“Where’s Winston?”
“Sergeant Winston couldn’t travel. Lieutenant Dixon stayed back with him at Sugar Mountain.”
“What?” Hawkins struggled to clear his head. “Shit. Why the fuck didn’t you radio that in?”
“We tried. Radio got hit when we walked into those mines.”
“Dixon?”
“He didn’t want to leave the sergeant.”
“No shit. Why the fuck did you let him stay?”
“He told us it was an order.”
“Oh fuck that, he’s a goddamn pilot. Shit fucking hell.”
“He’s got balls for a pilot.”
“The helicopter. Fernandez.” Hawkins jumped up and ran back to the chopper. Ziza followed, reaching him just as Hawkins got to the door.
Fernandez was slumped forward in his harness, chest, neck and head laced with bullets.
A line of holes arced up across the top of the AH-6G’s front glass. Otherwise the chopper seemed in good shape, though he was far from a mechanic. Or a pilot. He didn’t even know how to turn the panel on.
A fresh round of gunfire sounded from the Iraqis position beyond the hilltop plateau. His second helo passed overhead, unleashing machine-gun fire in that direction.
“How the hell did they get Fernandez and miss me?” Hawkins said as he ducked.
“They didn’t. The side of your head’s bleeding.”
Hawkins touched his temple. It was wet. He pushed his finger gently along the skin, felt something small and sharp; a piece of metal or glass. But it must not be serious or he’d be dead; unconscious at least.
“All right, let’s go get Turk and get the fuck out of here while we still can,” he told Ziza. “Show me the way.”
Ziza stooped slightly as he trotted. Hawkins huffed to keep up. He had a good feel for the situation now, had it laid out in his head.
His other helo was behind them somewhere. They would retreat and get picked up. Swing around and get Dixon and Winston. Go back to Fort Apache. Get their one spare pilot, maybe a mechanic. Bring back the downed helo.
Mechanic had broken his leg; wasn’t going anywhere.
Fuck that. He’d cart him there in a stretcher if they had to.
Ziza slid in behind the hulked ruins of an Iraqi truck as the enemy began firing mortar rounds. They were way off the mark and their first corrections were in the wrong direction. Hawkins ducked nonetheless, trotting toward Ziza and Staffa Turk. Turk was hunkered over guns on one end of a wrecked Iraqi vehicle. Four or five dead Iraqi soldiers lay on the ground, most still clutching their weapons.
The Iraqi mortar stopped firing. Turk nodded at the captain, then handed his starlight viewer to Hawkins, pointing out the Iraqi forces.
“They seem to think we’re still up on the hill,” he said, pointing to the rise on his left. “That APC has sat there since one of the choppers opened up. It’s got a gun and it works, but maybe its wheels are gone on the other side. I can’t tell. There’s about a squad of men clustered around that truck, and maybe three more over there with that one. Something fired once from there; I heard it, but that was it. Sounded like it might have been a grenade launcher, but then I thought mortar. Shell landed closer to Baghdad than to me.”
Hawkins scanned the positions. There were two wrecked APCs between them and the main body of the Iraqi force. Further right was a tracked vehicle with a four-barrel turret; obviously an anti-aircraft gun, though it would be deadly against ground forces. The enemy troops were arrayed as if the threat lay on the plateau, which rose about twenty-five yards to his left.
“What’s behind these guys?” he asked Green.
“Out to the road? There’s at least one tank. I heard it moving around before. You figure they stopped shooting because they think we’re all dead?”
Hawkins laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I think.”
Both men knew the Iraqis were merely regrouping.
“I’ll give them one thing,” said Ziza. “They’re smart enough not to fire a flare.”
“That’s only because they don’t know how outgunned we are,” said Hawkins. “We have to drop back and hook up with the helicopter before they figure it out.”
“Assuming he’s still here,” said Ziza. “I haven’t heard him for a few minutes.”
“He’s there.” Hawkins knew the pilot would take the AH-6G back and watch for them.
Have to move now, though. Any second the Iraqis might get their shit together and realize where the Americans were. Tanks could roll them up here.
“Okay, let’s pull back in the direction of that chopper,” said Hawkins. He pointed to the downed helicopter. “We’ll go to the helicopter, then move back into that open area. There’s a shallow ridge maybe a mile beyond us. That’s probably where the other helo is.”
He got up.
“Ziza, you lead the way.” He pushed him forward, waited a second, then tugged Turk. There was a flash behind them. Truck engines revved. He ran like his life depended on it.
Which it did. The Iraqis realized they were no longer on the hill and were coming across the plain.
“Tank!” yelled Ziza as something whizzed through the air ahead. “Tank’s firing!”
Hawkins fell toward the ground, spinning away from a white-red flash that momentarily silhouetted the middle of a large, hulking shadow.
In the next second, a fierce shriek split the earth ahead. Hawkins realized he and his men were doomed.
Then, an enormous white metallic light turned black Hell into bright Heaven. The air was rent by the concussion of a three-hundred-pound shaped Maverick G warhead smashing open the top of an Iraqi tank and incinerating its crew.
The commandos’ guardian angels had arrived.
CHAPTER 46
Doberman heard A-Bomb shout over the radio as the Maverick flashed dead on the turret of the T-72 tank, bursting through the relatively thin coat of armor and exploding inside. Forty tons of Iraqi metal went from an average 37 degrees Fahrenheit to over 300 in a half second. The turret popped up like the top on a boiling pot of water and the only thing that escaped was steam and ashes.
Doberman saw part of the tank begin to burn in the bottom corner of the Maverick’s cathode-ray tube as he edged the aiming cursor into the shadow of the APC. But he couldn’t set it— the damn pipper wouldn’t stay pipped. He cursed and relaxed his fingers, trying to feel himself into the target, then lost it completely. He felt the plane buck as the anti-aircraft gun on the edge of the Iraqi position finally figured out where the hell he was. He yanked to throw the gunner off, saw the cursor slap into place, steadied the plane, but lost the target again.
Doberman took a hard breath and got it back, did his thumb thing quick— bing, bang, bam— and nailed it down tight. He pickled the Maverick and kicked the god-damn missile into gear. By now the air around him was percolating with exploding flak shells. Doberman jinked hard, blood and gravity rushing to his head as he reached to key his mike and ask A-Bomb where the hell he was. The ground rippled brilliant red as it filled the top and side of his cockpit’s bubble glass. Doberman let the Hog fall into a swoop as he realized the triple-A had stopped; A-Bomb had just taken out the gun.
Okay, he thought to himself, points for timing.
Without the Maverick Gs, Doberman could make out only shadows and fires on the ground. Swinging behind the Iraqi position, away from the Americans, he called A-Bomb off, then fired one of the illumination flares his ground crew had thoughtfully packed under his wings. As the flare ignited beneath its slow-falling chute, Doberman spun back to the attack. The battlefield splayed out in his windscreen, Iraqi metal fat and juicy beneath him.