When it was over, Dixon lay against the rocks. He stayed there a long while. His knee hurt and his shoulder had been whacked out of joint and maybe he’d broken a rib and his head felt like it had been squeezed into sardine tin, but considering the other possibilities, it wasn’t that bad. Two hundred miles inside of enemy territory, without hope of getting out, it wasn’t that bad.
He stayed there a while longer.
Not bad at all.
“When did I begin lying to myself?” he asked finally, speaking the words in a whisper. He pushed himself upright and took a tiny sip of the water, then another, then a third.
There was a sound in the distance. Trucks.
Dixon recapped the water and reached down to grab his desert chip campaign hat, a “present” from the Delta unit he’d parachuted into Iraq with as a ground FAC helping coordinate strikes on Scuds. BJ grabbed the AK-47 he’d taken yesterday from a dead Iraqi and clambered up the side of the dry streambed, staring across the scratchy terrain toward the highway.
Two Iraqi troop trucks approached from the west. The trucks moved steadily though not quickly. They were traveling in the direction of a missile launching site that American fighter-bombers had attacked yesterday. The highway swerved southwards, toward Dixon, to skirt a hill. There were no houses or other buildings in sight; the area was apparently used as farmland, crisscrossed with irrigation ditches, though BJ guessed it wasn’t particularly productive. The local population seemed confined to a small village on the other side of the hill; there had been Iraqi troops there yesterday, and he hadn’t gotten close enough to see more than the minaret of a mosque.
As the trucks followed the highway, turning in his direction, Dixon flopped against the ditch, ducking from view. But as he lay against the rocks he asked himself why. Hiding just delayed the inevitable.
He wasn’t going to surrender, nor was he going to allow himself to be captured. But it was senseless to think he might somehow make it back to allied lines. A huge desert lay between him and Saudi Arabia.
So there were two choices. Kill himself, or make the Iraqis kill him.
Better to make the Iraqis do it. At least he might take a few of them with him.
BJ stood, pulling the rifle up, cocking it under his arm. But by now the trucks were past him. He swept his aim to follow, squeezed the trigger — a bullet sailed from the rifle, skipping into the dirt less than fifty feet away.
The trucks kept moving, oblivious. The highway was nearly a mile away; if the drivers heard the crack of the gun over their engines they chose to ignore it. Dust billowed in a thin swirl behind them, funneling over a shallow rise as they disappeared. There was another highway as well as a turnoff for a village somewhere beyond the rise, but it seemed as if the trucks had been swallowed by the blue fringe at the edge of the universe.
As Dixon stared at the disappearing film of dust, he realized he was yelling, screaming at the Iraqis to come back and fight. He pointed the AK-47 upwards and kicked off a short burst, then let the gun hang down. Slowly, he craned his head left and right, twisting it nearly 360 degrees. He was alone.
His stomach reminded him of his hunger with a low rumble, a gurgle that sounded more like a gasp for help. With nothing to eat, he took another swig from the canteen instead, then another. He had about half the bottle left, a few ounces — it would be gone before noon.
So that was his deadline.
Better to take a few of them out when he went.
Slowly, Dixon looked left and right, turning his whole body this time. Satisfied that he was truly alone, he began to walk toward the left side of the hill, heading in the direction of a ramshackle road that led to the village.
CHAPTER 7
Major Horace Gordon Preston hopped out of the small C-12 Huron that had ferried him across from Tabuk to his new squadron. After flying F-15s, anything was likely to seem slow, but the bare-bones two-engined Beech — essentially a Model 200 with Air Force insignia — had trudged across the Saudi peninsula, its three-pronged propellers huffing and puffing the whole way. He was a terrible passenger to begin with, but sitting in the C-12 was like rolling a heavy rock up Purgatory Hill.
An apt transition to his new assignment, Preston thought as he stepped away from the plane and got his bearings.
Yesterday, Hack had nailed an Iraqi MiG and damaged another. His reward came swiftly: a long-awaited promotion to squadron commander.
Except, not quite. Because the hot-shot pointy-nose fast-mover zipper-suit jock had been made only second in command — director of operations — not squadron commander.
Worse, far far far worse, he had somehow been placed with an A-10A squadron.
Preston bit back his bile and asked an enlisted man near the parking area where the 535th was located. The man pointed toward an A-10 maintenance area on the other side of the base, and said the trailer unit that served as its headquarters was located just beyond it.
“They call it Hog Heaven,” said the airman enthusiastically, as if he were pointing out Old Faithful.
Hack grunted and began walking in that direction. He had his gear in a small overnight bag — the rest was to follow him to the base.
His new assignment offered two consolations. One was the fact that, on paper, the squadron was actually listed as a wing. While at present this didn’t fool anyone — Saddam especially — he had been told more A-10s were expected to be added in the near future, in essence creating a new squadron. He’d be in line for that command.
The other consolation was a rumor that the present commander wasn’t cutting the mustard, in which case Hack would get his slot. In fact, a friendly general had hinted that was the whole reason for his appointment. Of course, the general worked in Washington, so there was no telling what, if anything, the hint was worth.
But why would Preston want to command a unit of Hogs?
He wouldn’t. Preston had flown A-10s for two of the worst years of his life. He had angled and pleaded and connived the whole time to get out of them to a real airplane. And now he was back.
A Humvee sat near a short fence beyond a low-slung building on his left. Two airmen sat inside, their backs turned away from the ramp area. Preston went to the Hummer, opened the rear door and hoisted himself and his small bag inside.
“Uh, excuse me,” said the driver sharply.
“Take me over to the headquarters for the 535th,” Preston said, settling into his seat.
“Uh, sir?” said the other airman.
“That would be Major. Come on, let’s go.”
The men — clearly not here for him — stared at him from the front of the vehicle. Preston returned their glare, confident that they would comply with his order without further instruction.
And so they did. The driver slapped the vehicle into motion, smashing the gas pedal and wheeling it around sharply, obviously trying to call attention to the fact that he wasn’t happy. But then again Preston wasn’t either, and so he ignored the bumpy ride.
Hack had never been to King Fahd before, and after the relative order of his Eagle base at Tabuk, the place looked cluttered and confused. Besides hosting every Warthog in the Gulf, Fahd was home port to an assortment of Spec Ops and SAR craft — C-130s, PAVE Low helicopters, and the like. An odd assortment of support craft and stragglers had also found their way here: a Navy A-6 that had suffered battle damage and couldn’t make it back to its carrier, a pair of OA-6 Broncos training with Delta troops as advanced scouts, even an ancient civilian Constellation that had taken refuge after escaping from Kuwait. Preston stared at the planes, unimpressed; slow movers all, they reinforced his sense of exile. The ride took him through the area where the 535th‘s Hogs were stored and maintained — it was easy to spot, with a large banner across the top of the largest metal building declaring it “Oz: Home of the 535th ‘Devil’ Squadron.”