It was, of course, impossible to avoid all the defense sites, and they deliberately challenged a few emplacements, relying on surprise and hoping to catch the PSI at their early-morning prayers. Waters was leading the first attack flight and was nearing his IP. Sweat poured off his face as he concentrated on picking up the small cluster of buildings located at the junction of two dirt roads that his wizzo had selected as their Initial Point. It flashed into his front left-quarter panel, exactly where it was supposed to be. As his flight flew over the buildings he could see six figures still kneeling on the ground next to their trucks, looking at the fighters turning above them. They would soon be on their radios, warning the railroad marshaling junction an attack was imminent and fighters were inbound. Well, they would have to be damn quick; he was less than a minute out.
So far the PSI had not reacted. Waters doubted it would be as smooth getting out. It depended on the last half of Jack’s plan. Two miles out from the junction he pulled in a pop maneuver, seeing the railroad junction with eight boxcars on sidings for the first time. He rolled in and pickled his bombs off. Before the bombs exploded he could see figures running for cover. He jinked the Phantom hard as he escaped, not taking chances, expecting to receive ground fire. His wizzo told him the other three planes in his flight were safely off target; their six o’clock was clear and no bandits were in sight. Waters was too old a hand to relax and concentrated on getting himself and his wingman out of the target area. They headed southwest, toward the city of Basra, an escape route they had never used before.
Jack’s plan had been simple: egress over Basra, the pivot point of the whole conflict. He had maintained that the UAC would never be able to coordinate its own air-defense network sufficiently to allow the fighters through. But if the UAC ordered its own Triple A and SAMs to remain at weapons-tight, only shooting at aircraft positively identified as hostile between 8:00 at night and 7:00 each morning, the 45th could hit its targets early in the morning and sneak through before the gunners started shooting at everything in sight. The UAC had agreed and sent out the order the day before. Mashur was still in England, taking a prolonged vacation…
The last of the Phantoms exited over Basra at 6:44 A.M. with MiGs in hot pursuit. The escorting F-15s had turned around and were sorting the MiGs out, each Eagle driver picking his target. For the next six minutes the embattled inhabitants and defenders of Basra watched as the F-15s met the MiGs over their city, engaging in classic aerial combat. Instead of zooming through the oncoming Floggers, the first flight of Eagles stayed and mixed it up, with most of the agile fighters using the vertical to turn with the slightly smaller MiG-23 Floggers. From the ground it looked as if the Eagles had hinges on their tails as they flopped over, always keeping their nose on a MiG. For the MiG pilots it was a terrifying experience, seeing the F-15s turn so quickly and not being able to disengage, to escape. The sky filled with the smoke trails of Sidewinder missiles and the falling wreckage of six MiG Floggers.
The second flight of Eagles ripped through the fight, heading for a second wave of oncoming MiGs, and the deadly ballet repeated itself as three more Floggers fell out of the sky. The third wave of MiGs opted not to engage and ran for home.
Stansell had forbidden his pilots to pursue the MiGs back into hostile territory, and so once the sky had been swept clean he ordered his birds home. His words crackled over the radio, “Recover as briefed,” which also meant no showboat victory rolls.
At the debrief in the COIC Waters saw how closely success and morale were linked. One of the F-15 pilots had produced a case of champagne and toasts were being intermingled with an occasional dousing. Stansell walked in then, looked around and made his way through the crowd to wing commander Waters. “We did good,” he said.
“You did good. I saw you didn’t let them do victory rolls on recovery. You’ve got a bunch of disciplined pros flying for you. Maybe next, though, you ought to let ’em. They’ve earned it. But of course it’s your decision—”
Their exchange was interrupted by an announcement over the loudspeaker, “Your attention in the COIC. All, repeat all, aircraft have safely recovered.”
Cups were refilled and the crews turned and looked to Waters. But before he could find the right words, Bull Morgan took over. “Gentlemen, to our commander, Colonel Waters.”
The reccy photos being projected on the screen of the main briefing room told a tale of destruction and success — the wing had stopped the latest flow of men and supplies before they could move into position to attack Basra. Every pilot and wizzo was there, listening to Carroll as he recounted the BDA from that morning’s mission and confirmed seven of the nine MiG kills. Two of the Flogger pilots had been captured, more or less intact, and were undergoing “interrogation” by the UAC.
After the briefing Waters told Jack and C.J. in Carroll’s small office that JUSMAG wanted them to launch Wolf Flight that same night for a cleanup on specific targets. Reports had it that the PSI was moving at night and forming convoys at transloading points. Those points were the new designated targets.
“They’ll be waiting, Colonel.” Carroll, from previous flights, was almost certain there was an intelligence leak in the UAC.
“I know, but we’ve hurt them. Now’s the time to keep punching,” Waters said.
“I think we need to go back to pairing a Weasel with an E model for this one.” Jack was already committed.
C.J., the bald-headed major, agreed. “They’ll be expecting us when the moon is up. We ought to hit them right at the end of evening twilight, just after it gets dark and before the moon rises. We need to do something different on this one.”
“Mostly, we need to get them looking where we ain’t,” Jack said. Jack didn’t like having his targets picked for him. It felt too much like a setup.
As for Waters, his training and experience told him to press the attack, hit the enemy when he was hurting. Sure… except some gut instinct told him to scrub the mission, quit while they were ahead. But the USAF didn’t pay him to go by his gut instincts…
Jack let Thunder do most of the planning, pulled up a chair in front of the big area map on the wall and stared at it. “Hey, come here a minute,” he said. “That damn trawler is back on station and Reza doesn’t have another oil tanker to run interference for us again. It’ll warn the PSI when we take off, like before. Besides, they’re expecting us now, which makes hitting the targets pretty damn risky… But how about if we let the trawler know when we’ve launched? The first flight will get high enough so the trawler can paint them on its radar. Instead of flying welded wing, the two birds will move, say, two thousand feet apart. We make it look like two strike elements on their radar, hope they’ll think we’re flying our normal close formation and assume they’re seeing four aircraft. Keep low so they’ll have a rough time tracking but high enough to divert their attention away from the six birds we’ll launch right after the first two. Those six will be going after the real targets, and they’ll have to get down in the weeds to avoid radar detection. They’ll fly together and go right over Basra again, only this time they will be on an easterly heading, inbound to the target. Since it’s at night the friendlies’ll be at weapons-tight over Basra. Besides, they should be looking to the east and we’ll surprise them as much as the Gomers. Once clear of Basra they head directly for their targets, but instead of turning south to escape, they head north before turning westbound and getting out of enemy territory. It’ll be a long low-level and that means we’ve got to have a KC-135 waiting for inflight refueling once we’re in friendly airspace over Iraq. At the same time the first flight draws all the attention to itself, hits the closest target we can pick and beats feet home, providing the diversion we need to get the other six in.”