Force of Eagles

by Richard Herman

  The two F-15 crew chiefs were waiting in the hangar until it was their turn to start engines in thirty minutes. They counted the six C-130s that followed the AC-130 as they taxied out for takeoff. “What the hell’s wrong with Mallard’s Herky Bird?” Ray Byers asked.

  “Line chief says it’s a sheared starter shaft,” Timmy Wehr an-swered.

  “Shee-it, why don’t they fix it?”

  “Too busy, I guess, not enough time,” Timmy said.

  “Keerap, I started out in C-130s. It’s no big deal. Let’s you and me do it.” Byers ran for his toolbox while Wehr pushed a maintenance stand up against the engine. A van drove up and the line chief asked them what they were doing. “Get a starter, Chief,” Byers bawled. The sergeant yelled that he’d be back in ten minutes and sped off, heading for supply.

  *

  After having her aircraft taken over by Mallard a dejected Kowalski and her crew were walking into the hangar when they saw Byers and Wehr working on the engine. Staff Sergeant Marcia MacIntyre, Kowalski’s flight engineer, ran up the steps of the maintenance stand to help them. “Captain,” she yelled at Kowalski, “it’s just a sheared starter shift. We can fix it in twenty minutes once we get a new starter.”

  “Sorry,” Byers told them as he and Wehr clambered down the stand, “time for us to launch. We’ll finish this as soon as we get our jets in the air.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  Chapter 44: H Plus 8

  Western Iran

  The bulky shadow in front of the lieutenant disappeared again. The two men had reached the next set of hills and were moving along the military crest, a line about two-thirds of the way up the hill and parallel to the actual ridge. Jamison hurried, trying to match the constant and relentless pace Kamigami was setting. It had been easier to follow him over the rough terrain when the moon was up, but now the lieutenant found himself stumbling and panting for breath in the darkness. He was seriously wondering if the sergeant major was human.

  Jamison panicked and started to run when he didn’t see the sergeant. The fear of being separated drove him into the darkness, his foot slipped and he fell against the hillside, slipping and rolling once before he came to a stop. His equipment clattered against the rocks, and he was sure the noise carried at least a mile. He heaved himself onto his feet and tugged at his LBE webbing that held much of his gear, pulling it back in place. Jamison jumped when his K-Pot, the Army Kevlar helmet, appeared in front of his face. Kamigami was holding it for him. He hadn’t realized he had dropped it or heard the sergeant pick it up.

  “You okay, Lieutenant?” Kamigami could sense the panic building in the young man. He had seen it before. “Got all your equipment? We gotta keep moving.” He kept up a reassuring flow of words. “I figure we’ve come over halfway, got another seven klicks to go.”

  Seven kilometers, the lieutenant calculated—four and a half miles. They were making good time and still had almost three hours of darkness to reach their objective. “My radio. I dropped my radio.” The two men went to their knees and felt around in the darkness. Jamison pulled out his flashlight but before he could use it a vise-like grip was on his arm.

  “No lights. Not after all that noise.” By now Kamigami was almost certain the lieutenant was a basket case. The young officer must not have secured his radio when he moved it from the shoulder strap of his LBE to his web belt after they landed. “Gotta move. Forget the radio. It’s going to get slower the closer we get to the objective.” He was going to have to explain everything.

  “Should we do a radio check?” Jamison asked, glad they still had Kamigami’s radio.

  “No. We’re still out of range. Just move.”

  *

  Incirlik Air Base, Turkey

  “Mornin’, Captain. Nice day for a flight.” Byers’ F-15 was parked on the ramp next to Jack Locke’s E model and he actually threw Locke a salute when he saw the captain. The sergeant wasn’t big on military courtesy. “You gonna bring that piece of shit back in one piece?” He gestured at the new F-15E, enjoying the chance to rag the pilot.

  “Always do, Sarge.” Locke had preflighted the jet earlier but he still did another walk around out of habit. The old emotions came back—the empty stomach, the self-doubts, a slight warming of the cheeks. How many times had he been here before? The last few minutes before a mission started he was a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

  “Time to do it.” It was his WSO, Captain Ambler Furry, who climbed up the crew ladder and settled into the back seat.

  Jack followed him up the ladder.

  The launch of the fast movers went smoothly with the three F-111s leading the procession out to the runway. Von Drexler led the takeoff and the other two followed at twenty second intervals. Then Snake Houserman led the F- 15s onto the active and they took off in pairs with ten second spacing. Jack Locke followed the eight F-15s and took off alone.

  The two sergeants stood on the ramp watching Locke’s jet reach into the clear night air as an early morning quiet settled over the air base. “Do you think they’ll do it?” Wehr asked.

  “Get the POWs out?” Byers had heard the rumors and had long ago decided for himself what Task Force Alpha was all about. Some of the POWs were his friends and he badly wanted to help. “They’ll do it. Come on, let’s get to that Herky Bird.”

  Sergeant MacIntrye was sitting on the steps of the maintenance stand, the old starter at her feet, talking to Kowalski. She explained how the line chief had not yet returned from supply.

  Byers checked his watch. “Over twenty minutes,” he grumbled, “Timmy, go see if you can build a fire under some asshole in supply and get us a starter.” The younger sergeant disappeared into the hangar to find a phone.

  “If you can get it fixed,” Kowalski told them, “I’m going to launch. We may only be a backup, but we can be one in the air.”

  Fifteen minutes later the line chief drove up with Wehr. “Sorry, but you know supply…” MacIntyre grabbed the starter and ran up the stairs to the engine.

  “Be careful, Mac,” Byers called after her, “don’t want’a break any fingernails.”

  “Byers, get your lazy ass up here and do some wrench bending.” She gave good as she got.

  Byers started to pull himself up the steps of the maintenance stand. “Timmy,” he said in a low voice, “I’ll help. You go get my scrounge.”

  “What the hell you need that for?” Wehr asked, puzzled why Byers would want the canvas bag he kept full of small spare parts—nuts, bolts, connectors, gauges, gaskets—parts that he had scrounged up. The bag was highly unauthorized and probably contained over ten thousand dollars worth of parts. It was worth a court-martial for a crew chief or maintenance troop to be caught with a scrounge. But when a crew chief needed to hurry things up and supply was sitting on its dead ass as usual…

  Twenty-three minutes later they were done and the engine buttoned up. Wehr helped Byers push the stand out of the way as MacIntyre ran aboard the plane for an engine start. “I thought they were a backup and weren’t going to launch,” Wehr said.

  Byers told him, “One thing’s for sure, if they go, I go.” He picked up his tool box and scrounge bag and ran for the back of the Hercules.

  *

  Western Iran

  Trimler roused two men and sent them forward to replace Baulck and Wade at the outpost. “Time for a change out,” he told Carroll. Then he went around the compound, replacing the men on alert so they could get some rest and food. When the team settled back down, he propped up his radio on top of the low wall and stared into the night.

  “Why don’t you do a radio check?” Carroll asked.

  “We just listen. They’ll call when they’re in range. Knowing Kamigami, he’s got his position fixed and is moving. I hope the lieutenant is smart enough to listen to him.” Trimler sat down at the base of the wall, hoping to get some rest. “Jamison is slightly thick between the ears.” Then he reconsidered. “That’s not true, he’s just green…like I was…”r />
  “Zakia’s been on the phone,” Carroll told him. “The town’s quiet and the road is open…we’ll have to move out in two hours. We can’t wait any longer.”

  “I know,” Trimler said, accepting the fact that Kamigami would not rejoin them at the DZ. “I can’t believe it…the way your people use telephones to pass information. That’s just asking for a compromise.”

  “They speak Kirmanji over the phone, not Farsi.”

  “But what if the phones are tapped?”

  Carroll shook his head. “Most Iranians only speak Farsi and wouldn’t bother to learn Kirmanji. Too demeaning for them. So the Kurds use it against them.”

  “Can we trust the Kurds?” Trimler asked.

  “Oh yeah, bet on it. Revenge is a lovely thing.”

  Chapter 45: H Plus 9

  Eastern Turkey

  Spectre 01, of the AC-130 gunship, was turning over the departure point on its second holding orbit. “Hey, Magellan, you ready?” It was Beasely calling his navigator. Mado was not happy with the informality and lack of radio discipline among the AC-130 crew but said nothing.

  “Rog, Beezer. We’ll hit the departure point right on time if you can fly three-minute legs on this orbit. Ten minutes to departure.” The navigator’s slight reversion to “professionalism” didn’t help offset the anxiety building in the general. He turned and looked at Thunder Bryant, secretly envying his cool and apparent detachment. Thunder was sitting on the edge of the crew-entry well, staying out of the way. He was listening on a headset and making notes on a clipboard. Mado was standing behind the pilot, not able to sit or relax.

  As they turned onto the outbound leg Beasely counted the rotating beacons strung out behind him. “General, I count six anti-collision lights in trail. We’ve got a formation.” The six C-130s were stretched out in a line behind Spectre 01.

  “Have them check in with their status,” Mado said over the intercom.

  Before the copilot could comply, Thunder stopped him. “General, we trained to do this maintaining radio silence. If something’s wrong, they’ll call.” Mado did not answer and the copilot did nothing. Beasely rolled out on the outbound leg and started their descent to low level. The six C-130s followed Spectre—chicks in trail.

  Now the UHF radio came alive. “Scamp One-One in-bound at this time.” It was Kowalski’s voice.

  “Scamp One-One, this is Delray Five-One,” the AWACS answered. “Enter holding at Flight Level two-four-oh”—Nelson had just told Kowalski to orbit at twenty-four thousand feet.

  “What the hell is she doing here?” Mado demanded.

  “She’s backup,” Thunder said. “She’ll orbit with the AWACS.”

  “That wasn’t what I wanted, order her to RTB.”

  “She must’ve misunderstood,” Thunder said, trying to soothe the general. “She’s not going anywhere. Better we maintain radio silence. We can sort this one out later.” The general’s right hand clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed…

  The flight deck fell silent as they waited for the next radio transmission from the AWACS that would commit them. The AC-130 fumed onto the inbound-leg toward the departure point, still descending. “Sky King, Sky King, this is Delray Five-One with a Romeo Tango message. Do not acknowledge. Repeat, do not acknowledge.” It was the transmission from the AWACS they were waiting for. It had been disguised to sound like a normal status report but the Romeo Tango meant the message was for them. The AWACS was reporting the latest status of the Iranian air defense net. “Sierra Hotel Lima. Repeat. Sierra Hotel Lima.”

  Thunder flipped to his page of code words. “Situation normal, sir.”

  “Does that mean that the radar at Maragheh is active?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mado was silent as he digested this latest information. Had they considered all the factors? Had the threat changed? “It doesn’t feel right…”

  “Why?” This is from the Beezer. “Everything’s just like we planned…”

  “For one, the weather is below mission minimums,” Mado shot back.

  “Sir, look out the window. It’s clear as a bell, well almost.” Mado did as the pilot said. Two F-15s flew past on the left and established a racetrack pattern in front of them, easily avoiding the few clouds that were breaking apart. The weather was exactly as the weatherman had forecasted. Mado’s whole background and makeup said abort the mission, get back to the safe and predictable routines of the Pentagon. But he knew it wasn’t to be, and that for the first time in his career he was actually leading men into combat.

  “Departure point in thirty seconds,” the navigator broke in. They waited. Then, “Departure point now. Anti-collision light off.” The copilot turned the rotating beacon off, the signal to the next C-130 in trail that they were at the departure point. One by one, the C-130s turned off their flashing anti-collision beacons as they overflew the point and turned toward the southeast, heading into Iran.

  *

  “Departure point now,” Drunkin Dunkin announced over the intercom, business as usual. His head was buried in the radar scope with his mangy yellow baseball cap on backward. “New heading one-two-six degrees.” Without looking, his right hand reached up and bounced off the button starting the elapsed time on the clock, and his left hand triggered the stop watch hanging from his neck. For Drunkin Dunkin, if he did his job then Duck Mallard would get him safely home.

  “Anti-collision light off,” Mallard said. “Loadmaster, double-check all lights out, we’re running dark now. How long to penetration, Dunk?”

  “Six minutes. I’ve got a radar contact on Spectre. We’re exactly two miles in trail.”

  “Well, Colonel,” Mallard said, “this is it. I wonder how Mado is doing…”

  “He’s carrying a lot of new responsibility,” Stansell said. He looked around the flight deck. He could make out the pilots’ faces in the muted reflection of the red instrument lights. Sweat glistened on the dark face of the copilot, Don Larson. Mallard seemed calm as he hand-flew the plane, not relying on the auto-pilot at low level. Stansell had heard a slight edge in his voice but didn’t worry about it. Duck Mallard had his emotions under control. I hope everyone else is as cool, Stansell thought. Myself included.

  *

  Western Iran

  The engines of the two trucks were idling smoothly as the last of the Rangers loaded. Bill Carroll was sitting on the runningboard of the lead truck waiting for Zakia. The two squad sergeants made another sweep of the compound, a last double-check that no trace of their stay could be detected. Zakia walked out of the house carrying the telephone and an Uzi submachine gun. Trimler was right behind her. He spoke briefly to the two sergeants and they climbed into the back of the trucks. When the Rangers were all out of sight, Carroll, climbed into the cab of the first truck and Zakia into the second.

  The trucks rumbled out of the compound and stopped when they reached the outpost a hundred meters down the dirt road. Two Rangers materialized out of the shadows and climbed on board the second truck. Twenty-three of the twenty-five Rangers were accounted for. The small convoy moved down the rut and turned onto a gravel road that would take them to the main highway that led to Kermanshah.

  *

  Kamigami made a stay-motion at Jamison and moved toward the back of the building looming in front of them. The lieutenant sank to the ground, thankful for any rest. He was on the verge of exhaustion after following the sergeant major through the hills that offered them a rough path into Kermanshah. He had never credited the stories making the rounds in the battalion about Kamigami and had always chalked them up to the lore the enlisted troops used to scare lieutenants like himself. According to the rumor mill, twenty-mile forced marches were child’s play for the sergeant. Now Jamison was wondering how much else that was impossible was true.

  The lieutenant caught his breath and tried to fix their position. Judging by the lights and the noises in the distance, he estimated they were on a hillside on the outskirts of Kermanshah, no more than two ki
lometers away.

  A babble of voices erupted from the other side of the building and lights sent a glow over the roofline. Jamison was sure someone had seen or heard the sergeant and drew his pistol, a newly issued 9mm automatic. He tried to find Kamigami but couldn’t see a thing. Then a man wearing a ragged suit coat and stocking knit cap pulled down to his ears walked around the corner of the building and looked directly at the spot where the lieutenant had last seen Kamigami. The lieutenant rolled into a prone position and sighted over the barrel. He thumbed the safety to off and then moved back to the hammer, ready to cock the weapon.

  Which was when a heavy weight hit him in the back and knocked the breath out of him, and a hand clamped over his mouth and the pistol was twisted out of his grip.

  *

  Eastern Turkey

  Lieutenant Colonel Leon Nelson was pleased with his crew. After the AWACS had launched out of Incirlik, he had briefed them on the coming flight and how they, Delray 51, would be supporting Operation WARLORD. Then something had clicked with every man and woman on-board and a precision he had never seen took hold. The hand-controller at the number three console was hanging up and the operator could not roll the ball full left. Within minutes, the computer technician had it fixed. As the mission developed, Nelson could hear it in their voices. They were committed to WARLORD.

  Nelson called up the tactical display that reached out 250 nautical miles. The C-130s and the four escorting F-15s were strung out in a line snaking through the mountains. He rolled the hand-controller and the cursor moved over the lead return. He called for identification and information flashed on the screen; call sign Cowboy 31, type F-15, speed 280 knots, altitude 7,250. That’s slow and only about four hundred feet above the ground, he thought. He watched two fighters set up a racetrack pattern in front of the C-130s, and for a moment he was jealous and wished he was there…anywhere, even in one of the four orbiting F-15s that had to stay behind.