“Wolf hasn’t heard from them. A-10s say we’re clear and Wolf concurs. Go for it,” said Kelly.
“Going for it.”
“Going to take a first pass to get the lay of the land?” asked the navigator.
Lars realized he was too high and too fast as he came out of the turn that was supposed to get him right in front of the balloon.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” he said, though he wasn’t sure whether he expected sympathy or outrage.
He backed off power, got a little more crosswind than he expected but compensated. He was doing too much; he couldn’t handle all of this. He needed to be at five hundred feet; he was at seven hundred, sliding down slowly.
“Forty seconds. Confidence high,” said the navigator. They were on course and somehow at the right altitude.
“Thirty second slow down.” Lars cut his airspeed again, holding his altitude at a perfect 500 feet above the ground. The flight engineer said something but he missed it.
There was no flak in the air, nothing. Just like a picnic.
“Five second slow down,” he said, but stopped himself as he went to cut more power. The big plane was already down to 140 knots indicated, and its speed was still creeping downward.
Too slow and he’d stall. Then he’d really lose it.
Keep it steady. That was the key.
No way he could do this. No way.
“Do we have them on radio? What’s the story?” he blurted.
“Pencil flare ahead,” Kelly shouted, practically jumping from his perch behind the pilot to point out the window.
The flare arched upwards, slightly off to the right.
That wasn’t the protocol, wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.
Was it?
“Shit, they’re off — I’m replotting,” said the navigator, trying to update the computer. “Damn it — was it them or what?”
Lars didn’t need the computer, didn’t need the terrain radar or even the FLIR. He nudged the big plane as gently as he could manage, edging slightly off-keel, speed dropping low. The plane’s airframe had been modified to increase its stability at low speeds and altitudes, but it was still a struggle, still a battle just to keep it in the air, get it to where he needed to get it.
Had the small flare come from their guys or Iraqis luring them to their deaths?
“Shit, there! There, dead ahead!” shouted the flight engineer.
Lars pushed his head toward the windshield but instead of looking ahead for the mylar blimp that would show him where the line was, he closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 65
A little less than a year before the Gulf War began, BJ Dixon’s mother had died. She had suffered a massive coronary and gone into a coma, briefly revived, only to plunge into a fugue state, teetering on death. Besides the severe heart condition she was found to have several aneurysms of the brain. After a second, milder heart attack, her doctor said her time left measured in hours, not days, but she somehow hung on for weeks.
The night before she passed away, he sat in a chair next to her bedside, praying. He had never been particularly religious, and the words were mostly haphazard snippets of things he remembered from childhood, interspersed with simple pleas for his mother’s life. He had begun praying simply because his mother asked him to, but as he went on, he started to believe more and more in the words, and then in their power. Finally he somehow came to think that his mother — who had been healthy and even strong all her life, who wasn’t yet fifty — would live. When he finished his last prayer, he was convinced God would save her.
His mother died a short time later.
He didn’t blame God exactly, nor did he lose faith — he hadn’t had a vast reservoir of faith to lose. But the religious inclinations that he might have had drifted away. By the end of the funeral service, the biblical passages that his mother had picked out — intended actually for his father, who had been bed-ridden for nearly twenty years — were no more than vaguely ironic words with references to faith and an afterlife. He was like millions of other men and women, neither believing nor disbelieving.
The war had done nothing to change his attitude. His panic during his first air mission, his triumphant shoot-down of an enemy helicopter, his free fall into Iraqi territory, his decision to sacrifice himself so another man would live, his wandering through the desert — none of these things had made him more or less of a believer.
But as he ran with the boy over his shoulder behind Wong, BJ Dixon felt strongly that God had saved him. It was the only explanation that made sense. His miraculous recovery might be explained by wild luck and chance — not to mention the heroic efforts of Wong and the other men who had landed here. But the Iraqi heavy machine-gun had been aimed directly at him from less than twenty yards away. Wong had distracted it, the Hog had finished it, but only God himself could have sheltered Dixon and little Nabi from the fusillade. Dixon felt gratitude and exhilaration — he literally felt grace.
By the time Dixon reached Wong and the rest of the ground team, he was spinning out a cable mechanism near what looked like a pair of football goal posts. Two men in parkas were sitting between the poles, one slumping against the other.
“What’s all this?” Dixon asked as Wong finished.
Wong reached over to the ground and tossed what seemed to be a green sleeping bag at him. “Into this suit.”
“What is this?”
“The suit is part of the harness system. We’re using a STAR retrieval system to board an MC-130. Please, Captain, prepare yourself. It will keep you somewhat warm and may help if you bounce along the ground.”
Another man, short, somewhat fat, stood in another suit nearby; he watched Wong but did not say anything.
An airplane dipped nearly overhead. It had to be a Hercules — nothing else in the Gulf had such a throaty, turbine roar.
“He’s too high and we are in the wrong position,” said Wong. He held up a pencil flare dispenser and fired, frowning as the small rocket disappeared. He stared northwards as the drone grew louder, then shook his head. “I’ll have to tell him to make another pass.”
He ran to Satcom rucksack.
“Shit,” said one of the men between the goal posts.
In the next second the Hercules passed directly overhead, so low Dixon thought it would land in the dirt a few feet away. He jumped on top of the boy, who’d already thrown himself down. Above the roar Dixon heard the sound of a guitar string breaking; there was a scream and a whoosh. The plane was gone — and so were the two men, literally plucked from the ground by the system.
Wong hunkered over the Satcom, shouting; his words were drowned out by the airplane. Finally he jumped up and ran the few steps back to Dixon.
“Quickly,” said Wong, gesturing at the suit. “We have six minutes while they recover the men and turn.”
“We’re getting snapped up?” Dixon asked, standing.
“Quickly. The suit has the harness sewed into it.”
“Where’s a suit for the boy? And where’s yours?”
“The boy is not going. We cannot kidnap an Iraqi child,” said Wong. He went to a large metal container and took out more poles. With a hiss, he inflated a blimp-like balloon and began reeling it upwards.
“I’m not kidnapping him. I saved him,” said Dixon, holding the boy to his side. “Where’s your suit?”
“There’s no time to argue, Lieutenant. I will order you into the suit if you wish.”
“Captain, no way I’m leaving him.”
Dixon threw the suit down on the ground, anger welling inside of him. As it landed, the man who had been sitting on the ground in the other suit leaped up, pushing Wong aside and slamming into Dixon.