He needed to see the goddamn highway. He needed to see it before the SAM nailed him.
It was going to come right through the windscreen any second.
Nothing but blur in the screen.
The SA-11 would have been launched at long distance, would be blind and unguided because surely the radar-seeking missiles had nailed the ground radar and the ECM support craft had fried its on-board guidance system.
No, it was there ahead, a shining silver blur coming for him. He was an easy target, straight and level at ten thousand feet, struggling to see the god damn car.
He was just about onto of the damn intersection. Should be right there.
Doberman took his eyes off the targeting screen for a second. Pinpricks of red and green light dotted the ground ahead of his wings. A wall of anti-aircraft fire rose from around the village. The radar warning receiver was still going ape shit. Someone — Preston — yelled a missile warning.
He was about to get nailed. He could feel it.
Served his damn butt right for wearing that stinking BS good-luck medal.
Doberman rolled his wings into a knifing dive, pushing the Hog as close to straight down as possible and swooping for the spot where the parade ought to be. The RWR freaked and Preston screamed and the Iraqi missile homed in.
Doberman put his helmet nearly on the Mav screen. The shadow of a truck materialized.
Finally.
He nudged the Hog’s nose sideways, pushing her along the highway as she plunged. He saw a truck, saw another truck, saw a car, saw a big Mercedes, saw a troop truck, saw a nice, long, long station wagon.
Just your typical madman dictator out for a midnight stroll through suburbia.
“Bing-bang-boing,” Doberman said aloud, his thumb dancing over the trigger in his old shooting ritual.
“Bing-bang-boing.”
The Maverick kicked out from the launcher, barely separating from the plane. The two-stage Thiokol TX-633 solid-fuel rocket motor ignited, jerking the eight-foot long missile out ahead of its mothership. A half-second later, another thunked into the air behind her, the cruciform delta wings at the rear whipping around ferociously as the guidance system put the missile on course.
CHAPTER 44
The gun jumped in Dixon’s hand, propelled upwards by the momentum of the gases that sent a dozen bullets into the two Iraqis in front of him. By the time he jerked it down the soldiers had crumbled to the ground. Dixon kept squeezing, shaking the gun up and down before realizing he’d burned the clip. He threw the rifle to the side and pulled up the other Kalashnikov, flinching as something seemed to move just beyond the sandbagged position he’d fired into. But there was nothing, or at least nothing that shot at him. He crouched down, leaning away from the hillside, still unsure if he was safe.
Budge was holding onto the back of his shirt, an anchor pulling him down toward the ground. Dixon reached his left hand around calmly, reassuring the kid as he scanned the hillside, still expecting someone or something to attack. He stayed crouched like that for an eternity, his senses perfectly focused, his whole world narrowed to a sphere no larger than five feet around.
Then he realized the air behind him had begun to hum. Dixon slid around quickly, knocking the boy to the ground accidentally. There was an enormous flash in the distance beyond the hill, a sudden geyser of red steam, a pipe bursting under tremendous pressure.
And over the explosion, the faint hum of a Hog swooping upwards after firing, hungry for another target.
Gunfire below. Vehicles on fire, explosions. A firefight.
On the ground.
There had to be a Delta team down there, or British SAS troopers, commandos, allies — friends of some kind. People who could get them the hell out of here.
Dixon reached over to the huddled, trembling shape of the kid, lifting him under his arm like a loaf of bread. He left the empty AK-74 and began sliding down the hill on his butt.
“We’re getting out of here, kid,” he said as they slid. “We’re going home.”
CHAPTER 45
Salt put a slug through the door of the sedan as it started to open. In the next moment a massive flash behind him threw him to the ground amid a whirling storm of dirt. He rolled over and spit out a mouthful of cordite, blood, and pulverized rock, then began to retch, puke pouring like water from his mouth. Somehow he got to his feet, grabbing his combination M-16/grenade launcher and running toward the highway. Davis had taken a position behind some rocks a few yards ahead, pumping rounds from the SAW into the armored car.
“He was in the Mercedes. Come on, come on,” Salt yelled, tapping Davis as he ran but not stopping. He managed to load the M203 as he ran; having the grenade in the gun somehow calmed him, helped him run even faster.
A shell from the tank hit near the spot he had run from. Bullets whipped around him, crisscrossing the night with green, yellow, and red streaks. He seemed to be in a movie, outside his own body — not untouchable, not immune to being hit or killed, but removed from it, as if he could die and watch it all happen, analyze it and even shake his head over what a fool he’d been. Because he was being a fool — he ran directly toward a fierce stream of tracers, kept running as an APC launched a shell over his head, kept running as he saw two figures thirty or forty yards away cross from the highway and duck behind a small rise in the terrain. The Mercedes was twenty yards away on his right, one of the troop trucks ten yards off to his left. He realized as he ran that the Iraqis had lost track of him in the confusion, though surely that could change in a moment.
The SAW ripped behind him; AK-47s answered to his right. Salt leveled his grenade launcher and kicked a 40 mm grenade into the yellow sparkle. He took another step and threw himself to the ground. A half-second before the grenade exploded, he heard a sharp, howling whistle from above, a wolf calling to its mate — or a Maverick, an instant before hitting its target.
CHAPTER 46
Lars blew another long breath from his mouth, shaking his head, swallowing back the salvia flooding his mouth. He checked his altitude and bearing for the fifth time in the past sixty seconds — on course at one hundred feet, chugging steadily through the long arc carefully planned to keep the MH-130 from active radars. He had his protective helmet and night-vision gear back on and he’d moved to the pilot’s seat — if he didn’t feel more comfortable there, at least it was more familiar.
One of the British RAF Tornadoes tasked with suppressing the SAM sites announced that it had launched its missiles. Lars glanced nervously toward the window on the right side of the cockpit, as if he might see the strike, then turned his attention to the throttle console, tapping each lever in turn though not changing the settings. He wanted to seem calm to the others. He had to — not because he thought they might rebel if they realized he was nervous, but because it was his job to reassure them so they could do their own tasks without worrying. You couldn’t do your job if you were worrying about your commander. He knew that from his own experience.
It was probably irrelevant, because already they must hate him. Major DiRiggio, the real pilot, their boss, was lying a few feet behind him on the other side of the bulkhead, barely breathing, possibly beyond survival. Lars had made the right decision — surely DiRiggio would have said himself that the mission came first. But the fact that Lars’s hands were shaking and he was gulping for air didn’t help matters.