by Clay Martin
The cockpit went quiet and Jake sensed his crewmates’ discomfort. “Okay, gents, now you know all, so let’s drop it?”
“Roger that,” Gance said while Ed searched for the puzzle page.
- Chapter 3 -
It was early afternoon when North Am-24 touched down at LAX. Jake was pleased to be in California with much of the day still ahead of him. He thought he might stay over and look up the Bergstrom family in Stockton.
However, as the day wound toward evening, Jake sat in his airport hotel room, staring at the phone, frustrated.
Unable to find a listing for Truls Bergstrom in Stockton, he’d tried several other California towns and come up empty; while the name Truls was unique, the surname Bergstrom was not. Nonetheless Jake ran down every iteration in the state, calling any and every Bergstrom, leaving detailed voicemail messages, his name, number, and his reason for calling. His old flight leader’s family had moved on.
Jake was stymied. What to do next? As he contemplated the phone, it rang.
“Jake?” It was Gance’s gravelly voice. “Had any luck running down Bergstrom’s family?”
“Nothing,” Jake said, then added, “and, Bill, thanks for cutting me a whole lot of slack today. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“Easy? Hell, I’m not sure it was even regulation. Breakfast?”
“Affirmative, Skipper. What time?”
“I’ll see you downstairs at six.”
Jake looked at the clock. It was only 7:00 p.m. but that would be 10:00 p.m. New York time and last night’s joyful romp with Sandy McRea, had left him tired.
Within an hour, Jake was in bed. Sleep, however, eluded him. Swede Bergstrom’s abrupt re-emergence had frazzled his nerves and he lay silent, letting his troubled mind wander back to an earlier time, a younger time, when life was filled with wonder and the lure of adventure.
To young Jake, adventure meant but one thing: flight.
Unable to afford civilian pilot training, he took another somewhat riskier path. The country was at peace, so within a week of his college graduation, he chose the Air Force. As expected he scored high on the entrance aptitude tests. His mental acuity, physical condition, and spanking new degree in aerospace engineering qualified the aspiring airman for a commission and undergraduate pilot training. There, too, he excelled, earning a place on Training Command’s elite Fighter, Attack, Recon (FAR) track.
Everything was going according to plan until the morning of September 11th 2001, when Jake’s plans along with those of countless other Americans, evaporated in a noxious cloud of ash and metal and blood and bone, leaving the Manhattanite incensed and seeking only retribution against whatever monsters had presumed to attack his home city.
When his chance finally came, the young lieutenant left the training grind of Luke AFB for his first duty station.
Tensions were high when Jake arrived at the coalition airbase in Saudi Arabia. The adrenal rush of combat permeated both the conversation and posturing of Jake’s squadron mates: young men all. Jake, however, found himself increasingly unable to reconcile the events that had colored the two years between the World Trade Center attack and this, his first combat assignment. If this war was indeed a response to the events of September 11th, it seemed an irrational one. As Jake’s frustrations had grown, so had his incredulity. Why, he’d wondered, was he finding himself based in the same country that had spawned the mastermind of those attacks and 15 of the 19 perpetrators? If that weren’t confusing enough to the conflicted young officer, why was he here to fly against Iraq, none of whose people took part in the attacks?
Bound by love of country and a staunch determination to stand by his sworn oath, yet finding it ever more difficult to suffer his dissonance in silence, Jake tossed in his bunk.
Unable to sleep, he rose and quietly dressed, deciding to take a pre-dawn run in the hope of clearing his head.
Donning his flight jacket above a t-shirt and shorts, he stepped into the cold desert night.
His path took him in the direction of the flightline where the unmistakable sound of departing F-16s drew him closer. Stopping at the foot of the tarmac he jogged in place and watched as the magnificent little warplanes streaked past, each lifting off to soar above the desert floor, its engine trailing a bright cone of flame against a black and moonless sky. But to young Jake, the terrible beauty of such spectacle served only to reinforce the sense of privilege he felt at having been granted command of so awesome an instrument of dominion and the almost unbearable responsibility contingent upon its use.
Unwilling to voice such ambivalence to those he assumed were his unsympathetic squadron mates, and not a man who’d seek comfort from his chaplain, Jake did the only thing he thought he could; against the roar of jet engines he shouted a catharsis into the beautiful uncaring Arabian night.
Mesmerized by the spectacle unfolding on the runway, he hadn’t noticed the young captain quietly standing a few feet to his rear. At first showing no reaction to Jake’s outburst, the aloof officer seemed to be ignoring the rookie until, finally, rather than upbraid the young malcontent, the veteran stepped closer and tempered his derision with advice. Without turning away from the sound and fury of the departing jets, the reticent officer raised his voice above the roar, saying, “I hear you’re a boxer.”
“Was a boxer,” Jake corrected, as startled by the man’s presence as he was surprised by his insight.
“I know a thing or two about boxing, myself—and boxers.”
“Is that right?” Jake replied, hiding his embarrassment behind a macho fighter-jock demeanor. Then, noticing the guy’s collar bars he added an obligatory, “…Sir.”
“That’s right, shavetail,” the slightly older flier said, now turning to speak directly to the young lieutenant “And the first thing I know is that every boxer has a plan.”
“Affirmative,” Jake said, lowering his voice as the last warplane climbed away.
“Yeah,” the stranger concluded with a nod, “you all have a plan…until the bell rings.”
Despite his mood, Jake had smiled in silent agreement.
“That’s how I also know,” the captain added, “that once it gets real, guys like you stop giving a shit if the man comin’ at you is big or small or loves his mother or has a friggin’ puppy. You just wanna kick his ass before he kicks yours. Everything else is suddenly bullshit.” With that he paused, making certain the metaphor was not lost on this naïve lieutenant. Satisfied, he went on. “So be advised, pal. The same thing applies here…in spades. Now I’m gonna try to forget that pile of crap you just spouted, and remind you that you’re not a politician, and you’re sure as hell not a philosopher. What you are,” he said while stepping closer that he might poke the pilot’s wings printed into the leather nametag affixed to the breast of Jake’s MA-1 jacket, “is an American airman. So unless you want to spend the rest of your tour pulling my size thirteen boot out of your worthless new guy ass, you will think and act and fight like the exquisitely trained US goddam fighter pilot those wings represent.”
With that, the young captain leaned close to Jake’s ear, and concluded with, “By the way, hot shot, I have it on good authority—my own—that your bell’s just about to ring and when it does, your rationale will KO your half-assed rationality.”
As the officer turned to leave, Jake followed him into the Base Ops shack. “Captain,” he called out. “You seem to know a lot about me, and I don’t even know your name.”
“You will, Lieutenant,” the stranger barked before disappearing into the night.
Without looking up, the sergeant behind the operations desk said, “Most call him Swede.”
The ensuing weeks found the squadron’s new pilots each assigned to a flight: a small subset of their squadron wherein they’d be engaged in seemingly endless local area orientation drills and systems training exercises. During these drills, Jake did get to know
Captain Leif Bergstrom’s name quite well. Bergstrom was the young pilot’s Flight Commander. And, over the course of these increasingly arduous dry runs, Lieutenant Silver’s flying impressed Bergstrom. From that common bond and anticipation of impending combat, the two young lions drew close. Then, when Bergstrom not only declared Jake Silver mission-ready, he also assigned the young pilot to fly his wing on what would be Jake’s first combat sortie.
Theirs would be an NTISR, or Night Time Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance mission—clandestine, defensive, and among the most dangerous assignments in all of aerial warfare. With Swede Bergstrom’s, “until the bell rings,” admonition top of mind, the junior officer hung on every word of the pre-mission briefing.
Satellite surveillance and JSTARS airborne battlefield management systems had been encountering unusually high surface vehicle traffic in an area around Baghdad, an area that had been largely neutralized by the previous two months’ of massive SEAD air defense suppression operations, but could confirm little beyond that. Theirs, then, was to be an armed recon mission, old-school, daring, and exactly how fiercely independent Swede Bergstrom liked it. And though the pair expected to be tracked, there would be no directions from Command and Control. Officially, they were alone and unknown.
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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Chapter 1
Tariq stared at the camera. I will do this.
Hot wind swept across the desert, pushing against him, rippling his black cotton shirt and blousy pants. A black scarf encircled his head, exposing only his dark eyes.
Two nine-millimeter automatic pistols hung loosely at his sides, each in a brown leather holster dangling from shoulder straps. A knife in his left hand, he felt invincible.
I was born to jihad. I have known that since I was very young.
Tariq put his right hand on the shaved head of the American journalist who knelt at his feet, a knee against the bound man’s back. The journalist wore orange prison garb, mimicking the men in Guantanamo who Tariq considered his brothers in global jihad.
They stopped me from going to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. They stopped me from marrying the woman of my dreams. They wanted me to betray my Muslim brothers. They will suffer and pay for their arrogance.
Tariq glanced pitifully down at the journalist’s pale skin and scruffy beard, the hand
s bound behind his back.
The prisoners call us the Beatles because we are British. But, we are not British. We were born on sacred Arab soil, then raised among the infidels. It was not of our choosing. The others say we are not true jihadis. But they lie. I will show them what a true jihadi does. They will tremble in awe.
Tariq lifted his eyes to the camera, drew a breath, and began to talk, his voice deep and resolute, muffled by the scarf. “I’m back, President Harris, and I’m back because of your arrogant foreign policy towards the Islamic state.”
Tariq pointed the blade at the camera.
“You continue to bomb our people despite our serious warnings. You, President Harris, have nothing to gain from your actions but the death of another American. Just as your missiles continue to strike our people, our knives will continue to strike the necks of your people. You, President Harris, with your actions, have killed another American citizen.”
Tariq waved his knife.
“This is also a warning to those governments that enter an evil alliance with America against the Islamic State to back off and leave our people alone.”
Bracing his knee against the journalist’s back, he grabbed the man’s chin with his right hand and pulled up, exposing and stretching the throat. Tariq’s stomach knotted. His heart pounded.
Do it! Do it!
With a furious burst, Tariq drew the thick blade across the American’s neck, the blade biting , unleashing a torrent of blood spilling over the man’s chest.
Moments later, Tariq’s hands shook, his body pulsating with the pounding of his heart.
Calm yourself. This is for the glory of Allah.
The eyes of the American were empty, lifeless. He bent over the body to finish the job. He rolled the American’s body onto its back and placed the severed head on the chest. He stood back to inspect his work. He exhaled, the task complete, his hands still shaking.