Firebreak (44 page)

But Leary’s Sidewinder was confused. It had lost the heat signature it was homing on and had gone into memory mode. Then its seeker head caught the heat signature from the rocket in Mana’s ejection seat and homed on that. Mana never saw the missile that killed him.

As briefed, the two F-15s blew through the oncoming line of Flankers, shattering what was left of die formation’s integrity as the colonel nailed his second Flanker with a Sidewinder. The Iraqi ground controller was screaming at the Flankers to maintain their bearing of aircraft so he could guide the remaining five Su-27s into an envelope where they could fire their weapons. But Martin and Leary had no intention of fighting that leisurely an engagement. What the Iraqis were doing worked well against unarmed airliners and possibly against bombers, but never against a fighter, especially one like the F-15E in the hands of a pilot who knew how to use it. It never dawned on the Iraqi radar controller that the Flanker pilots were scrambling for their lives.

Martin was surprised when his wizzo called out, “Bandit at seven o’clock, two miles, on us.” He twisted his head around to the left and could barely make out the plan form of a Flanker converting to their six. He saw a missile fire and home on him. It had to be either an AA-11 or AA-8, the two short-range dogfight missiles with passive infrared guidance the Flanker could carry. “Flares and chaff,” the wizzo said as he sent a stream of flares and chaff into their wake.

Instinctively, Martin pulled into a very tight oblique loop to reverse onto his attacker. All the time, he kept his eyes “padlocked” on the Flanker, evaluating the situation. By turning his tail pipes away from the missile, the guidance head lost its heat source and homed on the flares. But how had the Flanker found him when his TEWS had not warned them of a radar tracking them? He didn’t consciously work the problem; the answer was just there. He had made a mistake. His left hand dropped off the throttles and, without looking, he turned his formation and position lights off, reached back for the throttles and selected guns.

The attacking Flanker pilot momentarily froze when the lights he had been following went out and the dark gray F-15 disappeared, blending with the night. For a fraction of a moment, he rolled out while he tried to reacquire the target. Then he hardened up his turn again, turning in the same direction as before, still looking for the fighter he knew was out there. In desperation, he turned on his radar. But his nose was not pointed within sixty degrees of Martin and he came up dry. Now his own radar warning gear was screaming at him, telling the Iraqi that he was being tracked by a fighter that was behind him. He twisted around to his left in time to see what looked like a solid line of tracers reaching for him. Martin had selected high rate of fire for his gatling gun and squeezed off a short burst. Only every seventh bullet was a tracer, but at six thousand rounds a minute rate of fire, it looked like an unbroken line of red. Nine rounds of 20-millimeter high-explosive ammunition walked through the Flanker’s cockpit.

There was no elation in Martin as he came off his third kill. He would celebrate later. His voice was all business when he called Leary for a fuel check and to join up on him. He headed for a low-level orbit point they had selected to wait for his next engagement. “Damn,” he muttered to himself. “That was too easy.” He knew that “Joe” was still out there.

Matt had copied the second bandit warning from the AWACS and decided that it was too early to react to that threat. They were still ninety nautical miles out and Furry was having a problem in the pit. The ring laser gyro that drove their inertial navigation system was advertised to be accurate within .8 of a mile per hour and normally was much better than that. But they had been airborne less than fifteen minutes, and when he visually fixed their position by map reading, he discovered they were over three miles from where the moving map on the Tactical Situation Display said they were. “Problems,” he told Matt. “I need to make a map and update our position.”

“Do it,” Matt said. He worried that the Iraqis might detect their radar when it came out of standby, but he knew Furry. The wizzo wouldn’t have even mentioned it unless it was absolutely necessary. Because the two men had flown together so long, they were a tightly welded team with an absolute trust in each other. Matt glanced at the radar video as it came active and waited for Furry to make a patch map. He kept his head up, looking through the HUD, using the Nav FLIR to penetrate the night. He heard Furry count down as the system froze the map to work on later. When Furry said “Done,” Matt took control of the radar and swept the horizon for the second group of bandits. He came up dry and Furry returned them to silent running. “Where the hell are they?” he muttered.

“Ask Aldo,” Furry grunted.

Matt keyed his radio and queried the AWACS “Aldo, say position of bandits over Kirkuk.”

“Aircraft calling Aldo,” the AWACS replied, “say call sign.”

“Viper Zero-Three,” Matt answered, wondering who in the hell else they thought would be transmitting on
a
Have Quick radio net. The Israelis would have never wasted time with call signs and would have recognized his voice.

“Roger, Viper Zero-Three. Be advised that bandits are still launching out of Kirkuk and being vectored to the west, well clear of you. Ah, stand by.”

What the hell Matt thought, I’m eight minutes out and they’re telling me to stand by!

“Viper Zero-Three.” The AWACS was back on frequency. The tactical controller had been receiving new information from Duster, the orbiting RC-135 that was monitoring Iraqi communications. “The bandits are being vectored to a holding orbit thirty-five miles southwest of target. Two bandits are now being vectored onto you, bearing one-six-zero, seventy nautical miles, heading zero-two-five.”

Both Martin and Furry mentally ran the geometry of the developing intercept and where they would merge with the bandits. Thanks to the AWACS and RC-135, their situational awareness had increased a hundredfold. Now the TEWS started to light up with the first tickles of a search radar. Another symbol appeared on the video display—a Gadfly SAM. It was directly in front of them, next to their target. “Holy shit!” Furry yelled. “They’re going to jump us just before we get in range of the Gadflies around Kirkuk.”

Time to find out how good the air defense pukes are at separating us from their scumbags, Matt thought. And time to change plans, he added. “Doc, Wedge,” he transmitted, calling Viper 05 and 06. “Cleared in hot on the bandits.” A cool “Roger” answered him and the two F-15Es behind him shoved their throttles into Mil power and turned toward the two bandits that Aldo had identified. “Boss,” Matt radioed, “say position.”

“Chasing Flankers to the north,” Martin answered, his voice cool and matter-of-fact. “We’ll keep them off your back.” He and Leary had become separated and were jumping any stray Flanker they could find. The ground controllers directing the Iraqis couldn’t keep up with die rapidly changing fight as the two F-15s effectively kept the Su-27s occupied.

Matt concentrated on his attack run. “Skid,” he called his wingman, “take the lead, we’ll lase. Ripple two.” Matt had told his wingman to lead the attack and pickle both his bombs on the first pass. Matt would take spacing and follow on theopposite arm of the
B’nai
attack and do the lasing. “Then get the hell out of Dodge,” he ordered.

“Roger, copy all,” Skid answered.

“Sounds good,” Martin’s voice said.

My God! Matt thought. How can he keep what he’s doing sorted out and still pay attention to what’s going on down here?

The two fighters started their run in. The TEWS scope was a mass of symbols and the audio was deafening him with chirps and wails. He turned the audio off and would rely on Furry to do his job. Now he could clearly see the compound housing the nerve gas plant and storage bunkers on the Nav FLIR. Furry worked the Target FLIR and told him, “Target identified.” It amazed Matt how familiar the target complex looked.

Sweat poured off him as he concentrated on the run. A string of tracers from a ZSU-23-4 arched across the sky in front of him. He heard himself breathing hard. “Piece of cake,” Furry said, his voice rapid and high-pitched. More tracers crisscrossed in front of him and he saw the bright flash of two Gadflies launching. Now Matt “paddled” off the autopilot and hand-flew the jet as they swung in on their side of the pincers.

Then: “Bombs gone.” It was Skid coolly announcing that he had gotten his bombs off onto their target, the main production plant. Matt had lost sight of him when they split up for the attack and it was reassuring to hear from him.

A Gadfly exploded, lighting the sky. In the bright flash, Matt could see Skid escaping underneath the fireball and more tracers reaching toward him. The second Gadfly exploded, but this time, there was no trace of his wingman.

“Lasing,” Furry shouted. Matt was concentrating on the Nav FLIR, using it to fly around the target. It was a good run and all systems were working perfectly. A Gadfly streaked by less than a hundred feet above the canopy. For some reason, its proximity fuse didn’t work and the missile went ballistic.

The plant erupted in an explosion as the first bomb hit within inches of where Furry had laid the laser. The bombs were fuse-delayed and the first one penetrated to the first basement before it exploded. The second bomb flew right through die explosion and burrowed through to the thirdbasement, burying itself in four feet of concrete before it exploded. The labs and test chamber where the nerve gas had been developed disappeared in a fiery blast. But the scientists who had given Iraq die deadly weapon had been paid off long before and were safe in their homes in Europe and China. Only two technicians were on duty. A series of secondary explosions turned the plant into an inferno and flames belched and mushroomed over three hundred feet into the air.

Furry shouted, “GO!” as a wall of tracers mushroomed in front of the F-15. Matt broke hard left, still below a hundred feet. He flew around a radio tower and headed for safety as Viper 07 and 08 hit the first of the storage bunkers.

Then it was all behind them and Matt became aware of the chatter over the radios. He had effectively tuned it out. Still, he had been conscious of what was going on around him throughout the attack. It was called situational awareness. He reengaged the autopilot and coupled it to the TFR. He checked his fuel and ran a cockpit check, making sure they had not taken battle damage. Then it hit him, the simulator rides the Gruesome Twosome had put them through had been worse.

“Skid,” Matt radioed, “say position.”

“North of target,” his wingman replied, his words staccato-quick. “Heading for home plate. Battle damage. Took a hit after we pickled. ZSU-Twenty-three.”

“Need help?” Matt queried.

“Negative, I can handle it. This bird’s a tank.”

Matt hit the transmit button and called the AWACS. “Aldo, any trade?” He was asking if there was a bandit in the area he could engage.

“Negative Zero-Three,” Aldo replied. “Are you continuing to your second target?”

“Affirmative,” Matt answered. They headed to the northwest and Mosul.

Martin’s voice came over the radio. “Sean, say position.” There was no reply. “Aldo, do you have a paint on Viper Zero-Two?” Martin asked.

“Affirmative,” the AWACS replied. “Viper Zero-Two is returning to base, com out.” Martin relaxed—Leary was simply having radio problems and hightailing it back to Diyarbakir.

The second part of Trinity called for Matt to drop anyremaining GBU-24s on the air base at Mosul as he egressed. Other Vipers would do the same or hit the air base at Kirkuk. Since Mosul was a secondary target, they would use the great glide capability of the GBU-24, stand off from the base, toss the bomb, and lase as best they could. But they would not press in like they had on the nerve gas plant.

Furry took control of the radar and made another patch map to update their position. Then he checked his systems for battle damage. “Damn,” he muttered, “I don’t believe it.” The TEWS had gone strangely quiet and was only detecting the periodic sweep of a search radar. “The SAMs, the triple A, have gone off the air,” he explained.

“They’re still out there,” Matt answered. “Probably got their radars in standby and will bring them up when they get a visual. I don’t like it.” An inner alarm bell was going off, warning him that the Iraqis were using a new tactic. “Amb, radar delivery only on this one. Toss the damn bomb as far out as we can. It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge while we still can.”

“Roger,” Furry answered. He went to work using the highvolume radar and computer. While he updated their position again, Matt set them up for an air-to-ground radar delivery. After he had updated their nav system, Furry placed the radar cursors over the base, which was now inside thirty nautical miles. “Going for the runway,” he said. He refined the cursor placement. Then: “Designating.” Man stroked the throttles and pushed them up to just below the Mach. They were a well-trained team.

Matt’s inner alarm bell was now gonging at him. He paddled off the autopilot when they closed to inside twenty nautical miles. “It doesn’t feel right,” he mumbled, primed to react at the first hint of trouble.

“Ready, ready,” Furry said as they bore down on the release point where the system would automatically release the bomb. Matt mashed the pickle button and held it.

The TEWS erupted with symbols and its audio went wild just as they felt the bomb separate from the right pylon. The night exploded with tracers, engulfing them. “SAM three o’clock!” Furry yelled. But Matt had already seen it and jerked the big fighter into a tight turn barely a hundred feet above the ground, bringing the missile to his nose. Tracers were now passing directly in front of them. Matt brought thenose up and watched the SAM commit on his upward vector, hoping the tracers would pass underneath him. Then he wrenched the Eagle into a hard downward turn, leveling off at seventy-five feet. His heart pounded as he saw the missile follow him, and for a fraction of a moment, he knew he was dead. But the missile could not follow him through the turn at such a close range and broached sideways before it tumbled onto the ground. He concentrated on the HUD, relying on the Nav FLIR to give him the visual clues he needed to fly so close to the ground at night, and escape to safety. Only that strange sixth sense had kept them alive.