Agadir tapped his gloved hands in a rhythmic pattern on the hatch of his command vehicle, recalling another song. He could not remember the lyrics, but the story had something to do with a young cowboy who got in a gunfight with another man over a Mexican girl.
Someplace called El Paso, which apparently was in a vast wasteland. Well, Agadir knew about that sort of place. He remembered many years ago the wisdom of his old grandfather, who had no idea how prophetically he spoke when he repeated the ancient wisdom, "No man meets a friend in the desert."
Aaron Hali keyed his mike twice, the signal for his first group to break off toward its targeted airfield. It was unnecessary, as the flight leader already had the time down pat, but Hali never took details for granted. He watched the Eagles and Kfirs break away to port, accelerating toward the southeast.
At that moment Hali's radar warning system demanded his attention. Visually and aurally he picked up the emissions of Saudi radars. He knew immediately from the frequency and tone that it was SAM tracking, undoubtedly with the track-on-scan feature which allowed short electronic glimpses of aircraft without constant monitoring. The colonel experienced two seconds of confusion.
"Where did that come from? The intel briefing mentioned nothing about SAM batteries this far north!"
Then he knew. Whoever was running the Saudi air defense net was a shrewd bastard. Undoubtedly they had moved portable launchers north of the Tiger Force bases on short notice-probably during the night. Hali ruefully admired the professionalism of the setup. Then he concentrated on dealing with it.
Warning calls came rapidly as pilots saw the missiles lift off, blowing large geysers of dust and sand as the first-stage boosters ignited.
Without looking, Hali knew his suppressors were in their dives, rolling in on the most threatening sites, but there were too many of them. Goddam it! How many were there? The desert before him seemed saturated with the telltale dust clouds of lift-off and the smoky white trails of missile boosters headed toward his formation at a slant range of ten to thirty miles.
The next few minutes were aerial bedlam. Even in the clear air it was difficult to spot the missiles in sustainer stage, lancing upward at twice the speed of sound. But there were so many-no Israeli flier had ever had to deal with such an intense concentration of SAMs.
The orderly, spaced formations became ragged as pilots opened out to loose deuce, flying the "SAM box" which allowed two planes to maneuver independently without drawing a missile toward either one. But with each wrapped-up, mind-blurring turn, with each diving countermove to defeat a missile, the formations began to disperse. Sections became separated from flight leaders, wingmen from section leads. Air discipline-a hallmark of the Heyl Ha'Avir-was sorely tested. Some pilots had to take their planes down below 3,000 feet to escape the missile barrage. Then, climbing back to altitude with heavy bomb loads still on board, they bled off energy and became more vulnerable.
Aaron Hali spotted a SAM streaking toward him from almost dead ahead. From long experience, he turned twenty degrees port, to better gauge the threat's closure. At the moment his professional instincts told him it was now or never, he wrapped his Eagle into a hard barrel roll, defeating the SAM's tracking in two planes. He snapped his head to the right, watching the smoke trail flash past him and continue to its inevitable end.
The mission leader also sensed something else. The Saudi fighters would be approaching at this very moment. He knew because that is how he would time it if he were running their show. With his pilots concentrating on evading the SAMs, their mutual support degraded by violent evasive breaks and altitude loss, this would be the perfect time to commit interceptors.
Hali glanced at his radar screen. It showed the tentative traces of Arab jamming, but he could discern blips with the fifty-mile grid.
He hoped most of his other F-15s also acquired long-range targets before both sides' ECM wiped out the radar option. The radio channels were clogged with warning cries; not much chance of alerting his Sparrow shooters. But then he relaxed a bit. They were professionals; they'd take action on their own.
The Israeli strike groups passed through the ninety-mile SAM belt in less than ten minutes. There were dirty gray tendrils in the clear blue sky, and dissipating SAM trails. There also were parachutes, and smoking wrecks on the ground. With the superb visibility from his F-15 cockpit, Hali took in the situation. It would be a few minutes before his squadrons reformed, but he estimated four to six planes had gone down. It was a small loss rate considering some 135 missiles had been launched, but any loss was irreplaceable. Hali looked again to his screen, hit the auto-acquisition switch, and locked up one of the radar blips. Then he pressed the trigger, sending an AIM-7 off the number one station at ten miles.
Major Abdullah Ben Nir glanced to either side, admiring the excellent view from his F-15. He keyed his microphone, uttered a terse order, and returned his attention to his radar scope. The Israeli jamming was taking effect; his two flights would have to shoot fast. The Saudi squadron commander designated his target and pressed the trigger, firing his first Sparrow at twelve miles. He anticipated the built-in delay but the AIM-7 never appeared. Its rocket motor had failed to ignite.
Cursing to himself, Ben Nir double-checked his switchology, confirmed lock-on, and pressed the trigger again. This time his weapon functioned properly. The radar-equipped F-20s also fired their two sparrows, then prepared for the coming "knife fight."
Airpower historians later would describe it as the largest radar missile shootout ever. Nobody would ever know for certain, but it was reliably estimated in staff studies-in Riyadh, Tel Aviv, London, Washington, and Moscow-that over the next few minutes some eighty Sparrows were fired, slightly more by the Saudis than Israelis. Since ECM efforts already were in progress, many of the missiles were decoyed or diverted. Others were evaded by hard maneuvering which further split up leaders and wingmen. Four Israeli aircraft were knocked out of the air or too badly damaged to continue. Seven Saudi planes were lost in the exchange. Major Ben Nir knew his orders were to disengage as soon as he'd expended his AIM-7s, but he found the opportunity too much to pass up. Rocking his wings, he led his wingman and second section into the fringes of the fight he knew would be developing.
In the second flight of Black Squadron, Lieutenant Mohammad Assad caught sight of the white smoke trail headed for his F -20. Hurtling toward him with an inhuman intelligence at nearly Mach 4, the big Raytheon missile seemed to eat up the miles. With pounding heart, Assad executed the barrel roll maneuver he had been taught for such cases. He loaded six Gs on the wings of his Tigershark, completing the maneuver three seconds too early.
Timing is crucial to defeating an airborne missile. Too late a countermove allows no latitude at all. Too early, and the missile has time for a mid-course correction. Assad had a glimpse of the Sparrow compensating for his turn out of plane, and yanked the stick hard over. He knew as he initiated the maneuver that it was too late.
The AIM- 7 smashed into the Northrop just behind the port wing. A violent explosion blew the fighter inverted at 200 feet over the rocky terrain. Instinctively, Assad pushed the stick full over in an attempt to right the aircraft. Never quit trying. From inverted, he looked through the top of his canopy in the last seconds of his life and watched his homeland rush up to greet his stricken aircraft. Like a canister of napalm, a large fireball scarred the desert landscape, marking the end of Mohammad Assad, citizen of Saudi Arabia, fighter pilot, and martyr at age twenty-one.