Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

Doberman peered out the side canopy, staring through the thick, protective glass toward the desolate undulations of yellow below. The sand and grit hardly seemed worth fighting over; maybe staring at it all day made you crazy.

Sure, but so did thinking about the oil beneath it. Obviously Saddam’s problem.

“Yo, Doberman, buddy, how’s our six?”

Doberman snapped to attention at A-Bomb’s call. He craned his neck around, making sure his back, or his “six” as in six o’clock on the imaginary clock face of their location, was clean. As he pushed his eyes toward the front windscreen, he realized that A-Bomb had actually made the call to subtly remind him to keep his separation; he was off Devil Three by less than a quarter mile, and closing.

Subtle.

“Nothing behind us but a lot of dirt and open sky, thank you very much, old buddy,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“We’re flying silent com,” barked Mongoose.

Fuck you, said Doberman, without, of course, keying the microphone.

He hadn’t been paying enough attention, and now as he dropped back he realized he was also muscling the stick. So he had to wake up and relax at the same time. Doberman blew a long breath, letting the Hog ease under him like a calm horse out on a Sunday walk. His tendency to over manage the plane was a symptom of fatigue; they’d been flying since nearly three this morning and his butt was dragging lower than the wheels.

Mongoose had volunteered them for this stinking BAI hop, another reason to be pissed off at him. The original frag — the fragment or portion of the air tasking order that pertained to them — had them just sitting on alert at Al Jouf before going home.

Yeah, but could you blame him? Who wanted to hang out while there were things to blow up?

They were about three minutes from the assigned kill box when a familiar call sign crackled over the radio.

“Cougar to Devil Leader. Devils, stand by for tasking.”

Tasking?

Doberman slipped up the volume on the radio, even though the E-3 controller’s voice had been loud and clear.

“We need you to head east, pronto,” explained the AWACS. “One of our Weasels spotted a shipment of Scuds on the highway.”

Dixon found himself wearing a rut in the sand at the edge of the runway, unable to tear his eyes away from the stricken planes straggling into the base. Every beat-up F-16, every flamed-out Tornado seemed to criticize him: if its jock could take it, why couldn’t he?

Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. Unwilling to go near anyone whose questions would inevitably lead to more lies, the young pilot collapsed butt first into the sand, covering his face against the gritty wind. His mind blanked; his brain fogging nearly as badly as it had up north.

He’d sat there for nearly fifteen minutes when he felt a tug on his arm.

“Excuse me, you Lieutenant Dixon?”

Dixon looked up and found an Air Force special ops first lieutenant with a greasy pad of legal-sized paper staring up at him.

“Yeah?”

“Two things. The maintenance people say the parts they don’t have are en route; ought to be here in an hour or less. Plane looked worse than it was, or they kicked butt; Jimbo says take your pick. If it’s fixed tonight you can go back to Fahd. If not, we get you a bunk. Check the sheets before you turn in; the pilots are ball busters.”

Dixon shrugged. The prognosis on the parts sounded hopelessly optimistic, given the chaos on the field in front of him, but he wasn’t about to argue with anything that even pretended to be good news.

“Second thing, my colonel wants to know if you can help out the intelligence guys. They’re, uh, kind of overworked.”

“Okay,” said Dixon. “What do I do?”

“Find a Major Bauer,” said the lieutenant, flipping through the pad to see what his next errand was. He’d already mentally crossed Dixon off the list. “Uh, he’ll give you the rundown. Your stuff stowed with your Hog, right?”

Dixon nodded. He rose, surprising the officer with his height. “Where is Bauer?”

“Got me,” said the officer, trotting back toward the tower area.

Dixon asked half a dozen people if they’d seen Bauer without getting a positive response. Finally he flagged down a marine captain with a clipboard who was trotting toward a British plane. Jet engines were roaring all around and he had to practically tackle the officer, shouting directly into his ear.

“I’m looking for Major Bauer.”

“Why?”

“I’m supposed to help debrief pilots.”

“Here you go,” said the captain, handing over the clipboard.

“You’re Bauer?”

“No. But my plane’s ready and I got to get back to my unit. Bauer’s up there. There’s a communications set up in the Humvee. See it?”

He didn’t, but the marine, obviously shanghaied into the job earlier, disappeared before he could ask for more directions.

The clipboard had a thick sheaf of unlined, completely blank paper. There was a pen beneath the clip, which turned out not to work.

While he recognized the type of plane before him — it was a two-place Tornado, one of the most common British types in the Gulf — he wasn’t precisely sure what kind of mission it would typically be tasked.

Had a hell of a drawing on the nose, though. A woman who was primarily boobs was getting a missile right where it counted.

“Like the tart?” the pilot yelled down from the fuselage.

“Excuse me?” Dixon yelled back.

“The drawing. It’s m’wife.” He laughed. “It’s the backseater’s wife, actually.” He laughed again.

Between the roar of incoming jets and the subdued whine of the Tornado, not to mention the pilot’s accent, Dixon caught maybe a third of any given sentence.

“I’m supposed to debrief you,” he shouted.

“What?”

“What was your mission?” yelled Dixon.

“My mission? Talmud.”

“Tail what?”

“Talldaul Air Base.”

“Did you hit it?”

“Of course.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Like?”

“Like what?”

“How bad did you hit it?”

“Well I didn’t have a bloody chance to land there and find out, now did I?”

“Was it, uh, destroyed?”

“What, the runway?”

“Damage?”

“Like a tart’s face.”

“Tart?”

“Prostitute, son. How bloody old are you?”

“Can you spell it?”

“Tart?”

The lieutenant took out his own pen and scribbled something he hoped approximated the shout. Meanwhile, airmen were waving the Tornado pilot forward, urging him toward a tank truck. Dixon got the man’s unit, his call sign, and the fact that he had nearly “gone empty” before the surrounding confusion and revving Turbo-Unions overwhelmed the conversation. Giving up, Dixon took a few steps back — and nearly got run over by a taxiing Hornet.

“Okay, that would be Tallil. So did they hit the field?”

“Yup.”

“How bad?”

“Like a prostitute’s face, if that means anything.”

“Did he get both JP 233s on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“JP 233s, the things they use to muck up the runway.” The Brits like that word. Did he say, ‘muck’? “The JP 233s?”

“I know what you’re talking about. He said it was as cratered as a prostitute’s face.”

Bauer crossed his eyes, then sighed. Though he was wearing an Air Force uniform, he had found or appropriated an army sergeant’s helmet. He was serious about it, too; the chin strap was synched so tight he could barely move his jaw. “All the prostitutes I know have smooth faces.”