He had already taken control of Gordon and held it in orbit at the northern holding point.
“How much gas do you have?”
“It’s min fuel,” he said.
The aircraft had just enough fuel to attempt a couple of approaches and then land or ditch.
“So what’s the weather?”
I had an idea, but I wanted to know what the forecasters in the control tower were saying. MaDrawers called the weather shop from a phone in the GCS.
“Twenty-one hundred scattered, five thousand overcast,” he said, hanging up. “A scattered cloud deck at twenty-one hundred feet above ground level and a solid deck at five thousand feet.”
“The winds?” I asked.
A blank look.
“Call back.”
He spoke on the phone for a few minutes and hung up again.
“Fifteen knots.”
“What’s the predominant direction?”
Another blank look.
“Call back.”
He made his third call to the tower.
“Variable, though predominantly from the south.”
“Okay,” I said. “Does the wind outside feel like fifteen knots?”
“No, sir.”
I looked at him. He caught the clue and called the Task Force weather desk. Those guys had better meteorological sensors than the Djiboutian air traffic control.
“What’re the winds?” I asked.
“Task Force weather is calling forty knots from the south,” he said.
“How long will they last?”
“A couple hours,” he said.
That was problematic. The max wind we could land with in any direction was thirty knots. The max crosswind for our current weight was slightly more than sixteen knots, but Gordon didn’t have enough gas to wait.
“I’ll take the plane,” I said.
“Sir, I can do it.”
“Have you landed in crosswinds this strong before?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I will do it.”
I signaled him to get out of the seat. More than four thousand flight hours and fifteen years of aviation experience had taught me how to land with this kind of crosswind. I had suffered through this type of landing before in an E-3, a Boeing 707 converted into a radar platform. Then, with a highly experienced crew, we had almost ripped an engine off the aircraft at touchdown.
MaDrawers climbed out of the seat. He looked as if I had kicked his cat.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I trust you, but I’m not going to make you land in conditions like this. Anything happens, we can say the most experienced aviator was in the seat. I’ll take the hit.” He deserved to hear that. MaDrawers was an excellent pilot in whose flying skills I held great confidence. My replacing him wasn’t like pulling Jantz out of the seat before a shot. I hoped to protect him from an awful situation, one I could manage—to an extent.
I sat in the seat and immediately took control.
“Tower, Gordon Four Zero, ready for descent. Request runway two seven.”
The French-Arabic voice came back.
“Gordon, winds are calm. Descend to one thousand feet, cleared visual approach to runway zero nine.”
I chuckled. The wind still howled around the GCS. We could hear it above the noise of the HVAC coolers. I didn’t accept the clearance. I didn’t want to chance a crash on the civilian side of the airport or in a residential area. I wanted to stay over the water and land on the military end of the field.
“Gordon Four Zero, request runway two seven.”
After a moment, the controller let me have my way. I was the only aircraft in the airspace. The tower controller had the luxury to grant me any wish at that point.
I dropped down and leveled off over the blackness of the Gulf of Aden. I turned to start my approach. The lights of the base and the city rotated into view and then slid sideways. The tracker display showed the Predator virtually flying sideways to the north, though it was pointing west.
Winds calm, my ass, I thought.
The little pink aircraft icon inched its way toward the final course. I turned to start my momentum back to the base. The icon “S” turned about the course until I figured out the winds. Like a boat, planes had to point into the wind to counter a crossing force in order to hold a course.
Our ground speed read only twenty knots at most. Most of our engine power was spent fighting the wind. I had to keep the power high to maintain my glide path or else I would drop too soon. I knew I was close to the runway when I saw our parking ramp slip into view. At the end of the runway and well clear to the side, I would never have seen the parking ramp at this point on a normal approach. Tonight, I looked right at my horrified maintainers as the airplane flew sideways toward the runway, crabbing a full forty-five degrees off runway heading.
“You’re about ten feet, sir.”
The lights marking the edge of the runway were in view. I could see the ground rushing at us.
It was time.
I kicked the rudder to twist the nose around to line up with the runway. I rolled the wings to the left toward the wind so the lift in the wings could replace some of the thrust into the wind I had just lost. The painted stripes of the center line came into view. The wheels skipped a couple of times and the aircraft settled onto the runway. I shoved the stick over to keep the left wing from lifting and pressed the nose down, risking a bounced nose gear, a surefire way to destroy the plane.
The aircraft slowed to taxi speed and allowed me to relax. The taxiway was below the flight line fence and was somewhat sheltered from the gusts. Even so, the little bird bucked all the way back to the ramp as it tried to flip over. I had to “fly” her by making constant adjustments to the flight controls to counter the winds until the maintainers could tie her down.
Back in the compound, Jon dropped by the ops tent.
“Sir, we didn’t think you were going to land when we saw the airplane pointing at us.”
I didn’t either, I thought.
“Did I scrape anything?” I said.
“Not a thing, sir.”
The next night we were faced with the same weather conditions. This time, we brought the aircraft back with more fuel. I let MaDrawers attempt the landing. Three times he tried. Three times he forgot to adjust the wings enough and the Predator got pushed over the French Air Force’s Mirage 2000 ramp. I made him go around, climb back to altitude, and try again. After the third attempt, I let another pilot try. The winds died down to a less challenging level and he managed to skip it home.
—
The landings were tricky, but so was the hunt for al-Awlaki. Mapping a target’s pattern of life was a painstaking process. But it was harder because al-Awlaki was aware of how the United States tracked terrorists. Predators were in the news and it was widely known that we could track a cell phone signal.
The Task Force relied on the Predator during the early days of hunting al-Awlaki, but they quickly realized that we could not provide the coverage necessary. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversaw US forces on the continent, decided to deploy Reapers to the region to help the operation.
Since the Reaper had joined the hunt for al-Awlaki, the Task Force wanted my maintainers to upload bombs and then relaunch the aircraft. The only problem was space at Camp Lemonnier. Anything that staged out of Camp Lemonnier would stay on the ramp overnight, and there wasn’t enough room for the Reapers.
To figure out a work-around, the AFRICOM Air Expeditionary Group sent Mike, now a deputy group commander, out to coordinate. I hadn’t seen Mike for years. After our time at Creech, he’d bounced around before becoming the first pilot from the RPA community to command a squadron. Mike did a short stint as a squadron commander before he deployed to stand up this new group for AFRICOM. He had to move part of his flying squadron to
Camp Lemonnier to set up the forward staging area. After all, we were going after the same targets.
I met him in front of our two hangars.
“Squirrel,” he called out, stepping from a gator.
He had driven the flight line to access the compound instead of coming through the gate.
“Mike,” I said. “Welcome to Djibouti.”
We shook hands as he looked around.
“Place looks good on you,” he said.
“Let’s get out of this heat,” I said, guiding him toward the ops tent. “So what’s it like being the second-best Predator pilot at your base again?”
“Ahhhh.” He laughed and hit me on the arm. “I don’t fly Preds anymore.”
“Ha,” I returned. “They’re all Preds.”
In fact, the official General Atomics nomenclature for the MQ-9 was the Predator B. Only the Air Force called them Reapers.
Mike laughed.
We spent the next week discussing how to make his move happen while sitting on a T-barrier wall that circled my compound. The barriers, constructed of concrete, resembled massive eight-foot inverted “T’s.”
—
One night, Mike and I sat on the barriers talking as we had done for days. We alternated between watching the operations on the parking ramp and watching the occasional airplane on the runway.
“We’ve got to find a way to fit in here,” he said.
“I need the space for all my aircraft,” I said. “Besides, you’ll just use this place as a lily pad.”
Mike eyed me.
“You know that isn’t the endgame.”
I sighed. I knew it wasn’t. It was the special operations way. Take. Don’t give.
“Yeah, you guys will find a way to make your stay permanent.”
“We gotta make it work,” he said.
I looked up at the night sky. Brilliant stars peeked through the glare of the camp’s streetlights. It would never get dark enough on base to see the Milky Way, something I had hoped to witness on this expedition. At least the light southerly breeze was somewhat fresh. The burn pits were inactive that night.
“I know.”
“We should be discussing this on the golf course.”
I laughed. The national course was a couple of miles down the road. The caddies carried a square patch of Astroturf they could lay down when you teed off. There were no greens or fairways. It was just rocks on top of other rocks. The pins were your only indication you were hitting in the right direction.
I could fight the move and win, at a great cost to my political capital. I would lose face with the Task Force. That effectively left me with one option.
“I’ll give you half a hangar,” I offered.
“Thanks,” he said.
He was genuine.
“It is what it is,” I said. We both knew I was getting screwed.
I followed one of my Predators as it taxied out and took off, its low hum the only sound in Africa for a few moments.
“No, I mean it,” he insisted. “Thanks.”
“Look,” I said. “You need to know that if we weather recall, we can’t go anywhere else. I need that space if all our birds are on the deck.”
I couldn’t fit all my aircraft in only one hangar.
“I know,” Mike said.
“I can’t have an MQ-9 in the hangar when that happens.”
The Reaper took up the space of three Predators.
“We’ll fly it out if it comes to that,” Mike assured me. “We have the legs to get around the storms.”
No airplane in our hangars would launch in a storm. We both knew that. Still, I appreciated the gesture. I quickly changed the subject.
“You know we won a safety award?”
“Really?” Mike said. “Congrats.”
It was no small feat, considering our beginning. We had been accident-free for nearly four months. Flight discipline was so high that my young and very inexperienced lieutenants were saving previously unlandable aircraft. My aviators were vindicating themselves. I was very proud of what they had become.
Mike and I stood on the barrier and watched the airfield. Every pilot I know can watch an airfield for hours. It is second only to Pred porn. From the top of the barrier, I could watch our aircraft circle above the field while they struggled to gain altitude before heading north to the target areas. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing strobes of a Predator descending toward the single runway at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport. It was flying in the wrong direction. It was supposed to head north.
The engine didn’t sound right either.
“Excuse me, Mike,” I said. “I think we are about to lose an aircraft.”
“Go,” Mike said quickly. He recognized the signs too.
I burst into the GCS. Ponis was in the seat. He was frozen at the controls, his sensor operator unsure what to do.
“What’s going on, Ponis?” I asked.
“The engine’s coming apart,” he said. “I’m trying to land.”
I looked at the tracker. He wasn’t going to make the runway.
“Turn toward the airfield,” I ordered.
“I don’t know where it is.”
The most important thing when flying a single-engine aircraft is to know the location of the closest runway. We train pilots to know where their landing field is and immediately turn toward it if the engine malfunctions. But he was faced with a possible third accident, and he lost track of where he was.
His first incident had been when a Predator came apart in flight over Iraq. The plane was gone before he could react. His second was Tail 173, and he had no control when the aircraft flipped itself over on its back. Now he had full control. The aircraft and runway were clearly depicted on the tracker. He just couldn’t think enough to focus on it. All he could do was stare straight ahead at the HUD.
There wasn’t time to yank him from the seat and take over. I leaned down so I could speak directly into his ear.
I went calm like I did when I killed.
“Turn right,” I said.
Mechanically, he started a turn. The nose tracked around until the more familiar landscape around the airfield came into view.
“Stop turn,” I said.
He rolled out. I used the same commands he had heard while practicing radar approaches in the T-38, a two-seat, supersonic jet trainer. I hoped the familiar language would break through his haze.
“Aim for the end of the runway.”
He turned a little. A Djiboutian Air Force hangar came into view. This hangar housed the president’s personal plane. I checked our glide path and it looked like we might hit the hangar.
“Give me a little left rudder.”
The rudder pedal squeaked as he pressed down. The aircraft started tracking to the left. The right wing rose as the aircraft rolled.
“That’s enough.”
The hangar grew large very fast. I held my breath and hoped the Predator still had enough lift to get over the building. The hangar filled the whole screen and then disappeared. The video remained, which meant we were still airborne.
“Turn back to brick one.”
“Brick one” was the first foot of landable runway. Ponis started to turn. The Predator was about twenty feet off the ground. If it sank any lower, he risked digging the right wing into the dirt and cartwheeling the aircraft down the runway.
“Roll out,” I ordered.
“But . . .”
“Roll out,” I repeated evenly. “Use your rudder for alignment now.”
The rudder pedal protested with a loud metallic screech as Ponis pressed down hard. Usually, cockpit noise was sufficient to drown out the movement of the spring that centered the rudder pedals. The noise grated like fingernails on a chalkboard.
The nose track
ed to the right and rolled out slowly. The side runway marker was centered underneath us. Our left wheel was within five feet of being in the pockmarked dirt. Ponis stayed on the rudder and the nose tracked more to the right, starting to drift back to the center of the runway.
“Start your round out.”
Without flaring, the nose wheel would hit first and break under the stress of a heavyweight landing. Ponis eased back on the stick and the nose tracked up. Seconds later, the aircraft slammed onto the runway and pulled to the right.
The impact shook the last of the cobwebs from Ponis’s mind. He centered the rudder and kept the aircraft from bolting off the edge of the runway. The engine was still running enough for him to taxi back to the compound. The last thing the Djiboutians wanted was for us to close their only runway again.
I patted Ponis on the shoulder.
“Good job,” I said. I meant it.
Maintenance would later discover shards of metal in the oil filter. The pistons had shattered in the engine block and torn themselves apart. Miraculously, the engine was able to keep spinning long enough for Ponis to land safely.
I put him in for a safety award. Instead of being faced with a total loss, we had only to change the engine. We didn’t have aircraft to spare. If Ponis had failed, we couldn’t have kept up our ops tempo, and al-Awlaki might have eluded us.
We were close. Each air strike for the next two months eliminated his immediate subordinates and their replacements. Morbid jokes began flying through the squadron. Someone posted a Help Wanted sign in the operations tent: “Wanted, Facilitator, long work hours, lots of time in the field, job just vacated.”
After another successful mission, one of the weapons loaders summed it up perfectly.
“One day, AQ is going to realize they are volunteering for jobs with a life-span of two weeks.”
He was right.
We were issuing pink slips to al Qaeda on a pace close to that. Still, we were missing target number one.
—
Our break came in August. A source said al-Awlaki traveled in a pair of SUVs or trucks. Most operatives used only one truck, but his personal bodyguards and aides rode in a second truck.
Al-Awlaki was a cautious man. He was the face of al Qaeda propaganda worldwide. His loss would be a serious blow to the credibility of his English-language magazine, Inspire, as well as recruitment efforts in the West. The extra security was in place to protect al-Awlaki against a raid. The source said al-Awlaki expected to be captured and tried in the United States.
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