“Slash one-one? Nightlight.” Wilson was relieved knowing the AWACS was up, another potential disconnect averted.
“Nightlight, Slash. Go ahead,” Wilson responded.
“Your signal, stepladder. Over.”
“Roger, stepladder.” Wilson responded. This code word was their briefed word to continue. In thirty minutes Wilson and the others would roll in on the dual runways of San Ramón to put them out of action — for the time being. He then asked, “Picture?”
“Picture clean. Looks like you have some weather en route.”
Wilson rogered and kept a wary eye to the west. Fifty other sets of eyes did the same, all knowing that, right now, a thunderstorm was a greater threat than Venezuelan fighters or AAA. All saw the distant flashes and hoped the storms were isolated or small enough to fly over. The high overcast made it darker than normal and only a pink glow could be observed to the west/northwest, but this glow was enough to prevent Wilson from donning his NVGs just yet. His thumb mashed down on the mike.
“Slash, any alibis?”
He listened for any from his wingmen, and after a few seconds one did.
“Slash two-four. Only got half my load.”
Wilson acknowledged Slash 24’s call. “Roger that. Stick with your aimpoint.”
“Roger,” Slash 24 replied. Just then, Blocker lead transmitted on strike common.
“Blockers pushing.”
“Nightlight copies,” the AWACS controller answered.
They were committing now, and Wilson didn’t know if he had Tomahawks inbound to soften up San Ramón, didn’t know if he had signals intel in the form of an EP-3, didn’t know if the Venezuelans were alerted. He did know there was weather ahead, but he didn’t know if it would pass or get dangerous. And he could guess that the White House press corps were monitoring their watches as they prepared to cover the President’s address to the nation in less than an hour.
Wilson led his formation in an easy left-hand turn. As he watched his preplanned run-in speed align with his planned time on target, he felt a sense of progress. He had ninety degrees to go before he pushed the Slash formations on course behind the Blockers. Above and below were lone twinkling anti-collision lights that marked the Slashes, Volts, and Lances as they, too, waited to push out along the planned track. The others in formation were unseen in the darkness. Wilson could make out some position lights a mile or two away. Soon he could don his goggles.
“Slash one-one, pushing,” Wilson transmitted.
“Slash two-one, pushing.”
“Three-one, pushing.”
The twelve Slash strikers rolled out on a heading of 250 and accelerated toward South America, with Wilson in front and the other two division formations on his left and right. Wilson tried his goggles, but the faint, yellow-gray glow was still too much for the light intensifiers. He could discern a line of storms ahead and commanded his radar to air-to-ground mode to get a look at it.
His radar display depicted a ragged — but solid — line of return, almost perpendicular to their track seventy miles away. With his naked eye, he could see lightning ahead of him, small pops of light. Some were sharp but most seemed muffled as they zipped from inside one cloud to another. At this speed, the strikers would be on the storms in eight minutes, and the Blockers before that. He saw that the line extended along the horizon in front of him from Tobago to Guyana. That made it hundreds of miles in length. They couldn’t go around it, and going under it was a nonstarter. We’ll go over it.
Wilson elevated his antenna and saw the return was not much different. Even the horizon line on his HUD was cutting the tops of the cumulus clouds. He was climbing the formation ever so slightly, but in the high twenties, knew that their heavy bomb loads would prevent a much higher climb. It would be impossible, at these weights, to get up to the forties. He had to keep climbing, looking, thinking, and hoping.
Flying into a thunderstorm required him to break a cardinal rule of aviation, and, with eleven bomb-laden wingmen hanging on to him in formation, the stakes were ratcheted way up. He wondered what the Blockers were doing ahead and called lead.
“Blocker lead from Slash. How does it look?”
“Pretty solid line, but we found a saddleback we can go over.”
“Above forty?”
“Affirm.”
Now Wilson knew at least the Blockers could get over the line at 40,000 feet, but there was no way he could get up there, even in burner, as heavy as they were with bombs and full fuel tanks. With the faintest twilight glow behind the line he could detect anvil-topped clouds south of their track with the anvils also pointing south, which showed the high-level winds from the north were shearing them away. Even in the clear, airplanes near thunderstorms could be pelted, with no warning, by hail thrown up from inside the churning clouds. The fact the anvils pointed away from them gave a degree, albeit small, of comfort.
Level at 30,000 feet, and close to 500 knots ground speed, they floated closer to the line as the flashes increased in intensity. Wilson scanned the line up and down to determine the strongest segments, the tallest clouds, and the thickest concentrations of energy. Far to the north and south — almost 100 miles in either direction — the line’s strength did not seem to diminish. Wilson had to lead the formation through it or turn around.
DCAG — his immediate senior — was right next to him and, so far, had not offered any guidance. Wilson knew Devil Davies was watching his airplanes approach the solid line of weather, as were the controllers aboard the AWACS who transmitted the picture to staff officers in Miami and Washington. It appeared no one was going to jump in and make Commander Wilson’s decision. The line now loomed just off his nose. Inside the base clouds, in the teens and low twenties, muffled bulbs of grayish yellow light pulsed on and off. From this bubbling caldron of energy rose a wall of dappled gray, a shadowy and foreboding tapestry of dark cloud. And jagged veins of electricity shot from cloud to cloud in front of him. A thin stratus layer above obscured what little starlight was available to measure the tops of the serrated “mountain range” now less than forty miles ahead.
Wilson was glued to the radar display, hoping, praying for a break, praying for a call from above, wishing that someone would jump into his cockpit and direct him what to do.