“Gordon Four Zero, maintain position at one five thousand for departing traffic,” the air traffic controller said.
“Gordon, maintain position, one five thousand,” I said.
I was a little miffed at holding. Letting us descend and maneuver for landing would take us away from any aircraft departing, but it was their airport.
“Take a look at the airfield,” I said.
The sensor shifted the pod. The city at nighttime glowed below. It took a couple of seconds to pick out the airfield from the glare and clutter. I could hear the air controller over the radio.
“Air France, you are cleared for takeoff, turn left heading three six zero, climb to two zero thousand and join flight planned route.”
This was the weekly Air France A340 run from Djibouti to Paris via Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Something about the clearance raised my hackles. A quick look at the tracker showed that the flight path would intersect where we orbited. The airliner with four hundred seats was cleared to a different altitude from ours, but it still had to climb. It would be close to our altitude when it passed our position.
“Whoa!” I said.
“What?” the sensor called out.
“Djibouti cleared the airliner right into us,” I said. “Watch that plane.”
In the HUD, the large A340 lumbered down the runway, lifted off, and cleared the coastline. Then it turned and headed right for us. The Air France jet was to my south. I spun the aircraft around and headed west. I pushed the throttle up, hoping to gain some airspeed.
“Sir, he’s still coming at us.”
I shook my head. I told myself we would not be the first RPA to bring down an airliner. Try as I might, we couldn’t generate the kind of speed we needed to get out of the way.
I pushed the nose down. The massive jet slid left a little in the HUD. As a rule of thumb, anything stationary when seen in flight would hit you. If it didn’t move, it meant the aircraft was on a vector to collide with you. Anything moving was on a vector to pass you.
“Sir!” the sensor said.
In the HUD, the Air France jet’s wings banked to turn right at us. They were still below us, but climbing.
“Gordon Four Zero, say position.”
The call told me the controllers had noticed the conflict too.
“Sir, we are heading west to avoid traffic.”
The Airbus’s wings reversed direction to turn to my left. The pilots had heard me too.
“Gordon, maintain position.”
I wasn’t about to do that. Stopping would only keep us near the jet’s flight path. I kept heading west. The Air France jet turned to the east. A few minutes later, we saw the Airbus pass by us in the darkness of the East African night. We missed each other by about a half mile. That is too close in aviation.
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in several minutes.
—
The squadron was finally in a groove. We were pursuing al-Awlaki and his network. My supply chain was back on track. Maintenance had the aircraft purring and the pilots were making huge saves. We were meeting the Task Force’s surge.
The squadron was also coming together into one team. But I felt like we needed an identity. We needed something to bind us into a family, and after watching the sea-intercept mission, I had pirates on my mind.
The original squadron patch was a shooting star leaving Earth’s orbit with six stars on either side of the patch. It was a play on the numbers six (stars) and zero (Earth and patch border). But it didn’t resonate with me.
Our advance team replaced the star with a striking snake because a nest of asps was run out of the squadron area before construction of our ramp and tents could continue. They got a local company to modify the patch, but I didn’t think the snake was distinctive enough. I wanted an identity that everyone recognized. I wanted something that spoke to our mission, our location, and events surrounding the deployment.
My mind drifted to the books I’d read about Vietnam and the Yankee Air Pirates. The term was used by North Vietnamese propaganda to refer to the United States Air Force. Of course, pilots took it as a badge of honor much like the Marine Corps adopted “Devil Dogs” when the Germans used it after fighting Marines during World War I. The same could be said for the “White Devils.”
The pilots in Vietnam crafted a logo using a pirate flag with “Yankee Air Pirate” scrawled around the skull and crossbones. I wanted a history like that for the 60th. Instead of being Yankees, we were the East Africa Air Pirates. I didn’t think the original Yankee Air Pirates would object, considering our prey.
I had shirts and patches made that resembled those of the Yankee Air Pirates. The new patch was a hit. The guys wore it with pride. But as the summer heat intensified, fooling around with patches wasn’t enough to keep up the troops’ morale. The heat topped one hundred degrees every day, with humidity that could wilt rock. The ramp temperatures were easily twenty degrees higher. To stand guard or work on aircraft in those conditions was brutal. I needed my troops happy, or at least not angry, to keep them at their peak performance.
I saw the perfect foil when a Marine aviation unit raised a Jolly Roger from an eight-foot piece of PVC pipe. The squadron, Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 352, flew KC-130 Hercules tankers. Their missions were aerial and ground refueling. Known as the Raiders, they were based in California.
The flag was lashed with parachute cord to a tent strut next to the wooden steps leading to the front door. To me, the flag was an affront, as there was only one “pirate” unit on base.
In the Air Force, a spirit mission pits one squadron against another in a prank war, which usually involves theft and ransom of important squadron property. Targets could be mascots like an animal or suit of armor or flags. Flying squadrons at Holloman nearly got into a fistfight when a Predator squadron stole the Reaper squadron’s flag, took it out to White Sands, and shot pictures of it with the aircraft. They used the picture with no graphics to ransom the flag. Without the graphics, the Reaper squadron would never find the flag. The Reaper squadron paid the ransom of restocking the squadron’s Heritage Room with several bottles of whiskey.
My goal was to meet the new neighbors. A spirit mission was more fun than a housewarming basket. Besides, we couldn’t find a basket. It was time for our first antipiracy operation.
I walked into ops and spotted a young pilot, a lieutenant, sitting at the desk. Teflon was one of the pilots pulled straight from the Air Force’s pilot training program. Where his buddies got B-52s or F-16s, he got Predators. He was highly motivated and I often looked at him like I would a five-year-old, wondering where he got his energy. That kind of piss and vinegar had long since drained from my system.
“LT,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he said, standing.
I pretended to examine a large map of Africa near the ops desk.
“That flag outside the compound.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t like it.” I stared at a dot on the map. “It needs to come down.”
“I’ll see what I can do, sir.”
I nodded and left the ops tent.
At shift change, Teflon grabbed Ponis, another lieutenant, and went over to the Raiders’ tent. They fumbled with the flag for a while, unable to separate it from the pole. All I could do was shake my head in disappointment when they told me of their failure. The world’s best Air Force had been defeated by darkness.
Lieutenants.
The next day, the pair went out while the light was still good. They got to the steps, climbed onto the railing, and started cutting the cord with a knife. A couple of Marine sergeants happened to pull up to the tent in a gator, a small golf cart–size utility vehicle. It was dinner hour. Everyone on base was on the way or returning to the chow hall.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” one of the Marine serge
ants said.
The lieutenants froze. Thinking fast, Teflon noticed that the flag was almost off the pole. The wind was brisk that day.
“The wind broke your flag,” Teflon said. “We were just fixing it for you.”
The sergeants relaxed.
“Oh, thanks, guys.” They walked into the tent without another look back.
The LTs couldn’t believe their luck. The Marines had actually bought the line. The pilots decided not to waste any time and chance being caught when the Marines figured out their mistake.
Teflon cut the last bit of cord and bounded down the steps and back into the safety of our compound. I flew the Jolly Roger from a tower for the next week. At fifty feet, the flag could be seen from nearly anywhere on the base. I expected the commander of the Raiders to call and ask me to return his flag, but he never called.
Finally, after a week, a Marine gunnery sergeant approached the compound and asked for the flag back. The guards checked the access list and apologized. The gunny wasn’t on the list and couldn’t enter our compound. A couple of days later, he returned with some friends. Again, he was turned away, but he didn’t leave empty-handed. I sent a ransom note to their commander.
Teflon and Ponis drafted the note and printed it on fake parchment, as if it were a message from one ship’s captain to another. In it, I declared that only the 60th could hold a pirate name. No other ruffians, scalawags, raiders, buccaneers, marauders, mercenaries, swashbucklers, bandits, brigands, and, of course, pirates could exist on the base. In order to secure the return of their standard—their flag—they had to host a joint cookout where the squadrons could mingle.
The next day, the Marines returned in force. This time, they didn’t come empty-handed.
The gunny and his crew had nabbed a random Air Force officer and duct-taped him to a corpsman’s bodyboard. It didn’t matter that the airman wasn’t from my squadron. The Marines presented him, trussed up, and asked for me. Abandoning a fellow airman goes against everything the Air Force believes. The gunny knew this.
His response was well played.
I wasn’t on shift at the time, so Crash, my new director of operations, took the call. A C-17 pilot by trade, he was short and lean and wore glasses. He was the engine that drove the squadron. He never said something couldn’t be done. Crash’s enthusiasm matched his professional skill in the cockpit. He worked the twelve-hour shift opposite mine to ensure that we had senior leadership available no matter what happened.
Crash invited the gunny and his crew into the compound. We traded the flag for the airman and even offered them some refreshment. The whole time that gunny and Crash talked, the hapless airman remained strapped to the bodyboard. We never learned his name and he didn’t stick around after Crash finally cut him loose.
The Raiders retreated back to their tents. They never attended any of our cookouts.
—
Soon after our spirit mission, Somali pirates took four more American hostages off the coast of Oman. The pirates seized the Quest, a fifty-eight-foot yacht owned by Scott and Jean Adam from California. Two other Americans—Phyllis Macay and Robert Riggle—were also onboard. The Adams had been sailing the world since 2004 with a yacht full of Bibles. They decided to cut the corner across the Red Sea to save some time and sailed right into the pirates’ main operating area.
The USS Enterprise Strike Group was transiting from the Red Sea to its station in the Arabian Gulf at the same time. They responded immediately to the hijacking and surrounded the Quest.
At Camp Lemonnier, I watched the continuous news coverage on several big screens mounted above the tables in the chow hall. I didn’t like watching Americans get attacked and I didn’t like failing when it came to defending our citizens. It was the most important thing I did. My fangs were out. I anticipated the next step, so I finished my soda and headed over to the Task Force to speak with Frog.
Frog was a major from the 3rd Special Operations Squadron. He was the new LNO, between the Task Force and the squadrons. He looked harried when I arrived. He had been on station for nearly a month and the long hours had taken their toll on him already. He was the only Predator LNO, so he had to answer every question asked, no matter when it was asked. He had a room near the operations center where he could crash, but if the bags under his eyes were any indication, he didn’t use the room much.
The room was buzzing. A live video of a dhow racing at flank speed was on one monitor. The hull’s white paint was chipped and streams of rust ran down the sides. The camera wasn’t a Predator. I wasn’t familiar with the feed so I couldn’t tell which aircraft was watching it.
“You guys watching the pirate thing?”
It was a redundant question. I could see he was deeply involved in it.
“Yes,” Frog said. He was distracted trying to keep up with operations and talk with me.
“Is that the mother ship?”
“Yes,” Frog said. “That’s it.”
A mother ship was usually a converted medium-size cargo ship. When hunting, they launched several smaller boats, fishing boats really, to attack ships off the coast. The boats carried a team sufficient to take a commercial cargo hauler. When a ship was sighted, the small boat would attack, seize the ship, and call for help. The mother ship raced to their location and took any hostages back to Somalia.
“First thing I’d do is take out that mother ship,” I said.
Frog didn’t even look up at the monitor.
“What ship?”
I glanced up at the monitor and the ship was gone. All that remained were a couple of waves radiating out in concentric circles. I didn’t even see any debris. I had no idea what had happened to the dhow. One second, it was in the middle of the monitor. The next time I looked, all I saw was ocean. I didn’t press the issue.
“I was going to suggest an air strike,” I said. “Guess you beat me to it.”
“Hmm,” he grunted.
“Anything we can do?” I meant the 60th.
Frog looked at me. “The request is making its way through the channels,” he said. “Can you give us coverage on the Quest?”
I considered that for a moment. “That will take a lot of aircraft,” I said.
I knew the basic location based on maps shown on the cable news networks. If the news reports were accurate to even a basic nautical degree, my planes didn’t have the legs to provide that kind of coverage.
“I would need—”
“More sorties than you can fly,” Frog finished my thought. “I ran the numbers. You’ll still have a gap flying at your max surge. We can’t ask for more because we don’t have enough GCSs to add CAPs.”
I looked at the calculation sheet he handed me. His math was good. Only there was one variable he had left out.
“You can’t sustain this for more than a day,” I said. “Transit time is too long.”
He nodded.
“We considered that. We just can’t figure another way.”
“What would augment us?” I asked.
“P-3?”
The P-3 was a nautical patrol plane made to hunt submarines. The plane had four props and a large boom that stuck out of the tail like a bee’s stinger. It detected changes in the earth’s magnetic field caused by submarines. It had pretty good legs, but I didn’t think their station time was that long so far from home. We could manage our crews easily since they were home. The deployed P-3 crews would have to change their shift schedule every day to make the mission work. In effect, they would work a twenty-hour day, go into crew rest, and then launch again the next day four hours earlier than before. The human body couldn’t safely handle that strain. Not in aviation.
I thought for a moment and then it hit me.
“There is one thing we did before.”
“What?”
“Ever hear of heel-to-toe?”
F
rog’s forehead creased.
“No.”
I grabbed the notepad from him and started drawing.
“Okay, I fly my normal complement of sorties. At this distance, you will get a couple hours on station with each.”
I drew a line for each aircraft with hash marks to show the station times with enough overlap for a handover between aircraft.
“Flying like this gives us another six-hour gap, give or take, for the P-3. Agree?”
“I’m with you so far,” Frog said.
“Okay,” I said. “Add another CAP.”
“We don’t have the cockpit.”
“You don’t need it,” I said. “Send the return birds home lost link.”
Lost link meant no one would monitor or see the aircraft as it flew autonomously through international airspace back to Djibouti. It was the only time the aircraft ever flew without us in full control.
“We did it in the 17th in Afghanistan for some targets up in the northeast,” I said. “We couldn’t reach them from Kandahar and maintain constant stare. So we ran a program that tracked the aircraft and displayed the information to the mission commander. If something happened, then a crew would grab the plane and fix whatever happened.”
“Sounds risky.”
“It is, but its been done before,” I said. “Look, you need to do something like this or get another airplane to augment. We can’t kill the P-3 crews.”
“Can you do it?” Frog asked.
I thought about it. The real answer was no, but the Task Force never accepted that answer.
“Yes, but there is a price,” I said. “I am almost out of supplies. I can give you a couple days and then we are down, completely down. No sorties at all until we catch up.”
Frog was silent for a few seconds as he thought about it.
“I’ll have to check with the 3rd,” he said. “We’ve never done anything like this.”
I walked the mile back to the squadron. Had I done the right thing? Heel-to-toe was a technique that had worked in the past. It also carried with it great risk to the aircraft. There were no guarantees that a crew could get to a broken airplane to keep it from crashing. There would be no one to react to conflicting air traffic. No one wanted to be responsible for knocking down an airliner. The one saving grace was that the Predator flew well below most airliners. There wouldn’t be much for the Predators to hit.
Hunter Killer Page 25