“Devil Three, this is Four,” said Preston. “Bandits are positively identified and heading this way.”
“My radio’s working fine,” Doberman told him. It took a superhuman effort not to add something to the effect that Preston was welcome to run away if he was scared.
“I have your six,” said the major.
A-Bomb would have said something funny, but at least Preston didn’t try and pull rank. And, in fact, he had given the proper Hog response — screw the enemy, I’m staying here until my job is done.
Which didn’t make him all right, just slightly less of a jerk.
“Okay, Hack,” Doberman said. “Your old buddies in the Eagles’ll take care of the MiGs.”
“We’ll nail them if they don’t.”
Okay — that was something A-Bomb could have said.
Doberman eyed the village with the Mav’s infra-red eye; he caught a grayish blur at the left edge of his screen that came into focus as a large vehicle, possibly an APC though it didn’t have the wedge-shaped Dog associated with the Iraqi vehicles. No matter — there was something else behind it, a truck big enough to be a troop transport. And another. Doberman nudged his stick to try and get the lead vehicle back into his targeting scope; he slid his whole body to urge the plane around. He coaxed the pipper on target, locked and fired as he muttered his ritual “Bing-bang-boing.”
“I got trucks moving out of the village,” he told Preston. “I targeted a personnel carrier, or what looked like a personnel carrier.”
The Maverick smashed the vehicle as Doberman paused for a breath. As the explosion flared, the ZSU-23s to the east began firing, this time nearly straight up. Doberman banked west immediately; Preston said something but it was garbled.
A thick spray of red tracers arced for his nose as he turned, frothing in his path.
CHAPTER 50
Salt pressed his chin against the dirt. The world had become a sharp buzz, the air above him on fire. He wasn’t wounded, he was sure of that, but he was equally sure that if he moved, if he twitched, he’d get fried. Things were burning, things were exploding, but he couldn’t see anything except for a hazy gray mist, the shroud they threw over you before dumping your body into the earth. He waited for it to clear, but instead of lifting it drifted downwards, its electric tingle moving closer and closer. Salt pressed himself further and further into the earth, dirt filling his nose and throat and lungs as he breathed. The sky flashed white with heat so intense he could feel every hair on his body singe. Only then did the mist start to evaporate.
He lifted his head, saw nothing in front of him. The wreckage of the Mercedes, a twisted collection of burned metal, fabric, and plastic, sat to his left. The door was open.
Salt pushed forward like a sprinter lining up for a race. He took the M-16 and awkwardly sprung forward, unbalanced, low to the ground, legs propelling him forward in something like a stuttering dive rather than a trot or run. He pushed himself sideways, stumbling for three or four yards before collapsing in a roll. Something moved to his right. He got back to his feet and went in that direction, six yards this time, falling down a shallow hill, sliding like a kid belly-whopping without a sled down a snowy incline.
Two Iraqis huddled ten feet away. Either they were surprised by him or thought he was on their side, because neither moved as rose to his knees and aimed his gun at them. Or perhaps the rest of the world was moving in slow motion. The Iraqi on the right moved his hand, down towards his belt; it got about halfway before Salt put three 5.56 mm slugs in the man’s heart. The Iraqi reeled to the side, stood straight, then collapsed straight forward like a plank pushed from the top, all the time moving at what seemed to Salt one-quarter speed.
The other man stood and raised his hands out to surrender. He took a step forward, and in the dim light of the battlefield Salt saw the grubby bearded face of Saddam Hussein.
You bastard, he thought, aiming his gun at the dictator’s belly.
CHAPTER 51
The Iraqi heavy machine-gun sputtered its bullets in the dirt about ten feet from Wong. He could tell that the gunner couldn’t actually see him, but the bullets were still close enough to make him cautious. Sergeant Davis lay on the ground a few feet away, writhing in obvious pain. Wong still couldn’t hear anything.
There was no way to aim at the Dushka without exposing himself to return fire, a nasty proposition. The man with the AKSU Russian submachine-gun had him pinned in a cross fire. Sooner or later, Wong feared, the Iraqis would use their superior numbers to advance under the cover of the fire. So he had had two choices — retreat and flank, or charge forward. In either case, he would be a target. It seemed better to go forward.
The odds of getting shot depended on the ability of the Iraqi gunners, of course. Still, a rough estimate might put them in the three-to-one range, the three lying in the favor of the enemy. Wong took a breath, remembering a koan from an old Zen master that translated roughly as, “The bullet you see is not the bullet you hear is not the bullet you feel, unless it is.” Failing to make sense of the mystery, he jumped up and rushed for the truck where the man with the light machine-gun was hidden.
Either his sheer audacity or pure luck protected him as he ran the twenty or so feet. Bullets from both guns whizzed past. The flash of an explosion nearby almost blinded him, then silhouetted his nearest enemy at the front of the cab.
Wong squeezed three shots from the SiG then flung himself down, rolling beneath the chassis just in front of the rear wheel. The Iraqi soldier had stopped firing, though Wong wasn’t sure he’d hit him. He crawled under the truck, fired the SiG again in the man’s direction, then pushed out and began running. He’d lost track of exactly where he was, and when a figure appeared to his right he stopped, thinking it was Sergeant Salt. The man, perhaps five yards from him, was running toward the road carrying a rifle. Wong stared intensely and realized the gun was a Kalashnikov. He steadied his aim, fired twice, missing both times. The man stopped and turned to fire at him; Wong aimed again and hit him in the chest. The rifle flew to the side but it took two more slugs for the Iraqi to go down.
Wong thought of grabbing the man’s gun and took a step toward him when a muzzle flash ahead caught his attention. He threw himself down into the dirt, then realized the flash had been about fifteen yards away, down a small incline. He pushed back up, his knee jerking sideways out from under him as he started running again. He winced away the pain and reached the hill in time to see Sergeant Salt standing on the left, holding his M-16 on an Iraqi who held his hands upright.
A bearded, pot-bellied Iraqi who could only be the Strawman.
Salt raised his gun to fire.
“Sergeant!” shouted Wong. “Sergeant!”
Salt gave no sign that he had heard Wong.
“Sergeant, do not fire!” said Wong. “That is a direct order.”
Salt’s gun remained level but did not fire. Wong’s knee balked as he worked down the hill.
“I cannot hear you if you’re talking,” Wong said. “I appear to be deaf.”
The Iraqi’s face was stained with sweat or tears.
“I’m going to kill the bastard,” said Salt. “I’m going to kill this son of a bitch for starting this god-damn fucking war. He deserves to die.”