“I’m okay.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
This time, Leteri didn’t offer a salute, and Dixon somehow interpreted that as an even higher honor.
He had to crawl the first ten yards to get around the side, but beyond that it was safe to walk, protected both by the ridge and the Iraqis’ own over-confidence. They weren’t necessarily incompetent, Dixon reminded himself; they were just so far behind the lines that they couldn’t imagine American soldiers were sitting right next to them. He guessed that he acted the same way hanging out at Cineplex in Hog Heaven.
The fire was burning again at the back of his head, stronger now. His eyes were hard little spotlights, searching the rocks. The MP-5 was part of his hands; he didn’t have to think about it as he moved.
A lookout had been posted at end of the ravine he needed to climb down to get around the ridge and up onto the cratered hilltop where the missile launcher was. Dixon had a clear, easy shot of no more than ten yards— but no way to take it without alerting the entire Iraqi contingent.
The soldier faced the road, alternately standing and sitting, his Kalashnikov hanging loosely at his side. Dixon was only partly protected from view by the corner of the rock face and some large boulders. The man’s attention seemed focused entirely on the road and desert in front of him.
Somewhere in the foggy early days of his military training, Dixon had been taught how to smash the back of an enemy’s skull with the butt end of a bayoneted rifle, then twist the gun around and stab him in the throat.
Or the heart. He couldn’t remember which. He did remember that he hadn’t done very well in any of those lessons or exercises.
And anyway, the MP-5 didn’t come with a bayonet.
If he could sneak close enough to the man, he could smash him across the side of the face with the gun. Then he’d haul out his knife and finish him off.
Dixon judged that the soldier was twenty pounds lighter and maybe six inches shorter than he was. He ought to be able to take him in a fight, especially if he was able to surprise him.
Could he? The ground seemed fairly stable, no large rocks or boulders to trip over or send flying, tipping him off.
Ten yards. Two seconds?
More like three or four. If he got off cleanly.
The Iraqi started to turn in his direction. Dixon ducked back behind the rocks, barely in time.
Or so he thought. As he held his breath, he heard the man start to climb toward him.
Dixon pushed his knee against the rock and bit the corner of his lip, trying not to breathe, not to exist. Retreating was impossible; there was no cover behind him for five or six yards.
His finger edged lightly on the trigger. He’d kill this bastard at least, and two or three of the next men who came for him. Dixon pushed his right shoulder up, steadied himself for a shot.
The man stopped right next to the crevice wall, not three feet away around the corner, and began fumbling with his clothes.
He was taking a leak.
Go!
Dixon caught him in the side of the head, smashed him with the hard stock of the machine-gun butt.
Stunned, the Iraqi fell backwards, his gun falling away.
Dixon went after him, losing his balance and plunging his gun barrel-first into the soldier’s chest. The man struggled to turn over, both of them sliding downwards. Dixon took two wild swings, then lost the gun somehow, tumbling against the soldier and feeling a hard knee in his ribs. The fire in his head flared; his right fist found the soldier’s chin once, twice, three times in succession, pounding the man temporarily limp. Without thinking about exactly what he was doing, Dixon snatched his knife from his belt and stabbed it point-first into the man’s throat. He slid it around, slashing inside the wound as if he were taking out an apple core.
Finally, he realized the man was dead and jumped up mid-stab. He took a step backward and picked up his gun, conscious of the noise they had made, worried that someone might have heard the commotion. He held both the submachine gun and the knife in his hand as he ducked down as he scanned the area, keeping his breath still nearly sixty seconds, listening for the sound of men running to avenge their comrade’s gruesome death.
All he hear was silence. He straightened, then stooped to wipe the bloody knife blade on his pants leg. He slid the knife back into its sheath, and noticed that his uniform was black with the dead man’s blood.
Pants still undone, the Iraqi sprawled obscenely on hillside, blood oozing from his neck and chest. Dixon felt a twinge of compassion; he stooped down to pull the man’s pants closed.
That was the old Dixon— the good, overachieving kid next door whose impulses sometimes led him to do foolish things, and whose conscience never let him forget them; the kid who worried about failing and struggled to do his duty.
But the new Dixon hauled the dead Iraqi up into the crevice out of sight, dropping him quickly and unceremoniously against the side of the rocks. He let the dead man and his old self go without wasting another second thinking about the frenetic impulse that to kill that flamed like kerosene in Dixon’s hands and eyes. He felt the fire in his head, and used it to push him up the ravine toward his goal.
CHAPTER 66
Colonel Klee made one slight concession to the Hog drivers, Doberman specifically. He sent one of his flunkies to tell Doberman that if he wanted to go north early in case they were needed with the helo pickup, that was all right.
Doberman wasn’t sure how the colonel figured out that he intended on going away, but it didn’t alter his opinion of him. He hadn’t thought Klee was a fool, just a douche bag.
They tanked after taking off to gain a little more time for the mission. Done, Doberman pushed his plane out over the desert toward central Iraq. Truth was, both planes and men were being stretched beyond their reason, but he couldn’t give a shit about that. Numbers, formulas, all that crap— that was engineering, and right now he didn’t care for any of it. He was driving a Hog.
Still, it was a long haul north with little to do except sweat. He kept turning his eyes back to the Maverick’s small television monitor, thinking about the double whammy he had to make.
What if the lock drifted or got lost or he couldn’t get the little pipper precisely right as he rode in? What if somebody started firing at him, breaking his concentration?
If anybody could make it, Doberman could. No bullshit. Mr. AGM.
Just like he could hit an inside card to make a Royal Straight Flush.
If there was such thing as luck, his was for shit. He had the luck of Job. Period.
Maybe he should’ve gotten the cross from Shotgun after all. Or at least not thrown the penny away.
Fucking goddamn crazy people were polluting his mind.
“Devil Flight this is Apache Air One. Are you reading me?”
Doberman acknowledged the helicopter’s call and took his coordinates, then gave a quick glance to the map on his kneepad. They were right on schedule, right where they were supposed to be.
“We are one-zero minutes from the Cornfield,” said the commando in the helicopter.
“Acknowledged,” said Doberman. “Wait for the green light.”
“That’s cross at the green, and not in between,” joked A-Bomb over the squadron frequency.
Doberman found his way point and made a slight course adjustment. He didn’t bother acknowledging, but listened only to the Hog and his breath as he slammed onward.
Five minutes later, cued not only by the INS but by the highway below, Doberman pitched his wing over and fell toward the ground. The Hog grunted appreciatively, readying her cannon as she accelerated toward the ground, steadying herself under her pilot’s hand into a stable downward plunge that gave Doberman a perfect view of the countryside. The disabled AH-6G sat directly in the middle of his HUD. The remains of the Iraqi column sat on the lower ground a few hundred yards away, the broken tank at the top left of his screen with the other vehicles behind it as Doberman began pulling the stick back. He eased out of the dive at a still relatively safe four thousand feet. He was pulling over four hundred knots, cranking by on his first run just to see if there was anything below still moving. He was past the highway and large stream, then pulling around. Trailing in Devil Two, A-Bomb told him nothing had moved.