“Looking ugly!” screamed A-Bomb as he whacked the stick and jostled the Maverick, hoping to unleash it on one of the few remaining targets.
CHAPTER 78
They were in the air, without radar but with the radio, at least enough of it to monitor the chaos at Sugar Mountain. Rosen hooked her arm around the restraints, her attention divided between the radio and the readings on the displays in front of her.
The situation over at Sugar Mountain was chaotic as hell, but she recognized Captain A-Bomb O’Rourke’s voice screaming through the chaos:
“I just shacked the APC with my last Maverick. That was kick-ass, Dog Man! You double-banged the fucker.”
The helicopter pilot turned to her, as if asking for an explanation.
“I think that’s good,” she told him.
The pilot of the other helicopter made a transmission to the Hogs, reporting some battle damage and wounded.
“Is Captain Dixon okay?” Rosen blurted over the com set.
For a second there was no answer. She knew she had keyed her mike because Slim Jim gave her a dirty look. That wasn’t enough to prevent her from asking again, though this time she dressed up the communication with a slightly more professional tone, adding “over” at the end of the transmission.
“Air Two this is Air One. Lieutenant Dixon is not on board.”
“Shit. Repeat?”
“Dixon is not on board.”
Rosen grabbed the sleeve of her helicopter pilot. “Go over to Sugar Mountain.”
“What?”
“One of our men is still on the ground down there.”
The pilot said nothing, but gave her two answers nevertheless. One answer was with his eyes, which summarized the helicopter’s precarious mechanical state, their low fuel reserves and lack of ammunition in a look that clearly asked, Do you think I’m out of my friggin’ mind?
The other was with his hands, which yanked the helo’s control column nearly out of its bolts and put the AH-6G on-line to the foaming clouds of smoke that marked the Iraqi stronghold.
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“Apache Two, this is Devil One. I copied that transmission. We will cover you to Sugar Mountain. Over.” Doberman let go of the mike key and ran his eyes quickly over the Hog’s indicators, with the notable exception of the panel detailing his dwindling fuel supply.
“Got your six,” said A-Bomb.
He was as short of fuel as Doberman was, but it was senseless ordering him home. The two Hogs cut tight angles in the air as they whacked back for Sugar Mountain.
“I’m thinking that must have been Dixon who nailed the missile launcher on the crater,” said A-Bomb. “That’s just the sort of thing a Hog driver’s gonna do, you know what I’m talking about?”
“We’ll buzz the crater and have the helo follow us in.” said Doberman, straining to see the quarry through the dust and smoke ahead. “Check for machine guns, if you can find the damn things. I can’t see shit.”
He took the Hog into a shallow but quick dive, moving down through four thousand feet as he accelerated. The smoke, rocks and wreckage divided into distinct clumps, several of which began to fire furiously at him from the periphery of the quarry. Doberman didn’t have a particularly good shot on any of them and decided to truck on past, concentrating on looking for Dixon. He figured A-Bomb would be more than happy to clean up for him.
Picking out something as small as a man from an airplane under any circumstances was extremely difficult. Picking out someone in the rocks while people are shooting at you was nearly impossible.
Doberman nonetheless pushed the Hog in, practically crawling as he scanned out the right side of his cockpit. Pulling off to the west, he took a slow, low orbit and watched as A-Bomb rode in on one of the gunners, letting the A-10A’s cannon eat up the dirt.
The cannon’s kick was so fierce, it slowed the plane down, nearly holding the Hog still as the bullets stuttered right and left. A-Bomb worked the rudders like pedals on a piano, playing the Death March for the unlucky slobs who had dared aim at him. And then he was beyond them, spinning off as Doberman put his Hog onto another of the heavy machine guns, pelting it with the Gatling’s big shells. Doberman winged through the haze and got a good view of the landslide that had crushed the storage bunker closed for good.
He couldn’t see Dixon. Nor could A-Bomb when to took a second run through. The machine-gun fire had stopped, at least. Doberman cleared the helicopter pilot in for a closer look.
As they watched the helo approach, their AWACS controller asked, semi-politely, if they had left the allied air forces and established one of their own.
He had some pointed questions about fuel consumption as well.
“Somebody’s feeding him information,” squawked A-Bomb over the short range radio.
Doberman told the AWACS they had the situation under control, then asked for the nearest tanker track, knowing before the coordinates came back that it was going to be tight.
One of the machine-guns started firing again as the helicopter pushed in. Doberman cursed, nearly pulling the wing off the plane as he spun the Hog to take the bastard out. The helo pilot yelled something he couldn’t understand.
There was a dead man at the lip of the crater.
Helo was taking fire.
Doberman leveled off briefly and flailed back in time to see the helicopter work its way toward the back of the mountain. His Hog was sucking dirt now, down under five hundred feet, slipping to three hundred. Doberman spotted something brown moving in the crevice formed by the rocks between them just southeast of the hill he’d just hit.
“Two bodies,” said the helo pilot, except it wasn’t the helo pilot, it was Rosen.
Something flashed in the corner of his eye.
“Watch the hilltop!” he shouted as he passed. He started to bank back and transmitted the warning again, unsure if he had even keyed the mike to send it.
There was a gunner flailing at the helicopter. A-Bomb saw him and was diving at the hill. The helicopter yanked away, bullets erupting from its side.
A-Bomb yelled.
The helicopter pilot yelled.
Rosen screamed.
And in the middle of it all the AWACS controller, his voice calm and ice cold, dished out a snap vector: Two MiGs were taking off from a nearby Iraqi airstrip.
“We’re hit but we’re okay,” announced the helicopter pilot.
“Was that Dixon?” Doberman asked.
“Those bodies aren’t moving,” said A-Bomb. “Dog, we got two pick-ups on the road in warp drive heading for Sugar Mountain. Got guns in the back, looks like.”
“OK, everybody get the hell out of here,” said Doberman. “Take the AWACS vector, A-Bomb.”
“What about you?”
Doberman hesitated for a second. The kid was down there somewhere; dead probably, but he couldn’t leave him.
Dixon wasn’t dead. No way. No.
Doberman’s Hog was almost out of fuel, two MiGs were heading this way, and more Iraqis were playing Rat Patrol. Dixon or no Dixon, he had to go.
There wasn’t anything he could do for the kid now. No amount of skill— or luck or superstition— would help him. Neither would pounding the Hog into the dirt.
“Yeah, I’m on it,” he told A-Bomb, slamming the Hog onto the get-away course.
CHAPTER 80