Stan twisted his head away from the bank of scopes and radar warning gear in front of him, surveyed the target, grunted and went back to work. “Arm ’em up,” he said, reminding C.J. to make sure the AGM-45 anti-radiation Shrike missiles were ready for employment. “I’ve got a load on an SA-6,” he yelled, happy at last. One of the fifty-two antennas the Wild Weasel sported had detected an operator turning on the radar in the control van of a surface-to-air missile battery in preparation for a launch. “Follow the bug,” he told C.J.
The pilot turned the nose of the Phantom toward the threat and centered the target symbol of his head-up display. When the plan position indicator showed he was in range, he mashed the trigger on his stick. The missile leaped off the missile rail on the left pylon and homed on the signal it was receiving from the SAM site. The radar van of the SAM disappeared in a puff of smoke and flame. “How do you say piss off in Farsi?” Stan muttered.
C.J. zoomed up to eight thousand feet, still looking for MiGs. Stan reassured him the RHAW gear was quiet. The pilot watched as the first cell of twelve aircraft approached the troop-staging area from the west on a laydown run with the CBUs. They came off the target as sporadic tracers in the fading light indicated someone was pulling in the welcome mat. The second wave of attacking Phantoms from the east started to pop onto the target, homing onto the tracers.
The attackers could not see the carnage the CBUs spread over the area. The canisters holding the CBUs would drop off the wing pylons when the pilots hit the pickle button. As they fell, the canisters would open up like a clam shell, spewing hundreds of baseball-sized bomblets over a wide area. Each bomblet would spin, arming as it fell. Some would explode immediately on impact; others would bounce high into the air before exploding and raining their lethal charge over a wide area. Others would bounce and then lie dormant, waiting for a time-delayed fuse to activate or someone to jiggle it, setting it off. In some three minutes the 378th had worked over the troop concentration area, effectively disabling its personnel. C.J. and his wingman took one last sweep of the area, still looking for MiGs and radar activity, and exited to the south, finally closing the door behind the retreating Phantoms.
The first Phantoms started to recover fifty-two minutes after C.J. had led the launch. The birds flew down final at twelve hundred feet in flights of two or four and circled to land. Waters stood beside a pickup with Tom Gomez and Mike Fairly at the roll-out end of the runway, counting the birds and checking them for battle damage. One after another, the planes rolled past, the pilot or wizzo giving them a thumbs-up. Gomez and Fairly had recovered too late in the stream of traffic from Stonewood to take part in the attack and could not believe they had missed the first mission. When the last of the F-4s had cleared the active, Waters turned to them. “In less than twelve hours we flew three thousand miles, turned, and launched fifty-four birds against two targets. And all recovered with little or no battle damage. Your men did good.” To put it mildly, he silently added.
But unlike that from Ras Assanya, the launch out of Stonewood had not been perfect and five jets had aborted, not able to join the string of Phantoms headed for Ras Assanya. Locke was not surprised when his centerline fuel tank would not feed. He had taxied back in to face the worried crew chiefs. The two young sergeants vowed to get a new centerline tank that would feed if they had to cycle through every tank on base. Finally Colonel Bradley had driven up in his truck and told Jack that he was to lead four other Phantoms in a straggler flight and to go with only two tanks if they could not get a centerline to feed. After three fruitless hours of trying to get all the birds ready, Bradley had sent them all into crew rest, deciding they would launch the next morning. Jack had tried to contact Gillian, but the base was still sealed tight.
At 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday morning Jack taxied out with the last of the wing’s fighters following him. “Hell of a way to go to war, one tank short and a day late,” he said to Thunder.
“At least we’re going,” Thunder said. “I’d hate to be left here.” Since he had a different load then than the other four fighters, Jack told the other four pilots that he would make a single ship takeoff; they would follow with formation takeoffs with twenty-second spacing between pairs. The five ships took the Active with Jack in the lead as the tower cleared them for takeoff.
Thunder had now broken Ras Assanya out on the radar scope. “It looks like a boot,” he said, and indeed, the peninsula the base was located on did look like a boot that had the top of its leg stuck onto the mainland and the flat of the sole and heel pointing out to sea. They landed first and were not prepared for the intense heat when they popped their canopies.
“Son of a bitch,” Thunder muttered, “just like Egypt.” On the ramp that was a hubbub of activity, a Follow-Me truck appeared on their right and escorted them to a newly constructed concrete bunker where a ground crew was waiting to park them. They were still in the cockpit when Bull Morgan drove up in a jeep, tossed them two cold beers, bundled them into the jeep and headed for the new COIC. “What the hell’s wrong with overhead recoveries these days?” he demanded.
“Regulations call for single-ship radar approaches after a ferry-leg,” Jack said quickly, ready to defend himself.
“Start thinking like a fighter pilot. Visibility is no problem, you can see forever. Always get your flight on the ground ASAP. You’re too vulnerable in the pattern in a combat zone. But glad you decided to make it. Too bad you missed the first go yesterday. We launched against two targets and plastered them. Come on in and look at the results,” Bull said, leading them into the COIC.
Jack and Thunder joined a crowd of pilots and wizzos around a large collection of reccy photos pinned to a wall. The high-resolution photos vividly recorded the destruction the CBUs had spread, among the soldiers. Jack shook his head. “And they thought napalm was bad stuff.” He was stunned by what his wing had done. The war was over, he figured, and he had missed it.
The colonel briefing Cunningham on the results of the 45th attack concluded with the standard, “Any questions, sir?” His stomach was churning as he watched Sundown’s fingers drum on the arm of his chair in the briefing room. After what seemed an eternity the general shook his head and the colonel beat a hasty exit. Cunningham did not mind keeping the large group waiting while he considered the situation at Ras Assanya. The 45th had been in place less than four hours and had inflicted serious damage on the forces operating in Iran. If he could believe the briefer, the attack had relieved pressure on UAC forces holding the line between Iraq and Iran at Basra.
Still, the lack of damage to the 45th had made it look too easy, too much like a milk run, and two colonels had deliberately commented within his hearing that they could have done better. Cunningham had raked the two men with a quick look, convinced they didn’t have a clue about the developing situation in the Gulf. But Waters did, and he had a young Intel officer to stay on top of it…
Cunningham now probed the intentions of his adversaries, what they were likely to do with the forces they were committing into the Gulf and how they would respond to this latest setback. The buildup and positioning of forces gave the Tudeh and their allies a distinct tactical advantage and, he was sure, they would not fold their tents and steal away because they had suffered one major loss. The PSI, the People’s Soldiers of Islam, was still an Islamic Shiite organization with a strong penchant for martyrdom. Now they had another enemy to throw themselves against: the 45th.