“Three, I don’t have a target.”
“Yeah, just hang with me, Hack. That’s all I want,” Doberman told him, swinging a wide circle. “You just keep cool.”
“Four.”
He checked his fuel. Sealing off the flaky tank had worked. The game plan had called for them to fly all the way back to KKMC; even if he hadn’t lost a bit he’d be close to bingo by now. He could change that easily enough, though; just run south and hit the tanker.
What about Preston, though? He’d had trouble before and he’d be tired now.
Whack a few more ground vehicles, or walk Preston home?
What Doberman really wanted to do was scoop up Dixon. It wasn’t his job — Wong and the others were doing that — but he’d do anything to get the kid back, including landing and tossing him on the back of the plane. The kid was like his little brother — exactly like him, which was why he was in trouble in the first place, as a matter of fact.
He hailed Wolf, but they hadn’t heard from the ground team either. He told the controller that the pods had been put down and mapped out the trucks they’d just hit. Wolf told him a pair of F-16s were coming north to assist. In the meantime, a flight of F-111s out of Turkey had been rerouted to hit the stranded convoy one more time.
From Turkey?
Doberman acknowledged, setting his nose back toward the convoy area, still unsure how long they were going to stay there. Hack radioed that he had just passed bingo. His voice was flat and matter-of-fact, the way a Hog driver’s ought to be.
He could just send Hack home alone.
Might get lost.
Had to take him back. And give the devil his due, he had taken out the Zeus and he had ignored the MiG warning.
Which, come to think of it, had evaporated.
“Devil Three this is One. Doberman, what’s your situation?”
Skull’s voice, unexpected and a bit tinny, nonetheless had a tone that permitted nothing but a full set of the facts, including a layout of the positions as well as their fuel and ammo stores.
“Go south,” Skull told him. “You and Preston head back. We’ll stay here until the Vipers arrive.”
Doberman had heard Knowlington tell Wolf about the downed Frenchman. There was no way he and A-Bomb had more fuel than they did. Even without doing the math, he doubted Devils One and Two could linger more than two minutes before heading desperately for the tanker.
But there was also no way of disobeying Skull’s directive.
“Glenon,” said Skull.
“We’re setting course now,” he told him.
CHAPTER 54
Dixon shepherded Budge down the hill, trying to move as quickly as he could without running into the Iraqis. It took forever and longer, every step slowed by caution and speeded by anticipation. The battle unfolded on the plain before them as they descended, flaring and dying and then flaring again. Several times they hunkered down and watched for falling debris as missiles erupted overhead. Installations to the north and east reverberated, hit by bombs or long-range surface-to-air missiles.
There were definitely Hogs involved. Their target seemed to be trucks or buildings about a half mile down the highway, perhaps further; there was gunfire there, and Dixon guessed that must mean the commandos were in that area. There was also a tank and an Iraqi outpost that had been struck on the left foot of the hill. He and Budge found a path and began running, nearly to the bottom now. Dixon picked up the boy and carried him about a hundred yards until he saw a truck sitting at the bottom of the slope, thirty feet ahead.
BJ nudged Budge to the right, aiming to get around the vehicle. Something flashed as they moved on the sloping soil of the hillside — a lightning bug flickering in the dark.
No, a man on the back of the truck, squeezing off a single, almost silent rifle shot. The truck was a Land Rover, sitting pug-nosed in the dark a few feet from the roadway.
Dixon pointed his rifle at the man. As he took aim, he realized another Iraqi vehicle sat less than five yards to the left of the Land Rover, obscured from Dixon’s view by a bluff at the edge of the hill. It was thick and long, with a gun at the top — a tank or more likely a BMP, a tracked armored personnel carrier exported by the Russians.
The man in the Land Rover fired another round. He seemed to be trolling for a response, unsure what if anything was out there. He moved too deliberately to be panicked, yet seemed to be shooting randomly.
It wouldn’t take much of a shot to hit him. But the BMP was probably loaded with men. The bluff would prevent it from training its turret up the slope, but Dixon and Budge would be quickly outnumbered.
Infinitely safer to keep sneaking to the right, flank the position and then cross the road. At that point, he could swing toward the firefight, maybe help out by coming up behind the enemy.
Assuming, of course, the Iraqis were shooting at something more than ghosts.
“Okay, Budge,” he told the kid. “This way.”
“Budge,” agreed the boy. He got up and walked with BJ across the slope, then slid down toward the road with him. A trench ran along the highway; Dixon stopped Budge for a moment and pointed to it.
“Go, Budge,” he said, pushing him forward.
“Budge!” yelled the kid.
They’d gone only a few yards when the boy yelped. As Dixon moved to clamp his mouth shut he realized there was an Iraqi with a gun a few yards away.
Tugged from behind by Budge, he tumbled back into the ditch as the Iraqi began to fire.
CHAPTER 55
Salt saw the Dushka and its crew about ten yards to his left, set up behind the wrecked chassis of a truck. Mounted on a thick tripod, the DShKM was a thing of austere beauty, from its double-circle muzzle brake to the wooden pegs of its rear handles. Capable of spitting just over nine rounds of 7.62 mm ammo a second, the gun was as rugged and dependable as any machine-gun ever used, and at least as deadly.
Salt had a shot on only one of the three men behind the gun. If the others managed to swing the weapon around at him, he’d be dead meat — he had no cover himself.
Carefully, he began moving to his right, trying to flank the position from the rear, hoping to get into position where he could hit the entire crew with one burst. The wreckage of the truck helped camouflage him, but it also made it impossible to see the gunners. The Dushka’s metallic thud sent him diving to his right; it took a moment for him to realize the Iraqis had fired not at him but at whatever was in front of them — Davis, most likely.
As a general rule, Salt didn’t like officers, especially those giving him orders. He’d been willing to put up with Wong because his bonafides were there — the guy had, after all, done a HALO jump a few nights ago with some buddies of Salt’s. But the bullshit about Saddam pissed him off.
Not that Wong didn’t have a point. It was the way he expressed it that pissed him off.
That and the fucking SiG he’d pointed at his neck. He had half a mind to just drop back and let Wong deal with the machine-gunners — more than likely they’d fry him, and he could whomp Saddam in revenge.
Not to overvalue revenge. He began crawling on his belly, paralleling the wrecked truck. He paused parallel to the rear of the truck; he could spring up and be behind them with two steps.
Three guys, three slugs. Didn’t need cover.
Unless they were behind something themselves.
Sneak close to the truck, take a peak before he attacked.