Hogs #1: Going Deep Read Free Page A

of his problem was physical. But Dixon couldn't get the voice to
do anything but yell impotently.
The A-10, confused by its pilot's commands, started heading toward the ground.
    ***
    Doberman smashed the throttle and threw the Hog into a
tight turn, trying to get inside the Mirage and set up an overshoot– putting
the faster but less maneuverable plane ahead of him, a classic turn-the-tables
ploy. The Mirage pilot anticipated the move, and traded some of his altitude
for speed, breaking off in a diving straight line away. The move would have
meant death for the Iraqi if Doberman had been able to complete his turn; even with the widening
range and the lost
energy, his Sidewinders probably could have caught
the Mirage.
    But Doberman didn't have a prayer of turning in time, much less firing his heat-seekers; in
fact, he didn't dare complete his turn . The bogey had tossed off two heat seekers just as the
Hog started away. One shot off wild, sucking the fire off one of the diversionary flares the Hog
driver kicked out.
    The other sniffed the air and caught a faint whiff of Hog turbofan dead ahead.
    ***
    Dixon blinked his eyes, focusing not on the windscreen
but the horizon indicator below it. He had to get it level. That was his first job, before all others.
    The round sphere spun madly, whirling with no discernible axis. It fluttered and
waved and shook without any
pattern. It refused to be controlled, refused to assume any direction other than its own.
    The pilot reached out and grabbed it, sparks flying from
his hands. The sparks ignited his flight suit, burning his safety harness away, setting his
arms and chest on fire.
    He held on. His breath roared in his ears, rapid as the rod on a locomotive's wheels. His
entire body was on fire, but he held the
sphere tight.
    It stopped spinning . The cowl around his head
lifted ever so slightly.
He had both hands on the stick, and he had control
of the bomb-laden Hog.
    “The plane is level,” he heard himself say. Next step, climb to a safe altitude.
    •How do you climb? You put the nose toward the stars, you pull your arm gently back, you
feel your chest relax...
    Slowly, his eyes rose with the nose of the plane. The pilot found himself staring into the
muddled gray of the Iraqi dawn.
    But where there should be clouds, he saw flowers - hundreds and hundreds of grayish-white
lilies. Their mouths turned
toward him, delicate satin tongues that brushed gently against the hard surface of the warplane's
fuselage. Dixon and his
Hog were surrounded, folded in an endless blanket
of beautiful flowers.
    It was the most wondrous thing he'd ever seen. And then he realized that he had seen these
flowers before.
    At his mother's funeral three months ago.

CHAPTER 3
    OVER WESTERN IRAQ
    0658
     
    Several miles to the west, Devil One and Devil Three
were mopping up their attack on a similar set of dishes and trailers. Flown by two of the most
experienced pilots in the squadron,
the Hogs had made a serious dent in the Iraqi air defense system. They might looked
more like bathtubs with wings
than attack planes, but together the two Hogs had done enough damage to impress even a
snot-nose Strike Eagle commander.
    With a lot less fuss than a sissy-ass state-of-the-art
F-15E required, thought the pilot of Devil Three, Captain Thomas Peter “A-Bomb”
O'Rourke. Like a lot of other committed A-10A drivers, A-Bomb had nothing but disdain for the pointy-nose, fast-jet community.
Unlike most other Hog drivers,
he expressed it at every opportunity.
    Just now, his audience was an Iraqi radar trailer. In
all likelihood, its crewmen didn't hear a word he was saying, even though he was shouting
at the top of his lungs.
    They'd get the message soon enough. He held his Hog's
stick tight between his knees as he squeezed the trigger at the top of the handle. Dust erupted
from the building, metal evaporating under the ferocious onslaught of cannon
shells. The pilot
stopped yelling and stared at the windscreen in front