Mana fought briefly for control as the Flanker jerked to the left, its triple fly-by-wire systems able to handle most of the damage and keep the Flanker flying. But Mana panicked and jerked at his ejection seat handle. Fourteen hundred pounds of rocket thrust kicked Mana and the 450-pound K-36 ejection seat out of the aircraft just as Martin’s Sidewinder flew up his Flanker’s right tail pipe and exploded.
The pilot in the second Flanker honked back on the stick and climbed, not realizing that Mana was now between him and the missiles Leary had fired at him. Leary’s AMRAAM was transitioning from semiactive guidance to full internal guidance when its radar detected the second Flanker climbing. It had no trouble homing on its target.
But Leary’s Sidewinder was confused. It had lost the heat signature it was homing on and had gone into memory mode. Then its seeker head caught the heat signature from the rocket in Mana’s ejection seat and homed on that. Mana never saw the missile that killed him.
As briefed, the two F-15s blew through the oncoming line of Flankers, shattering what was left of die formation’s integrity as the colonel nailed his second Flanker with a Sidewinder. The Iraqi ground controller was screaming at the Flankers to maintain their bearing of aircraft so he could guide the remaining five Su-27s into an envelope where they could fire their weapons. But Martin and Leary had no intention of fighting that leisurely an engagement. What the Iraqis were doing worked well against unarmed airliners and possibly against bombers, but never against a fighter, especially one like the F-15E in the hands of a pilot who knew how to use it. It never dawned on the Iraqi radar controller that the Flanker pilots were scrambling for their lives.
Martin was surprised when his wizzo called out, “Bandit at seven o’clock, two miles, on us.” He twisted his head around to the left and could barely make out the plan form of a Flanker converting to their six. He saw a missile fire and home on him. It had to be either an AA-11 or AA-8, the two short-range dogfight missiles with passive infrared guidance the Flanker could carry. “Flares and chaff,” the wizzo said as he sent a stream of flares and chaff into their wake.
Instinctively, Martin pulled into a very tight oblique loop to reverse onto his attacker. All the time, he kept his eyes “padlocked” on the Flanker, evaluating the situation. By turning his tail pipes away from the missile, the guidance head lost its heat source and homed on the flares. But how had the Flanker found him when his TEWS had not warned them of a radar tracking them? He didn’t consciously work the problem; the answer was just there. He had made a mistake. His left hand dropped off the throttles and, without looking, he turned his formation and position lights off, reached back for the throttles and selected guns.
The attacking Flanker pilot momentarily froze when the lights he had been following went out and the dark gray F-15 disappeared, blending with the night. For a fraction of a moment, he rolled out while he tried to reacquire the target. Then he hardened up his turn again, turning in the same direction as before, still looking for the fighter he knew was out there. In desperation, he turned on his radar. But his nose was not pointed within sixty degrees of Martin and he came up dry. Now his own radar warning gear was screaming at him, telling the Iraqi that he was being tracked by a fighter that was behind him. He twisted around to his left in time to see what looked like a solid line of tracers reaching for him. Martin had selected high rate of fire for his gatling gun and squeezed off a short burst. Only every seventh bullet was a tracer, but at six thousand rounds a minute rate of fire, it looked like an unbroken line of red. Nine rounds of 20-millimeter high-explosive ammunition walked through the Flanker’s cockpit.
There was no elation in Martin as he came off his third kill. He would celebrate later. His voice was all business when he called Leary for a fuel check and to join up on him. He headed for a low-level orbit point they had selected to wait for his next engagement. “Damn,” he muttered to himself. “That was too easy.” He knew that “Joe” was still out there.
Matt had copied the second bandit warning from the AWACS and decided that it was too early to react to that threat. They were still ninety nautical miles out and Furry was having a problem in the pit. The ring laser gyro that drove their inertial navigation system was advertised to be accurate within.8 of a mile per hour and normally was much better than that. But they had been airborne less than fifteen minutes, and when he visually fixed their position by map reading, he discovered they were over three miles from where the moving map on the Tactical Situation Display said they were. “Problems,” he told Matt. “I need to make a map and update our position.”
“Do it,” Matt said. He worried that the Iraqis might detect their radar when it came out of standby, but he knew Furry. The wizzo wouldn’t have even mentioned it unless it was absolutely necessary. Because the two men had flown together so long, they were a tightly welded team with an absolute trust in each other. Matt glanced at the radar video as it came active and waited for Furry to make a patch map. He kept his head up, looking through the HUD, using the Nav FLIR to penetrate the night. He heard Furry count down as the system froze the map to work on later. When Furry said “Done,” Matt took control of the radar and swept the horizon for the second group of bandits. He came up dry and Furry returned them to silent running. “Where the hell are they?” he muttered.
“Ask Aldo,” Furry grunted.
Matt keyed his radio and queried the AWACS “Aldo, say position of bandits over Kirkuk.”
“Aircraft calling Aldo,” the AWACS replied, “say call sign.”
“Viper Zero-Three,” Matt answered, wondering who in the hell else they thought would be transmitting on a Have Quick radio net. The Israelis would have never wasted time with call signs and would have recognized his voice.
“Roger, Viper Zero-Three. Be advised that bandits are still launching out of Kirkuk and being vectored to the west, well clear of you. Ah, stand by.”
What the hell Matt thought, I’m eight minutes out and they’re telling me to stand by!
“Viper Zero-Three.” The AWACS was back on frequency. The tactical controller had been receiving new information from Duster, the orbiting RC-135 that was monitoring Iraqi communications. “The bandits are being vectored to a holding orbit thirty-five miles southwest of target. Two bandits are now being vectored onto you, bearing one-six-zero, seventy nautical miles, heading zero-two-five.”
Both Martin and Furry mentally ran the geometry of the developing intercept and where they would merge with the bandits. Thanks to the AWACS and RC-135, their situational awareness had increased a hundredfold. Now the TEWS started to light up with the first tickles of a search radar. Another symbol appeared on the video display — a Gadfly SAM. It was directly in front of them, next to their target. “Holy shit!” Furry yelled. “They’re going to jump us just before we get in range of the Gadflies around Kirkuk.”
Time to find out how good the air defense pukes are at separating us from their scumbags, Matt thought. And time to change plans, he added. “Doc, Wedge,” he transmitted, calling Viper 05 and 06. “Cleared in hot on the bandits.” A cool “Roger” answered him and the two F-15Es behind him shoved their throttles into Mil power and turned toward the two bandits that Aldo had identified. “Boss,” Matt radioed, “say position.”
“Chasing Flankers to the north,” Martin answered, his voice cool and matter-of-fact. “We’ll keep them off your back.” He and Leary had become separated and were jumping any stray Flanker they could find. The ground controllers directing the Iraqis couldn’t keep up with die rapidly changing fight as the two F-15s effectively kept the Su-27s occupied.