Both their voices had risen as the intensity and speed of the mission had tripled and their brains tried to make innumerable calculations simultaneously. Woods looked to his right and forward in the direction the SA-6. He was surprised to see snow reflecting on the top of the mountains. He pushed the airplane over and flew lower to the ground, his radar altimeter bouncing around due to the unevenness of the ground, but hovering mostly around fifty feet.
The two F-14s raced through the long valley, hugging the ground on their way to the point where they would pull up and lob their enormous bombs at Alamut, a flight they had flown many times in practice, but never with a five-thousand-pound bomb underneath.
They came to the end of the long valley and stared at a small mountain right in front of them. Woods aimed the Tomcat a little left of the peak and pulled up slightly to match the rising terrain. He maintained his altitude above the ground as he climbed up the mountainside, the accelerometer needle showing negative two Gs as the Tomcat headed down the other side of the small mountain, still close to the ground. Woods checked their fuel one last time. They were now two thousand pounds low. It was getting critical.
The Tomcats bottomed out after the hill and headed across another small valley toward Alamut.
“The SA-6 is still tickling us from right nine o’clock,” Wink said, as he checked their bombing solution. “Just over that hill.”
“Let me know if he locks us up,” Woods said.
Just as they steadied at fifty feet above the deck on the valley floor Woods pulled back on the stick to climb up the next summit. They headed up the hill, which was steeper than they had initially thought. As they reached the top of the ridge line Wink slaved his LANTIRN to the GPS latitude and longitude for Alamut. The forward-looking infrared immediately locked onto the fortress ten miles ahead as the Tomcat continued to climb. “Holy shit,” Wink exclaimed. “There it is!” he marveled. “Clear as day.” He worked his target designation crosshairs to where he thought the illumination should be. He glanced up at the clock on the instrument panel that he had double checked before launch and looked at his digital G-shock watch. They both said 0358. “Laser should be coming on any minute. One minute to drop. Weapon systems check good — GBU-28 selected.” He looked at the infrared image and studied the fortress as they prepared to utterly destroy it. It was strange to be looking up at a target. But the target stood clearly on the top of the steep mountain, large and solid against the cool night sky. He placed the targeting crosshairs right where he thought the laser energy should be coming from already. Nothing. “Thirty seconds!” he called.
Big was right behind him with Sedge seeing exactly the same thing. A perfect FLIR picture of the fortress, and a clear crosshair on his designation of where he thought the 1.06 micron ground laser designator energy should be. But he too, saw nothing. Someone hadn’t kept his promise.
“We’re going to have to light this guy up ourselves,” Wink said, trying not to panic. The SA-6 indicator was warbling in his ear. The SAM targeting radar had them. “Chaff!” Wink called. “I’m going active on our laser!” Wink’s hands flew to the switches.
Woods watched their airspeed drop off at an alarming rate, down through five hundred knots, then four hundred as they climbed through five thousand feet, three-fifty, as they approached ten on their way to fifteen thousand feet. Woods tapped the burner to get the rate of climb back where it needed to be, knowing he couldn’t afford the fuel.
“No!” Wink yelled, feeling the burners light off. “An IR SAM will see us!”
“We’ve got no choice, Wink!” Woods said. “We’ll fall out of the sky.”
“Fifteen thousand feet!” Wink said. They were going to toss the bomb in a high parabola so it would have the right angle and energy to penetrate. “Still no laser. I’m going active!” he said too loud as he flipped the switch that would ensure their failure — the entire mission turned on someone on the ground guiding the bomb into the underground hideout. At best, Wink was just guessing.
Wink watched the crosshairs remain steady on the target point he had selected. “Three, two, one, pickle!” Wink called as he released the bomb while they were still climbing steeply. They could both feel the airplane jump up as the enormous bomb dropped off and headed toward Alamut. The computer had calculated the right release point to lob the bomb the correct distance. Once heading down, the wings on the silent bomb would maneuver it to hit at the point of the reflected laser energy. “Let’s get out of here,” Wink called. Woods pulled the Tomcat hard left and brought the nose down through the horizon as they sought the safety of lower altitude from the SAM energy that continued to illuminate them.
Woods banked even harder, almost rolling upside down in the darkness.
“Keep it illuminated!” Wink screamed.
Woods glanced at his display to keep the line representing his maximum bank angle and aim point on the screen. They passed back through ten thousand feet toward the safety of the ground, then five thousand feet.
Wink stared at the aim point on his FLIR display on the PTID waiting for the impact of their huge bomb. But a new sound in the small speakers tore his eyes away. His head jerked to see what the new fire control radar was. “AAA has us locked up!”
Woods’s instincts worked faster than Wink’s mouth. He had already nosed over hard to get down to the lowest possible altitude. He hit the white button on the left side of the stick to release a chaff program. Small canisters of metal were ejected by shotgun-shell-sized blasts out of their receptacles in the back of the F-14 to deceive the radar. As soon as they hit the airstream they formed a cloud of reflective metal the size of an airplane to encourage the radar to lock onto the aluminum instead of the real plane.
But the mobile ZSU-23-4 below them was too hungry to be deceived by chaff. It was a nasty wheeled vehicle that carried its own radar and four-barreled antiaircraft battery. It was the most feared ground antiair weapon in the world. The Iranians had the Russian upgrade, which detected a sudden deceleration — chaff instead of an airplane — and didn’t take the bait. The 23-millimeter bullets leapt into the action for which they had been waiting all night. They raced up from the four barrels toward Woods’s F-14. The red tracer bullets tore into the LANTIRN pod, then into the belly of the F-14.
Woods pushed the nose over harder and banked left, not caring whether the target was still illuminated. More bullets ripped into the tail of the F-14 and the left engine exploded. The left wing buckled at its root and bent up as the left tail came off entirely.
“Eject! Eject! Eject!” Woods shouted as he reached for the ejection handle between his legs.
Wink reached for his ejection handle at the same time and both pulled. The canopy locks were blown off by detonation cord and the canopy flew up and back off the airplane. Wink’s ejection seat rocketed up the rail as the airplane slowly began to come apart and plummet toward the earth. Woods’s seat fired 1.2 seconds later. The Tomcat broke into pieces as Woods cleared the burning hulk. Twenty-three-millimeter bullets continued to rip into the pathetic airplane as it looked for a place to die.
Before Woods could even focus on what was happening he felt a jerk in his crotch as his parachute’s ballistic spreader deployed the silk and grabbed the air to slow his descent. He swung back and forth and steadied slightly. He looked around for anything recognizable. Suddenly an F-14 flew by not five hundred feet away. It flashed its lights to acknowledge his presence. It was Big. He had dropped his bomb and was keeping Alamut illuminated. Woods’s night-vision devices had been ripped off his face in the ejection and he couldn’t see much else. He looked toward Alamut and saw the mountain in the distance, maybe three miles away. He heard a deep rumbling explosion, then another, but saw no flash or fire. Woods jerked involuntarily in his parachute, trying to drive his five-thousand-pound bomb deeper into the hidden fortress, into the face of the man who had killed his best friend.