“Herky Bird, this Wolf. Advise your status.”
Lars started to answer, then realized the flight engineer was handling the communications. They spoke over each other for a second, and again as Lars apologized. He glanced up at the switch panel above him, examining the settings as if there were a possibility that something had been changed without him noting it. He worked as slowly as he could, deliberately, hoping to project an aura of assurance. If he couldn’t fool the others, perhaps he could fool himself.
Meanwhile, the mission controller brought them up to date. Strawman was being attacked; the Tornadoes were suppressing the SAMs. They were to proceed as briefed, though obviously well ahead of schedule.
They hadn’t had a chance to tell Wolf about DiRiggio’s heart attack, but now the controller in the ABCCC asked to speak to him. The navigator laid out the situation.
“Can you complete your mission?” asked the controller.
Lars felt his lungs cough for air.
“We will complete our mission,” he said between gulps.
He had talked over the engineer again. This time, however, their words chorused together, exactly the same.
CHAPTER 47
Major Preston watched the black-green hull of Devil Three plunge downwards, blurring into the raging hell fires. The dark night sky seemed to fold over itself as the Russian-made triple-A hunted through the sky for the intruders. One of the SAM operators had managed to launch two missiles; both were in the air somewhere ahead. Preston felt naked. His A-10’s ALQ-119 electronic counter measures pod was older than the airplane and incapable of confusing an SA-8, let alone the SA-11s.
But Doberman flew right into the teeth of the defenses, despite Hack’s warnings. All he could do was follow as his leader pitched downward almost directly over the target area, single-mindedly hunting for Strawman. He had a hell of an attitude but he had balls, no question about it.
Doberman snapped out something over the radio. Preston’s brain worked in slow motion, processing the words.
He’d launched the Mavericks.
Now it was Hack’s turn. Someone blurted something over the radio; he only half heard it, trying to find a target in his screen.
The Tornado commander had just assured the Hogs that they had launched their ALARMS at the other SAMs, the ones that hadn’t turned on their radar. Unlike American HARMs, the homing missiles could loiter above until the SAMs came back on-line.
Somehow, the idea of four or six missiles flying around overhead didn’t comfort him. Hack slid his eyes over to the small screen at the upper right quadrant of his dash. He had the highway in the middle of the screen, no vehicles. The screen blurred, the IR head temporarily overwhelmed by the flash of Doberman’s Maverick striking the station wagon.
There’s a way to compensate for that, Hack thought. What the hell is it?
Close your eyes?
A second flash. Doberman had taken out the APC as well.
Cocky little son of a bitch was one hell of a pilot.
Past tense. He spotted the Hog pitching left in front of a looming shadow — one of the SA-11s.
Poor son of a bitch.
Poor nasty son of a bitch.
Something exploded in the sky a mile ahead to the east, obliterating the darkness Doberman had just flown into. Hack gaped at the curling red circles that mushroomed into yellow and black spheres. The fireball crinkled at its edges, as if it were made of paper. Then it flashed white and disappeared, its only trace the shadow it had burned on his retina.
Jesus, he thought. I’ve never seen someone die before.
Poor nasty son of a bitch.
He started to turn his attention back to his targeting screen when Doberman’s voice came over the radio.
“Preston, you’re up. Go for the tank by the hill.”
What?
“Three, are you okay?” he said.
“What the fuck are you talking about, asshole? Take your shot. You’re almost on the god-damn highway.”
“I just saw your plane blowup.”
“You just saw the missile miss me and explode. Take your fucking shot. Then wheel if you can manage it and cover me. And watch it — there’s one more warhead in the air.”
Before Hack could respond, there was a second explosion in the sky, this one much higher and at least four miles further away.
“Take your fucking shot!” screamed Doberman.
Hack, partly angry, partly incredulous, and partly relieved, tore his attention back to the TVM. He pushed his right leg gently against the rudder pedal, nudging the plane ever so slightly through an eddy of turbulence. Somehow he overcorrected, elbow suddenly cramping as he moved the stick; he came back too hard and felt the beginning of a serious yaw, the plane pitching back and forth as it tried to follow the pilot’s over-anxious control inputs. He stopped moving the stick, told himself that it was going to have to be okay if he blew the attack — he’d be embarrassed but there’d be a next go-around, assuming the Tornadoes hadn’t missed any SAMs and none of the arcing yellow and green flares of anti-air perforated his wings.
Maybe he’d underestimated the Hog drivers, not just Doberman but every last one of them, willing to fly way the hell up here and hang their butts out where everybody in the world could hit them.
No longer confused by the jerks on her control stick, the Hog straightened herself out, pushing her tail up and sticking her chin down, smelling a ripe and ready piece of Iraqi meat on the ground ahead. Hack glanced at the HUD screen, noted the altimeter ladder falling through six thousand feet, then put his eyes back on the Maverick monitor. A big brick with a lollipop stuck on the top of it appeared in the left-hand corner; the brick reared back and flared into a glow so bright he thought the monitor would catch fire. The targeting cue jumped as Hack moved it toward the blur, sucking itself in.
But it didn’t lock, instead jittering away as Hack nudged his stick in the tank’s direction. Had he been flying an F-15, his touch would have been perfect; the plane would have bucked her nose ever so slightly in the proper direction. But Hack wasn’t flying an F-15, and as he felt a whisper of resistance from the controls, he pushed harder. Confused but obedient, the A-10A jerked her nose upwards to follow his command; Hack felt his stomach get weak again with the first hint of another yaw.
Do your best, he reminded himself, and this time he resisted the temptation to over correct. The plane’s momentum carried it into off the path he’d plotted, but he worked the cursor down as the tank reappeared in the upper quadrant of the screen. The cue slipped one way and then the other; Hack cursed and then realized with a shock he was down to two thousand feet.
As he went to jerk himself skywards, he saw the cursor plant itself square on the center of the lollipop.
CHAPTER 48
The black turned deep blue and a wedge of yellow appeared above, morphing into a triangle of pure, perfect whiteness, a gleam that grew and consumed everything else. Wong felt the edges of the triangle sear his face, bursting with the heat of a phosphorus grenade. It burned straight through his skull, his ears tingling with the sensation not of heat but cold; freezing cold. The triangle turned from white to black, the sides of his skull folded into it. His body followed in a rush, vacuumed inside out, skin to organs, molecule by molecule. He was at the end of a long, geometric tunnel cut from an infinite prism, glittering with a blue-blackness that seemed the inverse of light, as if it were capturing all colors to enhance its own nature. As he stood and stared, the crystal flared, then began to vibrate, pulsing with its blackness.