Jim DeFelice - Going Deep

Dixon shook his head. He started to pour it out, then felt a powerful hand grab the cup.

“No sense letting it go to waste,” grinned the sergeant. Clyston took a slug, winked, then turned back to his crew. “Pull that F-ing dragon back up here and get the damn Hog loaded while Rosen finishes up,” he shouted. “Come on, come on. Let’s look alive. What the hell, you guys looking to join the Navy? Get moo-ving!”

The dragon was pushed into place beneath the Hog’s belly. A large flatbed with a special treadmill, it loaded the A-lOA’s cannon with bullets.

Things looked chaotic, but Dixon could tell that even with the rush, the crew was still dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

“Rosen, kick butt up there,” Clyston called. “I need you done in five minutes. Got that? Five! No, that’s too long. Make it three. Hey, Larry — what the hell are you doing up there, sawing fucking wood? Let’s go, people — we have some Iraqis to bomb! This ain’t a goddamn high school play we’re putting on!”

Suddenly, all of the techs were doing rolls off the plane. Equipment was trundled away and the crew fell silent.

“Lieutenant, let’s preflight,” barked Clyston — more an order than a request. The gray bear loomed in front of the pilot. A smile broke on his grizzled lips. “Now you take your time, sir. Anything you want fixed, it gets fixed. You just go at this like you have all day, you hear? Don’t let us rush you.”

Dixon nodded and started toward the nose of the craft. He liked to touch the very tip of the Gatling gun before he began his walk around — it was a superstitious thing, and he sure as hell didn’t want to miss it this morning.

As he leaned forward to touch the weapon, he realized he had an audience. The squadron’s entire mechanical crew was looking over his shoulder, worried that he had found a problem.

“It’s okay,” he explained sheepishly. “I just like to touch it. For good luck.”

A murmur of approval passed through the techies.

The crew members followed him around the plane, silently shuffling along as he examined the belly, the weapons, the flaps. Clyston hovered at his shoulder, silent, nodding, sometimes frowning, once or twice ducking in to take a look at something himself. Dixon moved deliberately, trying not to rush things and yet be as thorough as possible given the time limits.

The bottom line was that he had to trust the people who had just given over the plane to him. But it seemed somewhat disrespectful not to look closely at their work, not to nod or pat the part and move on. Once or twice he thought he saw something; each time, three or four crew members would leap to the plane and help make sure there wasn’t a problem.

Dixon had done many preflights; certainly he had done more thorough examinations of the airplanes he was to fly. But he had never felt so confident climbing into the cockpit.

“Kick ass job, Sergeant,” he said, swinging onto the ladder. “I’ll say hello to Saddam for you.”

“You beat the living shit out of them, you hear me?” said Clyston, slapping the pilot on the rear.

From the crowd, Dixon heard a throaty female voice yell out, “Hey lieutenant. Break a leg up there, huh? Just make sure it ain’t yours.”

He turned down and saw Rosen, gave her, gave everybody, a salute.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get going. And don’t break my god damn plane,” snapped Clyston. “All right, everybody, party’s over — we got eight more planes to work on. Get your F-ing butts moo-ving!”

For a long, long second, Doberman thought he lost the plane fifty feet off the runway. It was still dark, and as the Hog roared off the concrete he felt a touch of weightlessness. He started to bank as planned — they had choreographed just about every foot of this mission — and felt his right wing coming up too fast. He began to correct, then felt he was over-doing it, then felt a queasy hole in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure where the hell he was. The dark night loomed out in front of him, vast and empty; clouds covered the stars. The wind rushed around his head, spinning it, confusing him. He saw the earth, an old mistress, trying to lure him back to her bed.

Doberman’s head swam. He was back under the tanker, trying to connect. He was playing cards, getting creamed again.

Lucky my stinking ass, he told himself. I got the luck of Job.

Somehow his eyes found the artificial horizon in the center of his dash. Somehow his brain managed to tell him he was precisely at the proper angle. Somehow his hand held the stick steady, calming the rest of his body.

I’m okay, he told himself. It’s vertigo because of the dark.

Fly your instruments, not your eyes.

He flexed his fingers inside their Nomex gloves, felt the lucky penny in the palm of his hand, frowned at himself for being superstitious, and put the Hog on course.

Mongoose could feel the fatigue riding behind his eyes. He hadn’t gotten any real sleep, undisturbed, head sinking below-the-horizon sleep, for nearly a week now. He promised himself he would have a full eight, ten, twelve hours at the end of this mission.

But none until then.

The pilot had a small pill box in a pocket on his leg; he hoped not to have to use any of the pills inside, but he would if absolutely necessary.

He envied A-Bomb. The guy could fall asleep anytime, anywhere, doze ten minutes and then go another twenty four hours. Not only that, but he could then go party his butt off, snooze twenty minutes on a pile of bombs, and come back fresher than a flower the next morning. Truly amazing.

Of course, he drank coffee like it was water. But damn if he never had to pee.

Inhuman. No wonder he’d become a Hog driver.

Mongoose checked the INS, hoping to hell it would work more accurately than usual.

KKMC was now just under an hour away. The crews there had been alerted to perform the fastest hot pit they had ever attempted.

They’d be over their target fifty-five minutes after taking off from KKMC. Assuming the planes cruised well, didn’t run into an unexpected head wind, and didn’t suddenly run low on fuel.

It was all doable. Mongoose had worked the calculations himself. But that was on paper. This was for real.

On paper, everything always went precisely according to plan. Everyone followed the dotted lines. The Iraqis swallowed the bait and Doberman and A-Bomb went in unscathed. Dixon didn’t get lost on the quick jink toward the guns, then followed him out to safety and the tanker.

In real life, Mongoose hoped like all hell the kid hung in there. He’d never forgive himself if he lost him.

A-Bomb rocked off the strip, feeling a little like he was straddling his first Harley, unwinding the big old bastard up the Pennsylvania mountains on 1-81, wind cutting into his face as the road narrowed for a bridge through the fog.

The crew had done something special to the Hog tonight, goosed her engines or something — maybe even juiced the plane with super-unleaded. She was cranked and she was cranking.

“There’s a darkness on the edge of town,” wailed Bruce Springsteen in his ears.

The man knew what he was talking about.

The plane wrapped itself around him like a familiar coat, taking him in its arms as it leapt into the Saudi sky. It was as if it had been waiting for him, counting the hours until Lieutenant Billy James Dixon would return to the cockpit and push its nose toward the dark shadows of Iraq. There was no logic to it, but this A-lOA felt very different than the one he’d ferried back from Al Jouf only a few hours before. It felt different than the others he ’d flown, more familiar than any plane, even the old T-38 he’d spent so much time in. There was definitely something particular, something personal about this particular arrangement of sheet metal.