At best, they thought he was nuts— and not necessarily good nuts. Staffa Turk, the demo man who was bringing up the rear, had practically sneered at Dixon earlier when he assured him he could handle an MP-5.
Granted, it was an exaggeration, since he’d never actually fired one before. But they didn’t know that.
The Delta warriors were all older than Dixon— much— and all were NCOs, a tribe not especially known for tolerating junior lieutenants. He could only guess what they thought of the Air Force. But heck— he’d already shot down a stinking helicopter in combat, and survived some of the thickest antiair fire of the war. Not to mention herded a platoon’s worth of Iraqis into the back of a Pave Low.
Not that he could tell them that, or even hint that he was angry. Saying anything would have exactly the opposite effect that he wanted.
Actually, what he really wanted was sleep, and plenty of it. He was so tired the marrow was draining out of his bones. Sooner or later he was going to stumble face-first into the hardscrabble dirt in front of him.
Which was the last thing he wanted to do. Dixon concentrated on his steps, tightening his grip on the MP-5’s metal stock tightly to keep himself awake.
About an hour after they had seen the Bedouin camp, Winston had the team stop. He told them to eat while they rested; Dixon fished out an MRE and wolfed its contents down in a breath.
“Got a candy bar if you want it, sir,” offered Leteri, who was crouched nearby. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him since boarding the plane.
“I’d love it,” said Dixon. “Hey, uh, you can call me BJ. Most people do.”
“I’m Joey.”
“That’s Joah-ee,” said Winston in an exaggerated Italian accent.
Leteri tossed him a Snickers bar.
“I haven’t had one of these since I was in grammar school,” said Dixon. He played it up, holding it to his nose like a connoisseur sniffing at a glass of expensive wine.
“You’re going to want to take the paper off before you eat it,” said Leteri.
“Why lose the calories?” Dixon said, unwrapping it. “Maybe I’ll just snort it up my nose.”
He had just enough self-control to offer Winston half the bar, but not enough to save it for later when Winston waved him off.
“You keepin’ up, OK?” asked the team leader.
“It’s a good hike. You?”
Winston laughed.
“Be honest with you, BJ,” said Leteri. “No braggin’ or anything, but compared to some of our training gigs, this is like a guided tour of Lincoln Center.”
“Where’s Lincoln Center?” Dixon asked.
“Shit, you serious?”
Dixon felt his face start to burn. “You mean the Monument?”
“No, shit.” Leteri thought this was the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard. “You never heard of Lincoln Center? You serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious.”
“Where’d you grow up, Lieutenant?” asked Winston.
“Wisconsin.”
“No shit,” said Leteri. “Lincoln Center’s a concert hall in New York City. Every school kid in the state’s got to tour it before they’re twelve. The law.” Leteri waited a second before adding. “That’s a joke, sir.”
“He got it,” said Winston. “If it were funny, somebody would have laughed.”
“So where in Wisconsin?” asked Leteri.
“Little town called Chesterville. About two hours away from Milwaukee. More cows than people. Nobody’s ever heard of it.”
“No shit. I come from a little town called Chester like an hour north of New York City. We got cows there, too.”
“You have cows in New York?”
“Hell yeah. It’s pretty far from the city. Just nobody believes you when you tell them.”
“I thought you were from Brooklyn,” said Winston.
“Nah. I was born there. I mean, my grandma still lives there and shit. But we moved out of the city when I was three.” Leteri turned back to Dixon. “People look at me funny when I tell them I grew up across the street from a farm. Hear New York and they figure, you know, it’s all city.”
“All right, break time over,” said Winston, standing up. “Here’s the deal. We got the streambed just over that rise. We follow that into an open area near the road. Obviously they knew we’d have some farm boys with us when they called it the Cornfield. Makes me feel right at home.” The sergeant obviously loved sarcasm; he practically broke his jaw twisting his face into a smile. “On my signal we shake out. Lieutenant, you want to stay kinda near Leteri here until we know what we got. Leteri, you got my ass.”
“I always take the dirt road.”
“Yeah, fuck you too, bugger boy.”
“Better to be the bugger, than the buggee.”
The troop was soon moving again, stretching into a long line as they proceeded carefully up the side of a large ditch. Shallow water filled the bottom. Shards of ice had formed along the surface, in case any of them needed reminding about how cold it was. Two dry irrigation ditches ran off at right angles ahead; there were others as the main wadi or streambed snaked around a flat plateau with a good view of the highway a half-mile beyond.
That was the Cornfield. The rise not only gave them a decent view of the road, but there was a good space between some of the ditches that could be used by helicopters if they needed to be evacuated.
Not that they were planning on being evacuated any time soon.
By the time they reached the top, Dixon’s limbs and body had congealed into a numb mass. The soft campaign hat he was wearing felt like a curtain around his brain, a permanent static emitter jamming outside reception.
Sleep would revive him. Sleep would warm his frozen bones, wet his parched lungs. Sleep would fill the hole in his stomach.
Sleep was a woman waiting for him just a few feet ahead, wrapping her legs around him, her open palms and long fingers sliding slowly across his chest. Electricity sparked as she touched him, soft and warm. Her fingers slipped into the crevices behind his ears, around and across his temples, down his cheeks to his neck, to the thick skin beneath his chin, up to his mouth. She spread herself back on the bed and pulled him into her, open and ready.
“We stop here,” said Winston.
Damned if the sergeant wasn’t part ghost, disappearing and reappearing at will.
“Use the slope here for cover. Hey Lieutenant, you still with us?”
Dixon grunted an answer as he collapsed butt first in the dirt.
“Maybe you ought to get some sleep, sir,” said Winston. “Catch a nap before show time. We’ll wake you up when we need you.”
Dixon nodded, then pushed himself prone.
“Uh, BJ?”
Dixon looked up to find Winston grinning in his face. “You probably want to undo your ruck first.”
Nodding, he fumbled with the straps, barely getting it off before slipping his head back to the ground.
CHAPTER 10
His nose tickled.
A-Bomb bolted upright in the bed, senses at full alert. He took a sniff, then another; quickly, deliberately, he got up and put on his boots. He slept in a flight suit for just this sort of emergency; he grabbed his jacket and hustled out of his small tent, threading his way through the Tent City to follow the faint but aromatic scent. Veering right, he headed in the general direction of “Oz,” the Devil Squadron’s maintenance and hangar area.
It was before dawn, but Fahd was in full gear. Many of the more than one hundred planes quartered here had already left on their missions north. A-Bomb sensed he was closing in as he ducked into a hangar and past a gutted F-16— served the pointy-nose Viper right for wandering onto a Hog base. He soon found himself standing in front of a coffeemaker that had just finished spewing a full pot of black gold. The capo di capo and the Tinman, the squadron’s resident Ancient Mechanic, stood nearby, already sipping from cups.