Force of Eagles (43 page)

“Get back down in the weeds,” Von Drexler’s WSO shouted, nudging on the stick to get his attention. But the pilot did nothing, and the F-111 continued to climb out well above the mountain peaks. The radar-warning gear started to chirp, telling them they were in the beam of a search radar. Von Dander sat motionless. “Oh, shitksy,” the WSO groaned, and took control of the jet, nosed it over and headed for the deck…

“You fucking turkey,” Doucette raged in the confines of his cockpit. It was all he could do not to transmit his anger over the UHF for the world to hear.

Some luck, though, was still with them—the radar operator at Maragheh was awake but still in bed, thinking about a certain double-jointed woman he knew in town.

But luck was a fickle lady.

*

Kermanshah, Iran

“Roundup, this is Romeo One.” Trimler was holding the headset of a PRC-77 FM radio against one ear so he could hear what else was going on around him. The Ranger team had moved into position but were still in the trucks parked along a road paralleling the front of the prison. They had stopped so the left sides of the trucks were facing the guard towers and the right sides were shielded from view.

Carroll had reassured him that the Kurds would keep any unwanted traffic off the road and that the other trucks were ready to move in once the prison was secured. The two Rangers with the mules were perched beside him, ready to move. The mules in this case were Laser-Target Designators, short bulky-looking rifles that only shot a laser beam at a target. A laser-guided bomb would catch the reflected energy off the target and home on the spot the Ranger aimed at, hitting within inches of the aim point.

“Come on, answer, damn you,” Trimler muttered. He didn’t know that Mado was busy talking to the President of the United States on the SatCom. He checked his watch and unable to wait any longer, motioned the Rangers to deploy. The men rolled out of the right side of the trucks into a ditch at the side of the road. Trimler followed the radio-telephone operator with the PRC-77 into the ditch. The trucks drove away, leaving a clear view across the road toward the prison that was three hundred yards directly in front of them. All heads were down…with the trucks gone, only the long shadows cast by the rising sun and the ditch offered them cover from the guard’s positions in the towers.

Trimler radioed again. This time another voice answered—Thunder Bryant “Read you five by, Romeo One. Your company is one minute out.”

Trimler pointed at his watch and held up one finger. One minute to go. He pointed at his eyes with two forked fingers and then pointed to their objective—the command for spotters. Two men stuck their heads above the ditch, and one trained his binoculars on the guard towers, watching for any sign of detection, while the other searched for the inbound F-111s.

“A guard’s looking right at me,” the spotter watching the towers said. “Hold on…negative. He’s watching something on the horizon.” The men could now hear the rumble of a distant jet coming their way.

*

“Spectre Zero-One, Mover Two-Three,” Doucette radioed. “IP now.” The F-111 was moving at over 560 knots as it streaked over the Initial Point and turned inbound to the target. Doucette had the jet down at two hundred feet as they made the run. They were right on time and the Pave Tack pod was deployed below the weapons bay as Contreraz refined on the target

“Rog, Mover,” Beasely replied, “cleared in hot.”

“Spectre, Mover Two-One has aborted for a bird strike,” Doucette told the AC-130. “I’m single ship, going for right wall and admin building on first pass.” Doucette scanned his weapons panel, double checking the switches. He didn’t want to reattack because of a switch error. But he did plan to reattack and punch a hole in the left side of the wall—Von Drexler’s target.

Contreraz confirmed that the video tape recorder was on and buried his head in the scope, still working the radar, about ready to transition to the Pave Tack pod. His left hand was by the scope, flicking a switch, changing the scope’s picture from radar to the video picture coming from the Pave Tack pod. He kept refining his cursor placement, then switched to infrared, moved the cursors again and activated the system.

*

On board the AC-130 Bryant and Mado were engaged in a furious argument “They should hit the left side first,” Mado shouted.

“Negative. Too late to change now. Mover Two-Three has got to ripple two bombs off into the admin building to get the guards. Call Jack in. He can punch a hole in the left wall.”

But Mado had made his decision. He twisted his intercom wafer switch to UHF and hit the transmit button. “Mover Two-Three, hit the left side of the wall.”

“Torch, hit the admin building.” It was Stansell He had been monitoring the UHF radio. “Jack, fall in behind Mover and take out the left side.”

“Roger,” Doucette answered.

“Rog, copy all,” Jack said. It was his first transmission, he had been maintaining radio silence. He broke out of the low orbit he was in and turned toward Kermanshah, now seeing Doucette’s F-111 In front of him.

Mado’s voice crackled over the UHF. “Use your call signs and authenticate. Repeat, authenticate your last transmissions.”

“Fuck that noise,” Contreraz grumbled. He had recognized Stansell’s voice. He bumped his target cursors a hair to the right—a final refinement. “Ready, Ready…” Contreraz watched the range counter on his scope roll down to 23,000 feet as the Time To Go counter ran out. “PULL” Doucette brought the nose of the F-111 up into a forty-five degree climb, smoothly following the command steering from the Weapons-Nay Computer.

The F-111 twitched as two bombs rippled off. “Bombs gone,” Doucette called over the UHF. He banked 110 degrees away to the right and began bringing the nose to the horizon. Contreraz continued to track the target through the Pave Tack pod. The bombs would fly for almost thirty seconds before hitting the target…

*

“Romeo One,” Bryant’s voice came over Trimler’s FM radio, “lase the right side first. Repeat, lase the right side of the wall first.”

“Romeo One copies,” Trimler said, “Right side first.” He pointed at the closest Ranger holding a mule. “Laser up, right side,” he commanded. The man raised his head above the ditch and leveled the mule at the wall.

“Laser on,” came over the radio. Trimler had turned up the audio on the PRC-77 so the Ranger could hear the transmissions. Maintaining silence was not a concern now.

“Gadget’s on,” the Ranger said, squeezing the trigger to the first detent to place the crosshairs and then to full action to turn the laser on.

“Gadget’s on,” Trimler relayed.

A spotter yelled, “One of the guards has seen the plane, he’s coming down the ladder like his tail’s on fire. I can see the bombs…”

“Spotters down,” Trimler barked, trying to keep them from being hit by flying debris or bomb fragments…

*

Mary Hauser was curled up on her bunk, trying to conserve what body heat she could. For the first time she was thankful for the blanket-like chador. When Amini, the friendly guard, had said it was time to return to her cell and leave Landis, she had covered the doctor with her blanket. Amini had protested but she had insisted and started to raise her voice. Rather than risk discovery, he had given in.

At first the muted rumbling didn’t register with her. Then she snapped fully awake as the sound grew louder…It was a jet flying by the prison at high speed. She knew what it meant…“Come
on
, you beauties, come
on
.” Her voice, she realized, echoed down the hall, and she hoped it reached every corridor in the administration building above her head, and especially that Mokhtari heard.

“Doc, hit the deck,” she called out as she threw herself on the floor and rolled under the bunk.

*

The two five-hundred-pound, laser-guided bombs fell in tandem toward the prison. It had been a perfect toss and both seeker heads picked up the reflected laser energy bouncing off the wall. The bombs made little jerking motions, refining their trajectory as they homed. The first bomb impacted two feet left of the spot the Ranger was illuminating with the mule and exploded on impact. The Ranger’s reactions were right on. He actually saw the bomb as it struck the wall and threw himself back into the ditch, holding onto his helmet. The explosion blew over the men, pounding their bodies, stunning their senses. But they had been in the same situation before and thanks to their training there was no panic.

The second bomb lost the laser signature it was homing on when the first bomb exploded. It then went into a memory mode and continued on its last trajectory, flying through the crumbling gap the first bomb had knocked in the wall and on into the administration building. It exploded on impact.

*

The F-15E streaked down the valley, its airspeed riveted on 540 knots. Shadows and early morning mist had degraded their forward visibility but the forward looking infrared sensor in the navigation pod slung under the right intake was creating a perfect picture on Jack Locke’s head-up display. They were still ten miles away. “Amb, I’m goin’ to lay down a Snakeye,” Jack told his backseater.

Furry wished they were carrying a GBU-15 with a 2,000 pound warhead. He wanted to guide something big onto the prison. As he continued to work he did not have to bury his head in a scope like Contreraz. Instead he sat upright monitoring the four displays in front of him. His fingers played on the switches and buttons of his hand controllers as he readied the system for the delivery. He had his cursors on the same spot Jack was aiming for. And the radar image was a perfect match with the infrared. He activated the system. “You’ve got steering,” he told Jack.

“See if you can get a better picture,” Jack said.

Again Furry’s fingers played a tune on his hand-controllers as he worked the radar screen. He enlarged the area around the prison and froze the image. He had a high-resolution patch-map of the prison compound that covered two-thirds of a nautical mile.

“Shit hot,” Jack called over the intercom, “Doucette did it. Two bulls right on target. Amb, check for BDA.” Furry looked over Jack’s right shoulder doing a bomb-damage assessment. He could see the smoke and dust still rising from the right side of the prison. They were less than twenty seconds out. The HUD showed Jack that he was dead-on and had the steering wired.

On the videotape that recorded the run it looked easy with all the sophisticated systems working as advertised, but they were working
because
of the men in the cockpit. And there was no better example of that than Jack Locke, a cool pro who had already lived through the pressure-cooker of combat. He had learned through experience how to confront the unbelievable stress that flying a mission generated. Few men juggled the task-saturation, the disorientation, the incredible number of tasks that had to be performed at once and correctly in aerial combat. If he balanced them all, life and success were on the other side of the equals sign. It was a hard formula that most men chose not to solve—Locke was doing it out of choice—and he was a master at it.

As they flashed over the open space in front of the prison, Furry could see the Rangers crouched in the ditch and felt the bomb separate from the left stub pylon. Then they were over the prison, going straight ahead to clear the frag-pattern the bomb would kick up. Jack dipped the right wing so they could get a better view of the compound. Then they were clear, flying over the old barracks behind the prison. Jack pulled up to the right so they could see where their bomb hit.

“A bull,” Furry yelled when he saw the hole they had punched in the wall. “Not much left of the admin building. Doucette started a fire down there—nothin’ left but hot hair, teeth and eyeballs. Rangers ain’t goin’ in through there.”

“Here comes Spectre,” Jack said. The AC-130 gunship was right behind them and setting up a thirty-degree left-hand pylon turn around the prison…

*

Mokhtari was almost dressed when he first heard the deep rumble of Doucette’s F-111 running in on the prison. For a moment he stood in his bedroom, the sound not registering as it grew louder. When he realized it was an airplane he dove under his bed. The explosion of the first bomb taking down the outside wall washed over him. He was not prepared for the intensity of the second bomb when it exploded inside the administration building. The power of the noise and shock-wave stunned him but he did not pass out. In a dreamlike state he felt the floor under him collapse, was aware that he was falling through to the floor below…

He was semi-conscious as he watched the walls collapse around him. And then he saw the dark gray form of Jack Locke’s F-15 flash past, barely clearing the top of the prison. A firebrand of hate burned through him, leaving a raw urge to kill the Americans. Jack’s bomb exploded, and again a shock wave pounded at him, this time driving him into unconsciousness.

*

The two dull booms echoed across the valley of Kermanshah and the young goatherd turned in his tracks, ten feet short of the gully where Kamigami and Jamison were hidden. Like most twelve-year-olds the boy wandered around in a daydream of heroics and fancies. Now he looked puzzled by the sudden intrusion of reality into his perfect world. He stared at the smoke billowing up from the southern edge of the town, fixing its location. And he watched transfixed as Locke’s F-15 ran onto the prison and pulled up. For a moment
he
was in the cockpit, guiding the fighter into combat, killing the American enemies he had heard about on TV and the radio.

Then the explosion of the third bomb reverberated through the valley and he knew what it meant. Hated Americans were attacking the prison and bombing the walls. He ran back to his family’s compound, away from the death that waited for him ten feet away. He stopped in mid-flight and turned back to gather the goats, then thought better of it, turned again and ran for home…

Kamigami waited until he could no longer hear the boy’s retreating footsteps, then raised his head over the edge of the shallow ravine, keeping in the shadow of the rock, and made sure they were alone. He returned his knife to its sheath and picked up his M-203, an M-16 rifle with a 40mm grenade-launcher grafted to the underside of its barrel. “Would you actually have…?” Jamison’s voice trailed off at the thought.