by Tom Clancy
As the Ninth Air Force Commander, Chuck Horner worked for Bob Russ, the TAC Commander, who in turn worked for Larry Welch, Chief of Staff of the Air Force. As CENTAF Commander, he worked for Norman Schwarzkopf, who worked directly for Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. The Joint Chiefs of Staff could meet in Washington and advise Colin Powell, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but neither Powell nor any of the service heads had direct operational authority over Schwarzkopf, unless Cheney wished it (as did, in fact, happen). Likewise, neither Bob Russ nor Larry Welch had operational authority over Horner in his role as CENTAF Commander.
The new system created by Goldwater-Nichols was not universally popular in the Pentagon, but the people in the field loved it.
★ Meanwhile, the first week of August had been a difficult — and strange — time for the CENTAF Commander. In late July, when the Iraqi Army had begun massing on the border with Kuwait, he had put on alert the 1st TFW’s F-15C Eagles at Langley and the 363d TFW’s F-16C Fighting Falcons at Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina, where he himself was based. On the night of August 2, a Wednesday, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, such a blatant act of thuggery that Horner had expected an immediate U.S. response. With Kuwait in Saddam Hussein’s bag, Saudi Arabia and the other oil-rich Gulf Arab states were very much at risk. Several divisions of Iraq’s powerful Republican Guards were poised in an attack posture along the Saudi-Kuwait border. Horner could not imagine how the United States could allow Saddam further loot. If sabers were to be rattled, then Ninth Air Force was likely to be the first one to get the call.
For the next two days, Horner expected to hear from General Schwarzkopf, his Unified Command boss, yet so far he had not heard a word either from him or from CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB in Tampa. Since the Iraqi army had poured across the border to Kuwait, there had been a truly eerie silence. So he had just kept to his schedule for the week as planned. On Friday, he flew off toward Langley.
The radio broke Horner’s thoughts. Grr was calling for a “G” warm-up exercise, a necessary precombat discipline in the very hot and quick F-16s. Pilots needed to know that their G suits and other protective systems were working, and that they themselves were ready for the rapid onset of G forces. Otherwise there was the danger of a blackout and an unpleasant encounter with the ground. He put himself through a ninety-degree turn to the left at 4 Gs, then 4.5 Gs, as he pulled back harder on the stick grip in his right hand. He ran through a mental checklist: G suit inflating properly; breathing not too fast, not too slow, as he strained to force the blood up into his brain. No dimness in vision — the small vessels in the eyes were the first warning signs that the brain cells were being denied oxygen-rich blood. All was going well. He rolled out, then lowered the nose, and throttled at full military power as his left hand pushed the power lever forward as far as it would go. He quickly rolled into a ninety-degree turn back to the left. Six Gs this time, again running through the checklist, pleased that his fifty-three-year-old body could handle the pain and strain of the heavy G forces. Meanwhile, even as it squeezed his thighs and calves — forcing blood into his upper body — the rock-hard, inflated G suit felt as if it were trying to pinch him in two. Once again everything was in order. He rolled out, checked for Grr on the left. Their formation was still good. Now they needed only to cruise out to the east end of the ACM practice area and wait for the 1st TFW Eagles to show up.
As they crossed the Atlantic coast, Horner’s jet almost imperceptibly shuddered, as single-engine jets always seemed to do when a pilot got beyond sight of land. He instinctively checked the gauges… all of them were in the green.
Then the radio came alive.
“Teak One, this is Sea Lion. Your F-15s have canceled and Washington Center asks that you contact them immediately.”
Sea Lion was the Navy radar station at Norfolk, Virginia, that kept track of military training airspace out over that part of the Atlantic. In an instant, Horner knew what was up — a recall to Shaw. Grr called them over to 272.7 MHz, the proper UHF channel to contact the center controller, checked Horner in, and gave Washington Center a call.
“Washington Center, Teak One. Understand you have words for us.”
“Teak One, this is Washington Center. We have a request that you return to Shaw AFB immediately. Do you need direct routing?”
“Roger, Washington. We’d like to go present position direct Florence direct Shaw FL 320,” that is to say, flight level — altitude—32,000 feet.
“Roger Teak, cleared as requested. Squawk 3203.” Grr then dialed a setting into his onboard radar transponder, the transponder transmitted a code that was used to cue the ground controllers, and “3203” was displayed over their return blip on the Center’s radar screen.
My God, Horner thought, stunned, as he and Grr turned back toward Shaw. It’s on. This has to be about the Iraqi invasion. A million questions roared through his mind: Have the Iraqis entered Saudi Arabia? How much force will we deploy? How fast can we get our Ninth Air Force squadrons in the air to rendezvous with the SAC tankers? How much heavy airlift is available to get our spares and maintenance people deployed to the Middle East? How do we get our pre-positioned tents, munitions, fuel, and medical equipment from their warehouses in Oman and Bahrain, and from the ships at anchor in the lagoon at Diego Garcia? And inevitably, How many young men and women will die?
Thank God for Internal Look, Horner thought. Every second year the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM held an exercise in the United States in which his staff planned for a mock war. CENTCOM’s forces were then brought into the field to execute that “war.” The actual component commanders, such as Horner, John Yeosock of the Army, Walt Boomer of the Marines, and Schwarzkopf himself would deploy with their staffs and forces and conduct the kind of operations they might use in a real crisis. In the process, they learned to work with each other and to test the staff ’s and their own abilities, and the CINC was able to evaluate his team and learn how to use them and all of his forces to best advantage. In the intervening year the CINC would hold training exercises in the Middle East, where U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen could experience life in the desert and serve side by side with their Arab counterparts.
In the early days after the founding of CENTCOM, it had been feared that the Russians would attack south through Iran, thus attempting to make real a long-standing, indeed, pre-Soviet dream. Early CENTCOM plans, consequently, had been aimed at stopping such a move. By November 1989, when General Schwarzkopf had taken over CENTCOM command, the Soviets were not about to attack anywhere, so CENTCOM had had to look for a new mission. They didn’t have to look far. After the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had been left with a huge, well-equipped, well-trained, and seasoned military force and an astronomical debt. How do they pay off the debt? Norman Schwarzkopf asked himself. They go where the money is: south, into Kuwait, and if they are really ambitious, into Saudi Arabia. As a result, General Schwarzkopf had directed that the 1990 Internal Look exercise take off from the premise that Country Orange (read: Iraq) had invaded some of its Gulf neighbors. Thus, early in August of 1990, when Iraq actually followed the Country Orange scenario, Schwarzkopf and his staff had a considerable head start on the planning needed for a U.S. military response to the invasion of Kuwait.
★ All these thoughts got shoved into the back of Horner’s mind when Shaw AFB appeared under his nose. They were about 1,500 feet up; Grr guided their airplanes over the runway without slowing down. Horner took a quick glance at the airspeed displayed on the windshield’s heads-up display; they were on the initial approach at a screaming 450 knots.
They were going to make a pitchout — a loop laid on its side — that would bring them down to runway level while they slowed down to landing speed. It was not an especially difficult maneuver if the pilot didn’t mind pulling a lot of Gs and working to maintain the same altitude and spacing as the other aircraft in the flight as he rolled out in the landing pattern. It was something like driving down the street at 250 mph in formation
with other cars going the same speed, then making the corner together. Of course, the leader wants to keep the maneuver tight, with the guys behind him in tight, so he doesn’t want to make the turn too loose, or else everyone else in the flight will spread out, and the landing will be inelegant. Inelegance is not an option.
The downside to making the turn too tight is to spin out and crash.
Horner felt the extra Gs needed to slow down in the pitchout force him down into his seat, then he took a little extra spacing on Grr in the event Hartinger turned a wide base. He wanted to save enough room to cut inside of him if Grr got wide on final approach, but still not overrun his aircraft. As usual, though, Grr kept the base leg tight, just outside the runway overrun. Horner grinned, put the gear down, lowered the nose sharply, and pulled the F-16 around with the stall warning sounding a steady noise in his headset. It was about 11:00 A.M.
After they landed and parked, José Santos, their crew chief, approached the aircraft, a worried look on his face. He figured they’d returned because of a mechanical problem, which would be a slap in the face for him. José disappeared for a moment to insert the ground safety pin into the emergency hydrazine tank that powered the F-16’s electrical systems and hydraulics if the engine failed. When he emerged, Horner gave him an OK sign, and his worried look changed into a relieved grin. After that, Horner ran through the engine shutdown checklist: inertial navigation system off, throttle off, and canopy up.
All about them, the ramp was silent. Shaw had been ready for two weeks to go to war, so local flying was at a minimum.
As soon as Horner climbed down the ladder, he told José to get the jet ready to go. He suspected he’d be on the ground only a short time. Meanwhile, Grr came running over. Horner told him to file a flight plan for MacDill; then he shrugged out of his G suit.
It’s hard to look anything but rumpled when you shed a G suit, but this was not a problem for Chuck Horner. For him, rumpled was normal. He had a comfortable, but not pretty, bloodhound face; sandy, thinning hair; and a bulldog body. He looked nothing like Tom Cruise or Cary Grant, or any other Hollywood fighter-jock image. On the other hand, Horner moved with great verve and dash; he had an easy, infectious laugh and a wicked wit; and inside his bloodhound head was one of the sharpest, quickest minds inside the Air Force or out. He liked to play the Iowa farm boy, but he’d come a long way out of Iowa.
He walked over to his staff car, threw his G suit in the backseat, and drove to his office in the headquarters Ninth Air Force/CENTAF building just two blocks away.
Horner’s secretary, Jean Barrineau, was waiting at the door of the outer office. A tall, slender, middle-aged woman with light brown hair who looked younger than her years, Jean was the Ninth Air Force Commander’s brain. She ruled his schedule, yet she wielded her power lightly. Most of the time a visitor would find her with a twinkling face, her eyes shining with amusement, and a little-girl smile, as though she was playing some private joke on her boss — which she often did.
Today there were no tricks and no smiles. She was worried and all business. “General Schwarzkopf wants you to call him,” she said, “secure.”
He blew past her into the office.
The office was institutional but pleasant, with the inevitable government-issue big mahogany desk at one end and a small seating area at the other. The walls held the collection of “I love me” plaques and pictures a man accumulated in the military as he went from base to base. On one wall was a large painting of an F-15 with Horner’s name painted on the canopy rail — a gift from the 2d Squadron at Tyndall AFB in Florida, where he’d served from 1983 to ’85. On the coffee table in the seating area was a copy of the Holy Bible and the Holy Koran; the Bible came from the base chapel, the Koran from a friend in Saudi Arabia. Both were in English. Around the room on various end tables and bookcases were the odds and ends he had gathered while traveling around the world. A gold-colored dagger was a gift from the AWACS crews in Riyadh, a bronze block paperweight commemorated his time in TAC Headquarters as the deputy for Plans and Programs, and there were fighter squadron plaques from the Ninth Air Force units with whom Horner had flown training sorties during base visits. To the right of the back wall was a door that led to the toilet and washstand he shared with his deputy, Major General Tom Olsen. A large, computerlike telephone was located on a credenza under the office’s rear window, directly behind the desk. It shared the space with a few books of the trade, including his F-16 Pilots Handbook and a copy of the United States Military Code of Justice. The phone looked like a computer, because in fact it was a computer, designed to scramble conversations, and it featured thirty or more hotline buttons that connected with locations in the building and around the world.
Horner sat down behind his desk and punched the top right red switch hotline button; it was marked “CINCCENT.” Schwarzkopf ’s Master Chief answered after the first ring; she said the General would be on the line right away. A moment later, the gruff yet friendly voice of H. Norman Schwarzkopf came on the line. “Chuck, can you come down to MacDill?”
This wasn’t a request. It was simply a civilized way to say, “Lieutenant General Horner, this is General Schwarzkopf. Get your ass in my office as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir,” Horner answered, in his best subservient military voice, then added, “Can you tell me what this is all about?”
General Schwarzkopf confided that he was flying up to Washington the next morning to brief the President on the situation in Kuwait, and about the options the President could consider should the Iraqi Army continue its advance into Saudi Arabia — a possibility that was worrying the President just then.
“I’ll be right there,” Horner responded quickly.
When he told Jean he’d be off for MacDill, she said that she had already called TAC Headquarters at Langley AFB, and told General Russ’s secretary that he’d miss the accident brief. He smiled and headed out to his F-16. It was then about one o’clock. They’d be in Tampa about two.
It was Horner’s time to lead the flight, and in the best of all possible worlds, he would have put together a low-level transit to Tampa; but they didn’t have time to plan that. It was first things first; a potential air war got priority over training and fun.
The trip itself was a blur. His head was a swarm of thoughts and plans — deployment concepts, numbers of sorties, bombs, enemy fighters, data from a dozen exercises, hundreds of briefings, endless hours of planning over the past three years for a threat from the north. Yet he was in no way anxious. He knew he was ready, well trained, and well supported by a dedicated staff of men and women. Some of them, in fact, had been at Shaw AFB back in the early eighties when the then CENTAF Commander Larry Welch (later the Air Force Chief of Staff) had formed the first Air Force component of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, before RDJTF had become CENTCOM about 1982.
The RDJTF had come about when U.S. political leaders realized that the industrial world’s primary oil supply was located in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on the globe, and that America’s allies there did not have sufficient population to create a military force capable of protecting it. The RDJTF concept had been to create a hard-hitting strike force of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force units capable of deploying halfway around the world on a moment’s notice; hence the terms “Rapid Deployment” and “Joint.” Unfortunately, when it had first started, it had been neither very rapid nor very joint. In the intervening years, successive leaders had honed the deployment skills of their units, and practiced fighting as an integrated team in numerous joint exercises in the California deserts.
Thus, Horner’s Ninth Air Force team had been preparing to go to war in the Middle East for the past decade. Endless hours had been dedicated to intelligence workups of the region and its people. The operations and logistics staffs had fought many paper wars, using computers to evaluate their plans, strategies, and tactics. Now all that work, all that study, and all that planning was to be put to the test.
The term would be used often in the coming months… but not by Chuck Horner. In the short ten months he and Schwarzkopf had served together, the two generals had forged a very different kind of relationship. For Horner, Schwarzkopf was not the screaming, tantrum-throwing prima donna others feared. He knew, first of all, that the CINC was very intelligent and amazingly softhearted, and, for him, Schwarzkopf ’s confrontational style of leadership was a plus. Horner also thrived on confrontation. If working for him was like an air-to-air battle, that was no problem. Horner was a fighter jock. That kind of competition was a joy. Horner always worked hard to enter engagements with the CINC prepared for any maneuvers he might throw at him; and as a result, their relationship was cordial and warm. Schwarzkopf had even learned to tolerate occasional jabs from Horner’s sometimes wild sense of humor.
On this day, however, there would be no humor.
When Horner walked into Schwarzkopf ’s office, he saw that the General looked very tired. The CINC didn’t waste any time: When he briefed the President and the cabinet the next morning (August 4) at Camp David, he said, he had a pretty good idea of the options the U.S. ground forces could employ to halt any Iraqi advance into Saudi Arabia, thanks to Internal Look, and he was confident he could give a clear, solid briefing to the President. But about the “Air” part of the briefing, he was much less secure.