“Lieutenant, there’s no roads in the southern Sahara that can handle heavy trucks,” McCray told her, “and by delivering the food we at least can keep it from getting stolen. Getting ripped off was our biggest problem in the cargo sheds at Niamey.”
The mission they were on was part of Grain King III, the third year that the U.S. government had mounted the relief program bringing food to the starving inhabitants of the southern Sahara. Grain King I had not started as a pure airlift operation but had turned into one after its first faltering steps. It had started out as a massive but straightforward logistics problem. The Air Force brought food and relief supplies into central staging points and delivered them to the local authorities for distribution to outlying areas by trucks. Every pound of grain was duly accounted for and the data fed into the appropriate computer. Grain King I was judged to be a resounding success.
Nevertheless, some disturbing reports were still coming out of the area about widespread and growing starvation. A meeting of the UN General Assembly had resounded with bitter accusations from Third World ambassadors about the United States propaganda efforts being greater than its attempts at food relief. Economic imperialism and genocide had been openly mentioned. The U.S. ambassador had been forewarned and was prepared with a commanding battery of charts and statistics outlining the size of the food deliveries under Grain King I, comparing them to the size of the annual grain production in each of the stricken countries.
The figures were imposing and should have carried the day. But the ambassador from Mali had produced a series of photographs showing potbellied, starving children, mothers nursing emaciated babies, and gaunt, hollow-eyed old people with death as their companion. With each photo, the ambassador had stated the date and location where each had been taken. All were in the area of Grain King operations and less than two weeks old. “So much for Operation Grain King. My people continue to die.”
The commander of MAC (Military Airlift Command) who had been responsible for the first Grain King, General Lawrence Cunningham, was rumored to have once kept a pet piranha until he discovered that it was too even tempered and not aggressive enough. So he ate the fish. Cunningham had never been content as the commander of MAC (“Trash hauling is not my bag”) and his disposition hadn’t improved after getting a call over the Pentagon’s hot line. The subject had been Grain King and the UN. For once, Cunningham did the listening. His rage, not to mention vocabulary, after that phone call was well remembered at MAC. Four colonels had been relieved from duty and ordered to be off base by sundown because they had produced the same figures as shown at the UN. What had gone wrong?
The answer came from a young major running the Airlift Command Element at Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Corruption had been responsible for diverting the food supplies into the hands of local merchants once the grain had been transloaded onto trucks for final delivery. The kickbacks had been enormous. Over eighty percent of the food had been shipped south into prosperous areas that could afford to buy it.
Cunningham was ordered to restart Grain King and he gave a decisive order: airlift it all down to the local level, to the people who were starving. That directive became the single-minded marching order for Grain King and had not changed after Cunningham left MAC for command of the Air Force. The basic tenet of Grain King had been established and chiseled in stone: airlift it and get it to the people. All of it…
Belfort broke the silence on the flight deck, “Time to dogleg north.”
“Rog’,” the copilot responded as she turned the C-130 onto a northerly heading—right into the heart of eastern Libya. She contacted Tripoli Center…
16 July: 1458 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1058 hours, Washington, D.C.
Colonel Eugene Blevins’ shirt was damp with sweat. General Cunningham had been sitting in the Watch Center’s battle cab for over five minutes and hadn’t said a word. He was staring directly at Blevins, rolling an unlit cigar in his mouth.
“Sir,” Blevins said, “we have just received a second Apple Wave message. Grain King’s route has been changed. It is flying north into Libyan GCI radar coverage and the Libyans have placed two fighters on runway alert.” He handed the message to the Air Force’s legendary gorilla.
Sundown Cunningham continued to stare at Blevins, not bothering to read the message. “Who the hell is sending these? Get me a name.” He dropped the Top Secret message to the floor.
Blevins hurried the short distance to the waiting Nesbit. “Get on the line to the reconnaissance unit that flies these missions. You heard what the general wants—move.”
“I haven’t got a clue what unit that is, Colonel.” The sergeant knew Cunningham was listening.
“Well, find out, Sergeant.”
Suppressing his smile, Nesbit assumed a worried look and placed an unnecessary call. He knew what unit to contact and whom to talk to. He enjoyed the thought of what he was doing to Blevins by stalling.
Cunningham continued to wait, chewing on his cigar. After a long pause, he barked at Blevins, “What do you recommend that I do about this Apple Wave?” Cunningham believed the hardest thing for any man to learn was how to think under pressure. The general already knew what his decision was but wanted to gauge the mental agility of his Watch Center commander.
Blevins admitted to himself that he didn’t know what do do, and worse, he didn’t know how to escape the general’s undivided scrutiny. The best he could do was stall for time. “I’m waiting for my analysts to correlate this information with an area situation report. I’m confident, sir, that they will give us a level of assurance on which to make the proper decision.” The general continued to glare at Blevins, who turned to one of the repeater consoles in an attempt to appear busy while frantically devising a way to shift the general’s attention away from himself.
Tom Gomez joined Blevins at the repeater console. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said sotto voce. “Cunningham wants you to make a decision. You’re in charge of the battle cab. Get some people in action before he rips us apart.”
There was desperation in Blevins’ voice. “My job is intelligence, damn it, not, not…”
In a low voice Gomez quickly outlined what Blevins should say. Blevins listened, then steeled himself for what he had to do.
He walked over to Cunningham and met the general’s direct stare. He paused and looked at the four other generals and six colonels who had crowded into the battle cab. “General, I have placed two F-4E fighters on cockpit alert at Alexandria South Air Base. I recommend you scramble them into an orbit close as possible to the C-130. Keep them in friendly airspace. Sergeant Nesbit has the details worked out.”
The cigar rolled in Cunningham’s mouth for a moment. “Not bad, Blevins. Do it. Relay everything we’ve got to Outpost. And tell them to get Grain King the hell out of Libya.” The general did not bother to tell the colonels what or where Outpost was; he simply expected them to get the message through and damn quick. Gomez and Nesbit knew that Outpost was an intelligence-gathering unit in northwestern Egypt near the Libyan border that operated under the guise of a radar ground control intercept site. Outpost would be able to find the C-130 on its radar and establish radio contact to relay Cunningham’s order.
“Excuse me, General,” Nesbit called from his console. “The module commander in the RC-135 sending the Apple Waves is Colonel Anthony J. Waters.” The sergeant knew Blevins had wanted to give Cunningham the name and take credit for himself.
The general remembered the name. From the depths of his memory, everything became clear. So, that’s where you’ve been hiding. I wondered what had happened to you after that F-15 fiasco. I was sure the Air Force had lost one of its better tactics men. Cunningham had participated in one of Waters’ Red Flag exercises and had been trounced by the complex scenario Waters had thrown at him.
The general had thoroughly enjoyed it.
16 July: 1511 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1711 hours, Alexandria, Egypt
“Stinger One-One, scramble.
Stinger One-Two, scramble.”
Lieutenant Colonel Mike Fairly and Lieutenant Jack Locke hit their start buttons simultaneously when they heard the first “scramble” from control.
Fairly acknowledged, “Roger, control. Scrambling now. Standing by for words.”
Bryant’s low voice came over the cockpit intercom. “The boss would rather die than sound bad on the radio.”
“You’ve got to look good and sound good to be a squadron commander, me lad. I want to make them eat their hearts out at the bar tonight, so let’s try to be as good,” Locke said.
“Goddamn Air Farce!” Bryant exploded. “Here come the missile trailers now. Too damn late. We get to go to war with only a gun? Well now, look at that. There’s a crew headed for one of the tankers. I didn’t know them SAC fellows could run.”
Control came over the radio. “Stinger One-One and One-Two, you are scrambled to Point Hotel. Contact Outpost on primary frequency two six-five point eight, backup frequency two eight-three point five.”
And Fairly again answered the controller, “Roger, control. Copied all.”
“Thunder, where in all the United Arab Republic is Point Hotel and who is Outpost?” Jack asked.
“I’ll dig it out while the inertial nav system aligns,” the WSO answered. Got to keep the boy cool, he thought.
“A wonderful thing, the inertial navigation system,” Jack said. “All ready to go and here we sit while that damn little black box tries to make up its mind where it is.”
“Patience, patience,” Bryant urged, pulling his aircrew aid out of a pocket on the leg of his anti-G suit. He thumbed through the small book until he found what he wanted. “Point Hotel is over two hundred nautical miles to the west. Glad for that tanker. Outpost is a radar control post. OK, the inertial nav system is aligned. Cleared primary-sync.”
At Thunder’s words, Jack flipped his compass and nav systems to their primary mode of operation, slaving them to the gyros in the inertial navigation system. It was a long delay. Jack gave Fairly a thumbs up, signaling that he was at last ready to taxi. Lieutenant Johnny Nelson, Fairly’s backseater, tapped his forehead. When he saw Bryant nod in acknowledgment, he simultaneously rocked his head forward and closed his rear canopy. Bryant keyed on Nelson’s head nod and closed his canopy in unison with Nelson. Fairly repeated the procedure for Jack and their front canopies came down together. Only the four crew chiefs launching the aircraft saw the synchronized canopy routine that was the first step in the aircrews’ coming together as a team.
Colonel Shaw and his lanky DO were sitting in the commander’s pickup truck, monitoring the radio and watching the two fighters as they taxied out, lined up on the runway, and started their takeoff roll. Shaw watched, with a critical eye, the two F-4s as they made a precision formation takeoff while the sound of the SAC tanker’s engines filled the truck. He was satisfied with the response of the SAC tanker unit. Maybe, he thought, SAC does understand what the Air Force is all about.
“Your boys look good,” he said to Hawkins.
“Good enough,” the DO said. He hoped.
16 July: 1523 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1523 hours, over the Mediterranean
“Colonel!” Bill Carroll shouted over the interphone in the RC-135. “The Libyans scrambled the MiGs. They’re going after the Grain King—”
Cruzak was continuing to refine the frequency pattern. The computer was almost locked onto the entire shift pattern the scrambler used. Cruzak calculated they would break the system wide open in another five minutes. It was a significant breakthrough.
Anthony Waters reacted calmly to this latest intelligence. “Down-link that to Washington.” He was sure a battle was going to start in a few minutes and there was little else he could do. He also hadn’t felt so alive in years.
The colonel unfolded from his seat and stretched his cramped legs. He could see the agitated lieutenant talking to Cruzak. Waters had been monitoring U.S. communications and walked down the narrow aisle, knowing the two needed reassurance. “Hey, you did good. Help is on the way from Alexandria South.”
16 July: 1528 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1728 hours. Western Egypt
Cunningham’s order to establish contact with Grain King and order them out of Libyan airspace had been received over Outpost’s command communications equipment. “Grain King, Grain King, this is Outpost on Guard. Do you copy?” The transmission on Guard—the frequency reserved for emergencies—surprised the C-130 crew.
“Read you five-by, Outpost. Go ahead,” Toni answered.
“Roger, Grain King. Turn right to a heading of zero-niner-zero degrees now. Leave Libyan airspace ASAP. Repeat, leave Libyan airspace ASAP.”
“Outpost,” Toni replied, “we are under the control of Tripoli Center on an approved flight plan, on a weather divert into Alexandria South with an injured man on board.”
“Grain King, Outpost. You are in danger of being intercepted by hostile aircraft. Do you copy all?”
“Copy all.” Toni reached for the yoke, disengaged the autopilot, and spun the big cargo plane to an easterly heading. By pushing the throttles up and nosing the plane into a gentle descent, the airspeed increased to almost three hundred eighty knots. “How far to the border, Dave?”
“About a hundred miles, fifteen or sixteen minutes at this ground speed.” He looked over the flight engineer’s shoulder at the fuel gauges and rapidly calculated what the increased airspeed would do to their fuel. “You can keep this fuel flow up for about eighteen minutes.” If we don’t rip the wings off first, he thought. “Then you’ll have to shut one engine down for long-range cruise. It’s going to be tight.”
16 July: 1531 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1731 hours. Western Egypt
“Outpost, this is Stinger One-One with a flight of two. How read this frequency?” Fairly queried the radar control post.
“Read you five-by, Stinger,” a female voice answered. “Situation is as follows. Grain King Zero-Three, U.S. C-130 cargo aircraft, is transiting Libyan airspace with approved flight plan. Two bandits reported scrambled to intercept Grain King. Intentions of bandits unknown, suspect hostile. I have contact with Grain King. On your nose bearing two-six-five degrees, one-niner-zero nautical miles from your position. Will have a tanker on station in fifteen minutes.”
Fairly stepped on his rudder pedals, wagging the F-4’s tail. Jack broke out of his loose formation and moved two thousand feet to Fairly’s right and five hundred feet above him. The fighters had moved into a tactical formation from which they could support each other in an engagement. Fairly calculated how he could set up an interception on the C-130 that could be switched into an engagement with the bandits should it be necessary. It all depended on how good Nelson was at running intercepts and if he could find the bandits on his scope. “How’s the radar?”
“It’s a good set,” the young lieutenant replied. “All the test checks were OK. I’ve got it set up for air-to-air, fifty-mile range. It’s not much good beyond that. Don’t worry, I’ll get the first radar contact on Grain King.”
Fairly hoped it was not a false show of confidence. “Jack, listen up,” Fairly said over the UHF radio. “If we have to rendezvous on Grain King, the first one with a radar contact will run a standard intercept to the stern of the C-130. If we have to engage the bandits, the first one with a radar contact or visual on the bandits is lead. Run a hot intercept head-on into the merge. Number two will fall in trail two miles. Lead will blow on through the bandits and reverse. We want them to turn and two will go for a sandwich. Don’t let them get on Grain King. Support whoever’s engaged.”
“Roger,” Jack answered his flight leader. “Thunder, trade your mother for the first contact on that magic box of yours,” he told his backseater over the intercom.
“Stinger, Outpost. Say state.” The radar post was asking for the fighters’ armament, fuel and oxygen.
Fairly answered, “One-One and One-Two are guns only, fifteen minutes play time, lox sweet.” The radar site understood
he meant they had internal gatling guns, could stay in the area for fifteen minutes before fuel would force them to the tanker, and had plenty of liquid oxygen.
16 July: 1540 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1740 hours. Western Egypt
“Stinger One-One, Outpost. Grain King is on your nose, five-five nautical miles from you. Altitude twenty-five thousand feet, heading zero-niner-zero degrees. The bandits are at your one-thirty position at five-five from you. They are intercepting Grain King. Do not intervene unless a hostile act is committed.”
Thunder’s voice came over the radio, deep and clear. “One-Two has a radar contact at twelve o’clock, five-four miles, level.” He touched the radar’s elevation wheel, raising the antenna’s elevation a whisker. Slowly, he played the gain, breaking out the target.
“Roger, Stinger One-Two. That is Grain King,” Outpost replied. “Rendezvous on Grain King. Fly heading two-six-five.”
Outpost’s orders were clear. The radar controller was still in control of the developing intercept. Fairly cursed his bad luck, radar set, and backseater.
“Jack, arm ’em up,” Fairly ordered, directing the pilot to throw the sequence of switches that activated his gun and made it “hot” while he did the same. Jack’s fingers moved over the switches, just as they had so many times on the gunnery range before he strafed the target panels. But this time he paused and went through the sequence again, making sure that all his switches were in the right position. No switchology errors, he thought as he lifted the switch guard and threw the final Master Arm toggle.
Jack glanced at the radar scope in front of him, satisfied to see the bright return of the C-130 sliding down the scope. He noticed that Thunder did not reduce the scope’s range to fifty miles when Grain King moved inside forty-nine miles. Thunder was searching for the bandits, a much more difficult target to break out on the old radar set. Hell, the pilot thought, we need a pulse Doppler radar. But if anyone can make this set work, it’s Thunder.
The Warbirds Page 6