“Interesting,” Wong said aloud. “The metaphysical implications of this experience challenge a great deal of my essential beliefs regarding the nature of existence. But I have a considerable amount of work to do. Perhaps we can continue this at another time.”
And in that moment he was flung down on his back, his head bouncing off the hard rocks. He opened his eyes to an enormous headache and the flash of missiles and shells exploding all around him, bullets flying everywhere in the air.
He could see it all, but he heard nothing. The explosion had rendered him deaf.
In some ways that was a blessing, because he was in the middle of an enormous racket. Wong’s explosive charges had indeed thrown the tank’s aim off, but the T-72 crew was still firing. Wong turned to look back in the direction of Davis and Salt when his eye caught a wavering shadow above the highway; a red and yellow burst below it, followed by the quick flash of a gas tank exploding. A second flash, a second fireball, this one not quite as high. The long barrel of a howitzer or light tank gun somersaulted into the sky.
Obviously, the Hogs had arrived. And if, as was their wont, the A-10s were blowing up the biggest things they could find, the T-72 would be next.
Wong turned began running about ten seconds before the AGM-65 hit the top of the tank, crushing it with the wallop of a hammer hitting the side of a soda can. He slid into the crater created by the C-4, narrowly avoiding a spray of heavy machine-gun fire.
As he swung himself around on his haunches, Wong realized he had lost his MP-5 somewhere along the way. He had carried two pistols — a .44 magnum Desert Eagle and a SIG P226. Both were admirable weapons with slightly different applications, not to mention limited utility in the present situation. The Desert Eagle carried only seven rounds, though admittedly these were monster magnum slugs capable of stopping anything smaller than a rhinoceros. The heavy gun’s demanding kick made it more suitable to close encounters of the one-on-one kind, and Wong therefore chose the SIG, whose utter dependability and fifteen 9 mm rounds were enhanced by a nature that could only be described as “sweet,” even by someone like Wong who was not given to such imprecise and abstract descriptions. Pistol in hand, he got up and began running in the direction of the Delta team. Alternately ducking, diving, running, and spinning, it took Wong several minutes to spot Sergeant Davis hunkered behind his SAW. As the M249 Minimi spit a fresh mouthful of 7.62 mm toward the highway, Wong yelled to the sergeant, sliding in behind him as the light machine-gun clicked through the last of the rounds in its plastic feeder.
Davis shouted something in response, but Wong still couldn’t hear.
“I’m deaf,” he yelled, or thought he yelled — he couldn’t even hear himself.
Davis nodded vigorously, then reloaded the gun.
There were two knot of Iraqis firing at them. One was toward the north end of the highway, beyond the truck Salt had taken out with his grenade. They were firing willy-nilly, beyond the effective range of their weapons but not daring to move up.
The other knot was directly ahead, with better aim and more guns.
Wong realized that there must be more soldiers, but they were either dazed by the attack or prudently waiting until they had clear and obvious shots.
“Where’s Sergeant Salt?” he asked Davis.
Davis spoke and made a kind of looping gesture with his hand; Wong took it to mean that Salt had decided to try flanking around the Iraqi’s position.
“The A-10s didn’t know to hit the Mercedes,” said Wong. “They would have gone for the station wagon. Is the Mercedes still intact?”
Davis didn’t know.
“We have to get Strawman,” Wong said. “Come.”
Wong jumped up, running to his right in a diagonal toward the curving highway, intending to flank the stalled convoy. A DShKM “Dushka” heavy machine-gun roared to their left, spitting its monster 12.7 mm shells into the night, fortunately behind them. A shadow loomed dead ahead. Wong extended his arm and pumped two slugs from the Sig in its direction, then threw himself down into a roll to duck any return fire. He rolled back to his stomach and got up into a crouch. The Dushka raked the night again, this time considerably closer to Wong and Davis, who had thrown himself to the ground a few feet away. The Russian-made heavy machine-gun was being fired from the lip of the road about forty yards away on the left; he had an unobstructed field of fire and sooner or later one of his sprays was going to nail them. Wong reached to his web belt for his M26 fragmentation grenade; his fingers had just touched it when he saw Davis rearing back and pitching one of his own.
Forty yards was a good toss under fire, but the sergeant had a right fielder’s arm. Fused to detonate on impact, the M26 sprayed its fragments through the air, killing the two men who had been operating the machine-gun. Meanwhile, someone with an AK-47 fired a burst at them from the edge of the road. Wong sighted across the top of his pistol but all he could see was darkness. He took a handful of dirt, tossing it to the left; as the soldier began firing in the direction of the noise Wong fired a single shot.
The Iraqi screamed, his anguish cascading over the battlefield. Wong crawled to his right a few yards, then picked himself up and began running toward the highway.
The Mercedes sat to his left off the road. There was a troop truck just beyond it. Wong still had the grenade in his hand and considered tossing it at the truck; he didn’t though, not knowing where Salt was.
A second vehicle sat about ten yards down the highway to his right. Its motor wheezed; Wong threw himself down as a shadow ran behind it.
Davis skidded in behind him, huffing; he’d lost his SAW along the way and like Wong was armed only with his pistol.
“Someone behind the truck,” said Wong. “Moving left to right.”
The Delta trooper said something, but Wong still couldn’t hear.
“Could be Salt,” he guessed, and Davis nodded his head.
An AKSU Russian submachine-gun declared that they wrong, a statement underlined by a half-dozen 5.45 mm bullets that ripped through Sergeant Davis’s arm and leg. And just in case there was any doubt, bullets from a much larger Dushka roiled the dirt nearby, the impact of its bullets so strong that Wong could feel the earth vibrating beneath him as he pressed into the soil.
CHAPTER 49
“Got it! Shit! Shit!” yelped Preston over the radio, sounding like a nine-year-old who’d just nailed a tin duck at a church bazaar.
Doberman, flying in a wheeling pattern that had him roughly opposite his wingman’s path, glanced at the ground and saw the T-72 guarding the turnoff to Kajuk explode in a red-white geyser of frying steel. Preston was coming straight on for the hill behind it.
“Up, get up! Get the fuck up! You’re too damn low! The hill! The hill! Jesus get up!” yelled Doberman.
He cut his turn to try and keep Hack in view, but lost the dark-hulled airplane in the shadows near the hill. Doberman pitched his Hog downward, cursing the idiot and repeating his warning to pull away from the hill. Preston might be a jerk, but no one should pay the ultimate price for target fascination.
Pay attention to the plane, not the boom. Hog Rule Number Three.