The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  “Colonel, wake up.” Stansell’s voice cut through the deep fog of his sleep.

  Waters sat up, feeling slightly dizzy, glanced at his watch. He had been asleep over three hours and it was almost sunset. He felt alert and rested. Sergeant Nesbit handed him a cup of hot coffee.

  “What’s our status?”

  “Chief Hartley wants to blow the causeway,” Stansell told him. “He’s starting to take small-arms fire out there. We’ve lost contact with the GCI site and Captain Hauser never made it in…The engineers never got the runway open and are trying to patch together two thousand feet on the taxiway, enough for a C-130 to get in and out. Single-ship Floggers have tried to overfly us six times. Reccy birds, I figure. The Rapiers got ’em every time. So far. If we can hold on another six or seven hours, the Navy should be able to give us air cover. We’re taking on artillery barrage every fifteen or twenty minutes. Over two hundred casualties now, sir.”

  The phone lines had been cut to the Security Police bunker and Waters had to use a radio to establish contact. “Chief, this is Zero-One. I agree. Blow the causeway.”

  “Roger, Zero-One,” Hartley answered, “it’s time. We’re taking an occasional mortar round and can see movement at the head of the mine field.”

  “How long can you hold?”

  “Maybe three or four hours, Colonel. But that’s only a guess.”

  The chief signed off then, telling them he would report back when the causeway was down. He listened for a moment, looking at his watch. “These muthas are something regular.” He calculated he had twelve to fifteen minutes to blow the charge under the causeway before the next artillery barrage would start. “Hey, with a little luck they might do the job for us with a lucky shot.” The chief was talking to himself as he strapped on his helmet and closed the front of his flak jacket, then jogged the two hundred yards from his command bunker to the embankment the bulldozers had pushed up on the base side of his big ditch. He kept down until he reached the break in the wall that they had left for the road leading across the causeway. He moved quickly and lightly, darting into the observation bunker set into the embankment next to the road.

  Macon Jefferson, holding the bunker with another man, felt a little better when he saw Hartley. “Time to blow this mutha,” the chief told them. He quickly connected two wires to the actuator, a small box with two guarded switches and a timing dial. He set the dial to zero, lifted both guards and threw the switches. Nothing happened. “Don’t look out,” Macon said quietly. “There’s a sniper out there.” The chief looked anyway, counting seven craters on the causeway. A single shot hit the sandbagged opening inches from his face.

  “Mortars must have cut the wires,” the chief growled. “Why haven’t you guys taken the sniper out? He can shoot. Maybe the next bastard won’t be as good.” He scowled at the fresh scar the bullet had left. He picked up an M-16, checked it. “Stick your helmet into the opening in three minutes,” he ordered, jogging out of the bunker. He moved fifty yards down the wall and scrambled up the loose dirt of the steep bank, stopping just below the ridge. Carefully he scooped out a shallow depression that pointed toward the spot he judged the sniper fired from. “I got the angle on you…” The chief took off his helmet, laid his cheek against the stock, looked over the sight, and waited. He saw the flash before he heard the report when the sniper fired at the helmet flashing in the port of the observation bunker. Hartley swung the barrel ten degrees to the left and squeezed off a single shot. He could see the sniper’s jaw and rifle stock come apart in the rapidly fading light. He checked his watch, calculating he still had seven minutes before the next barrage.

  He jogged back to the bunker and picked up a fresh reel of wire, telling the men to cover him, then moved along the edge of the causeway to a spot near the middle. He knelt and attached the new wires to the leads coming from the charge planted eight feet in the earth, threw the old wires aside, reeled the wire out as he trotted back. Twenty feet from the observation post a series of shots erupted. Hartley surprised the watching men with a sudden burst of speed as he piled into the bunker. One shot had cut a bloody furrow across the back of his left thigh. “I told you he wouldn’t be as good,” he grunted, handing the new wire to Macon. “So I was wrong. Blow him while I stuff this leak.” He shoved a wadded-up dressing into his wound and bound it tightly with a compress bandage from the first-aid kit on his belt.

  The causeway erupted in a shower of noise, dust and dirt. Macon asked him why he didn’t crouch when he ran. “Don’t do any good when you’re my size. Now get some shovels and fill this gap in,” he replied, waving at the road cut through the embankment. He checked his watch and walked back to his command bunker to call Waters.

  “Rup,” Waters was saying to Stansell, “see if the Engineers can get three thousand feet of taxiway open. Enough for an F-4 take off.” Waters hadn’t shaved in two days and his face and flight suit were streaked with sweat. Energy, though, still radiated from him. “After that, get over to the bunkers you’re using for evac and make sure someone is in charge; then get back here.”

  6 September: 1710 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 2010 hours, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

  The crew of the C-130 was sprawled out on the cargo deck waiting for the order to launch another shuttle mission out of Dhahran. They were weary from repeated attempts to get into Ras Assanya and discouraged because they had only been able to land once. The overweight major who had taken over running the operation drove up in his air-conditioned truck and walked toward the C-130 with clipboard in hand. “I’m putting you into crew rest,” he said. “Ras Assanya is reporting they have only two thousand feet of runway open. I’m not about to send you into that.”

  Toni D’Angelo turned and walked toward the flight deck, the men trailing her, and the major realized they were going to Ras Assanya no matter what he said. “Captain Luna,” he yelled at their backs, “stop using Grain King Zero-Three for your call sign.”

  “Screw you,” from Toni, climbing up the ladder.

  Captain Luna dropped the Hercules down onto the deck when they were forty miles out of Ras Assanya, hugging the coast line. The moonlit night gave him plenty of visibility, and Dave’s radar navigation kept him on the course he had to fly in order to be recognized as a friendly aircraft by the Rapiers.

  Two miles out, Luna popped the bird to twelve hundred feet and dropped his gear and flaps, configuring for an assault landing. When he saw a flashing light at the southern end of the taxiway he queried the tower’s frequency. No answer. He did not see the large crater that had been the tower’s bunker.

  He brought the Hercules down final with its nose high in the air, carrying as much power as he could. The moment his main gear touched down on the taxiway, he shoved the yoke full forward, slamming the nose gear down, raking the throttles full aft and lifting them over the detent into reverse. He stomped on the brakes, dragging the cargo plane to a halt.

  A pickup dashed onto the taxiway in front of them and a figure jumped out with two hand-held wands and motioned them to back up. Luna threw the props into reverse and backed down the main taxiway until he reached another taxiway leading into the bunkers. The lone figure ran down the taxiway motioning him to follow, waved the Hercules to a stop in front of a bunker with open blast doors.

  “My God, look at the litters lined up,” Toni said, pointing to the casualties waiting evacuation. “How are we going to get that many on board?”

  “We shut down and reconfigure for litters, that’s how,” Luna said.

  “Captain, that takes thirty, maybe forty minutes,” the loadmaster complained.

  “We’ll do it in fifteen. Get busy.”

  Chief Hartley was already in the back of the Hercules directing the offloading of mortar shells and anti-tank weapons they had been waiting for. He told them the base was expecting an attack across the isthmus connecting the base to the mainland at any time. “They been pounding the crap out of us for two hours. We got some gettin’ even to do.” The battle-wea
ry and wounded chief bundled into his truck and went off with the load into the night.

  The men tending the wounded swarmed onto the Hercules and helped the crew rig the stanchions that allowed litters to be stacked five-high. The wounded were then carried on board as soon as a set of stanchions were in place, leaving trails of blood across the cargo deck. Bill Carroll helped carry on board one of his sergeants badly wounded in a rocket attack. He strapped the litter into place and checked with Toni D’Angelo, who was standing at the rear of the cargo bay supervising the loading. “These are the ones our doc says can be saved if we get them to a hospital…The aid stations look like slaughter-houses.”

  Toni looked at his name tag and checked the passenger list that had been handed her. She found the captain’s name at the top, indicating he had top priority to be evacuated. “We’ll do what we can, Captain. Why don’t you ride up front with us?”

  It was an offer hard to turn down. God knew, Carroll wanted to get out of there, find his sanity again. He even started to pull himself up the steps leading to the flight deck, then abruptly stopped and hurried out through the crew-entrance hatch. “What the hell am I thinking of,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here,” Luna yelled at his co-pilot as Carroll jumped off the C-130 and headed for the Command Post.

  Toni snapped the gear handle up as soon as the C-130 lifted off while Luna held the big bird on the deck and pushed the throttles full forward, coaxing as much airspeed as he could out of the tired engines. “Ten minutes, babies, just ten minutes,” he pleaded…

  The enemy Flogger was also on the deck, trying to avoid radar-detection and engagement by the Rapiers. The pilot was trying to figure out a cover story to prove he had overflown the base on a visual reconnaissance as the air-group commander had ordered. Those fools, he thought, nothing is impossible for them when they don’t have to do it! Well, let them try once and not take a hit from an American missile. He also couldn’t understand why his superiors were so anxious to learn if the American base was burning. A huge silhouette flashed in front of him, heading south. He pulled up and rolled in behind the escaping airplane, recognizing the outline of a U.S. C-130 and seeing a solution to his problem. A confirmed kill would give any story he concocted the ring of truth.

  The pilot carefully positioned his Flogger and closed to within three hundred meters, moving the pipper on his gunsight over the cockpit area. He squeezed the trigger and held it, emptying his twin-barreled twenty-three-millimeter gun into the Hercules…

  The first five shells ripped into the left side of the cockpit, killing Captain Luna and Riley Henderson. A shell smashed into Riley’s chest, tearing apart the upper half of his body. Blood and pieces of the flight engineer splashed over Dave Belfort as pieces of shrapnel cut into his face. Toni wrenched the yoke back, fighting for altitude, managing to control the Hercules and keep it airborne. Belfort unstrapped from his seat and moved across the flight deck, scooping Luna’s remains out of his seat. “I still got it,” Toni called out, and Dave grabbed the wheel and helped her fly the plane while she checked the overhead panel and radioed a distress call.

  Meanwhile the Flogger repositioned for another attack and rolled in. The pilot selected an Aphid dogfight missile and placed his target-pipper on the left outboard engine before he squeezed the trigger. The missile streaked toward the Hercules and impacted outboard of the engine, tearing off the left wing. The C-130 spun to the left, out of control. Toni pushed the left throttles full-forward and pulled the right throttles aft, trying to use differential power to control the plane’s flat spin. Just before they hit the water Belfort thought he heard her say, “I’m sorry, Dave.”

  6 September: 1955 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 2255 hours. Ras Assanya, Saudi Arabia

  The lights in the command post flickered, then went out. Waters heard the backup generator kick into life, cough twice, and the lights came back on. Stansell had never stopped talking on the phone. Now he hung up and walked over to the launch-and-recovery board and marked tail-number 512 as mission capable. “Whoever laid in the hardened com lines knew what they were doing,” was his only comment. He changed to 2049 the number of people evacuated out. “The second C-130 is taxiing out now. Three hundred eighteen to go.” Waters listened for the sounds of a C-130 but couldn’t hear the turbo-props through the thick walls. He was thankful that two shuttles had made it in since dark and most of the wounded had made it out.

  He studied the boards for a moment, knowing what he had to do. Bitterness and frustration washed over him when he thought of the sacrifices his wing had made in trying to end this “little war.” He almost lost control when Bill Carroll walked into the room. “Bill, you were ordered out.”

  “Yes, sir, but I think I might still be of some use…I speak Arabic and Farsi—”

  “Yes, you do. Get over to Doc Landis and stay with him. He’ll need a translator.” The Intelligence officer stared at him, catching the terrible implication.

  The crew chief threw open the right blast door to the aircraft bunker and motioned the refueling truck to back in. He wanted to see if he could get the truck inside and close the blast door, but there wasn’t enough room. He yelled at the pumper to get the hose out and connected. The pumper refused to be hurried and went about his duties with a studied nonchalance, an unlit cigar stump clamped in his mouth. “No way this here white man’s piece of shit is going to get into the air,” the pumper said, knowing how to rile the crew chief.

  “Shut your mouth unless’en you want that cigar lit and shoved up sideways.” He went through the servicing routine that had not been completed, even though he had already called his aircraft in as mission ready. “Well,” he grumbled, “what do they expect? Bust my ass doing an engine change ’cause some pilot can’t see shit comin’ at him and now can’t find anyone so I got to do the whole thing…” He was still muttering to himself when the pumper disconnected the hose and started to move his refueler away from the bunker. “Hey, if you see my partner tell him to get his ass back here,” he yelled after the departing truck. “And I could use a ammo cart and a gun-plumber…”

  The truck had moved about thirty yards down the ramp when another artillery barrage started to pound the base. That pumper’s a dead man, the crew chief thought, returning to his work in the relative safety of the bunker, not feeling guilty. No time for that now. He slipped into the front cockpit, checked the switches and carefully adjusted the lap belt and leg harnesses, making the cockpit ready for the next launch. He crawled into the backseat and did the same thing. Finally he found some rags and started to wipe the bird down, removing any signs of dirt, oil or hydraulic fluid.

  He cracked open the small access-hatch in the blast doors, peering into the night, and worried about his partner. He thought he saw some movement on the taxiway but it was hard to tell in the darkness. The intensity of the incoming rounds had slackened and given way to a steady deadly rhythm. “Whump-one-two-Whump,” he counted, picking up the beat. He could see definite movement coming his way: the figure of the pumper materialized, pushing an ammunition cart, cigar still clamped in his mouth. The crew chief pushed the blast door open and helped the exhausted sergeant jockey the cart up to the right side of the Phantom’s nose, swung a panel down and connected the feed head into the internal gatling gun. Then he grabbed a speed wrench and started to crank the gun over, feeding fresh ammunition into the drum.

  “Okay, I need help turning this fucker—”

  “What’s wrong with them?” the pumper shouted back, pointing at two motionless figures on the floor in a corner.

  “Ah, them’s the pilot and wizzo. They been bustin’ their asses helping change the engine. They ain’t used to workin’. Let ’em sleep.” The two then helped each other, laboriously mining the wrench and reloading the gun. They had finished when the chief’s partner staggered in with another man, carrying the last Sidewinder on base. They almost dropped the one hundred-eighty-pound missile before they could han
d it over to the crew chief and the pumper. “Not bad, asshole.” The chief allowed a grin as they slipped the missile onto the left-inboard rail.

  A minute later the Phantom was ready and the shelling died away. An unusual quiet descended over the bunker.

  “What the hell,” the chief muttered as he settled down to wait.

  The sergeant from Civil Engineers who reported into the command post was covered with dried sweat and caked dirt. His hair was plastered to his head with rivulets of fresh blood. “You’ve got three thousand feet,” he told them, and sat down, shaking with fatigue.

  Waters erased Jack’s call sign on the board and wrote in “Wolf Zero-One.” He motioned to Stansell, stepped into the passageway leading outside and put on his flak jacket and helmet. “Rup, I’ve got to…surrender the base before the shelling starts again.” Stansell said nothing. “These lulls last about fifteen minutes; use it to get our planes out of here. Get the word to the crews and call Doc Landis and the evacuation bunker and tell them what’s happening. I’m going to the Security Police bunker and tell them. They’re the closest to the Gomers.”

  Stansell still said nothing. What was there to say? They shook hands, and Stansell went back to the command post as the Security Police’s radio net began to broadcast a new warning.

  The bunker’s blast doors were partially open so Jack and Thunder could receive messages over the command post’s radio frequency. Now they heard Stansell relay the latest warning he had just received from the Security Police. The repeated artillery shellings had finally cut the landlines to the bunker, so the Phantom’s UHF radio was their only means of communication. “Close the doors,” Jack told the crew chief. “There’s a tank on the taxiway, coming for us.”