Flak, said a voice that belonged neither to A-Bomb nor to Skull. It came from behind an iron wall in a F-4 Phantom twenty years in the past, his old “bear” growling out a warning on a mission long since forgotten.
Now as then, Skull ignored the warning, sticking to his game plan. He tacked to the left, right through the exploding shells, swinging around as he scanned the target site with his AGM-65G. He had nothing but blurs — then his eyes caught a leaping tongue of flame on the ground, the result of a large Paveway series laser-guided missile launched from the F-111 striking the SA-11 launcher. Another roman candle erupted a half-second later — probably the van that provided targeting data. Then everything was red and white.
Skull whacked the Hog hard to left, then hit the transmit button.
“Door is Open,” he said over the long-range frequency, alerting Wolf that the SAMs had been knocked out.
As he lifted his finger, something rapped his right wingtip so hard it nearly rolled the plane.
CHAPTER 26
The village was smaller than Dixon had imagined, laid out along one main road that had been cut into the saddle of three hills. The road jagged away from a sharp rock outcropping at the entrance; by climbing the rock Dixon had been able to scout the town before going in.
A mosque sat at the center, elevated on a narrow plain in front of one of the hills; the other buildings were small, mostly made of concrete or something similar, their sides shadows in the dim evening light. Industrial buildings, either warehouses or factories, were wedged into the slope to his right; he couldn’t see much of them from the rocks.
Worried about being seen, he moved slower than a turtle across the sloping scrubland behind the village. The boy seemed caught up in the game his rescuer was playing; he moved behind him like a shadow, ducking when Dixon ducked, rising when Dixon rose. He made no sign that he knew the village. They huddled together as the sun set, waiting for the long shadows to make it easier to move. But the night wasn’t nearly as dark as Dixon wanted. Or perhaps he was just getting more paranoid.
They moved ever more slowly, stopping any time there was a sound or odd shadow ahead. They drew a semi-circle around the village without seeing anything remotely resembling a store. At three spots along the street clusters of men stood around vehicles; otherwise there was no sign of life. They were too far away to see for certain whether the men were soldiers or not. The vehicles they stood around seemed to be civilian, but Dixon knew that meant nothing.
Gradually, he and the boy worked back around the hillside, inching closer to a group of houses that lay below the rock he’d climbed earlier. Finally, they came to a flat, open space less than twenty yards behind three small buildings. A faint light shone through one of the windows of the house on the left. Dixon decided to send Budge there to ask for some food.
He mimed it out for the kid, who nodded.
“You really understand, Budge?”
The boy nodded again. “Budge,” he said.
Dixon patted his shoulder. He considered simply waiting a few more hours and break in, steal what they needed. But something inside him was uncomfortable with that — as if he truly were back in Iowa, as if this weren’t a matter of life and death.
“Yeah, all right,” he told the kid. “Go for it.”
A rattle echoed off the hills, the sound of a rattlesnake about to strike. Dixon dove forward, grabbing the boy as a bomb hit somewhere to the northwest, not terribly far from the hill. A second explosion followed, then the sky behind them turned red, fiery hands waving across the horizon. Anti-aircraft rumbled, tracers arcing into the sky overhead. The closest gun was a half-mile away; the rest were scattered around in a vast semi-circle that seemed to form a fist around them.
“This way,” he told Budge, jumping back to his feet. “This way.”
Dixon picked the boy up under his arm, hauling him along as he ran up the slope to the rock, hoping he might see what was going on from there. The ground shook like the floor of an old auditorium where a rap group played. Dixon ran as fast as he could manage, clutching the kid and the guns to him, stumbling as much as climbing.
The thunder of the flak guns stopped. A truck or some other vehicle started its engine in the distance, but otherwise everything was quiet. The sky beyond the village to the northwest was red; whatever the American bombers had hit was on fire.
When Dixon reached the rock he hoisted Budge up first, then clambered behind him. But the topography made it impossible to get a clear view; whatever had been hit lay beyond or on the side of the short hill opposite the road they’d walked down. Dixon faced it, trying to orient himself north-to-south; it seemed the target lay a mile or more north of the highway, commanding an open plain just before the hills.
Probably another Scud launching site.
If that was true, it was possible it had been pointed out by a Delta team. They’d be around somewhere, maybe waiting for pickup.
Go in that direction and see what was going on? He could skirt the house by walking around the slope, get down to the highway and walk along it. He could go to the spot where the Black Hawk had appeared last night — it was an easy place for a pickup.
The Iraqis might have it guarded.
Scout it first.
If not there, where? Back to the Cornfield? The kid would never be able to walk that far without food.
Maybe it better to sneak back to the village, go ahead and get some food and water. The attack might divert attention for a while.
Or it might make the villagers doubly suspicious.
Dixon looked at the boy, trembling on the ground, curled around his leg. Dixon saw a shadow on his pants and realized the child had pissed himself.
“Hey, it’s okay, buddy,” he told him, pulling him up. “Happens to the best of us.”
His father used to tell him that, didn’t he? When he was three or four?
Dixon couldn’t really remember much his father had told him. It didn’t matter, one way or another.
“It’s okay, Budge, come on.” He stood the kid up. “Let’s go see what all this fuss is about, okay? We’ll move around to the other side of this hill and see what we can see. We’ll get something to eat later. Moving’s better than standing still. Remember that.”
He repeated the advice, as if he expected Budge to take it to heart.
CHAPTER 27
A-Bomb’s stomach twitched. It wasn’t hunger — Skull had twisted his plane directly into a spewing fountain of yellow lava, seemingly oblivious of the ZSU-23 anti-aircraft guns even though A-Bomb had broadcast two warnings about them.
O’Rourke cursed, leaning against his restraints as the cascading sparks enveloped the lead plane. At the same time, he nudged the aiming cursor of his first Maverick toward the bank of ZSU-23s, the image jumping around and refusing to lock on target. It took so long that before he finally nailed the cursor the air around him had begun to bubble with the hot steam of exploding 23 mm shells. As the Maverick dropped off her rail, A-Bomb tapped his throttle for luck and yanked the Hog into a tight dip that would take him to the west and out of the Zeus’s line of fire.
Had to give it to the Iraqis — they had lined the stinking flak guns up damn good. And they had a million of them here, more than last night, or so it seemed.
Tracers arced over his left wing as he pushed the Hog into its bank. He felt the plane rumble as he flipped the wings hard the other way, trying to dart north into a piece of open air. The violent maneuver tugged the hell out of ailerons, not to mention the wings and the rest of the plane, but the Hog didn’t seem to mind, not even bothering to groan as her pilot shoved her over into a roll, gamely holding her rudder straight despite the violent g forces and exploding artillery fire. Finally clear, A-Bomb leveled out, running due west as briefed, his eyes hunting for Knowlington.