The Warbirds (54 page)

Meanwhile the Flogger repositioned for another attack and rolled in. The pilot selected an Aphid dogfight missile and placed his target-pipper on the left outboard engine before he squeezed the trigger. The missile streaked toward the Hercules and impacted outboard of the engine, tearing off the left wing. The C-130 spun to the left, out of control. Toni pushed the left throttles full-forward and pulled the right throttles aft, trying to use differential power to control the plane’s flat spin. Just before they hit the water Belfort thought he heard her say, “I’m sorry, Dave.”

6 September: 1955 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 2255 hours. Ras Assanya, Saudi Arabia

The lights in the command post flickered, then went out. Waters heard the backup generator kick into life, cough twice, and the lights came back on. Stansell had never stopped talking on the phone. Now he hung up and walked over to the launch-and-recovery board and marked tail-number 512 as mission capable. “Whoever laid in the hardened com lines knew what they were doing,” was his only comment. He changed to 2049 the number of people evacuated out. “The second C-130 is taxiing out now. Three hundred eighteen to go.” Waters listened for the
sounds of a C-130 but couldn’t hear the turbo-props through the thick walls. He was thankful that two shuttles had made it in since dark and most of the wounded had made it out.

He studied the boards for a moment, knowing what he had to do. Bitterness and frustration washed over him when he thought of the sacrifices his wing had made in trying to end this “little war.” He almost lost control when Bill Carroll walked into the room. “Bill, you were ordered
out
.”

“Yes, sir, but I think I might still be of some use…I speak Arabic and Farsi—”

“Yes, you do. Get over to Doc Landis and stay with him. He’ll need a translator.” The Intelligence officer stared at him, catching the terrible implication.

The crew chief threw open the right blast door to the aircraft bunker and motioned the refueling truck to back in. He wanted to see if he could get the truck inside and close the blast door, but there wasn’t enough room. He yelled at the pumper to get the hose out and connected. The pumper refused to be hurried and went about his duties with a studied nonchalance, an unlit cigar stump clamped in his mouth. “No way this here white man’s piece of shit is going to get into the air,” the pumper said, knowing how to rile the crew chief.

“Shut your mouth unless’en you want that cigar lit and shoved up sideways.” He went through the servicing routine that had not been completed, even though he had already called his aircraft in as mission ready. “Well,” he grumbled, “what do they expect? Bust my ass doing an engine change ’cause some pilot can’t see shit comin’ at him and now can’t find anyone so I got to do the whole thing…” He was still muttering to himself when the pumper disconnected the hose and started to move his refueler away from the bunker. “Hey, if you see my partner tell him to get his ass back here,” he yelled after the departing truck. “And I could use a ammo cart and a gun-plumber…”

The truck had moved about thirty yards down the ramp when another artillery barrage started to pound the base.
That pumper’s a dead man, the crew chief thought, returning to his work in the relative safety of the bunker, not feeling guilty. No time for that now. He slipped into the front cockpit, checked the switches and carefully adjusted the lap belt and leg harnesses, making the cockpit ready for the next launch. He crawled into the backseat and did the same thing. Finally he found some rags and started to wipe the bird down, removing any signs of dirt, oil or hydraulic fluid.

He cracked open the small access-hatch in the blast doors, peering into the night, and worried about his partner. He thought he saw some movement on the taxiway but it was hard to tell in the darkness. The intensity of the incoming rounds had slackened and given way to a steady deadly rhythm. “Whump-one-two-Whump,” he counted, picking up the beat. He could see definite movement coming his way: the figure of the pumper materialized, pushing an ammunition cart, cigar still clamped in his mouth. The crew chief pushed the blast door open and helped the exhausted sergeant jockey the cart up to the right side of the Phantom’s nose, swung a panel down and connected the feed head into the internal gatling gun. Then he grabbed a speed wrench and started to crank the gun over, feeding fresh ammunition into the drum.

“Okay, I need help turning this fucker—”

“What’s wrong with them?” the pumper shouted back, pointing at two motionless figures on the floor in a corner.

“Ah, them’s the pilot and wizzo. They been bustin’ their asses helping change the engine. They ain’t used to workin’. Let ’em sleep.” The two then helped each other, laboriously mining the wrench and reloading the gun. They had finished when the chief’s partner staggered in with another man, carrying the last Sidewinder on base. They almost dropped the one hundred-eighty-pound missile before they could hand it over to the crew chief and the pumper. “Not bad, asshole.” The chief allowed a grin as they slipped the missile onto the left-inboard rail.

A minute later the Phantom was ready and the shelling died away. An unusual quiet descended over the bunker.

“What the hell,” the chief muttered as he settled down to wait.

The sergeant from Civil Engineers who reported into the command post was covered with dried sweat and caked dirt. His hair was plastered to his head with rivulets of fresh blood. “You’ve got three thousand feet,” he told them, and sat down, shaking with fatigue.

Waters erased Jack’s call sign on the board and wrote in “Wolf Zero-One.” He motioned to Stansell, stepped into the passageway leading outside and put on his flak jacket and helmet. “Rup, I’ve got to…surrender the base before the shelling starts again.” Stansell said nothing. “These lulls last about fifteen minutes; use it to get our planes out of here. Get the word to the crews and call Doc Landis and the evacuation bunker and tell them what’s happening. I’m going to the Security Police bunker and tell them. They’re the closest to the Gomers.”

Stansell still said nothing. What was there to say? They shook hands, and Stansell went back to the command post as the Security Police’s radio net began to broadcast a new warning.

The bunker’s blast doors were partially open so Jack and Thunder could receive messages over the command post’s radio frequency. Now they heard Stansell relay the latest warning he had just received from the Security Police. The repeated artillery shellings had finally cut the landlines to the bunker, so the Phantom’s UHF radio was their only means of communication. “Close the doors,” Jack told the crew chief. “There’s a tank on the taxiway, coming for us.”

“What you want me to do about that?” the crew chief said, pulling the doors shut with his partner’s help.

“Control says we’re scrambling as soon as they can knock it out with a TOW missile. Stand by.”

“That’s all they ever say—stand by.” The crew chief could hear the clank of tank tracks and sporadic cannon fire moving toward his bunker. “They’re going to stand-fuckingby too long,” the crew chief said, disappearing into the back of the bunker. He rummaged around, finding two glass jars that he used for collecting fuel samples out of his Phantom. Hurrying up to the power cart, he twisted
a valve and filled both jars with gasoline from the cart’s fuel tank. He tore strips from the rag he had been using, soaked them with gas and stuffed one into the neck of each jar. He held up his handiwork for Jack to see. “Got a match?” Jack reached into the leg-pocket of his G-suit and tossed him a container of survival matches.

The crew chief dropped his webb belt with its heavy canteen and ammo pouch and shoved three matches between his teeth. Bending low, he peered out the access door, then ran toward the oncoming tank, making for the cover of the next bunker. He ran inside and set his jars down, unbuttoned his pants and urinated against the wall. Explosions and shell fire were coming from the tank’s direction. He crept around the wall of the bunker on all fours, looking at the tank. It was firing point blank into a bunker about seventy-five yards away. “Not my bird, you don’t.”

The tank pivoted on its left track and moved toward the next bunker on the other side of the taxiway not fifty yards away. “Oh, momma,” he whispered, “the angles are right.” He struck a match and lit the rags of both bottles, picked them up and ran toward the tank. The flames burned his hands, nearly making him drop the jars.

The gunner in the tank saw the light from the burning Molotov cocktails and swung the turret toward the running figure of the chief as he hurled them against the tank. The bottles shattered, the rags ignited the gasoline, the tank was enveloped in flames. Now an internal explosion sent a tongue of fire out of a hatch that had popped open.

The crew chief picked himself up, surprised he was still alive, and ran back to his Phantom, partially opening the big blast doors to the bunker.

Jack keyed his radio. “Control, Wolf Zero-Nine. 512’s crew chief knocked the tank out. The taxiway is clear.”

The guards at the Security Police bunker recognized Waters immediately and waved him inside. Chief Hartley was lying on his stomach on a table while a corpsman put a fresh bandage on his thigh. The crew chief sat up, pointed at the chair next to him. “You shouldn’t be here,” he rasped at the colonel, “but the gesture is appreciated.”

Waters searched for a way to tell the chief how he felt about what they had accomplished. He could only think of tired phrases, all of them wrong. “No gesture, Chief. How much longer can you hold your ditch?”

“Not long. They’re using tanks like a bulldozer to build a causeway. That’s one reason the shelling has stopped. They don’t want to nail their own troops.”

Waters stared at the wall in front of him. “Chief, I can’t ask your men to do any more…I’ve got to…I’m going to surrender before the shelling starts again. Maybe we can scramble our last birds out of here before that—”

“Sir”—there was hurt in the crew chief’s voice—“a tank waded ashore about five minutes ago and is on the taxiway. You must not have heard.” He paused, startled by the look on Waters’ face. “Don’t worry, my men will knock it out.”

He hoped it wasn’t an empty boast.

“Roger, Wolf Zero-Nine.” Stansell’s voice was firm. “
Scramble.
Repeat.
Scramble
. Wolf Zero-Nine, you are now Wolf Zero-One. Recover at Dhahran. Repeat, recover at Dhahran. Good luck.”

The crew chief and his partner pushed the blast doors open and fed power into the Phantom when Jack signaled them for engine start. They worked furiously buttoning up panels as the bird came to life. Finishing the last panel, the two men jerked the chocks from the wheels and gave Jack thumbsup. The chief ran to the front of the bunker and motioned them forward. Gunning the engines, Jack taxied out. As they rolled past, the crew chief came to attention and threw them a salute, the only way he knew to say good-bye to his warbirds.

Jack returned the salute, hoping he saw it.

“Hey, pard,” the crew chief said. “The ragheads are coming from the north. I’m going south. Coming?” And the two men ran from the empty bunker.

Doc Landis looked at the beams over his head, visualizing the five Phantoms he heard taking off. He bent back over the wounded Security Policeman, trying to stop the flow of blood from a gaping wound in his back. “Bill, it
won’t be nice when they find out you are an intelligence officer,” the doctor said. “I don’t need you here. Doctor’s orders…”

“Thanks,” Carroll said, “but I’m not going anywhere. Waters’ orders…” He had disobeyed his colonel once and wasn’t about to do it again.

The Security Police radio net came alive with warnings of landing craft and tanks in the water moving toward the beach at the north end of the runway. Chief Hartley shook his head. “I guess this is it. Well, we’ve come a long way together, Colonel.”

“Chief, we sure have…” He began looking for something to make a white flag out of.

Hartley wouldn’t let it go. “You’re the best damn boss I’ve ever had.” And he started to weave, dizzy from the effort. Waters reached out and steadied him. “You made me want to do things I never thought I could. I appreciate that…”

The men still in the bunker looked up as they heard the sound of jets taking off. Waters counted them. In his mind’s eye he could see his five warbirds lifting off, reaching into the clear desert night, their afterburners leaving pulsating beacons of blue light behind them. And Waters knew with a certainty now that Jack Locke was, no question, Wolf Zero-One.

The men reflexively ducked when they heard the shrill incoming whistle of artillery. Most of them heard the chief say, “Sweet Jesus,” before the rounds walked through the bunker, tearing them apart, and killing the commander of the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing.

7 September: 0230 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 6 September: 2230 hours, Washington, O.C.

The President was standing in the War Room deep in the Pentagon, leaning over the table in front of his chair, propped on his arms. His jaw moved slowly, the only sign of his distress as he listened to the colonel standing in front of the situation map at the front of the room. The
colonel’s gray hair belied his youthful good looks, and his slow southern accent masked a quick, intense intelligence.

“The base at Ras Assanya has been overrun,” the colonel said, using an electronic pointer.

A pain cut through the President’s gut.

“A Navy reconnaissance plane is stationed over the area and reports that all fighting has stopped…”

“How old is that information?” National Security Adviser Cagliari said.

“Less than twenty minutes, sir. The United Arab Command is reinforcing a line between the Getty oil refinery at Mina Azure”—the colonel traced a line six miles south of the oil refinery located on the Persian Gulf—“and the beachhead the People’s Soldiers of Islam have carved out.” He circled the spot where the PSI had come ashore.

The pain in the President’s stomach got worse. “Has the PSI attacked the oil refinery?”