Authors: Dan Hampton
“If he's out there, then find him.”
S
quinting as the afternoon sun lanced through the cockpit, he smoothly pulled back on the stick and began a climb. No need to check on his wingmenâhe knew they'd be there. That was their job today. His was to get them to their targets and home alive.
“Scar is inbound . . . two by Fox-Sixteens . . . thirty minutes of play . . . Mavericks and Guns . . .”
“Copy all Scar.” The controller on board the AWACs sounded like he was 200 miles away. He actually was . . . which is why they were generally so useless in this conflict. Amazing how fucked up things still were.
“Proceed to Eighty-four Alpha Whiskey. Contact Chieftain on Zinc Eighty-four.”
He shoved up the visor and took a quick swig of water. It was nearly 1500 hours, three in the afternoon, and he'd been airborne for five and a half hours already. Hell, it took well over two hours to get into the air, up to the Iraq border, air refuel, then fly to Baghdad. Squinting at the map, he eyeballed some rough coordinates close to the right part of Iraq and typed them in.
“Scar, push Zinc One.” He keyed the VHF auxiliary radio and got clicks from his three wingmen as they changed radio channels.
One hundred twenty-two miles to the point, his system said. About fifteen minutes. Too long. Whoever was in trouble down there could well be dead by then. Bunting the fighter over at 25,000 feet he leveled off and shoved the throttle forward to full MIL power. He could get there faster with the afterburner but wouldn't have any fuel left to be of any use. Even heavily laden, the F-16 was still able to creep up to 514 knots.
Staring over the canopy rail, he tried to match visible features against the shitty map. It was hard at that altitude . . . the haze from the big rivers and blowing dust almost always left a milky film over the ground. Even worse, to the southwest an immense wall of chocolate-brown sand had been climbing into the sky since noon. Somewhere in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Jordan the wind had begun to blow strangely enough to form this mess. Far below, the mottled green and brown earth of Iraq glided by and he tried to rub the fatigue from his eyes. Combat flying was like that. It took hours, sometimes days, of preparation to get to the right place at the right time. It was then you usually found out you had the wrong weapons or the wrong target. Things changed. That was the essence of combat airpower: adaptability. Even when zipping along at the speed of a rifle bullet deep in bad-guy land and running out of fuel.
“CHIEFTAIN . . . CHIEFTAIN . . . SCAR Seven One.”
Nada. Nothing except the continuous low-intensity crackle in his headset. CHIEFTAIN was a sort of information relay agency that decided where to send fast movers like him with lots of ordnance. Theoretically, they worked like a big air traffic center and had the latest and best information to pass on.
Swiveling around and staring back behind the wing line, he found his three wingmen. The other F-16s, called Vipers, were strung out to about three to four miles in a big wedge shape. Nice and loose. Good for fluid combat maneuvering.
“SCAR Seven One, this is CHIEFTAIN.” He jumped a little as the voice came through loud and scratchy.
“Go ahead.”
“Scar . . . confirm Fox-Sixteens?”
“Affirmative . . . four by with Mavericks and Twenty Mike Mike.” He glanced at the digital fuel readout. “We'll have about thirty minutes of playtime when we get there.”
Where was “there”? he wondered. They'd just passed the Euphrates River at Diwaniyah. The ground became richer as the fertile crescent area between the two great rivers spread out before them like a green quilt.
“Scar . . . proceed to the center of Eighty-four Alpha Whiskey and hold at Base plus six . . . contact Broadsword on Bronze Twenty-nine.”
He clicked the mike in reply. Broadsword would be the forward air controller, or FAC. Some poor bastard of a fighter pilot assigned to the army precisely for this reason. To speak to airborne pilots in their own language and talk them onto a target.
He switched the flight over to the new frequency and checked the distance: 69 miles. Quickly removing his helmet, he poured some water on his head and scrubbed it into his itchy scalp and flat, matted hair. He splashed more onto his face and into his dry eyes, blinking away the burning. Shrugging his shoulders, he eased the ache a bit, then replaced the helmet.
Better.
Showtime.
“Broadsword, this is Scar.”
“Scar . . .” the reply was immediate. A calmly desperate voice with an edge only found in combat. A man realizing he was probably going to die . . . unable to accept it but professional enough to continue doing his job. Mostly because he needed something to hang on to.
“Scar this is Broadsword . . . We need them now, dammit!” The FAC sounded strained. Who could blame him? Trapped down in the shit with the grunts facing a mass of pissed-off Iraqis.
“Copy all . . . we'll try.”
Just then the radio erupted again. “Attention on the net . . . attention on the net . . . this is Broadsword on guard . . . Emergency! Air support needed at north . . . thirty-one . . . twelve . . . fifty-two . . . east . . . forty-six . . . twenty-eight . . . eighty-seven . . . repeat . . . troops in contact . . . they're coming from the . . . from the north and east . . . they're . . .”
The voice abruptly broke off and the radio crackled.
“Broadsword this is Scar . . . overhead Nasiriyah . . . ready to play . . . request Five-Line.”
Nothing.
“Broadsword . . . Scar . . . acknowledge!”
They were over the city now. Looking off the rail he could see lines of vehicles on the main roads leading up to the city from the south. That would be the Marines, he knew. The First Marine Expeditionary Force had been given the delightful job of fighting its way up the river valley to Baghdad. The problem with that is most of the people in Iraq lived in the valley and there was a shitty little pissant town every few miles along the road. Each shitty little town had its own collection of shitty little “freedom fighters” determined to die as martyrs. Nice.
He shook his head and looked at Nasiriyah. From the air it was a bewildering spiderweb of roads and canals. The buildings looked like they were cut from a mold. All the same height, shape, and color. And viewed through the smoke, sand, and haze. And at least he didn't have a CAS map.
Swell.
He set up a big left-hand wheel and toggled the autopilot back on. His wingmen fanned out comfortably and throttled back also. This was a good administrative type of formation that allowed everyone freedom to maneuver, save gas, and scope out the target area. Giving up on Broadsword, he switched back to the Chieftain frequency and keyed the mike.
“Chieftain . . . Scar . . . no contact with Broadsword . . . overhead Nasiriyah and ready to play.”
The FAC came back immediately. “Scar . . . Chieftain . . . Broadsword's off the air.” The pilot felt a lump in his throat. They were too late. “Contact Grizzly on Violet Six.”
“Copy Violet Six.” He rifled through the plastic phone book but couldn't find it. “Ah . . . Chieftain . . . how about just giving me the freq.”
Surprisingly, he did. Passing it to his flight, the pilot stared over the wing line as they arced east of the target area. There were hundreds of sparkling flashes on both banks of the big canal that cut through the town. There were several bridges and he could see armored vehicles on the south side. Occasionally a bigger white smoke trail would shoot across from the northern side as the Iraqis tried to get one of Marine tanks.
“Triple-A . . . ten o'clock . . . level!”
His Number Three man's voice stabbed through the helmet and he looked up to the left. Sure enough . . . a whole popcorn cluster of white puffys. Fifty-seven millimeter anti-aircraft fire. He instinctively dumped the nose and dropped down to 20,000 feet while checking the flight further north. The pilot knew it would take some minutes for the gunners to recalibrate the change in altitude and heading.
“Grizzly this is Scar . . . Grizzly this is Scar.”
“Scar . . . thank God . . . this is Grizzly . . . say your position!” The FAC sounded nearly frantic.
“Grizzly . . . Scar is overhead Nasiriyah . . . four Fox-Sixteens . . . ready to play!
“Scar . . . stand by Five-Line . . . call ready . . . call ready!”
The pilot could hear the same small-arms crackle in the background. This guy was close.
“Grizzly . . . Scar . . . I need a talk on . . . we don't have CAS maps . . . repeat . . . I need a talk on.”
A talk on took time but was absolutely necessary if friendlies were fifty yards from the target. He'd never whacked a good guy yet and had no intention of starting now. Besides, this was the first taste of combat for his three wingmen and they couldn't afford a mistake.
“Grizzly copies . . . tell me what you see!”
Shit hot
, the pilot thought.
The guy knows his business
. That was always the way to start.
“I see an east-west canal cutting the town in half. I see an north-south canal bordering the town to the west.”
“Okay . . . do you see the three bridges across that east-west canal?”
The pilot rolled up on a wing and stared down into the muck. One . . . two . . . only two! Where was the third one? The crisscrossing arcs of tracer fire had intensified . . . there wasn't much time.
“Ah . . . Grizzly . . . I only see two.” He checked the altitude. Time to shift again. He pulled the fighter up again several thousand feet to confuse the gunners and continued staring at the ugly brown city.
“Scar . . . do you see the bridge closest to the north-south canal?”
“Affirmative.”
“Triple-A . . . left eight and drifting aft.” Number Three on the VHF freq again. He clicked, or zippered, the mike in reply.
“Okay . . . use the distance from that canal to the first bridge as one unit of measure.”
“Continue.” A unit of measure was almost always established. It was often the fastest way to get a pilot's eye onto a target.
“Go one unit east and look on the north bank of the canal . . . what do you see?”
He did. There was a blockhouse or something like it hunched on the bank. Even as he watched, a ropy strand of orange tracers spat over the canal from the building.
“I see a blockhouse . . . and tracer fire.”
“Scar . . . that's your target. We've got wounded friendlies on the bank . . . no evac possible until that thing goes . . . copy?”
He flipped his Master Arm switch to
ARM
. “Scar copies all . . . I'll run in from the south and egress west.”
That would keep his Maverick from hitting any Marines on the way in and put him directly in the sun on the way out.
“Makes sense Scar . . . with positive ID you are cleared in hot . . . call âin' . . . abort will be in the clear . . . acknowledge!”
“Scar copies all.”
He keyed the VHF. “Scar Two . . . stay west of the north-south canal and stay above twenty K . . . Scar Three and Four stay east of the canal above twenty K.” He'd neatly split up the flight. Now they could watch the target area without worrying about flying formation.
He glanced at the map and used his fingers to measure the distance to the nearest tanker track. It was called Twitch South, just over the Iraqi border in Saudi Arabia . . . and 150 miles away.
“Scar Three . . . call up Luger and see about getting the Twitch tanker moved north if we need it.”
The mike clicked. The pilot leaned forward against the seat straps and stared at the battlefield. More vehicles had moved up from the south and spread out along the canal and side streets. Even from 15,000 feet he could see the tiny specks of men as they darted back and forth. Tracers still shot both ways across the water in skinny bright arcs. Molten blobs from the heavier weapons moved slower . . . seemingly more deliberate as they smashed into buildings and men.
Flying by feel alone, he didn't take his eyes off the blockhouse. The cockpit smelled like hot nylon, old sweat, and urine. He'd removed the white leather flight gloves and his fingers played lightly over the stick and throttle. Without really thinking, he changed displays, checked the engine instruments, and quickly scanned the radar. There were always other jets tooling around and they frequently didn't talk to anyone. Navy usually.
He dropped the nose and descended as he passed through southwest in the arcing left turn. Large numbers of trucks and cars were pouring into the outskirts of the city from the north carrying Iraqi reinforcements and supplies. There was even a school bus.
“Scar . . . this is Grizzly!” The man sounded out of breath. “We've moved . . . falling back on the bridge . . . probably have to bug out to . . . on the south bank of the . . .”
He pushed the throttle up and descended to 10,000 feet. The haze made it hard to see.