Woods steadied the Tomcat on the new heading.
“Set five hundred fifty knots,” Wink said.
Woods pushed the throttles forward to the stops, short of afterburner. Wink studied the display on his PTID as he watched the EA-6B and the F-18 HARM shooters fifteen miles in front. They were at thirty thousand feet, hunting SAM radars. They would head down the corridor for the attack and hope that Syria, or Lebanon, or the Hezbollah, or whoever ran the SAM sights surrounding the Bekáa Valley, would be unwilling to allow the Americans to just strike with impunity, unable to resist turning on their SAM radars at least to see what was coming. As soon as the radars went on, the EA-6B would lock on to their position, then launch their HARM missiles or the F-18s would launch theirs. Even if the radar shut down, the missiles would remember where they were. It was a very hungry missile.
The radios were silent. The Tomcat passed through five hundred knots to five hundred fifty. The air streamed by their two-thousand-pound bombs so quickly that it made a slight buzz, or hum, underneath the plane.
Woods felt odd being in the lead with his Commanding Officer on his wing. It was all because of Wink, the top RIO in the squadron, the one who was without a doubt the best at running an attack with the LANTIRN system, the one sure to put the bombs on the target. Everybody knew it, including Bark. So Wink was taking them in and showing them where to go.
“Feet dry,” Wink called as they passed over the beach of Lebanon and headed inland. “Good thing we got that stealth paint,” he cracked.
“You wish. See any airplanes?”
“Negative.”
“Push over in ten minutes.”
“Glad Lebanon’s small.”
Wink’s voice suddenly raised slightly in pitch. “We’ve got a SAM site at nine o’clock lighting us up. Fire control radar.”
Woods quickly lowered the left wing to look for a SAM launch. Nothing but darkness.
“See anything?”
“Not yet. They’re just tickling us.”
“EA-6B should be reading him. Bomb switches set?”
“Yeah. We’re set. LANTIRN system checks good.”
“Everyone else in position?”
Wink checked his PTID. “Yes. We’re set — “ Suddenly a very distinctive warble pierced their ears. “SAM launch, SAM launch!” Wink cried.
Woods searched the sky. “Where?”
“Two o’clock!” Woods dipped his right wing and looked beneath the plane. He saw a red ball tearing up from the ground toward them. It was the missile motor burning as it pushed the weight of the surface-to-air missile uphill.
“Chaff!” Wink urged.
Woods hit the white button on the stick with his thumb and fired off a preprogrammed series of chaff. Underneath the tails at the back of the airplane small cylinders of tightly packed metal foil fired down from the F-14. They immediately burst into small clouds of falling metal strips to attract the radar’s attention away from the Tomcat, which made an excellent radar reflector in its own right.
The best radars, though, looked not only for reflected energy, but reflected energy that moved. The chaff stopped dead behind the Tomcat, as the airplane continued forward. If it was a newer radar, or upgraded, it would track the plane through the chaff release. Woods turned to his left to put the missile directly on his right wing as it continued to climb up after them. It had nothing else on its mind except to have a collision with Woods and Wink. As soon as the missile was ninety degrees off, Woods rolled the Tomcat over on its back and pulled down hard toward the earth. He leaned harder still, using the added acceleration of gravity to move them down quickly, to achieve the maximum possible change in position from the missile. As the nose of the Tomcat dropped and the missile peaked and headed down after them, Woods rolled level and headed up in a 7-G pull away from the earth. Woods watched the missile continue to close on them.
“They’re still locked on!” Wink said grimly.
A bright flash lit the horizon in front of them. Woods tore his eyes from the missile momentarily to see whether an airplane had fired on them. It was a missile, but from the EA-6B. A HARM — a High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile — luxuriating in the energy that was guiding the SAM toward Woods. The HARM raced down toward the source of the energy, ready to explode on the transmitter. The HARM gave the SAM site operator two choices — leave the radar on and eat the HARM, or shut down the radar, and lessen his chances of dying.
Wink watched the strobe on the ALR-67 radar warning indicator that showed where the SAM had come from. They maneuvered up, then down, as the missile continued to track them, but then suddenly diverted its attention from the Tomcat, appearing to lose interest. Woods watched the missile fly straight again. “Strobe?”
“Gone,” Wink said, glancing down at the indicator. “We’re clear.”
“He saw the HARM coming,” Woods said, steadying out on his original course.
Bark rejoined in loose trail on Woods’s wing and they pressed on toward the target.
“Fifteen miles to the target,” Wink announced, forcing himself to walk through the bombing run. “Everything looks good.”
“SAM! SAM! SAM!” someone yelled over the radio. It chilled Woods and Wink, who had yet to settle down after their close call. They both jerked their heads around searching for a new SAM. Wink checked the radar warning screen but it was uncluttered with fire control radars.
Wink called to Woods. “Come starboard hard to 070. Beginning release run.” In the backseat he checked the switches on the AWG-15 weapons panel to ensure he hadn’t changed the drop settings for the bombing run.
Woods responded immediately to Wink’s request. “How’s the LANTIRN system?” he asked, concerned about the high G maneuvering the pod had endured during the attempt to evade the SAM.
“Sweet. I’ve got a good picture.” He looked at the infrared image on the screen. “Clear as a bell. It made it easy to pick a target. There it is, Trey. The fortress, bigger than shit. One minute,” Wink warned, watching the precalculated release point timer count down.
Woods checked his switches and prepared for the release.
Wink was focused on making the bombing run perfect. He didn’t know what the bomb would do by way of damage, but he sure could say where it was going to hit. “Three, two, one.” Woods pressed the release button on the panel and the two laser-guided bombs dropped off the Tomcat and headed silently toward the earth.
As soon as Woods felt the release, he pulled up and left, ensuring that the laser designator stayed on the target.
“Good release!” Wink exclaimed. The hop was all worth it now to Wink. They had done their job, and Bark was dropping right behind them. “Good target,” Wink said, seeing the image of the crosshairs on the exact place where he had designated the bombs to hit, just at the base of the fortress, calculated to do the most damage to the structure. “Five seconds to impact,” Wink said. He stared at the image waiting anxiously for the explosion. Suddenly the screen lit up at the same time the sky did five miles away when the two enormous bombs slammed into the centuries-old fortress in Lebanon.
“War’s on,” Woods said as he headed toward the Med.
“Home base, 263 for two hundred thirty.”
“Roger that. Let’s get out of here,” Woods said.
31
Sean Woods sat in the ready room chair in the briefing area and fought to stay awake. He had been operating on adrenaline for so long that when the excitement of flying in combat waned, he was left more exhausted than he would have been otherwise. He’d been up for twenty hours. He had flown the first strike into Lebanon and was about to fly on the last strike of the night. He could smell himself. He waited for 0230, for the brief to start for his next hop. His launch time was 0430.