“You’re getting paranoid, Dog Man. You got to lighten up. Everybody can make a mistake.”
“Maybe.” Doberman studied his map and position on the INS. He plotted a new course for home.
“Yeah,” said A-Bomb after he relayed the data. “Looks good.” His voice was nearly drowned out by the strains of “Rocket Queen,” the last song on Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction CD.
“I thought you were laying off the heavy metal,” said Doberman, putting his nose on the new bearings.
“You can’t get enough of the classics,” replied A-Bomb, who had to be the only combat pilot in the world with a flightsuit customized with a full-blown stereo. “I’m thinking of broadening my outlook, though,” added A-Bomb. “I mean, a man has to be open to new experiences. You have to move forward.”
“What do you mean? Rap? More grunge rock?”
“Early Beatles.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Doberman, as if they’d rehearsed it.
CHAPTER 11
Skull shifted on the hard metal chair, sipping the dark black liquid the CentCom staff claimed was coffee and trying to keep from bitching out loud. He’d caught a total of three hours’ sleep last night, including the ten minutes on the Huey hustling here for the high-level briefing session on the “Straw” Mission. But fatigue didn’t bother him — war was a twenty-four hour, do-it-yourself operation, and this particular product had a serious freshness date on it, due to expire in less than fourteen hours. Which meant it was exactly the sort of situation he liked; it kicked his pulse up and tightened his muscles, got his eyes into sharp focus. If anything, he was too awake.
What irked him was the attitude of the CinC staff running the show. It wasn’t just that the Army officers had started frowned the second Wong opened his mouth to begin the briefing. It was the way they frowned — as if Air Force officers had no ability to analyze anything below ten thousand feet, let alone propose and organize a combined ground-air covert operation.
Not that they treated the Delta folks any better.
Maybe it was just an Army thing, but Skull got the impression that they saw the whole thing more as an annoyance than an opportunity. They called it “Strawman” rather than Straw, hinting at the implication that the intelligence was bogus or perhaps even planted. Even the conference area they had been assigned — a basement room in a Saudi government building with two large folding tables for everyone to crowd around — seemed to signal that the mission had something less than top priority.
Officially, the allies weren’t supposed to be targeting Saddam. President George H.W. Bush had even said they wouldn’t during a press conference. But that was BS and everybody knew it. So why were they getting the sneers and knowing glances?
Wong, Knowlington, and the Spec Ops staff had put together a plan for four six-man teams of Delta troopers to make a high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop at 2000 about three miles southwest of the target area. The troopers would coordinate with a flight of F-111s, visually IDing the target before clearing the strike. The fighter-bombers would use laser-guided smart bombs to destroy the convoy. The ground teams would then escape in a pair of PAVE Lows in the early morning hours an hour after the attack, covered by four planes from Devil squadron.
Technically, the A-10s were ill-suited to night-support missions; they’d have to use special Maverick AGMs as night vision equipment if things got heavy. But it was a kludge Skull had made do with a few days before when he’d gone north to rescue one of his men. He expected an argument. He also anticipated that with a target like Saddam in the offing, the brass might want something a little flashier than the earth pigs — AKA as Aardvarks, Varks, and One-Elevens — handling the action. What he wasn’t prepared for was the flat-out statement that the Delta teams couldn’t be made available.
“We’re not risking that many men on this,” said Major Booker, an infantry officer from the CinC staff who was running the meeting. “It means taking away from Scud hunting and that can’t be done. The Scuds are job one.”
“These teams are currently in Riyadh. They’re not even technically reserves,” said Captain Leterri, who was presenting the Delta perspective at the briefing. Leterri looked like he wanted to say something along the lines of, “All they’re doing is jerking off.” Instead, he snorted at the air. The highly trained soldiers in question were, in fact, acting as a bodyguard pool for CentCom and the CinC — not exactly what they wanted to be doing.
Booker raised his shoulders and lowered his head, as if he were an eagle looking down from a craggy perch. The veins popped in his long, sinewy neck. “If the men are available,” he said, “then they should be hunting Scuds.”
Leterri was not be cowed. “They can conduct that mission immediately after this. The PAVE Lows…”
“We’re not risking helicopters that far north.”
“We had PAVE Lows there last night,” snapped Leterri, exasperated.
“Actually, the helicopter in question was a PAVE Hawk,” said Wong. “While operating at the extreme end of it range, it accomplished its mission with typical aplomb.”
“Irrelevant,” snapped Booker. “Anti-aircraft defenses have picked up in the area. We are not risking either PAVE Lows or PAVE Hawks there. The assets are too precious.”
“Aw bullshit, Major,” said Leterri, no longer able to control his frustration. “What the fuck do we have them for if we don’t put them to use? Shit, they got in last night, they’ll get in tonight, they’ll get in tomorrow.”
“We have fresh satellite data,” said Booker. He sounded almost triumphant, and waved to a sergeant near the door, who stepped forward and put the photos on the long table. Wong took them and began studying them. Paddington, one of the two British representatives at the session, leaned over his shoulder and whispered something.
It seemed clear to Skull that Booker’s job was to rain on the parade, scuttling it if possible. He couldn’t let that happen — not because he wanted to nail Saddam, but because he saw the mission as the only chance to search for Dixon. Officially, his lieutenant had been listed as KIA; nobody was going to send a search team looking for him, especially this far north, without very solid evidence that he was alive. This was their best — maybe only — shot at getting him back.
So it was time to take over the meeting.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, speaking in the deceptively soft tone that he had honed through years of maneuvering with the brass. “With all due respect to the other services represented, we have a serious opportunity here, based as much on luck as good intelligence. We only get one shot. The ground team is important, because the planes may need to be directed in at the last minute, depending on what’s going on. We considered using a Pave Penny TSL system, lazing the specific vehicle, and we can still do that if that’s what you’d prefer. But the F-111s can do the targeting on their own if we have the ground team directing…”
“We can’t spare F-111s,” said Booker.
“Why don’t we let Tommy tell us that?” said Skull. He kept his contempt veiled as he motioned to the Black Hole planner officially representing the Air Force theatre commander at the session. Black Hole ran the air war, assigning hit lists to squadrons in a daily briefing or task order known as the ATO, for air tasking order. Knowlington was well-connected with the planners and their bosses, and would never have included the planes in the game plan without having checked to see if they were, indeed, available.