Someone had it very right when they called the F-15E Super Eagle.
“Got the primary target on the TSD,” Furry told Locke. “They’re over Salt Wells. Want to look again?”
Locke glanced down at his TSD and saw a red aircraft symbol right over Salt Wells. Furry hit the EMIS LIMIT switch again, allowing the radar a single sweep before returning to silent running. The same targets reappeared on the radar scope, still over Salt Wells.
“Probably some Navy birds out of Fallon,” Locke said. “Snake’s a flight of two and he’d never set up a wheel to circle a target. That’s dumber than dirt.”
“If it’s below average headwork it must be Navy,” Furry agreed. “Oh, oh, just got a tickle on the TEWS, we’ve got an interceptor sweeping the area with a pulse Doppler. That’s Snake. Looks like he’s to the east of Salt Wells. We would’ve flown right under him on our old track.”
“He’ll still find us,” Locke said, again lowering his altitude, searching for a way to out-fox the Snake. “Go Guard, front radio.”
Without looking, Furry’s right hand dropped down on his upfront controller and rotated the present channel selector on the left until G appeared, switching the UHF radio switch to GUARD, the preset emergency channel on 243.0 MHz. One of Furry’s jobs in the back seat was to be an audio-commanded radio-frequency shifter.
Locke pushed the radio transmit button on the throttle quadrant forward with his left thumb. “If you Airdales over Salt Wells would like some action, come up 356.0.”
Furry pushed the channel-manual button on his UFC and switched them to 356.0. Snake Houserman was on the same frequency.
Almost immediately, Pedro flight checked in on 356.0 with a flight of four.
“I think we’ve got ourselves four F-18 Hornets in the area,” Locke said.
“Pedro flight, this is an Air Force assigned frequency,” Snake radioed.
“Rog,” Pedro flight lead acknowledged. “We’re in a wheel, beating up the old emergency field near Salt Wells, practicing a little dive bombing. Please stand clear.”
“Almost perfect,” Locke told Furry, heading straight for Salt Wells. “If Snake wants us, he’s going to have to go through a nest of Hornets.”
“Pedro flight,” Locke radioed, “this is Dobo. I’m transiting the area underneath you. Please hold your altitude until I’m clear.” He could clearly see the F-18s through his HUD along with digital readouts on his own altitude and airspeed. He didn’t need to look inside the cockpit.
“A radar’s got us,” Furry said, monitoring his TEWS. “Still east of Salt Wells. Must be Snake.”
“That’s fine as long as the Navy is between us and him.”
“Pedro flight, please clear the area,” Snake transmitted. “I intend to intercept Dobo.”
Pedro lead answered, “This is our airspace and we like Dobo.”
Locke flew his dark gray F-15E down the valley, heading straight for a small collection of buildings surrounded by a cyclone fence near Salt Wells. The four F-18 Hornets were breaking out of their wheel pattern and zooming toward the east.
“Pedro one and two are on the left F-15,” the Navy pilot radioed. “Three and four take the right man. Both are dead meat.”
“Rog, Pedro. This is Snake and Jake. Keep the flight above five hundred feet AGL and everything is copacetic.”
“Screw you, flyboy. Fight’s on.”
“I think Snake’s got his hands full,” Locke told Furry. He pushed the throttles up, touching 540 knots as he headed toward Tolicha.
“We got two of ‘em and scared the other two so bad even their laundress knows for sure,” Snake said. Locke and Furry had met Snake and his wingman Jake in one of the 461st’s briefing rooms for a debrief when they had all recovered at Luke AFB. A debrief with Snake Houserman after a flight was always a colorful affair.
“Amb, what was our bomb score on Tolicha?” Locke asked, his blue eyes serious.
“A bull.”
“Who give’s a rat’s ass about iron bombs.” Houserman grinned. “Like the sainted Baron von Richthofen said, roaming your allotted airspace and destroying other fighters is our job. Anything else is rubbish. That’s the trouble with you friendly clowns,” Snake said, pointing at Locke’s 461st squadron patch, the black and gold of the Deadly Jesters, “you forgot what the fighter business is all about.”
“You sure about that direct hit, Amb?” Locke could be like a bulldog and wanted to make his point that dropping bombs was an important part of their mission. Like Snake, he hadn’t a clue, yet, that he would soon have a chance to prove it.
“Sure am. That would have been one busted air patch.”
“Get a grip, Furry.” Snake smiled, leaning back in his chair, banging against the wall of the small briefing room. “Wizzos ain’t shit.”
“We accomplished our mission, Snake,” Locke said. “You can’t say the same.”
“What do you call two F-18s?”
Locke saw he couldn’t reach the young pilot. He stood up and motioned Furry to follow him out.
“I think we lost that one,” Furry said.
“Nope,” Locke told him. “We got our bomb on target and that was what we set out to do.” He looked at his dejected backseater and slapped him on the back. “Hell, Amb, the air-to-air pukes make movies, us air-to-ground jocks make history. Cheer up, you don’t win an engagement in the debrief. Besides, if that had been Snake’s home airfield he would have had to divert somewhere else after shooting down the Hornets because we blew the hell out of it.”
“One thing,” Furry said, “how come you were so sure that Snake would be in a CAP near Salt Wells?”
“That collection of buildings we turned over at Salt Wells is a whorehouse, Amb. You got to know the opposition. Where else would you expect to find Snake?”
“Or the Navy,” Furry added.
“Rupe, I don’t know if Cunningham will give you F-15s to CAP for the C-130s. You’ll have to sell him on it.”
Dewa Rahimi sat behind the computer console listening to Stansell and Mado. They were buried in a small office deep in the Pentagon’s basement, hidden behind the guarded doors of the Air Force’s Directorate of Operational Intelligence. She scanned the screen again and decided they needed to see the incident report from the Office of Special Investigations.
“Colonel,” Rahimi said, breaking into their conversation, “I think you need to see this. There’s an OSI incident report on a Sergeant Raymond Byers.”
- “Excuse me, sir. Byers is one of the sergeants who pulled me out of Ras Assanya.” Stansell looked over Rahimi’s shoulder reading the report, distracted by her perfume until he saw Byer’s statement about hearing the men speaking Arabic.
“General, you had better read this.”
Rahimi spun the screen to face Mado, who read it and gave a noncommittal “humm.”
Stansell knew what he had to do. “If some Arabs are going after Byers, they might be after me. I think you may need a new mission commander.”
Mado quickly arranged to see Cunningham. “Bring your map, Rupe. We can kill two birds while we’re up there.” Mado stopped when he reached the door. “You come too,” he told Rahimi. “It’s time you met Sundown.”
Cunningham studied Stansell’s map, tracing the route the colonel was proposing. He tried without success to visualize what a pilot would see on the low-level route through the mountains of western Iran. The general was angry with himself for losing the ability that fighter pilots needed to survive in combat. Running the Air Force had apparently dulled his ability to take a few clues and create a mental three-dimensional image of reality. Like flying a fast moving jet through mountains he had never seen before.