O’Rourke lit his cannon as the Boss wailed, the GAU grabbing the bass, rhythm and drum lines with its own particular take on slash and burn rock ‘n roll. The enemy machine gun disappeared beneath an onslaught of 30 mm shells, vanishing along with its truck in a frothing white powder that turned red and black as the vehicle’s gas tank blew.
Unfortunately, the tank had been less than half-full; the explosion barely lit up the night, throwing only a lackluster fireball across A-Bomb’s path as he veered off. The fire wasn’t even strong enough to sear his wings.
“I keep telling you idiots, keep your gas tanks full,” A-Bomb admonished the Iraqis as he recovered from the steep dive. “Woulda had a 10 on the Boom Scale if you’d just held up your end of the bargain. Losing the war’s one thing, but at least score some style points while you’re at it.”
CHAPTER 61
As the machine-gun swung its dragon-like fangs back toward Dixon, a hawk flashed above it. The Iraqi gun disappeared upwards in a furious windstorm. Flames shot everywhere; dirt, dust, shrapnel, bits of plastic and rubber swirled through the air. A ball of fire shot off at an angle. Thunder roared with a massive, ear-shattering pop. Then silence returned, the night hushed by the faint whisper of two turbofans churning in the distance.
Dixon jumped to his feet.
“That was a Hog, kid,” shouted Dixon, pulling the boy to his feet. “We’re saved. We’re saved. Shit — we were about an inch from getting creamed. Holy Jesus. Holy, holy Jesus.”
“Lieutenant Dixon?”
Dixon looked up and saw a soldier running toward him carrying a light machine-gun.
“I’m Dixon,” he said. “Thank God you rescued me.”
“We’re not rescued yet. I’m Captain Wong.”
“Lieutenant William James Dixon, 535th Attack Squadron. Wong? You?”
“Yes. A pleasure to meet you in person.” Wong had joined the squadron after Dixon was assigned to Riyadh, but had spoken to him briefly over the phone several times. Then as now, he spoke in a bored monotone, as if he were on a train platform waiting for the 6:03 to arrive. “We have a rendezvous to make,” said Wong. “It’s two miles away and scheduled to take place in five minutes.”
“I guess we better get going.”
Wong took a step then stopped. “What’s this boy?”
“Budge. I saved him.”
Wong gave him a quizzical look, then bent to examine the child. He said something in Arabic. Words flooded from the kid’s mouth.
“Your name is Budge,” Wong told Dixon, translating a bit of what the boy had said. “BJ, I assume. Budge. He misunderstood. He thinks you’re an angel sent from God. He doesn’t understand who we are.”
“What’s his name then?”
“Nabi.”
The boy nodded.
“Some Iraqi soldiers were going to kill him,” Dixon told Wong.
“His parents were taken away. I believe he saw his father shot. My Arabic is not optimum,” said Wong. “Most likely, the father was executed, along with the rest of his family. I believe we’ll find he was a Shiite Muslim and-or part of the resistance, though there are other possibilities.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” said Dixon.
“He can’t come with us, Lieutenant. We have to run two miles; I suspect our transport is already approaching. They won’t wait.”
“He is coming,” said Dixon.
Wong shook his head again. “We can’t take him back.”
“Are we going to make the rendezvous or not?” Dixon asked.
Wong frowned but said nothing. Turning, he began trotting to the southwest. Dixon started to follow, tugging the child to come.
They’d gone perhaps ten yards when the kid fell. He’d slipped well behind; it was obvious he couldn’t keep up.
“Come on,” said Dixon, running back to him. He picked Nabi up and took a few steps, but couldn’t carry both the AK-74 and the kid, not and run at the same time.
He threw down the rifle, pushed Nabi across the top of his shoulder, and set off behind Wong.
“It’s okay,” he told the boy between his labored breaths. “We’re going home. God must want us to, because there’s no way we would have gotten this far without Him. Yeah,” he said, running. “You don’t mind if I still call you Budge, okay? It kind of sounds cool. That okay?”
The boy murmured something.
“Thanks,” Dixon said. “Shit Jesus — to make it back after all this. We’re going home. Home.”
And though his legs were liquid and his lungs wheezing, though he had a dozen bruises and maybe broken ribs and a bum arm and a banged up head, he knew they were going to make it.
CHAPTER 62
His Maverick’s IR head remained out of commission, but Skull had no problem seeing the splashed trucks; one of them was burning rather spectacularly. Two other vehicles were stopped nearby, also damaged or destroyed. A pair of vehicles were coming down the highway from the west, maybe a mile and a half away. From what he understood of the layout on the ground, they weren’t an immediate danger to his guys, but that didn’t mean he was going to let them continue merrily along.
He warned A-Bomb even though he was back by the main battlefield, then pitched to climb and let off his last LUU flare. They popped at roughly nine hundred feet, lighting the sky like a bank of high-powered stadium lights as Knowlington continued upwards before spinning around to attack. A little anxious, he started firing from 3,000 feet, the shells falling in a bent arc toward the earth to catch the first vehicle, a six-wheeled truck, right across the grill. Two dozen uranium-enriched slugs made short work of its engine compartment, stalling it in a heap of steam.
Skull kept coming, riding his rudder to put his nose across the path of the second vehicle. He let loose with more cannon but could tell he missed; he jabbed the pedals and nudged his stick, but just couldn’t hold the plane in the right position, altitude and speed burning off and the light of the flare distracting him. He pulled back and got a chop warning, the plane hinting that he had pushed things a bit too far and was in danger of losing all forward momentum.
Knowlington ignored it, rearing the plane up by her nose and dipping around, goosing the throttle. The Hog divvied the air currents with her wing, skipping tightly back toward the target with an appreciative giggle, her nose centered on the truck. Knowlington clicked out a three-second burst, more than fifty rounds of combat mix flaring from the business end of the Gat. He saw another shadow to his right and pushed toward it, aware that he was getting precariously low but still calculating that he could get off a burst. His aim was short; he zeroed again and nailed his trigger but missed wide and now had to pull off.
As Skull banked, he saw a new group of shadows fleeing south from the vehicles Doberman had smashed earlier. But as he began to push the Hog in their direction, the flare inexplicably burnt itself out. He fired anyway, hoping he might at least scare the bastards. It was a waste and he berated himself as he began to climb away, the Warthog gradually picking up speed.
“Devil Two, what’s your situation?” he asked A-Bomb.
“Geez, Skip, I was just about to ask you,” answered his wingman. “Got a Devil Dog underway, and Bruce is poundin’ in the earphones.”
“You’re a piece of work, A-Bomb. What about the BPM?”
“Gone. Ditto a truck, and a flatbed or something they were using for a machine-gun nest. Took the machine-gun out too. Shame. Probably a Dushka. You ever shoot one of those, Boss?”