Sergeant White was reading a Sports Illustrated spread across his lap, glancing up occasionally at the radar screen in front of him. “Whoa, looks like KKMC damn come alive,” he yelled into his chin mike as he dropped the magazine on the floor. “I gots me three, four, five fighters on a fast climb out headed east toward Khafji. I thought those motherfuckers been dead for a while. Guess they done come back from the crypt.”
“Keep it clean,” Major Johnson responded, looking up at his own screens. “Intel, what you make of that?”
“They are twin-engines. I’d say they’d be some of the F-15s that Islamyah can still get working. But I am not getting a radar emission from them, so maybe not everything’s working,” Lieutenant Moore answered. She paused while the NSA civilian, headphones still on, passed her a note. She read it and continued her report: “Confirm Islamyah Air Force chatter from several fighters on climb-out. Keep you posted.”
The Iranian Air Force has sent fighter interceptors into the general vicinity of the AWACS a few times, just to let us know they are there, Johnson thought, but Islamyah had not done so before. Maybe they are going to do it now too. He thought he’d better remind the aircraft commander to review the procedures for dealing with visitors. Although she was junior in rank to Major Johnson, the pilot, Captain Phyllis Jordan, was the aircraft commander. He was just the mission commander. Another example, Johnson thought, of the tyranny of the pilots in the Air Force. He touched his mike. “Captain Jordan, we may have bogeys visit us in a little while before we enter Kuwait airspace. It could be a first for these guys; it’s Islamyah this time.”
“Roger that,” the aircraft commander replied. “We’ll keep an eye out. Right now, no joy.” The unarmed AWACS continued to lumber north.
Listening to that exchange and now watching his screen intently, Sergeant White saw another surprise. “Major, they keep a-comin’,” Troy White barked. “I swear I got six more coming like bats out of hell from the north, climbing out of angles twelve for twenty. Don’t know where these bad boys came from.”
Kyle Johnson spun his head around to the screen. He saw the new icons moving fast from the west. They broke into two groups of three, one flight on either side and in trail of the group of fighters they had spotted a few minutes ago. At the rate they were moving, they would not be trailing for long. So there were now almost a dozen fighters racing toward the coast, racing toward his AWACs. “Major, intel here,” Judy Moore called.
“Whatcha got, Jude?” Major Johnson answered.
“Sir, I have two airborne radar signals coming from near Rafha. Sir, it’s two AWACS. The Islamyah Air Force AWACS,” she said with incredulity in her voice.
“Well, we did sell the Saudis five AWACS, but I thought intel said only one of them was operational. And you got two up and, what, flying in formation?” Johnson asked.
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what we’re seeing. Don’t know where they came from. They just all of a sudden appeared. They are at forty thousand,” the intelligence section chief reported out. “And this second group of fighters are definitely F-15S birds. Their radars are working and pinging out strong.”
Johnson was suspicious. He hit the keyboard on his console, merging intelligence and radar data onto one screen, focusing the cursor near the city of Ar Ar, and running the tape backwards like a TiVo. He would now see what had happened a few minutes earlier, what they might have missed. There on the screen were the two icons they had designated as “Probable Air Islamyah A-340 or 747.” Neither aircraft seemed to be emitting a radar signal. Then, briefly, a narrow radar beam shot out westward, then another to the southwest. The automatic diagnostic software labeled the radar beam “ASY-2 AWACS.” He moved the tape ahead. Suddenly three radar icons bloomed from the 747, or AWACS, or whatever it was. The icons moved away quickly. The diagnostics software quickly labeled them “F-15S,” the version of the U.S. Air Force Eagle that had been sold to the Saudis.
Then, as Johnson watched, the other big aircraft also seemed to eject three icons, and they were quickly labeled “F-15S.” What he had assumed were two airliners on checkout rides had actually been two Islamyah AWACS flying in tight formation with three F-15s each hiding right beneath them. Now, Johnson thought, the six fighters were headed his way. As were the five others.
He hit the mike. “Phil, you might want to think about diving to the deck and speeding up toward Kuwaiti airspace.” He wondered if there were U.S. fighter aircraft on alert in Kuwait. He checked for the call sign of the detachment there and switched to their frequency. “Kilo Light, Kilo Light, this is Quarterback Golf, request CAP ASAP, repeat, request CAP ASAP. We have multiple bogeys, possible hostiles…” He needed U.S. Combat Air Patrol protection to scare these fighters away.
Before he could finish his transmission, a loud horn blared in his cabin. A tape-recorded female voice spoke the alarm: “Alert. Missile radar lock-on. Alert…” The fighters had not launched their missiles — not yet, anyway. As the Flankers were closing on the U.S. AWACS, their radar-guided missiles still sitting on their launch rails, had started to track the AWACS at a distance.
Major Johnson felt the 767 airframe lurch forward as the aircraft commander put the big plane into a dive. In the cockpit, that commander, Captain Phyllis Jordan, was also flicking three countermeasure switches in quick succession, spraying aluminum chaff in the air, shooting infrared flares out the side of the aircraft, and sending electronic warfare signals back toward the fighters on the same frequencies that their missiles and radar used. Johnson now heard the U.S. detachment in Kuwait responding to him: “Quarterback Golf, this is Kilo Light. Say again your request.”
The lead pilot in the Iranian Flanker was still climbing when his radar warning receiver started beeping. The flat screen flashed on, with an orange background and the letters “ASY-2 AWACS.” Then, as he watched, three different headings appeared. He was being painted by three AWACS radars, only one of which was the American target. He checked his own targeting radar. It had locked on the American AWACS out over the Gulf, still well beyond his firing range. Then the radar warning receiver beeped again, faster and in a higher tone. The screen switched to a red background and the words “APG-70 lock-on.”
That meant an American F-15 was out there. Multiple F-15s. Or, he thought, maybe the Saudis? What was happening back there? he wondered as he sped eastward. He switched on his radio and turned it quickly to low power, enough power to reach his wingmen. Then he called in Farsi to two of the four Flankers with him, “Break off. Clear our tail. See what’s back there.” He flew on. The radar lock-on he had on the AWACS was blinking on and off. He laughed. The American aircraft was trying to jam him, but the 767 was too big a target for his powerful radar to miss. He turned up the gain on the target acquisition mode.
Two of the Iranian Flankers broke from their formation, one right, one left, rising and looping, rolling over in modified Immelmanns. As soon as they had righted themselves, the Flankers each had a visual through their long-range cameras of six Islamyah F-15 Eagles speeding toward them. One of the Iranian Flanker pilots radioed his commander, asking for two more of their squadron to turn around and join what was about to become a major dogfight. Coward, the squadron leader thought, but I can do this on my own. He ordered his remaining wingmen to break off and go after the Islamyah F-15s on his tail.
As the U.S. 767 dove lower, the detection range of its sensors dropped, too, but the northern Global Hawk had moved from scanning into Iran and was now augmenting the AWACS. Major Kyle Johnson saw the “Missiles Away” alarm pop up on his screen. He quickly keyed a text message in and hit Transmit: “CRITIC: Air-toAir Missiles Launched.” A message slugged CRITIC would literally ring bells in command posts all the way to the White House Situation Room. Then Johnson realized the missiles had not been fired at his AWACS. The fighters were firing on one another!