Furness watched as the F-111G began moving closer. She could see the long black nose bobbing a bit as the nav made rather large pitch changes — too large for being less than fifty feet away: “Use nice, easy power and stick changes,” she said. “Nothing drastic, nothing sudden. Forget about your fuel state, forget about your pilot, forget about everything. Relax. It’s like pulling your big Jaguar into your garage and parking it. Concentrate on slipping that big Aardvark nose right under my tail. We’ll tell you when to stop.”
“You’re starting to turn me on, BC,” Mace radioed back.
The F-111G eased itself gently into position, the tip of its long black fiberglass nose all the way under the boomer’s pod, the refueling receptacle less than ten feet from the nozzle.
“Look at the plane, not the nozzle, Daren,” Furness said, ignoring his last remark. “Look at me. Start developing a picture of the underside of the plane in relation to your canopy rails. Don’t look at the nozzle — that’s our job. Keep coming … keep coming …”
Suddenly, Mace’s radar warning receiver came to life: a loud deedledeedledeedle came on the interphone, and a bat-wing symbol appeared on the right side of the indicator. He automatically started to back away in preparation for a breakaway maneuver. “Two-Two, I’ve got a bandit at three o’clock,” Mace shouted on the interplane frequency. “Repeat — bandit at three o’clock. Stand by for evasive action.”
“Wait! Hold your position, Daren,” Furness said. “You’ve got a fuel emergency. Get on the boom and get your gas, then we’ll do a separation.”
This time, before the chief master sergeant could react, Sam Marlowe shouted on interphone: “Furness, that’s not the SOP! If we come under attack, we do a breakaway and begin evasive maneuvers. That fighter can be on top of us in no time!”
“I’m not losing this guy.”
“But you’re willing to get our asses killed!” Marlowe thundered. “I’m calling a breakaway.”
“Like hell!” Furness shouted. “This is my aircraft and my sortie!”
A calm but determined British voice said on the refueling frequency, “Shamu, Breakdance, this is Elvis Three-Ought-Seven, we have a bogey at our three o’clock, turning starboard to engage. We’ll be back shortly, Elvis Three-Ought-Seven.” The Tornado suddenly banked sharply right and climbed steeply, with afterburners glowing brightly and its wings tucked all the way back against its fuselage.
“Daren, continue in to contact position, and do it quick,” Furness said. “If my crew gets a visual on the bandit, we’ll begin evasive maneuvers.”
“I copy,” Mace replied. “Coming in.”
But it wasn’t going to happen. The Tornado had disappeared from sight, the radios were silent, and the bat-wing symbol on the threat scope kept on closing. “Shamu, the threat’s approaching lethal range, and I can’t see the Tornado. You better—” just then, they heard a calm British voice on the refueling frequency: “Lousy bugger … don’t try it … yes, thank you … lovely … lovely … missile away, missile away.” There was no sign of excitement, no sign of stress at all in the voice — except for a bit of strain against the G-forces. The bat-wing symbol disappeared from the threat scope. “Splash one MiG, chaps. Elvis Three-Ought-Seven, splash one. Coming in on the rejoin.”
Furness found she was holding her hands to her face in absolute, sheer horror. Just like that, as if it was a simple stroke of a pen or a brush of a hand, the Tornado crew had killed an Iraqi pilot and shot down his plane. It was only now that the threat was gone that she realized the threat to herself — had it gone any other way, she could have been the one crashing to the desert floor in pieces.
Even now, she could see a small column of smoke rising from the ground, not that far away. Death was that close for all of them, but especially for the crew of the KC-10 Extender tanker. The F-111G could descend to hill-hugging altitude, fly faster than most fighter-interceptors, use jammers, and dispense decoy chaff and flares to protect itself; the Panavia Tornado could do all that and launch air-to-air missiles itself. But the KC-10 was powerless, as vulnerable as a newborn baby. The KC-10 could not even detect nearby threats, unless the pilots got lucky and saw the missile or fighters coming — at night or in bad weather, they would be dead long before they saw the threat. Flying these behemoths over enemy territory was crazy, simply insane. Aircraft flying in combat needed to be able to fight. More than that, she wanted to fight. She wanted to be the one in the F-111G dropping bombs, or the one in the Tornado shooting down bandits. Refueling was fine, and it was a necessary mission, but if she was going to fly, she wanted to fight.
“Thank you, Elvis,” Furness said shakily to the Tornado crew as they maneuvered their jet up beside the F-111G again.
“My pleasure, mademoiselle,” the Tornado pilot replied in the very same voice he used to announce that he was blowing away the Iraqi.
“Okay, Daren,” Furness said, “you’re cleared back in. Remember, nice and easy. There’s a little bump when you get inside, but don’t try to anticipate it or try to smooth it out. Ride the bump and keep moving in.”
Mace again eased the crippled F-111G into position. He struggled momentarily with the bow wave, overcompensating for the push by pulling back on the stick, then fluttering dangerously close to the tanker’s belly when he broke free, but he managed to stay in position through the momentary oscillation and moved slowly but steadily into contact position. “Okay, right there,” Furness called out. “That’s perfect. You don’t have to look up, just get your bearings from the markings on the belly … I said don’t look up, Daren, just remember the picture you see right now.”
She saw the signal from Clintock that he was ready to plug the F-111G. “Here we go, Daren … a little push from the boom … don’t try to help it or back away from it, just hold your picture.”
Clintock carefully eased the boom down a bit lower and extended the nozzle. It scraped only a few inches against the slipway, then plugged into the bomber’s receptacle with a satisfied ch-clunk! The green AR/NWS light went out, indicating that the toggles had made contact and the nozzle was locked in place. “I’ve got contact,” Mace reported.
“Contact, Two-Two,” Clintock reported. “Taking fuel.”
The director’s lights on the tanker’s belly automatically illuminated, and Mace found himself right in the middle of the envelope, with the UP-DOWN elevation marker and IN-OUT boom-extension markers both right in the center.
“Okay, Daren, good job. Now just ignore the director lights. Maintain that last picture you see through the canopy. You can glance at the lights every now and then as a crosscheck, but they’ll just confirm what you should already see. Relax your hands, take a deep breath. You’re taking fuel, and we don’t see any leaks. Good job, guy.”
Mace was afraid to breathe, afraid to move, but he tried to do as the tanker commander said and relax. He found that, once it was trimmed up and at the proper aimpoint, it was very easy to stay in the contact position — the KC-10 practically dragged the bomber along. One by one, the forward-body low-pressure lights and the LO FUEL PRESS caution light went out. “Thanks, BC,” he said on interplane. “You really saved our bacon. I’m grateful.”
“Don’t mention it,” Furness said. “Give me a ride in your plane someday.” If she ever had her choice of planes to fly, without any women-in-combat restrictions, the F-111 would be it.
“You got a deal.”
After over three minutes on the boom, the nozzle suddenly popped out and Clintock pulled it quickly away from the bomber. “Pressure disconnect, Breakdance,” Clintock reported.