Matt concentrated on his attack run. “Skid,” he called his wingman, “take the lead, we’ll lase. Ripple two.” Matt had told his wingman to lead the attack and pickle both his bombs on the first pass. Matt would take spacing and follow on theopposite arm of the B’nai attack and do the lasing. “Then get the hell out of Dodge,” he ordered.
“Roger, copy all,” Skid answered.
“Sounds good,” Martin’s voice said.
My God! Matt thought. How can he keep what he’s doing sorted out and still pay attention to what’s going on down here?
The two fighters started their run in. The TEWS scope was a mass of symbols and the audio was deafening him with chirps and wails. He turned the audio off and would rely on Furry to do his job. Now he could clearly see the compound housing the nerve gas plant and storage bunkers on the Nav FLIR. Furry worked the Target FLIR and told him, “Target identified.” It amazed Matt how familiar the target complex looked.
Sweat poured off him as he concentrated on the run. A string of tracers from a ZSU-23-4 arched across the sky in front of him. He heard himself breathing hard. “Piece of cake,” Furry said, his voice rapid and high-pitched. More tracers crisscrossed in front of him and he saw the bright flash of two Gadflies launching. Now Matt “paddled” off the autopilot and hand-flew the jet as they swung in on their side of the pincers.
Then: “Bombs gone.” It was Skid coolly announcing that he had gotten his bombs off onto their target, the main production plant. Matt had lost sight of him when they split up for the attack and it was reassuring to hear from him.
A Gadfly exploded, lighting the sky. In the bright flash, Matt could see Skid escaping underneath the fireball and more tracers reaching toward him. The second Gadfly exploded, but this time, there was no trace of his wingman.
“Lasing,” Furry shouted. Matt was concentrating on the Nav FLIR, using it to fly around the target. It was a good run and all systems were working perfectly. A Gadfly streaked by less than a hundred feet above the canopy. For some reason, its proximity fuse didn’t work and the missile went ballistic.
The plant erupted in an explosion as the first bomb hit within inches of where Furry had laid the laser. The bombs were fuse-delayed and the first one penetrated to the first basement before it exploded. The second bomb flew right through die explosion and burrowed through to the thirdbasement, burying itself in four feet of concrete before it exploded. The labs and test chamber where the nerve gas had been developed disappeared in a fiery blast. But the scientists who had given Iraq die deadly weapon had been paid off long before and were safe in their homes in Europe and China. Only two technicians were on duty. A series of secondary explosions turned the plant into an inferno and flames belched and mushroomed over three hundred feet into the air.
Furry shouted, “GO!” as a wall of tracers mushroomed in front of the F-15. Matt broke hard left, still below a hundred feet. He flew around a radio tower and headed for safety as Viper 07 and 08 hit the first of the storage bunkers.
Then it was all behind them and Matt became aware of the chatter over the radios. He had effectively tuned it out. Still, he had been conscious of what was going on around him throughout the attack. It was called situational awareness. He reengaged the autopilot and coupled it to the TFR. He checked his fuel and ran a cockpit check, making sure they had not taken battle damage. Then it hit him, the simulator rides the Gruesome Twosome had put them through had been worse.
“Skid,” Matt radioed, “say position.”
“North of target,” his wingman replied, his words staccato-quick. “Heading for home plate. Battle damage. Took a hit after we pickled. ZSU-Twenty-three.”
“Need help?” Matt queried.
“Negative, I can handle it. This bird’s a tank.”
Matt hit the transmit button and called the AWACS. “Aldo, any trade?” He was asking if there was a bandit in the area he could engage.
“Negative Zero-Three,” Aldo replied. “Are you continuing to your second target?”
“Affirmative,” Matt answered. They headed to the northwest and Mosul.
Martin’s voice came over the radio. “Sean, say position.” There was no reply. “Aldo, do you have a paint on Viper Zero-Two?” Martin asked.
“Affirmative,” the AWACS replied. “Viper Zero-Two is returning to base, com out.” Martin relaxed — Leary was simply having radio problems and hightailing it back to Diyarbakir.
The second part of Trinity called for Matt to drop anyremaining GBU-24s on the air base at Mosul as he egressed. Other Vipers would do the same or hit the air base at Kirkuk. Since Mosul was a secondary target, they would use the great glide capability of the GBU-24, stand off from the base, toss the bomb, and lase as best they could. But they would not press in like they had on the nerve gas plant.
Furry took control of the radar and made another patch map to update their position. Then he checked his systems for battle damage. “Damn,” he muttered, “I don’t believe it.” The TEWS had gone strangely quiet and was only detecting the periodic sweep of a search radar. “The SAMs, the triple A, have gone off the air,” he explained.
“They’re still out there,” Matt answered. “Probably got their radars in standby and will bring them up when they get a visual. I don’t like it.” An inner alarm bell was going off, warning him that the Iraqis were using a new tactic. “Amb, radar delivery only on this one. Toss the damn bomb as far out as we can. It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge while we still can.”
“Roger,” Furry answered. He went to work using the highvolume radar and computer. While he updated their position again, Matt set them up for an air-to-ground radar delivery. After he had updated their nav system, Furry placed the radar cursors over the base, which was now inside thirty nautical miles. “Going for the runway,” he said. He refined the cursor placement. Then: “Designating.” Man stroked the throttles and pushed them up to just below the Mach. They were a well-trained team.
Matt’s inner alarm bell was now gonging at him. He paddled off the autopilot when they closed to inside twenty nautical miles. “It doesn’t feel right,” he mumbled, primed to react at the first hint of trouble.
“Ready, ready,” Furry said as they bore down on the release point where the system would automatically release the bomb. Matt mashed the pickle button and held it.
The TEWS erupted with symbols and its audio went wild just as they felt the bomb separate from the right pylon. The night exploded with tracers, engulfing them. “SAM three o’clock!” Furry yelled. But Matt had already seen it and jerked the big fighter into a tight turn barely a hundred feet above the ground, bringing the missile to his nose. Tracers were now passing directly in front of them. Matt brought thenose up and watched the SAM commit on his upward vector, hoping the tracers would pass underneath him. Then he wrenched the Eagle into a hard downward turn, leveling off at seventy-five feet. His heart pounded as he saw the missile follow him, and for a fraction of a moment, he knew he was dead. But the missile could not follow him through the turn at such a close range and broached sideways before it tumbled onto the ground. He concentrated on the HUD, relying on the Nav FLIR to give him the visual clues he needed to fly so close to the ground at night, and escape to safety. Only that strange sixth sense had kept them alive.
“Goddamn flak trap!” Furry shouted, venting the intense pressure of the short engagement. “No radar warning on that bastard. Probably an SA-Nine.”
Great, Matt thought, they’re backing up Gadflies and the ZSUs with SA-9s. The SA-9 was a short-range SAM that used passive infrared guidance and was reported to be effective below a hundred feet. He keyed his radio, “Viper flight, secondary targets are flak traps. RTB. Repeat, RTB.”