Afterburners (7 page)

    Derrin turned the overhead projector back on and inserted a new transparency.

    The LT continued, “Highlighted here is our theatre of operations, which is, of course, northern Iraq. Why northern Iraq, why not the KTO, I know some of you want to ask. But those of you who’ve done your homework understand why. These next slides will help you understand.

    “Here you see the significant number of airfields in this region. There is a map similar to this one that’ll be in your mission kits, along with a listing of best-guess ground and air assets for each. Review these as soon as possible. The more you know, the better prepared you’ll be.

     “Nonconventional warfare is a major threat. We expect to see the use of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons before this thing is all over.

    “Here you see the key installations suspected of these activities. Do you see anything that strikes you immediately? If the answer is no, you better take a long look again. Eradicating this nonconventional warfare threat will be one of our major goals.

    “Next we’ll review expected ground and air threats. We’ll go through these slides kind of quick.”

    The LT paused as Derrin put in a new slide. “The Soviet-made MiG-29 Fulcrum depicted here is one of the deadliest fighter jets in the Iraqi inventory. Others include the MiG-25, the MiG-23, the Mig-21, the Su-25, and the F-1 Mirage.” Derrin put in the appropriate slides.

    “Expected ground threats. The Iraqis have a wide array of surface-to-air missiles, from hand-held stingers to the large SA-2 and SA-3 fixed sites. Anti-aircraft artillery ranges from short range 23 millimeter to long range 130 millimeter. We have seen a lot of SAM and AAA activity. AAA tends to be of the 57 millimeter variety.

    “The critter you’re looking at here is a Soviet-made ZSU 23-4. This particular piece of artillery is being used extensively. Pilot and copilot, have your evasive maneuver plans prepared in advance. You will see it, so prepare for it.”

    Derrin turned off the projector and the LT turned to the big map. “On the big map, you see your orbit box and those of other EC assets.” The lieutenant paused to take a swig from a liter bottle of water, then proceeded to tell us about the missions we would be supporting and their targets, finally concluding with, “You have a little less than one hour. Good luck, combat crew, I hope to see you all when you return!”

    We left intel with our hearts racing a hundred miles an hour. Security police was our next stop. We were issued .38s and given eighteen rounds in three numbered clear plastic bags—bullets and guns were always accountable. These we put in the holsters of our survival vests.

    The pilot gave a pre-mission brief. We reviewed emergency procedures and contingencies. Our mission crew commander briefed us on the packages we would be supporting—primarily a strike package of B-52s. The Buffs would be going against airfields and aircraft while a contingent of Strike Eagles and Falcons departing from Turkey also went in. Our job would be to jam enemy communications using every and any means at our disposal.

    Two hours after we entered base ops, our entire crew of thirteen was crowded into the back of a single step van and rolling down a darkened Turkish road. The Gray Lady waited for us somewhere along a dark and lonely runway.

    I was able to see around the cabin for brief moments. Maybe it was my journalistic instincts or maybe it was because I was so emotionally wrought that I rationalized things by separating myself from them, but it was as if I were on the outside looking in as my life passed before my eyes. I did feel rather gung ho and eaten up. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but I loved every minute.

    This was, after all, why I had joined the Air Force. The military was a tradition in my family that stemmed from my grandfather on my mother’s side to my own father. My grandfather had served in the last great war. My father had served, and now it was my turn. During my childhood, which hadn’t been perfect, I’d heard it all. My father had told me stories of burying fallen comrades and much, much more. In a way, he had unknowingly prepared me for what I now faced.

    So as I looked around, I saw the faces around me and understood their expressions. Captain Willie’s eyes read unknowing; it was a relatively new concept for him. PBJ, a master sergeant and our MCS, looked scared to death. Charlotte was feeling rather motherly, protective. Robert, loud and booming and never at a loss for words, was quiet and tense. And Allen, whom I didn’t know, was gritting his teeth.

    The step van lurched to a halt and a few of us moved for the door. “FOD check,” called out Happy, “lighten up. I have to check the wheels and the undercarriage for foreign objects. You’ll know when we’re there.” This was his third day and he seemed the expert, so we all sort of listened. He reminded me of someone stuck in the seventies, listening to the sound of Saturday Night Fever playing over and over in his mind.

    I’d find out real soon that in combat the people you thought you knew well you didn’t; those you knew hardly at all, you’d come to know a little better; and that everyone copes with stress in different ways. PBJ, our MCS who was scared to death, would turn out to be one hell of a guy and a good friend—it’d be just those first couple of days that we’d find it hard to resist the urge to strangle him.

    With one final lurch, the van came to a halt. We could see the plane out the window now, so we knew we’d arrived. The ten-minute ride out to the flight line had seemed a lifetime, and for some it had been.

    A sense of closeness to fate triggered something and everyone started talking. Then the crew van door was sliding open and Happy was yelling, “Everyone out!”

    We piled out as soldiers going to war, heads held high, scurrying with our bags, our survival vests fitted, the .38s holstered within, to the plane.

    Up the stairs through the crew entrance door we went, filing into our assigned seats. I was on Six, my home away from home, away from home. We began the usual preflight checks, the checks most of us had done a hundred times before, except it wasn’t the same. Our helmets would stay on for this flight. We wouldn’t switch to headset as we would have under normal conditions. The parachutes in our seats needed to be fitted; that wasn’t usual. The .38s in our holsters needed to be loaded; that wasn’t usual.

    Our AMT, John, and the newlywed, Craig, fitted their chutes. They didn’t take them off for the entire flight. Those bottom straps are so snug they cut off the circulation to your privates after a time, and I could only imagine how that must have felt by wheels down.

    Foam ear plugs stuffed into ears, aircrew helmets on, mikes in front of our mouths, and preflight checks completed, we strapped in. We were ready to go. The engines were roaring now and the front-end was finishing their checks.

    “Crew attention to brief!” called out Captain Smily, the pilot.

    I listened as he began a checklist I’d never heard before: the Before Combat Entry Checklist. That was about all it took for my thoughts to begin spiraling again. There was a song playing in my ears. “You’re headed down to Vietnam,” it rang and went on and on. I wasn’t the only one who hoped this wouldn’t be another Vietnam, but at the time no one knew what the future held. Now if we would have had our tarot cards spread out in front of us, maybe things would’ve been different. But they weren’t.

    The pilot reviewed the communications plan and double-checked radio settings then began to review procedures for lookout and threat calls. “MCC, Pilot, you have your spotter selected back there yet?”

    “It’ll be Four.” replied Captain Willie.

    “Four listen up closely. The rest of you as well, your turn will come soon enough. This isn’t a drill, remember that; this is the real thing! I want everyone in the cockpit to be alert. Spotter, when we’re on stations, stay faced toward the environment. Follow standard radio procedures for call up and then quickly give your traffic or threat call. Our direction of travel is always, always twelve o’clock. Give the traffic’s position relative to ours and if possible, direction of travel, such as traffic at nine o’clock, low, moving to twelve o’clock. Be quick, I don’t want anyone tying up intercoms too long!

    “If you’re making a threat call make it clear. Such as bogies at nine o’clock. Bandit at three o’clock. Bogies are unknowns and possibly hostile. Don’t make a bandit call if it is not an enemy fighter that you see. But it is better to be safe than sorry.

    “Crew, the briefing is complete. Interior and exterior lights checked. Radar altimeter is set. Co, you ready?” The rest of the front-end crew began to go through their checks, starting with the copilot.

    Soon the pilot called out, “Crew, Before Takeoff Combat Entry Checks—Complete.”

    That was our cue to give the thumbs up sign that we were ready for takeoff. “Pilot, MCC, mission crew ready for takeoff, sir!”

    Interphone tweaked and the pilot called out the obvious, “Crew, we’re rolling!”

    The Gray Lady rattled and hummed as we gained speed; then with a sluggish lurch, the wheels lifted from the runway. We were airborne. I gripped the armrests of my flight chair, eyes wide and staring straight ahead.

    Once we reached our flight altitude, the system was brought up and we readied our positions. For me that meant logging onto the system when cleared and following a few other steps that I’d done a hundred times.

    Private clicked and PBJ’s voice hissed into my headset, “There are flight meals around if any of you are as hungry as me.” Robert on One—we called him Bobby—unbuckled and attacked a nearby box of ready to eat meals (MREs), tossing them around to his fellow crewers.

    MREs seemed to have improved tremendously since basic training or so I reckoned at the moment. I ate so fast that in a few minutes, nature was calling—that was another thing I hadn’t done since departing Germany besides eat. Yet the unwritten law among veteran crewers, and I was a veteran crewer, was: no shitting on the plane. There were a lot of unwritten laws among crewers. “MCS, Six, clear to the rear?”

    “Clear to the rear, Six,” called back PBJ. As he was to my right, he shot me a knowing grin.

    I immediately headed to the luxury powder room in the rear, a gray curtained open chemical toilet on a pedestal that needed to be manually lowered—I’d seen quite a few new troops hop up there without first lowering the platform. When a chemical shitter came crashing down with you on it, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Most probably this was the origin of the unwritten law among crewers: no shitting on the airplane. There was also a funnel shaped thing that passed for a urinal. The right paratroop door was close enough to the toilet so I could glance out the window. The sky was still shrouded in darkness. The Buffs had a predawn strike, so I wasn’t surprised to see darkness.

    I had just plugged back up on headset when the MCC called out, “15 minutes to stations.” The adrenaline was pumping, really pumping.

    The moment of truth was near. We’d find out not only who had done their homework as they should have, but also who really understood it. If the military had taught us anything in our however short or long careers, it was how to adapt. I’d been through years of training to get into this hot seat that I sat in now. I wasn’t about to blow it.

    I took a deep breath and repeated to myself, “This is what it was all for.”

    The pilot began the Airborne Combat Entry Checklist and I knew this was finally it. In five minutes we’d be on orbit supporting the first package: Buffs as they bombarded Kirkuk, a key airfield in Northern Iraq. This would be our first combat sortie. The time to rise to the occasion was now or never. For some, the time simply would never come. For those of us who did rise to the occasion, we’d never be the same again.

    Two minutes to orbit now. I heard the Spotter calling out the location of traffic. The AMT had been there before; but now we needed him to do his job, and that job was to keep the system up and running.

    The pilot called out, “Combat stations,” and the MCC relayed it. I punched off ship’s Interphone and pulled out the out-of-ship radio buttons so I could back up the MCS on radio communications. Then I went to work. When I found that first target soon afterward and it was confirmed, I hit a new high—I’d climbed to the top of the world.

    On radio, Gypsy was calling Shadow, and our navigator answered the call. Shadow was our call sign. Gypsy was the airborne warning and control aircraft (AWACS). They were passing an air advisory. I wasn’t worried. We had our dedicated high-value air asset combat air patrol (HVAA CAP) of Eagles—F-15C—all-around air superiority fighters that could match any Soviet-made MiG any day of the week.

    On a different radio channel, I heard chatter from Phantom. Phantom was passing the targets it had already acquired and I was writing them down as fast as I could. I passed the list to the MCS who was staring at the pencil trembling in his hand and a blank piece of paper. I wanted to slap him and scream, “Come on, PBJ, get with it!” but I didn’t.

    Phantom was the friendly folks on the RC-135; and after a short delay, PBJ relayed a greeting. His face flushed with a bit of color as a familiar voice tweaked back over headset. He knew their lead op. Afterward it was back to finding equitable targets, which meant searching the frequency spectrum and finding enemy communications wherever they might be. The operators on positions One to Four specialized in air communications, such as communications from Iraqi fighters, Iraqi air defense, and those communications between Iraqi fighters and Iraqi air defense. The senior operators on the other side of the plane took everything else and that meant the senior ops had walls of high tech gear to keep track of and manipulate.

    On Position Six, I had three banks of electronic gizmos to contend with. On the left was a tower of RF spectrum analyzers that could be configured for automated or manual search in specific frequency ranges. In the center below my CRT was a line of hot button controls for the computer systems. Above the CRT was a specially configured wide spectrum analyzer. On the right, a tower of signal analyzers and other gear for locating the source or sources of origin, identifying and classifying signals.