HOGS #5: TARGET SADDAM (Jim DeFelice’s HOGS First Gulf War series) Read Online Free Page A

capi, and wizard of
wizards. He ran Devil Squadron. The unit was commanded by Colonel Knowlington
and staffed by a fine collection of officers, but like any efficient military
organization the chief master sergeants ran things. And Clyston was the CHIEF,
with all capital letters— the squadron’s master of fate and minder of souls.
    Rosen
smiled, and Doberman felt his knees starting to tremble.
    No
shit.
    “Relax,
Captain. I’m just being cautious,” she said. “Plane can go at least another
hundred hours without fiddling with the motor or anything else. I promise.
Honest. It’s showroom pretty.”
    “Planes
look weird,” said A-Bomb.
    “Captain?”
asked Rosen.
    “No
bombs. No Mavs,” said A-Bomb, shaking his head sadly. “No rockets. Nothing.
Naked. What I’m talking about here is nude. Out of uniform. Obscene. Got to be
a reg against it.”
    “We’re
flying straight to Fahd,” snapped Doberman. “What do you want to do, bomb
Riyadh?”
    “If
it needs bombing, I’m up for it,” said A-Bomb. He slapped the front of
Doberman’s Hog. “Even the Gat’s empty.”
    “Begging
your pardon, but your cannon has been reloaded,” said Rosen in a tone that
suggested she wasn’t begging anything. “As is Captain Glenon’s. And he has
fresh Sidewinders.”
    Her
voice softened ever so slightly when she mentioned the air-to-air missiles, and
she glanced back at Glenon. Last night, Doberman had made Hog history by using
the Sidewinder in a dogfight— even better, he had managed to nail a MiG in what
had to rate as the most lopsided battle since open cockpit P-26s tangled with
Japanese Zeroes at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Doberman had, in fact, saved Rosen’s
life— as well as the lives of three other people aboard a small AH-6 fleeing
Iraqi air space.
    But
as far as the world was concerned, Doberman’s exploit hadn’t occurred. Command
had declared that the need to keep ground operations north of the border secret
extended to the aircraft supporting those operations. In other words,
Doberman’s flight hadn’t happened, and therefore the shoot-down hadn’t happened—
officially.
    Unofficially,
every member of the A-10 community either knew about the shoot-down or would
shortly. Glenon wouldn’t get a medal or headlines, but he’d be stood plenty of
beers. And knowing he’d save Rosen felt loads better to Doberman than taking
salutes from a dozen dumbass generals.
    As
for kissing her . . .
    That
would have to wait. Doberman sighed as the sergeant turned her attention back
to A-Bomb, who was whining about not getting a full complement of Mavericks, or
at least cluster bombs, beneath his wings for the routine ferry flight home.
The tech sergeant demonstrated her experience in grade by restricting herself
to a single smirk as she walked away, leaving the two jocks to saddle up and
get on with the morning flight.
    From
a pilot’s point of view, flying the Warthog was a relatively straight-forward
operation. The A-10A personified the concept of no frills flying. Its cockpit
would have been familiar to the P-26 pilot.
    Well,
some of it, at least. No P-26 pilot ever dreamed of a heads-up display,
and even though it was slightly underpowered and agonizing slow by contemporary
standards, its twin turbos pumped Doberman into the sky at a pace that would have
left the P-26 pilot gasping.
    Glenon
eased his stick back gently, the Hog’s fuel-filled wings lifting the plane
easily into the sky. Unlike nearly every other jet designed after the 1940s,
the A-10A’s wings were not swept back, part of a design strategy to
enhance low-speed/low-altitude maneuverability. The fuselage’s rather odd
shape— it looked like a beached whaleboat with wings— was the result of two
other design strategies: survivability and maximum firepower. A good hunk of
the front end weight came from a ring of titanium that protected the pilot’s sides
and fanny from artillery fire. The rest came from the Avenger 30 mm cannon,
arguably the most