“Geez, who bit you in the ass?” said A-Bomb. By common consensus, he was the only member of the squadron, officer or enlisted, who could get away with a remark like that to the capo.
Clyston harumphed in response, then turned to Doberman.
“Captain Glenon, sir, I heard what you did with that MiG. Kick-ass flying, sir. I’m f-in’ proud of you, and every member of this squadron is f’-in’ proud of you, even if they don’t officially know what you did.”
“You mean they don’t know, or they don’t know that they know,” laughed A-Bomb.
“Yeah, thanks, Chief. I appreciate it,” said Glenon, who wanted desperately to get out of his gear and grab something to eat.
That and take a leak.
Clyston took a measured step backwards and did something that nearly knocked Doberman over: He lifted his hand up for a salute.
Glenon hesitated; truth was, he’d never seen Clyston salute before. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen any chief master sergeant in the Air Force salute before, certainly not to him.
But here was Clyston, grizzled bear of grizzled bears, seriously waiting for him to snap off a salute in return.
“Okay,” said Doberman. He gave his best impression of a parade color guard — in truth not a very good one — and returned the salute. “Thanks. Your guys, I mean, Rosen and Tinman and the rest out at Al Jouf, they were kick ass, too.”
“Thank you, sir.” Clyston remained at attention.
“I appreciate the sentiment, really. But, you know.”
“Yeah. I know. You got a bullshit deal. But these guys appreciate what you did. They won’t forget.” Clyston glanced over Doberman’s shoulder toward the crews examining the planes. He morphed back to his old self with a loud growl at one of his men. “Grimsley, you start on the other side of that first, for christsake. Geeee-zus-f-ker-eye-st.”
Doberman started shagging along toward the life support shop, where he could change. He and O’Rourke would have to gather their thoughts for a round of reports on both the border incident and their time north at Fort Apache; he wasn’t looking forward to intel debriefings but they were a necessary part of the job. Inevitably, he’d forget some vital thing that somebody else would remember and he’d have to answer a ton of questions about it, trying to stretch his memory when all he’d be interested in doing was playing cards or catching Zs. He started outlining what had happened with the tanks and the SA-7 as he walked; he had the play-by-play more or less summarized before realizing Clyston was tagging along with them.
“Something up, Chief?” he asked.
“Couple of things,” said Clyston. “New D.O. is a certified asshole, for starters.”
“New D.O.?” said A-Bomb. “I had ten bucks on Dogman here getting the post.”
Clyston’s scowl deepened. “Between you, me and the lamp post, sirs, I truly wish he was. I’m sorry if this is news to you, Captain.”
“I don’t want to be D.O. anyway,” said Doberman.
“A Major Horace Gordon Preston,” said Clyston, answering the obvious question. “You can tell he did time at the Pentagon. For my money, he belongs back there.”
Coming from Clyston, the pronouncement was libel. And his next sentence explained why:
“Fucking zippersuit wants us to take down our Saddam sign.”
“Eat shit, Saddam? Oh man, you can’t do that,” said A-Bomb. “That’s, like, our motto. It’s what I’m talking about. You have to leave that up. You have to leave that up.”
“I didn’t say it was coming down,” said Clyston slowly. “Only that Preston wants it down.”
“What’s the Colonel think?” asked A-Bomb.
Clyston shrugged.
“Skull wants it down?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it,” said Clyston. “Not my place.”
“Well, I will,” said A-Bomb.
Clyston turned his head slowly to O’Rourke. “I’d appreciate that, Captain.”
More than the sign was obviously at stake. The chief was by far the closest man, regardless of rank, to Colonel Knowlington on the base. Rumor had it they had served together when the Air Force was still using biplanes. If Clyston mentioned it to Knowlington himself, the odds were overwhelming that Knowlington would make sure the sign stayed.
So it must be that the chief saw Preston as a threat, and not to him.
“I’ll speak to the colonel, too,” said Doberman. “And we’ll watch out for him. He’s a good commander. A-Bomb and I were just telling some clods from the CinC’s staff at Al Jouf that, as a matter of fact.”
“Thank you, Captain.” The chief’s smile extended slowly. “There’s a meeting scheduled for 1300 hours to introduce the new DO, pilots, senior NCOs, and probably an f-in’ cheerleading squad if Preston has any input on it. In the meantime, you sirs might want to run into Major Wong.”
“Wong’s back?” asked A-Bomb.
“And last I saw, headed for lunch,” said Clyston. “You really, really want to talk to him, Captain,” he added, turning to Doberman. “You’ll be glad you did.”
CHAPTER 14
Skull stared at the top sheet of the lined pad on his desk. He’d sketched a backwards “7” in the lower left-hand quadrant; atop it was a sideways, script “v.” Two small squares sat like ink blots at the top stem.
Anyone glancing at it would have thought the hieroglyphics meaningless. In fact, it was the outline of his mission.
A maniac’s mission, as Padington had put it. And obviously the reason CinC wasn’t willing to dedicate more than a few Hogs and an old C-130 to it.
Not true. The Hogs were backing up four F-111s, and the C-130 wasn’t old. There were a dozen other planes involved, counting the CAP that would be orbiting nearby, the ABCCC command and control plane, the electronics-warfare craft, the SAM suppressers, and the rest of the support team.
But truly, it was a shot in the dark. And truly, finding Dixon was going to take more than a little luck.
If anyone could do it, Wong could. Skull knew that. But still — a long shot.
And the slingshot they planned to use to get them out — that wasn’t even worth thinking about. The best hope was that helo flights would be cleared into the area by the time the mission took off — possible, but not likely.
Best to worry only about his part of the mission. Because he wasn’t allowed to disrupt his other missions, Knowlington’s planes would be over hostile territory for as much as six hours, from the drop to the pickup. They had to stay low to avoid being picked up by the sophisticated Iraqi defenses — and they had to remain unseen (and unheard) to avoid tipping off anyone of the ground team’s presence. At the same time, they had to back up the F-111s and drop the pods containing the STAR gear. To do all this, he’d have only four planes — assuming Chief Clyston lived up his promise that he could have four ready without disrupting the other missions.
Easy. For a maniac or a Hog driver.
If the mission succeeded — if they got Saddam — Skull and the others were going to be world class heroes. Every last one of them could run for President.
But Saddam wasn’t why he’d sketched the 7 and V on the pad, or why he’d pushed so hard to get the mission approved, or why he’d decided he was flying it himself. He wanted Dixon back. If there was even a small chance that he might be able to get him — an infinitesimally small, minute chance — he had to go for it.
No MIA bracelets in this war.
It was an arrogant, foolish thought. Guys got killed, guys got captured, guys got lost. Who the hell was he to wipe that out? What gave him the right to risk somebody’s else’s neck on a wild goose chase for a corpse?