Ras Assanya. The name kept pounding at him. Without a word to his staff he hustled out of the room, telling his aide to get Brigadier General John Shaw into his office immediately.
Cunningham told Shaw: “The President wants to convince the hotheads in the Gulf to cool their water.” He didn’t smile at the unintended pun. “Unfortunately his hands are being tied by critics in Congress and some of the media that’s scared of another Vietnam. The President’s advisers are telling him that he was lucky even to get the 45th in place, and he’s under a great deal of pressure to get out of the Gulf. He has taken the Rapid Deployment Force off alert and is keeping most of the naval task force in the Gulf of Oman, just outside the Strait of Hormuz.
“Since we got the 45th into Ras Assanya, I want to make it a force strong enough to hurt the PSI and make them back off. We’re going to reinforce the wing through Third Air Force and I’m making you Third Air Force’s Director of Resources, Material and Personnel. Set up the logistic support necessary to ensure the effectiveness and survival of the 45th… Make it a base that can fight a war.”
After Shaw had left, Cunningham buzzed for Stevens. The colonel entered the office and stood waiting, expecting what was to come. “Dick, how long have you been sitting on Third’s list of possible replacement commanders for the 45th?”
“I had it Saturday night—”
“So why didn’t you give it to me then?” The general was calm, no anger in his voice.
“Because, sir, I wanted to read both inspection reports first. That’s why I ran out after you had finished with Waters. I figured he had them and wanted to catch him before he left. I hadn’t read them when all this broke on Sunday so I waited to see what would happen. Besides, you didn’t fire him on the spot; I figured there must have been some doubt in your own mind. I tell you, sir, I trust him. He said his wing was ready and I believed him. Events proved he was right—”
“What if you were wrong?”
“Well, sir” — the colonel risked a smile — “I was looking for a new job when I got this one.”
“And you almost got one, in Leavenworth,” the general said, dismissing his aide and keeping a straight face. After Stevens had left, Cunningham lit a cigar and paced his office. Dick Stevens just might be the first ground-pounder Chief of Staff. For sure he had saved one General Cunningham from a whopper of a mistake.
The next frag order committing the wing against new targets had come in. The weapons-and-tactics officers from each squadron had gathered with Waters, Tom Gomez and the squadron commanders to allocate targets around the wing. The message from General Cunningham commending Waters and the wing on their deployment and first mission had sent the wing commander’s spirits soaring but made Jack worry… The wing had set a standard of combat without him. He wondered if he could match it.
He found some relief by throwing himself into planning their mission against a line of heavy artillery that was pounding UAC positions near Basra. The 379th was tasked to attack with four Phantoms what looked like big howitzers on the reccy photos. Fairly had elected to lead a two-aircraft element against the northern battery while Jack would lead the second pair against the southern battery. His doubt started to build again as they went through the final briefing and stepped to their Phantom. Thunder preflighted the Mark-82 Snakeyes hung on the Triple Ejection Racks on the inboard pylons. He jerked a thumbs-up when he was ready to go.
Jack walked outside the bunker and urinated on the sand, noting that other pilots and wizzos were doing the same, then clambered up the ladder into his cockpit and strapped in.
A pickup truck drove by, streaming a yellow flag from a fender mount that signaled them to start engines. Maintaining radio silence, they launched over the quiet waters of the Gulf, and Thunder commented on seeing a lone ship that looked like a fishing trawler cruising nine miles offshore. Jack grunted, tried to stow his self-doubts and worries…
Fairly, leading his two-aircraft element, jinked his Phantom hard as he came off the target. He had flown a short curvilinear approach onto the gun emplacement, making it almost impossible to track his fast-moving fighter, and had acquired a late sight picture. His thumb flicked on the pickle button and the six Mark-82s slung under his wings rippled off, walking across the artillery tubes. The first bomb exploded short of the target, sending fragments and flying rock over a wide area. The second and third bombs bracketed the first 122-millimeter howitzer, shattering the gun, taking out its seven-man crew. The fourth bomb impacted on the ammunition dump between the gun pits, setting off a series of massive secondary explosions as the shells blew up. The fifth bomb landed directly in a gun pit, but it was a dud. The sixth scored a hit on the dugout that served as a command post, wiping out the eighteen men inside. Fragments from the five bombs and the secondary explosions in the ammo dump reached out over a thousand yards, adding to the destruction…
A seventeen-year-old Soldier of Islam had jumped for cover when he saw the Phantom start its run onto the gun emplacement. At first he thought the fighter was aiming for him, until he saw, with embarrassment, that he was well clear of the intended target. He jumped back onto his anti-aircraft gun, a Soviet-made ZSU-23-2, and raked the sky with a burst of twenty-three-millimeter high-explosive ammunition. The two barrels of the gun emptied eighty rounds into the sky in a rapid burst of fire. The teenager had been trained by his unit’s Russian adviser, but he had not understood the man’s explanations and, like the rest of the company, he detested the Russian for being a foreigner, even though he claimed to be Shiite and spoke fluent Farsi. Still, he was able to load and fire the gun, though he never saw the Phantom after it released its bombs.
One bullet hit the underside of Fairly’s aircraft as he jinked to the right, but the bullet’s fuse mechanism had jammed on impact and the shell did not explode. Fairly should have been able to recover the Phantom despite the battle damage it had taken. Unfortunately it was the “Golden BB,” the lucky shot, the aircrews often joked about, and it struck the LOX bottle under Johnny Nelson’s seat in the pit. The highly volatile liquid oxygen bottle exploded, shattering Nelson’s seat and jamming the wizzo through the canopy. Fragments of the LOX bottle and seat ripped through the lower part of his body while the canopy crushed his skull. The stick went dead in Fairly’s right hand as the Phantom rocked from its internal explosion. He automatically pulled the ejection handle between his legs, but nothing happened. He reached for the handles on the headrest of his seat and jerked them forward as the fighter spun out of control and into the ground, exploding on impact.
Waters and Gomez sat in the broiling pickup truck near the end of the runway listening to the radio traffic as the flights started to recover, each flight of four checking in with the tower as they called for landing clearance. Both men sucked in their breath when they saw a flight of three enter the pattern. Waters shot his DO a quick glance when they heard Jack’s voice check the flight in with the tower. Jack was the backup lead… Mike Fairly was missing. Gomez gunned his truck toward the COIC to await the arrival of the crews for debrief.
Mike Fairly. Johnny Nelson. The names beat a constant punctuation into Waters as he listened to Jack’s debrief. He wanted to ask questions, to interrupt the sergeant conducting the debrief, to get to the main point — the loss of Fairly. But he forced himself to let the young woman methodically plow through the series of detailed questions that reconstructed the mission.