by Robert Gandt
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Maxwell glanced to his right. A quarter mile away, in combat spread formation, was his wingman, Leroi Jones. Both jets were in full afterburner, hauling ass to catch their commanding officer, who had just charged off to engage the Iraqi Air Force.
Maxwell studied his situational display. The bandits were heading west along the border. They were obviously playing their game of feint and tease. The other two blips in the display — Killer and Hozer — were nose hot on them, in a ninety-degree intercept angle.
Maxwell was getting a bad feeling in his gut. He called on the tactical frequency: “Stinger One-one, confirm the rules of engagement. We gotta see hostile intent, right?”
“We already covered that in the briefing.”
“I show the bandits nose cold.”
“Get off the frequency,” DeLancey snapped, “unless you’ve got something I need to hear.”
In the cockpit of his Hornet, Maxwell smoldered. Everyone on the channel — AWACS, Rivet Joint, the rest of Stinger One-one flight — had heard the rebuff.
Okay, asshole, go for it. Maybe we can bail you out. Maybe not.
<>
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
Colonel Jabbar heard the aural alert from his Sirena RWR — radar warning receiver — and he felt every nerve fiber in his body tingle.
He had heard it before, of course. And he expected it. It meant that the Americans — probably F/A-18 Hornets — were rushing toward the NFZ at high speed. Even his enfeebled GCI up in Baghdad had been able to pick them out and send the warning. So it was all very normal that Jabbar and his wingman would be getting an RWR warning from the inbound fighters. It was part of the game.
Still, that slow chirping of the Sirena made his blood run cold. Jabbar toyed for a second with the notion of turning hard into the Yankee bastards and engaging them. Stuff a couple of AA-10 missiles up their intakes. It would be glorious. It would correct a hundred past humiliations the Iraqi Air Force had suffered.
But not today. He did not have an expendable wingman to lose in such an engagement. Instead he had Saddam’s idiot nephew to protect.
“Blue Wing, stay with me,” Jabbar radioed Al-Fariz. “We have fighters approaching from the south.”
Jabbar started a gentle turn to the north. He would play it safe, show everyone that he was giving the border a wide berth. As he turned, Jabbar glanced over his left shoulder. Make sure Al-Fariz was following.
He saw nothing.
No wingman. Just empty sky.
“Blue Wing, where are you? Join up! Now!”
<>
Captain Hakim Al-Fariz heard the warning. Enemy fighters inbound from the south! Even though Colonel Jabbar had briefed him that the Americans would probably send up fighters, the news that they were out there — coming toward them! — sent a surge of adrenaline through Al-Fariz’s body strong enough to jolt a camel.
His immediate reaction was to go to his own radar. Fighters! Where were they? From what angle?
Fixated on the display, he twirled the acquisition knob. He was a novice with the complicated Russian-built tactical radar display. Why wasn’t he picking up the targets? Where in God’s name were they?
While Al-Fariz toiled with his radar, his MiG-29 rolled into a gentle left turn.
Southward. Into the NFZ.
<>
They all saw it.
Tracey Barnett, in the E-3C AWACS, picked it up on her display. The trailer MiG was. . . Oh, shit!. . . the guy was turning nose hot!
Butch Kissick was peering at the same display. “God damn it!” he roared. “Look at that. The sonofabitch is flying right into the NFZ.”
Brick Maxwell, leading the second section of Hornets at Mach 1.2 toward the NFZ border, observed the MiG drifting across the border. He also saw the lead Fulcrum in a shallow turn — to the right. What the hell? Were these guys playing a game? Some kind of setup? The trailer Fulcrum was either playing a game of chicken or he was totally out to lunch.
Maxwell felt a sense of dread. This was going to be ugly. The other pair of blips — Stinger One-one and his wingman — were closing fast from the left. DeLancey and Hozer were almost within the envelope for a missile shot. And so was the Fulcrum. He was still coming left.
Nose hot.
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DeLancey wasn’t worried about the Fulcrum pilot taking a shot. If the guy really wanted to fight, Delancey figured, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to make a shallow turn like that into two opposing fighters. Even if he managed to get a missile into the air, DeLancey was sure that at this range he and Hozer would have the time and tools to defeat it.
Only one worrisome thought troubled him: This MiG jockey might get homesick and bug out for Baghdad.
He might get away.
And sure as hell, that’s what the guy was doing. DeLancey could see it happening on his radar. He could see the bandit’s nose cranking around back to the right. The sonofabitch was going to cut and run!
Well, maybe he’d get away, maybe not. If the stupid bastard was in the NFZ, he was fair game.
On his stores display, DeLancey selected an AIM-120 radar-guided missile. It would be at the far edge of his firing envelope, but it was the only shot he would have.
He rolled his Hornet into a right turn, leading the Iraqi jet’s turn to the north. He superimposed the target acquisition box in his head up display over the radar symbol of the retreating Fulcrum.
Looking good. . . almost. . . hold it. . . There!
Fighter pilots called the AIM-120 a “wild dog in a meat locker.” This was because the missile contained its own autonomous guidance system which, when locked onto a target — any target — guided the weapon without further control from the pilot. Once launched, the AIM-120 pursued its prey like an unleashed hunting animal.
Delancey squeezed the trigger on his stick.
Whoom!
He squeezed again.
Whoom!
Two AIM-120 missiles, one after the other, were racing out ahead of the Hornet. Behind each missile trailed a wisp of smoke and vapor.
“Fox 3!” yelled DeLancey, signaling that he had just fired radar-guided missiles.
<>
Hunched inside the cockpit of his MiG-29, Captain Hakim Al-Fariz heard the slow chirping of the Sirena radar warning receiver. Then he heard it sharpen to a high-pitched warble.
Al-Fariz felt a stab of fear that nearly made his heart explode. Even though he had never been in combat, he recognized that shrill warbling sound: The Sirena, which had been receiving the American fighters’ APG-73 radar emissions, was now hearing something else.
A missile! An air-to-air missile was inbound. From where? Was it targeting him?
Al-Fariz refused to believe what was happening. How could this be? This was his first tactical mission in the MiG-29. He wasn’t supposed to be fired upon by the enemy.
“Help!” he squawked on the radio. “Colonel! The Sirena. A missile—”
“Break right!” came the voice of Colonel Jabbar. “Turn right now! Immediately!”
The urgent command penetrated like a laser into Al-Fariz’s paralyzed brain. Turn! He jammed the stick hard to the right, then pulled. The MiG wheeled hard into a right turn. Al-Fariz hauled the stick back, grunting under the heavy acceleration. Five Gs, six, seven Gs. Seven times his normal body weight, the blood being forced from his brain. Turn! Make the missile overshoot.
The AIM-120 bored through the sky toward the MiG. The sudden angle-off and the seven Gs were more than the missile could manage. Nearly at the end of its envelope, the air-to-air missile swished past the tail of the hard-turning MiG-29, then sputtered and lost its guidance.
Al-Fariz was alive.
But the second missile, a quarter-mile behind the first, stayed locked-on. As Al-Fariz’s MiG-29 pulled hard in its seven-G vertical bank, the AIM-120 continued in a relentless arcing pursuit curve.
Tracking. Closer, closer, still tracking.
Kablooom! The missile impacted the
MiG squarely in the cockpit.
The forward half of the MiG-29 disintegrated from the blast of the AIM-120’s warhead. Captain Hakim Al-Fariz, who had been an athletic, handsome specimen of young Iraqi manhood, was transformed into a molten blob of protoplasm.
The aft portion of the jet, containing the engines and the fuselage fuel tank, exploded in an orange fireball. The flaming debris descended like a comet to the floor of the desert.
<>
“Stinger One-one, splash one!”
The radio call from the Hornet crackled like an electric shock through the command cabin of the AWACS. Butch Kissick stared at the tactical display console. “What the fuck. . .?”
Tracey Barnett was shaking her head. “He did it. He shot him.”
“I don’t believe this shit,” said Kissick.
“What do you want me to do, Butch?”
“Remember everything that happened. I guarantee you we’re gonna be standing in the general’s office.”
<>
From thirty miles away, Maxwell saw the fireball. It looked like a tiny Roman candle, arcing downward to the earth.
On his radar display he could see the aftermath of the engagement: The lead bandit was still in a turn to the north. The blips from DeLancey and Hozer’s Hornets were still pointed northward, into Iraqi air space.
“Stinger One-one,” said Maxwell. “Heads up. You’re past the NFZ boundary.”
“Roger that,” said Killer. Maxwell could hear the exhilaration in DeLancey’s voice. “We’re bugging out. Stay nose on the bandit and cover us while we egress.”
“Three copies. You’re covered.”
Maxwell saw the two radar symbols — Killer and Hozer — executing a turn-in-place to the left. In unison, their noses swung toward the south, back to the NFZ, egressing from Iraqi air space. As they turned southward, Maxwell and his wingman swept past them with their noses — and missiles — trained on the surviving MiG. Just in case the MiG leader decided to come back and take a shot at the retreating Hornets’ exposed tail pipes.
And that, Maxwell realized with a start, was exactly what the bastard was doing.
There it was on his display — the symbol of the lead Iraqi MiG-29. He wasn’t turning north any longer. The MiG’s nose was in a hard turn southward. Toward Maxwell and his wingman.
“Sea Lord, Stinger three,” Maxwell called. “Do you show the lead bandit coming nose hot?”
“That’s affirmative,” answered Tracey Barnett from the AWACS. “Looks like he’s reengaging.”
Maxwell cursed inside his oxygen mask. It was just what he was afraid would happen. The fight that DeLancey started wasn’t over. DeLancey had hosed this guy’s wingman. Now the Iraqi wanted to take his own shot at someone.
Maxwell was the someone. It was going to be a face-to-face shoot-out.
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Colonel Jabbar scanned the empty sky where Al-Fariz’s MiG had been. No sign of a parachute. He was not surprised. He knew from the pitch of the Sirena warning that it was a radar-guided weapon, not a heat-seeker. It had been a direct hit. At least Al-Fariz did not suffer a painful death.
Jabbar felt himself filled with a white-hot fury. The smoking trail of his wingman’s destroyed jet was still falling to the desert. The arrogant bastards had executed Al-Fariz like he was a stray dog in a garbage heap.
He could see in his radar the two fighters — the ones who had killed Al-Fariz — egressing from the area. If he accelerated, pursued them into the NFZ, Jabbar could lock them up, take them both out.
But then he saw something else. Two extra blips that weren’t there before.
He should have known. Two more enemy fighters coming at him. They were twenty miles, nose on.
Just as Jabbar reached to slew the target designator in his radar display to lock up the lead fighter, he heard the aural warning in his headset. The warning was in Russian: “Low fuel! Low fuel!”
For a second Jabbar considered. If he stayed in the fight, he would probably run out of fuel before he made it back to Al-Taqqadum. If he turned tail, he would be exposed to a shot from the enemy fighters. Either way, his chances were nil.
Jabbar’s finger went to the missile launch button on the control stick.
He was about to depress the button when he heard another aural alert. Chirp! Chirp! Chirrrrrrrp!
The Sirena. It was going crazy. They had fired another missile! This time Jabbar was the target. The enemy had preempted him. Now he was defensive.
Colonel Jabbar made an instantaneous tactical decision: Try to save yourself. Maybe, if you survive the missile, you might even escape a firing squad.
Jabbar snapped the MiG into a seven-G right break. He shoved the throttles into afterburner and dove for the deck. With its nose down, under full thrust from the two mighty Tumansky afterburners, the MiG-29 accelerated — Mach 1.5. Mach 2. The brown vastness of the Iraqi desert filled his windscreen.
Jabbar was in a deadly tail chase. Behind him the Mach 3 air-to-air missile was trying to overtake his Mach 2 MiG-29 fighter. It was a game of hound-and-hare, except that the hound possessed an 800-mile-per-hour advantage.
He could hear the angry shrill squeal of the Sirena. Sweat poured from inside Jabbar’s helmet, stinging his eyes. Chiiirrrrrrrrrrp!
The chirping intensified. More shrill, more relentless. The missile was closing on him. Jabbar hunched down in his cockpit seat, holding his breath, waiting for the inevitable.
The chirping stopped.
Jabbar waited. The chirping did not resume.
He took his first breath in nearly a minute. He had outrun the killer missile and its fuel was exhausted. But the Americans were still behind him. Was another missile on its way?
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Maxwell prepared to fire his second missile. His finger curled around the trigger.
His first shot had been launched at the extreme end of the AIM-120’s range. The MiG pilot had made a smart move. He had dived and managed to outrun the missile. It had saved his life, at least for the moment. It had also persuaded him to haul ass for home.
But now, because the MiG had gone nearly vertical, Maxwell had closed the distance. He could take a second shot and still bag the MiG. Maxwell hesitated, finger on his trigger. Should I kill this guy. . .?
The window was closing. He had perhaps three seconds. He could shoot now — and the MiG would be dead. Another anonymous Iraqi fighter pilot would be history.
Maxwell’s finger touched the trigger.
Squeeze the damn thing. Shoot and get it over.
Another second.
“Position check, Brick,” said Leroi, high off Maxwell’s right wing. Jones’s job was to radar-search for “spitters” — unobserved newcomers to the fight. Jones sounded worried. “We’re thirty miles past the boundary.”
So they were. The two Hornets were deep into Iraqi air space, and going deeper. On his display Maxwell could see the blip of the Iraqi jet retreating northward at twice the speed of sound.
The MiG was still in range. Maxwell still had a shot.
He slid his finger off the trigger. Okay, pal. You owe me one. Have a nice life.
“Copy that. We’re bugging out.”
<>
Screech. Screech.
The landing gear of the big Russian fighter squawked onto the asphalt surface of Highway U45, the main thoroughfare from Baghdad to the Al-Taqqadum military complex.
Jabbar saw an Army truck coming at him head on. Jabbar’s MiG was still rolling at over a hundred kilometers per hour. From the cockpit, Jabbar could see the truck driver’s eyes. They looked like huge white lamps. At the last instant the driver swerved toward the ditch, rolling the truck up on its side. Jabbar swept past, giving the driver a friendly wave.
Well, he’d almost made it back to Al-Taqqadum. The full-afterburner race with the air-to-air missile had consumed the last of his reserve fuel. Knowing that he would not make it to the Al-Taqqadum runway, Jabbar had decided to plunk the MiG-29 down on the highway while his e
ngines were still running.
That turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Ten seconds after touch down, he saw the RPM indicator for the left engine begin spooling down from fuel exhaustion. And then the right engine. Now he was coasting down the highway in total silence.
Still rolling, Jabbar passed a sign declaring that visitors were ordered to halt. They were entering a restricted military area. Ahead he saw the main gate of Al-Taqqadum air base. Jabbar let the jet roll until the long, drooping snout of the MiG-29 was pointed directly at the door of the sentry house.
A startled guard, holding his Kalishnikov across his chest, came charging out of the sentry house. Suddenly aware of the immense object rolling toward him, the guard dug in his heels. Losing traction, he fell in a heap, still clutching the Kalishnikov.
Jabbar brought the MiG to a smooth stop. He opened the canopy and removed his brilliantly painted red helmet. The red helmet was the single indulgence by which he distinguished himself from his other squadron pilots.
Despite the searing afternoon temperature, the outside air felt cool. He gazed around him at the shimmering desert, the dumbstruck guard, the air base he hadn’t quite reached. Overhead, the sky was a dull, hazy blue. Jabbar realized that he was soaking wet from perspiration.
Several hundred yards inside the gate, he saw a personnel vehicle coming. It would be the base commander and, surely, several Republican Guardsmen.
All in all, he thought, this had been a very bad day. And the worst was yet to come.
Chapter Two
The Hero
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Joint Task Force Command, Southwest Asia
1515, Friday, 18 April
The news traveled, literally, at the speed of light. It flashed simultaneously from the AWACS and Rivet Joint to the Commander of the Joint Task Force in Riyadh.
The reaction was predictable.
