Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (26 page)

I twisted in the seat and looked back over my left shoulder, bringing the jet along, too. There! I picked up the smoke trail as it cleared the horizon line. Actually, there were two.

“ELI Three’s tally two missiles. Left eight o’clock . . . they’re climbing eastbound and correcting north.”

That’s why I hadn’t seen them. They’d come from the edge of the city just past the main canal and everything down there was some shade of gray.

“ELI Four is blind.”

I kept my eyes on the SAMs. The wingman would be fine. It was hard to say which of us was targeted, since the RWR was still saturated. Flying by feel alone, I pulled the power back a bit and brought the nose up. Still looking back past the tail, I checked left and thumbed the decoy on again just in case. I also sent a data-link.

“Four . . . stay above ten thousand until visual. One is re-attacking from the north.”

Cranking up hard on one wing, I swung around in the no-man’s-land between the highways and put Baghdad on the nose again. With the target in the HUD, I pushed over and called up the CBU symbology again.

Even as I watched, another immense cloud of light smoke billowed up against Iraq’s greenish-gray background. Slewing the diamond left, I put it directly over the smoke and stabbed forward to make a new steerpoint.

“ELI Four’s visual.”

I zippered a reply and squinted through the HUD. Like tan warts, I could make out several raised berms in a flat area just north of the canal. But without a better picture, I’d have to get a lot closer.

Where’s the fucking targeting pod when I need it?

Up the Pentagon’s ass.

Suddenly, several glowing streams shot upward from the site, and I flinched. The heavier Triple-A looked like fiery tennis balls as they rose quickly, hung in space, then fell back toward the earth. These seemed to be aimed right at my forehead, and for a long moment, I pressed ahead directly toward the ground fire. Descending through 9,000 feet, I was in range of anything down there except a kid with a slingshot.

That was probably next.

Leaning forward, I followed the last hanging smoke trail back to the ground and . . . there! In front of the center earthen berm were four horseshoe-shaped revetments. Where the smoke trail began, I could plainly see the light-colored, pointed tips of missiles. Triple-A began flashing from the top of the center berm, but I ignored it and concentrated on refining my aim just a hair. As the white-hot balls whizzed up past the nose, I put the tiny pipper on the center of the revetment, bunted forward slightly, and mashed the pickle button.

One CBU canister kicked off, and I instantly pulled straight up and shoved the throttle to mil. They’d been leading me with the anti-aircraft fire, so I had to change position now. As the jet came through the horizon, I snapped over onto my back and sliced back toward the farmland north of the city.

Slapping the throttle back, I was now passing through 5,000 feet and 500 knots, and I yanked violently right, then rolled out. Bunting again, I came back to the left in time to see the puffy white bursts overhead. Pulling back hard on the stick, I popped some chaff and zoomed up a few thousand feet, adding power as I climbed. Twitching my tail like this would hopefully defeat the stuff I couldn’t see but knew they were shooting.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw a large, dirty-brown cloud rising from the center of the site and knew the cluster bomb had hit.

“ELI Four . . . see any secondaries?” Secondaries were one very visible indication that you’d hit something. But even without them, my CBUs could still really mess up a SAM site. Close detonations can knock launchers off their mountings and put fatal holes in things that don’t burn, like radars or people.

“Four . . . negative.”

Well, I hadn’t, either.

But I also hadn’t seen any more missile launches, so maybe the Iraqis were dazed or hiding in shelters with their skulls ringing. Maybe not. Didn’t matter. What did concern me was the fact that there was an entire SAM site down there no one had known about. A missile battery that could kill our attack helicopters on their way into Baghdad to support the Army and Marine ground units.

A
T
10,000
FEET AND TEN MILES FROM THIS NEW TARGET
, I crossed Highway 2 and pulled the power back to hold 400 knots. ELI Four had reappeared and was hanging fairly close off my left wing. I smiled. It was always disconcerting for young wingmen to get separated from a flight lead, especially being shot at while over enemy territory. But it happens, and he’d managed to rejoin without garbaging the radios, hitting me, or getting himself shot down.

“ELI Three is 6.1.”

“ELI Four . . . 7.2.”

I nodded. I’d done a lot more maneuvering than he had, so I’d be shorter on fuel and it was better that way. Beginning a wide, right-hand turn, I looked back at Baghdad, and switched over to the AWACS.

“LUGER . . . this is ELI 33.”

The Tigris was a sage-green ribbon against the darker green fields on either bank. A good-size suburb known as Taji lay just west of the city. As a vital rail depot for Baghdad, this place was supposed to be a nest of SAMs, including a few SA-6s, so we’d give it a wide berth. Shaking my head, I tried to see the railroad tracks but could not. (I’d actually bombed the Taji railway station in 1991 to keep the Republican Guards from moving. Small world.)

LUGER wasn’t talking, so I scanned my comm card and found the frequency for HYPER. Iraq was divided into north, center, and south sections, based on latitude. HYPER was the AWACS that controlled north of the 35th Parallel, so maybe I’d have better luck with him.

I didn’t.

“ELI Three . . . LAPEL One.”

“Go.”

“Ah . . . LAPEL One has a stuck refueling door and I need to RTB. I’d like LAPEL Two to join up with you.”

“Where’s LAPEL Three?”

“They came off the tanker ten mikes ago . . . probably inbound and close by.”

“LAPEL Three is Bull’s-eye two-five-zero for eighteen. Just west of the airport,” he added.

I looked over the wingtip at Iraq. Baqubah was off to my northeast and that little auxiliary field was just off the nose. This was as good a place as any.

“ELI Three flight and LAPEL come up on Cobalt Eight.” This was LAPEL’s frequency but if their flight lead was going home he wouldn’t need it. Now we could all talk and data-link together. “LAPEL Two you are now ELI Five.”

“Five copies. 10.6.”

Good—he had plenty of fuel. ELI Five was a young, cool-headed captain named Dave Brodeur, otherwise known as Klepto. I slewed the diamond over Baqubah, took a mark, and data-linked it. Several bends in the Diyala River were heavily irrigated and looked like big green testicles. It was the perfect rejoin point for a bunch of guys with more balls than brains.

“LAPEL Three, cleared overhead above fifteen thousand. ELI Five stay overhead at twelve K and head’s up for Taji.”

They all acknowledged. I had one can of CBU-103 plus a full load of 20-mm for the cannon. Number Four had a HARM left and the gun, while ELI Five had two cans of CBU with his gun. Glancing at the lineup card, I saw LAPEL Three had CBUs and his wingman had HARMs.

I’d sketched out a rough picture of the compound and figured, based on the northerly winds, we should hit the southern revetments first, so the smoke and dust wouldn’t obscure the rest of the compound.

“ELI Three this is LUGER.”

Of course it is.

“LUGER, ELI Three . . . come up Zinc 14 and stand by for data.”

Zinc 14 was a secondary strike frequency. This way, I could pass him the information without trashing the radio for the other fifty jets listening in. I peered at my scribbling and diagram. “North three-three . . . two-five . . . four-one. East four-four . . . two-seven . . . two-nine.”

Staring south at Baghdad, I saw more missile launches toward the southeast, and I wondered about ELI One. But Zing was a big boy and knew what he was doing. I’d never get down there and get involved quick enough to make a difference. These situations all had a “flow” to them, and it was difficult to mesh with flights that were already on station and involved in attacks.

“LUGER . . . this is an SA-3 complex . . . at least three batteries observed. Fifty-seven mike mike Triple-A.” I remembered the last bunch of shit whizzing by the cockpit and added, “Probably Zooce as well.”

“Zooce” was slang for the ZSU-23-4. This was a very small, very mobile anti-aircraft gun. A four-barreled, high rate-of-fire system, it was nearly impossible to defend against and was a really nasty piece of work.

“LUGER copies all. Say intentions.”

That word again.

“LUGER, keep all friendlies clear of the northern half of Killbox 88 Alpha Sierra. ELI and LAPEL are working the target from the north and east. Will advise.”

I came through my third orbit and saw Triple-A over the little tan airfield to the south.

“LAPEL Three is on station.”

I looked up but saw nothing. The upper-level clouds seemed a bit lower though, and much thicker. All the more reason to destroy this site today so they wouldn’t try to move it under cover of bad weather.

“LAPEL . . . when I call ‘Attacking,’ you arc southeast of the target. Turn in and attack when I call ‘Rifle’ or ‘Defending.’ Any defensive call gets a HARM from LAPEL Four.”

This was a Hunter Killer attack I’d personally developed and refined over the years. One pair attacks from one axis, while the other pair arcs on another side of the target. This forces the SAM to react to both threats and usually resulted in shots fired. If the attacking flight is fired on, then they simply abort, turn sideways, and begin to arc. The other pair immediately turns in and attacks. HARMs are fired to distract, and eventually someone works in close enough to kill the SAM. If all went well, which rarely happens, when the first pair released weapons, the second pair would begin their attack. “Rifle” was actually a term for shooting a Maverick missile, but I’d always hated extra words. In a perfect world, we’d use three pairs, called a six-pack, to overwhelm and nail the site. These guys all knew the attack but it felt better to reiterate the major points.

Incidentally, attacking and killing a SAM site is at least as difficult and dangerous as killing an enemy fighter jet. These days, I believe, it’s harder, because modern missile technology is deadlier than the quality of any enemy pilot who might face us. During the Vietnam War, over eleven hundred fixed-wing aircraft were shot down from SAMs and Triple-A; seventy-seven were shot down by MiGs. The U.S. military had lost just one fixed-wing aircraft to air combat in Operation Desert Storm and Kosovo, but eighteen were downed from ground threats. Yet, despite this, there was still no such thing as an air-to-ground “ace.” Makes you wonder.

“Copy all,” LAPEL Three replied. “What target?”

I glanced at the diagram. “If I abort then take my target. If not, I’ll zap you a DMPI.”

Designated munition point of impact. Proof that whenever possible, the military will always use four words when one would suffice. DMPI meant “target.”

“LAPEL copies . . . ready.” He sounded eager.

“ELI Five, stay put here. We’ll pick you up for the next attack.”

“Five copies.”

“ELI Three . . . attacking SA-3, Bull’s-eye zero-two-two for eight. Check switches.”

Looking left, I cranked over in a five-G turn and put the SAM site on the nose. Following my own advice, I ran my fingers and eyes over the countermeasures and weapons display.

Paralleling the Tigris River, we were pointing southeast directly at Baghdad. My wingman was on the east side, about two miles away and slightly high. The cloud cover had settled in, but it stayed up around 20,000 feet and didn’t affect us yet. Dark gray smudges from large-caliber Triple-A also hung over the city. More appeared, popping open like grotesque red and orange mushrooms, as the Iraqis fought back against the American jets.

Several streams of white anti-aircraft fire hosed off in our direction as we passed the little airfield. I couldn’t see anything on the runways or taxiways, and the Triple-A looked to be small-caliber stuff that couldn’t hit us unless we were stupid.

At eight miles, I nosed over slightly and watched the TD box settle on the SAM complex. There were two sprawling neighborhoods just south of the canal, separated by a triangular swath of ground that looked like a trash dump. The SAM site was just north of the canal and the dump. I was going to hit the southern edge of the complex where I’d seen the other revetments. The wind behind me would blow the smoke over Baghdad and leave the target area clear for the others. Even as I watched, I saw the familiar rolling cloud of a missile launch; lucky for me, it came from the south corner of the site.

“ELI Three, missile in the air, Bull zero-two-two for seven.”

My wingman jumped on it. “ELI Four, attacking . . . SA-3!”

“Negative.” I looked over at him. “Negative. LAPEL Four . . . Slapshot SA-3, target area.” Five miles from the target area, the last thing I wanted was a huge ball of HARM smoke showing our position. Might as well hang a big neon
SHOOT ME
sign overhead.

“LAPEL Four, Magnum SA-3!”

My hands were light on the stick and throttle, ready to slam sideways and get the fuck out if the SAM showed any signs of having been corrected in my direction. But it didn’t. The missile headed west in a slight climb, leaving a wobbly gray trail across the skyline. It also left an excellent visual cue for me—again, I followed the smoke to its launch point. The revetments were a bit farther west than I remembered, but there was an algae-covered irrigation ditch pointed directly at the SAM cluster. It looked like a nasty green finger.

Pulling the power back, I passed through 7,000 feet. That weird, bright-red section of canal caught the corner of my left eye while Triple-A sparkled off to the right toward Taji. Leaning forward, I hung in space for a moment and took in the target area. There were four big revetments and several smaller ones. The one where the smoke had come up from was next to a road, and I could see the familiar pencil-shaped missiles sticking up from the earth. The other revetments had missiles, too, but the Iraqis were big believers in decoys.