Not that he was worried. On the contrary. He had finally arrived at the spot he had been aiming for since joining the game.
“Seeing as how this was your first time playing a Hog pilot,” A-Bomb told them, pushing the chips back into the middle of the table. “I don’t think it’s fair for me to take your money. But there is something you can do for me in return.”
Which was how, with a minimum of haggling (as those things went), A-Bomb ended up behind the wheel of a butt-kicking, desert romping rat mobile, officially known as a “FAV”— for Fast Attack Vehicle.
The FAV was essentially a very fast go-cart with two machine-guns and an AT4 antitank missile launcher. She was a two-seater; the driver, in this instance A-Bomb, sat in the bottom between a light-caliber machine gun and extra gas tanks. Directly behind and above him sat a gunner, in this case Major Wilson, who had drawn the low straw. A-Bomb suspected that in normal operations, the man on top actually had the better seat, since he got to work both the missile launcher and the .50 caliber-machine gun, as well as a lashed-on grenade launcher. But considering that it was nighttime and they weren’t technically authorized to shoot anything— in fact not be technically authorized to drive at all— A-Bomb contented himself with handling the wheel.
And damned if this little buggy didn’t move. It reminded him of an old big-block Chevy he’d had briefly, little ol’ Nova that he’d rebored and jacked up. Bottom line, it couldn’t hold the road worth shit, no matter what he tried doing with the suspension. For a little car it sure felt like a truck, but you stepped on the accelerator and she cranked, baby.
Just like this. The FAV spit sand ferociously as A-Bomb blasted off into the desert. She had a whole row of headlamps but he figured, there being a war on, it didn’t make sense to use them. He could see pretty well with the infra-red night setup he’d insisted on as part of the deal.
Damn helmet was heavy, though.
A-Bomb veered to the right, narrowly missing either a large rock or a buried tank. He thought he heard the major groan, and felt his boot kicking the chair.
“Yeah, I know I can go faster!” shouted A-Bomb. “Hang on!”
He mashed the accelerator pedal. The rat mobile pushed herself down as she picked up speed. They were doing sixty, maybe seventy.
The major’s kicks became more violent.
“It’s at the firewall now,” yelled A-Bomb. “Problem is you got that muffler holding the engine back. You take that off, then we’re talking speed.”
A fence or the edge of the earth loomed ahead. A-Bomb yanked hard right, felt the FAV starting to tip, corrected. Two wheels came off the ground before the go-cart settled down and began accelerating in a new direction.
No wonder Dixon volunteered to go north, thought A-Bomb. He was probably driving one of these right now.
Parachuting and driving a FAV. Some guys had all the luck.
For a brief second, he wished it was him and not Dixon who had gone north. Then he thought again about trying to get his Harley into the Gulf.
Not the good one, just the ’89.
That short moment of inattention caused him to miss the fact that he had headed straight up a dune.
Had he seen it, he would have accelerated.
The FAV flew off the top, launching into the air like an F/A-18 catapulted from an aircraft carrier.
Of course, an F/A-18 had wings. The FAV didn’t. It hit nose first in the sand, somewhat harder than A-Bomb would have expected.
That didn’t stop him from giving a proper war whoop, however.
The major didn’t kick. Obviously he’d decided A-Bomb was going as fast as he could.
The pilot glanced at his watch as he cranked around for another turn. He really ought to be getting back.
Time for one more try.
This time, he managed to get the FAV to accelerate sufficiently to land on the back wheels. The resulting wheelie wasn’t much— barely five seconds long— but it was a hell of a way to end the night.
Doberman was waiting as A-Bomb drove up to the Hogs’ maintenance area. He hopped out of the vehicle and turned to help the major down. But the Special Ops officer waved him off.
The light wasn’t that good, but it seemed to A-Bomb the major looked a little under the weather. Probably the homemade hooch.
“Where the hell have you been?” Doberman demanded. “We’re going to back up that helo flight that’s picking up Dixon. The Hogs are fueled and armed.”
“About time you got out of bed,” said A-Bomb, starting to trot toward the shack where his gear was stored. “Be with you in two minutes.”
“Make it one.”
“I don’t think Tinman can brew the coffee that fast,” A-Bomb yelled back. “But I’ll have him try.”
CHAPTER 39
The F-111F had barely taken off from its airfield, joining the rest of the package on a precision-strike deep into Iraq when the AWACS controller broke in with a change in plans.
Captain Jay “Heavy” Muir, sitting in his weapon officer’s slot next to the pilot, pushed back in his seat as the new target info came in: a suspected NBC site near the Euphrates. Heavy’s mind clicked, erasing everything it had stored about the aircraft shelter they were originally tasked, then rebooting for the new challenge.
Among other things, Heavy handled the Aardvark’s Pave Tack radar, which guided the big laser-guided bombs strapped beneath their wings. Heavy was rated the best operator in the squadron, which made him among the best in the Air Force, so he didn’t consider the new mission itself that difficult. Still, the change in plans put a fresh kink in his already wrenched neck. Especially when he was told that his aim point was a small exhaust pipe on the side of a hill in an old quarry. That wouldn’t be particularly easy to spot on the targeting screen. He had no photo, no briefing folder, nothing more than a vague description and a set of coordinates to help prompt him.
“Needle in a rock pile,” said his pilot, Captain Chris Klecko, as they laid out the new course.
“Yeah,” said Heavy. He studied his paper map, letting the details soak in. The pipe was in a rock quarry, above a large metal door. Just a pipe, not even a full ventilation system.
Not easy. But yesterday he had put a pair of Paveways down a chimney.
The idea here was just to break the top of the shelter. His Paveways were serious hunks of explosives. He didn’t have to hit the pipe, exactly.
But he would. As soon as he could see it in his head.
“Doable?” asked Klecko.
“Oh yeah,” said Muir. “Assuming we can find it.”
“We should have plenty of time. They want it splashed by 0500. We’ll be there by 0400, latest.”
Muir closed his eyes, clearing everything else away. “I’ll get it,” he told Klecko.
CHAPTER 40
The first thing Dixon thought when he heard the noise was that his friends in the truck were returning. A half-second later he realized it was far too loud to be just one vehicle.
He shifted around behind the rocks near the sergeant, pulling the M-16 and its grenade launcher next to him but not shouldering the weapon. He was so cold he was shivering. They’d left him with one of the night scopes and it felt like an ice cube when he held it to his face.
An armored personnel carrier was leading a pair of light trucks on the highway; there was another APC, and maybe a second and third in the blur behind. A tank loomed behind them like a vast battleship on the horizon. It took a moment for his eyes to separate enough detail so he could tell that it was riding on a flatbed.