Afterburners (6 page)

    “Stay here in ops,” he advised, “looks like the time schedule might be pushed back.”

    I looked to Katie, and she looked at me. A delay just meant more tense minutes of waiting.

    14:00 came and went. Nothing. The official word had not come as expected. At 14:30 a meeting was called and we were told that unfortunately we’d have to do this whole thing again tomorrow, but at least we could spend another evening with our families.

    I had a few things to finish up, and then I went home. Unfortunately Katie had to work until 15:30 and couldn’t get off, not that she didn’t try; they just wouldn’t let her. She was crying when she called work and afterwards when she hung up the phone. I told her it was okay, but really it wasn’t. We spent fifteen short minutes together and then Katie left for work.

    Afterward I packed a few more things, which included a framed picture of Katie that had stood on my computer table. I dinked around with the car some more, but I still couldn’t get it to start.

    Later I watched the news. CNN showed that NATO forces were landing in Turkey. The Turkish people didn’t want NATO there and they were quite vocal about it. Turkey was our destination. The unrest added more doubt to the picture and was the obvious reason for the delay.

I heard a knock on the door at 03:00, went back to bed afterward. One of the crews had been alerted, but not mine.

    At 04:30, the phone rang. I was awake anyway. I had to report to squadron ops ASAP. Saying goodbye a second time wasn’t any easier than the first. Seeing Katie cry again tore my heart into tiny little pieces. She wasn’t as strong as she had been yesterday, and I didn’t blame her.

    I headed over to squadron ops. Captain Willie told me we had to “bag drag” to Ramstein. I never expected to go. After we arrived by crew bus at Ramstein, I called Katie and told her I didn’t expect to be going today. That was at 10:00. At 11:00, one short hour later, I was boarding a C-5 bound for Turkey and war in the Persian Gulf.

    We completed the journey without mishap. Our C-5 Galaxy touched down on a semi-busy airstrip in Turkey. Its cargo: war supplies, a small group of combat crewers and a number of ops support personnel. Sunset spread across the Turkish skyline in a myriad of oranges and reds. The earth raced flat and clean to distant mountains. The air was cool and a lot milder than any of us expected.

    A support bus was waiting to take us to the airport complex where we would process through customs. In the middle of exiting the plane, we were greeted with one of the rudest welcomes a modern war zone can give: an Alarm Red.

    None of us had our chem gear ready or close. We scrambled like mad dogs to the piles of gear half stacked in the rear of the aircraft and half strewn on the tarmac. My heart pounded in my ears as I searched frantically for my gear. The other crewers ran around the tarmac just as frantically. To make matters worse, the area was darkened during the alarm in case of incoming enemy fighters.

    By the time I found my chem mask and donned my gear, I knew I was a walking dead man. You didn’t have minutes when chems hit; you had mere seconds. The things neurotoxins and chemical agents do to a man no living person should ever have to see, but I had seen the aftermath of such attacks. It had been part of our briefings. Saddam Hussein’s army had used chemical weapons extensively in the past and our intel said he would use them again.

    When the All Clear sounded after what seemed an eternity of waiting, there was never a happier bunch of human beings kissing their own behinds in all the world. Needless to say, after that we clutched our chem masks in their pouches as if they were Bibles and we were repentant sinners bound for church.

    At the airport complex, a lieutenant colonel, our deployed commander, greeted us. In later days, we’d come to call him Gentleman Bob, but for now he scared the hell out of most of us. When a lieutenant colonel greets you, shakes your hand, and tells you how happy he is you have arrived, you start to worry.

    Gentleman Bob wasn’t a little man. He was six foot four, give or take a bit, and broad shouldered. He was the commander of the 43rd—the front-end crew—and what little I knew of him at the time was from his cavalry call salutes on Monday mornings and Friday evenings. He directed us to the airport terminal where customs agents awaited.

    Turkish Customs stamped our orders, told us about drugs, contraband, and their laws regarding females and then released us. Flashbacks from Midnight Express ran through my mind. The Turks with dark hair, the obligatory thick mustaches, and often thick dark beards that masked their faces and their dark-toned skin matched those images exactly. Their faces for the most part were expressionless except for the man in the long tan trench coat that just stared and scrutinized. I’m not sure who he was, but I know that when one of us tried to ask him a question, the custom’s agent behind the counter who had been stamping our orders became frantic. At that moment, flashbacks from Midnight Express didn’t seem so far fetched.

    Turkey was a land rich in customs and traditions far different from any place I’d ever been. While largely Muslim, it was not entirely akin to its neighbors. The Turks were considered Ottomans and not Arabs. In fact, both Iraq and Kuwait were once part of the vast Ottoman Empire, a Turkish empire that thrived for six centuries and collapsed after World War I.

    Outside, our A-bags were scattered everywhere and we had to sort through them to find our own. Afterward, our fellow ground support troopers took a bus to Tent City. I’d already heard about it, tents going up as fast as they could pound the stakes into the ground. In the coming weeks, Tent City would grow manyfold; and conditions that had once been bad would turn to near good.

    We were fortunate to be aircrew, but not that fortunate. The need for crew rest and quiet hours mandated that we be quartered separately. With the air campaign ongoing, flyers were, after all, the reason everyone was here. We went off to quarters that would be quieter, or so we hoped.

    The three females in our group were the fortunate ones. They were a combat minority and as members of another minority here, aircrew, they were given exceptional treatment—not that any of them wanted it or asked for it. They were dropped off at billeting, where they had private quarters, showers, televisions, microwaves, phones, and all the other amenities of life. Afterward, the crew van driver took those remaining to our new home. Two converted, freestanding one-room buildings that had once served as professional military education (PME) classrooms. All the desks had been stacked on the sides of the room and cots had been set up in their places.

    Our fellow crew dogs were pleased and not pleased to see us, especially as we crowded extra cots into the already overfilled quarters. Two twenty-by-forty-foot buildings stuffed with thirty cots each didn’t allow for much movement space. I barely got enough room to set up my cot so I wasn’t kicking another guy in the head. Who were we to complain, though? There was a set of working toilets in the outhouse set back from the two PME classrooms and running water. Cold running water, which we weren’t supposed to drink because it would most likely give us the shits, but at least it was working. Tent City didn’t always have working water.

    The one-day delay meant there was a rotation of the crews already under way and it was a relief to hear that we weren’t going to be flying without being given time to sleep. It was 22:00 by the time the first of us new arrivals bedded down. We were told to expect an early alert and that we were on crew rest. “Get some sleep and soon,” was the advice, and we did.

I awoke to the beam a flashlight on my face. It was 01:00.

    “Captain Wilson’s crew?” a voice called out. What if I wasn’t?

    Let’s see, I’d gotten three hours of sleep, hadn’t eaten since an early lunch yesterday. Was I? “I guess so,” I finally replied after a moment of silence.

    “Hey what’s up? Good to have you with us. You got in yesterday, huh?”

     I recognized the voice as that of a friend of mine but didn’t say anything. At 01:00, even at home, I wasn’t normally conversational. His name was Albert, but we all called him Happy after one of the Seven Dwarves. He didn’t much like the nickname but there was an unwritten rule among crewers about the origin of nicknames: you can’t pick it; someone else has to give it. If the name sticks, you’re pretty much stuck with it. And so we called poor young Albert Happy—it was eerie the way the name fit him to perfection.

    “Hey, man, I’ll come back in thirty to make sure you’re up. The step van will be out front at 02:00. You need all your flight gear and your chem gear. Don’t forget to sanitize; and hey, cheer up!” He went on for a time, but I was no longer listening; all I heard was that he’d come back in thirty to make sure I was up and that was good enough. I still thought that maybe if I faded off to sleep, I’d wake up at home in bed next to Katie.

    I did get up eventually, but only because I forced myself to. Sanitizing meant removing the insignia from my flight suit, emptying the pictures and IDs out of my wallet. Leaving behind anything that the enemy could try to use against me if our plane went down and I survived the crash.

    At 02:00 I was sitting in the back of a SWAT-type panel van, helmet bag clutched in one hand, a death grip on the A-bag in my other hand. Captain Willie, Craig, Robert, Todd, Allen, Thomas, and I waited while Happy climbed into the driver’s seat—it was 02:00 and he was already telling jokes. Craig, Robert, and Thomas were fellow crewers. Todd was the crew mission control supervisor. We called him PBJ because he always ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when he flew. Allen was one of the guys from England. Our pilot, copilot, Nav, Eng, and AMT were already at base ops.

    At billeting, we picked up Charlotte—Charlotte, whose hair was blown dry. We razzed her no end about being housed in separate quarters only to find out that there was one whole crew that was also housed in billeting.

    Base ops was a sight. There was a level of energy and intensity there that I’d never seen before. Happy, as our guide, walked us through the first few steps. Our first stop was intel to get our preflight intelligence briefing. Here we knew we would be briefed on the current situation of the battle, our theater of operations, and the mission. We didn’t know exactly what to expect. I braced myself for grim realities as the intel briefer began.

    “Good morning. Most of you know me and the lieutenant although I do see one or two unfamiliar faces. I am Sergeant Derrin Lorenz. This is Lieutenant Henry Albright. I’ll be giving you your intelligence overview briefing and the L-T will go over mission specifics. You all look a little disoriented, so let’s take a moment to catch our breaths.

    “Okay, first of all, I want to apologize for running through this so quickly, but we’re pushing the clock, combat crew. It’s wakeup call time. Your uniforms should be sanitized. If they aren’t, remove all insignia at this time. Remember to clean out your helmet bags and your wallets. Combat wallets should have only the bare essentials: dog tags, shot records, identification card, and little else. I know some of you have other items. You can leave them here and pick them up after the flight.

    “On the desk behind you, you’ll find a number of interesting items. You’ll find a card depicting the articles of the code of conduct and the tap code. Take one, put it in your wallet. Getting shot down is a possibility, combat crew. We have nine aircrew members listed as MIA right now.

    “Next, you’ll find evasion maps and blood chits. You need to sign out one of each before you leave this room. Pay particular attention to the search and rescue codes listed on the board at the front of the room. Memorize them or write them down on your hand if you have too.

    “As you all know, in the pre-dawn hours on the morning of January the 17th, the United States of America and its coalition forces’ partners began offensive operations in the Persian Gulf. What you don’t know is exactly what has taken place since then and this is what I am about to tell you.”

    Derrin paused to turn on an overhead projector.

    “The Kuwaiti Theatre of Operations, 16 January. Take note of the placement of Iraqi forces, and of course the Republican Guard units. The next slide is more telling. The following scenario unfolded around 03:00 Baghdad time this morning. The massive strike force depicted here slowly made its way toward enemy territory. Their goals were 45 key strategic targets in and around Baghdad. The Baghdad electrical power grid was taken out in the first minutes after H-hour and the city fell to darkness. Command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) networks were another major objective.

    “Many of these systems fell to precision bombing raids in the first minutes, effectively cutting off most of the primary means of communications to and from Baghdad. As you know, with the primary microwave and landline communication systems destroyed, the enemy will resort to radio comms usage, and this is where you come in. Disrupting, degrading, and denying enemy air and ground communications is vital to the success of our goals.

    “By H-hour plus one, the Iraqi integrated air defense network has collapsed. Air Power, combat crew, there is nothing like it!”

    Derrin paused, then switched off the projector while Lieutenant Albright moved to the fore. “Well, Derrin’s pretty much laid it all out for us, but what he hasn’t told you is the decisive role of Electronic Combat assets in all this. Our counterparts in the Gulf are doing one hell of a job. Without comms jammers, radar jammers, airborne command and control, and the rest of the gambit of EC assets, the tremendous success so far wouldn’t have been possible. Command Control and Communications Countermeasures is the name of the game, combat crew.”