Raid on the Sun (26 page)

Finally, just after 1900, they could make out the first dots in the sky. They anxiously counted the numbers. One, two, three . . . six . . . finally, eight! They were all back. The F-15s broke off and headed directly for Tel-Nof in the north. For ten minutes the eight planes dropped one by one to the tarmac, their tires smoking rubber as they hit the runway. All accounted for. The crew was ecstatic.

In the bunker, Eitan called Begin for the last time.

“All planes have returned safely,” he informed the prime minister.

“Barach hashem!”
Begin sighed.

“Blessed be God.”

He signaled Mitka to retrieve the bottle of vintage French cognac he had promised himself half a year ago that he would drink to toast the success of the mission. Mitka set out glasses for the entire cabinet. Everyone suddenly felt thirsty.

Five hundred and eighty miles to the east, al-Tuwaitha was in chaos. The Nuclear Research Center security guards and Iraqi military troops carrying Kalashnikovs raced back and forth across the compound, challenging anyone not in uniform and dodging fire engines and emergency vehicles. Everyone was jumpy. Darkness had fallen, adding to the confusion. The shadows were sliced by the headlights of fire trucks and jeeps racing across the grounds. Eight people had already been confirmed killed. One was a Frenchman named Damen Chaussepied, a twenty-five-year-old nuclear technician caught in a lab hallway attached to the reactor. Osirak itself was completely demolished, the once monumental dome looking like a broken eggshell in the flickering flames, which still danced high into the sky from deep within the reactor.

As Mossad had discovered, the Iraqi units manning the AAA batteries at al-Tuwaitha had made it a habit to break for supper every night before six o’clock—one of the reasons Ivry had planned the attack time for after 6:30, Baghdad time. Before heading to the center’s cafeteria, the battery teams inexplicably shut down their ZSU-23–4 and SAM radars. The men were just sitting down to dinner at the cafeteria tables when they heard the first bombs hit the Osirak dome. Surprised, they raced back to their stations. But by the time the gunners reached their AAA emplacements, Raz’s team, the first four planes, had already dropped their bombs. As Yaffe dived, the antiaircraft gunners were desperately fumbling to start the radars, which were completely cold. Most of the ZSU radars had nowhere near enough time to warm up in the four minutes the planes were in range. The gunners decided to begin targeting manually, without the aid of radar or computers. The fire was wild and intensive. In the excitement, AAA gunners manually tracking the diving F-16s dropped their line of fire so close to the ground that they actually began mowing down their own gun emplacements on the opposite side of the compound, killing several soldiers and wounding at least a dozen men. Meanwhile, the explosions from the bombs sent debris sailing high into the air, crashing back down to the ground and wounding workers and guards scurrying across the compound. The cries of the wounded and the frightened could be heard everywhere across the installation.

As darkness fell at Etzion, one hour behind Baghdad, Rani Falk waited along with the crew chiefs, who signaled the taxiing F-16s in with their red-tipped flashlights. The base was still dark, radio silence continued. The planes were directed to their underground hangar glowing bright under the glare of floodlights. The pilots emerged from their planes, blinking momentarily in the harsh glare after spending hours in the darkened cockpits. As they climbed down the ladders, the ground crews surrounded them, patting their backs and congratulating them. The fliers’ faces were flushed with the mix of emotion and adrenaline.

Raz, Spector, and Nachumi all carefully checked their planes, examining the wings and fuselage for any signs of flak damage. They told their crew chiefs to look over the fighters inch by inch to make sure there were no bullet holes. Then they joined the rest of the men to be transported to the debriefing room.

Iftach Spector stood to the side, visibly upset.

Nachumi was pretty sure Spector had missed the target. The other pilots, too, had immediately sensed that something was wrong. They began to approach their longtime commander.

Nachumi clasped him on the shoulder.

“We did enough damage to the reactor,” he said, hoping to console him.

“I want to see my video!” Spector snapped, waving the men away.

It was clear he wanted everyone to know something had gone wrong. It was equally clear he wanted to be alone. Katz was surprised. He had never seen Spector so rattled.

The pilots walked straight to Operations. Eitan and Ivry had already flown on ahead to Tel Aviv to brief the prime minister. The squadron was served coffee and sodas. The men unwound fast, an easy casualness quickly replacing the frayed edges of tension and nerves they had lived with since taking off seven hours earlier. They discussed the mission, the attack, the surprising lack of AAA until the final minutes. Nothing was said about Raz missing the navigation. Neither Raz nor Yadlin mentioned that Yadlin had cut in beneath Raz, or the fact that the first two bombs had been dropped by the number two flier. Unmentioned also was Raz’s astounding 360-degree backflip over the target, under enemy fire, and then dropping both two-thousand-pounders with 100 percent accuracy.

At last the crew chief brought in the nose-camera videos. The men quickly took their places around the TV monitor. It was what they had been waiting for. Everyone was eager to see his video. The videos showed the view of the gunsight camera, the corners of the frame delineated by brackets. In the middle of the screen was a cross indicating the location of the pipper. On the lower left side were digital readouts of the plane’s airspeed, navigation, and other vital signs. The men watched each pilot’s video intently, grading the quality of the attacks—good passes or bad passes. Shafir’s and Ramon’s cameras had documented the entire mission. As Relik’s camera recorded his plane crossing the Euphrates, Iraqi soldiers could be seen waving at him from the far bank. The pilots laughed.

Raz and Yadlin’s videos were shown first, the dome of Osirak rising clearly in the middle of the huge compound, the HUD gunsight cross flitting across the frame like a butterfly. No AAA fire could be seen. The dome of the reactor raced toward the camera, and then the bombs could be seen piercing the shell, leaving behind a gaping crack. Then came Yaffe and Katz. As their ordnance fell, the dome crumbled inward, leaving a jagged open mouth. By the time Nachumi’s video screened, the crown of the decapitated dome looked like a softboiled dipping egg. As Ramon, the final bomber, sighted the target, the videotape showed the cupola below spewing huge funnels of black smoke from deep within the reactor. Ramon’s two bombs could be seen disappearing into the smoke. But as the plane began to climb, the nose camera captured the Osirak dome below exploding outward, erupting in a volcanic conflagration of flame, utterly demolished.

At the sight of the final destruction of Osirak, the pilots broke out in spontaneous whoops. Their mission had been a success: the complete annihilation of Israel’s most deadly threat. Throughout it all, Spector stood off to the side, watching silently. He obviously felt terrible. For the videos had made clear what Spector himself had realized alone in his cockpit: the commander had missed the target. With both bombs. Everyone else had targeted with 100 percent accuracy.

Outside, Spector was disgusted, but he was determined not to show weakness. He was a leader. He did not have the luxury of being vulnerable. He also made up his mind that he was not going to use the flu as an excuse.

“I missed,” he said, with forced equanimity. “Something happened. I’m not sure what. . . .” He shrugged. “But there is no excuse. Thank goodness you were there to back me up.”

No one dared ask him what had happened. If he wanted to tell them someday, he would. As the pilots turned toward the runway, Raz smiled grimly to himself and shook his head.

“He was punished!” he thought. “He went over everyone’s head, and he was punished!”

Nachumi was extremely upset by Spector’s obvious pain. By pulling in so close to the first four planes, had he taken attention away from his wingman at the most critical part of the bombing, when acquiring the target? The thought would haunt him for the next twenty years.

The squadron made ready to leave. The long day was not over yet. They still had to return to Ramat David and then fly in small planes to Tel Aviv to meet with the command and support teams who had gathered to congratulate the pilots and hear firsthand the details of the mission. Out in the maintenance bays the crew chiefs were busy refueling and cleaning the F-16s for the return flight north. The maintenance techs had found nothing wrong with either Raz’s or Nachumi’s plane. The only logical explanation was that they had dived so low to release their bombs that the shock waves from the explosions had shaken the planes before they could escape.

The men zipped up their flight suits, grabbed their gloves and helmets, and climbed the metal ladders back into the cockpits. Takeoff was much simpler and quicker than it had been some six hours earlier, when the planes were overloaded with fuel and bombs. Raz led the team home on full thrusters, streaking at supersonic speed the entire trip and rattling the windows of the towns and kibbutzes below—and breaking IAF rules against flying at supersonic speeds over civilian territory. He was sure they wouldn’t object this one time. The men were back at Ramat David in less than half an hour.

After landing, each of the pilots drove to his on-base home to clean up and change clothes before leaving for the assembly in Tel Aviv. The pilots were still sworn to secrecy, but many now elected to tell their wives what they had been up to for the last eighteen months. Yadlin’s and Yaffe’s wives, who knew about the raid in advance, were nearly beside themselves with relief after enduring eight hours of hell. Katz told his wife for the first time. She was stunned, but the two shared a laugh over her unconscious but nonetheless uncanny prognostication at his departure. The pilots showered and shaved and changed clothes, and, an hour later, were back out on the runway for the thirty-minute hop down to Tel Aviv on a small, cramped, twin-engine prop plane. As the plane flew south in the darkness, Yaffe shook his head in his seat. After all the meticulous planning and expense of the last year, this was a pretty bush league way to end the mission: to have all eight of Israel’s new heroes shoved into a rickety puddle-jumper that could crash at the bat of an eyelid.

The plane landed at the tiny airfield in north Tel Aviv. A van quickly transported the pilots to IAF headquarters just outside the city, where they were dropped off in front of a small auditorium. Heavily armed security ringed the building. As they marched down the aisle of the auditorium, the men were greeted by a standing ovation from Ivry, Eitan, the senior command, and the dozens of operational staff and IAF support teams that had toiled in secret over the mission planning for the last year and a half.

Again, the men were peppered with questions about every detail of the mission, and especially the attack. The excitement was such that soon the staffers were shouting over one another to ask questions. Raz had a hard time deciphering most of them. Instead he continued smiling and repeating: “It all went according to plan. There is nothing to say.”

Not satisfied with Raz’s nonanswers, the inquisition turned to the other pilots, relentlessly pressing for every detail.

“It was just as we planned in the briefing,” Yaffe answered. He recited a quick rundown of the mission. There was some AAA, maybe SA-7s. The defenders had been surprised as there were no MiGs. They had caught the Iraqis with their pants down.

Ivry and Eitan were nearly bursting with frustration. This was probably the most historic event in the history of Israel, and the pilots were treating it like some boring job!

“Nothing to write home about,” Katz repeated.

Relik Shafir was at his nonplussed, self-effacing best.

“I was just at the right place at the right time,” he quipped, shrugging off the compliments. “It’s like the game of golf—the more you practice, the luckier you get.”

Undaunted by the pilots’ disappointing, matter-of-fact answers, the Operations officers and ministers began debating the mission among themselves, examining and rehashing the minutest detail of every action.

Finally, Avi Sella spoke up.

“What was the meaning of the code word
Alhambra
? I did not see that in the operational notes. We worried we had missed something.”

Raz smiled. “Why don’t you explain that, Doobi.”

The room went quiet, waiting for this momentous intelligence.

Looking sheepish, Yaffe told the room about the bet he and Ramon had made the night before the attack. Ilan was only reminding Yaffe that he owed him a dinner at the Alhambra Restaurant. The crowd broke into a cheer. Ivry and Eitan both demanded invitations. Finally, toward midnight, almost punch-drunk from exhaustion and spent adrenaline, the eight pilots climbed aboard the prop plane for the final trip home to Ramat David—and a few days of rest. The next day, Monday, was a national holiday, Shavuot, a celebration of the Feast of the Pentecost, the giving of the law to Moses and the Jewish people by God. It was one of the most popular holidays of the year, a summer festival that combined the feel of the United States’ Fourth of July and Halloween, a day of picnics, concerts, beach cookouts, and hayrides.

The holiday was one of Katz’s favorites. As he made ready for sleep that night, he thought for a moment how strange it was that less than twelve hours ago he had wondered briefly if he would ever celebrate that holiday again.

Richard V. Allen, President Reagan’s head of the National Security Administration, was at home outside Alexandria, Virginia, Sunday afternoon, relaxing on the sundeck, drinking iced tea and flipping through the weekend homework of position papers, memos, and classified reports when the telephone rang. A White House aide in the Situation Room, the round-the-clock communications center located in the basement of the West Wing, reported that Israel had just informed the State Department that its air force had bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant at al-Tuwaitha.