HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) (19 page)

Nothing happened. He glanced down and realized
he’d placed his finger not on the rifle trigger but on the grenade mechanism.

He coughed again, this time so hard that he had to
drop to one knee to recover. But the air was even thicker here, the scent stifling.
He rose slowly, telling himself to slow down.

A small fire burned about midway down the far side
of the building, casting a reddish glow across the interior. Metal ramps and a
small hand truck sat near the glow; a set of benches and lockers were lined
against the wall.

A tractor was parked on his right. Hack sidled
toward it, trying to hold back his coughs. A bomb trolley had been hooked to
the back of back of the vehicle; two slim anti-air missiles sat in its base.

Hack put his arm over his mouth to filter the
stench. Something moved on the floor a few feet from a workbench beyond the
weapons carriage.

This time his finger was in the right place.
Bullets ripped through the figure and ricocheted everywhere, the hangar reverberating
with the automatic-weapons fire.

Hack coughed uncontrollably and threw himself
down, rolling and starting to retch, his lungs and throat scratched by the
toxic fumes of the smoldering fire. He tasted metal in his mouth; his nose felt
like it had been filled with shavings from a metal lathe. Hack lost his hold on
the gun and fell against the floor, stomach heaving.

He knew he had to stand up to breathe, but he
wasn’t sure if there were other Iraqis in the hangar, or even if he’d killed
the man he’d aimed at. Finally he summoned his energy and jumped up, threw his
hand over his face and pumped his lungs against the fabric of his jumpsuit.

A man sprawled across the ground ten feet away.
Hack froze, then realized the man wasn’t moving. He could see the man’s head
glowing with the dim red light of the fire across the way.

A helmet. The pilot.

He walked toward the man, looking this way and
that. His lungs felt pinched in his chest. He had to get outside and breathe.

The building rattled with an nearby explosion.
Hack reached down and grabbed the man’s leg, hauling him backwards toward the
yawning blue light. He started slowly, then felt himself tripping. He managed
to keep his balance long enough to reach the entrance, where he fell over
backwards. He whirled around, still coughing as the clean air hit his face. He
gulped it, then reached back for the boot, pulling the Iraqi clear into the
sunlight.

The dead pilot’s fingers were wrapped around a
pistol. He was fully dressed in a pressurized suit and helmet. While his torso
and limbs were intact, his nose and forehead looked more like a smashed pumpkin
covered with red pulp than anything human. Part of the flight helmet was
missing; the rest was cracked and fused to the man’s skull.

Something warm touched Hack’s shoulder. He
flinched, thinking it was blood, but it was Fernandez, the Delta soldier.

“I shot him,” Hack said.

“I think a grenade got him, Major,” said
Fernandez. “Look at the helmet.”

“Maybe,” said Hack, though he knew he’d seen the
man move. He dropped down, examining the flightsuit. It seemed intact, though
there were blood splatters all over it. The survival gear and belts, nicked
here and there but seemingly sound, were thick with blood, already congealing
into brown crust.

A helmet and mask. He’d have to go back into the
hangar. There must be a dressing station further back.

“Fuel’s on it way, coming across the strip,”
yelled Eugene, running up to him and pointing across the field.

“Can you load missiles?” Hack asked.

“Missiles?”

“There’s a pair in there, attached to a tractor.
Can you get them on the plane?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hangar’s on fire,” Fernandez said.

“I know that,” said Preston, running back into the
building. He bunched his flightsuit up to cover his mouth, and tried to hold
his breath as much as possible. He pointed to the tractor, hoping the others
were following, then kept going, kicking his 203 on the floor as he ran.

There should be a rack of suits standing against
the wall, lockers for personal gear. A readyroom, an area to brief pilots.

Or maybe not. Maybe they used the buildings on the
other side of the base.

No. He was thinking about this all wrong. It wasn’t
a real air base. It was more like a lone bus terminal, a solitary stop.

Might be no gear here at all then.

The fire licked across the row of benches at the
left, blue flames circling a tank of some sort. The light waxed and waned, cycling
from red to purple to blue. The fire seemed to die but then flared back again.

Three large trucks sat at the back the building.
Empty sacks sprawled on the floor near the far corner. Several benches and
metal structures looked like lockers. Hack moved toward the lockers, then saw
that the sacks were men’s bodies.

Something rumbled behind him. Hack whirled, throwing
up his hands and expecting the building to come crashing down. But it was just
the tractor – Eugene and Fernandez had managed to get it started.

Hack stepped over the bodies, looking for the
suits or at least a helmet. The dead men were just workers or soldiers, of no
use to him. There were large metal tool chests under the benches, and some old
machinery that seemed like farming equipment. Tires were stacked against the
wall, not far from where the fire was slowly working its way through a pile of
rags.

As Hack turned to go back to the other side, his right
leg kicked something on the floor. The fire flared bright and he saw it was an
oxygen mask, its long hose curled in a neat spiral. As he scooped it up,
something popped behind him. Now there was plenty of light to see— the fire
leapt into a can on the floor, exploding and flaring up the tires. Hack ran out
of the hangar, feeling the heat as the flames suddenly found plenty of fuel to
ignite.

“The plane! Get the plane out of the way! The
fire!” he screamed.

Fernandez and Eugene had already hooked the front
of the MiG up to the tractor. The plane jerked and screeched as it moved— the
Fulcrum’s parking brakes were obviously still set. Hack tucked the gas mask
beneath his arm and ran for the wing, hauling himself up over the trailing edge
flap as the plane stuttered forward with a groan. He caught the back end of the
canopy and threw the mask inside, then squeezed himself around and down into
the seat, his right leg catching on one of the panels as he fell in. He curled
his leg beneath him as best he could, trying to orient himself.

So where was the brake?

He flailed on the left side of the cockpit of the unfamiliar
plane. He couldn’t remember a thing, not from the MiG he had flown in or the
briefings.

The emergency extension for the landing gear was
on the left, at the bottom of the panel near his knee.

His mind blanked. He couldn’t find the parking
brake on a Chevy, let alone work a foreign airplane.

On the panel. On the panel.

Hack found the small, slender handle right above
the turn-and-slip indicator. He clawed at it, and the MiG rolled forward and
then sideways, stopping abruptly. Unsure of himself again, not trusting his
memory, he fumbled around the cockpit, looking for something else.

Wong appeared on the right wing, shouting.

They’d stopped the tractor.

“The configuration appears to be the most
primitive export model,” said Captain Wong. “Do you concur?”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Preston, pushing himself
up. He pulled the oxygen hose out from under his leg, untangling himself in the
process. He found the end and inserted it into the panel, then sat back down,
getting his bearings now— remembering himself, his plan, his checklist.

He needed his flight board. Not for the few notes
he’d scribbled. Hell, they were useless now. He had all the important stuff
memorized and he could, would remember it. But the cartoon, and Ecclesiastes,
and most of all his dad’s advice— he couldn’t fly without them.

Wisdom exceeds folly.

Do you best

Don’t be superstitious, he told himself.

Hack turned his attention back to the plane. It
had been outside the hangar, so the Iraqis might have already fueled it.

Power the instruments, find out.

Hack turned to the power panel on the right and
began walking himself through the checklist he’d repeated on the flight from
KKMC to the Delta base.

Power, number one. Switches set, check them front
to back.

He remembered Lieutenant Romochka Dmitri Krainiye,
the Commie pilot who took him up at Kubinka. He had walked Hack through it step
by step. Easy stuff.

They’d puffed that engine, though, starting off an
external power source.

Do your best.

Hack looked at the voltmeter in front of his crotch.

He had a good battery. Hot shit.

What was next?

As his eyes rose across the rest of the
instruments, he felt a twinge of vertigo, dizzy suddenly, the rush from the
hangar catching up with him.

Do your best.

He remembered his dad saying that to him during a
Little League game when he was walking to the plate, bases loaded.

He’s struck out.

Blinking and then rubbing his eyes, Hack stared at
the gauge faces. He recognized the clock, an old-fashioned dial at the base of
the panel. It was his anchor.

Compass at the top right. HUD, of course, slaved
to the radar. Gear below it. Armament on his right— hard to reach in a
dogfight, not natural.

No place for a critique, he told himself.

Fuel gauge was a bar indicator with a flow gauge
on the right side of the central panel. He’d had trouble keeping track of it
during his flight at Kubinka— you had to stare at the damned thing to figure it
out.

No fuel.

“Do you have power?” asked Wong.

“Yeah. Needs fuel. Get us some juice. I can go!”
he yelled to Wong, pushing up out of the seat. “Four thousand kilos, no more.
The runway’s damn short and I need this plane light.”

Wong started to complain, but Hack pulled himself
out, rolling off the plane to get the flight gear.

Flames licked out of the hangar.

He’d have to undress the dead pilot, use his own
helmet.

Preston rolled over the side of the plane,
intending to walk along the cowling. He slipped, plummeting right to the
ground. He hit awkwardly, but kept his balance, running to the dead man as a
Hog whipped overhead, fifty feet off the runway. The ground shook with a
massive explosion. An arm caught him as he began to fall.

“The Iraqis are sending reinforcements,” said
Captain Hawkins, pulling him up and yelling in his face as two Apaches crossed
overhead. “Maybe tanks and helicopters. If you’re going, you better make it
fast.”

OVER IRAQ

29 JANUARY 1991

0613

Skull banked his
plane back south, cutting
back over the line of hills that lay to the east of Splash. Smoke curled from a
dozen places as he flew, the battle sorting itself into several messy knots.

Closest to him was the hangar and apron area,
where he could see the MiG being worked on perhaps seventy yards from the
hangar. A Pave Hawks at the edge of the runway; .50-caliber bullets spitting
from its doorway. An RAF Chinook skittered from the hangar area toward the
buildings on the northwestern end of the complex.

Apache gunships zipped around the buildings,
peppering them and the surrounding emplacements with rockets and gunfire. Smoke
furled everywhere, in every sort of permutation— gray wisps and thick black
clouds, red-tinted mushrooms, and diaphanous white scarves.

The commandos had entered the buildings. From what
Knowlington could decipher from the excited communications, neither team had
found any trace of their quarry. The SAS men were using mobile infrared radar
units and other detectors. To lessen the chance of hitting their own men, the
Apaches were in direct communication with the helicopters, but the gunships
were not exactly subtle— every so often their chins would erupt in smoke and
blue flame, and part of the buildings would implode.

The F-16s, their services not needed for the
initial assault, had diverted to nearby secondary targets, including a small
ammo dump or bunker area just below the runway. They were already en route
home, leaving three A-10s— Skull and his wingman Antman, along with Dixon— to
cover contingencies. The scheduled escort flight of four Navy F-14s had been
reduced to two, apparently because of mechanical problems, the planes had just
relieved the F-15s and would remain to escort Hack and the MiG back.

As Skull banked west, he saw a glint on the road
about ten miles away, up toward the river and the highly populated area. He
told Dixon and Antman to stay in a wheeling orbit over the airfield, then
nudged his stick. As he did, he noticed a cloud of dust where the highway should
be.

Splash Controller came over the circuit, reporting
that one of the Apaches had seen a column of vehicles and possibly a helicopter
approaching. Someone else came on the line, ignoring the controller’s attempt
to keep them quiet. By the time the circuit cleared, Skull had changed course
and identified targets in the dust cloud:

A dozen vehicles, including at least three light
tanks or self-propelled guns and a jeep, coming along the highway toward
Splash.

“Add two transport helicopters,” Skull told the
Splash controller as the helos caught up to the column.

They were at a very low altitude, slowing as they
caught the column. Mi-8 Hips, probably, large transport types that occasionally
carried rockets in side packs along the cabin.

Skull studied the area beyond the helicopters,
expecting escorts or other Hips to appear. He suspected there would be more— an
entire formation of Mi-8’s and Mi-24 Hind gunships and Fishbeds, everything
Saddam could throw at them.