Pontowski shook his head. “What’s the threat? What happens if one gets shot down? Besides, without an ATO from SEAC, there’s no way I’ll let them clear themselves onto a target.”
Ryan had been listening, and now he said, “General, I’m in telephone contact with SEAC’s command post in Singapore. It’s a secure line.”
Maggot’s eyes narrowed as he hunched over the ONC, or Operational Navigation Chart, in front of him. “Kuala Lumpur’s a hundred and twenty-five nautical miles away,” he said. “If one of those Hogs was at altitude, he’d be in UHF range and could talk to us. We could coordinate with SEAC and ask for special tasking. Who knows? It might work.”
“Sir,” Ryan called. He directed his laser pointer at a map of the base tacked up on the far wall and circled two aircraft bunkers. “We might be able to use the First SOS and their helicopters for search and rescue if one of our jets gets shot down. They’ve got two helicopters on base right now and two out on a mission.”
Maggot liked the idea. “Ask ’em.” Ryan nodded and reached for the phone.
“It’s worth a try,” Clark said, urging a decision.
“Better than sittin’ here with our finger up our ass,” Maggot mumbled.
“Do it,” Pontowski said.
Waldo carved a racetrack pattern in the sky high above the city. Far below, clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. Five thousand feet below his altitude and to the south, he caught a glimpse of the other three Warthogs in his flight as they entered a holding orbit. It was time to call Chicken Coop, the command post at Camp Alpha. He glanced at the Have Quick UHF radio control panel on the left console to make sure he was on channel 20. Even though the frequency-hopping radio supposedly guaranteed that an enemy couldn’t monitor their transmissions, he insisted they maintain radio silence as much as possible — just in case they might. He liked to think of it as “sticking to basics.” His left thumb nudged the mike switch on the throttle quadrant to transmit. “Ranch flight, radio check.” The radio was very clear, with a slight clicking sound in the background.
“Two.” As usual, Lurch was abrupt and nasal.
“Three.” Bag sounded bored.
A piglike grunt answered for Ranch Four. Waldo made a mental note to mention it during debrief. Probably a comment about the pilot, a slow-talking Native American from New Mexico everyone called Duke, not being able to count to four. “Chicken Coop, Ranch One. How copy?”
“Chicken Coop reads you five by,” Doc Ryan replied, his transmission loud and clear.
“Rog,” Waldo transmitted. “Solid cloud deck below us at six thou. Can’t see a thing on the ground. We’ve got about thirty minutes of light before sunset. I’d like to send Ranch Three and Four down to take a look.”
“Bossman says go for it,” Ryan radioed. “Stay above small-arms fire.”
Waldo humphed. Pontowski was getting cautious. “Copy all.” Now he could get to work. “Bag, you and Duke are cleared in for a look. Shooter-cover.” The idea was for Bag to do the looking and Duke to fly cover for Bag and discourage anyone who might think it was a good idea to shoot at him.
“We’re in,” Bag replied, his voice still bored and matter-of-fact. Waldo watched as the two aircraft broke out of orbit and descended through a small opening in the clouds. Bag was in the lead, with Duke a mile in trail and displaced to the right. Now Waldo had to wait, which he hated.
The radio crackled. “Bag! Break right.” It was Duke, now quick and decisive. “Triple A at your deep seven.” A short pause. “You’re clear.”
Waldo ground his teeth as he waited for what seemed an eternity. A Warthog popped out of the clouds. Waldo counted the seconds. A second Hog punched into the open, and Waldo breathed easier as the two joined up and climbed back into orbit with Ranch Two. “Four tanks and troops in the open moving into town along the main road to the south,” Bag reported.
“What about the Triple A?” Waldo asked. Because of the A-10’s slow speed, antiaircraft artillery was always a big concern.
“Coming from the airport on the south side of the city,” Duke radioed. “Some CBU might discourage them.” Besides carrying six Mark-82 Airs, five-hundred-pound bombs that were retarded by an inflatable balloon/parachute, Duke was also loaded with six canisters of CBU-58, a cluster-bomb unit that contained 650 baseball-size bomblets.
“Might be friendlies at the airport,” Waldo cautioned. Waldo relayed the information to Chicken Coop and got the standard answer given by all command posts.
“Stand by one,” Ryan radioed.
“Shee-it,” Bag grumbled, dragging the obscenity out into two syllables. They orbited for twenty minutes as the sun set.
“Ranch flight, Chicken Coop.”
Waldo keyed his radio. “Go ahead, Chicken Coop.”
Ryan’s voice was almost jubilant. “You are cleared in against the tanks and the troops on the south side of the city. Simpang Airport is reported to be in friendly hands.”
“Then see if you can get them to stop shooting at us,” Waldo replied. “Got to hurry. The light’s almost gone. Okay, Bag. You got the lead. One pass, haul ass. Me and Lurch are right behind you.” Waldo rolled 135 degrees and peeled out of orbit, dropping like a rock to join up on his wingman, Ranch Two, while Bag and Duke disappeared through the clouds.
“I’m in hot on the lead tank,” Bag radioed.
“Press,” Duke replied. “You’re covered. I’ve got the end tank. Come off to the right and you’ll see me at your two o’clock.”
Lurch fell in behind Waldo as they dodged through the clouds, descending like falling bricks. At twenty-five hundred feet they broke clear. “Jesus!” Waldo shouted to himself. Off to his far left a bright line of tracers reached out from the airport, cutting the sky behind Duke, who was rolling in on a tank. Waldo punched at his UHF radio and called up Guard, the emergency channel used by aircraft in distress. “Simpang Tower, cease fire! Cease fire! We’re friendlies going after the tanks advancing on you.” Three seconds later the deadly streak of high-explosive shells cut off. Orphaned, the tracers crossed the sky like a train steaming over a prairie horizon.
Even though the Warthogs were moving across the ground at 560 feet per second, fast by normal human standards, it was way too slow for Waldo’s sense of survival. He quickly sorted the targets. Bag was clear of the lead tank, which was now a smoking hulk, and jinking hard. A line of flares popped out behind his A-10 to decoy any surface-to-air missile that might be coming his way. Duke had just launched a Maverick antitank missile at Tail End Charlie and had broken off to the south. That would trap the two middle tanks. “Lurch, take the tank on the right. I’ve got the one on the left.” The end tank disappeared in a satisfying puff of flame as the Maverick did its thing.
Deciding that Duke had the right idea, Waldo called up the Maverick on station nine. His GAU-8 cannon, the seven-barreled, thirty-millimeter Gatling gun, was designed for tank plinking, but he opted for the Maverick on the premise that it was better to launch and leave rather than get up close and personal with an unknown opponent who might have a few nasty surprises of his own. He rechecked the master arm switch, making sure it was in the up position. No switchology errors today, he told himself. He mashed the mike switch. “Bag, clear my six when I come off.” He dropped down to the deck and firewalled the throttles, his airspeed pushing 340 knots.
When the tank was at two o’clock and three and a half miles away, he popped to a thousand feet and rolled in. What happened next was the product of years of training and fifteen hundred hours’ experience flying the Hog. Automatically, his left forefinger played the slew/track-control button on the throttle quadrant and drove the symbol for the Maverick’s seeker head in the heads-up display over the tank. His finger mashed the button to lock on, and when the symbol pulsed, his right thumb mashed the pickle button on the stick, sending the Maverick on its way. He hit the transmit switch. “Waldo, rifle.” All the while he was jinking hard, making constant, random heading changes to break any tracking solution, and never looked inside the cockpit. Once the Maverick was launched, he turned away and slammed his Warthog down onto the deck. All this took less than eight seconds — which later he would claim was way too long.