Hogs #3 Fort Apache (4 page)

KING
FAHD AIRBASE, SAUDI ARABIA

25
JANUARY 1991

0005

C
hief
Master Sergeant
Clyston’s quarters at
the home drome were a testament not merely to the role of the squadron’s first
sergeant, but to the entire institution of the noncommissioned officer.
Clyston’s tent was located in the heart of Tent City, placing him in the very
midst of the people he led. Outwardly, it was unostentatious to a fault, a
billboard that said to the entire squadron of techies, specialists, ordies,
candymen, crew dogs, and wizards that their premier sergeant, their first among
firsts, their man, their capo di capo, their CHIEF (as he preferred to be
called, capitalization included) was, on some admittedly imperceptible level,
one of them.

Inside, it was better equipped than a Pentagon suite,
and a hell of a lot more comfy.

Some noncoms, having reached the exalted heights that
Chief Clyston had, let it get to their heads, thinking that just because they
really ran the show, they had to make sure everyone, officers especially, knew
it. Some sergeants, having extended their careers into the rarefied air of
chiefdom, not only lorded it over their airmen and lower NCOs, but let their
commanders know who was really in charge at every turn. But a major part of the
sergeant’s success was his subtlety as well as his efficiency. Just as he was
approachable by the lowliest of airmen (assuming, of course, the capo di capo
had already had his first cup of morning coffee), so the ostensible commander
of Devil Squadron, Colonel Knowlington, felt he was entering the tent of an old
friend, albeit an extremely important one, as he knocked at the door. And, in
truth, he was. The two men had been a pair since Clyston helped get
Knowlington’s Thud ready for a flight over the Ho Chi Ming Trail in the Dark
Ages: a flight that earned the then-lieutenant his first air-to-air kill.

“Disturbing you, Alan?” he asked Clyston, who was
sitting in a recliner, eyes closed, stereo headphones on.

“Colonel. You surprised me.” Clyston took off the
headphones and pushed the recliner closed.

Knowlington plopped himself into one of the
over-stuffed chairs nearby. How Clyston had managed to get such decidedly non-military
furnishings into the middle of Saudi Arabia hardly ranked among the panoply of
Clyston-esque achievements.

“I was just listening to Chopin,” he said. “London
Symphony bootleg.”

Knowlington nodded.

“Root beer?” Clyston asked. “I have some from Schmmy’s.”

Schmmy’s was a small, old-fashioned soda-fountain in a
small upstate town where a friend of the sergeant’s lived; it was, in the
opinion not merely of the capo but of half the squadron, the creator of the
world’s best root beer. Knowlington found himself agreeing, despite his
intention to go grab some sleep as quickly as possible. The sergeant reached
into one of his refrigerators – he had several of various sizes and purposes –
and retrieved a small hose and spigot. He then took a frosted mug from an ice
chest and pumped the colonel a glass.

“You just wanted to talk?” asked the sergeant as he
handed him the glass.

“I wish. We need to send a few people over to Al
Jouf.”

“How many?”

“Enough to keep two Hogs in the air indefinitely.”

“Geez, I don’t know if I can spare anybody.”

“It’s important.”

In theory, Clyston wasn’t on the very short list of
people with a need to know about Fort Apache, and so the colonel had not told
him about it. But Clyston was a five
–
star member of the Pipeline, and the look and slight
nod that he gave the colonel confirmed that he knew all about it, quite
possibly in greater detail than the men who had planned it.

It was also obvious that he had already given the
matter some thought.

“Going to have to send Tinman,” said the sergeant. “I
hate to, but there’s no one who knows metal better than him. He’ll take three
places.”

Knowlington nodded, as he did at the other names
—
until the
last.

“Rosen? Again?”

Clyston shrugged. “Colonel, she’s the best on the base
at all the avionics crap. And not just on Hogs.”

“She’s a pain in the ass.”

“True. But the thing is, she knows what she’s doing.
I’ve seen her make radios work that had half their parts. Besides that, she can
strip and reassemble three-quarters of the engines we got in half an hour, and
that’s not even her specialty. She’s also a certified parachute packer. Hell, I
saw her take an f-ing OV-10 Bronco completely apart and put it back together
last year. You know, when she first joined the Air Force . . .”

“It’s not her ability I’m worried about,” Knowlington
interrupted. “She’s an Einstein. But she’s got the personality of the Wicked
Witch of the West.”

“That’s not precisely fair,” said Clyston. He nodded
to himself, as if considering his words, though Knowlington had heard most of
this speech before.

Several times.

“She just gets involved in difficult situations,” said
Clyston. “People try to hit on her.”

Knowlington rolled his eyes. In fairness to Rosen,
some officers did make unwanted advances toward her; it was a problem for all
women in the military. But Rosen wasn’t particularly discriminating about what
exactly constituted an “unwanted advance.” And her way of dealing with them
wasn’t exactly by the book. A few days before a captain had shown up in
Knowlington’s office sporting a badly bruised kneecap and ribs.

Rosen’s defense? She was wearing new shoes or she
would have broken them.

As a general rule, Knowlington didn’t interfere with
Clyston’s “suggestions” on assignments. No one in the Air Force knew their
personnel better than the capo.

Still . . .

“You sure, Alan?”

“I’ll kick her butt around a bit and make sure she
keeps her f-in’ nose in line,” said Clyston. He crossed his heart with his
finger.

“It’s not her nose I’m worried about. She slugs the
wrong person and even I won’t be able to get her out of it.” Knowlington
drained his glass and set it down, then got up to leave. “Somebody ought to
stick a gun in her hands and send her after Saddam.”

“Hey, you never know,” said Clyston, putting his
earphones back on.

###

Aside from one of his sisters, about the last person
Skull expected to be waiting for him as he walked back to Hog Heaven was Major
James “Mongoose” Johnson.

“You’re supposed to be back in Buffalo by now, aren’t
you, ‘Goose?” he asked.

“I missed the plane,” said the major. “Mind if I talk
to you a second? It’s kinda
. . .
I’d really appreciate it.”

Even though Mongoose was the squadron’s director of
operations and Knowlington’s second in command, the two men hadn’t known each
other very long and had never gotten along particularly well. Knowlington
couldn’t imagine why he was suddenly being called on as a confidante, even
though he had risked his neck, and A-Bomb’s, to snatch the major out of an
Iraqi troop truck only a few days before. But he led the major into his spartan
quarters anyway, waving him toward the only seat in the small room, a trunk at
the foot of the cot. Knowlington sat on the cot.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I don’t want to go home,” Mongoose said.

Knowlington laughed, thinking there was a punch line.

There wasn’t.

“I’m serious,” said the major.

“Why don’t you want to go home?”

“I belong here. There’s a lot to be done.”

Nearly thirty years in the Air Force, including a
shitload of time in Vietnam, and this was a first. Major Johnson had his arm in
a cast, to say nothing of a few less visible injuries. He was in line for
umpteen medals and due some major R&R. Knowlington shifted uncomfortably on
his cot. “Major. . . listen, Goose, you deserve to go home. You earned it.”

“I didn’t earn anything. I got shot down.”

“Bullshit. You did a kickass job in that airplane.
Hell, you took on those bastards who captured you.”

“No, you guys took them on. I got lucky.”

Knowlington shook his head. Mongoose wasn’t a
particularly good person to argue with
—
as he knew from experience.

“Orders are that you’re heading home,” Knowlington
said simply.

“You can get around them, though. I know you can.
You’ve got connections coming out your. . .
”

He stopped short of saying “ass,” which struck Skull
as funny, though he didn’t laugh. “I don’t know if I have enough connections to
get around that. Hell, Major, don’t you want to see your kid?”

“Yeah, I do. More than anything. But I belong here.
It’s my job. You need me.”

“No one’s irreplaceable.”

“Come on, Colonel. Don’t send me home.”

“You can’t fly. What are you going to do? Saw that cast
off?”

Johnson ignored the question. “There’s a lot I can do.
Please. I’ve never asked you for anything.”

What the pilot didn’t say, though clearly meant, was
that Knowlington owed him big time. Major Johnson had taken care of a lot of
things
—
a hell of a lot of things
—
before Knowlington finally managed to control himself
and put himself on the wagon.

The grand total time of which now amounted to twenty-one
days, twenty hours and fifteen minutes, by his watch.

Of course, tallying it made him want a drink more than
ever.

“I really think you belong with your family, Goose.
You just had a kid.”

“Colonel? I want to do my job.”

Tired, surprised with a request he hadn’t expected,
Knowlington searched his mind for something to say.

Johnson was nuts.

But he did owe him. And maybe the guy knew something
he wasn’t saying.

He’d never pegged Johnson as a drinker or a druggy,
but maybe that was what he was afraid of. Or maybe there was something with his
wife. Or the kid. Some sort of personal thing that needed time or something.
Knowlington had never married and he really wasn’t good at figuring that kind
of thing out, except to know for some guys, a lot of guys, it was important.

But damn. The Air Force had an interest in making sure
pilots who’d gone through hell got a decent reprieve.

Even if they didn’t want it?

“Colonel?”

“You know what, Major? I’m going to have to think
about this. I just don’t know.”

“I do know, sir. I belong here.”

“I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

The major’s face lit with an enormous smile. “Thanks.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” said Knowlington.

“I know that,” said Mongoose, but he was still smiling
as he left the tent.

KING
FAHD AIRBASE, SAUDI ARABIA

25
JANUARY 1991

0245

L
ying in
his
cot after volunteering to go on
the mission, Doberman found it impossible to sleep. It wasn’t because he was
worried about flying so far into enemy territory. He was thinking about the
stupid card game.

He had nearly been dealt a dream hand, unarguably the
best seven cards he had ever had with a pot fatter than he could have wished.

No, he hadn’t come close to being dealt it
—
he
had
been dealt it. He just hadn’t had a chance to play the damn thing.

The dream hand to top off the dream night. Over four
hundred bucks was tucked under the mattress.

What a run. Too bad that it had been cut off.

And that was the problem. Because if things had gone
on, the odds would have balanced out. He would have started to lose. That was
the law of averages, the way statistics worked, the way of probabilities. You
could describe it with math. Bing-bang-bam.

Unless there was something else involved, like luck.
And what did Sullivan say
— lucky at
flying, unlucky at cards, and vice versa.

Bullshit. He didn’t believe in luck.

Except a little.

But if he had any luck, it was all bad. Luck of Job.
Bullshit luck.

Doberman hadn’t believed in luck or any such
superstitious bullshit until the war started. Now he did kind of believe
— a little. He had to admit he had been just a little
lucky to make it back the second time his plane got hit.

And the first.

The sergeant who inspected his plane called him the
luckiest dead man alive.

More skill than luck was involved in getting those
planes back. Way more.

Though he had found a lucky penny.

Bullshit. He had a goddamned engineering degree, for Christ
sake. There was no such thing as luck.

If he hadn’t gotten the stinking card
—
if he hadn’t
peeked at it
— he’d be sleeping by now.

Did the fact that he’d been stopped from playing the
hand mean anything?

Maybe he had only a certain amount of luck and
couldn’t use it up playing cards. So God or Fate or the Easter Bunny had
stopped him from playing it.

Right.

Or maybe his luck was running out.

There were X number of possibilities such a hand would
come up; he had played Y times. He’d had a million crappy hands. The pendulum
had to swing back at some point. The two curves of probability met at the axis
point, bing-bang-bam, the best hand of his life. No luck involved. Only probability.

Was there another curve that had to do with flying?

If there was such a thing as luck, if he had been
lucky, he’d have to admit something was going on. Fate or some other
superstition which he didn’t believe in. Because if there was such a thing as
luck then there would be things like omens, and then the hand might mean truly
that he was screwed.

Or not. Because it was all bullshit and superstition. A
man succeeded because he busted his ass. Doberman had learned that lesson from
his Uncle JR, the guy who’d taught him everything important. Luck was bullshit.

There were only two kinds of pilots. Guys like A-Bomb
who were somehow naturals, who just kind of fell into things somehow and made
them work. Those guys could fly no matter what happened.

And then there were guys like him, who studied it like
a book, worked and worked themselves until they had everything so precise you
could describe their flights with mathematical models.

If one somebody like A-Bomb wanted to be
superstitious, well what the hell? The guy was already so whacked out one more
thing wasn’t going to make any difference. But a pilot like Doberman, a pilot
who relied on being exact in everything he did
—
throw superstition into the
equation and that pilot was in serious trouble.

There was no such thing as luck, only probability.

But Doberman just couldn’t get the stinking idea out
of his head. As desperately as he needed sleep, the best he could do was play
the game in his head, over and over.