Free Hogs #2: Hog Down by Jim DeFelice Page A

to
get away. His throttle was full out as he zoomed away, beyond the attack.
    It
was a vulnerable moment; he was moving quickly but well framed against the
horizon. He pushed his stick, kicked his rudders and bent his body hard to the
right. He hit flares as a precaution against a shoulder-fired weapon, and bolted
from the bubbling cauldron of fire and burning sand. They were shooting at him.
All Iraq was trying to kill him; even if their bullets were puny, a bullet was
a bullet. He held it full bore, hell-bent on getting away, skimming the ground
low enough to count grains of sand. Finally sensing he was clear, Mongoose
started to nose up, grabbing for more sky. He felt his chest muscles relaxing.
There was a vehicle now he hadn’t seen here along the highway; they were
firing, too, a lot of shit reaching out for him but nothing he couldn’t handle.
He pushed the plane to get around, to get back and cover A-Bomb’s run.
    He’d
smashed the crap of Saddam, nailed both Scuds. Who knew? Maybe the stinking
chemical crap the bastard intended dumping on the Americans— or maybe the
Israelis— was now wafting below, killing his own men.
    Served
them right.
    Mongoose
took a long, relaxed breath, the easiest since they had cross the border, and
keyed his mike to tell A-Bomb he could start his pass.
    In
that second, something thumped behind him, and he felt a flutter in his stomach
that extended all the way back to his engines.

CHAPTER 14
    OVER IRAQ
    21 JANUARY 1991
    1840
     
     
    A -Bomb shouted when he saw the flash from the
far end of the underpass. By then it was far too late for anything he could do
to have much of an effect, but he didn’t think about that. He keyed his mike to
give the warning, and in practically the same motion he pushed the nose of his
plane down and smashed the trigger, hoping that his flailing bullets would
suppress any more fire. He couldn’t hold the angle well enough to nail the
target, which passed by in a blur; he tried rolling and diving back but even A-Bomb
could only bend Newton’s laws so far. He got a good glimpse of the bastard,
though— a Roland SAM launcher, sitting atop an AMX tank chassis and just about
ready to dish up another missile.
    At
him.
    He
yanked the Hog hard to the north, goosing the throttle and hunkering down,
wondering why the Scuds hadn’t caused a big enough explosion to take out the
Roland. The Hog’s ECM unit was useless against the missile’s Siemens J-band low-PRF
tracking radar, which used techniques perfected well after the pod came on
line. All he could do was jink and fly like hell.
    A-Bomb
keyed his mike and shouted his warning to Mongoose again. Then he concentrated
on his own plane, his own body, pushing it away. He had the throttle to the
firewall. The Hog leapt forward with the lust of a race horse leaving the gate.
He let the plane have her head for a few seconds, then took another hard turn,
rolling out at the same time and just about cracking the plane’s back as he
whacked it sideways, exploring new dimensions in geometry. He flew the Warthog
harder than an aerobatics plane, pushing it over, and under, and back again,
trying to undo the knot the SAM had tied.
    The
Roland could move just over Mach 1.6. She had a limited range, though; he could
win if he could run just a little further.
    He
glanced back and saw it coming for him, just about softball size and getting
bigger in the rear quarter of his canopy.
    Maybe
he didn’t see it at all; maybe his imagination was painting it there for him,
because no way in real life could you see a Roland this long after it had been
fired. He’d gone what? Ten miles at least. And still he felt the damn thing
homing in on his head like Saddam had painted a big bull’s eye there.
    No
way it could still be coming for him. Damn thing weighed less than 150 pounds,
and it couldn’t all be fuel.
    He
jinked again, this time so low to the desert floor he would have had to look up
to change the oil on a Jeep. There was