Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  *

  “Got the C-130s and F-15s on the VSD,” Stansell said, talking for the VCR to record. “They’re at my twelve o’clock, twenty-two miles, In the weeds, below a cloud deck. The cloud deck is broken to overcast at five thousand. I’m at twelve thou. The four 130s are on their low-level route, two miles in trail. Good station keeping, right on course. They’re maintaining radio silence. Good. Two F-15s are running a racetrack pattern in front, the other two are behind the package, doing the same and varying their airspeed.”

  Stansell’s radio crackled as the F-4s from March checked in with Blackjack, the Range Control Center. Blackjack gave the F-4s vectors and headings, establishing a search pattern above the cloud deck, much as Iranian ground controllers would do. Stansell turned lazily away from the four C-130s, not wanting his position to give the F-4s any clues about the whereabouts of the intruders on the deck. “The 163rd is established in a HICAP,” he recorded. “No contact on Joker”—Locke’s call sign. He was flying single-ship as a wild card and would jump the C-130s if the F-15s left them uncovered and if, a big if, he could find them on the deck underneath the cloud deck.

  “The package should be underneath the HICAP in about ten minutes.” The colonel had constructed a mental map and constantly updated the position of the players. Only Locke was unaccounted for. He maneuvered in a race-track pattern, sweeping the area with his radar, trying to find Locke. “No contact on Joker. He must be using terrain-masking to avoid detection.” Stansell kept up a running commentary for the recorder that he would use in debrief.

  “Gambler flight”—the UHF frequency for the F-15s on the deck came alive—“twelve bogies two o’clock at forty-five miles.” It was Snake Houserman’s voice. “Split—now.”

  “Gambler lead is positioning for an engagement, moving between the threat and the C-130s,” Stansell observed. “Good defensive move in case they get jumped. Damn it, they’re not staying with the 130s.” Stansell’s radar followed the F-15s as they moved away from the C-130s and each pair fanned out in an arm of a wide pincher movement heading toward the orbiting F-4s. “They’re taking the bait and going to engage the HICAP.” Stansell continued talking into the recorder, detailing how Gambler flight was violating the Rules of Engagement that only allowed for the F-15s to engage when they were jumped by bandits. “Make the F-4s find you,” he raged.

  He pointed his nose toward the developing engagement in time to see the four F-15s punch through the cloud deck. He followed Snake in a frequency change when he called the F-15s to the same channel the F-4s were on, and the radio burst into a wild buzzsaw of sound.

  “Fox One on the southbound F-4 at eighteen thousand.” Snake’s voice.

  “Lobo flight, two bandits at four o’clock, low, eight miles, on us. Just coming out of the clouds. What happened to the goddamn ROE? Brewer flight, go to second CAP.” The Phantom flight-lead was still a disciplined professional and sent four of his birds out of the engagement to another CAP point to continue the search for the C-130s.

  “Skid! Break right.” From an F-4

  “He’s on me! Boomer come back left.” Another F-4 in trouble.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Smoky, he’s coming to your six.” A F-15 was warning his wing-man.

  Stansell’s lips compressed into a tight line as the four F-15s engaged the eight remaining F-4s. He headed after the C-130s and switched radio frequencies.

  “Okay,” he recorded, “C-130s at two o’clock, nineteen miles. Still on course. No Joker. Dropping through the cloud deck now.” Stansell’s Tactical Electronic Warfare System buzzed at him. “Got an interceptor searching in the area. Bingo, cloud bases at forty-five hundred feet and got a bogey on the VSD. Bogey converting onto the C-130s. The bogey must be Joker.” He checked that the VCR was recording everything he saw through the HUD.

  The four C-130s were working their way down-track, heading for the prison mock-up, still on time. “Tallyho,” Stansell muttered when he saw them. “Got a visual on Joker.” He watched Locke slash down onto the lead C-130, maneuvering into position for a rear-aspect missile shot.

  “Puff One-One, you’ve got a bandit at your seven o’clock,” the pilot in the second C-130 radioed, warning the lead aircraft. “On you.”

  “Rog,” Duck Mallard’s voice answered. “Check turns only. Don’t do anything stupid. Seven minutes out.”

  Stansell watched the lead C-130 make a level twenty-degree turn to the left before returning to track. The move created a small problem for Locke before he took his missile shot. He broke the attack off before he crossed between the lead and following C-130 or broke the mandatory five hundred feet altitude separation the ROE required.

  Locke then repositioned for a sequential attack, staying below the cloud deck. He rolled onto his back and pulled his nose toward the ground and swooped down onto tail-end Charlie, dropping his F-4 like a giant bird of prey. Another voice came over the radio. “Puff One-Four, the bandit’s on you.”

  “Roger.” Stansell could hear the strain in the pilot’s voice. The big cargo plane jerked to the left, lowered its nose and continued a hard downward turn.

  “Puff One-Four is trying to generate an overshoot by turning into Joker,” Stansell recorded. Then, “Puff One-Four,” he yelled over the radio, “pull up!”

  But it was too late. The left wing of the C-130 caught the ground and the cargo plane cartwheeled into a fireball. Dense black smoke pillared into the sky, a dark beacon marking the funeral pyre of Puff One-Four.

  *

  “Hey, Byers,” Timmy Wehr yelled across the ramp, “it’s our old bird-512.” The two crew chiefs ran toward the spot on the ramp where the sergeant from transient maintenance was standing, waiting to park the F-4.

  “Look at her,” Byers shouted as the engines spun down. “She’s beautiful.” They watched the canopies open and the pilot rip his helmet off. He threw it over the side, letting it bounce on the hard concrete, shattering its visor. “It’s Locke and Bryant,” Byers said in amazement. They could sense that something was terribly wrong as the two men dismounted. Locke ignored his helmet lying on the ramp and stomped toward building 201, Bryant following close behind.

  Wehr’s voice was a whisper. “Geez, Locke was crying…”

  *

  The Pentagon

  Cunningham’s aide, Dick Stevens, took the phone call. He knew better than to hesitate and walked directly into the general’s office. “General, Task Force Alpha just lost a C-130. All five crew members killed.”

  Cunningham spun in his chair, his back to the three generals in his office. Finally he turned back to Stevens. “Get Mado. We’re going to Nellis.”

  *

  Nellis AFB, Nevada

  Dewa saw the light in the trailer that served as Stansell’s and Pullman’s office when she pulled into the parking lot in front of building 201. Stansell’s car was out front. You’re hard to find, she said to herself. She walked into the rear office and headed for the coffeepot, ignoring him. It was almost midnight, she was tired, needed a jolt of caffeine. She took a mug and waited for Stansell to start talking.

  All night if we have to, Colonel, she thought.

  “My fault,” he muttered, “all my damn fault.”

  “Really,” she said, her voice neutral. “You should tell Jack. He thinks it’s all his fault. Gillian is barely coping with him.”

  “It was my decision to fly that exercise. I was pushing too hard trying to get us ready, and I killed five of my own people. Cunningham’s going to be here in the morning, the President wants to watch our final exercise Sunday, Byers and Wehr show up with the Holloman jets…Some fucking wonderful commander I am.”

  Dewa wanted to shout at him to stop feeling sorry for himself. “At least I wouldn’t worry about the two sergeants being here,” she said quietly. “Holloman is here for a Red Flag exercise and crew chiefs come with their aircraft. And the President was scheduled for a speech in Vegas three months ago.”

  “Dewa, I kill
ed five of my own people…”

  “That isn’t what I heard.”

  “Watch.” He turned the TV on and hit the play button of the VCR. “This is a copy from the flight. The Accident Board has the original. Pullman back-doored a copy of my own tape.”

  Dewa watched the accident unfold on the screen. At one point she glanced down at the counter, noting the spot on the tape she wanted to replay. The horror of the C-130 pitching into the ground and disappearing in an eruption of smoke and flames stunned her. “Oh, my God…No wonder you and Jack…”

  The tape ran out and stopped. She rewound it to the particular place she wanted now and sat down on the couch next to him. “Tell me about Byers and Wehr…how they pulled you out of Ras Assanya.”

  “Why? What the hell does that have to do with this?”

  “Please. Just tell me.” She had to break through the image of the dying C-130 that held him, that would not let him escape.

  Slowly Stansell related how the Iranians had interrogated him after he had surrendered the base. “After about twelve hours they had worked me over good, kept asking me what happened to Waters. Nothing I said seemed to satisfy them. Two of ’em took me out to the bunker where he was killed. It was dark and I couldn’t identify anything. That made them even more angry. One of them kept screaming death to America, death to this, death to that. I was getting pretty sick of it so I shouted ‘Death to Khomeini.’ I figured the old bastard was dead so what harm would it do?”

  “A bad mistake, Rupe.” Dewa wanted to touch his hand. “That curse doesn’t mean anything to us, but to an Iranian…”

  “Yeah. They went crazy. One threw me down and sat on my chest, the other grabbed a bayonet and started to saw on my right ear. I was bleeding and screaming like a stuck pig. Anyway, Byers and Wehr were hiding in a shelled-out bunker about thirty feet away, no one else around. They came and beat hell out of the two guys doing the number on my ear, then dragged me to a boat we’d used for laying mines around the base, and Byers managed to sneak us out, heading up north instead of south. It worked.”

  “Why did they take such a big chance to save you?” Dewa had read the debrief of Byers and Wehr and knew the answer.

  “I asked Byers the same question. He mumbled something about it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Real original.”

  “Listen carefully now.” She started the tape. They stood in front of the TV and watched the scene play out again.

  Mallard’s voice could barely be heard as Locke’s F-4 surged into the picture and the Hercules turned twenty degrees to the left. “Rog. Check turns only. Don’t do anything stupid. Seven minutes out.” Dewa stopped the tape.

  “Did Mallard do the right thing?” Stansell nodded yes. “And Jack?” Again, Stansell nodded, this time understanding the point. Puff One-Four had crashed because the pilot, under the pressure of the moment, had made a bad decision and did the wrong thing. It was simple enough to understand, but until Dewa had led him to the truth through his own emotional wreckage, he had not seen it.

  “Rupe, you’ve got to put this, like some other things, behind you and do what seems the right thing at the time. No guarantees in this business. We get rewards later, we pay the consequences now.” She forced a smile. “End of lecture, Colonel.” And tried not to look at the scar where his ear used to be.

  Chapter 31: D Minus 4

  Nellis AFB, Nevada

  Stansell stood outside the door leading into the main briefing room in building 201, fists clenched. Dewa was sitting in the front row against the wall with Locke and Bryant, and Stansell kept glancing at her back. Task Force Alpha entered in groups, finding seats in dumps, sitting in silence. The C-130 crews came in first, led by Duck Mallard and his ungainly navigator Drunkin Dunkin. They were followed by Gregory and his officers and platoon sergeants. Then the three F-111 crews straggled in and found seats away from Von Drexler. Finally, the F-15 pilots came in and sat near the C-130 crews. Stansell nodded at Pullman, who was standing with Kamigami just inside the door. “Let’s do it.”

  “Room, ten-hut.”

  Everyone stood as Stansell marched down the aisle and climbed the steps to the stage. “Seats, please.” He waited while they shuffled back into their seats. For an instant he stopped breathing when the rear doors opened and Cunningham and Mado slipped into the room. Pullman was about to call the room to attention again but Cunningham cut him off with a short chopping motion as he sat down in a seat at the rear, across the aisle from Pullman and Kamigami.

  “Yesterday we took our first loss,” Stansell began. The lights went dim and a slide of the burning wreckage of the C-130 flashed on the left-hand screen. “We need to know what went wrong so we can continue and not repeat our mistakes…This happened because we were not acting as a team and not doing what we trained to do. The F-15s were suckered into leaving the C-130s unprotected, allowing a lone F-4 to jump the 130s. Listen to this.” He played the tape, letting them hear his comments and the radio transmissions of Snake and the pilot who was leading the F-4s before he hit the pause button. “The F-4 lead’s concern about the ROE marks him as a disciplined pro.” He restarted the VCR. Most of the audience could not clearly see the TV screen but they could all hear the audio. Stansell stopped the tape right after Mallard’s comments about not doing anything stupid and replayed it.

  “Puff One-Four crashed because the pilot tried to take evasive maneuvers too low to the ground. The Accident Board will probably find pilot error the primary cause, but this is not any one person’s fault. The blame belongs to a lot of us, and it starts with me.” Heavy silence in the auditorium.

  Snake Houserman was slumped in his seat and refused to look at the screen. “All for a damn training exercise,” he said in a voice loud enough to carry over the silence.

  Cunningham heard Snake’s comment and stood up, pointing at Pullman. He only said one word.

  “Now.”

  Most of the room heard it and turned to its source. The general had filled that simple single word with the presence of command. Pullman and Kamigami shot to their feet and Pullman bellowed for the room to come to attention.

  All but Snake Houserman snapped to their feet. He slumped lower in his seat, still stung by Stansell’s words. “Stand up, asshole,” Lydia Kowalski said. He stood while Cunningham took the stage.

  “This is not routine training,” he began, keeping them at attention. “Task Force Alpha was created at the direction of the President as part of the effort to rescue the POWs being held in Iran. Originally your purpose was to serve as a cover operation for the actual rescue team. But events have a way of taking unpredictable turns—you are now being considered by the President to mount the rescue. You are scheduled for an exercise tomorrow. The President will be here to watch you and find out for himself if you are, as someone has told him, the second team. Or”—again he packed a single word with special resources—“if you are the team that will get the execute order.”

  He turned to Stansell. “Colonel, if Task Force Alpha is going to rescue the POWs, it’s got to be perfect tomorrow. And no security leaks.” He left the stage, walked up the aisle and exited the room.

  “I want it,” Kamigami said in his soft voice.

  *

  “We’ll go with the original plan and drop the Rangers in right after the F- 111s hit the walls,” Mado said. Stansell didn’t move from the large-scale wall map in Dewa’s office. “It’s more spectacular and will impress the President,” he added.

  “That’s just an option now,” Stansell argued. “The Rangers have got to be on the ground and in place if they’re to exploit the confusion right after the bombs knock holes in the walls.”

  Mado walked over to the colonel and stood beside him. “You may be right, but we both know we’re obliged to make this look extra good for the boss—ring the bells, all the good stuff, if he’s going to take up our option.”

  “Leachmeyer’s going to be here,” Stansell reminded him. “He’ll spot what’s wrong and
tell the President. The Rangers have got to be on the ground early.”

  Mado, a busy thinker, was turning over his options. If the rumors were true, the President was going to cut through the Pentagon with a meat ax, reforming DOD around unified commands. And Leachmeyer was considered one of the architects of the unified command system. So Leachmeyer and his interests counted if he was ever to make four stars. But what if the status quo held? Then he’d need to rely on Cunningham’s support for future promotion. He was a man in the middle, so he’d play both ends against the middle. Work hard on Task Force Alpha, make it and himself look good, but also keep kicking up a little dust of doubt along the way for Leachmeyer.

  He slapped Stansell on the shoulder. “Do it my way, Rupe. It’ll work.”

  Dewa, feeling sick, glanced at her watch and stood up. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” Minutes later she was, listening to the two discuss the final arrangements for Sunday’s exercise.

  Chief Pullman knocked on the door and stuck his big head in. “General Mado, there’s a phone call for you. A Barbara Lyon.”

  “I’ll take it in private,” Mado said. Dewa followed Stansell out, leaving the general alone.

  “That’s a dinner invitation for tonight,” she told Stansell. “Should keep him occupied for a while—”

  “Dewa…did you—?”

  Mado came out of the office. “It’s looking good. The President will be in place at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. I’ll be here at five o’clock. Make it all happen, .Rupe.” He grabbed up his hat and moved double-time out of the office.

  “Well,” Dewa said, “there goes a man in a hurry. We’ve got decisions to make. I think you should run the exercise exactly as called for in OPORD WARLORD.” She waited expectantly. Rupert Stansell, she thought, you are so damn straight, even naïve about some things. Maybe that’s why I go for you. Now if I can just wake you up…