All things considered, Preston had the easiest job of the mission. After a quick refuel at KKMC, the planes would fly together across the border, as if coming in for an attack. The dance would begin at a coordinate they called “Wendy’s” — A-Bomb had supplied the nicknames — about fifty miles due south of their actual target area. The planes would make a show of turning west toward a GCI or ground radar site that had been hit two days before; the maneuver was supposed to make anyone watching think they were going to attack it again. After about two minutes of flying time, they would reach “Krisp.” Knowlington and A-Bomb would hit the deck, diving to fifty feet and starting a zig-run north to scout the LZ for the Hercules. Doberman and Hack would continue toward the GCI for about a minute and a half before breaking off turning back south to refuel. Assumed all went as planned, they’d relieve the first two planes in a staging area about fifteen miles south of the LZ, orbiting there until — if — needed. They’d be about a two minute scramble from the hot zone. The A-10s would trade back and forth, waiting and refueling, until they were needed to cover the pickup. Then they’d go home.
Two pairs of F-111s were doing the heavy lifting — one taking out the SAM site and the other, several hours later, going after Saddam’s car. The Hogs would back them up.
“Four, you’re supposed to be further back in trail.”
Glenon’s ferocious yap jerked Hack physically; he slammed the stick of his Hog to the left, pitching the plane on its wing to fall back before realizing that he needn’t have taken such drastic action. He swooped back level, cursing Glenon as well as himself — he hadn’t been that close, for christsakes, just a little tighter on Devil Three than they had briefed. No reason to bark at him.
“Four,” he said, acknowledging. He let the distance work out to a mile and a half, in the meantime pulling closer to the axis of the flight. You could waste a lot of fuel getting too close, because then you’d be making constant adjustments on the throttle.
In theory, anyway. Damn Hog throttle was just an on-off switch.
“Devil Leader to Devil Flight. Ease up, boys,” snapped Knowlington. “The night is young. We have our first way point in zero-two. Nice, gentle turn.”
The colonel’s voice had the smooth, suave assurance of an all-night deejay spinning golden oldies in the wee hours. Hack eased his fingers, rolling his neck and trying to snap some of the tension out with the cracks of his ligaments against the vertebrae. The sky ahead darkened as he flew, blue hazing into a gray that slid into blackness. He took the turn and then the next course correction, now on a direct line for Iraq. The planes had climbed all the way to 18,000 feet. It was high for a Hog — and the lowest altitude he’d ever been at crossing the border.
They were going a hell out of a lot lower before the night was through. Fifty feet in the dark.
Damn long time since he’d done that. Had he ever actually done that, even in an exercise? He wasn’t sure.
Hack blew a wad of air through his nose and worked his eyes around the cockpit, determined to keep his shit together. Nail this and everyone in the squadron was going to respect him, no questions asked.
He hadn’t even thought of that when he’d volunteered. But it was true — a bonus he hadn’t counted on.
Assuming he made it.
“Wendy’s,” said Knowlington.
The transmission startled Hack; it felt like it was too soon, though a glance at his instruments told him they were dead on.
One by one, the planes acknowledged and took the turn. A-Bomb’s acknowledgment seemed garbled, and for a half-second Hack felt a mixture of anticipation and actual fear, desire to step up into the tougher slot mixing with the fear that he might screw up the harder job.
But there was nothing wrong with Devil Two or its radio. A-Bomb’s voice hadn’t been garbled so much as consumed by another sound.
Bruce Springsteen, it seemed, singing, “Born to Run.”
Snap out of it, Hack told himself. You’re wound so tight you’re starting to hear things. Nobody listens to music on the way to a bomb run over enemy territory, not even a Hog driver.
CHAPTER 21
Skull’s yellow pad had it nice and neat, a quick cut to the northeast followed by a dogleg south, a dive and then a 160-degree turn and a jog north to the money.
Real life was messier, with the RWR warning that an Iraqi radar that shouldn’t be there was trying to acquire him before they reached Krisp. There had been a GCI or ground radar site due west, but if the RWR was to be believed, that wasn’t what was targeting them now; the radar was in a different band.
If the warning was to be believed, in fact, they were being hunted by a Roland mobile SAM battery, probably the most deadly anti-air weapon the Iraqis had outside of the SA-11s Wong had spotted further north.
“Radar,” said Knowlington tersely. “Hang with me and stay on course.”
As he let go of the mike button to end the transmission, the warning indicator went clear. Skull’s eyes hunted the dark shadows below for a sign of the threat. They were more than a hundred miles inside of Iraq, heading toward the heart of the country. They were beyond the worst of the desert; the ground was more hard-packed here, hard-scrabble scrub as opposed to sifting mounds of sand. But no matter what the earth was made of, it would have been hard to pick anything out of the dusky shadows from this altitude.
Their planned zig would take them through the direction the radar waves seemed to have come from; the way they’d chalked it up, they’d pass right through the missile’s prime acquisition envelope as they dove to fifty feet.
The German-made missile system, which Iraq had a good number of, had a range of roughly four miles. Designed for low and medium-altitude protection, it was extremely nasty once locked on a target.
“I have no radar,” said A-Bomb. “Been clean.”
“One,” acknowledged Skull.
It had been roughly thirty seconds since the warning. They were one and a half minutes away from Krisp.
The safest thing to do was change course to skirt the missiles. But that might change their time on target, which would mess everything up — this was a delicate dance between the F-111s, the Hogs, and the Herk. Throw the schedule off a minute and he risked having the Hercules spotted.
Better, though not safer, to dive sooner, steeper, get under the Roland as well as the SA-11. That meant a much longer drive at fifty feet.
Lose some speed, eat more fuel.
Knowlington quickly looked at his paper map, double-checking the elevations in their path to make sure there weren’t any surprises.
Doable.
“Krisp in sixty seconds,” Knowlington told the rest of his flight. “Devil Three, I’m figuring that Roland at about two o’clock, four miles from Krisp, maybe a little further. You want coordinates?”
“I can do the math,” snapped Doberman.
“We’re going to break on my signal. A-Bomb, you and I are going to dive down to fifty feet and get under it. Doberman, you avoid the site when you come north.” He left it to Doberman to decide how.
“Two. I’m ready when you are, Skip,” said A-Bomb.
“Three. I’ll call in the position on the SAM.”
Skull took one last look at his gauges, making sure he had plenty of fuel. His preflight calculations had been pessimistic; the Hog was sipping daintily.
Maybe he was being overly cautious. No way Black Hole would have left a working Roland out here. Probably just an ECM glitch.
No way to tell.
“Krisp,” Skull said, tipping his wing as he rolled the Hog into a steep dive.