Jack gave him a puzzled look.
“Wolf Flight is your baby and he won’t take it away from you,” Thunder said.
Jack nodded… “I think Doc Landis wants to ground me for a while while he cures me of the clap.” Jack said it with a straight face. Now everyone started to volunteer their slot for Waters, and one wizzo suggested they should make the wing commander a WSO so he could get a night off.
“Colonel, if you want to lead a flight, I’ll be your wingy,” Jack offered, and within a few minutes it was arranged with Stan-the-Man flying in Waters’ pit.
The mission that Waters laid out for them was significantly different from the previous sorties. The wing commander pointed out that an identified headquarters merited much more attention and that both Phantoms would split at the IP and both would hit it. He would go first, using a new version of the Maverick they had received — the Maverick had been designed as an electro-guided anti-tank missile. The wizzo’s radar scope became a TV screen that repeated what the seeker head was imaging. The wizzo drove the scope’s target cursors over a high-contrast part of the target and locked on. The seeker head memorized the contrast, and when the pilot hit the pickle button the Maverick launched and homed in. The new Mavericks the 45th had received used a double-infrared seeker head that was very sensitive to heat signatures created by buildings, vehicles and people. Waters calculated that a headquarters would be very “hot” indeed at night.
At the prearranged time eight Phantoms of Wolf Flight hit their start buttons. But the number-two engine of Wolf One-Nine would not ignite when the RPM wound past fifteen percent. The wingman tried again, and still no ignition. It was an automatic abort for the pair of One-Nine and One-Eight. The remaining six birds fast-taxied for the runway. Waters and Jack were the last to take off since they had the closest target. Instead of hugging the water at two hundred feet, as Jack would have preferred, he lifted them up to four hundred feet, explaining that an old man’s reflexes weren’t that good. Waters reasoned that the trawler would send a launch warning no matter what altitude they ingressed at. But he was wrong; it was the PSI’s coastal watch team that was sending the warnings. The trawler crew was apparently being lazy and not too concerned about detecting launches; it just monitored the watch team’s frequency and repeated their warning over another frequency.
Waters used the higher altitude and pushed his throttles up, increasing his indicated airspeed to 480 knots over water. Stan kept grousing about the lousy RHAW gear in the pit of the F-4E but seemed satisfied that no search radars had found them. At the IP, Waters called, “Split,” slight pause, “now.” He punched his clock, starting the second hand as the two fighters moved off on separate headings, losing contact with each other in the night. It was a new tactic for the Wolves and one that would make a rejoin very difficult.
Stan was concentrating on the image on his radar scope as Waters ran for his pop point. “A great picture, I think I’ve got the heat signature. It’s glowing like a bonfire.”
Waters grunted in acknowledgment, concentrating on wiring his speed at 520 knots and maintaining his compass heading as the clock ran down the seconds. He would pop at exactly one minute, eight-and-a-half miles in from the IP. He was using basic dead reckoning. As the second hand flicked onto sixty seconds Waters pulled the nose up, trusting Stan to get an early lock-on. Their RHAW gear came alive with chirps and barks of audio warning as air-defense radars found them.
“Locked on. Cleared to pickle,” Stan said as he punched the chaff buttons on his left console. He did not, though, hit the flare button, knowing flares would draw attention to their part of the sky and might distract Jack, who should be rolling in right behind them. Stan would use flares and more chaff once he sighted a missile plume.
Waters rolled his Phantom one hundred thirty-five degrees and pulled its nose to the target, apexing at nineteen hundred feet, a tight pop. His finger flicked twice on the pickle button, sending two Mavericks on their way. Their sensitive seeker heads had pinpointed the target and homed in, allowing Waters to launch and leave. The explosions would serve as marker beacons for Jack to drop his load of Mark-82s on, which would do the real damage.
Waters keyed his radio, “Zero-One off hot.” He had to tell Jack that he was clear of the target and the Mavericks were on the way. “SAM launch, eight o’clock,” he warned Stan. The SAMs’ rocket plumes were easily seen in the dark.
“Rog, Boss,” Sam acknowledged. “Tallyho. No radar activity, probably an SA-9. Break—now.” Waters wrenched the Phantom’s nose into the oncoming missiles, turning his tail away from their IR-guided seeker heads as Stan punched his flare button. Four flares shot out behind the F-4 and exploded, capturing the missiles’ guidance head and sending them clear of the F-4. Six Mark-82s flashed in the night, and Jack was off the target. “Come right to one-three-five degrees,” Stan directed. Waters envied his calm. “Thunder’s found us with his radar. That interceptor symbol on the RHAW gear is from an F-4 radar.”
Waters glanced at the small scope and saw an aircraft symbol at their four o’clock position, closing on them.
“Flash your anti-collision light,” the bear directed. “Give Jack something to home on visually.”
Waters bounced the flasher switch on, then off.
Stan had twisted in his seat to ensure they only flashed for a moment. When the anti-collision light did not come on, he said, “No light, boss. Make sure the fuselage switch is in the bright position and try it again.”
Waters toggled the switch from DIM to BRT and hit the flasher switch again. This time the anti-collision light on the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer flashed twice and went out.
“Thanks, Stan,” Waters said. Damn, I’m rusty, he thought. No wonder this is a young man’s game…
“No problem, boss,” Stan said, knowing how easy it was to lose your edge.
“Tallyho,” Jack radioed. “Check right. Zero-One.”
Waters did not acknowledge and “check” turned twenty degrees to the right as Jack had ordered.
A shadow slid over them and dropped into position on their left wing, materializing into the angular shape of an F-4. Jack was back in formation and they were on course.
“He’s good,” Waters said. “He made the rejoin look routine.”
“They’re both damn good,” Stan added…
In the debrief the men found out how good Waters was. Without notes he ran through the entire mission, pulling from memory headings, speeds and altitudes. “We ingressed into the target at a different airspeed and altitude primarily to add more variables to our method of operating. I don’t know if the Gomers monitored that phase of our flight or not. But if they did they now have plenty more factors to consider when they engage us. The idea is to make the situation more complicated for them, not us, and we’re doing it.” The colonel concentrated on the IP-through-escape phase of the mission, asking if Jack had any trouble acquiring the target.
“Not with the Mavericks acting as Willie Petes,” Jack said, alluding to the white phosphorous marking rockets that slow-moving Forward Air Controllers used to mark targets.
“Yeah, but these Willie Petes hurt like hell and are accurate,” Stan replied. “We need to use more of them. Beats the hell out of wide-area ordnance.” The bear obviously preferred the rifle-bullet-through-the-heart method to the shotgun approach when dropping lethal ordnance. The bear was well named.
The man removed his dark glasses when he entered the hospital room in Tehran. He studied the general lying in the bed… one leg was missing, the heavy bandage on his head confirmed he had lost an eye and the left side of his face was mangled. The man shuddered at the sight, thanking Allah it was not him; he preferred a quick and clean martyrdom. He suspected he had been summoned to the hospital for a very important reason when he made his normal courier run. The People’s Soldiers of Islam commander’s hawklike eye glared at the man from the silver Mercedes. “We monitored the radios of the devils who did this to me.” The voice coming from the mass of bandages was not weak and had lost none of its command. “Find out who this is — this Wolf Zero-One — kill him. No — tell me and I will arrange his death.”