Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

Doberman had practiced this sort of escape under these sorts of circumstances at least a hundred times. He realized he should be clear now, a few miles and a dozen hard turns from the missile. The Russian-made SA-7 was a good weapon, but couldn’t hang with you on a serious G turn. He kept going a few more seconds just to be sure, pulled one more turn with more flares, being extra cautious, then turned around, looking for his buddies. His eyes shot over to the altimeter ladder on the HUD, focusing on the white numbers as he reoriented himself.

In that second, a sledge hammer hit his right wing.

The next five seconds defied all known physical laws of time and space. Simultaneously, the universe moved at infinite speed and stood completely still. Doberman was paralyzed beyond comprehension.

Hit a bit beyond midway on its right wing, the Hog slumped in the air. Small bits of the wing were sucked into the turbo fan. The GE groaned, its fire quenched by the in-rushing rain of debris.

The engine munched the shrapnel, spit it out, and then, helped by the momentum of the air rushing through the blades as the plane hurtled downwards, kicked itself back to life. Doberman felt the surge in his arms as he coaxed just enough power to stay airborne; stutter-stepping off the ugly brown earth, he managed to hold the plane in a slow but steady climb. He was even going in the right direction, southeast — though he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he got that way.

Once the plane was stable, the pilot pitched his head back to look out the right side of the cockpit, back at the wing. The missile had gone straight through, blowing a fair-sized hole en route. A bit of the aileron had been taken away; he couldn’t quite bend his body around far enough to see how much or what other damage had been done.

On the bright side, the missile had missed the fuel tank.

That, or angels really did drive Hogs in heaven.

A-Bomb waited for the canopy to blow, then worried that Doberman had been hit too low, too fast, too hard to save himself. The distance between the two planes closed as quickly as the bile rose in his throat, the empty sickness of seeing a buddy go down.

“Dog man, get out,” he shouted again and again. “Eject. Eject.”

“Now what the fuck am I going to eject for?” growled Doberman. “A-Bomb, would you shut the hell up so I can think?”

Suddenly, the nose of Doberman’s Hog changed direction. The plane began lifting itself off the deck.

A hand reaching down from above wouldn’t have shocked A-Bomb more.

“Jesus Christ,” he yelped. “You are one lucky mother fucker.”

“Yeah, right. You’re going to explain your reasoning as soon as we put down.”

Adjusting his speed, A-Bomb pulled almost directly over the damaged Hog. The wing had a gaping hole, exposing organs and underwear, not to mention the ribs that held it together. But it was intact.

Just another day in the life of a Hog driver, thought A-Bomb. Damn, I love these planes.

The first thing Mongoose did when he realized Doberman was still alive was curse himself for not taking out the water tank first thing with bombs. Better, he shouldn’t even have bothered. The Scuds were the priority, and they were gone. Getting greedy was a good way to get killed.

It was one thing to put himself in danger, and a hell of a different thing to put his guys there. His job was to get them home. Period. Everything else was way second.

Fucking water tower.

“I have a question for you I need a real honest answer on,” he told Doberman as soon as the pilot had the damaged Hog headed toward the border.

“Shoot.”

“How far you think you can fly that thing?”

“Me? Hell, I’ll fly around the world if you want.”

Mongoose took a second before responding. His own arms and legs were tired as hell; Doberman’s must be aching even more. The control surfaces on the right side of the stricken Hog’s wing were shot to hell, and he’d feathered his right engine. Doberman’s fuel situation was strong enough to get him back to Al Jouf with only a little sweat, assuming he didn’t spring a leak. But that meant sailing through Indian territory just about the whole flight.

They could turn and fly directly south, safer if he had to punch out, but that made Al Jouf a stretch. King Khalid, another FOB the Hogs had used this morning to refuel, was even further.

And what did he do once he got there?

Mongoose took another glance at Doberman’s plane. The Hog looked shot to hell. How long could it stay airborne with a football-sized hole in the wing?

But the matter had to be broached delicately.

“Do you think you could tank?” Mongoose finally asked.

“If I have to. Why?”

“What I’m thinking is the tough thing for that Hog is going to be landing. Your flap’s probably not going to set right, and I’ll be honest with you, it’ll be a miracle if your landing gear works right.”

There was silence from the other plane,

“You can go ahead and respond,” he told Doberman.

“You want me to bail out.”

“Not necessarily. But that may end up the only option.”

“You’re also thinking we shouldn’t go straight back to Al Jouf because you think I’m going to have to bail before I get there.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re thinking that.”

“Yeah,” admitted Mongoose. “If we go back to the base we’ll be over Iraq most of the way.”

“You ain’t going to jinx it by admitting it,” said Doberman. “Be straight with me.”

“I’m trying.”

“If we refuel, maybe we can coax it all the way back to Hog Heaven,” said A-Bomb. “Bail out in the sand and walk in for a shower.”

“I’m not bailing out,” snapped Doberman. “Period.”

Mongoose worked his lips together, not sure what to say. He would feel the same way. But feelings were irrelevant. What had to be done had to be done.

If it came down to it, would he order Doberman to jump out of the plane? Was it his job to do that?

Absolutely.

Not that ejecting was risk free. The seat manufacturer put survivability at eighty percent.

And they bragged about that.

The flight leader checked his own gauges, calculating distances and plotting a course in his head. There was no sense answering Doberman — what could he say? I’m in charge here?

“Yeah, okay,” said Doberman finally, breaking the uneasy silence. Mongoose couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, or just tired. “Let’s try for a tanker and then on to King Fahd. Line it up.”

Dixon couldn’t find the F-16 pilot, if he existed. There were two F-16s at the base, one of which had been pushed off the side of the runway and left for scrap metal. Neither pilot had been anywhere near Tweedledum — or Taqaddum, the actual name of the Iraqi installation. They didn’t know anything about a lake, but they had seen plenty of things on fire.

Military intelligence at its finest, the lieutenant thought as he returned to the intel Humvee.

Bauer didn’t seem all that broken up about the lack of information. He sent him to debrief a pair of French pilots who had somehow wandered up to Al Jouf in their Jaguars.

Unfortunately, Dixon didn’t speak French. And though the other pilots spoke English, it rolled off their tongues the way a Mk 82 would fall down a flight of stairs at Versailles.

Like the A-10, the aging Jaguar was primarily designed to support front-line troops, but it represented an entirely different philosophy, something more akin to the F-16’s― get in and out as fast as possible. And that was about the only element of their mission Dixon could understand― the two pilots gestured freely as they described an attack on an installation that for all the world sounded like a circus tent. Even more of a mystery was how the pilots had managed to get way the hell out here. They were based at Al Ahsa, back near Riyadh. Dixon hadn’t seen the entire ATO; the air order dictating the first day’s game plan ran hundreds of pages. He knew the Frenchies had started out in the eastern part of the theater.