HOGS #6 Death Wish (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Read Free Page A

clean except for the Sidewinders and ECM
pod, the Hog fluttered slightly, urging her pilot to recover to the right as
planned. But Hack’s attention stayed focused on the ground in front of him, the
sticks steadily growing from twigs to thick branches. The bark roughened and indentations
appeared. They were armored personnel carriers, all set out in a line. He could
see hatches and machine guns, sloped ports. He stared at them as they grew,
watching with fascination as they became more and more real, yet remained the
playthings of a kid.
    Finally he pulled his stick back, belatedly
realizing he’d flown so close to the ground that the exploding blomblets might
very well clip his wings. He reached for throttle, slamming the Hog into
overdrive, ducking his body with the plane as he tried desperately to push her
off to the south.
    It was only as the Hog began to recover that Hack
realized he hadn’t bothered to correct for the wind, which could easily send a
stick of bombs tumbling off target.
    As he twisted his head back to get a look, A-Bomb’s
garbled voice jangled his ears. He started to ask his wingmate to repeat, then
realized what the words meant.
    Someone on the ground had fired a
shoulder-launched SAM at Hack’s tailpipe.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 4
    OVER SOUTHEASTERN IRAQ
    28 JANUARY 1991
    1130
     
    A-Bomb repeated his warning, then stepped
hard on his rudder pedal, twisting his A-10A in the air. The ants that had
emerged from the burned out bunker were fat and pretty in his screen— no way
could he waste a shot like this, even if there were missiles in the air. He
kissed his cluster bombs good-bye, then tossed a parcel of flares off for luck,
tucking the Hog into a roll.
    He swirled almost backward in the air, goosing
more decoy flares off before finally pushing Devil Two level in the opposite
direction he’d taken for the attack. If either of the SA-7s that had been
launched had been aimed at him, his zigging maneuvers had tied their primitive
heat seekers in knots.
    Probably.
    Something detonated in the air about a half-mile
north of him. Immediately above the explosion, but a good mile beyond it, Devil
One crossed to the west.
    Assured that his wingmate hadn’t been hit, A-Bomb
pulled his plane over his shoulder, flailing back at the armored depot to share
his feelings at being fired on.
    “I’m a touchy feely kind of guy,” he explained as
Iraqis scattered below. “So let me just hug you close.”
    The 30mm Avenger cannon began growling below his
feet. About the size of the ’59 Caddy A-Bomb had on blocks back home, the Gatling’s
seven barrels sped around furiously as high-explosive and uranium
armor-piercing shells were fed in by a duet of hydraulic motors, only to be
dispensed by the Gat with furious relish. The recoil from the gun literally held
the Hog in the air as the pilot worked the stream of bullets through the top
armor of three APCs.
    As smoke and debris filled the air before him; A-Bomb
pushed the Hog to the right, leaning against the stick to fight off a sudden
tsunami of turbulence. He let off the trigger as he came to the end of the row,
pushing away now at only fifteen hundred feet, close enough for some of the
crazy ragheads on his left to actually take aim with their Kalashnikovs. The
assault rifles’ 7.62mm bullets were useless against the titanium steel
surrounding the Hog’s cockpit, and it would take more than a hundred of them to
seriously threaten the honeycombed wings with their fire-retardant inserts
protecting the fuel tanks. Still, it was the thought that counted.
    “I admire the hell out of you,” said A-Bomb. Then
he turned back to nail the SOBs. “Let me show you what a real gun can do.” As
he zipped back for the attack, the Iraqis dove on the ground. “Do the words ‘thirty-millimeter
cannon’ mean anything to you? How about u-rain-ee-um?”
     
     
     

CHAPTER 5
    OVER SOUTHEASTERN IRAQ
    28 JANUARY 1991
    1135
     
    Tiny bubbles of sweat climbed up the sides
of