by Clay Martin
Before first light, Jake’s and Bergstrom’s F16s—Vipers, as their crews called them—were streaking toward “The Line,” a name given the 32nd Parallel gateway to Baghdad.
Their mission objective was to fly within detection range of the city’s defenses and evaluate empirically what remained of Iraqi antiaircraft missile systems.
As they approached the city, Jake flew the number two airplane, with Bergstrom a mile ahead. Swede had named their two-flight Bolo.
Though it was known that the IrAF—the Iraqi Air Force—posed little if any threat from the air, it was suspected that both Russian and Iranian tactical aircraft were operating in the area.
The two American pilots were under orders to avoid engagement unless attacked.
The primary threat would come from Iraqi ground batteries. The mission objective was to find out just how formidable those batteries were by luring the Iraqis into activating their defensive radars and thus exposing their remaining SAM locations.
These recon missions were the aerial equivalent of strolling into a dark alley in the hope of provoking the bad guys you knew were hiding in the shadows to shoot at you, and by doing so allowing you to report the location of their muzzle flashes. So, as the pair approached the heavily defended airspace, Jake was tense and adrenal.
They were at altitude, and fifteen miles out when a SAM site’s aiming system detected them, thereby exposing itself to the Vipers’ RWR, or radar warning receivers.
“Tally-ho, Bolo Two,” Swede declared. “Sam in the air!”
“Bolo Two is tally,” Jake responded with false calm, his heart pounding.
His warning systems began beeping and lighting up like Times Square and Jake was suddenly in the fight of his life and caught himself white-knuckling his fighter’s side-mounted stick as the dark space ahead filled with flash after flash, trail after trail.
When one missile’s fiery exhaust trail morphed into a halo encircling its warhead, Jake knew that the thing had a lock on his jet.
He threw his fighter into a violent, rolling evasive turn streaming chaff and perhaps causing the SAM to acquire a false target. He did not see or detect his wingman’s fighter closing the distance between them and doing the same. Perhaps their combined efforts confused the SAM and it missed them both, but its proximity fuse caused it to explode sending a shock wave and fragments slamming into Jake’s fighter. The force—which would have destroyed a lesser aircraft—knocked Jake nearly unconscious as his head was whiplashed with such violence it nearly snapped his spine. His vision flooded white.
Struggling to recover while frantically attempting to assess the damage to his fighter, his warning and weapons-systems in disarray, his data link and IFF transponder out, his radios were now the only reliable link to Swede.
As Bergstrom joined up, their course took the fighters out of range of the ground batteries and into broken clouds.
Once clear, Jake could see his lead’s jet drifting out from underneath his own straining to assess the damage to Jake’s airplane through the dim light and obscuring clouds.
“You’re pretty chopped up,” Swede reported. “Your avionics hatch is gone, so’s a chunk of your radome and you’re streaming fuel. Okay Wing, we’re RTB. Acknowledge.”
“Jake zippered his microphone, its two transmitted clicks barely acknowledging the order to return to base, but concealing his condition.
“Heading two-one-zero,” Swede directed. “And keep a swivel. Saddam or his buddies might still have flyable assets up here,”
Thus forewarned, Jake, brought up his stores and punched air-to-air just as the gleaming MiG appeared out of nowhere running for the wall of cloud a mile distant and Jake “pickled” a Sidewinder air-to-air missile.
Realizing it was a desperate reflexive act, he was momentarily relieved when the rocket misfired and the MiG disappeared into the clouds. Swede Bergstrom’s F-16 took chase, and the errant rocket fired and screamed off Jake’s wing.
Swede’s fighter chased the MiG into the clouds while Jake’s missile chased them both and despite his state, he knew that without a radar lock the rocket’s own sensor could lock on Swede’s fighter as easily as it could the MiG and he sat galvanized, silent, as the audible whine in his helmet confirmed his fears; the little rocket had found its mark—its mark—and the cloud flashed orange as fuel and ordnance thundered in serial conflagrations behind its opaque wall.
Trembling, heart pounding, Jake pulled his airplane into a tight six-G loop, waiting, watching to see what would emerge, a MiG-25, an F-16. Or both. Or neither.
After a second that seemed an eternity, one sleek fighter streaked away dead ahead of his jet and Jake took chase. “Bolo One.” No response. “Bolo One, acknowledge.”
As the distance between the fighters closed and Jake’s eyes regained clarity, there could be no mistaking what he saw. Dancing a mile off his fighter’s nose were the distinctive twin-tails of the MiG-25 as it streaked for the north country, running for its life, and rather than pursue, Lieutenant Jake Silver choked back the vomit rising in his throat as the heads up display began flashing FUEL, FUEL…
Jake sat bolt upright as the dawn light and the LAX hotel room slowly refilled his tortured consciousness.
The sweat-soaked sheets at his waist, his eyes were drawn to the newspaper lying on the floor at his bedside. Its headline seemed to mock him: IRAQ WAR HERO…
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