The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  When he had finished, Reza nodded. “I believe I can arrange that. Jack, our way is different than yours and what you are asking for involves political exchanges. It is Byzantine politics. Think of it as a labyrinth with many passages we must go down at the same time.”

  Reza could not, of course, tell them about his cousin who was passing on the frag order to the People’s Soldiers of Islam. The Americans could not be expected to comprehend the power struggles that went on in the Saudi royal family, requiring that Mashur be protected. At least, he thought, Mashur will be in England attending the Farnborough air show for the next few days. The Americans would also find it confusing that religious leaders in his country were crying for the Americans to be expelled…and under other circumstances he would also like to see them go…but he and those of more practical bent appreciated how much his country needed the 45th…

  8 August: 1200 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1500 hours. Ras Assanya, Saudi Arabia

  Two days later Reza’s small Gates Learjet deposited Jack and Carroll at Ras Assanya. Thunder was waiting with a pickup and drove them to the COIC, where Waters was anxious to hear about their trip.

  “Reza has some Japanese friends who will be happy to even a few old scores. An oil tanker will be available when we get our next frag order,” Jack told Waters.

  “Can we trust him?” Waters asked.

  “Can we afford not to, sir?…There’s something else, Colonel. Something there’s no question about. We need to change the way we get out of bad-guy land and work on bagging a few MiGs. We figure it’s time to even the score.”

  The first shrill whines of the starting engines jarred Jack out of his sleep. It would be the first strike since they had aborted with the F-15s. At first he had felt relief when the frag order came in two days after he and Carroll had returned from Riyadh. The targets indicated the PSI was again pushing at Basra, trying to break it open. But the United Arab Command was tenaciously holding, taking heavy casualties. This time the 45th was fragged against the transportation net in an attempt to freeze movement of men and supplies away from the FEBA, The Forward Edge of Battle Area—the front. But doubts were starting to build—was his plan too ambitious, was he relying too much on Reza? And if it was, and if he was…well, the thought of dying in a grubby little war helping the Arabs—as a group, people he didn’t particularly like—wasn’t one he relished. Still, he did like Reza, the only Arab he knew personally. Whatever, it bothered him sometimes that he was fighting for political goals old men in comfortable rooms had chosen for him. But then he remembered Doc Landis’ words at Mike Fairly’s memorial service: ending a small war before it became a larger, uncontainable war was what it was all about. And there was another thing, something very simple and deep: he wanted to hurt the enemy that had killed his friends. He wanted his revenge. But were the sacrifices worth the results? Only when he snapped the gear and flaps up on takeoff could he stop brooding and find his answer dropping bombs on a hostile target. It was simple then: them or us, kill or be killed.

  The trawler’s radar operator studied his scope, watching the big blip move toward them. He had noticed it thirty minutes earlier but had decided it was one of the rare ships that still chanced the run into Kuwait. He carefully plotted the new position of the ship, confirming its course. “Konstantine,” he called out the open door of the stifling hot cabin that served as the radar shack on the trawler, “there is a large ship bearing down on us. Have the lookouts check on it and tell the captain. It is not in the shipping channels.”

  “Impossible,” the mate said. “It would have to be out of ballast to be in these shallow waters. They don’t do that.” One of the lookouts solved the argument by calling in and reporting that an oil tanker riding high in the water was bearing down on them but should pass to their left, between them and Ras Assanya. Konstantine ran out to the bridge’s wing and focused his binoculars on the ship. “Get the captain,” he snapped. Every eye on the trawler studied the tanker.

  The captain came onto the bridge, still half-asleep and rubbing his chin. “Identify him,” he said, focusing his binoculars on the ship. “We will report him to the International Maritime Commission. At least his insurance rates will rocket for being out of the shipping channels—” He froze as he saw the bow of the tanker start a swing toward his trawler, putting them on a collision course. “Hard to starboard,” he ordered the helmsman, turning his much smaller craft away from the looming mass of the tanker brushing past them. Well, at least the idiot must realize where he is and return to the proper channel—

  “Fighters!” the aft lookout reported in. “I count over thirty headed north, are launching…”

  “Why didn’t you report them sooner?” the captain barked into his headset.

  “The tanker was in the way. I cannot see through steel, Captain. Ask the radar operators why they have not reported it.”

  The captain knew the 45th maintained strict radio silence and his operators had to rely on radar to pick up launching aircraft out of Ras Assanya. But why hadn’t they reported anything? “Captain, we’re being jammed,” the chief radar operator told him, answering his unspoken question.

  All doubts he had about the tanker vanished. It was a trick of the Americans. But whose tanker was it? They had not been able to identify it. “Radio a warning,” the captain told his operators, hoping the air-defense net would receive the message in time to react.

  “Captain,” the mate told him, “all our radio frequencies are being jammed. The jamming is very close to us. It must be from the tanker.” The two men ran back out onto the open wing of the bridge. The tanker was slowly turning, staying close to the trawler. Until they could stand well clear of the tanker, they could not overcome its jamming.

  “We’ve got to outrun the tanker. Turn to the north; find another frequency. They can’t jam everything we have…” The mate could hear the building panic in the captain’s orders. Soon he would be in command of the trawler and not the old fool who swilled cheap vodka and slept past six in the morning. The radio operators rapidly cycled to new frequencies as they searched for an open channel to transmit a warning message. But as soon as they found one the automatic frequency sweep on the tanker’s jammer would lock on them and override their signal. As the trawler tried to draw abeam of the tanker the huge ship again turned into the trawler, forcing it to turn eastward and continuing to cast its shadow over the trawler’s radio frequencies.

  After seventeen minutes, the jamming ceased and the tanker stood clear of the trawler, signaling, “Can we be of any assistance?”

  The captain swore and beat on the railing, fully aware the Phantoms were reaching into Iran.

  The captain of the oil tanker Tokara Maru stood on the starboard wing of the bridge, concentrating on the Russian trawler as his ship turned south, his weather-beaten face impassive while the trawler disappeared behind him. The captain stood almost five feet ten inches, tall for a Japanese of his generation, and at sixty-three years of age, his rigid discipline and self-control masked the satisfaction he felt. He turned now and walked into the spotless, air-conditioned bridge.

  The officer of the watch saw him turn and warned the helmsman that the captain was coming. The old man was a perfectionist.

  The navigation officer was still awed by the captain’s piloting of the 150,000-ton ship—small by supertanker standards—around the trawler. Only the officer of the watch acknowledged the captain’s entrance with a crisp bow. The captain glanced at the radar, fixing the location of the trawler and his ship, and walked out onto the port wing.

  “He hates the Russians,” the helmsman said sotto voce.

  “Most Kuril islanders do,” the navigation officer put in. “He was forced to leave with his family in 1945 when the Russians took over their island, Kunashir.”

  The bridge became silent when the captain reentered and stood beside his chair—he seldom sat down. “How long to the rendezvous with our escort?”

  “Forty-six minutes,” the naviga
tion officer told him. “We are in radio contact with the British frigate and Dutch minesweeper the United Arab Command has arranged to escort us through the Strait of Hormuz. The frigate sends a ‘well done.’”

  The old man focused on the horizon. “Please relay the message to the crew and tell them I am most satisfied with their performance. Now we must return the Tokara Maru safely to the open sea. She is my last command.” He silently reprimanded himself for saying so much, but he was pleased with his crew. He had not been allowed to tell them about the coded radio message from the company’s headquarters in Yokohama that asked him to take his ship into the Persian Gulf as a jamming platform for the Americans. He had only told them that the next voyage would be dangerous. They had volunteered to the man. The captain’s face relaxed. The men on the bridge exchanged furtive glances. Their captain was very pleased.

  This time, without warnings from either Mashur or the trawler, the strike force was able to reach its targets unopposed, hugging the deck and trying to avoid early-warning air-defense radar. Without MiGs to contend with they were able to fly around the last known positions of SAM and Triple A sites. And their intelligence was current, courtesy of the Stealths.

  It was, of course, impossible to avoid all the defense sites, and they deliberately challenged a few emplacements, relying on surprise and hoping to catch the PSI at their early-morning prayers. Waters was leading the first attack flight and was nearing his IP. Sweat poured off his face as he concentrated on picking up the small cluster of buildings located at the junction of two dirt roads that his wizzo had selected as their Initial Point. It flashed into his front left-quarter panel, exactly where it was supposed to be. As his flight flew over the buildings he could see six figures still kneeling on the ground next to their trucks, looking at the fighters turning above them. They would soon be on their radios, warning the railroad marshaling junction an attack was imminent and fighters were inbound. Well, they would have to be damn quick; he was less than a minute out.

  So far the PSI had not reacted. Waters doubted it would be as smooth getting out. It depended on the last half of Jack’s plan. Two miles out from the junction he pulled in a pop maneuver, seeing the railroad junction with eight boxcars on sidings for the first time. He rolled in and pickled his bombs off. Before the bombs exploded he could see figures running for cover. He jinked the Phantom hard as he escaped, not taking chances, expecting to receive ground fire. His wizzo told him the other three planes in his flight were safely off target; their six o’clock was clear and no bandits were in sight. Waters was too old a hand to relax and concentrated on getting himself and his wingman out of the target area. They headed southwest, toward the city of Basra, an escape route they had never used before.

  Jack’s plan had been simple: egress over Basra, the pivot point of the whole conflict. He had maintained that the UAC would never be able to coordinate its own air-defense network sufficiently to allow the fighters through. But if the UAC ordered its own Triple A and SAMs to remain at weapons-tight, only shooting at aircraft positively identified as hostile between 8:00 at night and 7:00 each morning, the 45th could hit its targets early in the morning and sneak through before the gunners started shooting at everything in sight. The UAC had agreed and sent out the order the day before. Mashur was still in England, taking a prolonged vacation…

  The last of the Phantoms exited over Basra at 6:44 A.M. with MiGs in hot pursuit. The escorting F-15s had turned around and were sorting the MiGs out, each Eagle driver picking his target. For the next six minutes the embattled inhabitants and defenders of Basra watched as the F-15s met the MiGs over their city, engaging in classic aerial combat. Instead of zooming through the oncoming Floggers, the first flight of Eagles stayed and mixed it up, with most of the agile fighters using the vertical to turn with the slightly smaller MiG-23 Floggers. From the ground it looked as if the Eagles had hinges on their tails as they flopped over, always keeping their nose on a MiG. For the MiG pilots it was a terrifying experience, seeing the F-15s turn so quickly and not being able to disengage, to escape. The sky filled with the smoke trails of Sidewinder missiles and the falling wreckage of six MiG Floggers.

  The second flight of Eagles ripped through the fight, heading for a second wave of oncoming MiGs, and the deadly ballet repeated itself as three more Floggers fell out of the sky. The third wave of MiGs opted not to engage and ran for home.

  Stansell had forbidden his pilots to pursue the MiGs back into hostile territory, and so once the sky had been swept clean he ordered his birds home. His words crackled over the radio, “Recover as briefed,” which also meant no showboat victory rolls.

  At the debrief in the COIC Waters saw how closely success and morale were linked. One of the F-15 pilots had produced a case of champagne and toasts were being intermingled with an occasional dousing. Stansell walked in then, looked around and made his way through the crowd to wing commander Waters. “We did good,” he said.

  “You did good. I saw you didn’t let them do victory rolls on recovery. You’ve got a bunch of disciplined pros flying for you. Maybe next, though, you ought to let ’em. They’ve earned it. But of course it’s your decision—”

  Their exchange was interrupted by an announcement over the loudspeaker, “Your attention in the COIC. All, repeat all, aircraft have safely recovered.”

  Cups were refilled and the crews turned and looked to Waters. But before he could find the right words, Bull Morgan took over. “Gentlemen, to our commander, Colonel Waters.”

  The reccy photos being projected on the screen of the main briefing room told a tale of destruction and success—the wing had stopped the latest flow of men and supplies before they could move into position to attack Basra. Every pilot and wizzo was there, listening to Carroll as he recounted the BDA from that morning’s mission and confirmed seven of the nine MiG kills. Two of the Flogger pilots had been captured, more or less intact, and were undergoing “interrogation” by the UAC.

  After the briefing Waters told Jack and C.J. in Carroll’s small office that JUSMAG wanted them to launch Wolf Flight that same night for a cleanup on specific targets. Reports had it that the PSI was moving at night and forming convoys at transloading points. Those points were the new designated targets.

  “They’ll be waiting, Colonel.” Carroll, from previous flights, was almost certain there was an intelligence leak in the UAC.

  “I know, but we’ve hurt them. Now’s the time to keep punching,” Waters said.

  “I think we need to go back to pairing a Weasel with an E model for this one.” Jack was already committed.

  C.J., the bald-headed major, agreed. “They’ll be expecting us when the moon is up. We ought to hit them right at the end of evening twilight, just after it gets dark and before the moon rises. We need to do something different on this one.”

  “Mostly, we need to get them looking where we ain’t,” Jack said. Jack didn’t like having his targets picked for him. It felt too much like a setup.

  As for Waters, his training and experience told him to press the attack, hit the enemy when he was hurting. Sure…except some gut instinct told him to scrub the mission, quit while they were ahead. But the USAF didn’t pay him to go by his gut instincts…

  Jack let Thunder do most of the planning, pulled up a chair in front of the big area map on the wall and stared at it. “Hey, come here a minute,” he said. “That damn trawler is back on station and Reza doesn’t have another oil tanker to run interference for us again. It’ll warn the PSI when we take off, like before. Besides, they’re expecting us now, which makes hitting the targets pretty damn risky…But how about if we let the trawler know when we’ve launched? The first flight will get high enough so the trawler can paint them on its radar. Instead of flying welded wing, the two birds will move, say, two thousand feet apart. We make it look like two strike elements on their radar, hope they’ll think we’re flying our normal close formation and assume they’re seeing four aircraft. Keep low so they’ll have a roug
h time tracking but high enough to divert their attention away from the six birds we’ll launch right after the first two. Those six will be going after the real targets, and they’ll have to get down in the weeds to avoid radar detection. They’ll fly together and go right over Basra again, only this time they will be on an easterly heading, inbound to the target. Since it’s at night the friendlies’ll be at weapons-tight over Basra. Besides, they should be looking to the east and we’ll surprise them as much as the Gomers. Once clear of Basra they head directly for their targets, but instead of turning south to escape, they head north before turning westbound and getting out of enemy territory. It’ll be a long low-level and that means we’ve got to have a KC-135 waiting for inflight refueling once we’re in friendly airspace over Iraq. At the same time the first flight draws all the attention to itself, hits the closest target we can pick and beats feet home, providing the diversion we need to get the other six in.”

  Carroll said, “It could work for the six, questionable for the two who serve as a diversion.”

  A quick look at Thunder told Jack that his pitter was willing. “C.J., you game to be a volunteer?” Jack asked.

  “Why not? It’s the kind of ride Stan-the-man likes. We’ll join you. Now we need to sell it to the Old Man.”

  Waters listened to Jack’s latest plan for launching Wolf Flight and had to admit the pilot was creative in devising new ways to deceive and attack the enemy. But he was the one who had to decide whether to launch or cancel. He wanted time to think, not be forced into committing the lives of his men so fast. Except time was what he didn’t have.

  He made his decision. “If we can get an airborne tanker it’s a go,” he said, and quickly left the room. All the elation he felt from the morning’s successful raid was overwhelmed by the possible consequences of his “go” decision.