“Border in nine minutes,” Furry said, getting back to business.
When they crossed into Turkey, the tension from the mission started to shred. Both men could feel it wash off them as they climbed to twelve thousand feet for the last sixty miles to Diyarbakir. Matt jotted a few notes down on his knee pad as he thought of them. “Hey, Amb, what was all this shit over Kirkuk about it being a piece of cake?”
“I lied,” Furry answered.
26
Johar and Samir were standing outside the entrance to the squadron watching the remnants of their squadron recover. “I can’t believe it,” Samir said, his eyes glued to the wall of flames and smoke on the runway. “One bomb did all that.”
The lone GBU-24 had hit the runway at the halfway mark, blasting a deep crater thirty feet across. Frag from the bomb had reached out over a half mile, killing people and destroying trucks caught in the open. Two Flankers had also died in the blast. One was rolling out after touching down and its tail had been blown off before it exploded. The other Flanker had been on short final and had taken the full force of the blast head-on and had pitched into the ground, spreading wreckage and burning fuel along two thousand feet of runway.
The two Iraqi pilots were silent as a Flanker touched down on the unpaved surface that paralleled the main runway. They dissected the landing with a professional eye, appreciating the Soviets’ near-fanatical obsession with designing aircraft that could take off and land from poor surfaces. “That’s the last one,” Johar said. “I didn’t see Mana land. Think he bought it?” Samir shrugged. Neither felt any great sense of loss.
Samir couldn’t take his eyes off the flaming runway and the wreckage of the two Flankers. “You think they’ve got some new type of smart bomb?”
“Maybe,” Johar allowed. “Or it was a golden BB.” A hard edge clipped his words. The two pilots incinerated on the runway had been his friends. “Only two made it back,” he said. His eyes squinted and his jaw hardened as a burning desire for revenge consumed him. He wanted to even the score.
When the crews had finished debriefing intelligence, they straggled into the office at the back of the hangar at Diyarbakir that had been turned into a makeshift command post. Most of them sat on the floor against the wall and drank Cokes or coffee while Martin paced the floor like a caged tiger. One of the radio operators in the next room looked around the corner and told him that Duster, the RC-135, was coming in to land. “It must be important if it’s landing here,” the colonel mumbled. He ordered the security team that had deployed with them out of Stonewood to establish a perimeter guard around the highly classified aircraft when it parked.
“What the hell is going on?” Martin barked. “That was a fuckin’ milk run.” Matt shot Furry a look, wondering how the veteran wizzo would react to that pronouncement. Furry’s face was impassive.
“If that was a milk run,” one of the pilots mumbled, “I don’t want to see the real thing.” Matt agreed with him. The mission had been much tougher than the attack he and Furry had flown against the Syrian First Army in Lebanon. The Iraqis had learned much from the Kuwait war.
“Okay,” Martin said, “let’s get to it.” For the next few minutes, they recaptured the mission, discussing results and what had gone wrong. It looked like they had hit and destroyed the nerve gas facility as planned. “Let’s hope the recce pukes confirm the BDA you’re claiming,” Martin said. He knew how overenthusiastic crews could be in reporting bomb damage assessment. “Fumble Nuts”—he turned to Matt—“did you get a bomb on Mosul?” Matt told him yes, but that the results were unknown. Then he described the flak trap he and Furry had run into as they approached the base. Martin was nodding his head.
“Calling Off the secondary attacks was a good decision,” he said. “Obviously, they’ve got a damn good ground observer net around their air bases. SA-Nines are a perfect complement to the Gadfly — gives them low-altitude coverage. They’ve got their act together.”
A very confident Sean Leary related how his Have Quick radio went “tits up” in the middle of an engagement at the exact moment he hosed down a Flanker. For a moment, he thought he had taken battle damage but it was a system malfunction. His crew chief had cannibalized a good black box out of Skid’s badly damaged F-15 and Leary was ready to go again. Skid’s F-15 wasn’t going to be flying for a long time.
The major running the maintenance team came into the command post. He told them that two other jets had taken battle damage and would be out of commission for a few days. The remaining nine aircraft were turned and ready for the hop back to Stonewood. “Who told you we were finished here?” Martin barked. “Find out what type of ordnance is available here.” The crews sat in shocked silence as the major beat a hasty retreat.
“Sir”—it was the command post controller—“Duster is landing now.” Martin gestured at Matt and Furry to follow him and stomped out of the room.
“Shit-oh-dear,” Furry said, sotto voce for the crews to hear, “his fangs are still out.”
Bill Carroll was standing in the open crew entrance of the RC-135 when the three officers reached the ramp. He yelled at one of the security guards who always flew on the aircraft to let them board. The guard checked their line badges and escorted them past the rope that had been strung around the recce bird. Carroll led them back through the maze of equipment racks and stations to a small open area near a buffet where meals could be heated. The mission commander, the colonel in charge of the technicians, joined them.
“Bad news,” Carroll said. “A truck convoy escaped before you hit the arsenal.”
“Why didn’t the AWACS detect the traffic like they did when the trucks went into the arsenal?” Matt asked. “We could have gone after them.”
The mission commander shook his head. “They had optimized their radar to detect aircraft and had turned the moving target indicator up to sixty miles an hour to reject any stationary or slow-moving returns. They’re painting the traffic now.” He produced a map that showed the convoy’s location on a highway ninety miles southwest of Kirkuk. “At least twenty-five trucks, all westbound. Be sure they’re hauling nerve gas.” The colonel couldn’t tell them that the RC-135 had monitored ground communications that reported the nerve gas was on the way.
The pieces started to fit for Matt. “So that’s why the bandits out of Kirkuk were holding thirty-five miles southwest of Kirkuk — they were in a CAP to protect the convoy.”
“That fits with the radio traffic we monitored,” Carroll added.
Martin grabbed the mission commander’s map and stared at it. “What’s this?” He poked at a spot on the map sixty miles in front of the convoy.
“A ferry crossing over the Euphrates River,” Carroll explained. “The convoy should reach there in about an hour and forty-five minutes.”
Martin erupted with orders. “Matt, you and Furry work out an attack on that convoy, try to take out the ferry and back ‘em up on the eastern side of the river. Make it look like we’re going back after the arsenal. But that’s a feint to open up the corridor. Use some of the jets strictly for air-to-air and nail any raghead that takes off from Mosul or Kirkuk. Colonel, you and Carroll are going to have to work wonders and convince the clueless wonders in the Puzzle Palace thatwe need a go for a reattack. We ain’t got a hell of a lota time.”
“I’ll try, Mike, I’ll try.” Both colonels knew how slow the wheels of command could turn.
Martin stared at them for a moment, “Give it your best shot. We’ve got to be airborne in seventy-five minutes to catch ‘em before they cross the river. I’ve got to find us some bombs and kick Maintenance’s ass to get ‘em uploaded.” Then he was out of the aircraft, running.