Hogs #3 Fort Apache (15 page)

KING
FAHD

26
JANUARY 1991

0100

C
olonel
Knowlington had
thought, had hoped
really, that his flight north to rescue Mongoose would represent some sort of
turning point, that getting back in the cockpit under fire would vanquish some
of the demons that had followed him for so many years. But they were still
there.

Demons? No, Colonel Thomas “Skull” Knowlington wasn’t
oppressed by demons, but by something much closer to him, much more dangerous,
much simpler.

He wanted a drink.

It was nothing new. He’d wanted a drink every day of
his life. He’d resisted before. Twenty-one days now in a row.

Or was it twenty-two? He felt something close to panic
as he couldn’t remember. Not knowing the count was like losing control.

And he couldn’t do that. He sat straight up in his
cot, casting his eyes around his empty room. There was nothing here except his
old trunk and the cot and the plain walls. He liked it that way, stoic. It gave
him control.

He needed to drink.

He had to do something. Maybe wander over to Oz. No
matter what the hour was, there would be at least a few people working in the
maintenance areas: coffee too
—
Oz always had some going.

Knowlington didn’t like to make his men too nervous by
hanging around, but on the other hand they liked to know that he took an
interest. Something good always came from the few minutes he took to chat.

He was tired. He should sleep. He didn’t need to get
up. He needed to sleep. He closed his eyes.

He hadn’t made a decision on Mongoose’s request to
stay with the unit yet. Damn Mongoose. Was he out of his mind? Who wouldn’t
want time off? See the kid, for cryin’ out loud. And make love to his wife.
Hell, stay in bed for a whole year.

If it were him, he might not want to go home either.
But that was different – he didn’t have a home, or a kid, or a wife to go to.

He did have a home, in the Air Force. He was a lifer,
and way beyond that. His damn skin was blue.

Mongoose was, too. In a different way.

Maybe he ought to let him stay. It would help the
squadron, certainly. And if it helped the squadron, it would help the Air
Force, and that made sense.

Knowlington felt his eyes closing. He started to drift
off. . .

Mongoose’s wife yelled at him.

She screamed that he had killed her husband.

The colonel bolted upright in his bed.

It had been a dream, or the start of one, and so vivid
that he was trembling from it.

He needed a drink.

Knowlington got up, rubbing his arms against the cold,
barely pausing to throw on boots before hiking over to Oz.

AL
JOUF

26
JANUARY 1991

0230

D
oberman
had about
as much chance of falling
asleep as a butterfly hitching a ride on a Hog. He gave it a decent try
—
flipping over
and over in the cot, pushing his arms into different positions, pulling more
blankets on and throwing them off. But it didn’t work.

Klee pissed him off and Dixon worried the shit out of
him. The kid was on the team that found the NBC storage site. Which figured.
Volunteering to go north with the commandos was pretty stupid, no matter how
you looked at it, but it was typical Dixon. The kid reminded Doberman of his
brother, reckless in a good-natured, gung-ho, ‘scuse-me-ma’am way. Doberman actually
felt a little proud of him
— but he didn’t
want to see him
hurt.

Which made it difficult to sleep. After a few million
rolls, he decided to do something about it. He pulled on his clothes and headed
toward the Hog pit area.

###

Rosen and the rest of the crew had been assigned a
large tent directly behind the area they were using to maintain the Hogs.
Doberman hovered at the entrance a moment, trying to see if anyone was awake.
He couldn’t hear anything, but decided to at least step inside and see if
someone was stirring.

He got half his right foot across the threshold when
something hard, cold and metallic was shoved into his stomach.

“You’re gonna identify your fuckin’ self or there’ll
be a nine millimeter hole through your colon.”

“Rosen?”

“Captain Glenon? Sir?”

Doberman started to explain but Rosen reached her hand
to his face to shush him.

“Outside,” she said. The pistol was still in his
stomach.

Glenon backed out as quickly and as quietly as he
could, with Rosen and her gun following. She was wearing a military T-shirt and
boxer shorts. Maybe it was the light, maybe it was the Beretta, but Rosen
looked damn good.

Better than that. Absolutely beautiful, despite the
scowl on her face.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he told her.

“You didn’t startle me. What’s up?”

“I wanted to know how soon we can get the Hogs in the
air.”

Her voice softened just a bit. “Now?”

“There’s some sort of trouble north with Dixon’s
party. I want to be there.”

Rosen lowered the gun.

“Look, I don’t want you making a big fuss,” Doberman
said. He explained what he had heard about the NBC site and the need to evac
Dixon’s team. Technically, the Hogs weren’t signed up for the operation
— but since
he was
in charge of the planes, and he was just sitting around . . .

“Sir, we’ll have those planes ready to fly faster than
you can take a leak. You round up your gear and A-Bomb; I’ll get some ordies
and take care of everything. Hell, I’ll top you off myself if I have to.”

“Thanks, Sergeant, I appreciate it.”

“No sweat, sir. Uh, you can call me Becky if you want.
Most of the guys do.”

God, thought Doberman – she’s hot for me.

“Thanks,” he told her.

“Kick butt,” she said, disappearing back into the
tent.

Doberman admired one butt in particular, then got his
own in gear.

AL
JOUF

26
JANUARY 1991

0230

S
ome
things you
could bluff, some things
you couldn’t.

A full house, aces over jacks, you couldn’t.

But when you were sitting pretty with five aces –
three natural, one permanently wild and one declared in the special version of
Hide and Seek Draw Out that A-Bomb had taught the Special Ops officers
—
there wasn’t
much need to bluff.

And while the guys were, in general, good losers, the
fact that A-Bomb had completely cleaned out the lot of them made for some less
than harmonious comments.

Which didn’t necessarily seem like bluffs either.

Not that he was worried. On the contrary. He had
finally arrived at the spot he had been aiming for since joining the game.

“Seeing as how this was your first time playing a Hog
pilot,” A-Bomb told them, pushing the chips back into the middle of the table.
“I don’t think it’s fair for me to take your money. But there is something you
can do for me in return.”

Which was how, with a minimum of haggling (as those
things went), A-Bomb ended up behind the wheel of a butt-kicking, desert
romping rat mobile, officially known as a “FAV”
—
for Fast Attack Vehicle.

The FAV was essentially a very fast go-cart with two
machine-guns and an AT4 antitank missile launcher. She was a two-seater; the
driver, in this instance A-Bomb, sat in the bottom between a light-caliber
machine gun and extra gas tanks. Directly behind and above him sat a gunner, in
this case Major Wilson, who had drawn the low straw. A-Bomb suspected that in
normal operations, the man on top actually had the better seat, since he got to
work both the missile launcher and the .50 caliber-machine gun, as well as a
lashed-on grenade launcher. But considering that it was nighttime and they
weren’t technically authorized to shoot anything
—
in fact not be technically
authorized to drive at all
—
A-Bomb contented himself with handling the wheel.

And damned if this little buggy didn’t move. It
reminded him of an old big-block Chevy he’d had briefly, little ol’ Nova that
he’d rebored and jacked up. Bottom line, it couldn’t hold the road worth shit,
no matter what he tried doing with the suspension. For a little car it sure
felt like a truck, but you stepped on the accelerator and she cranked, baby.

Just like this. The FAV spit sand ferociously as A-Bomb
blasted off into the desert. She had a whole row of headlamps but he figured,
there being a war on, it didn’t make sense to use them. He could see pretty
well with the infra-red night setup he’d insisted on as part of the deal.

Damn helmet was heavy, though.

A-Bomb veered to the right, narrowly missing either a
large rock or a buried tank. He thought he heard the major groan, and felt his
boot kicking the chair.

“Yeah, I know I can go faster!” shouted A-Bomb. “Hang
on!”

He mashed the accelerator pedal. The rat mobile pushed
herself down as she picked up speed. They were doing sixty, maybe seventy.

The major’s kicks became more violent.

“It’s at the firewall now,” yelled A-Bomb. “Problem is
you got that muffler holding the engine back. You take that off, then we’re
talking speed.”

A fence or the edge of the earth loomed ahead. A-Bomb
yanked hard right, felt the FAV starting to tip, corrected. Two wheels came off
the ground before the go-cart settled down and began accelerating in a new
direction.

No wonder Dixon volunteered to go north, thought A-Bomb.
He was probably driving one of these right now.

Parachuting
and
driving a FAV. Some guys had
all the luck.

For a brief second, he wished it was him and not Dixon
who had gone north. Then he thought again about trying to get his Harley into
the Gulf.

Not the good one, just the ’89.

That short moment of inattention caused him to miss
the fact that he had headed straight up a dune.

Had he seen it, he would have accelerated.

The FAV flew off the top, launching into the air like
an F/A-18 catapulted from an aircraft carrier.

Of course, an F/A-18 had wings. The FAV didn’t. It hit
nose first in the sand, somewhat harder than A-Bomb would have expected.

That didn’t stop him from giving a proper war whoop,
however.

The major didn’t kick. Obviously he’d decided A-Bomb
was going as fast as he could.

The pilot glanced at his watch as he cranked around
for another turn. He really ought to be getting back.

Time for one more try.

This time, he managed to get the FAV to accelerate
sufficiently to land on the back wheels. The resulting wheelie wasn’t much
—
barely five seconds
long
—
but it was a hell of a way to end the night.

###

Doberman was waiting as A-Bomb drove up to the Hogs’
maintenance area. He hopped out of the vehicle and turned to help the major
down. But the Special Ops officer waved him off.

The light wasn’t that good, but it seemed to A-Bomb
the major looked a little under the weather. Probably the homemade hooch.

“Where the hell have you been?” Doberman demanded. “We’re
going to back up that helo flight that’s picking up Dixon. The Hogs are fueled
and armed.”

“About time you got out of bed,” said A-Bomb, starting
to trot toward the shack where his gear was stored. “Be with you in two
minutes.”

“Make it one.”

“I don’t think Tinman can brew the coffee that fast,” A-Bomb
yelled back. “But I’ll have him try.”

OVER
IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

0310

T
he
F-111F had
barely taken off from its
airfield, joining the rest of the package on a precision-strike deep into Iraq
when the AWACS controller broke in with a change in plans.

Captain Jay “Heavy” Muir, sitting in his weapon
officer’s slot next to the pilot, pushed back in his seat as the new target
info came in: a suspected NBC site near the Euphrates. Heavy’s mind clicked,
erasing everything it had stored about the aircraft shelter they were
originally tasked, then rebooting for the new challenge.

Among other things, Heavy handled the Aardvark’s Pave
Tack radar, which guided the big laser-guided bombs strapped beneath their
wings. Heavy was rated the best operator in the squadron, which made him among
the best in the Air Force, so he didn’t consider the new mission itself that
difficult. Still, the change in plans put a fresh kink in his already wrenched
neck. Especially when he was told that his aim point was a small exhaust pipe
on the side of a hill in an old quarry. That wouldn’t be particularly easy to
spot on the targeting screen. He had no photo, no briefing folder, nothing more
than a vague description and a set of coordinates to help prompt him.

“Needle in a rock pile,” said his pilot, Captain Chris
Klecko, as they laid out the new course.

“Yeah,” said Heavy. He studied his paper map, letting
the details soak in. The pipe was in a rock quarry, above a large metal door.
Just a pipe, not even a full ventilation system.

Not easy. But yesterday he had put a pair of Paveways
down a chimney.

The idea here was just to break the top of the
shelter. His Paveways were serious hunks of explosives. He didn’t have to hit
the pipe, exactly.

But he would. As soon as he could see it in his head.

“Doable?” asked Klecko.

“Oh yeah,” said Muir. “Assuming we can find it.”

“We should have plenty of time. They want it splashed
by 0500. We’ll be there by 0400, latest.”

Muir closed his eyes, clearing everything else away.
“I’ll get it,” he told Klecko.