Hogs #4:Snake Eaters by Jim DeFelice

the fur started flying, he and his plane would do what was natural – leaky hydraulic system, missing wing, whatever. Doberman might bitch and growl, but in the end he’d understand.
    His leader’s tail was a small black line in the upper left quadrant of his windshield. The loose trail formation was a de rigueur Hog lineup for a two-plane element. It was basically follow-the-leader with a slight offset; the trail plane off the right or left wing back anywhere from a half-mile to three, depending on the circumstances. The planes would generally fly at slightly different altitudes, making it a little more difficult for an approaching enemy to pick out both in one glance. Freelancing attack gigs like this sortie and the others typically flown by Hogs tended to be somewhat less precise than the carefully orchestrated plans employed by vast packages of advanced bombers and escorts, but they were well suited to the ground support mission. The Devil Squadron’s trail formation was almost infinitely flexible, the wingman protecting the lead plane’s six while allowing for a quick, two-fisted ground attack or a more leisurely figure-eight wheel and dive when it was time to boogie.
    “How’s that repair holding up?” Doberman asked.
    “Fine,” A-Bomb replied. “I’m dyin’ up here, though. Nothing to eat.”
    “You didn’t check the seat for crumbs?”
    “Now that you mention it, there’s probably a gum drop or two under the sofa. Probably full of cat’s hair, though.”
    “This is war, Gun. You have to rough it.”
    “It’s what I’m talking about,” said A-Bomb. Now that he thought about it, he probably had dropped something on the floor during the morning’s mission. He rocked the Hog left and right and pitched the nose up, trying to shake something loose.
    Then the plane jerked hard to the left, much harder than it should have. A-Bomb felt the G’s snap into his body as he muscled the stick, got the Hog back.
    He knew by the feel even before he checked his gauges that it wasn’t the hydraulics. He’d lost power in his right engine.
    Gone. Dead. Dormant.
    What the hell?
    A-Bomb worked through the restart procedure, thought he had a cough.
    Nada. He tried twice more and came up empty.
    Serious caution lights; the damn cockpit looked like a Christmas tree.
    Well, all right, a slight exaggeration. But this is what came of flying without even a good luck Three Musketeers bar.
    A-Bomb cast his eyes toward his last resort – the lone Twinkie. Then he snapped the mike button in disgust.
    “Devil One, this is Two. I’ve got a situation.”

CHAPTER 15
    I RAQ
    26 JANUARY 1991
    1540
     
    T hree weeks ago to the day, Bristol Wong had been enjoying a leisurely game of chess in a small club frequented by Pentagon and CIA intelligence specialists in Alexandria, Virginia. With its thick leather chairs, horse paintings, and British decor, the club appealed to the Air Force captain’s innate sense of culture and decorum. The fact that a good game of chess and reasonably decent sherry could always be had there didn’t hurt. But on that very day, Wong had no sooner settled into a Sicilian defense— old hat to be sure, but he was playing a former CIA agent well known for his love of extreme symmetry— when his beeper vibrated. Wong knew immediately that he was going to hate the next four or five weeks of his life.
    An hour after returning the call , Wong found himself aboard a Navy transport plane, en-route to Saudi Arabia, armed with a title several sentences long that had little to do with his actual mission. Officially, his job was to “consult and brief” Centcom on Iraqi air defenses. His actual task was to gather information about any and all advanced Soviet systems in the theater, which would be provided back-channel to the Pentagon G2’s chief of staff. The dual nature of his mission was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, at least not for Wong who was, after all, the world’s greatest expert on