Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (18 page)

Now, the University of Seville was barely a quarter mile south, and it was a definite hotbed of antiwar protest. But I’d come to see the church and its famous bell tower and had no intention of walking through the university. That would’ve been like cutting through UC Berkeley in 1968 wearing a uniform. So I ducked into an alley next to the Alcazar—and came out face to face with a marching mob. Like most protesters, they looked young. The majority of them were also waving flags. All red. Banners, too. Hundreds of banners showing caricatures of George Bush and Tony Blair; crossed-out NATO symbols, American and British flags, and one very ugly Uncle Sam with his foot on the globe. They were chanting, too.

“No a la Guerra! No a la Guerra!”

“No to the war” . . . and there I was.

I got caught up in the flow, like a swimmer in a strong current, and simply rolled through the dusky old streets with the rest of them. After a few twists and turns we shot out into the bright sunlight, the crowd thinning as it filled the square. Blinking, I slid sideways to put my back against a wall and looked up, startled, at the sandstone-colored tower next to me. La Giralda; a minaret that survived the destruction of the Seville mosque and was now a Catholic bell tower. Glancing around then, I knew exactly where I was—the Plaza del Triunfo in front of the cathedral. The square had filled quickly and I saw news crews scattered about, big cameras panning back and forth over the crowd. What a terrific headline that would make, I thought.

AMERICAN FIGHTER PILOT JOINS ANTIWAR RALLY IN SPAIN.

Then I saw her.

A young girl, maybe twenty, with long, black hair blowing in the breeze. She’d jumped up on one of the concrete piers lining the sidewalk and was holding an immense red flag. The sun was behind her, and the flag was made of thin material, because I could see through it. The girl had on an oversize white blouse, a dark, loose skirt, and no shoes. As I watched, she began waving the flag slowly back and forth. All the people at the base of her piling began chanting and the girl smiled. It was, in retrospect, a true Kodak moment. I watched for a few seconds then turned to slip away—directly in front of a BBC camera filming the girl. Without hesitating, I raised my fist and yelled,
“No a la Guerra!”
before gliding off into the crowd.

I eventually made it back to the hotel and never told anyone about it. As we took off the next day for the bleak, cultural void of Saudi Arabia, the irony was plain. I, who would shortly be leading dozens of aircraft in combat, had taken part in one of the biggest antiwar rallies in Europe. Fortunately, nothing ever came of it, and, in fact, I did get to see the cathedral after all, my last bit of beauty for a few months, which was nice.

I stood outside our operations trailer in Prince Sultan Air Base and breathed in deeply. The heavy Saudi air was very still but I could plainly smell the desert—dust, smoke, and a very faint trace of distant rain. Twilight was always fast in Arabia; the painful, fiery shield of the sun darkened to deep orange, then to blood red as it slid beneath the horizon.

War was here.

Thinking back to Desert Storm, I couldn’t recall feeling any fear. I’d stood in my room, listened to the
Phantom of the Opera
soundtrack, and waited for the call. When it had come, I felt a release—no more waiting. A day later, climbing up the ladder into my F-16 before my first combat mission, I was only afraid of screwing up. Of letting down those who depended on me. Years of extensive and unforgiving training had winnowed out the weak and given us all the quiet confidence of true professionals. I knew I could do it—but you never really know.

Dying didn’t occur to me at all in 1991. I thought I was invincible back then, so what could happen?

Well, some of that attitude changed over the years. Lots of very talented, skilled guys never came back. Fractions of seconds had separated me from oblivion literally thousands of times. Countless
extremely
close calls have humbled my belief in invincibility. Obviously there’s no such thing—maybe my inexplicable survival is God’s sense of humor. Or it’s just not my time. Or both.

As I stared at the fading sunset in 2002, I’d been tempered with a great deal of hard-won experience. Now, waiting to fight, it was the haunting strains of “Vide Cor Meum” instead of the
Phantom,
and my thoughts were somewhat different than they’d been in 1991. I was responsible for many more lives this time, and any mistakes I made would have implications far beyond my solitary cockpit. This didn’t bother me—I was thoroughly accustomed to the responsibility by this point in my career. Still, holding lives in your hands is sobering.

My country had also been attacked. I was well aware that 9/11 was not the real reason we were here waiting to surge across the Iraqi border, but to me it was a vindication nonetheless. This war, I hoped, would be an object lesson to all of those who thought America had received a comeuppance on that September morning. Regardless of the political permutations of this fight, we would show the world again that our political dithering had nothing to do with our military might. Like us or not. Hate us or love us, it didn’t matter. If an enemy struck the United States, then they would pay for it in blood and I, along with every fighting man facing north this evening, was here to collect.

Intermission was over.

Photo Section

Undergraduate Pilot Training graduation, 1987. Welcome to the USAF.

TopGun clipping. All fighter wings have these competitions, and this was my first win.

Germany, 1990. Every bachelor fighter pilot should have a fast car. This Porsche became my favorite toy—next to an F-16, of course.

Inbound SCUD missile being destroyed by a Patriot battery at the start of Desert Storm, 1991.

23rd Tactical Fighter Squadron “Fighting Hawks” Hunter Killer team ready for takeoff in the first Gulf War. (See chapter 3.)

French-built “indestructible” bunker used by the Iraqis and destroyed courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

After the first daylight raid into Baghdad during Desert Storm.

Self-portrait during a surface-to-air-missile (SAM) hunt in northern Iraq, 1991.

Blood chit. If we were shot down over enemy territory, these were used to tell any locals that we were the “good guys,” and if they helped us to safety they’d be well paid.

Beni Suef, Egypt, 1992. A shot of me during my exchange with the 242nd Tactical Fighter Wing of the Egyptian Air Force. (See chapter 4.)

Left:
Leading a mission into Iraq, 2003. We were the first over the border in Operation Iraqi Freedom. (See chapter 7.)
Right:
Inside the F-16CJ cockpit.

A shot of me leading a four ship following a strike into Iraq, 2003. Note the empty weapons pylons under the wings. The picture was taken by a friend from inside the air-refueling tanker.