Free Hogs #4:Snake Eaters by Jim DeFelice Page A

thousand feet.
    Hack and his wingman were just falling into their first sweep when the AWACS broke the loud hush in his ears with the words he’d prayed to hear.
    “Boogies coming off the runway at H-2.”
    Oh yeah , thought Hack. Oh yeah !

CHAPTER 14
    F ORT APACHE
    26 JANUARY 1991
    1540
     
    A- Bomb adjusted the harness on his seat restraint, rocked back and forth and played with the rudder pedals as he sat off to the side of the runway, waiting for Doberman to clear so he could trundle into takeoff position. His Hog had been fueled, he had close to a full combat load in the Gatling-style cannon beneath his chair, and the plane had just been given a personal going over by the best A-10A maintenance tech this side of the capo di capo.
    Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little discombobulated.
    Not anxious, exactly, not worried or nervous. Those words weren’t in his vocabulary, at least not as they pertained to flying. Just off.
    Part of it was the fact that, in order to conserve fuel, the Warthog was going to be pushed to the far end of the runway. Not that he personally cared, but the plane was apt to feel embarrassed, especially with all these Special Ops guys watching. In the pilot’s opinion, the eleven seconds or so of flight time that would be gained weren’t worth the indignity, but Doberman was in such an obviously bad mood today that A-Bomb had just nodded when he suggested that.
    No, what was bothering him went beyond the Hog’s sense of self-esteem. A-Bomb had a full load of coffee, such as it was, in the thermos. The Boss was cued up on the custom-rigged CD system that had been integrated into his personal flightsuit and helmet. But his cupboard was practically bare: no Twizzlers, no Three Musketeers, not even an emergency M&M.
    In fact, his entire store was represented by a single Twinkie. He eyed its bulge in his shin y pocket longingly, aching to swallow it but not wanting to be without hope of sustenance at a critical moment in battle.
    War was hell, but this was total bullshit. It was the kind of thing that really made him mad. Not to mention hungry.
    A-Bomb was aware that most combat pilots, perhaps even all combat pilots, never ate on the job. There was all the flight gear to deal with – the mask, the helmet, the pressure suit. There was gravity and there were vague altitude effects, which played havoc with your taste buds. And admittedly, the wrong crumb in the navigational gear could send you to Beijing instead of Baghdad, though that was the sort of mistake you had to make the most of.
    But A-Bomb wasn’t another combat pilot; he was a Hog driver, and Hog drivers were genetically equipped to do the impossible. He had stuffed a Tootsie Roll in his mouth on his very first flight in an A-10A, savoring the chewy caramel flavor through his first roll. Few things in the world could compare to the shock of four or five gs hitting you square in the esophagus as you bit down on a Drake’s cherry pie. It made the blood race; it made you feel like you were an American, connected to the great unbroken chain of 7-Elevens strung across the Heartland. It was what he was fighting for, after all.
    A-Bomb shook his head and watched as Doberman lit his Hog’s twin turbofans at the far end of the Apache base and start down the runway. Unlike many other planes, the Hogs were equipped with on-board starters that allowed them to operate at scratch bases like these; they were just one of the many features that made the A-10 the ultimate do-it-yourself airplane. Doberman’s mount picked up speed, jerking herself in the sky two hundred feet before the wadi.
    Rosen ran in front of A-Bomb’s Hog and gave him a thumbs up. The pilot released the brakes, sighing to himself as the soldiers began pushing the plane forward. He could tell the Hog didn’t like this – she grunted and creaked, dragging her tail across the concrete like a dog yelled at for peeing on the rug.
    “Get over it,” he barked at the plane. She