“Turning,” he said, cueing A-Bomb as he began a fresh bank.
There was no way to do this part of the mission comfortably. You flew and you waited, you flew and you waited. It was worse than the interminable ferry flight he’d made from the States to the Gulf, surrounded by darkness, waiting for something to happen, partly wishing it would and partly hoping it wouldn’t. Skull tried not to let his mind wander, concentrating on his airplane as he came back north, nudging the Maverick viewer around in what he knew was a fruitless attempt at widening the area he could see.
At least there was no temptation to drink.
Maybe he was over that now. Maybe getting back into the adrenaline rush of combat was the shock therapy he’d needed.
The idea of bourbon in his mouth seemed mildly nauseating.
“Turning,” he told A-Bomb again, reaching the northern end of their racetrack pattern. The Hog seemed to anticipate him, pushing her wings down and gliding through the smooth bank as if she were showing off for the crowd at a Sunday afternoon air show. The plane looked ugly — hell, it didn’t look like even belonged in the sky. But sitting in her cockpit putting her through her paces, it was hard to imagine a prettier aircraft. She went where her pilot wanted; she could walk through a standing wall of triple-A; she could carry a heavier bomb load than most World War II bombers. Every plane should be so ugly.
Skull checked his watch. They had a half-hour to go.
Waiting sucked.
Wong had a pair of fancy binoculars that let him see heat sources, basically hand-held IR. Still, finding the kid was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. The search area was more than a mile from the point where the two Delta boys were going to watch the highway for Saddam or Strawman, as everyone on the mission now referred to him.
Boys. Kid. Dixon was twenty-three. Old enough to fly a Hog well enough to nail a helicopter on the first day of the air war, no mean feat.
But still a kid.
Skull had nailed three MiGs and hit the silk once by the time he was twenty-three. He’d seen two of his close friends go down, never to come back.
Had his commanders thought of him the same way?
“Vulture Three, Vulture Three,” said a distant voice in the faint crackle of Knowlington’s radio.
At first he thought it was a transmission from a flight overriding their frequency. Then Skull realized it was a distress call on Guard, the emergency band.
“Vulture Three,” said the voice again. Static crashed over it like an ocean wave.
Was he identifying himself or talking to another airplane?
“Any allied airplane, please respond,” said the voice as the channel cleared. “Vulture Three, requesting assistance from any allied plane.”
“Vulture Three, this is Devil leader. What is your location?” answered Skull.
The response was garbled, but Knowlington heard coordinates approximately ten miles directly west of their position. His head turned that way, as if he might catch a glimpse of the stricken plane.
There were no other allied planes in the area. Detouring his orbit would add a little more than a minute to his response time back to the ground team.
“A-Bomb, you catch that?”
“Catch what?”
“The transmission on Guard,” said Knowlington.
“Negative.”
“Not at all?”
“Nothing but static.”
“Hang with me,” he told his wingman. “We’re going west. Come to 255 on my signal.”
“On your back,” said A-Bomb.
Skull tried hailing Vulture Three again before telling Wolf what was up. The controller acknowledged, volunteering to alert the AWACS control plane in the area and hurry up the two Devil flight Hogs that were tanking.
It was only after he snapped the mike off and found his new course that Skull realized Vulture Three was the call sign of one of the buddies he’d lost in Vietnam.
PART TWO
VULTURE DEATH
CHAPTER 31
Wong thumbed the contrast wheel at the top left of the AN/PAS-7 thermal viewer, dulling the glow of the approaching vehicle’s engine. It was more than a mile away, just turning north from the dogleg that would finally bring it into view.
There were two people in the front seat of the sedan. From his vantage twenty yards from the highway it was difficult to tell whether the men were soldiers, though that seemed obvious — the car was following a military transport, and besides, who else would be driving at night in Iraq? He could draw no other conclusions, however; a civilian vehicle might be part of Saddam’s advance party or it might not.
“Truck a problem?” asked Salt, lying next to him.
“Negative,” said Wong. “The Zil-130 6x6 is empty except for its driver. The sedan has two passengers, neither of whom would appear to be our target.”
Salt hastily set down the M82A1 Light Fifty sniper rifle. The long-barreled heavy rifle fired the same cartridges as the Browning fifty caliber machine-gun; equipped with armor-piercing shells, it could get through an armored car at roughly 1,000 yards. Salt sighted toward a slight bend that brought the road roughly three hundred and fifty yards away from their position.
“What kind of car?” Salt asked.
“I am not acquainted with the model.”
“You don’t know what kind of car it is?” asked Davis, hunkered on the other side.
“I am an expert on weapons, not automobiles,” said Wong.
“You sure it ain’t a Mercedes?”
“It is not a Mercedes, nor a station wagon,” said Wong. “Please keep your voice down.”
“It’s a piece of shit Jap car,” Salt told the other sergeant as it came in view of the starscope on his Barrett sniper rifle. “I could nail it.”
“The provenance of the sedan is irrelevant,” said Wong. “They are not our target vehicles. Saddam would not be traveling alone, and in any event, he is not due until midnight.”
“Nothin’ says he can’t be fuckin’ early,” said Salt.
The two vehicles continued up the highway toward Kajuk. Wong scanned behind them to make sure they were alone, then turned the infra-red viewer northwards, scanning past the intersection with the main highway, then up the road towards the nubby hill that guarded the turnoff to Kajuk. A T-72 tank sat in a shallow depression just to the west of the intersection; there were at least a half-dozen soldiers scattered there. Wong made out a small observation post on the nearby hill manned by two men. A second post, this with three or four soldiers, a Jeep-like vehicle and an armored car or personnel carrier, sat in the middle of the road at the very western edge of the hill, commanding a curve in the highway.
The post on the hill presented them with an immediate problem. If the soldiers there were equipped with the proper night vision equipment mining the road would be difficult. Still, doing so was important — if the bombers were late or there was confusion about the target, cratering the roadway would increase the chances of killing Saddam.
Of the two northern points they had selected as candidates, one had no cover at all; the gully which made it an attractive location for the explosives was directly exposed to the observation post. The backup candidate had a few rocks scattered around it and was further away; it seemed the better choice.
Wong watched the truck and the sedan pass the spot. If the highway were blocked there the rocks would make it difficult to pass but not impossible.
At most, it would slow the convoy down by a minute as they regrouped, then treaded their way off the road.