned, and the thick flare of a heavy machine-gun, probably a Dushka, made a perfect X in the middle of his targeting screen.
And wouldn’t you know it? Bruce Springsteen was on the CD player, just dishing up “Born in the USA.”