“How the hell did you see that?” he asked, snapping onto course.
“Carrot cake,” said A-Bomb. “No better source of Vitamin E. Enhances your vision rods. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of grabbing another bite, so long as I’m playing Tonto back here.”
“You’re eatin’ carrot cake?”
“Hey, man’s got to have breakfast,” replied A-Bomb. “I figured the bacon would have been cold by the time I got a chance to eat it. One of these days, I’m figuring out how to get a microwave in here. Course, nuked bacon tastes like cardboard. What I really need is a deep fryer. Could slot it in over the radio gear, if I can get one of Clyston’s techies to order the parts.”
Anybody else would have been kidding.
Doberman reached to the armament panel, readying the cannon. He could now see two distinct smudges on the ground. One seemed to consist of a dozen ants surrounding a small pickle they’d stolen from a picnic. The second, behind them by about a mile, looked like two large and angry bees.
He nudged toward the bees, setting up for a straight-in dive across their path. They were tanks, moving at a fair clip.
“Rat Patrol to Devil Flight, Rat Patrol at frequency ten-niner looking for Devil Flight. Understand you are in our box. Please acknowledge.”
“Devil Flight,” answered Doberman. “I have two enemy vehicles in sight. I’ll be on them in about ten seconds. Keep running.”
“Negative, negative. We’re stationary. We see you. We’re southeast of you, a mile directly south of the truck and the men,” said the soldier. “They’re not the problem. Repeat, they’re not the problem. Don’t hit them.”
Before Doberman could ask what the hell was going on, the tanks stopped moving. A large mushroom appeared near the truck and its attendant ants. They veered off to the right, followed by another mushroom.
“T-72s or maybe Chinese 69’s in that second group,” announced A-Bomb. “What’s the deal, Dog Man?”
“I don’t know. I see the tanks but I don’t have Rat Patrol. Let’s take a turn while we sort this out. Cover my butt.”
“Butt’s cleaner than the floor of the Route 17K diner in Monroe, New York,” said A-Bomb.
Doberman took that for a compliment.
“Rat Patrol,” added A-Bomb. “I like that. Nothing like taking your inspiration from a sixties TV show.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Better than Ozzie and Harriet. Or My Mother the Car.”
As Doberman swung the Hog around, he nudged the GAU to its high setting, the preferred choice for breaking serious armor; roughly 65 slugs a second would pour from the nose when he pressed the trigger. Though it allowed for a more potent burst with less time on target, the higher rate also increased the amount of gas expelled by the powerful cannon, not insignificant at low altitude because it was possible to choke the engines. Besides, the high rate was overkill for soft targets, where the normal 30 bullets were second were more than enough to guarantee obliteration.
“Devil One to Rat Patrol. I see tanks firing on a truck. Are these both Iraqis? Explain to me what the hell’s going on,” he told the ground unit.
“They’re both Iraqis, yes. The first group is trying to surrender to us,” the ground unit’s com specialist explained. “Armor’s trying to stop them. We’re not sure exactly what’s after them. They started out talking to us on the radio but we’ve lost contact. They’re about to get nailed.”
“I don’t have your position,” Doberman warned.
The last thing he wanted to do was whack good guys. But the coordinates the soldier started feeding him only made him more confused, and there wasn’t time to pull out the paper map and sort the whole damn thing out. He had dropped through 1,500 feet and was lined up perfectly to cross the path of the lead tank — he had to go for it now or bank around, let the tanks get off another four or five shots.
Doberman pushed his stick, putting the Hog into a shallow dive. He saw something on his left, a U with dots in the sand, a mile and half away, closer to the tanks than the truck.
Had to be Rat Patrol.
Balls.
A pair of mushrooms erupted on the ground about two hundred yards from the truck. It veered to the right, then stopped moving.
“Okay, Rat Patrol. Hang tight. I got ya,” said Doberman. “A-Bomb, the Ural is surrendering to our guys, so leave him alone. I got the tank.”
A-Bomb’s acknowledgment was lost in the fuzz of another transmission overriding the squadron frequency. Doberman wouldn’t have heard it anyway — he was all cannon now, the targeting bulls-eye centered on the front end of the Russian-made T-72. While not to be taken lightly, the 40-ton tank was at a severe disadvantage against the Hog; having stopped to get a better shot at the fleeing deserters, it was an even easier target. Doberman nudged his stick gently to the right, then squeezed the trigger. The first shells, fired at just under 750 meters away, missed low, but that was merely a technicality — the stream moved up, following Doberman’s stare and the plane’s momentum, uranium and high explosive dancing through the steel plates as if they were paper. The T-72’s gun retracted, then burst apart, choking on its own charge. The turret opened like a rose bursting to meet the morning sun.
Doberman jammed his pedals, swinging his tail hard to the left as he tried to yank the Hog around and line up on the other tank. He’d come all the way down to five hundred feet, still descending, but wanted the other T-72. He was so close he could see the gunner at the top cursing as he splayed shells from the twin 7.62 mm machine-gun in his direction. Something plinked against the Hog’s armored windscreen as Doberman pushed his trigger to fire. He flinched, then tightened his grip on the stick, nailing down the trigger. The bullets spat off to the right, drifting with his momentum. Doberman worked the rudder pedals, giving a little body English with his shoulder as he tried to walk the cannon fire onto the target. He got a few rounds near the front fender but then just had to give up, the desert yawning up at him.
Doberman pulled back, jerking four g’s as the Hog angled her wings upwards. He cleared the ground by about fifty feet — too close for comfort, but not as close as he thought he’d cut it.
He was just starting to climb when A-Bomb shouted a warning in his ear.
“Missile launch! Missile launch from the Ural! Those fuckers weren’t giving up, Dog Man!”
CHAPTER 6
He woke up thirsty, his throat hard, his mouth hot.
Lieutenant William “BJ” Dixon stared for a minute at the hazy blue sky, sore, cold, tired, but more than anything else thirsty. He remembered the small canteen of water on his belt and reached for it, his arm and shoulder joints cracking. The bottle felt like ice, and he realized he, too, must be freezing, though all he could feel was his thirst and the scorching heat in his mouth. Fingers fumbling, he rolled himself onto his stomach and got on his knees, then finally managed a drink. The water fell across his teeth to his tongue and into the back of his mouth; he began to choke. His body wanted water and it wanted air both — he choked and he gasped and he tried to drink, and the only thing he could manage was to fall forward against the rock-strewn side of the ditch where he’d spent the night, stomach heaving, body retching. He had nothing to give, nothing to puke except mucus and viscera, the scrapings of his soul. He curled in the dust, muscles spasming, chest and stomach wrenching against the hard Iraqi soil. A metallic taste mixed with the vaguely bloody flavor of vomit in his mouth.