Victory Point - Ed Darack [117]
Soon after the drones of the Grips’ turbofans faded into the background of the Hindu Kush, the Boars sped into zone. Meanwhile, Pigeon’s radio operator had gotten the FAC’s communications up and running once again. Pigeon, who was accustomed to going into battle in the front seat of a Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet, driving the supersonic aircraft with steel-cold nerves, carried that experience with him on his ground tour, under the press of combat. But it was one thing to be forced to watch fellow Marines thrown into the air by RPG blasts and to witness a mortar-shell burst just meters above his head, not to mention the continuous barrage of machine-gun rounds ripping throughout his position. Having to deal with his failing radio was quite another.
“Come on, Pigeon. Get that shit rollin’!” Konnie wailed. “Get some! Motherfuckers be turnin’ tail and runnin’! Clear some shit hot and shred those bastards! Dorf’s marks are on the ground!”
Boar-21 jumped on the net, “coaching” Pigeon: “Venom, slow it down, buddy. We know you’re in a shit sandwich. Take a second and key the mike before you talk. We’re here to help you, but if we can’t understand what you want to communicate, we can’t do anything but fly around way, way above all the action. Talk us on. Get us into the thick of it.”
Pigeon sat back and laughed at the irony of his situation. He remembered his time in the cockpit of a Hornet during OIF-I, supporting an FAC near Al Asad, in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. That guy was in a panic, he thought. Pigeon had told the FAC in Al Asad to slow it down, just as the Boar pilots directed him—but he wasn’t in a panic that day in the Hindu Kush, far from it, in fact. His radio was teetering on the edge of frying itself, sending out chopped transmissions. He finally got it working yet again.
“Konnie.” Pigeon looked toward the lieutenant. “Listen; these guys can’t attack unless they have a confirmed target. I’ve been too busy working this radio and coordinating the air side of things to get eyes on to confirm anything. Their rules, you know. You got a confirmed target?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely I got targets,” Konnie piped up. “All along that ridge to the east.” He peered through binoculars and passed positive identification of the fighters to Pigeon, noting their positions relative to Dorf’s illum marks. “The bad guys are fleeing. Smoke-check their asses. Every last one of ’em!”
Pigeon nodded, “Gotcha. Roger. Will do,” the FAC said, then he and Dorf expertly deconflicted the mortar fire, having Middendorf shut down the mortar barrage to ensure that the A-10s wouldn’t collide with a high-explosive mortar round meant for one of Ahmad Shah’s men. Seconds later, after passing to the A-10 pilot a “nine-line brief”—a standardized set of instructions guiding a pilot onto a ground target—Pigeon uttered the words that Konnie had been waiting so desperately to hear: “Boar-21, you’re cleared-hot for a thirty mike-mike gun run.”
“Roger.” Boar-21’s voice echoed from the radio. The Marines gazed skyward as the A-10 approached the target ridgeline, made a tight bank turn, then dove into an attack run. Cheers rang out as the target lit up like a massive, high-speed Fourth of July sparkler as the 30 mm rounds detonated in coruscating explosions upon impact. Then the Warthog banked hard, expending flares—standard operating procedure to cloak its path from potential incoming ground-to-air heat-seeking missiles—and pulled into the cobalt sky above. Heartbeats later, the sound of the furious salvo echoed throughout Fox-3’s position, a deliciously guttural brrrrrrrrr! of loosed high-explosive rounds, punctuated by the whine of the aircraft’s twin turbofan engines. Three more cleared-hot gun runs, and Pigeon sent the Boars back to base.
“Thanks for a great job,” Pigeon calmly announced.
“No problem. Anytime, Venom,” one of the pilots replied.
With that job completed, Pigeon’s most difficult task of the day began. The Army UH-60 Air