by Dale Brown
It was sheer luck that Mace was looking right at the very spot on the ground—he saw a bright flash of light, like a searchlight or beacon light, then a long streak of yellow light. The spot of bright light began spiraling toward them at incredible speed. He had never seen one before, but he knew exactly what it was: “SA-7, three o’clock!” he shouted. He hit the FLARE button, then shouted, “Break right!” It was a Soviet-made, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile, as common as ants in Iraq, and they were deadly at this close range.
Parsons did not hesitate—he rolled into a 90-degree bank turn and pulled on the control stick. Mace stopped popping decoy flares as soon as he felt the G-forces hit. He lost sight of the missile in the break—he was lucky enough to stay conscious, let alone maintain visual contact on a Mach-two missile—but as soon as Parsons rolled out of the break, Mace saw more flashes of light on the ground. “More SA-7s, two and three o’clock!” He popped more flares as Parsons did another right break.
Parsons had to sweep the wings forward once again to keep from stalling—two hard-break maneuvers in a row bled off a lot of airspeed very quickly. In just a few seconds the wings were forward to 26 degrees, he was in full military power, and the angle of attack was still just 5 degrees below the stall. “I’ll roll wings level,” he said to Mace. “Punch out the missile! Do it!”
“Keep at it, Bob,” Mace shouted. “Level turn back left to the launch point. Still twenty seconds to the turn.”
Just then they heard on the GUARD channel, again in the clear, “Breakdance, Breakdance, this is Nightmare, abort your missile run, repeat, abort your missile run. We show you ninety seconds to launch time. Do not fire your missile. Repeat, do not launch. Acknowledge.” They then gave another date-time group and a new authentication code. Mace flipped open the code book he had already opened to the proper page, and in just a few seconds he discovered it was another valid message—valid, but still not acceptable to the Aardvark crew.
But the voice was definitely American, and the messages were real messages. Either it was a very clever, very well trained Iraqi, or it was for real and meant for them. But they had no choice in the matter—they had to ignore clear-text messages … they had to! But how could anyone else but the Pentagon know their launch time? “Christ, Bob, they know our launch time—down to the fucking second!”
This time Parsons hesitated, and it was obvious that he was scared and worried. Someone, anyone, could fake the first clear-text message they’d received—the second was impossible. They had indeed named their target time down to the second. Parsons shouted, “I’m rolling out for a few seconds to get our smash back. Get on GUARD and talk to someone. We’ve gotta stay on the missile run, but try to get confirmation. Clear my left turn, then get on the radio.”
After making sure there were no missiles nearby being fired at them, Mace cleared Parson’s left turn, then used the IFF/COMM page on his CDU and switched his radio to UHF 243.0, the international emergency channel that the voice who called itself Nightmare was using. The SA-7 missile was no match for an F-111G bomber at high speed and low altitude, and they had avoided or decoyed all the missiles fired at them so fair. But they were down to about a dozen flares remaining, enough for two or three more attacks.
“Nightmare, Nightmare, this is Breakdance. We copy your message, but we cannot comply. We need a coded message to authenticate. Over.” There was no reply. Maybe it was a fake radio message. “Nightmare, this is Breakdance, how copy? We need a coded message over our tactical network to authenticate. We will not respond to clear-text messages. Over.”
Parsons turned hard left and rolled out, carefully watching his airspeed tapes. “Those damn SAMs are all around us,” he said. “I’ve seen at least six so far! We’re right in the middle of a damn Republican Guard division or something!” The airspeed was building rapidly, and he was able to sweep the wings back to 54 degrees to build up even more.
“I’ve got us at the turnpoint,” Parsons shouted. “Coming right.
Stand by for missile launch.” The SAFE IN RANGE light began blinking—the missile countdown would hold until he rolled wings-level. “Verify launch mode in auto.”
“It’s in auto,” Mace replied.
“Forty degrees to roll-out,” Parsons said. “Stand by on missile launch. Stand by on bomb doors. Check cockpit lights up full and PLZT down. Close the curtains.”
No one knew for sure what it would be like to fly in the vicinity of a modern-day nuclear explosion. There would be no fallout and less total energy released, but the effects on a “hardened” jet aircraft were just impossible to predict. They had had briefings on EMP and blast-shockwave effects, and they had their game plan laid out—radar fixpoints to re-initialize the navigation computers if they dumped, which circuit breakers to pull if the flight control computers went haywire, even small radiation dosimeters taped next to their skin to check for the amount of radiation they had been exposed to. They had lowered their special PLZT (Polarized Lead-Zirconium-Titanate) goggles in place and checked to make sure they were operating. PLZT goggles were electronic visors that would instantaneously darken to protect their eyes from serious damage from a nuclear flash. The PLZT goggles were like wide, bug-eyed sunglasses, so Mace and Parsons had turned up the cockpit lights not only to see the instruments before the burst, but to help see them after the burst as their eyes readjusted.
They had metal curtains and shields to cover the canopy and windscreen, and just seconds before roll-out they unclipped the curtains and pulled them across the canopies, then raised the windscreen shields and locked them into place. They were flying blind now. Every bit of skin was covered—gloves were on, collars were pulled up, zippers were up and tight; their oxygen supply was turned off to prevent any chance of fire; and their shoulder straps and lap belts were as tight as they could make them. One of the last items on the checklist was to shut the radios off to prevent the EMP from traveling through the energized external antennas and frying the electronic circuits. He reached down to his CDU to set all the radios to OFF—
—and just then the SATCOM RCV light blinked on the forward instrument panel and the thermal printer clattered to life. Mace heard it and gasped aloud. “Jesus fucking Christ, Bob, a SATCOM message.”
“Coming up on missile launch.”
Mace waited an interminable, spine-tingling thirty seconds for the printer to finish, then tore a long strip of thermal printer paper out of the printer, his hands and lap filled with decoding documents. He ran down the phonetic names one by one against the correct page of the decoding book. “Actual message … all Eighth Air Force units … I’ve got a SATCOM message for us, Bob.”
The F-111G bomber rolled wings-level, and the SAFE IN RANGE light stayed on steady. “Screw it, Mace. The missile’s gone. Turn off the radios, lower your PLZT goggles, and stand by on bomb doors.”
THREE
It was a termination message. He knew it was, without even decoding it. The clear-text messages were for real, meant to warn them that the termination order was on the way. The Pentagon, the White House, did not want them to launch this missile.
He knew what he was doing was wrong—until he decoded the message and authenticated it, he was obligated to carry out his current orders and launch the SRAM, but Mace didn’t feel he had a choice. He reached down to the weapons control panel and moved the bomb-door mode switch from AUTO to CLOSE.
When the SAFE IN RANGE light stopped blinking, the AGM-131X missile computer activated the MSL POWER light, and it began blinking as inertial guidance information was transferred from aircraft to missile. It took only two-tenths of a second for a complete computer dump; then the computer would command the bomb doors to open. The MSL POWER light continued to blink as the computer tried to open the bomb doors, but Mace had seen to those. The computer could not override the position of the bomb-door switch. It would wait about thirty seconds for the doors to respond; then the computer would automatically shut down the first missile, power up the second missile, and attempt
to launch it. By then Mace thought he would have the message authenticated with Parsons, and he would either allow the second missile to launch automatically or just manually power it down.
But he had to decode this new message.
The timer in Parsons’ brain ran out: “Standing by on bomb doors… safe-in-range light steady … doors … check doors, Mace …” He looked over to his radar navigator and saw him, his PLZT goggles off and his shoulder straps loosened, furiously checking data from the SATCOM printer. His lap and glareshield were full of decoding documents. “What in hell are you doing?” Parsons screamed.
“We got a SATCOM message. I’m decoding it.”
“Why didn’t the bomb doors open? Why didn’t the missile launch?”
“I got the doors closed until I—”
“You what?” Parsons screamed. He leaned over and saw the bomb-door mode switch. “Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? Open those damn bomb doors now! That’s a damned order!”
“I know it’s a recall order, Bob,” Mace said, pleading with his aircraft commander. “I know it is. It’ll just take me a second.”
“Dammit, I’ll have you fucking court-martialed! Open those—”
On the computer control panel, the MSL POWER light stopped blinking and the red MASTER MAL and MSL MAL lights came on. At the same time, the SAFE IN RANGE light on Parsons’ panel went out—and he knew why. Since they were doing an “over-the-shoulder” SRAM launch, they had been flying away from the target. Now, thirty seconds past the launch point, they were out of range. They would not get a SAFE IN RANGE light unless they turned back toward the target—and now all of the Iraqi air defense units on the ground were alerted to their presence and ready for them.
“Jesus, Mace,” Parsons cried out, “we lost the safe-in-range light! We have to turn back.”
“Just wait,” Mace argued. “If this is a recall message, we don’t have to turn.”
“And if it’s not a recall, we have to fly over that infantry formation out there again,” Parsons said. He snapped open his PLZT goggles and opened the flashblindness curtains on his left-side canopy with an angry wave of his hand, scanning carefully for any more enemy SAMs coming at them before jabbing an angry finger at his radar navigator. “You son of a bitch, you fucked up big-time. Your flying career is history, Mace. You chickened out and screwed up. I’m coming left. We’ll launch the second missile as soon as we get a safe-in-range light—no over-the-shoulder launch this time. Make sure the second missile is powered up and ready to—”
Mace saw it out Parsons’ left cockpit canopy, a bright burst of light from the ground, a stream of yellow fire, and a bright ball of light spiraling right toward them, and screamed “Shit! SA-7! Break left!” The large spot of light with a long, bright yellow tail climbed over Parsons’ canopy sill, then descended straight at the hot leading edge of the F-111G’s left wing.
The warhead of the SA-13 man-portable SAM is only two point two pounds, but the explosive energy is directed forward into a round cylinder designed to punch a hole through titanium- and ceramic-armored attack helicopters—against glass, thin steel, and aluminum, it found little resistance. The left cockpit canopy shattered, the entire left side of the windscreen disintegrated, and the blast blew a three-foot hole in the left side of the bomber just aft of Parsons’ seat.
Parsons’ steel seat took the entire force of the explosion, but the sheets of shattered Plexiglas windscreen battered his body, and the sudden force of the six-hundred-mile-per-hour windblast drove him unconscious and almost ripped his left arm out of its socket. The only thing holding his shattered body in the plane was a few bits of metal and the remnants of his right shoulder-harness strap.
Mace was knocked to the right by the blast, but Parsons’ body, and the hard left bank that shielded his body with the aircraft, protected him from the worst of the explosion. His front windscreen cracked, but it did not disintegrate. His body felt as if it was on fire, then instantly it felt bone-numbing cold as six-hundred-miles-per-hour winds pounded into the cockpit. Mace needed to get on the controls and climb for lifesaving altitude before the engine shelled out.
F-111G navigators are not required to fly the plane and they are not permitted to log second-pilot time, but all navigators must know the emergency procedures just as well as the pilots, and most experienced navigators like Mace were frustrated or hopeful pilots themselves and take the controls and fly the plane whenever possible. The bomber heeled sharply left, threatening to enter a flat spin and hurl itself like a twenty-ton Frisbee into the desert, but Mace immediately applied full right throttle and full right rudder, and was able to thumb in full right rudder trim before the FIRE lights came on in the left engine.
Mace accomplished the engine-fire emergency procedures without thinking and without even consciously remembering he had done them.
The airspeed had dropped from six hundred to two hundred knots in just a few seconds. But for now they were flying and they were upright—that was the important thing.
Parsons was in really bad shape, but Mace thought he was still alive. The left side of Parsons’ face and body were black, and his left arm was shredded below mid-bicep; he could not see his legs or much of his torso, but Mace guessed his injuries below the waist were thankfully minor. The windblast was streaking fresh blood from his chest across his helmet and up onto the aft bulkhead. Mace ripped the first-aid kit off the Velcro attachment point behind his seat, fumbled with it with one hand in the dark, and tried to stuff a handful of gauze and a large combat dressing pad into the worst of Parsons’ wounds near his chest, but the windblast was too great and the gauze went flying. He was more successful in placing a flight jacket over him and taping it in place. Parsons’ helmet was cracked, but the visors and oxygen mask were still in place and intact, and Parsons had suffered no injuries to his face or neck, so Mace decided to leave the mask and visors in place. Mace checked that Parsons’ oxygen was on 100-percent oxygen and flowing, tightened Parsons’ last remaining shoulder strap, then used the last of the medical tape to secure Parsons to his seat. If they had to eject, Parsons had to be as straight in the seat as possible or the G-forces would snap his spine in two.
Mace then returned his attention to flying the plane. A safe landing was probably impossible. He had a low-fuel situation, wings stuck at 24 degrees or greater, and one engine was out, with all the related hydraulic and electrical malfunctions. He had major structural damage, a blown windscreen, and an injured crewmember. He had no navigation systems, no engine monitoring systems, no computer assist for any function, and no primary flight or performance instruments. He nosed the bomber southward, determined to at least get away from Baghdad and across the Iraqi border before he punched out. The controls felt mushy and unresponsive—soon they would give out altogether. Mace decided to gain a little more altitude, cross the border if possible, then eject. The F-111G bomber was the best plane in the world to punch out from. The entire cockpit section was a winged capsule, complete with its own parachutes, rocket motors, stabilization fins, and landing shock absorbers—it would even float, and the pilot’s control stick was a handle for a manual bailing pump. He was at two thousand feet now … plenty of altitude for a safe ejection … just grab the yellow handle by his left knee and pull …
But not with two fucking nuclear missiles on board.
The mission directives said do not bail out until at least thirty miles into Turkish or Saudi airspace, and then jettison the weapons safe over the Arabian Sea or Red Sea, or let the weapons crash with the aircraft. It was possible that the weapons would not be destroyed in a crash, and letting two SRAM-X missiles fall into Saddam Hussein’s hands was unthinkable. No, he had to fly the machine a little longer, find a Coalition airfield, maybe get some gas from an aerial-refueling tanker, then try to set the thing down.
Straining against his shoulder harness to see the console between Parsons’ legs, he checked the electrical systems panel. The indicator read EMER—that meant that both h
ydraulically powered electrical generators had kicked off-line and he was running on battery power alone. He flipped over to the emergency checklist for electrical malfunctions, checked the circuit breaker panel near his head between the two seats, made sure the autopilot was off, checked that the battery switch was on, then flipped the generator switch from ON to OFF/RESET, held it there for a few seconds, then switched it to RUN. The indicator read TIE instead of NORM, but with one engine out, TIE was a good indication—it meant that one generator was successfully energizing both electrical systems. Several lights popped on in the cockpit … and the radios came alive.
He completed the electrical system malfunction checklists, shutting down unnecessary electrical systems and the autopilot, then switched the IFF, or Identification Friend or Foe, thumbwheels to 7700, the emergency code, and the number one radio knob to the emergency GUARD position. Over the howl of the windblast in the shattered cockpit, he yelled into his oxygen mask microphone: “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, any radio, any radio, this is Breakdance, 7440 Provisional, squawking emergency. Position south of Karbala, heading southwest at five thousand feet, declaring an emergency, injuries and weapons on board, requesting refueling and vectors to divert airfield. Come in. Over.”
He then remembered the earlier radio transmissions and, forgetting proper radio procedures, yelled, “Nightmare, goddammit, this is Breakdance. You must be monitoring my position by now. My pilot is injured and I’m in deep shit. Give me a vector and help me get this thing on the ground now!”
FOUR
An American E-3C AWACS Radar Plane, Flying Over Northern Saudi Arabia Same Time
On board an E-3C AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) radar plane, a converted Boeing 707 airliner with a thirty-six-foot-diameter rotating radome atop the fuselage, there were fourteen radar controller consoles, each scanning a specific segment of sky and watching every aircraft in their sector, enemy as well as friendlies, all throughout southern Iraq, Kuwait, the entire Arabian peninsula, western Iran, Syria, and eastern Jordan. Nine consoles were for air controllers, two were set aside to monitor sea vessels, two were tasked to monitor commercial and other noncombatant air traffic along the periphery of the Kuwaiti theater of operations, and one was set aside for the task force commander or other special operations missions. This fourteenth console was manned that morning by a special task force of Army and Air Force general officers who were representatives of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself. Their call sign was “Nightmare.”