Winston grunted, and turned his binoculars back toward the highway. Dixon slid back down the hill to the radio, though there was little reason to at the moment. It would take the Hogs close to two hours to refuel and return. By then they would be limited by the available light.
Dixon had just decided to brave an MRE when Leteri came sliding down the hill, nearly landing on his back.
“Patrol,” hissed the corporal. “They’re on the side of the road and they’re moving slow. Stay down.”
Dixon spun back around, pressing himself into the dirt and pulling his gun under his arm. If they came under fire, his job was to stay with the radio; they might need air support, which he could get through the AWACS controller. But holding the MP-5 made him feel safer.
Leteri continued to the very base of the hill, crawling into a shallow trench the commandos had dug and camouflaged so it could be used as an observation post. The far end of it gave him a good view of their flank as well as the road. Dixon watched him work along it slowly. Moving that slowly must be an exercise in great will power, he thought; the temptation to rush would be almost overwhelming, but doing so might expose you to the enemy. Patience was such a difficult thing in war— in life, for that matter. It was the one trait he didn’t have.
Leteri reached his post, stayed flat against the side of the trench a minute, then leaned back and gave a thumbs up. The others had relaxed as well. Curious, Dixon scrambled up the hill, flopping between Winston and Turk.
“They’re staying put, at least for now. They’re on the other side of the highway,” said Winston, handing the binoculars over. “Got their backs to us.”
Dixon peered through the glasses. Four men in tan fatigues were walking a staggered line beyond a troop truck.
“What are they doing?” Dixon asked. “Looks like they lost something.”
“They may have seen the planes,” said Turk. “The idiots probably think they mined the road. They did the same thing about a mile north.”
Winston took the smallest of sips from his canteen, rolling the water around and around the inside of his mouth before swallowing. “Crazy fucks.”
“They use their own men to trip mines?” Dixon asked.
“Saddam doesn’t give a shit,” said Winston. He screwed his canteen closed. “We’re going to have to move off this hill.”
“Why?” asked Dixon.
“It’s the tallest feature on the landscape, the most obvious place to check the road from. If they really are looking for mines, even if they’re fucking picking up litter, they’re paranoid enough to figure out that someone on the ground brought the planes here. Besides, maybe the trucks turned off down the road a bit. They may be setting up to bomb Tel Aviv right now.”
“Trucks were headed east,” said Turk. “Are we going to follow them to Baghdad?”
“Shit, why not?” said Winston. “Let the Lieutenant get a chance to practice his Arabic.”
“I don’t know Arabic.”
“Fuck no,” said Winston in mock horror. “And here I thought you went to college.”
Turk laughed.
Dixon couldn’t think of a comeback. He waited a bit, and when Turk changed the subject, he slid back down the hill. When the time came to move out, he told Leteri he’d take a turn humping the com gear, then did his best to ignore the trooper’s surprise as he shouldered the ruck and got into line.
CHAPTER 17
Two hours and one record-time tanking later, Doberman found himself clicking his mike button and getting nothing but a steady stream of static. They’d been trying to find Dixon for the past five minutes without any luck. He was about to try hailing the Delta unit again when A-Bomb beat him to it.
“Devil Flight to Ground Hog. Yo, Dixon, where the fuck are you?”
“Real military,” Doberman told A-Bomb over the short-range fox mike radio, tuned to the squadron’s private frequency.
“Yeah, well you try.”
“Just keep their frequency open. I’m going to have Cougar double check for us, in case we’re out of range or something.”
Cougar was the call sign for the AWACS. The controller told them— as he had only a few minutes before— that the ground unit had not come back on the air after signing off to change position. This wasn’t unusual, implied the operator, who all but directed the Hogs drivers to just “chill.”
“Man, I’ll tell you something. I’m getting a little fed up with Cougar,” said A-Bomb. “Kinda like havin’ my fourth-grade teacher lookin’ over my shoulder. Hangout. Break. Run away. We need somebody back there who’s a Hog driver, you know what I’m talking about? Like, here’s a couple of tanks to splash while you’re waiting.”
Doberman let A-Bomb rant on as he examined the map unfolded in his lap. The two Hogs were at 16,675 feet, flying a wide, perfect circle around the coordinates where the ground team had spotted the trucks. As they swung through the northern arc, the Euphrates edged into their windscreens, a thick brown line in the distance.
Doberman had read somewhere that civilization started along the Euphrates. The Sumerians had built an impressive empire well before the Egyptians, taming the wiles of the river with massive irrigation projects. They had enjoyed tremendous wealth, building cities of gold.
Hard to imagine that now. This was supposed to be part of the country’s fertile area, but the terrain looked blotchy at best. Doberman had flown over Iowa cornfields — now those looked like something, orderly lines of green extending out as far as you could see.
Part of the problem was, they were too stinking high, as per their orders to maintain a safe altitude. Safe for whom? Might just as well be on the moon as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t get a very clear view of the highway, let alone make out what exactly might be moving on it. Scud launcher or a milk truck looked the same from here — smaller than an ant’s behind.
“Getting kind of dark,” A-Bomb hinted.
“Copy,” said Doberman. “Let’s take a run over the highway down where we can see something bigger than a fucking battleship.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” snapped A-Bomb.
Doberman pushed his wing over and threw the Hog into a tear-ass dive, plunging downwards so fast even the A-10 seemed to have been caught by surprise. He moved his stick until the gray line of the road fell into his windshield. He was below five thousand feet before he started to recover, pulling the Hog back level in a smooth, precise arc, his wings leveling. The GE power plants hummed behind almost gently, their steady rhythm a subconscious soundtrack as he flew.
Some pilots flew by making the plane an extension of their bodies. They moved their arms and legs and the plane moved; they felt the wind curling in a slipstream around their bodies and their eyes were part of the radar nosing ahead. At some point the line between man and plane blurred; they flew as much by instinct, by stomach or gut, as they did by carefully accumulated knowledge and deliberate action.
Doberman considered himself more a director, or maybe a sitter— he sat on top of the plane, pushing its levers the way an experienced heavy equipment operator might move a bulldozer through a construction site. The plane went where he wanted it to, not the other way around.
No luck involved in that. You knew the data, worked with it. Wind had a certain effect, depending on the altitude and angle of your attack; you calculated it, you compensated for it, you pushed the button to drop your load. Anything else was bullshit.
“Six is clean,” called A-Bomb.
Doberman eased his stick right, following the road’s curve northward. Now he could see damn well. A bus appeared ahead, a Matchbox-sized vehicle with a light-brown color. A half-mile in front of it was something that looked more military; grayish-brown waves of camo flopped over the back of a medium-sized truck. Might be a troop carrier.