Jim DeFelice: Going Deep

I started writing the Hogs series early in my career, soon after the end of what we now call the First Gulf War. The A-10A was still something of an ugly duckling — or Warthog — at the time, though the men who’d seen her in action were quick with praise. The planes and their crews gave everything they had in that war, and then some; the colonel who “owned” the Hogs after the conflict used rather colorful language when explaining their condition to me following the fight.

Things are different now. It seems as if the whole world knows about the Hogs. They’ve been overhauled and upgraded considerably since the war, so much so that they’ve been rechristened as A-1 °Cs. But they’re still amazing tough… and still darn ugly.

Good ugly.

Another thing that hasn’t changed — Hog drivers are still a rare breed, throwback stick and rudder types whose skills squeeze every ounce of capability from their amazing machines. Man and beast are lean and lethal warriors, perfectly matched.

I was still learning — I still am learning — when I wrote those books. One of my regrets is that, in portraying the squadron, I had to cut down dramatically on the number of people and streamline the various tasks involved to keep the story manageable. There were probably ten or twenty people in the real squadron for every one person depicted in the books. I wish I could have depicted and thereby honored everyone who contributed to their success.

About the pseudonym, James Ferro — it was a marketing device at the time, suggested by the publisher (I believe) so readers wouldn’t be confused by the historical fiction I was also writing. The last name is a tribute to my wife’s family, most especially my late father-in-law, a no-nonsense, meat and potatoes Marine, whom I’m sure wouldn’t have minded a few Hogs flying overhead when he was in Korea.

The desert stretched without borders, without anything but heat and pink light. It lay as it had lain for thousands of years; silent, undisturbed, impenetrable…

And then came the roar…

It started as the somber rattle from the back of a dying man’s throat. The next second a hurricane pounded the air, whipping sand and stone in fury.

Then something infinitely worse exploded in the sky, something metallic, something swirling, something from hell. Four black beasts filled the southeastern horizon like the lions of the Apocalypse. The reflection of morning light off the sand splayed like blood across their wings, vengeance glistening against their seething muscles. Their dark bodies profaned the pink flesh of the horizon, thirsting for the judgment of fire and damnation.

Startled from the half-daze of a monotonous watch, the sentry grabbed his rifle and flung himself against the sand filled bags at the front of the trench. It took a moment for his brain to register the fact that the planes were coming from the south and not the north — they were friends, not foes. The thick canisters of death slung beneath their wings were not meant for him…

“What the hell are those?” he asked his companion as the planes roared over their positions.

The other soldier laughed. “You never saw A-10 Warthogs before?”

“They’re on our side?”

“You better pray to God they are.”

“Get into the damn cursor now!” Doberman shouted at the fuzzy shadow in the corner of his infrared targeting screen. He pushed all of his 120 pounds into the A-lOA’s seat harness, as if his body’s momentum might somehow improve his aim — or help hold the target steady. But the huge dish of the Iraqi ground intercept radar station continued to slosh around in the screen, refusing to lock. Doberman blamed the wind and clouds, cursed his adrenaline, and kept his hands glued to the controls as he pushed below twelve thousand feet, his only aim in life to blow a good hunk of Iraqi early-warning hardware to Hell where it belonged.

Outside the bubble cockpit, Devil Two’s straight, stubby wings cut through the thick air, balanced perfectly by several thousand pounds of ordinance. The Hog’s twin GE TF34 turbofans, mounted above the fuselage like Flash Gordon’s rocket pack, pushed the nose of the dark green warplane faster and faster toward the gristly sand of the desert.

From a distance, the A-10A looked a bit like a winged pickup truck headed for disaster.

Up close, it looked like a weathered two-by-four loaded for bear.

Inside the cockpit, Captain Thomas “Doberman” Glenon narrowed his eyes until he saw only the television screen in the top right-hand corner of his instrument panel. Slaved to the infra-red seeking device in the nose of his air-to-ground Maverick G missile, the display provided the pilot with a heat picture of the ground below him. Finally, it glowed radar dish; he locked, drew a half-breath, and clicked the trigger. Devil Two kicked slightly as the missile whipped out from beneath her wing. The pilot caught a glimpse of the Maverick’s exhaust and stared at it, momentarily entranced by his first launch in combat. He snapped back to attention, thumbed another missile up, and pointed the A-lOA’s nose in the direction of what ought to be a long metal trailer jammed with radar equipment. He launched, then rolled up another one.

No matter how much you trained for combat, no matter how refined the lines and arrows on the maps, real life blurred past you like a freight train flinging itself down a ravine. Doberman barely realized what he was doing, pushing buttons and talking to himself, searching his front windscreen for his second target. Forever and forever passed. Every curse known to man failed to get the stinking thing to show up. Altitude kept bleeding away. Doberman mashed his teeth together, his face gnarling into the unflattering pose that had helped earn him his nickname. He was ready to concede he’d lost his way when something clicked in his head; without conscious thought he pulled the trigger. In the next moment the Maverick went whoosh-bam-thank-you-ma’am, flinging its three hundred pounds of high explosive toward an Iraqi radar trailer.

Less than a minute had passed since he had begun his bombing run, but it had seemed like a lifetime. The plane was already low enough to draw serious anti-aircraft fire. He kicked his head back and got ready to take some Gs.

Flying in Devil Four, Lieutenant William James “BJ” Dixon had lost Doberman as soon as the lead plane began its bombing run. Dixon was late eyeballing his target area, late putting his eyes over to the Maverick screen. Everything came at him twenty times faster than it should. The fact that he’d practiced this attack several times over the past few days didn’t matter, and the abilities that had helped him rate among the best pilots at every stage of his training seemed to have deserted him. His head felt like it was a hand grenade with the pin removed. His arms and legs moved as if through heavy oil. The Hog growled at him, yelling at the pilot to get his shit together. No drill instructor had a meaner snarl.