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

throbbed at the mention of Sergeant Rosen.
She was a damn good worker and smarter than hell, but she had caused Skull
nothing but trouble. She had a way of pissing off half the officers who crossed
her path. The rest made passes at her— not her fault certainly, but her way of
dealing with them fell somewhat outside the parameters of the Military Code of
Conduct.
    Worse, she’d recently joined Delta Force in an
unauthorized foray across the border to help the Army retrieve a battered
helicopter. A good many butts were hanging in the wind because a woman had gone
over enemy lines.
    Not that she hadn’t done a kick-ass job and
probably single-handedly saved the operation.
    “Your usual channels can’t get this stuff?” Skull
asked, trying to make sense of the specifications.
    “My channels are military,” said Clyston. “Turns
out, those are pretty rare little circuits. Rosen claims she can adapt them to
regulate the voltage and then use that to feed back against the errors. Has a
little card designed and everything, neat as a pin. She’s a whip, I’m telling
you.”
    “It’ll work?”
    “She says so, if we can find the parts.” Clyston
shrugged. “You know somebody at GE, right? They probably have something like
that. Or they’d get us onto someone. Maybe a regular supplier of theirs or
something. That G.E. guy now— Rogers, right?””
    No, not Rogers. Jeff Roberts, who’d flown Phantoms
with Skull out in California. Some sort of senior vice president at the company
now. Probably didn’t know shit about radios, but he’d like this. Roberts had
always talked about finding ways around the brass, military or otherwise.
    Skull did know a Rogers, though. Had known.
    Captain “Slammin’ Sammy” Rogers had gone out over
Vietnam, ended up a POW. Supposedly, he’d been at Son Tay with a bunch of other
guys shortly before the raid there in ’70. Knowlington had led one of the
support packages, flying a Phantom.
    The raid came up empty; Rogers never came home.
    “Captain Roberts,” said Clyston.
    “I think he went out as a lieutenant colonel,”
said Skull.
    Clyston’s left shoulder edged up slightly in a
shrug. “Pretty much a captain’s attitude, though. It stays with you
    “Oh, that’s a new theory.”
    “F no,” said Clyston. He smiled. “Guy has a rank
stays with him for life, whatever the stripes say. Or what have you.”
    “What rank am I?”
    “Oh, a colonel. Definitely. Not full of shit
enough to be a general. No offense.” Clyston smiled.
    The capo probably hadn’t come here to give him the
parts list. He must know about Skull’s drinking. The reference to Roberts— a
subtle hint that he ought to resign?
    Clyston could be very subtle. But he was also
pretty straight. Very straight.
    Skull folded the piece of paper and put it down on
his desk. “You got something you want to say, Allen?”
    “Huh? Not me. You?”
    A ton of things. Angry things: How dare a sergeant
hint that a colonel hang it up? A stinking decorated colonel with three
confirmed air kills and well over a hundred combat sorties, medals up the
yahoo, friends in all the right places— what gave some sergeant who’d never had
his fat butt graze an enemy’s gunsight, by the way, the right, the audacity, to
hint that he was over the hill?
    Calmer things: Gratitude for pulling the men
together maybe a million times, for making planes whole, for moving heaven and
earth to keep the Hogs flying.
    Other things: Sadness over people like Rogers who
hadn’t made it back, frustration over the delays and screwups and the human
factors, fatigue and nerves. Rage that they were both growing so damn old, that
after all these years, after all they knew, they had to keep sending kids to
places where they could die.
    But words were not things that came easily to
Skull. There were too many, and no way of prioritizing them— no checklist to
follow, no map to plod your way through. Much easier to stay silent— and so