“Not like flying a slick, huh?” DiRiggio said to Lars, using Herk slang for a “normal” C-130. Compared to the heavily modified Combat Talons and other special operations craft, the transport models had smooth or slick skins.
“It’s the flak vest I can’t get used to,” he said, coaxing what he hoped was a jocular note into his voice.
“Probably a good idea, though.”
“Uh-huh.”
Because the mission was classified, the crew had been told just the bare outlines, the absolute minimum they needed to do their jobs. Lars and DiRiggio knew that the Delta team was targeting a caravan of vehicles for F-111s. Lars figured that the target was a high-ranking Iraqi — possibly Saddam himself, given the location where they’d made the drop. Lars guessed that DiRiggio thought that too, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if the rest of Herky Bird’s crew had figured it out. But their code called for ignorance, and to a man they practiced it, concentrating on their job and pretending to know nothing beyond what was in front of them.
DiRiggio hit his mark and began angling into a slight turn eastward. They double-checked their indicators. They were still clean; the terrain before them empty desert. Lars listened for the transmission from Wolf that would tell them the landing team was down and in the right spot. Their MC-130E carried the latest high-tech communications gear, but radio transmissions could still be problematic, hampered by everything from low altitude to atmospheric vagaries to interference from jamming craft. In theory none of those things were supposed to matter, but somehow communications remained as much an art as a science. Lars remembered an old Philco monster radio his great-grandpa had had in his Bristol, Connecticut row house. It managed to pull in Yankee games from New York City, crystal clear, even day games — once you hit the knob right. Took a certain flick, though.
“Jerry? Three? God. God!”
Lars snapped his head toward DiRiggio, unsure whether he was worried about engine three or something else. The major’s face seemed to glow white in the dim cockpit, as if he were made of white marble instead of flesh. His eyes were round, large circles that stared at Lars, stared at him for a long moment, as if DiRiggio had woken from a dream and wondered how he’d gotten there. Then they rolled back in his head, the pilot’s body flailing against the restraints, his arms snapping taut. The plane jerked to the right so hard the control yoke pulled out of Lars’ hand.
“Somebody help me.”
Lars wasn’t sure whether the words came from DiRiggio or himself. He grabbed at the controls desperately, struggling to right the Hercules as its right wing pitched toward the ground barely fifty feet away.
CHAPTER 30
Skull brought the Hog level at just under a hundred feet, not sure exactly where he was and half-suspecting that he was going to slam into a hill any second. He stepped through the last of the blurring tracers and found himself in the open air, though dangerously low. The plane quickly responded as he pulled back on the stick, plucking its nose upwards toward the sky. If he’d been hit — and surely the odds had favored it — the Hog had shrugged it off. The plane responded crisply to his control inputs.
Not wanting to believe his luck, he hesitated before checking the row of warning lights on the dash.
Clean and green.
What had the rattle been? Shock waves from the exploding shells? Or was he flying with holes in his sides?
Knowlington craned his neck around, checking the exterior of the plane through the Perspex. It was too dark to see, of course, but he had to look, just as he had to recheck his indicators once more, working through them slowly.
If anything, he had a bit more fuel than the preflight calculations had predicted.
He’d always been good. But he hadn’t been this lucky since the old days — the really old days, back in the Thud.
“Devil Two to Devil One. I’m having trouble locating you, Boss,” said A-Bomb.
“One,” said Skull, keying his mike to let A-Bomb use the radio signal as a primitive direction-finding beacon. In the meantime, he got out his small flashlight and pulled the paper map off his flight board, shaking it out with his left hand as he got his bearings with the help of the plane’s nav gear. He’d flown slightly to the northwest of where they had planned, but was more or less in the right place.
He saw A-Bomb before the pilot saw him — bearing straight at him from the east, less than a mile away.
“A-Bomb, you’re on me,” he said, tucking his wing in an evasive and hopefully attention-getting roll. “Time for glasses,” he added as he recovered.
“What I need is one of those NOD doohickeys,” complained A-Bomb. “Night vision. What I’m talking about.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t traded for one yet,” said Knowlington. While he was still a bit put off by some of A-Bomb’s personal habits — not to mention the music he played — Skull had come to respect O’Rourke and his skills. A-Bomb goofed around a lot, except when the shit started to fly; then he was the sort of no-nonsense, can-do pilot Knowlington wanted watching his six.
“I almost had one off these Green Beret dudes at Al Jouf,” replied A-Bomb. “Went for a FAV instead.”
“A FAV being what, exactly?”
“Fast Attack Out-of-my-way Vee-hicle,” said A-Bomb. “The ‘O’ is silent. Your basic dune buggy.”
“You strap it to your wing?”
“Geez, Colonel, why didn’t I think of that?”
“That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Knowlington. He leaned the Hog into a wide bank, now precisely on the course they had laid out before the mission. They were approximately twelve miles from Kajuk, south of a highway that ran west to east over mostly empty scrubland. They were far enough away not to attract attention, but close enough to ride in to the rescue if things went sour. He dialed in Wolf and asked for an update.
The F-111 had done its job well, taking out one of the SAMs. There was still some doubt as to whether the missiles had been SA-11s or not; their radars had never been activated. A pair of Tornadoes had been tasked to sit on the remaining sites in case they flickered to life. While the sites would present a danger to the F-111 tasked with actually nailing Saddam, Wong had felt that taking out all of the SAMs would have caused the dictator to go elsewhere.
Which he might just do anyway, Skull realized. But you took your shots where you found them.
Skull advised Wolf that he and his wingman would orbit for another forty-five minutes, then go and tank as the other two A-10As came north.
“Wong ought to be finding Dixon right about now,” said A-Bomb after the exchange with the command ship was finished.
Skull shrugged to himself, not sure what to say. He hoped O’Rourke was right, but knew better than to be so wildly optimistic.
He should have pulled strings and insisted on the original plan. He cursed himself for not being more forceful.
Honestly, though — what more could he have done?
If anyone could find Dixon, it was Wong. But damn it — they should have launched a full-blown SAR mission. The hell with Saddam — any American was worth twenty, a hundred dictators.
Not true, not even close. And he’d done the best he could as far as getting the mission authorized. This was a lousy compromise, but if Wong brought something harder home than a long-shot hunch, they’d be back.
Skull checked his instruments as he continued southward, easing off on the throttle to conserve fuel. The Maverick IR head painted the terrain empty and lonely in his screen, a green-hued plain of desolation.