Imminent Threat (6 page)

    “Definitely,” I replied. “Hey, Big John’s got a letter in here, the lucky SOB!”

    A moment later, I handed two sweet-scented letters to Cowboy, who we all knew wasn’t married. He snatched them up and disappeared. PBJ had a letter. I put it next to Big John’s.

    I was almost through the stack when I found a letter from Katie. It smelled heavily of perfume and far better than Cowboy’s—at least to me. She’d sprayed it with Poison, my favorite scent—when she was wearing it.

    I slapped Ray on the back and escaped to the crew lounge. I found a quiet corner and unsealed the letter. I could see Katie’s face as I read the words. The scent of the perfume was overwhelming.

    I read and reread the letter three times. That night I stuck it under my sleeping bag so her scent was near. In the letter she told me that someone from the squadron had come over and fixed the car, one less worry. I still don’t know why I had to get that damn distributor cap and rotor in. I was glad to hear the car was fixed and that from what I understood the folks at the squadron were keeping the families updated.

Awakened in the manner I was slowly becoming accustomed to, a flashlight shining in my eyes, I lurched up.

    “Alert,” whispered a familiar voice, “I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up. Which one is Allen?”

    Allen who? I wasn’t fully awake yet, and then I considered the question. “Third cot down, against the wall, but he’s on Captain Willie’s crew.”

    “I know,” replied Mike.

    “Wait a minute, you alerting Captain Willie’s crew or what?” I asked, attempting to sit up.

    “Two crews,” Mike whispered back, while shining the flashlight at Allen, “Alert. I’ll be back in one hour to pick you up. Which one is Todd?”

    “If you weren’t in Hotel California, you’d know,” Allen said wryly.

    “PBJ’s in the other building,” I answered before Allen said anything more. “What do you mean, two crews? We weren’t supposed to be flying. I thought crew four was.”

    “Crew four had the O’dark-thirty.”

    “Why two crews?” I repeated.

    “You’ll have to wait. Is Happy in here?”

    I reached out with my foot and kicked the cot kitty-corner to mine. Happy lurched up. “Alert, I’ll be back in an hour,” Mike said.

    I put my feet onto the cold floor, reached for my flight suit just as Mike eased out the door. After fumbling around in the dark for my own flashlight, I grabbed my toothbrush and headed outside.

    It was cold outside. I had the unfortunate luck of finding both bathrooms occupied. When I finally did get inside and splashed icy cold water onto my face, I was wide awake. My thoughts were running—two crews? Had something transpired during the night that we weren’t aware of?

    The rec tent was my next stop and since I was the only one in it, I turned the TV on. There was still no heater.

    The news wasn’t much different from any other day. After a few minutes I went back into the PME to gather my gear and find breakfast. Breakfast was a can of mixed fruit and a breakfast bar.

    Shortly afterward, two crew vans pulled in front of ops and an unhappy gaggle of crewers piled out, me included. Inside the ops building everything was buzzing. It was readily apparent that something big was about to take place. As all of us tried to sign our flight orders and check the big board at the same time, the ops center quickly became overcrowded.

    The intel briefing started well. The overview map depicting orbits was an absolute mess and among the mess two EC-130 orbits were scrawled in bright red. I keyed in as the briefer outlined the day’s targets, but I wouldn’t understand the big picture until after the pilot’s briefing and during the MCC’s briefing.

    “Today will be one of the busiest days of the war to date for us as well as our counterparts to the south,” began Tennessee Jim. “We’re not only going to support one package group of multiple waves, but two package groups of multiple waves. This means our orbit time is essentially doubled. The first package group will sweep in in separate waves, engage their targets, come out, land, refuel and re-arm, then take off again for another entire round of bombardment.”

    Jim paused to spit into his ever-present cup. “A-group’s target, the nuclear R&D facility here—” he slapped the big map with his pointer “—is a critical target. Part of our job and that of the package we’ll be supporting is to divert Saddam’s eye northward while an enormous strike force that includes an entire wing of Fighting Falcons closes in on Baghdad.

    “The mission of the Fighting Falcons is to avert or destroy Iraqi fighters fleeing to Iran. Over the past week increasing numbers of Iraqi fighters have been fleeing to Iran for safekeeping. We simply cannot let Saddam Hussein keep those fighters from being destroyed.”

    I swallowed a lump in my throat. Jim continued, “Our mission in all this is to keep the Iraqi forces confused by jamming as many of their command and control, air defense, and other communications as we can find to ensure that our fighters have a clear way in and out. This means jamming enemy SAM, AAA, and other ground comms almost exclusively.”

    Jim paused, spit into his cup, and put down the pointer. “Our crew will be the primary crew. We’ll stay on orbit throughout the entire engagement. Captain Willie’s crew has what I’d call the quarterback fake. They’ll go out an hour before us and set up on orbit with all the usual array of support aircraft, the full CAP and everything.

    “We’ll take off an hour after they do and while they pedal as fast as they can to the forward edge, we’ll cut throttles and go in slow and low. Once our crew is set up on a low orbit, Captain Willie’s crew will cut their jammers and drop way back. Afterward, they’ll provide support only if necessary.

    “At the appropriate time, we’ll pop up and go to work slamming and jamming. The job only we do best!” Jim smiled. “If all goes according to plan, we’ll lose no planes to enemy AAA nor to SAMs. And no Iraqi planes will escape to Iran.”

    Jim paused to catch his breath. My face was aglow with enthusiasm. “Today will be our longest combat mission to date. More than nine hours from wheels up to wheels down, a very long time to be airborne over any combat zone.”

     Right then I was thankful that I had a fair amount of sleep and that I had packed two cans of beanies and weenies.

    “Needless to say, Captain Willie and I need everyone at their best out there today. Now unless Captain Willie has anything to add, this briefing is concluded.”

    There were a lot of anxious faces and a lot of anxious conversation as we waited for the appointed hour. CNN was playing loud in the background. Gentleman Bob and Major James were both present, looking on, though neither gave a pep speech that day.

     I had almost expected to see Captain Willie’s crew outfitted in their dusters, but it seemed none of them had the hats with them. Soon I watched them go and then settled in for another hour of waiting.

    The hour passed slowly. Then, survival vests on and .38s strapped at our sides, we headed to the waiting van. I couldn’t wait to get airborne. In the back of my mind, I saw a strike force sweeping in over Baghdad, a wing of F-16s with afterburners full aglow screaming across the skies.

    The taxi call seemed to come belatedly as we were pushing a sluggish time schedule. Gloves on, headset on, seat facing forward, I waited for the AC to say, “Crew, we’re rolling!”

    Happy had his Walkman all ready to rock and roll, and though it wasn’t playing, I could already hear Martha screaming, “There’s nowhere to run.”

    Each of us had our red or blue bandannas fitted around our heads. Although the intent of it was to keep our heads warm, since with fresh and short haircuts the cold air at altitude had an especially biting sting to it, we started a new crew tradition.

    We proceeded through the checklists slowly. Taxi and takeoff also went slowly. Afterward Martha was finally screaming as we climbed out of five thousand feet. Crow had brought in an oldies’ tape and so for a short time we tuned into ship’s PA.

    Happy and Cowboy began playing solo air guitar. When Tammy and Sparrow joined in, Tennessee Jim looked up from his keyboard and smiled that silly Tennessee smile of his. He didn’t say anything. It was all in good fun and it relieved a lot of stress.

    Chris did a secure radio check with Shadow-1. We were Shadow-2 today. Afterward he contacted Gypsy.

    Crow had the system up and running with surprising swiftness. We were logged in and ready to go to work well ahead of schedule. By now, Captain Willie’s crew was set up and working the environment, going at it as if everything was the same as it always was. Periodically they kept us updated, passing us lists to ensure that when we popped up from our low orbit we were good to go.

    They were jamming as if there were no tomorrow. Their reports said AAA sites were lit up and pulverizing empty sky. The Iraqis were expecting the package ingress we weren’t going to give them.

    It pleased me to know that the AAA sites were wasting precious bullets. I could only think back to a darkened night when I’d witnessed through a pair of NVG just how awesome that firepower was. 100mm artillery could really rip through the sky. The Iraqis had a whole array of anti-aircraft artillery in their arsenal, ranging from 23mm to 130mm. The SAMs that they were more and more often firing blindly when they spotted anything ranged from handheld Stingers to mobile systems that could instantly prove deadly without our jam support.

    I glanced at my watch as the mission compartment became ominously silent. The interior lights turned red. The crew entrance portal was blacked out. All we had to do was wait for the go-ahead which would come from Gypsy if all were going according to plan.

    The passage of time reverted from the ticking by of minutes to the agonizing passing of seconds. The radios were fairly quiet for the amount of traffic poised to strike. The only thing I could do as I waited was maintain a mental image in my mind of the progress of the packages. Ravens and Weasels were lining up, getting ready to blind enemy radars. Shadow-1 was preparing to withdraw. We were getting ready to pop up and jam Iraqi communications. The mood in the back grew more tense by the second.

    “MCC, Nav, ten-minute warning,” tweaked Bill on Private.

    Tennessee Jim relayed what we had all heard. It only made time seem to slow down even more.

    I glanced at my watch every few seconds while I stared at my terminal.

    Unexpectedly, all displays blacked out. I heard Crow scream, “Shit, not now,” as the system crashed. We had six minutes to go.

    Suddenly I could hear both Jim and Crow breathing into their microphones. “Get on it!” hollered Jim, going up Hot at the same time Crow did.

    I flashed four fingers at Chris, which was what Shadow-1 had just relayed. Four minutes till they left orbit.

    “Status back there?” called out the Nav, “We going to be ready to go or not?”

    “We’re in reboot. Give me one more minute,” Crow returned.

    “Don’t dick around setting back up. As soon as Crow says go, GO! And I don’t want to hear anything but position and go when you’re set up, you got it, crew? Clear to work as soon as you’re ready,” Jim cried out. “AMT? AMT, this thing up or not?”

    Three was in the rear window spotting, and he was already calling out distant traffic marshalling. A short pause ensued. Everyone in the mission crew paused to hear Crow’s response. “She’s green, just a gremlin is all, better now than before.”

    “Save it. Nav, MCC, green light.”

    Chris was on radios to Shadow-1 as the front-end contacted Gypsy. Shadow-1 was pulling off orbit, seemingly turning for home. They reported AAA units had stopped their endless barrage, which was good. The fighters at the head of the wave would hit the AAA and SAM units that had set up in the open for the apparent ingress that had not come and were hopefully busily reloading ammo or preparing to move out. They would be easily knocked out before they realized what had occurred.

    The green light came. We popped up just as Shadow-1 hit the back of their box. We came up jamming. Happy reported seeing explosions. The first package was headed in, in wave after endless wave. I couldn’t help wondering about the strike force headed for Baghdad. Whether they were airborne yet I didn’t know. I was working too feverishly at my terminal to calculate times.

    Gypsy called out an air advisory. Captain Sammy took us into an evasive maneuver. We didn’t know if anything was close enough to reach out and splash us but that had been the advisory. We weren’t going to wait around to find out.

    Captain Sammy dropped the nose hard. We dropped like a rock. My heart jumped into my throat. Minutes later, we climbed, leveled out, still jamming.

    The first hour clicked by seemingly in a single heartbeat. It seemed I was only taking my second breath when the first part of the package began to egress. Happy, in the back window, was calling out groups of traffic coming out low and fast. At the same time, Chris was on radios to Shadow-1.

    An emotional moment came as Gypsy reported that the entire package had safely egressed and were headed for base. For a time, the frenzy slowed, but we had to keep the Iraqi forces below thinking they were going to get hit again at any moment. We kept working.

    At Jim’s advice, Shadow-1 got back into the game, taking up a position in the forward half of our box. They’d turn a short orbit on one end. We’d turn a short orbit on the other. Both crews were periodically going in and out of jam. The Iraqi forces below were taking the bait.

    When the AAA gunners couldn’t see with their radars or couldn’t communicate—most of the time—they kept on rattling off ammo. I didn’t blame them. I’d be scared to death if I knew I was going to die, for our fighters would surely find the ones who had escaped the first onslaught during the next package ingress.