HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) by Jim DeFelice

pausing for effect.
    But you couldn’t tell who was wise and who wasn’t
by looking at his face, Hack thought. You couldn’t guess what people were worth
by looking at them. They changed. Look at Knowlington— take him out of
Washington, and the guy was actually wise, or damn close to it.
    What about himself? Take him out of an F-15 and
put him in an A-10 and he was worthless.
    Worthless? Just because he’d flubbed the wind correction
on his bombing run?
    Or locked on an armored car instead of a missile
launcher?
    Or hadn’t been aggressive enough? How much more
aggressive could he have been? Aggressive enough to get shot down? What if the
helicopters had been hit?
    What was wisdom? What was folly?
    The minister continued on, his thin voice as
earnest as any Hack had ever heard. The man’s eyes shone like faceted glass as
he spoke, clearly lost in the advice he was giving..
    Preston had listened to many sermons like this in
his life, sometimes with rapt attention, more often with indifference as he
daydreamed about something else. The minister’s voice evoked something
different in him tonight— he thought about how naive the reverend must be, how
innocent of his surroundings.
    He knew it wasn’t fair, and he knew he ought to
get up and find A-Bomb, let him know what was going on. But he stayed
listening, watching the reverend speak. He remained when the service ended and
the others filed out. He remained sitting as the minister closed his book and
walked to the electronic keyboard and turned it off; he watched as the man
walked toward him.
    “Can I help you, son?”
    “I’m as old as you, maybe older,” Preston told
him.
    The minister laughed, nodding his head. “Age comes
with the collar, I’m afraid. I saw you listening to the sermon.”
    “I have a line from Ecclesiastes on my flight board.
I carry it with me every flight. ‘Wisdom exceeds folly.’ ”
    “It does.”
    “But you can’t always tell what’s wise, and what’s
stupid.”
    The reverend bit his lower lip, nodding his head
slowly. The lids of his eyes squeezed together slightly, as if he were
considering the quote for the first time. “I think that may be the point of the
passage,” he said finally.
    “No,” said Hack. “I don’t think so. No one ever
said that,” he added, thinking of all the discussions he’d heard.
    “Maybe they were wrong?”
    “You think what we’re doing here is right? I mean,
we could be fooling ourselves and wouldn’t know it.”
    Hack felt his throat contract as the words ran out
of his mouth. He hadn’t meant to say anything like that— he hadn’t been
consciously thinking of that, and even if he were, he’d never raise the
question with a stranger.
    He stood, surprised at himself, a little
embarrassed even, waiting for the minister to reassure him, to say something
like: “Of course it’s right, justice must be done.”
    It was the sort of thing that chaplains tended to
say. But this one looked at him and said nothing for a moment.
    “I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure,” said the
reverent. “I struggle with it. To see someone die must be a horrible thing.”
    “I’ve never actually seen anyone die,” said Hack.
“But I have killed a man. Or probably. I shot down a MiG.”
    “Does it weigh on your conscience?”
    “No. It doesn’t,” he said honestly. “I hadn’t
really thought of it. Not in that way. Not that I killed someone.”
    How did he think of it? He thought of it as a
contest, a game almost.
    No, as a job. Like the one he’d had in high
school, cutting grass. Something he had to do.
    Surely the other pilot would have killed him if he
had the chance. Did that make it right, or wise?
    Why had he held back on the Splash mission?
    But he hadn’t held back at all. Screw the Army
briefer, screw Hawkins, screw anyone who suggested that. His guys saved two
men’s lives and that was worth something. No matter what you measured it
against.
    “It is a struggle, deciding what