Hogs #3 Fort Apache (24 page)

OVER
IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1015

R
osen
jumped out
of the arriving helicopter
right behind Captain Hawkins, her tool case in one hand and an MP-5 in the
other.

She’d have trade both for a manual. She was a damn
expert in avionics and com gear, a whiz at everything electronic, and had
worked on gas turbines enough to smell like them
—
but her mind went blank as she
ran toward the helicopter.

Just fuzzed. She knew it would come back, but until
then, how to jump start it? She glanced quickly at the top of damaged
helicopter and its tail, saw that they were intact, then lugged her tools into
the cockpit.

“Hey!” she yelled behind her. “Where’s my pilot?”

“Here,” said the man, a tall, chain-smoking Floridian
whose name was either Slim, Bim or Flim; she couldn’t be sure.

“Start it up,” she told him.

“You don’t want to check it first?”

“Maybe nothing’s wrong. Start it up. If it works we’ll
worry about it later.”

“What about the rotor blades?”

Rosen gave the pilot a look that made him climb
inside. She took the co-pilot’s seat and examined the interior; nothing was
obviously out of place, except for the bullet holes in the windshield
— and the dead pilot’s blood.

“I’m trying to turn her over but I got nothing,” said
the pilot. “Instruments are dead. Engine should be coughing and the rotors
cranking, see? You gonna check it now?”

“Good, we’re looking good,” Rosen said. “Kill the
power. Don’t smoke until I’m sure there’s no gas leak,” she said, zipping open
her toolkit and then clambering out the door to climb between the rotor and the
roof. Her mind was still fuzzy, like a TV caught between pictures on two
different stations.

Then it cleared, and she could imagine a motor laid
out perfectly in her head.

Trouble was, it didn’t belong to an AH-6G, or any
other member of the MD530 family. In fact, it didn’t belong to a helicopter at
all.

It was a good ol’ Chevy 350, V-8, stock, untuned,
lying the center of the vast engine compartment belonging to her grandfather’s
Impala.

Heck of a motor, just not what she wanted to be
thinking about right now.

The stream of bullets that had taken out the pilot had
made an arc up the top of the glass across the roof and rotor mechanism. The
bullets seemed to have either missed or grazed off. There were dents in the
faring but nothing serious.

“Don’t smoke!” she warned the pilot as she slid off
the front of the helicopter.

“It ain’t lit!”

She climbed over the rocket launcher and hung beneath
the body of the aircraft. A spray of bullets had nearly shot one of the bottom
right-side access panels off. The metal was so loose that a touch of her
screwdriver kicked it away.

And damned if the problem, one of them anyway, wasn’t
right in front of her
—
the bullets had chewed up one of the wire harnesses.

Hey, ignition system, no shit. That was exactly what had
been wrong with Grandpa’s Impala. Except it had been damaged by squirrels, not
30 mm bullets.

There was a warren of wires here, enough to keep a
squadron of mechanics busy for hours testing and tying them together.

Best punt, as Sergeant Clyston would say.

“OK, Slim Jim, hey, come here,” she shouted. “And for christsakes,
don’t fucking smoke!”

The pilot slipped out of the chopper. Rosen was used
to Air Force pilots, most of whom ran instead of walked. The Army Special Ops
pilot had a much slower approach to life, ambling around to her.

Or maybe she had just been thrown into overdrive and
the rest of the world was at normal speed.

“You see colors?” she asked.

“What do you mean colors?”

“You color blind?”

“No.”

“Good. This is gonna be kind of like a game, except
it’s not.”

Rosen took a roll of spare wire and electrical tape
from her toolbox and threw it to him. Then she explained how to strip the ends
off the wires and reattach them. She emphasized the importance of getting the
color coding absolutely correct; they could easily short something important
out if they didn’t.

“We going to re-attach everyone?”

“Only if we have to,” said Rosen. “Every five wires,
you go see what works. Just shout before you do.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Number one, I want to make sure the gas tanks aren’t
leaking before you blow us all to bits.”

“It ain’t lit!” he protested, taking the cigarette
from his mouth to prove it.

###

Hawkins saw that the survivors from the firefight, or
maybe reinforcements, had taken away the dead, including the Americans. Relief
mixed with his anger as he surveyed the scene. Taking the bodies back would
have been difficult if they couldn’t get the second bird going. The captain
called his two men back and made sure they had carefully gone through the site.
He knew, of course, that they had, but asking was part of his job and they
accepted it without complaint, assuring him the site was “clean.”

“Wait for me by our helo,” he told them, then headed
over to Rosen. She was working on something at the tail end of the aircraft.

“How long?” he asked.

“If this rotor control and the wires are the only
problem, I’m thinking another ten minutes, fifteen tops. This isn’t serious at
all.”

“What if they’re not the only problem?”

“Well, I think they are. The blades are all good, the
engine itself wasn’t hit and there’s gas. The infra-red radar will probably be
out and I won’t vouch for anything electrical until the engine’s back, but Slim
Jim ought to be able to fly it back.”

“Gary’s his name.”

“Gary?” It was the first time since they’d met that
her face betrayed anything but dead certainty. “Really?”

“We’re going to leave you here and get our guys,” said
Hawkins. “You run into trouble, call us.”

“What if the radio doesn’t work?”

“If we don’t hear from you, we’ll come back,” he called
back, already trotting toward his helicopter.

SUGAR
MOUNTAIN

26
JANUARY 1991

1015

T
here was
no
way he was sneaking up on this
guard, and no way was he getting lucky enough to dump him easily either.

Twenty feet of rubble and a sixty-degree slope separated
Dixon and the soldier posted near the summit of the cliff. The man had his side
to Dixon and his back to the lip of the bomb crater where the man with the
missile was. And he was paying attention to his job
—
Dixon had to
duck back around the cliff wall as the man walked his short line back and forth
across the ledge.

Rush the man now and everyone would hear. He might be
able to kill the soldier, then get up over the lip of the crater and take out
the man with the missile, but only if the second man wasn’t armed. And only if
this guard was the other soldier he’d seen climbing the hill with him.

Too many
ifs.

He could wait until he heard a plane. The Iraqis might
find him by then.

Dixon could walk back around to the other side and try
to get a firing position. That would take at least forty-five minutes, and he’d
be in the open much of the way.

If he went back and put on the uniform of the man he’d
killed, he might be able to get close enough to take them out before they realized
he was an American.

Nah. It was covered with blood and too small.

Dixon stuck his head around the corner of the rocks.
The guard had walked further along his lookout ledge and was out of view,
though Dixon could hear his footsteps scrunching in the dirt.

The ledge blocked most of the cliff face directly below
his sight. If Dixon could go down about twenty feet and then tack out across the
rock face, he’d get by him without being seen. That would put him a few yards
from the side of the crater, with a good view of the soldier with the missile.

That would also put him in clear view of the guard.

He’d have to take them both out very quickly.

Doable. Then fire the missile into the dirt.

Better yet, into one of the tanks. If he could figure
out how it worked.

Dixon studied the cracks on the quarried rock face below
the guard. It wouldn’t be easy.

Doable, though. Best way.

The guard turned and Dixon ducked back behind cover.
He’d have to wait until the guard was about halfway before starting.

Dixon was going across. It would take fifteen minutes
and some luck.

Make it ten, he decided. And screw luck.

THE
CORNFIELD

26
JANUARY 1991

1027

“Try it!” Rosen shouted.

Nothing happened.

But damn, all the wires were together. She had
current. There was definitely fuel. What the hell?

Her fingers were just touching the body of the engine
when she felt a vibration. At first she thought it was an electrical shock; she
yanked her hand back as the turbine coughed.

It started, coughed again, and stopped.

Progress.

“Shit,” said the pilot.

“Give it another shot.”

“These things are supposed to start right up.”

Rosen rolled her eyes. Pilots!

Sergeant Clyston wouldn’t have this problem. When he
told a pilot to do something, they damn sure did it.

It had to do with the way he used his voice.

“Give it another shot,” she said, trying to sound
exactly as the sergeant would have.

The engine cranked to life.

“Let it run!” she shouted, running to the cockpit. “I
have to make some adjustments and see what I can do about the panel. Then I’ll
get the radio to work.”

“Radar’s out. No radio,” said the pilot. “How the hell
am I going to fly without a radio?”

She ran back to the engine shaking her head. Pilots.

SUGAR
MOUNTAIN

26 JANUARY
1991

1028

D
ixon
slid his hand
into the crack, pushing
it sideways to get as secure a grip as he could manage before swinging his
right leg toward the foothold.

His boot slipped and he had to strain to hold himself
up. He pushed off with his left foot and caught a got foothold just as the ache
in his arms became unbearable. He breath deeply, then inched his left hand to
the same crack as his right, pulling his body across the face of the rock as he
found a new place for his right hand.

He had maybe five feet to go, five easy feet. All he
had to do was get there and he’d be beyond the guard and have a line on missile
boy in the crater. His head sagged backward. He was tired as hell, but he
wasn’t stopping now. As he flexed his shoulder muscles slightly, the guard’s
footsteps approached above him to the left. He froze, waiting for the man to
continue his rounds, walk past him, turn, then go back the other way.

While he waited, Dixon plotted his next two hand-holds:
large, squared notches on the rock. He had a good ledge for his feet, though it
was a bit of a stretch to get to the holds. As the guard turned and began
walking back, Dixon moved his right leg, found solid footing, then pulled for
the new spot. He was there, he had it, only two feet to go and he’d be on the
rocks, scrambling toward the top.

Something gave way behind him.

Rocks tumbled. He heard curses and people running.
Dixon curled his body into a ball and plunged to the right, landing hard on the
rocks at the side of the hill where he’d been aiming. He pulled the
submachine-gun up, ready to take a long blast, make something out of nothing
before they killed him.

But the shouts weren’t for him. A helicopter was
approaching, a dark bee in the distance.

And something else, something that exploded nearly
straight down from the sky. It came faster than an archangel and with
considerably more prejudice, not to mention a lot more explosives.

The Hogs had arrived.

OVER
IRAQ

26
JANUARY 1991

1031

A
-Bomb
had both
tanks at about eight-thousand
feet and three miles off, a turkey shoot for the Mavericks, which were
salivating in anticipation on his wings
—
and who could blame them? But he had to hold them in
reserve, in case Doberman missed. As unlikely as he knew that was, it was the
plan, and so A-Bomb merely sighed and soldiered on, getting ready to drop the
iron bombs instead. He fixed the Hog’s nose at nearly a ninety-degree angle
toward the ground, nonchalantly making his wind adjustments and bopping to the
beat of E Street shuffle.

Finger itching on the pickle button as he framed the
first tank in his HUD, A-Bomb decided that
The Price is Right
was just
what he was looking to play here.

Or rather,
The Bomb is Right
.

“Who’s today’s lucky winner, Johnny?” he asked as the
target grew fat and ever more juicy. “Why, it’s tank number one, a lovely
little T-72 model fresh from the factory at Minsk. I know it’s not really Minsk,
Bob, but I just love saying that. Minsk. Minsk.”

“And what have they won?” continued the pilot. “Why,
two lovely five hundred pound bombs, right down the poop chute.”

He releasing his bombs and pushed the stick for a
quick drop on the second tank. It was close to physically impossible to nail
them both on the same swoop given their separation and his steep angle, but A-Bomb
went for it anyway, swinging the Hog’s wings.

The shot fluttered toward the aim point, then fritter
away.

The Iraqis actually had the gall to try and shoot at
him as he began to pull back on his stick; a fair-sized knot of soldiers
appeared in the center of his windscreen and he had to exercise an extreme
amount of willpower not to toss his bombs at them, saving the heavy iron for
the tank.

Which, really, he should have gotten on that first
run, tough angle or not. Problem was, he decided, he hadn’t gone with the flow.
He’d gone with a game show, when he should have just gone with
The Boss
.

No problem. He clicked the play button on his personal
stereo and dished up “Thunder Road.” At the same time, he slammed the Hog into
a butt-crunching, face-distorting negative-G turn and climbed, looping out at
the top, and nailing down into a dive toward the tank. The Hog snapped her tail
and picked up speed, revving with pleasure as her pilot decided to use the cannon
instead of the bomb.

This is what she was designed to do: unzip Soviet
tanks. And even if this wasn’t Europe and the big hunk of metal in front of her
was technically bigger and thicker than her designers had envisioned her frying,
the Hog had fury and momentum on her side.

The tank commander’s 7.62mm winked at the plane as she
came. It seemed to A-Bomb that a bullet or two actually grazed off the lower
titanium hull.

“Don’t do that,” A-Bomb warned. “You’re only going to
piss her off.”

The tank commander obviously heard him, for the stream
of bullets veered away.

“You know what I’m here for,” sang Shotgun, echoing
Bruce Springsteen as he pressed the kill button. His first bullets greased
harmlessly across one of the Dolly Parton plates at the front of the t-72. The
stream moved upwards, streaming left and right, until A-Bomb found the relatively
soft top of the turret.

Then he nailed it down, riding the rudder pedals as
his uranium slugs erased the bastard’s top and back end.

Shotgun let off on the gun, pulling up and sailing
over the rock quarry, considering whether to find something else or get more
altitude. He was just banking when he heard Doberman shouting in his head. A
frantic warning cut through the chaos, drowning out the Big Man’s saxophone:

“Missile on the hill! Missile on the hill!”