The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  The silence after the launch was as deafening as the noise had been. Gillian turned to Jack. “Oh, my God…” She reached out and put her hand on his cheek, surprising him by the warmth of her touch. They stood there for a moment, not saying a word.

  “I don’t know what happened to me,” she said. “I think it must have been the incredible noise, the power of it…it excited me, I admit. That is the secret isn’t it? I mean, the power in those beasts. Controlled and caged and you fly them—like riding a whirlwind.” She seemed to blush. “Is that too silly, Jack? I don’t care…No wonder it draws you in so…”

  Jack drew Gillian into his arms. She had it right, no question. She knew…knew him, which excited and even scared him a little…

  “What am I going to do with you?” he said, pulling her to him.

  “Well, you can start by letting me show you London. You’ve given me part of your world; it’s my turn to show you some of mine.” For starters, she added to herself.

  The London that Gillian first showed Jack included an aunt’s elegant home in Mayfair, meeting her friends in a variety of pubs, and the theater. Over breakfast Sunday morning Jack told her that he now wanted to play tourist and see at least one of the standard sights.

  Gillian checked the weather, found that it would be cold and sunny…a miracle in London. “That’s it then,” she told him. “Greenwich by river.” They caught the tour boat for Greenwich at Tower Bridge, and Jack saw why the famous observatory should only be seen from the river. The rigging of the clipper ship Cutty Sark dominated his first impression until he saw the expanse of the buildings designed by Christopher Wren.

  In bed early Monday morning, Jack reached out for Gillian—she wasn’t there. A sudden hurt, an ache of loneliness hit him before he realized he was panicking, that she had gone no further than the bathroom. When she came back to bed he pretended to be asleep, not wanting to let her know how he felt…still confused—even afraid—about what was happening to him.

  The next day when Thunder decided he’d had enough of waiting around for the Ahlhorn mission, delayed by the rotten weather, Jack grabbed at his suggestion that they get a pass and try some skiing in the Alps. Without saying as much, it was an escape from more than the tedium of waiting for the weather to clear…

  19 March: 1930 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 2030 hours, Davos, Switzerland

  The cold of the Alps and getting to the hotel in Davos that they’d been booked into made them almost nostalgic for the wet but tolerable English countryside. Never mind, they’d determined to have a time and proceeded to begin with a quick trip to the bar, which was crowded with some especially succulent women, including two who identified themselves only as Jane and Diana. The getting together didn’t take long—everybody knew what everybody was there for, including but not restricted to the slopes.

  And the next day, after a run from the top of the Weiss-fluhjoch down the Parsenns-Klosters trail, Jack and Thunder again got together at the bar with the ladies, who this time were conversing in French, with two men, a Frenchman named Paul and another, an Arab, named Reza.

  Paul was especially interested to hear that Jack and Thunder flew F-4s, and soon let them know that he and Reza flew fighters, that he himself was actually a test pilot. They promised to talk more the next day.

  Early in the morning, after a restless night, Jack decided to try the sauna, and found it was coeducational, with Jane already there, as though waiting for him…? A very nice coincidence. What the hell, he was supposed to be getting away from the pressures, personal included. She was sitting on a middle bench and patted the place beside her. She turned to him when he sat down, apparently taking his erection as a compliment. After that, there really wasn’t much to say. What happened was sex, a purging. So why didn’t he feel more satisfied?

  Meanwhile, Jane’s friend Diana was languishing and despite her advances, not having any luck with Jack’s remarkably built buddy Thunder, who seemed to have found somebody else he preferred.

  The Arab, Prince Reza Ibn Abdul Turika, of the Saudi royal family, was, on the other hand, pleased with his good fortune. He was impressed with the two American flyers and also listened carefully to the Frenchman Paul Rainey celebrate the technical merits of the French Mirage 2000 fighter as opposed to the much older U.S. F-4. He understood that the French government had given Paul the tough assignment of convincing him that his government should purchase new delta-wing Mirage 2000s.

  Jack’s arguments came down to the crucial difference being the relative skills of individual pilots. Paul then asked the two Americans to come with him to the airfield near Nancy, where they were conducting a combat evaluation of the Mirage. He’d arrange a demonstration ride for them, he said.

  The next day at the airfield the weather was cold and cloudy. When they got to the hangar Jack stopped dead in his tracks. “For God’s sake, where in hell did you get that?” He was referring to the lone occupant of the hangar—a pristine F-4E.

  Paul then proceeded to tell how the F-4 was a gift from the Ayatollah in 1980, who was paying back the French for giving him asylum during the Shah’s regime—and particularly enjoyed giving a plane that had been given to the Shah originally by the Americans. The French had shipped the plane in crates to Nancy, and their technicians had only recently reassembled it and trimmed the engines. They had only flown it twice, Paul said.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Jack asked him.

  “We want to fly it and use it as a standard for comparison. Maybe you would like to fly it for us?”

  Reza watched the exchange closely, understanding that Paul obviously assumed his Mirages would perform well and impress Reza as compared to the older American Phantom. But then he added an unexpected zinger of his own.

  “Jack, I would like to fly against you in the Mirage.”

  Paul protested, sure that Reza, a newly qualified pilot in the Mirage, would hardly be able to stack up against the two highly trained American pilots. But Reza insisted, and he was the potential customer. So Paul salvaged matters by urging that at least he should fly with Reza in another Mirage as his wingman. The fight would be documented, shot for shot, by video gun cameras.

  Paul Rainey gave them a map and Thunder noted the location of the French GCI radar site in the center. He figured Paul would probably use it to find them and receive vectors into the engagement, which would put him and Jack at a real disadvantage. “Well, they’ve got to find us first,” Jack said. “We get low and loiter in the weeds, hide from the radar and try to make them burn up fuel looking for us. Once they get low we’ll engage them. We’ve got to make them depend on a visual contact to engage us—that’s the only way I can see to offset their radar. So…we’ve got to keep below a hundred feet and you’ve got to track them without locking onto them with our radar…their warning gear will probably react even to the search mode of our radar, so keep your search time to a minimum and your radar in standby. Think you can handle all that till it’s time to engage?”

  Thunder said he could, thoroughly caught up in it now. Both of them were pushing to the back of their minds any second thoughts or possible consequences of what they were doing. They were fighter jocks. Consequences were for field grade officers and Pentagon paper pushers…

  Jack taxied slowly, watching Reza and Paul takeoff, wanting the Mirages to consume as much fuel as possible while he stayed on the ground. He felt Thunder take control of the rudder pedals with his big feet and weave the bird back and forth down the taxiway. Thunder, Jack knew, was just prancing, enjoying himself, looking forward to the coming engagement.

  In the control tower the controller remarked to an observer that the Americans were crazy, that they’d have no chance against the Mirages if they couldn’t even taxi straight.

  Actually Jack was being less crazy than he’d ever been on a flight, understanding the odds against him and Thunder. Paul, a top test pilot, was a better pilot in sheer technique than he was. But he was also betting that Paul wasn’t so
much of a technician, hadn’t practiced or thought about air-combat tactics in a long time…not his bag. In fact, Paul had already made an error by taking off before the Phantom, and Jack stalled another ten minutes on the runway after he had received clearance to take off, claiming gyro-stabilization problems. When the controller saw Jack finally make his takeoff and come out of afterburner and level off at one thousand feet and 350 knots airspeed, he said, “Merde, he flies slow. The American is in no hurry to be eaten by Paul.”

  Once out of sight of the tower Jack dropped down to a hundred feet and skirted the area they’d picked for the engagement, entering it on the side opposite the base. He dropped lower and skimmed the tree tops, heading for the radar site. “Time for a bubble check,” he said. Two miles out from the radar antenna he increased his speed to 420 knots, a better maneuvering speed, then pulled up in time to fly over the dome covering the antenna, clearing it by less than ten feet as he stroked the afterburners.

  The operators in the radar site had been searching for the Phantom and weren’t able to respond to Paul’s request for information. The tower had broadcast Jack’s takeoff time to them, and the delay in finding the Phantom was worrying the Mirage pilots. When Paul did realize Jack was using fuel conservation as a tactic he zoomed to a higher altitude to save his own fuel, penetrating the cloud deck at eight thousand feet, which forced him to rely on his radar and information from the radar site. He broke out of the clouds at twenty-four thousand feet, entering the envelope that, in fact, the Mirage had been designed for. Just then the radar site radioed that they had “found” the Phantom, that it had buzzed the radar head at a crazy low altitude.

  Paul understood that the American would stay low, forcing him to come down to engage, and began to work his radar, using the pulse Doppler set to find the low-flying Phantom…

  At Thunder’s direction, Jack now fell in behind the two Mirages and trailed them around the area from twenty-five thousand feet below, hiding in their blind spot…the radar on a fighter is in the nose and so it is blind at its rear…

  Reza was enjoying the Frenchman’s predicament, remarking that it didn’t look good if they couldn’t find the target. Paul silently invited him to drop dead…

  Finally Jack decided it was time to engage and let them know where he was. He told Thunder to get ready to lock onto one of the Mirages and stay locked on. He climbed to five hundred feet to let the GCI find him, then after pausing a few seconds went back to seventy-five feet, once again dropping off the GCI’s scope. He counted to ten and told Thunder to lock on…

  “The Phantom is at your six o’clock, five miles in trail, altitude five hundred feet,” the radar site told Paul. As Paul received this unpleasant information, Reza broke in with, “I have a radar warning; they are locked on and tracking me at my six o’clock.”

  Paul checked his fuel gauge. “Follow me, I’ll take the lead.” He put the nose of the Mirage over and did a Split-S toward his six o’clock, immediately acquiring two targets on his scope as he plummeted through the cloud deck. He selected the one on the right, locked on to track it and told Reza to lock onto the left target. Paul’s target turned out to be moving at only eighty miles per hour and he had to assume it was a fast-moving car. He broke lock and relocked on the other target. He came up empty. His and Reza’s radars were interfering with each other, giving false readings. But Paul now called on his skills and led the Mirages in a steep dive through the cloud deck—not a simple dive but one that turned and reversed course as Paul maneuvered to bring the Phantom to his twelve o’clock position and keep it there. Reza’s performance as a wingman wasn’t too shabby either, remaining welded to Paul’s wing throughout the tricky descent…

  Thunder was twisted around his seat, straining for a visual on the Mirages. His radar-warning gear was screaming that the other birds were at his six, and he spotted them as they broke out of the clouds. “Tallyho,” he called over the intercom. “Bandits, six o’clock, eight miles plus, high on us.”

  It was enough for Jack to engage. Thunder had just told him that the two Mirages were over eight miles behind him at a much higher altitude with their noses on the Phantom. He check-turned thirty degrees to his right, kicking them out of his six o’clock position and visually acquiring them. Then he accelerated to 420 knots and climbed to twenty-five hundred feet to gain the minimum room he needed to maneuver in. He watched with growing excitement as the two Mirages closed to his six. Then he waited…

  Paul’s acute senses told him they were going too fast and would overshoot the Phantom. Yet, the radar indicated a much slower overtake speed. Trusting his senses, he called for speed brakes and slowed the Mirages as they closed to within three miles of Jack’s tail. Jack’s speed control was faultless as he reversed course, pulling four Gs through a one hundred thirty-five degree bank, bringing his nose head-on to the Mirages. The American’s timing was perfect as he simulated a snap gunshot at Paul’s Mirage. He had cut his counterturn so close that the two Mirages had to take evasive action.

  Paul zoomed out of the flight, expecting Riza to follow him, but Reza wanted to engage. He pulled his nose up, using the vertical to reverse course before Jack shot by. Now Reza was going back the way he had come and expected to see Jack in front and below him. But Jack, using his speed brakes, was still directly under Reza, turning to the left and diving for the ground. Reza, seeing how close they were, again pulled up his nose and turned to the right away from Jack. He wanted to maneuver away from the ground and get room to turn back on Jack…

  Except Jack had only feinted in his hard turn to the left and rolled under and sliced back to the right, turning after Reza. He cleared the ground by two hundred feet and rolled out behind the Arab, right in the heart of the launch envelope for a Sidewinder missile. He then simulated two AIM-9 missile launches on the retreating Mirages…

  Reza, trying to find Jack, heard Paul call out, “Bingo fuel.” He glanced at his gauge and realized that they had to scramble for home. Nothing to do about it. No fuel left for maneuvering. Take the humiliation of defeat or flameout…

  After calling the tower to enter the pattern, Jack came down final, but instead of landing he snapped up the gear and flaps and flew down the runway at one thousand feet, executing a roll as he passed the taxiing Mirages. “I wish you hadn’t done that, old buddy,” Thunder said as they circled to land. “Our French-friend is going to be eating nails as it is.”

  He was, of course, right. Reza was fascinated and exhilarated by the experience but them know that Paul was far from amused, that he had, in fact, asked that they be declared non grata by the French government. He quickly arranged private transportation for them at the international airport in Luxembourg, and they were soon back at Stonewood, without time to make any good-byes to any ladies. It seemed, for the moment, that they’d gotten away clean and free.

  5 April: 0845 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 0945 hours, Stonewood, England

  Waters had joined the three men around the map of the Persian Gulf that Bill Carroll had spread out on the work table in Intelligence. Carroll plotted the coordinates he’d been given that morning. “That’s it, Ras Assanya,” the lieutenant told the group. “Never heard of it and there’s nothing in my records about it.”

  Chief Pullman bent over the map. “Why is the air base located near a neutral zone?”

  “That’s an old map that needs updating,” Carroll told him. “The neutral zone is now part of Kuwait. They stuck our deployment base in the middle of nowhere.”

  With a pair of dividers Waters measured off two hundred fifty nautical miles and swung an arc on the map using the base as the center point. “Someone had their act together when they picked Ras Assanya for our deployment base. Our effective area of operations is the head of the Persian Gulf. And that at least makes us a significant deterrent to any would-be Alexander the Greats.”

  “And a significant target,” Carroll said. “Sir David, our information is that British contractors built the base. Can you get us
any pictures, plans?”

  The group commander nodded. “You have a problem,” he began. “Base survival will be a major factor in the success of your operations out of Ras Assanya. You need to be prepared to deal with air attacks, commando raids and naval bombardment. Fighting for your base is something you Yanks haven’t done since the early days of World War Two.”

  “How in the hell do we get our troops ready for that?” Chief Pullman grumbled. “Home is supposed to be safe.”

  “The first step is to get everyone’s attention,” Childs said, and outlined how they could do that by staging a training raid on Stonewood. He proposed using four F-15s from Soesterberg in the Netherlands launching out of Stonewood to defend against attacking aircraft from NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program. “Once your people have seen what a well-planned attack can do, then we can teach them how to fight for their survival while they launch and recover fighters on combat sorties.”

  “Well,” Waters said, “let’s get cracking. Time’s no longer on our side.”

  Jack stood on the ramp with Morgan and Conlan, watching four F-15 Eagles taxi into the hardened bunkers near the squadron and noting the big black letters painted on the tails of the taxiing aircraft. “I’ve never seen the CR tail markings before. Who are they?”

  “That’s the designator for the 32nd Tac Fighter Squadron out of Soesterberg in the Netherlands. Probably the best group of air defenders in the Air Force,” C.J. said.

  “If they’re so hot, how come they’re so unknown?”

  C.J. shrugged. “They don’t holler about it, they just do it. They’ve won the Hughes Trophy twice in a row. For an air-defense squadron that’s the same as winning the Super Bowl. They only have eighteen birds and are tucked away on the corner of a Dutch air base. For them, small is better.”