“Tallyho on the trailer,” Matt shouted. At the same time, he moved the Weapon Select switch to the mid-detent position that called up a Sidewinder missile. Again, the system did its magic.
“Tallyho the leader,” Furry said, much calmer. “Coming to our six, disregard him, we already killed him.” The lead Tornado was converting to Matt’s six o’clock position, eager to engage. But in reality, one of the missiles would have taken him out. In this game of cowboys and Indians, Furry figured this particular cowboy was dead and was going to ignore him.
Matt was still climbing straight up. He rolled and pulled his nose down, into a forty-five-degree dive, pointed directly at the second Tornado. “That’s your one turn,” Furry cautioned. The one turn allowed by the ROE did not have to be made parallel to the ground but could be made in any plane. Matt had made his in the vertical. The distinctive growl of the Sidewinder came through their headsets. The cooled, infrared seeker head on the Sidewinder was tracking the target. The Lock/Shoot lights on the canopy bow came on. “Fox Two on the Tornado in a hard left diving turn,” Matt transmitted. He stroked the afterburners and continued his dive. The Pratt and Whitney F-100-229 engines responded crisply and they outran the Tornado that was at their six o’clock.
A clipped British voice came over the radio: “Fox One on the Eagle.”
“He blows a lot of smoke for a dead man,” Funy said.
“Thanks for the fun, troops,” Matt transmitted. “Got to run.” They were back on the deck, heading for the target.
“I want to update our position,” Furry said. The wizzo called up the mapping radar on his right-hand MPD. The radar image was overlaid with symbols coming from the navigation computer. If the inertial nav system was totally accurate and had their actual position pinpointed, the turn points and target boxes that had been programmed into the navigation computer would be over the correct spot on the radar return. But life being as it is, they seldom agreed. He placed the radar cursors over the center of one of the target boxes, which should have been a small crossroads he had picked out during mission planning. He hit the Auto Acq switch under his right thumb on the right-hand controller and reduced the size of the box around his cursor. Then he hit the pushbutton switch with his little finger, freezing the picture. He was making a map. The system counted down for a few seconds and then unfroze. “Take command and search for bogies,” he said.
Matt took command of the radar with the Auto Acq switch on his stick and did a quick search. “Done,” he said. Furry hit the EMIS Limit switch and they were back in silent running. All the time the TFR had been coupled to the autopilot and guiding them along their route at 480 knots and two hundred feet above the ground.
While Matt was searching for more bogies, Furry had updated the nav system by refining his cursor placement on the crossroads (he picked the southwest corner) on the frozen radar map picture. When he was satisfied, he hit the castle switch on the right-hand controller and updated the system. In effect, he was telling the navigation computer that was where the center of the target box should have been if the system was totally accurate when it placed the box over the radar image. The computer worked backward and refined its internal alignment, taking into account the movement of the aircraft since the map was made. Matt saw the aircraft symbol on his TSD jump a fraction of an inch when the system was updated. The autopilot sensed the change in their position and made a slight heading adjustment, putting them back on track.
All of this took less than forty-five seconds, much faster than the first time they did it.
“Eat your heart out, Mr. Nintendo,” Furry laughed. “Best damn video game in the whole world. We’ll get faster.” Silence. “Let’s simulate battle damage from that last engagement. Aah, say we lost our radar, laser, and FLIR and have to do a backup delivery using manual only.”
“Come on, Amb. I haven’t done that in six months.”
“What the hell, it was briefed. No time like right now.”
“Give me a break!”
“Okay, okay, just an idea. We’ll save that one for our next mission.”
“Thanks a bunch.” Matt was seriously wondering about the man riding in his pit. Furry wanted to push the aircraft, its systems, and themselves to an extent he didn’t care to think about.
Matt took control of the aircraft when they overflew the IP (initial point) that was the last checkpoint that showed the way to the target. Matt flew around a low hill, squeaking them down to a hundred feet, using terrain masking to protect them from defenses around the target. Furry used the radar to slue the Target FLIR onto the target. An unbelievably clear infrared picture materialized and they were still eleven miles out. A computer generated target box surrounded a concrete bunker. The wizzo moved the castle switch on his left-hand controller aft and the box changed to a triangle — the symbol for the target. Satisfied that he had the correct target, he mashed the trigger on the same hand controller and the weapons delivery computer went to work, processing a wealth of information to put a bomb on that target.
“Designating,” Furry said. With that one word, Furry told Matt they were working their target. Matt had the weapons system in full automatic, so he mashed the pickle button and held it. When the computer had reached a delivery solution, a bomb would come off the stub pylons automatically. They both felt the bomb separate from the aircraft. “Lasing,” Furry said and mashed the pushbuttons at the bottom of his left-hand controller. Matt banked away so Furry could continue to lase the target. Through the Target FLIR, they saw the bomb fly right through the closed door Furry was illuminating.
“Strange way we make our living,” Matt said and coupled the TFR to the autopilot for their egress.
The fatigue generated by the mission was demanding its price and Matt wanted to flop out on one of the couches in the new crew lounge and take a break. But Furry was heading for an open briefing room for a postmission debrief. He followed Furry down the hall because something inside of him felt good and he wanted to recapture all that they had accomplished. He ignored the two pilots standing by the scheduling counter trying to wangle an extra flight. “Hey,” one of them called, “kill anyone today?”
Matt spun around. Anger lashed at him and splintered any satisfaction he felt about the flight. “Excuse me very much, fuckhead,” he shot back.
A viselike hand clamped down on his shoulder. It was Furry. “Only turn to blow the meatball out of the sky,” he growled. “Otherwise run away and fight another guy.” He half dragged Matt down the hall.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean,” Matt grumbled, his temper barely under control.
“This is not our day to engage,” Furry answered and closed the door of the briefing room behind them.
“Another one of your rules for survival?”
“Goddamn right,” Furry snapped.
The agony of waiting was back on Shoshana and she wanted to ask when Habish would return. Instead, she studied the four walls of the basement room of the safe house where they had gone after leaving the airport. Zeev Avidar looked up from his computer and sensed what was bothering her. “It helps if you can keep busy,” he said and went back to his work. A few moments later, the laser jet printer whirred and a new ID card for Shoshana spat out die bottom. Avidar picked it up and examined it critically. “Yes, this will do,” he decided. Then he fed the printer a sheet of paper that he had aged with chemicals and heat from the oven. The printer whirred again and he had an authentic-looking Iraqi identification card.
“Now we need a photo,” he said. He posed Shoshana with a dark shawl draped over her hair and took a series of Polaroid photos. After each shot, he would change her makeup with a soft artist’s brush. Finally, he had one that made her look like a farmer’s wife. Then he treated the photo with a chemical, giving it an aged look, before he trimmed it and fixed it to the ID. He used a pen to add some finishing touches to the final product and handed it to her. Then he repeated the process, only this time making her into a college girl.