“SUU” stood for Suspension Underwing Unit, a nod to the fact that the sophisticated weapons were more like dump trucks than conventional iron bombs. Popularly known as cluster bombs, they packed several hundred explosive and fragmentation devices, releasing them at a pre-set altitude after being dropped. The CBUs were an optimal weapon against “soft” targets, which besides men included unarmored vehicles and tasty treats like radar vans and dishes. The SUU could accommodate specialized loads, depending on the mission; Doberman’s were CBU-58s— which hosted a total of 650 BLU-63 fragmentation/antipersonnel bomblets.
Besides the AGMs and cluster bombs, the Hog could carry an assortment of conventional iron— unguided, straight-at-you blowup bombs. But in the opinion of most Hog drivers, the plane’s fiercest weapon wasn’t its bombs. It was the GAU-8/A Avenger cannon that sat in the plane’s chin. The Gatling gun could deliver as many as four thousand rounds per minute; during a typical three or four second burst more than a hundred peas of Uranium and high explosive darted from the revolving barrels. The plane had been designed around the huge gun; the weapon was so awesome it could literally make the Hog stand still in the air as it was fired.
The one thing the Hog couldn’t do was go fast. Doberman had the stops out and he was barely making 350 knots. And without an autopilot, the plane demanded at least a modicum of attention at all times.
Still, as he climbed through the Saudi sky en route to a pit stop north at King Khalid Military City, the pilot’s mind started to wander. This part of the mission, staging out to Al Jouf before heading into Iraq, was very plain-Jane, as close to boring as you could get in a war zone. Inevitably, his thoughts shambled back to the card game and to Tinman’s idiotic cross.
A lot of the crew members and even a few pilots were heavily superstitious, he knew, but you had to draw the line somewhere.
Luck. Luck was some magic BB with his name on it sailing out from Iraq a zillion miles away and managing to nail him. Luck was something flaky happening with the engine in level flight, which in his experience was almost as likely as the magic BB shot.
He thought that, he frowned, and in the next second the right engine stopped winding its turbine. He saw the indicator zeroing out of the corner of his eye as he tightened his grip on the stick, body jumping to work the plane and compensate for the loss of power. Something unconscious took over, something that felt rather than thought.
His mind whipped through his contingencies; it would be best if he could make it back to the Home Drome but he had plenty of divert fields closer if he couldn’t. His heart pounded and he could feel something in his scalp tingling, as if his brain had gotten a quick shot of adrenaline.
He also felt himself suddenly out of kilter in the cockpit.
But not because the Hog had slumped from losing the engine. His body was compensating for something that hadn’t happened.
The engines were humming perfectly. There hadn’t been a malfunction. In fact, everything was at operating manual specification.
Son of a bitch.
Doberman twisted backwards in the seat, craning his neck to look out the cockpit glass. He couldn’t actually see the GE turbofans mounted on either side of the fuselage in front of the Hog’s double-tail. But he had to look anyway.
Just as he had to tap each one of the engine instruments when he turned back.
Maybe they had flaked out for a second.
No. Everything was fine. It was all this thinking about superstition and luck and that crap that was putting him over the edge.
“Devil Two this is One,” he said, calling A-Bomb. His wingman was flying about a quarter mile back, off his wing in a trail. “How’s our six?”
“Clean,” said A-Bomb. “You ducking flies?”
“Negative. Just staying awake.”
“Ought to drink more coffee.”
Air speed, attitude, rpms, fuel— everything at spec. No way his engine had even burped.
It was just that he was tired. Damn royal straight stinking flush had cost him a good night’s sleep.
“Something up?” A-Bomb asked.
If he didn’t know better, Doberman would swear this was something A-Bomb and the capo had rigged up to teach him a lesson.
But which lesson would that be?
“Just wanted to make sure you were with me,” Doberman told his wingmate. He glanced at his watch and did some quick math. “We have ten minutes, twenty seconds to the Emerald City.”
“Yeah, I’m unwrapping my last pocket-pie now.”
CHAPTER 12
A dried-out but very deep wadi formed a semi-circle around the abandoned runway. Hawkins, kicking at the erosion at the southeastern end of the runway, theorized that the Iraqis had found the tributary too rough to deal with, the seasonal rains eating at the ground they needed to stay solid under the long expanse of concrete and asphalt. Why they wouldn’t have realized that before laying out several hundred feet of concrete, though, he had no idea.
It was nice of them to tear up the road leading out to the highway, though. That made sneaking up on Fort Apache a little more difficult.
Hawkins’ men had set out a good defensive perimeter and studded it with a variety of weapons; still, a concentrated armor attack could easily overrun them until they got their AH-6G gunships in. With luck, they would get them in tonight.
Hawkins turned and began walking carefully down the center of the cement. Except for minor crumbling around the expansion joints, the concrete was smooth and seemingly solid. He could certainly land his helos.
He wanted a lot more. Like an MC-130, loaded for bear. But to get the big four-engine gunship in and back up in the air again, they needed two thousand feet.
Six of the twelve men who’d come in on a second parachute drop once Fort Apache was secure were combat engineers. They’d landed about ten minutes before dawn; a few seconds later he’d gotten them to work plotting an extension that would add nearly six hundred feet to the northwest end of the runway. Steel mesh was due to parachuted in as soon as the sun went down. But that would get them only to the edge of the streambeds. Without a bulldozer and cement culverts, the runway wasn’t getting any longer.
Still, all things considered, Hawkins had only relatively minor problems at the moment. One of the men on the second team— an inexperienced jumper who had no business being on the team, volunteer or not— had broken his leg and arm during the drop, their only casualty so far. He was in decent enough condition to stay on, but he was their lone helicopter mechanic.
Team Blue, operating north of the Euphrates since the night before, hadn’t checked in on schedule, though that might just be due to problems with the satellite communications system. But the team he’d been most worried about, Team Ruth, was in position and ready to work several hours ahead of schedule.
Sent to an area thought to be one of the main Scud highways, Team Ruth would be vectoring in bombers by late afternoon— assuming they found something to target. Hawkins had put some of his best men on the squad, including Master Sergeant Eli Winston, who was leading the team. And Ruth included the lone Air Force officer assigned to the entire Injun country operation, a ground FAC who was supposed to sweet talk the iron onto the Scud trailers. A pair of A-10As had been attached to Apache; for now, they were at Team Ruth’s beck and call, though Hawkins could change that if he needed to.
The captain took a wistful glance down the runway. It was good to know the Warthogs were on the job, but he couldn’t wait for his own helicopters to get here.