The Italian Air Force officer and the SAM operator crouched, but stood their position. Their heads followed the approach and the departure of the Mig. Red Leader shoved his power controls all the way forward and pulled back on the throttle, sending the Mig into a near vertical climb.
The Italian officer slapped the noncom’s shoulder. The surface-to-air missile blasted out of the army green tube.
Flares rocketed down from the Mig, but the missile traveled up, nicking each flare like checkpoints on a road map, before disappearing into the white-hot afterburner. The Mig-23 blew apart. Its burning fuselage sailed another fifty feet before it tumbled down to explode on the runway.
“Salim! They got him!”
“Shut up, Aboul. We’ve one more run to do.”
“No, Salim, we must go, now!” He reached over and shook Salim’s shoulder.
“We need to go!” he cried, terror showing on his face. Wide-eyed, fear drained his face. Aboul’s head twitched back and forth as he reached forward.
Salim reached over and slapped Aboul’s hands away from the controls.
“No! Don’t touch anything! We have one more run and we will do it!” Aboul grabbed him. Salim pushed Aboul’s hand off him.
“Stay calm!”
He saw where Aboul had wet himself and Salim’s lips curled in disgust.
From the other side of the runway Red Two roared toward the Italian SAM team, his cannon shells tearing up the pavement and soil as he bore in to avenge Red Leader.
On the ground, the Italian officer drew his pistol and fired at the attacking Mig, methodically pulling the trigger, one bullet after another. A third noncom ran out of the nearby building with another handheld SAM canister bouncing on his shoulder. He kneeled and fired. Red Two discharged a series of flares and rocked the Flogger to the left. The missile locked on the heat of the magnesium flares and passed harmlessly behind the Libyan fighter. The ground in front of the SAM team erupted into small geysers of dirt and asphalt as the twenty-three-millimeter shells raced toward the Italians.
The officer touched the SAM operator, held up one finger, and shook his head. The kneeling airman nodded, licked his dry lips, and forced himself to ease the pressure off his trigger finger. He knew, as well as the officer, that they needed a rear-hemispheric shot for the infrared homer to work.
The sergeant who had fired the missile that missed tossed the empty canister to the ground, stood to attention, and stuck his left arm into the crook of his raised right arm as he faced the approaching Mig. The Mig veered slightly to align the bullets with the stationary men. The sergeant dove to the side. Cannon shells tore up the ground where a moment before he had flicked off the Libyan.
The officer and airman never moved. As the Libyan fighter passed overhead, the airman whirled the SAM canister around. The Italian officer slapped him on the back.
The airman fired their last missile. The missile, trailing a corkscrew contrail, veered slightly right and struck the rear exhaust of the Flogger, blowing its tail off. The aircraft, already vertical in its climb, whirled over with its nose pointing down to a field on the other side of the perimeter road. The nose cone hit first. The Mig crumbled in upon itself before a massive explosion from the remaining fuel and bombs knocked the Italian heroes off their feet as a rolling black cloud of flame and shrapnel rose over one hundred feet into the air.
The Blinder bomb crew reported over the intercom to Salim that the last rack was in place.
“Hold tight. Last run and we’ll head for home,” Salim said calmly. He glanced at his copilot, who lay quietly with his head resting on the cockpit window, his eyes shut and moaning. Salim thought that if he had his gun, the least he would do would be to pistol-whip the coward.
He twisted the wheel hard to the right, causing the old bird to groan in protest as it banked into a hard right turn.
The plane came out of the turn perfectly in line with the runway. Salim nosed the aircraft slightly up and when the runway disappeared beneath the bomber he shouted, “Bombs away!” and hit the red button. He always wanted to say that.
The first three bombs hit the grassy area between the damaged taxiway and the main runway. The fourth five hundred-pounder carved a hundred-foot-wide, twenty-foot deep crater in the middle of the runway, completing the shutdown of Sigonella Airfield. “Red Formation, Blinder One; we are done,” Salim called, knowing that only the two Mig-23s attacking the other base were all that remained of Red Formation. He pushed the throttles forward and pulled back on the steering controls. The large bomber began to climb.
There was no answer.
“This is Aswad Leader, Blinder. Forget Red Leader and Red Two. Take evasive action and return to home plate.
We will re-form on you as you head out.”
Two minutes later the Libyan attack formation of one Mig-25 Foxbat and two Benghazi Mig-23s formed around the antiquated TU-20 Blinder as it crossed the Italian coast of Sicily at eight thousand feet heading south at Mach one.
The second Mig-25 joined them twenty miles further south.
“Where are the other aircraft?” Salim asked Aswad Leader.
“I have ordered the Benghazi aircraft to return to their base.”
“How many did we lose?”
“Blinder One, maintain radio silence,” Aswad Leader replied curtly.
Salim saw Aboul reach forward and take the steering controls.
“We have done good, Aboul,” he said, as if nothing had happened.
Four minutes later the Italian F-16 fighters reached Sigonella.
“Pronto, Sigonella Control, this is Etna Formation,” said Etna Leader. Colonel Antonio Lopez was a tall, dark-haired “Valentine” who was fifth-generation Italian. His ancestors originally migrated from Spain in the mid eighteenth century as military officers and palace retainers for the king and queen of Naples, who were Spanish. He was the fifth generation of Lopezes who had made the military their career. His great-grandfather fought in World War I and his grandfather fought in Libya and Ethiopia during World War II. His father led the transfer of allegiance from the Army to the Air Force, to much derision from his grandfather.
Antonio had eight years of Air Force service under his belt, but other than defensive fighter patrols over the Balkans, this was his first combat action. He wondered what his father would do and, at the same time, swore that as a Lopez, he would live up to the family name and honor. He glanced up as if suspecting his grandfathers of watching him — God rest their souls. He quickly crossed himself.
“Etna Leader, we are under attack! Large swept-wing bomber with Libyan colors escorted by minimum of two Mig-23 aircraft,” shouted the Italian Sigonella air terminal controller to the arriving fighter formation.
“There are fighters overhead. Two enemy aircraft destroyed. Blinder heading south from airfield.”
“Where are they now?”
“They are fifty miles south on a course of one eight zero at approximate altitude seven thousand five hundred meters.”
“Roger, this is Etna Formation. We are engaging. Talk us to them, Sigonella Control.”
“Sorry, Etna Formation. My radar is damaged. I am transferring everything to Italian Air Defense Control at Groseta. Be advised that to your west are four American Marine Corps Harriers approaching Sigonella. We watched them engage the Libyan fighters before our radar was destroyed.
They reported shoot-down of one Foxbat.”
The F-16 Fighting Falcons turned noses up, afterburners blazing, and wasted two minutes overhead searching for the Libyan fighter formation.
“Sigonella Control, there is nothing here!” Antonio Lopez snapped.