But finding some planes to fly more than a hundred miles into Iraq on less than twelve hours’ notice?
Not easy.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Knowlington. “We were originally talking about twenty-four hours.”
“Things change,” said the general. “I’m getting your best guys?”
“We agreed on volunteers.”
The general smiled. The agreement was that Knowlington would ask his best men first, and both officers knew or at least suspected they would volunteer. They were, after all, Hog drivers.
“I’d like to get a special maintenance team at Al Jouf,” added the general.
“Wait a second,” said Knowlington. “There are some good people there already. Plenty, from what I hear. We’re running full sorties out of there.”
“We want to keep the Apache force separate. Security.”
“Aw come on. That’s just bullshit.”
Knowlington would have made the same response even if he and the general hadn’t been through some butt-wrenching times together over the years— one of the reasons Knowlington was still only a colonel. The general gave him a just a hint of a disapproving stare, then folded his hands outward as if he had no choice.
Which Knowlington knew was complete bullshit.
“We don’t need your entire squadron,” said the general. “But I want people we can count on. Right now we’re screwed on the helicopter maintenance side. I have one person to keep two helos in the air. That’s an accident waiting to happen, don’t you think?”
Of course it was, and Knowlington couldn’t argue. But it wasn’t necessarily relevant. There were plenty of A-10 specialists from other Warthog squadrons out at Al Jouf, which was on the other side of Saudi Arabia much closer to the border. As a matter of fact, a crew of them had patched one of his planes together just the other day.
“I don’t want one of my pilots flying in a plane that’s not one hundred percent,” added the general.
“Those are my pilots,” said Knowlington.
“Our pilots,” said the general, about as diplomatically as he ever managed.
That was a bad sign, thought Knowlington, realizing he was going to have to concede. “What do you need?”
“Well, we can pick up the survival shop out there.”
The survival specialists were in charge of, among other things, making sure the pilots had working parachutes.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Work with me, Tommy. I just want to make sure the planes are ready to go.”
“I have the same problem here,” said Knowlington.
“Ah, your guy Clyston’s put together a Super Bowl team. Come on. I’m not asking for everybody, just a few key guys.”
“I’ll see who we can spare.”
The general gave him a look that implied he better spare at least a few of his best technical wizards, but said nothing more.
“You have up-to-date intelligence on that strip you want to use?” Knowlington asked, changing the subject as a tactful surrender.
“The last satellite picture shows it there, with no guards, no nothing. Improving it to the point where we can put in C-130’s still a long shot. Now if we had gotten the J’s though congress…”
“I wasn’t part of that,” said Knowlington, who had heard the pointed lament at least twice in the past three days. He was fudging a bit. Knowlington’s most recent Pentagon assignment had included “briefing” Congressmen. He had been asked unofficially to help lobby for the special-edition cargo planes, which could land fully loaded on even shorter strips than the normal models; 1,500 feet was the supposed spec. But Knowlington’s boss was opposed to the program because of other funding priorities. The issue was one of the few where the colonel had strictly obeyed orders.
“I better get going,” said Knowlington when the general didn’t respond. “I have to get your volunteers.”
“Thanks for your help.” The general got up and walked with him to the boxes that marked the sit-room door. “And thanks for Dixon, too.”
“What do you mean, Dixon?”
“Lieutenant Dixon. The assignment you cleared.”
“I didn’t clear any assignment. You mean the trip with the helicopter crew that picked up Mongoose? I’m still pissed at that.”
“No,” said the general. “The ground FAC assignment. You didn’t clear it?”
“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
The general stifled a laugh. “Typical Hog pilot.” he shook his head. “You didn’t tell Lieutenant Dixon to see Jeff Marg in Riyadh?”
Marg was one of the colonels in charge of the infiltration teams.
“No way,” said Knowlington. “I sent him over to Black Hole to cool his heels for a week or two, but I want him back eventually. If only to spank his behind. He got hooked up in that rescue mission on his own.”
“Jeez, go easy on the kid. Marg told me he shot down a helicopter. And a whole platoon of Iraqis surrendered to him.”
“They surrendered to me and my wingman,” said Knowlington. “I’m not saying the kid’s not a good pilot,” he added. “Or that he’s not brave. Or stupid. But he’s still green. Shit, Dixon’s barely old enough to have a beer.”
“Ah. You were young once.”
“Not naive, though. Where the hell is he?”
“Parachuting into Iraq.”
“Parachuting? Into Iraq? Dixon is parachuting?”
“Well, yeah. We needed someone who could talk to pilots and he volunteered. Marg thought you cleared it. Dixon’s not a skydiver?”
“As far as I know, he’s as much a skydiver as I’m a skateboarder.”
“Well I sure as shit hope you’re world class,” said the general.
CHAPTER 3
Doberman took another swig from the soda can and squirreled his eyes into something he hoped would look like a perplexed squint.
“Hey Dog Man, you betting those threes or what?” asked A-Bomb, who was sitting across from him at the poker table.
Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke was Captain John “Doberman” Glenon’s wingman in Devil Squadron, a Hog driver with considerable experience in the cockpit and even more playing cards.
“Yeah, I’m in.” Doberman kicked in a chip to meet the bet. He was showing a pair of threes, separated by a king and a ten. It looked like a dumb move and, truth was, it wasn’t a percentage play at all.
The thing was, though, both the king and the ten were spades. And his first two cards, dealt face down in this game of seven-card stud, were also spades.
An ace and a queen, as a matter of fact. Ordinarily Doberman would run the odds through his mental computer and reject any possibility of winning with a flush or a straight, let alone a royal flush. But he was so far ahead tonight, he could afford to play a wild long shot. In fact, he’d been doing that all night, a complete reversal of his usual poker operandi, which had brought completely unexpected results: He was winning.
The pilots were playing in a back room of the Depot, an off-base club located in what seemed to have been an old bomb shelter literally yards from the King Fahd runway. Who ran it, let alone who had built it, was unknown. Some guys said it sprung whole from the desert after too many GIs had too many wet dreams; you didn’t have to take more than a step into the hazy interior to believe that was true. The uniforms the waitresses wore covered less than the average postage stamp. There was a floor show, a cage show, and a ceiling extravaganza — not to mention several rooms that even A-Bomb advised weren’t to be entered.