Raid on the Sun (24 page)

He did a quick mental check of the plane: fuel—more than half gone—engine temperature and RPMs—both normal. Electrical systems were positive. He programmed his chaff and flare systems now. During release, as he executed a 7-G turn and climbed at the speed of sound in order to defeat any SAMs chasing his tail, Raz would release his flares and chaff. The flares exploded like gigantic flashbulbs, burning brighter and hotter than the aircraft’s exhaust and, hopefully, confusing any heatseeking SAM-6s. The chaff, thousands of strips of confettilike tinfoil, would also draw off radar-guided missiles fooled by the masking of the plane’s metal signature.

Raz released the throttle with his left hand, then awkwardly stretched that hand across his chest and used it to grab the control stick on the right side of the cockpit. That allowed the right-handed pilot to use his more dexterous right hand to operate the chaff and flare switches behind him. As he strained backward, keeping his eyes forward, Raz concentrated on the control stick. One slip of his “spastic” left hand and he could nose the plane into the ground.

Dammit, Raz thought, fumbling for the switches behind his seat, it would have been nice if they had designed the cockpit so you didn’t have to twist around like a yogi to reach the controls. He had twenty bundles of chaff. He set a computerized program that would eject two bundles of chaff every two seconds during the ten seconds of pop-up, in case a SAM or AAA radar locked onto him during the climb. He programmed the last ten bundles to eject automatically from the tail after he had released his bombs and was thrusting up and away from the target. He turned his attention back to flying. Up ahead he could see lights from a small town.

Khidhir Hamza stood outside a car repair shop just off the dusty main highway from Baghdad, about a mile and a half north of al-Tuwaitha. It was about 6:30, and the cars normally roaring by during evening rush hour had thinned. The week before, a pickup truck had rammed Hamza’s late-model Volkswagen Passat in the side, crumpling his fender. He had brought the car in to the body shop for repairs and painting. A Passat was something of a prestige car in the Middle East, and it was more than worth the money to keep the car looking sharp. As the Atomic Energy project director stood on the lot, waiting for his car, he was startled by a thunderous noise in the west. He looked skyward as a flurry of Israeli fighter planes suddenly shot past the rooftops of the village, two by two by two by two, heading straight for the concrete-and-aluminum dome of Osirak down the road. He could not believe his eyes. Oh my God! Hamza thought. They are going to bomb the Nuclear Research Center. If he had not arranged to have his car repaired that day, he would have been sitting in his office in the administration building this very second.

Yadlin, Yaffe, and Katz glanced down at the tiny village where Hamza stood rooted to the garage parking lot, then prepared for their final approach behind the leader, Raz. Yadlin punched up the targeting control panel on the console above his left knee. The digital screen sprang to life, lighting up in green characters and numbers, showing that the “pickle-button,” the red firing pin on the end of his control stick, was selected to fire Sidewinders. With his left thumb he clicked the three-way switch to the right, changing the pickle to the MK-84s. He glanced at the display screen for the readouts on the bombs, checking that they were armed and programmed to drop together at the same instant. The screen display gave him the minimum altitude the bombs had to fall before the delayed fuses would arm: 4.8 seconds. The MK-84s would need to fall at least twenty-five hundred feet before hitting the reactor, otherwise they would fail to arm and be nothing more than duds.

In the lead, Raz had also switched on his weapons and bomb display. The dot of the pipper, the round bull’s-eye circle at the end of the vertical bomb-fall line, glowed on the screen. The digital symbol resembled a clock pendulum. As Raz closed on Osirak, the pipper dot moved toward the target icon. When the dot covered the target completely, he would squeeze the “bombs away” button with his right thumb. He checked the INS: eighteen miles to al-Tuwaitha. He watched the mileage click by: fourteen miles, ten miles, six. Up ahead, through the cockpit, Raz could now make out the white, shiny dome of Osirak and the outline of some of the surrounding building. He could see the towering earthen revetments that surrounded the entire compound. They looked mammoth, even at this distance. God, the work that went into all this, flashed through his mind. He squinted, searching for the antiaircraft balloons. There were none. And there was no AAA fire. Raz was puzzled. Maybe they had really surprised them after all. Well, he wasn’t going to complain about it.

Behind Blue Flight, Nachumi could also see the dome of Osirak. It was much bigger than he had imagined. The concrete and aluminum dome was covered in mud to reduce its brilliance and help conceal it from enemy eyes. The Iraqis had done that after the Iranian bombing raid. But the dodge was a pipe dream: on the flat river delta, less than a mile from the Tigris to the east, the monumental orb still glinted golden-red in the fading rays of the setting western sun.

Four miles. Time to pop up. Raz pushed back in his seat again. At this point the F-16s were actually flying south, at a 45-degree angle to the target. Raz pushed the throttle to full afterburner and pulled back on the control stick. The Gs pinned him back into his seat as he soared to five thousand feet in four seconds, climbing out of the blinding setting sun behind him. He executed a 90-degree climbing turn and headed straight for the target, then rolled belly-up to maintain positive G forces, keeping the blood pumping to his brain and making it easier to sight the target directly below. While dramatic-looking from the ground, flying upside down for the pilots was nothing particularly spectacular and not at all disorienting.

Raz maintained his focus. In seconds he would roll back and start his dive to the target.

At Etzion, 580 miles to the west, the mission commanders smoked or stared at the radio. It took all of Ivry’s willpower not to start pacing. It was 1742 Baghdad time. According to Operations, the attack would,
should,
commence any second—or already had. That was the trouble—no one knew. The strike force was on radio silence. There was no real-time intelligence from Baghdad. They had nothing to do but wait.

Miles behind, circling in an F-15 over Saudi Arabia, Sella sat tensely, balancing the ice chest–sized SSB on his aching knees. Just over the Jordanian border, the line of CH-53 Sikorskys hovered. Near the Saudi border the 707 circled, waiting. In Tel Aviv, six hundred miles west, Begin and his entire cabinet were holed up in the ministry offices, surrounded by a pile of empty teacups and overflowing ashtrays. Waiting.

No one at the ministry was more anxious than Ariel “Arik” Sharon, the notoriously hard-nosed tank commander. He had been a longtime family friend and comrade-in-arms with Yaffe’s father. When Avraham had suddenly passed away in 1969, leaving Doobi, not even out of high school, to be the man of the house, Ari Sharon turned up on the Yaffe family’s doorstep two days after the funeral. After consoling Mitka and the children, the bulldog-faced general and lifelong rancher took Doobi aside and swore an oath to him: “I will come here every Saturday morning at 7
A.M.,
and you and I will ride horses together.”

Sure enough, for the next three years, until Yaffe was accepted into IAF flying school, every Saturday morning at precisely seven o’clock, the old warrior-statesman would be at the front door, dressed in English riding garb, complete with shined leather boots and riding crop, ready to head out to the nearby stables. The figures of the rotund, genteel general and the beanpole kid beside him would then ride off together on horseback, talking of family, history, and horses, or just nothing at all, except the cool mornings and the clean smell of freshly turned earth. To Yaffe, Arik Sharon revealed a sensitivity and tenderness few could ever guess, and by the time Doobi moved to Hatzerim, the general had become like an uncle to him.

For his part, Sharon felt no less close to Doobi. Now, waiting along with all the other ministers, he worried for all the pilots. But it was especially painful to know that his “adopted” nephew was deep inside enemy territory in harm’s way. And there was nothing he could do to help. He tried to keep up a good front for Mitka, but seeing the expression on her face did little to help his own doubts.

Time had stopped. And all Israel, it seemed, waited.

As Raz began to nose his F-16 toward the dome, he quickly double-checked his INS. Something was not right. Osirak was almost directly beneath him already, and he was still on his approach. With rising horror, Raz realized that in the distraction caused by missing the sunken IP, he must have overflown the pop-up point by half a mile. All his calculations had been based on a false point! Now, as he should be beginning his dive, he was too close to the target for his approach on final.

“I am too close!” he yelled out.

Yadlin saw that Raz, instead of beginning a steep 30-degree dive, was still angling straight up. As the leader, Raz was the number one bomber. Yadlin was number two. Yadlin could see the arc of the dome clearly beneath him as he rolled back over. His threat alarm was now ringing loudly. Iraqi radar was finally beginning to lock on. Yadlin’s headset was suddenly filled with the jumbled, harried voices from the Iraqi AAA batteries below. The panicked garble grew increasingly intense. The piercing wail of the threat receiver bounced off the glass canopy around him. All hell was breaking loose.

Yadlin knew that he had at most a four-or-five-second window before the Iraqi radar fixed him. He had seen half a squadron lost to SAMs in ’73. Nine good men from his unit killed.

The F-16s were already outgunned, and now the leader was hesitating. Yadlin decided in a flash he could not wait.

“I’m not going to end up being hanged in some square in Baghdad because of a screwup,” he swore.

Yadlin dropped his nose and cut in beneath Raz’s plane, heading straight down “the chute,” hurtling 480 knots at the target. He focused complete attention on the HUD, careful to keep the bomb-fall line across the target. He was in a zone: The threat receiver, the engine, the noise of the Iraqi defenders on the ground—everything just faded away. Five thousand feet. The dome raced toward him; the pipper on the display screen creeped ever closer along the bomb line to the target icon. Forty-five hundred feet. Four thousand. He was almost at the predetermined bubble of the frag pattern. The death dot at the end of the bomb-fall line, like a pendulum, crept toward the target icon. Out the glass canopy, Yadlin saw the dome beneath growing larger as he grew closer. He felt the pressure of the tiny red button on top of the control lever. He checked to make sure his wings were level. He had to avoid slipping or the bombs would miss their target.

Thirty-eight hundred feet. The altimeter whirled. Thirty-six hundred. The death dot edged into the target. Thirty-five hundred feet . . . the dot centered, blocking out the dome icon like an eclipse. Yadlin squeezed the pickle and pulled back the control stick. He felt the release clips free the two bombs and the plane seemed to jump ahead with the sudden loss of four thousand pounds. Yadlin quickly clicked the selector button to the Sidewinder fire-control and hit the afterburner, at the same time turning the stick hard left. The F-16 responded immediately, banking radically and climbing as the G-suit bladders ballooned with air, pressing Yadlin’s thighs, chest, and head tight against the seat, preventing the blood from rushing to his extremities, which would cause him to lose consciousness. At four Gs, his 165-pound body weighed the equivalent of 660 pounds. He looked over his shoulder back down at the Osirak dome and watched both of his bombs pierce the shell of the cupola and disappear inside, then he was gone like a rocket, racing to high altitude.

As Raz had struggled to modify his approach, he saw Yadlin cut in beneath him. Not a bad move, he thought. He pulled all the way back on the stick, angling the F-16 backward and, finally, all the way over, executing a maneuver pilots called an “overturn,” an incredible, circuslike loop-de-loop in which his F-16 turned full circle like a Ferris wheel. Raz came swooping down on the dome at a perfect angle. His eyes were glued to the HUD display, the bomb-fall line tracking toward the target. His right thumb rested on the red button atop the control stick. His threat receiver was ringing in his ears, his headset crackling with Iraqi voices.

The pipper moved slowly into the target icon on the screen. Down, down. Raz reminded himself not to get “target fixation,” that was, to continue the dive so close to the ground that he would not have enough altitude left to pull out. At last the death dot completely covered the target symbol. Raz squeezed off the 2,000-pounders and immediately cut ninety degrees left and began his escape. His chaff bundles fired behind him as the thrusters pinned him back, his G-suit bladders filling with air, holding him immobile. Raz switched on his IFF: he did not want the F-15s to mistake his radar blip for an enemy plane.

Suddenly he felt the aircraft shake violently. His heart leaped to his throat. Had he been hit? AAA or SAM? He twisted in his seat but could not make out a thing. The instrumentation showed zero. There was nothing he could do about it now anyway. Raz continued to climb until he rendezvoused with Yadlin. Both pilots began to level off at thirty thousand feet, now far out of range of SAMs and AAA and safe from any pursuing MiGs.

One of the French electricians working at Osirak, Jean François Mascola, stood outside his apartment in the foreigners’ compound just down the road from al-Tuwaitha. He heard the fighter planes streaking in from the northwest. Straining to see in the fading light, Mascola could make out a number of planes in the sky above the Nuclear Research Center. He was shocked when the fighters began diving at the Osirak dome. Though not partial to Saddam Hussein, he had worked long at the nuclear reactor and made friends with many of the Iraqi technicians and scientists. He immediately worried for their safety.