shit, shit, he’s friendly! He’s ours, he’s ours.”
Hack cursed too . The plane his radar had just locked up was an A-10A Warthog.
What the hell was it doing way up here? It sure as hell wasn’t on the air tasking order, at least not that he had seen.
The AWACS controller was yelping in his ear.
“Piranha One acknowledges,” Hack said coolly. “I understand that is a friendly. Tell him not to sweat it. We’re coming south.”
“Probably doesn’t even know you had him by the short hairs,” said Johnny as they turned to head south.
Hack didn’t answer. He suddenly felt angry as hell at the Warthog and its driver, as if the plane had made him miss the MiG.
Damn Warthogs had no business being in the war, let alone being so deep in Iraq. They were old, obsolete, slow, and worst of all, ugly.
Hack ought to know: he’d been a Hog driver for nearly three years before finally kissing enough ass to get promoted to the real Air Force.
Damn stinking Warthog and its dumb-as-shit drivers. Probably got lost.
He checked his position and flicked the radar into air-to-air scan, hunting for his tanker.
CHAPTER 21
A PPROACHING THE IRAQ-SAUDI BORDER
26 JANUARY 1991
1620
E ven a Hog driver had his limits.
After nearly twenty minutes of temptation and ho-hum flight back toward Al Jouf, A-Bomb was overcome by boredom as much as hunger. He reached down to the pocket flap for the Twinkie. The cellophane wrapper teased his fingertips— the pilot rarely wore flight gloves— but the package had somehow wedged itself in the bottom of his pocket and resisted his gentle tug. Under ordinary circumstances, A-Bomb would just yank, squeeze and swallow, but with your last piece of pastry you had to consider Karma. Squishing the delicate icing was very bad luck, especially while you were still over enemy territory. So he leaned down, trying to slip his fingers beneath the cardboard at the base of the pastry and tease it out.
As he did, his eyes caught something on the ground ahead, a small gray shape scuttling along like a crab in a shallow pool. A-Bomb left the Twinkie in his pocket and jerked upright in the seat. A Zil truck with a trailer was running across the desert ahead, maybe ten miles from the Saudi border. This wasn’t some Iraqi dad taking his kid to college, either— the trailer was a 122 mm D-30 towed howitzer, a large and effective medium range artillery piece designed to harass well-meaning trespassers and Coalition troops on the good-guy side of the border.
The Hog sniffed and snorted, her appetite inflamed by the tasty treat. She was in almost perfect position to gobble it up; a good solid push on the stick, perhaps a tad of rudder, and the target would slide into the cannon’s crosshairs at maybe five thousand feet. A-Bomb pushed in, so excited by his good fortune that he forgot he was flying with only one engine.
The A-10A promptly reminded him, bucking her tail behind him. It didn’t amount to more than a slight whimper of complaint, however— A-Bomb barely noticed as the altitude ladder on his HUD scrolled downwards, falling promptly through eight thousand to seven thousand feet. At six thousand, the truck passed into his targeting pipper, but A-Bomb held off, deciding that he would bank behind the truck and come lower, attacking it from the rear with a long, shallow approach, a tactical concession to the fact that he was running with only one engine.
Technically, of course, the concession he should have made was to ignore the target and fly directly back to base. But A-Bomb had never considered himself a technical type. He banked and came around, down now to nearly three thousand feet, a turkey shoot except that the Zil was not only moving faster than he thought but had cut to his right, leaving whatever trail it was following to dart and dodge in the hard-packed sand. A-Bomb corrected but then threw his momentum too far to the right, not only completely losing the shot but nearly putting himself
Hack cursed too . The plane his radar had just locked up was an A-10A Warthog.
What the hell was it doing way up here? It sure as hell wasn’t on the air tasking order, at least not that he had seen.
The AWACS controller was yelping in his ear.
“Piranha One acknowledges,” Hack said coolly. “I understand that is a friendly. Tell him not to sweat it. We’re coming south.”
“Probably doesn’t even know you had him by the short hairs,” said Johnny as they turned to head south.
Hack didn’t answer. He suddenly felt angry as hell at the Warthog and its driver, as if the plane had made him miss the MiG.
Damn Warthogs had no business being in the war, let alone being so deep in Iraq. They were old, obsolete, slow, and worst of all, ugly.
Hack ought to know: he’d been a Hog driver for nearly three years before finally kissing enough ass to get promoted to the real Air Force.
Damn stinking Warthog and its dumb-as-shit drivers. Probably got lost.
He checked his position and flicked the radar into air-to-air scan, hunting for his tanker.
CHAPTER 21
A PPROACHING THE IRAQ-SAUDI BORDER
26 JANUARY 1991
1620
E ven a Hog driver had his limits.
After nearly twenty minutes of temptation and ho-hum flight back toward Al Jouf, A-Bomb was overcome by boredom as much as hunger. He reached down to the pocket flap for the Twinkie. The cellophane wrapper teased his fingertips— the pilot rarely wore flight gloves— but the package had somehow wedged itself in the bottom of his pocket and resisted his gentle tug. Under ordinary circumstances, A-Bomb would just yank, squeeze and swallow, but with your last piece of pastry you had to consider Karma. Squishing the delicate icing was very bad luck, especially while you were still over enemy territory. So he leaned down, trying to slip his fingers beneath the cardboard at the base of the pastry and tease it out.
As he did, his eyes caught something on the ground ahead, a small gray shape scuttling along like a crab in a shallow pool. A-Bomb left the Twinkie in his pocket and jerked upright in the seat. A Zil truck with a trailer was running across the desert ahead, maybe ten miles from the Saudi border. This wasn’t some Iraqi dad taking his kid to college, either— the trailer was a 122 mm D-30 towed howitzer, a large and effective medium range artillery piece designed to harass well-meaning trespassers and Coalition troops on the good-guy side of the border.
The Hog sniffed and snorted, her appetite inflamed by the tasty treat. She was in almost perfect position to gobble it up; a good solid push on the stick, perhaps a tad of rudder, and the target would slide into the cannon’s crosshairs at maybe five thousand feet. A-Bomb pushed in, so excited by his good fortune that he forgot he was flying with only one engine.
The A-10A promptly reminded him, bucking her tail behind him. It didn’t amount to more than a slight whimper of complaint, however— A-Bomb barely noticed as the altitude ladder on his HUD scrolled downwards, falling promptly through eight thousand to seven thousand feet. At six thousand, the truck passed into his targeting pipper, but A-Bomb held off, deciding that he would bank behind the truck and come lower, attacking it from the rear with a long, shallow approach, a tactical concession to the fact that he was running with only one engine.
Technically, of course, the concession he should have made was to ignore the target and fly directly back to base. But A-Bomb had never considered himself a technical type. He banked and came around, down now to nearly three thousand feet, a turkey shoot except that the Zil was not only moving faster than he thought but had cut to his right, leaving whatever trail it was following to dart and dodge in the hard-packed sand. A-Bomb corrected but then threw his momentum too far to the right, not only completely losing the shot but nearly putting himself
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