“Planes look weird,” said A-Bomb.
“Captain?” asked Rosen.
“No bombs. No Mavs,” said A-Bomb, shaking his head sadly. “No rockets. Nothing. Naked. What I’m talking about here is nude. Out of uniform. Obscene. Got to be a reg against it.”
“We’re flying straight to Fahd,” snapped Doberman. “What do you want to do, bomb Riyadh?”
“If it needs bombing, I’m up for it,” said A-Bomb. He slapped the front of Doberman’s Hog. “Even the Gat’s empty.”
“Begging your pardon, but your cannon has been reloaded,” said Rosen in a tone that suggested she wasn’t begging anything. “As is Captain Glenon’s. And he has fresh Sidewinders.”
Her voice softened ever so slightly when she mentioned the air-to-air missiles, and she glanced back at Glenon. Last night, Doberman had made Hog history by using the Sidewinder in a dogfight — even better, he had managed to nail a MiG in what had to rate as the most lopsided battle since open cockpit P-26s tangled with Japanese Zeroes at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Doberman had, in fact, saved Rosen’s life — as well as the lives of three other people aboard a small AH-6 fleeing Iraqi air space.
But as far as the world was concerned, Doberman’s exploit hadn’t occurred. Command had declared that the need to keep ground operations north of the border secret extended to the aircraft supporting those operations. In other words, Doberman’s flight hadn’t happened, and therefore the shoot-down hadn’t happened — officially.
Unofficially, every member of the A-10 community either knew about the shoot-down or would shortly. Glenon wouldn’t get a medal or headlines, but he’d be stood plenty of beers. And knowing he’d save Rosen felt loads better to Doberman than taking salutes from a dozen dumbass generals.
As for kissing her…
That would have to wait. Doberman sighed as the sergeant turned her attention back to A-Bomb, who was whining about not getting a full complement of Mavericks, or at least cluster bombs, beneath his wings for the routine ferry flight home. The tech sergeant demonstrated her experience in grade by restricting herself to a single smirk as she walked away, leaving the two jocks to saddle up and get on with the morning flight.
From a pilot’s point of view, flying the Warthog was a relatively straight-forward operation. The A-10A personified the concept of no frills flying. Its cockpit would have been familiar to the P-26 pilot.
Well, some of it, at least. No P-26 pilot ever dreamed of a heads-up display, and even though it was slightly underpowered and agonizing slow by contemporary standards, its twin turbos pumped Doberman into the sky at a pace that would have left the P-26 pilot gasping.
Glenon eased his stick back gently, the Hog’s fuel-filled wings lifting the plane easily into the sky. Unlike nearly every other jet designed after the 1940s, the A-10A’s wings were not swept back, part of a design strategy to enhance low-speed/low-altitude maneuverability. The fuselage’s rather odd shape — it looked like a beached whaleboat with wings — was the result of two other design strategies: survivability and maximum firepower. A good hunk of the front end weight came from a ring of titanium that protected the pilot’s sides and fanny from artillery fire. The rest came from the Avenger 30 mm cannon, arguably the most important feature of the plane. The Gatling-style cannon spat a mixture of incendiary and uranium-tipped slugs custom-designed to unzip heavy armor — and not incidentally obliterate everything else.
Airborne, gear stowed, Doberman walked his eyes across the wall of gauges in front of him, checking his sense of the plane against the cold data of the indicators. A small TV screen used to target Maverick air-to-ground missiles sat in the upper right-hand corner of the dash; without any AGMs aboard, it would remain blank the entire flight. Below the screen were two sets of gauges monitoring the General Electric turbofans that hung in front of the tail. Relatively quiet as well as efficient, the TF-34s hummed at spec, propelling the A-10A toward its 387-nautical-miles-per-hour cruising speed, which Doberman would achieve at five thousand feet, give or take an inch.
“Devil One, this is Two. I have your six,” said A-Bomb, drawing his plane into trail position behind Doberman.
“One,” acknowledged Doberman over the short-range Fox Mike or FM radio.
“Kick butt sun,” said A-Bomb.
Doberman grunted at the scenery and checked his INS guidance system. Preprogrammed way-points helped the pilots make sure they were on course as they flew. Hog drivers also carried old-fashioned paper maps, though by now Doberman and A-Bomb had so much experience flying over northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq that they could almost tell where they were by looking at the dunes.
Almost.
“So Dog Man, what’s the first thing you’re going to do as squadron DO?”
“Who says I’m going to be squadron DO? I’m only a captain.”
“You’re a high-time Hog driver, the squadron’s longest in service pilot, and all-around peachy-keen guy,” answered A-Bomb. “Besides, Skull loves your ass.”
“They’ll probably bring somebody in from the outside.”
“Nah. You da man.”
“I don’t want the headaches.” Doberman snapped off the mike button and rechecked his instruments. DO stood for Director of Operations. Traditionally, the DO rated as the number-two man behind the squadron commander. Devil Squadron wasn’t particularly traditional — it had been thrown together from a bunch of discarded planes, its pilots shanghaied and “volunteered” from other units. It had an extremely bare support structure, with a short chain of command and a relatively thin roster of fliers. But it also had an amazingly high sortie rate and had already dropped more than one million pounds of bombs, missiles, and curses on the enemy. A lot of bang for the buck, as A-Bomb would put it.
All of which meant Devil Squadron’s DO worked twice as hard as he would in another unit. The last DO, Major James “Mongoose” Johnson, had been sent home after being shot down, injured, and rescued. Doberman had never gotten along with him; from his point of view, Johnson tended to be a bit of a prig and was always on his butt for little bullshit things. It wasn’t just Doberman, either. He seemed to think he had to be everywhere, looking over everything. He rode the maintenance people especially hard; Glenon couldn’t go near the hangars without hearing somebody bitch about him. But Mongoose hadn’t been the worst DO Glenon had ever served with, and Doberman could have put up with the jerk for as long as necessary, especially if it meant he didn’t get tagged with the gig.
“Ah, you’re bullshitting me,” said A-Bomb. “Once you’re DO, you’re on your way. Stepping stone to general. Shit, with that shootdown, you’ll be wearing stars next week. Just remember me when you’re in the Pentagon. Score some tickets for a RedSkins game, okay?”
“Seeing stars, maybe.”
“General Dog Face. Probably have your own box at RFK, right?”
“Who the hell said I ever, ever wanted to be a general?” blustered Doberman. “And I thought we were flying silent com.”
“Silent com? Can you do that in a Hog?”
A call from the AWACS controller monitoring their sector ended the banter.
“Devil Flight, this is Coyote,” said the controller, who was aboard the Boeing E-3 Sentry aircraft orbiting to the south.
Doberman acknowledged, verifying their course and status.
“Can you handle a detour?” asked the controller. “Army unit near the border has a situation and needs some support. You’re the closest flight.”
“Give us the coordinates,” answered Doberman, touching Tinman’s medal with his thumb before nudging the Hog northward.