Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

He was still looking for the other Hogs when the terrain ahead erupted with a thick black explosion. A-Bomb was yelling ‘hot shit’ and Doberman pulled his right wing up and pushed straight for the thunderclap of ex-Scud, aiming to mop up what was left. He caught a glimpse of a Hog orbiting back in his direction, off at two o’clock.

“Doberman, there’s a flatbed with two guns at least to the west of the tank. Take it out,” said Mongoose.

“No, I got it,” said A-Bomb.

“Where the fuck are you?” Doberman asked.

“Right here,” said A-Bomb, pulling his A-10 through the smoke cloud. He was well off to Doberman’s right but the roiling dust was so thick Doberman broke off, unable to get a target and not wanting to screw up what was quickly becoming a turkey shoot. He gathered his wits for a better run once A-Bomb cleared.

“What else is down there?” he asked A-Bomb, his back momentarily turned to the action.

A-Bomb’s response was garbled. Someone else jumped on the frequency and Doberman heard an F-16 flight ask if the Hogs needed help.

Meanwhile, Mongoose put himself in a shallow orbit and played quarterback. He had A-Bomb hold off while he directed Doberman in to drop his bombs on a truck park north of the now-demolished Scuds.

The haze made it tough to settle his target in the HUD. As he glared into the screen. Doberman realized the enthusiasm he’d felt this morning — hell, the giddiness, there wasn’t another word — had slipped away. Even the energy he’d just had smoking the trucks was gone. His arms throbbed as he worked the stick, his legs jittered. Time to get rid of the stinking bombs and head home. A thick shadow finally loomed in the center of his HUD. He went for the trigger, pickling his bombs and arcing back toward the sky, looking for his second wind.

“One of us ought to take out that water tank,” said A-Bomb. “Discourage them from coming back.”

“Yeah,” said Mongoose. “Who’s closest?”

“I am,” said Doberman.

“You got bombs?”

“Negative. Cannon’s ready though.”

“Okay. I don’t see any more ground fire,” added Mongoose. “You?”

“They ought to be out of ammo by now. Stinking machine gun bullets won’t do much anyway.”

“Yeah, don’t get too cocky,” said Mongoose. “All it takes is one.”

“I think anyone still alive down there’s hiding in the sand,” said A-Bomb. “They got a bad case of Hog-itis.”

Doberman pushed his Hog around and double-checked his cannon. “A good burst ought to nail it. Unless it’s filled with gasoline. Then one’ll do.”

“If you wait a minute, I’ll come in behind you.”

“I’m lined up now,” said Doberman, rushing a bit, as if getting the tower was somehow a competitive event.

“Doberman, take it out,” said Mongoose. “Then we go home.”

Hakim Ibn Lufti was not religious by nature, but he prayed to Allah nonetheless as he snaked his way onto the catwalk surrounding the water tower. The American invaders were all around him; though he had lived in the desert his entire life, he had never felt more alone. The green-black planes had destroyed the missiles and all of his comrades; as far as he knew, he was the only one left alive.

Yesterday, Private Hakim had confided to another man that if the Americans came, he would most likely surrender; this was Saddam’s war, and he felt no particular fondness for the head of his country. But the man Hakim had told that to lay in the sand several hundred yards away; he’d caught a fist-sized piece of metal in his chest when the planes began dropping their bombs. Hakim’s ambitions had accordingly changed; he wanted nothing more than to extract some revenge on the invaders.

He had carried a missile launcher to the tower to help him do so. He wasn’t entirely sure how to use the weapon, however. It was a new model, an SA-16, and though he had heard others say it was considerably better than the SA-7, in fact he had never been trained to use either. He knew how to push a trigger, however, and had some hope that if the weapon were pointed in more or less the right direction, it could take care of the rest.

Hakim had almost fired at one of the jets zooming at him when he was distracted by a billow of thick smoke. He began to choke. By the time he recovered, the warplane was veering away.

Hakim cursed, and pushed the trigger anyway.

Doberman cursed as he watched his cannon shot spitting wide right, a bad putt on an uneven green. The first two slugs punctured the side of the tower but the plane’s pull and maybe the wind threw him off. He had too sharp an angle and then the smoke got in the way and he had to slide off and try for a better pass.

Damn it, I have to give myself more room this time, he told himself. I may be tired but I can still hit a fucking water tower.

God, he thought, I’ll never hear the end of it if I miss the damn tower.

It took a second for Hakim to realize why the weapon had not fired. The missile had a prime button which kept it from being accidentally launched.

Tears came to his eyes as he realized his error. Cursing himself, cursing his God, he unsafed the weapon and punched its stock against the steel rail in anger. The jet was far away now, and getting further.

And then, God brought it back. It was as if His hand took its nose, drew it up in the sky and yanked it backwards. Its strange, stubby wings straightened as it angled around and flew directly toward him.

Fire erupted from its mouth. The tower shuddered, crumpling above him. Hakim cringed, held his breath, waited for death to come. He felt the grating below him start to give away. He held the missile launcher up, falling as the plane flashed overhead. He pressed the trigger as his life evaporated in a steam of metal and fire.

A-Bomb saw the flash from the tower, saw the rocket shoot out wide, and saw the tower disintegrate, all at the same time. He barked a warning to Doberman and pounded his own plane hard left, shooting flares and giving it gas and pushing his body to the side, trying to add mustard to the evasive maneuvers. Doberman jinked ahead, twisting, diving and climbing behind a shower of flares.

The missile had shot straight out from the tower, perpendicular to the Hog’s flight path. An ordinary SA-7, if it happened to get lucky and catch a whiff of the exhaust, would choke out its engine swinging back and fall harmlessly away.

This one didn’t. This one came around in a tight arc, snorting for Doberman’s turbofan.

“It’s still on you,” yelled A-Bomb.

Doberman sensed the missile before A-Bomb warned him. Something had moved on the tower as he closed in; a sixth sense told him there was a suicidal maniac on the rail with a shoulder-missile. The pilot pushed the Warthog hard in the direction of the launch as he flew past, tossing flares and jinking as wildly as he could. His cannon burst had slowed his momentum, and there wasn’t a huge amount of altitude left to use gathering speed. He danced and shook, shoving the forked-tail of the Hog in a wild streak across the desert, riding a roller coaster of right angles and flares. His stomach rolled into a pea as G forces slammed against his body in every direction. The pilot felt the flesh on his cheeks peeling under the sudden weight of the oxygen mask, plunging itself into his face. But it was a good feeling, blood running away from his head despite the best efforts of his suit. The heady, floating weightlessness told him he was alive.