Dixon pumped and loaded, pushed his right knee down into the dirt to brace himself and then squeezed his finger against the launcher’s thin metal trigger. As he did, the gun rammed into his shoulder; he threw as much of his weight against it as he could, awkwardly dancing the weapon in a half-pirouette that would have been comical under other circumstances. The whishing sound of the grenade zipping through the air was followed by a deep, authoritative bang; he had missed wildly, firing at least a hundred yards beyond and well to the east of his enemies.
The Iraqis responded with equally misplaced shots, firing not in his direction but towards the explosion. He cocked again, pointing the barrel eastward into the creek this time.
As he was about to pull the trigger, something moved to his right. He swung around to nail it, stopping his finger only at the last second.
“Lieutenant, shit. What the hell are you doing here?” said Leteri, hunkering toward him.
“I almost put a grenade right through you.”
“Nah, I saw your first shot. You would have missed by a mile,” he said. “You don’t mind if I take a whack at that, do you?”
Dixon quickly traded for Leteri’s gun, an H&K MP-5. A fresh flare arced into the air from this distance, igniting overhead just as Leteri launched the grenade into the soldiers on the other side of the ditch. The corporal pumped a fresh one into the chamber and let it fly into the far end of the creek itself.
Dixon leaped to his feet. The Iraqi truck was about a hundred yards away, heading in their direction with troops behind it and its lights on. He had a clear shot at its front end; he nailed the trigger on the submachine-gun straight back, running half the clip through the front of the truck. He pushed the barrel upwards, working his aim with his body as if he were firing the cannon in the Hog, smashing the radiator and the hood and then the glass. He stopped firing, saw something move to the left of the truck and emptied the rest of the clip at it.
He ducked down as he ejected, reaching to his pocket to reload, forgetting that he had only M-16 cartridges in his pockets now.
“They’re out of ammo,” said Leteri.
“What?”
“They just wasted their clips.”
“They were firing?”
“The whole time,” said the sergeant, passing him a pair of MP-5’s long clips. “Now would be a good time for a strategic retreat.”
“Okay,” said Dixon. He jumped up.
“Afraid I can’t go very fast,” said Leteri, grabbing him. He pointed to his side, caked with a black substance that looked like tar. There was a second blotch on his leg. “My head hurts, too.”
“Lean on my shoulder,” Dixon told him. “Wait— maybe we ought to blow up the helicopter first. You got more grenades in that thing?”
“Let’s not fuck around.”
Dixon hesitated for another second. He thought he heard something move on the other side of the creek. That cinched it — he squatted down, his back to Leteri. “Get on. Let’s go.”
Leteri started to protest, but before he finished, Dixon has him on his back.
“Just hang on,” he said, rising. “And try not to bleed on my uniform. I had it dry-cleaned yesterday.”
“In that case I’ll puke on you, too,” said Leteri, as Dixon waddled away from the battlefield.
CHAPTER 56
Skull wasn’t terribly surprised to find Mongoose in Cineplex, even though it was relatively early. Even though there was no one else in the squadron room, he decided to talk to him down the hall in his office. Mongoose’s grin practically lit the way.
“So?” asked the major as Skull closed the door.
“Sit down and relax.”
“Colonel —”
“I wanted to ask you something first.”
Mongoose’s expression quickly changed. He was once more the solid-faced, on-guard DO who had done so much of Knowlington’s work during the first weeks of the squadron’s creation and deployment.
“What’s your wife think of you staying here?” Skull asked him.
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“She thinks it’s great.”
“You haven’t told her, have you?”
“She’ll go along with what I think is right.”
Skull pushed his fingers along his left ear, then around to his neck. He still hadn’t made up his mind. It was going to take a lot to keep the major with the squadron, though he had no doubt he could pull the strings.
What he doubted was whether it was the right thing to do. And he felt awkward about asking; he’d never been good at the personal questions, even when it was his job to ask them.
“Why don’t you want to go back?” he asked. “Are you afraid?”
“I can’t really explain it,” said Mongoose.
“Don’t you love your kid? I’m not trying to insult you, ‘Goose. But what you’re asking— it’s unusual.”
“I love my wife and my son. Shit, he was just born. Of course I love him. And I want to see him, too. But not yet. Not until this is over.”
There was pain on the major’s face; Knowlington saw that he hadn’t quite figured it out either.
“I can’t explain it,” said Mongoose. “They’re all I’ve thought about since I’ve been here. But to go to them now, it feels wrong. It feels like I’m running away when I have a hell of a lot more to do.”
“It’s not your fault you got shot down. I’m serious.”
“I know. Look, I ought to stay until this thing is over. How long can it last?”
Under other circumstances, Knowlington would have laughed for quite a while. Instead, he only said, “We thought that about Vietnam, too.”
“This isn’t then.”
“I know. Thank God.”
It wasn’t Vietnam, truly. Knowlington couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Mongoose had obviously told him as much as he would— and maybe as much as he could.
“What about it?” the major asked finally.
“If you want to stay with the squadron, here, doing what you can, I don’t see that I can really deny that request,” said Knowlington slowly. “In a lot of ways, I owe it to you. But I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do, and not a little string pulling. And you can expect half-a-million people to show up on your doorstep with questions.”
“I can handle them.”
Skull scratched his chin. “I have to be honest with you, ‘Goose, I’m not exactly sure I’m making the right decision here.”
“You are,” said the major. And with that, he got up and practically ran from the office, as happy as Knowlington had ever seen him.
CHAPTER 57
The commandos owned the night, but the day belonged to the Iraqis. Any of a thousand things might give them away— a passing Bedouin, a flyover by an Iraqi plane. They had lookouts covering the approaches and the highway under surveillance for nearly twenty miles, but the general plan for dealing with the day was to lay low, hiding and sleeping as much as possible.
But Hawkins wasn’t about to sleep. Nor did he think about the danger they were in, or his injuries. He was determined to get back the helicopter and the men he’d left behind. He started working out a plan as soon as his AH-6G, now officially dubbed Apache One, touched down on the weathered concrete.
Apache One had been hit in several places, including its fuel tank; while they were lucky that the bullet or shrapnel hadn’t ignited the fuel, the damage itself was minimal and easily repaired. More serious were the hits the electronics and rear rotor assembly had taken. His men could patch a fuel tank and bang out damaged metal under the direction of their injured mechanic, but they didn’t know very much about electronics or propulsion systems. The mechanic’s splints made it tough for him to inspect, let alone repair, the damage. He was a gamer, but he didn’t look in particularly good shape, clearly exhausted after only a half hour’s work.