Flash Point

by James W. Huston

  Woods turned east, heading 086. It was 0715. They were a couple of minutes behind the rigid schedule Woods had set for them in his planning. They had no room for error. “We may be late. I’m going to push it up a little.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t go super.”

  “Don’t worry,” Woods said, advancing the throttles to military power as he leveled off at fifty feet. The sea raced by, a dark purple comforting blur. Big stayed above Woods, long ago having learned the lesson that when flying very low the wingman should stay above the lead or risk being scraped off the ground or a tree. “Head 080,” Wink said.

  “How do you know that?” Woods asked without looking into the cockpit. He was concentrating to keep from flying into the sea. If he sneezed, they’d hit the water going five hundred knots.

  “We’ve got good data link. They’re showing Ramat David, and all the airplanes that are airborne.” Wink leaned forward and raised his hand above the green on black screen to block out the reflected sunlight. “I’m going lead nose. No radar from here on.”

  “Don’t turn it on accidentally, Wink. That’s all we need is for someone to detect our radar.”

  “Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll set the frequency to sniff in case I hit the switch.”

  “211, come south to 200, Bogey 200 at 30, angels 15,” Tiger transmitted.

  “Roger. 211 coming to 200,” Wink replied. “Sounds like Tiger’s on board.”

  “Think he’ll pull it off using fake symbols?”

  “He thought so. We’ll soon find out.”

  “You didn’t tell him where we were going, did you?”

  “No. Don’t want them to run out of room at Leavenworth. Less he knows the better.”

  “What if he doesn’t pull it off?”

  “We’re cooked,” Wink said, shrugging. “We could still say we were doing unauthorized dogfighting. Didn’t want Admiral Sweat dirtying his shorts.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Radar altimeter set?”

  “Forty feet.”

  “That should keep us dry.”

  “How far to the shoreline? I think I can just make it out.”

  “Without the radar it’s hard to tell, but about fifteen miles.”

  “Big doing okay?”

  “Yep. Sedge has his arms up on the canopy rails. Looking for birds or something. Very casual.”

  “Good,” Woods said as they accelerated through five hundred fifty knots.

  The two Tomcats with their white skull and bones painted on the tails screamed toward Israel fifty feet off the water. They cut through the smooth air like parallel daggers, their wings working their way back to a 68-degree sweep, programmed by the onboard computer as they approached supersonic.

  “211, Bogey 199 for 20 miles, angles 15.”

  “Roger. Judy,” Wink said, taking control of the imaginary intercept.

  Woods’s heart was pounding as it had been since they took off. His throat was usually dry when flying this fast this low, but now he could barely swallow. His palms were sweaty as he gripped the stick and throttles with his bare hands, not wearing the required Nomex fireproof gloves.

  “I’ve got the shoreline,” Woods announced, trying to sound calm.

  “Come to 084,” Wink replied.

  Woods immediately made the small correction. In the green projection of the HUD on the windscreen, he could look right at his heading, weapons status, and altitude without taking his eyes off the terrain in front of the plane. The HUD symbols were focused at infinity, the same as looking off in the distance.

  Suddenly the beach shot by underneath them, giving them a sense of speed the passage of constant blue water never did. Palm trees snapped by only a few feet under the Tomcats. Woods stole a glance sideways to see if there was anyone on the beach this early, but saw no one. They passed directly over a car as they crossed the coast highway, the highway where Vialli had been killed. Woods breathed deeply and drank in the pure oxygen. He pulled slightly on the stick and climbed to five hundred feet. He brought the throttles back and slowed to three hundred knots.

  “How far to Ramat David?” he asked.

  “Thirty miles or so. Six minutes,” Wink said. “Fox Two, knock it off and set up another one,” he transmitted.

  “Roger, 211. 207, head north as the fighter, 211, south as the bogey,” Tiger said calmly.

  “211. Roger.”

  “207. Roger.”

  Woods looked at his clock—0730. “We’re late.”

  “I doubt it’ll matter,” Wink said. “Nobody gets that organized on time.”

  Woods could make out every detail of the houses and farms. He could see the animals’ breath in the cool morning air as they moved away from the screaming sound he brought from the sky when he approached them. People looked up even though all over the country they were accustomed to low-flying jets at any hour of the day or night.

  Woods felt invincible. He was completely in control and found his heart settling down, but just as he relaxed, his heart jumped into his throat. “You see what I see?”

  Wink leaned over and looked forward through the side glass of the windscreen. “Holy hell, Trey. There must be seventy-five airplanes!”

  “They’re all over the place” Woods said, reducing the throttle to slow to two hundred fifty knots. “Well,” he said with relief. “At least we’re not too late.”

  “Directly overhead at five hundred feet? Is that where the Major said to rendezvous?”

  “Yep. That’s where I’m going, but there are still airplanes taking off. They’ll just have to avoid us. There’s quite a gaggle in a racetrack over the field at five hundred. Seems about twenty planes or so.” Woods turned slightly right to head for the group of Israeli planes circling over Ramat David Air Force Base. “Let’s push and catch up with them so someone else trying to rendezvous doesn’t hit us.”

  “Roger that,” Woods said, advancing the throttles slightly. He glanced down to his left at the air base and saw two F-15s in afterburner lifting off the runway in formation. “I don’t see any others. They must be the last.”

  “211, come north. 207, come port, your bogey is 197 for 32, angels 25.”

  “211, Roger.”

  “207, Roger.”

  “207, bogey 196 for 30 miles, angels 25.”

  “You getting a good picture?” Woods asked Wink, unable to take his eyes off the F-15s and F-16s with their blue Star of David in a white circle.

  “Holy shit! It’s unbelievable,” Wink said, hunched over his screen as if watching a show. He had the screen on the large scale with their F-14 in the middle. The Israeli E-2C Hawkeye was flying north of Ramat David, south of the Lebanon border. Wink stared at the radar picture. It was what the E-2 saw. The symbols on his screen were upside down, indicating they were data link symbols. The Israeli airplanes appeared as half circles, and the other airplanes—designated as hostile—were upside-down chevrons. Wink could see them all without even turning on his own radar.

  “Look at this gaggle!” Woods remarked as he searched the sky over Ramat David. Dozens of Israeli fighters circled, waiting. F-15s, F-16s, F-4s, all ready to go to battle. Itching for the chance. Suddenly, the group of F-4s peeled off and headed northwest.

  It was the second group of Phantoms. The first was crossing the Lebanese border while the real strike rendezvoused. Dozens of Top Secret Ze’ev Antiradiation Missiles streaked north into the sky from Israel—the missiles had been used only once before, and their existence had never been confirmed. Thanks to the silent Arava, the electronic monitoring plane, the ground launchers knew where to aim and the missiles homed hungrily toward the radars trying to shoot down their fellow unpiloted Israeli drones. F-4 Phantom Wild Weasels, positioned by the E-2 in southern Lebanon, raced forward on the silent signal and fired American-made HARM antiradiation missiles toward the northern targets out of reach of the Ze’evs. The drones flew directly into the SAM and AAA radar envelopes over Lebanon, looking like airplanes being flown
by very stupid pilots. The operators salivated and turned on their systems to get firing solutions to shoot into what looked like a large number of Israeli planes. The SAMs flew off the rails as the radars guided the missiles toward their targets. The Phantoms rolled in with their bombs and antiradiation missiles on the SAM and AAA sites to clear the way for the real raid. All over Lebanon, in the Bekáa Valley, around bases and camps, and along the border, antiradiation missiles slammed into radars and control vans wiping out the antiair capability of the Syrians, who had controlled Lebanese airspace for years. Even those operators smart enough to detect the ruse and turn off their radars before the Ze’evs hit, soon learned that the missile remembered where the last transmissions came from.

  The F-4 Phantoms that had been assigned to attack the SAM sites screamed across the border toward the bases in southern Lebanon. They carried thousand-pound laser-guided bombs, with the laser illumination provided by yet more drones circling over the designated targets.

  Just then Major Micah Chermak, in the lead F-15 of the aft-most group of airplanes over Ramat David, rolled his wings level and headed north. In front of Woods, Chermak’s group of eight fighters spread out into two boxes of four, five hundred feet above the ground. Woods let them accelerate ahead and signaled Big to move out to combat spread a mile and a half directly to the right and a mile behind the last F-15. There were fighters everywhere, gray, light blue, and camouflage, flying in loose formation with missiles hanging from every rail, ready for the fight.

  “Here we go,” Woods said to Wink as he pushed up his throttles to stay with the F-15s. They accelerated to four hundred fifty knots.

  Wink studied the radar picture being steadily transmitted to them by the Israeli E-2C. “Trey, I’ve got six or eight bogeys on the screen, headed south toward the border. This could be a fur ball,” he said.

  “Are they headed for us?”

  “No. The F-4s that went in to bomb all went from the east to west, and are now headed toward the coast. The bogeys are falling in behind them. I think the Phantoms are dragging them. Son of a bitch. The whole thing is a setup! They should be in front of us about fifty miles, twenty degrees right, moving right to left, about five hundred knots.”

  “Combat checklist,” Woods said, excited.

  “Roger,” said Wink, reaching for the cards attached to his knee board. “Wings.”

  “Auto.”

  “Missile prep.”

  “On.”

  “Sidewinder cool.”

  “On.”

  “207, bogey 195 for 25, angels 25.”

  “Roger. Judy,” Wink said, responding to Tiger to keep the pretend intercept alive in case anyone on the Washington was listening to the radio communications. His mind wanted to shut down the ruse to allow more processing time for reality, but Wink knew it would be too risky.

  “Weapons select.”

  “Sidewinder.”

  “Master arm.”

  “Off, for now.”

  “Put it up now so we don’t forget.”

  “Roger,” Woods said. He reached over and flipped up the red switch. “Master arm, on.”

  “You ready?”

  “Ready. Sure you want to do this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Me too.”

  The fighters moved apart slightly as they closed on the MiGs now streaming down from Syria. Woods took his eyes off the radar picture and looked around. He could faintly see another group of twenty fighters or so east of them, and yet another group to the west. Woods had never seen so many airplanes airborne at once in his life and he couldn’t believe he was flying into combat with the Israeli Air Force.

  The group of fighters to their west angled northwest to intercept the incoming MiGs. The F-4s the MiGs were chasing were supersonic over western Lebanon, circling back toward Israel in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to avoid the Syrian planes. The EC-135 activated its jammers, clogging the Syrian Ground Control Intercept radar as well as its SAM and AAA radars.

  “I’ll bet those Syrian pilots have their fangs out,” Wink said. “They think they’re finally going to be able to catch one of the Israeli bombing strikes. If only they knew—but I’ll tell you one thing. They’re coming in force. There must be thirty MiGs coming, maybe forty, and probably others taking off. The E-2C is picking them up as soon as they’re airborne. We’ll have to watch the northeast.”

  Woods pushed the throttles forward slightly as the Tomcats fell behind the F-15s and F-16s. “They’re accelerating ahead. What’s the speed of the MiGs?”

  “About five hundred fifty to six hundred knots.”

  “We’ll push it up a little.”

  “Say hello to Lebanon. We’re in their airspace now.”

  Woods looked around and down at the ground, still only five hundred feet below. “Looks the same to me.”

  “May look the same, but if we get shot down, it won’t be the same, I promise you that.”

  “Don’t even think that,” Woods replied. Unconsciously, their voices had moved up in pitch.

  They followed the Israelis deeper into Lebanon. No turning back now, Woods thought.

  “005, for ten miles for the first of them, the rest are east and north from there, angels—they’re all over the place, all above us! The E-2 is showing about thirty bogeys! I have no idea how many targets are real,” Wink said.

  “I see some specks, but nothing clear,” Woods said, half in frustration, half in anticipation.

  “Five miles. Here we go,” Wink said, watching the F-15s ahead of them begin a climb. The Tomcats started uphill right behind them, going to military power to accelerate in the climb. They saw no sign that the Syrians knew they were there. They passed through five thousand feet on their way to ten.

  “Check our six,” Woods said.

  Wink grabbed the handle in front of him on top of his radar panel, and forcibly turned around so he could see between the tails. “Nothing,” he grunted. “Belly check,” he added.

  Woods rolled the airplane into a knife edge so they could see directly underneath them to the ground, to make sure no MiGs were doing to them what they were doing to the MiGs—sneaking up on them from below. He rolled back level and saw Big do the same thing. He checked behind Big to make sure there weren’t any bogeys following him. All clear.

  Suddenly Wink remembered. “Fox two, Tiger. Set up another one,” he said.

  “Roger, 211. New heading, 005, 207, head 175.”

  “211, Roger.”

  “207, Roger.”

  Woods scanned the sky around him again, quickly. Suddenly it was full of white smoke as the Israeli fighters shot their AIM-9M heat-seeking Sidewinders at the Syrian MiGs head-on. Dozens of missiles streaked toward the bogeys, flying toward the targets on the corkscrew paths, which gave them their name.

  “Geez, Trey! You see that?” Wink shouted.

  “Fight’s on!” Woods replied calmly, tightening his lap belt.

  The Sidewinders tore toward their targets. Some of the MiGs saw them as soon as they were fired, others only after the missiles hit their wingmen. Two on the left pulled up in an emergency break and dropped burning magnesium flares to avoid being hit. But the heat-seeking Sidewinders were hungry missiles, especially looking up, away from the ground, at a target streaking through the sky riding a hot jet engine.

  The missiles smashed into the MiGs across the sky as far as Woods could see. MiGs exploded all around and fell out of the heavens. F-15s and -16s climbed through the disintegrating MiG formations. As the Sidewinders raced in all directions, the lead F-15s broke through the first group of MiGs and went after the others. The MiGs panicked. They watched as their wingmen dropped from the sky like clay pigeons, missiles exploding in their bellies. Chermak was the first to fire a second missile. Woods watched in fascination as the supersonic missile flew off the F-15’s underwing rail and silently hurled itself at a MiG-23 two miles ahead. The missile hit the MiG in the chest, right in front of a drop tank full of fuel. It absorbed t
he blow like a wounded animal and immediately lost speed, rolling over and heading for the ground ten thousand feet below, upside down, flames licking skyward.

  “I’ve got MiGs to the right and left,” Wink said excitedly, straining to see behind the Tomcat.

  “I’ve got Israeli fighters everywhere,” Woods said, looking carefully at the melee all around them. He checked to make sure he had Sidewinder selected and went to full power.

  “There goes the Major. He’s made the turn to the target!” Woods exclaimed as Chermak and three other F-15s peeled off and headed east. Woods and Big fell in behind them, slightly higher, in a position of cover and fighter escort. “How far is it to that town?”

  Wink looked at the chart and at their position listed as latitude and longitude in a continuous readout on his PTID. “Thirty miles.”

  “No sweat. As long as a bunch of MiGs don’t close in behind us and cut us off, we’ll be okay.”

  “The F-15s are heading down. I think they’re doing a pop-up delivery.”

  “Where do they want us?” Wink asked, growing anxious. “They must be trying to stay low on the radar. If we stay high we’ll give them away!”

  Woods looked around. “Let’s take a low trail position on them,” he said as he pushed the Tomcat over and followed the F-15s downhill. Before he knew it they were tearing across eastern Lebanon at five hundred fifty knots toward a town he had never heard of forty-eight hours before. The F-15s were flying in two sections of two, in a welded wing formation—Chermak was in the lead, the wingman right on the his wing.

  Woods watched Lebanon streak by under their jet as they followed the Israeli fighters to their target. Every few miles they would see AAA, antiaircraft artillery that tried to reach the strike group. It was always poorly aimed or too far away to do any damage. They weren’t heading toward a predictable target. All the known targets were protected by SAMs or AAA. But Dar al Ahmar? There wasn’t anything there. No reason to be surrounded by a multimillion-dollar defense—except today, when the new scourge of the Middle East was there.

  “Bogeys!” Wink shouted. “Eleven o’clock high!”

  Woods headed up and to the left to meet the MiGs head on. Big moved at the same time, still flying in combat spread, one mile to Woods’s right and a little higher. The two Israeli F-15s flying behind Chermak and his wingman left the low-flying strike group and went after the MiGs with Woods and Big behind them.