Scorpion Strike

by Nance, John J. ;

  “Cairo, two-eight-four, you’re breaking up. Say again?”

  Hammedi repeated the message twice with the same response. He switched transmitters. Same response. He asked the following MAC flight to relay. Again, the same response. Hammedi slammed his pencil on the floor and keyed his transmitter again, speaking in Arabic.

  “Egyptair one-twelve, descend immediately to flight level three-three-zero.”

  Someone on the Egyptair flight deck acknowledged, but in English, and for a second Hammedi felt himself off balance, as if he were losing part of the picture. His eyes swept the scope again. Egyptair should be descending to FL330, no other conflicts—that should do it. Now for the disobedient American. He was chomping at the bit to take care of that matter. Hammedi turned and caught the eye of his shift supervisor, motioning him over.

  Scorpion-1 (formerly MAC Alpha 284), in flight

  Wednesday, March 6, 1991—11:37 P.M. (2137 GMT)

  “There he is!” Sandra’s voice broke the interphone silence as the distant flash of strobe lights from the wingtips of the oncoming DC-10 caught her eye. The strobes were followed by the hint of a pulsating reddish light, probably a rotating anticollision light, barely visible against the background of stars to the northwest. The lights were exactly where they were supposed to be—at last.

  Sandra was feeling fatigued, but since Bill Backus wanted to stay at the flight engineer’s panel awhile longer, she had no intention of leaving the jump seat just before the real show began.

  The previous two hours had been very tense as they dashed in formation behind the other C-141 toward El Dab’a on the Egyptian coast, hoping the Balair DC-10 would be slower than his original estimate. For the past twenty-five minutes she had strained to catch Balair’s position reports, turning off the squelch control on one of the VHF radios and tuning it to the frequency used by Atheni Control, straining to pick the voice of the Balair pilot out of the background static. At one point she thought the words were there, just behind the hiss and roar, but she couldn’t make them out. They were still too far apart.

  The Westerman-Harris crew had no call sign now, but the Coalition would have their positions listed on various command-post display boards as Scorpion-1.

  Before going “feet wet”—as the act of crossing over a coastline and flying over a large body of water was called—she had recalculated their estimate for Tansa a dozen times, but the estimate had stubbornly remained 2147. That meant that if Balair crossed Paleochora any earlier than 2121, the rendezvous at Tansa would be impossible. The time-to-fly between there and Tansa at Mach .78 was only twenty-five minutes.

  Nearly twenty minutes before, just as they approached El Dab’a, Sandra had managed to overhear Balair’s position report to his company on one of the high-frequency radios. Through the background static that had been numbing her senses, the DC-10’s pilot reported they had crossed Paleochora at 2115, and were southeast-bound toward Tansa, estimating the Tansa intersection at 2140, seven minutes before Scorpion-1 could get there.

  It had been painfully obvious that northbound MAC Alpha 284, as the lead C-141, needed to make an immediate course change to the right to catch Balair farther to the east. But there was the same dilemma again: how to tell them without telling the world? After all, there were people with sophisticated radios in Egypt and certainly in neighboring Libya who would gleefully inform Baghdad of anything that might jeopardize American military operations.

  In the lead airplane, MAC Alpha 284’s crew had heard the same position report and already figured out what they had to do to be able to pass precisely under the Balair DC-10 as their courses crossed over the Mediterranean. As they soared over El Dab’a with Scorpion-1 behind them, Will reached for the rocker switch on the control yoke to order a course change, but before he could transmit, the lead 141 was banking to the right, rolling out on exactly the right heading, and reporting to Cairo the need to deviate around nonexistent thunderstorms.

  “That,” Will had said, “is performance in the ‘above and beyond’ category!”

  For twenty-two minutes they had listened in silence to the sparring as Cairo became increasingly agitated, and MAC Alpha 284 became increasingly devious, and now it was all about to pay off. Balair 5040 was in perfect position, even if MAC Alpha 284 and his silent wingman weren’t.

  Will reestimated the distance remaining and keyed the interphone.

  “Crew, this is the pilot. We’re about to change partners. Loadmaster, have the passengers strapped in tight, yourself included. Engineer? The refueling port is closed and dark, correct?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay, all lights down here in the cockpit, and Load, I want it pitch dark back there in the cabin. I don’t want anyone spotting a lighted window.”

  “No problem, pilot. Everyone down here’s ready, and the lights are out.”

  “You ready to take it, Will? I’m beginning to see double.” Doug’s eyes remained on the tail of 284. The two pilots had traded off formation duties since leaving the Red Sea, but Doug had flown for the past forty minutes.

  A small shake of the yoke marked the transfer of control as Will leaned forward, his chin over the edge of the glare shield, trying to calculate the right moment to bank away.

  “Copilot,” Will began, a shadow of a grin on his face, “you remember that cartoon with the two guys hanging by their thumbs in a dungeon, both with long beards, and one says to the other, ‘Now here’s my plan …’?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Okay. Well, now here’s my plan. We can’t generate more than point four-five Mach closure rate on Playmate once we get behind him, since he’s already doing point seven-eight and we can’t exceed point eight-two-five. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I’m going to try to time this to come out of the turn almost exactly under him. That means in the turn—which will be steep—I’ll need all the help I can get watching where he is and where we are. Jump seat, could you get behind me here and monitor him as I start the—”

  Doug’s voice cut him off. “Traffic at three o’clock, pilot.” His face turned to the copilot’s side window.

  The confusion in Will’s mind was momentary but profound. The Balair was to the left. What traffic could be to the right?

  “What altitude, copilot? Above or below?”

  “Our altitude—and closing!” Doug’s voice was intense.

  Sandra yanked her seatbelt clasp open and moved quickly to the copilot’s window behind Doug’s seat as Will glanced in the same direction.

  “Will—” Doug began.

  Sandra’s voice cut in. “The traffic’s level with the horizon, and he is closing on us, pilot!”

  “We’ll have to warn two-eight-four if we need to climb or turn,” Will barked, his eyes remaining glued to the underside of 284, just ahead. The Balair DC-10 was at their ten-o’clock position now, and less than ten miles away. The breakaway turn would have to be made momentarily. This would immensely complicate his timing, to say the least.

  “He’s closing fast, we’re dark, and 284’s beacon is off. He can’t see us.” Doug grabbed for the wafer switch on the copilot’s interphone panel, turning it quickly to UHF-1, then grabbing the transmit button on the yoke.

  “Two-eight-four, traffic closing three o’clock, collision course. Climb, climb, climb! Now!”

  Another glance to the right brought the rotating beacons of whoever it was into Will’s view at last, the sudden proximity taking his breath away. He felt adrenaline rush into his bloodstream. He had to do something instantly, but they were literally trapped by the looming hulk of the lead C-141—which began to rise in the windscreen, a small suggestion of a climb at first, then rising like a fighter, clearing the way for Will to maneuver clear.

  “Climb, Will! NOW!” The voice was Doug’s, and it came out as a strained shout as Doug’s right hand joined Will’s on the yoke, both of them pulling hard, Will banking to the right as the sudden flash of a lighted tail insignia and the
roar of jet engines passed just below them.

  On the flight deck of Egyptair 112, what sounded like the roar of jet engines passing just above them scared both pilots speechless. They had been assigned FL350. Could someone else have been at the same altitude? The captain changed the radio frequency to Atheni Control and reported level at FL350, his face ashen when he learned where they were supposed to have been: level at FL330.

  Doug lunged at the windscreen, searching above for 284, who was out of sight above them now. If 284 somehow failed to see Balair, they could climb right into him. “Two-eight-four, go no higher than three-six.” The prospect of avoiding one midair just to send a companion into another flashed through their minds as the voice of 284’s aircraft commander cut through with a strained grunt. “Rog.”

  The lights of the Balair DC-10 were now just to the left and slightly above at FL370. He had to be closer than four miles. Will had planned to start the turn when the DC-10 was exactly four miles away, as measured on their weather radar. Now there was no time even to look at the scope, and the Douglas-built jumbo was passing almost directly through their course.

  With 284 out of the way, Will banked hard to the right, running the bank angle to forty-five degrees and pulling it around, realizing he had started late. They needed to be exactly beneath the Balair when they rolled out, but they weren’t going to make it. To Sandra’s eyes, from her position on the jump seat, the DC-10 appeared to angle down in the windscreen, and then slowly, steadily, float back up and move ahead as they came around on the same heading, overshooting slightly to the left and too far behind to stay radar-masked.

  Will reached over and selected a range of five miles on the weather radar, then moved his hand to the center console, raising the antenna tilt to its limit to “see” the target aircraft. The DC-10 suddenly appeared on the radar scope in front of them, just under a half-mile away.

  Will said it first, the same thought setting off alarms in Doug’s head. “If we’re unmasked here for more than a minute, every radar in the eastern Mediterranean will see us!”

  The throttles were nearly to the firewall now, and the flight engineer saw the vertical tapes shoot toward the top of the two engine RPM gauges as his foot toggled the floor-mounted interphone switch. “Overboost, all four. Bring ’em back to two-point-two-zero maximum, sir.”

  Doug complied as the lights of the DC-10 stayed stubbornly ahead. They were closing, but they were still exposed, the metal skin of the dark 141 reflecting radar bursts back in the direction of a dozen air traffic control and air defense radars at a slightly different time than the electronically enhanced return from the transponder on the Balair aircraft. Cairo, Cyprus, Greece, and perhaps even Israel could be getting a small, shadowy target behind Balair 5040. If it didn’t go away within a couple of radar sweeps, someone was going to take it seriously.

  “What’s our worst-case scenario, Will? Fighter interception from Syria? I know the Iraqis wouldn’t dare launch any.”

  The occupant of the left seat nodded, his eyes locked on the brightly lit airliner now only a few hundred yards in front of them and still somewhat above.

  Will’s voice was slower now, more metered, as he struggled to suppress the effects of the adrenaline he couldn’t purge from his system.

  “I’m, ah … not going to slow down until we’re right under him. Be ready on the spoilers, copilot. I’ll come screaming under and then put on the brakes, so to speak.”

  “Will, don’t forget the pitch-up tendency. Make sure we have some vertical room, okay?” Doug cautioned. MAC crew members were supposed to address each other on the interphone only by their crew positions, not by first names. Reservists, who tended to maintain friendships over many years across the officer-enlisted lines, were the worst offenders in using one another’s names—especially when things got tense.

  “Understood,” was the left-seat reply.

  The bulk of the DC-10 seemed to be coming at them fast now, the closure rate around thirty knots. No more than thirty seconds had elapsed since they had rolled out on the same heading, but the closure rate was half a mile a minute. They had thirty seconds to go—more, if they tried to slow down from behind and match speeds gently.

  Doug loosened his seatbelt and threw the shoulder harnesses off, placing his head as far forward over the glare shield as he could manage as the DC-10’s tail slid backwards over them.

  “Now!” Doug called. Will brought the throttles to idle and the spoiler handle rapidly down to the full flight position, raising the large panels on the wings that acted as speed brakes in flight. The C-141 suddenly shuddered and protested, the nose wanting to leap up, the aircraft fighting to climb as Will kept the altitude constant.

  The huge jumbo appeared to slide backwards into position directly above them, then stop, exactly matched in speed, the lower rotating beacon barely visible in the topmost corner of the C-141’s windscreen.

  “Retract the spoilers now.” Doug was trying to look straight up, at considerable expense to his neck muscles.

  Will brought the spoiler lever up rapidly and increased power on all four engines back to cruise, the 141 suddenly returning to smooth flight, the DC-10 moving slightly ahead as Will began to ease them up and into what was essentially the refueling position—less than fifty feet down and back from the tail of the aircraft.

  “Amazing,” Doug said. “That crew hasn’t the slightest idea we’re back here.”

  “Which is why,” Will continued, “we’re going to have to watch him like a hawk. He could dive or climb with virtually no notice, and we’re right below.”

  In the engineer’s seat, Bill toggled a generator switch and scowled at the electrical panel. Another problem to report.

  “Pilot, engineer.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m going to disconnect number-one generator, sir. It was unstable and getting worse. Way out of limits.”

  Will turned to his right and surveyed his panel. “We still have the other three, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Will gave his approval, and the interphone fell silent for a minute as Bill completed the disconnect and the two pilots took stock. Over four hundred miles ahead and still out of sight was the Middle Eastern coastline. The Balair DC-10 would fly over Beirut and then Damascus before proceeding into Iraq on a direct course for Baghdad, all the while oblivious of the presence of their silent partner below.

  Every mile of the way, however, the DC-10 would be watched carefully by the radars of several different nations who would not take kindly to such a trick.

  “Well, did we make it, pilot?” Doug was watching carefully for Will’s reaction, which was slow in coming. As Sandra changed places with Bill Backus back at the flight engineer’s station, Will looked over finally in Doug’s direction, a weary smile creasing his face, his head shaking slowly. “I don’t know. We were too far back there for over a minute. Cairo had to have seen us.”

  “And if they did?”

  “Maybe they’ll ignore it.” Will gestured in the direction of Lebanon and Syria. “And maybe they won’t.”

  One thing’s certain, Will thought to himself. I was too damn cocksure I could pull this off!

  Farouk Hammedi looked up as his supervisor returned. “We have informed Atheni, and they will violate MAC Alpha two-eight-four for entering off course.”

  Hammedi pointed to the radar display. “When this Balair flight passed the MAC flight, for about a minute, if I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was following Balair. There was a return just behind him. Then it stopped. I recommend we tell military control.”

  The supervisor scratched the side of his face and considered that for a moment. He remembered the last time he had reported something odd to military control, and fighters had gone up to take a look. There was nothing wrong, they said, but a supervisor who couldn’t read his radar. That had not been a pleasant experience.

  “You saw nothing,” he told Hammedi, “unless it reappears as a steady ta
rget.”

  6

  Scorpion-1, in flight

  Thursday, March 7, 1991—2:20 A.M. (2320 GMT)

  Shakir Abbas sat bolt upright suddenly, his forehead slamming inadvertently into the portable oxygen bottle strapped to the ceiling of the crew rest pallet. The horrifying image of his wife being dragged from their home began to fade, but his heart was still pounding as his mind searched frantically for a way to save her. The image was confusing and wrong. Saliah was in her wedding dress and beautiful as always, but her face was contorted in fear, and she had tossed her veil aside in anger as she looked at him and mouthed the word, “Why?”

  He rubbed his eyes and tried to find reality.

  Thank God, it was only a dream! I must calm down.

  The bruise from the emergency oxygen bottle asserted itself at last, and he felt the spot on his head, relieved he wasn’t bleeding. He was still shaking slightly, or was it the airplane? It was hard to tell.

  Shakir looked around again at the tiny space, grateful for the offer of a place to lie down, but amazed that anyone could ever get rested in such a pigeonhole. The pallet hung from the ceiling seven feet or so above the cargo floor, and extended back about five feet behind the cockpit bulkhead, just enough space for two single mattresses separated by a ceiling-high stack of canvas bags full of life vests and other emergency equipment.

  It was too cramped to sit all the way up, so he let himself lie down once more, studying the battleship gray padding around the air-conditioning ducts and the maze of control wires running, he supposed, from the cockpit back to the control surfaces of the C-141.

  The dry heat was incredible. Almost as bad as the desert. He was overheated and consumed with thirst. Despite the nightmare, it had been good to sleep for a while—especially with the little yellow earplugs the loadmaster had given him as a defense against the amazing noise levels.

  Shakir closed his eyes and tried to capture his wife’s image again, the gnawing worries washing over him in a wave of fear and despair. If the mission succeeded and they took him back to Saudi, how would he return to his family? Would the Coalition or the Saudis arrest him? Would they give him political asylum? They would have to let his family in, but how could he get them out of Iraq? What if Saddam was not overthrown? What if someone fingerprinted that burned corpse he had left in his place? What if, what if, what if!