“I got the aircraft!” Mace shouted, hauling back on the stick with both hands. At first he was actually fighting Kondrat’evich, who wanted to push the nose down so he could keep the target in sight, until the young pilot realized how low they were. “Wings to thirty!” he shouted, and Kondrat’evich swept the wings full forward to 30 degrees so they could get every ounce of lift and control possible. They finally got their nose up and began a safe climb at only sixty feet above the ground.
“Good dust, Kiev Three, good dust,” the range controller called out.
“What does that mean?” Kondrat’evich asked.
“That means they’re congratulating us for flying so low but not hitting the ground and killing ourselves, Ivan,” Mace replied. “Ivan, you’re doing ground attack now, not fighter tactics. There are no ground attack weapons in the inventory that require you to keep your nose pointed at the ground after pulling the trigger.” Actually, the Ukrainians had one, the AS-7 “Kerry,” but it was an obsolete weapon and they were training for gunnery and Maverick-style TV, imaging infrared, or laser-guided weapons, not old-style radio-controlled missiles. “Shoot, then scoot — don’t hang around to admire your handiwork. You understand?”
“ ‘Shoot, then scoot,’ “ Kondrat’evich mimicked. “Climb or die, eh?”
“You got it,” Mace agreed. “Climb or die. Now get on your egress heading and get up to your assigned altitude before your wingmen think you’re a bad guy.”
“I understand,” Kondrat’evich said, making the turn and climbing to five thousand feet to join up on his formation leader. “But it is a very good day to die today. You think so?”
Mace dropped his oxygen mask, looked at the bright sun and clear blue cloudless sky around him, and clicked his mike twice in reply. Yes, he agreed, it was a pretty good day to die.
Back on the ground a few minutes later, Ivan Kondrat’evich was so happy with his performance that he was out of the cockpit and running to join up with his fellow Ukrainian pilots almost before the engines were shut down. Mace had to smile as he watched the exuberant young pilot darting about the tarmac, slapping his buddies on the shoulder, cajoling them for some screw-up they did. When their operations officer came by a few minutes later to tell them their gunnery scores, Ivan practically did cartwheels on the frosty ramp. Mace could tell their scores were good. Despite a few lapses in concentration, Kondrat’evich was a good stick. A few more years and a couple weeks at RED FLAG, the U.S. Air Force air combat exercise in Nevada, and he might just live to see age thirty.
It was a long time since Mace had been that happy after coming back from a mission, and even longer since he’d seen age thirty. Mace was a tall, rugged-looking man, with close-cropped blond hair and dark green eyes. Six foot, 180 pounds of naturally well-defined muscle, Mace would have been Central Casting’s dream for a war movie. A younger, less-weathered Robert Redford, they would have said. He was a former enlisted man in the Marine Corps for two years, with an assignment as a weapon systems specialist at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California, first in the A-4 Skyhawk and then in the F-4 Phantom. It was the big, powerful Phantom that ignited his desire to fly military jets — in two years on the flight line, he had never flown in the planes he fixed — so he applied for officer candidate school. But the Marine Corps was looking for more infantry soldiers, not more officers, and the only place he could get accepted for officer training was Air Force ROTC at Eastern New Mexico State University.
He graduated in 1974 with a degree and a commission in the United States Air Force. He entered navigator training virtually on the very day the U.S. embassy in Saigon was being overrun by the Viet Cong. His years as a prior enlisted man helped him past the “new guy” syndrome common to second lieutenants, and studying hard in military classes was something the Marine Corps hammered home. Mace graduated top of his nav class in 1975, and got an assignment in the F-4E Phantom II at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.
But it was during a Tactical Air Command bombing exercise in Nevada that Mace was introduced to the F-111 “Aardvark,” and he was hooked forever. He cross-trained to the sleek, sexy-looking FB-111A in the Strategic Air Command in 1980, shortly after pinning on captain’s bars, and was assigned to Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in 1982, pulling strategic alert duties with nuclear-loaded Aardvark bombers. He and the FB-111A became one. He became an instructor, simulator panel operator, senior navigator, and wing weapons officer, shuttling between Pease and Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York, the only two FB-111 bases in the country.
Daren Mace wanted to be involved in every aspect of the F-111 mission. He became instrumental in ushering in the new digital avionics modernization program for the Aardvark’s weapon and navigation systems, won Strategic Air Command’s Bombing and Navigation Competition once as S-01 senior instructor navigator, and participated in tests of several new weapons for the FB-111, including the AGM-131 SRAM II attack missile, the AGM-84E SLAM (Standoff Land Attack Missile), and the AIM-9 Sidewinder self-defense missile. As the nuclear deterrent role of the FB-111 diminished, Mace saw to it that SAC crews adopted skills in non-nuclear bombing tactics, and he helped design and test new weapons and new missions for the F-111, including “Wild Weasel” enemy air defense suppression and tactical reconnaissance. He was an expert in high-threat bomb delivery tactics, precision-guided munitions employment, and defensive tactics.
He was at Pease as the DONB (Deputy Commander for Operations, Navigation, Bombing) in 1989 when the decision was finalized to transfer the FB-111 to Tactical Air Command and close Pease Air Force Base. Mace began shuttling FB-111s to McClellan Air Force Base in California to begin their conversion to the F-111G, giving them full integration with Tactical Air Command units. While at McClellan, a major aircraft maintenance and repair facility, he learned more about the inner workings of the Aardvark than ever before — his training as a former Marine aircraft mechanic helped him. In just a few months, Daren Mace was recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on the F-111 weapon system.
Then, in 1990, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. America at war. A secret assignment, no questions asked. In one fateful night, Daren Mace’s life was turned upside down. Nothing was the same ever again.
After Desert Storm, Mace wanted to get as far away from the United States, as close to virtual exile, as one could get. He still had his wings, but he rarely flew — completely by choice. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel without fanfare in 1992, was allowed to attend Air War College, and was then sent to Turkey in 1993 for his third overseas assignment.
The Islamic Wars of 1993 and 1994, in which a strengthened Iraq, allied with Syria, Jordan, and other radical Muslim nations, tried to throw the entire Persian Gulf region into chaos once again, signaled the rebirth of Daren Mace. As weapons officer for the 7440th Provisional Wing at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, Mace supervised the weapons requirements for a hastily formed NATO coalition, successfully arming every strike aircraft that was sent to him in the first few critical weeks of the outbreak of war. He helped keep two hundred Turkish, U.S. Air Force, Saudi Arabian, and a few Israeli aircraft in fighting shape until help could arrive in force. Daren Mace did everything — refuel planes, upload bombs and missiles, change engines, and even flew as a weapons officer in F-15E, F-111F, and F-4E and — G fighter-bombers.