She was right behind him. Outside, Pontowski made himself walk, making light conversation over the distant thunder of artillery. “Sounds like it’s getting closer,” he told her. Ahead of them, a security policeman peeked at them from his defensive fire position outside the command post. “Next mortar round at 1717,” Pontowski told him. He ambled by as the airman spoke into his radio, spreading the word and adding to the Pontowski legend. “How ’bout that?” Pontowski said to himself as Rockne emerged from the heavily sandbagged Base Defense Operations Center.
“Got your message, sir,” Rockne said.
“What message?” Pontowski asked.
“About the mortars. Time to do something about it.”
They walked inside, where Maggot was waiting. He quickly recapped the situation. “We’ve got four Hogs on the ground at Tengah Air Base. They’re safe enough in shelters but can’t move because of nerve gas. Here we got twelve Hogs, nine good to go and three down for maintenance. Maintenance should have two fixed and ready to go in the morning.”
“And the last jet?” Pontowski asked.
Maggot shook his head. “Waldo’s old bird. The one he crunched at Kelly Field and barely got here. Needs an engine change. Which we ain’t got. Gonna cannibalize it for parts.”
“Fuel?”
“Right now,” Maggot replied, “we have enough in the lines and holding tanks for twenty-nine more sorties.” He thought for a moment. “Tengah’s got lots of fuel but no munitions.”
“And lots of nerve gas,” Clark added.
“True,” Maggot replied. “But if Tengah opens up, we get our birds back. If that happens, we can launch out of here, fly a mission, recover and refuel at Tengah, and then fly here to upload. We can top the tanks off or just fly a shorter mission.”
“If the artillery I heard outside is any indication,” Pontowski said, “the action’s coming to us and we’re not going to be flying long sorties.”
“Those fuckin’ mortars aren’t doing much damage,” Maggot grumbled. “Just bounce off the shelters, but they’re keeping us from moving.”
Now it was Rockne’s turn. “We pinpointed their firebase.” He unfolded the 1:50,000-scale chart he was carrying. “Two of my cops found a counterbattery radar the MA left behind. Maintenance got it working and installed it on top of the control tower.” He circled an area to the east of the base, on the far side of the weapons storage area. “As best we can tell, they got two tubes in this area and they ain’t movin’.”
“Movement is life,” Pontowski intoned.
“Exactly,” Rockne said.
“Time to return the favor,” Maggot said.
Waldo sat at the mission director’s console and waited. Like everyone’s in the command post, his eyes were fixed on the master clock. At exactly 1732 hours they heard a dull thump as a mortar round hit on an aircraft shelter. The radios came alive as Maintenance reported no damage. Now they had to wait for the security police. The phone from the BDOC buzzed, and Rockne picked it up. “The counterbattery radar reports no change on the mortars’ location,” he told them.
Waldo’s fingers flew over the communications board. “Thresher One and Two, scramble.” He kicked back from the console and, like the rest, waited.
Like clockwork, the big doors on two shelters rolled back as the pilots, Bull Allison and Goat Gross, brought their A-10s to life. The engines had barely come on line when the crew chiefs pulled the wheel chocks and motioned them forward. Bull’s crew chief stepped back and came to attention, throwing him a salute as he cleared the shelter. Goat fell in behind Bull as they fast-taxied for the runway. There was no end-of-runway check, where crew chiefs gave each bird a final inspection and pulled the safety pins from the munitions hanging under the wings. All that had been done before engine start. Instead they turned onto the runway, paused briefly to run up, and rolled down the runway in a formation takeoff.
Immediately the pilots snatched the gear up and at fifty feet did a tactical split, each turning away twenty degrees for five seconds before returning to the runway heading. A mortar round flashed in the open area where they would have been had they not split, ample proof the base was closely watched. “Missed,” Bull radioed. “Arm ’em up.” He reached out and hit the master arm switch. They turned into the setting sun, never climbing above two hundred feet, and headed to the west. Below them, the main road was packed with refugees, still fleeing south. A convoy of military trucks heading north was stalled, unable to push through the desperate people. Farther to the west, people were flooding down the railway tracks.
Well clear of the base, the two Hogs cut a big arc to the north, turning back to the east. The sun was almost to the horizon, and they had only a few minutes of light left. “Split now,” Bull ordered. Goat peeled off to the right and took spacing as Bull headed back for the base. He checked his GPS and followed the bearing pointer to the spot in the jungle east of the base, a no-show target pinpointed by the counterbattery radar. He double-checked his switches and centered up on the target-designation box in his HUD. One last glance at the master arm to ensure that it was in the up position. He jinked and mashed the flare button on the throttle quadrant, sending a stream of flares out behind him. Then he mashed the pickle button on the stick, giving his consent to release when all delivery parameters were met. He climbed to four hundred feet, stabilized for a fraction of a second, and felt the six canisters of CBU-58s ripple off. Again he jinked hard as he dropped down to the deck.
“Your six is clear,” Goat radioed. “I’m in.”
“Reversing to the north,” Bull radioed.
“Got you in sight,” Goat replied. “I’m at your nine o’clock.”
Bull’s eyes darted to the left, and he saw Goat inbound to the target, crossing at a ninety-degree angle to his bomb run. Like Bull, he laid a string of flares out to decoy any SAM that might be coming his way. Under the jungle canopy, bright flashes popped like flashbulbs as the last of Bull’s bomblets exploded. Goat’s deadly load separated cleanly, and he pulled off to the north, falling in behind Bull. A dazzling light bloomed behind them — a big secondary. “What the hell was that?” Bull radioed.
“Beats the shit out of me,” Goat replied. “I didn’t see a thing.” The CBU-58 dispersed its bomblets over a wide area and was very effective against soft targets like unarmored vehicles — and people. But they didn’t make for good secondaries. “Must’ve been big.”
“Shooter-cover,” Bull said. “I’m gonna take a look.” He turned back to the target as Goat moved out to the left to cross behind him. Numerous fires and a column of smoke belched skyward, a beacon in the rapidly darkening sky. But there was enough light to see by. “Nothing but dog meat down there,” Bull pronounced, pulling off.
“Roger on the puppy chow,” Goat said.
Janice Clark studied the big situation chart, trying to make sense of it. She tuned out the voices behind her as Maggot and Waldo used the landlines connecting them to the shelters to debrief Bull and Goat. Since the mortar shelling had stopped, there was no doubt as to the effectiveness of the mission. But the dull thunder reaching into the command post spoke for itself. The fighting was coming closer. “Frustrating,” she murmured to herself.
“Indeed it is,” Pontowski said from behind her. “Supposedly we have the best communications system in the world, and here we sit, thirty miles from the front, without a clue what’s happening.”
She corrected him. “We know it’s coming our way. Damn. I feel like we’re stranded on a rock in the middle of a raging stream that’s rushing past us.” She turned to face him. “We could sure use a lifeline to get us off it.”
“We’ll get out of here,” he assured her. “The shelling’s stopped, runway’s open, and we’re ready to launch sorties at first light.”