Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat (21 page)

8

Sandstorm

S
OUTH OF
N
ASIRIYAH
, I
PASSED
20,000
FEET, NOSED THE
fighter over, and gratefully pulled the throttle back. The steering was already called up to the Dog air-refueling track, and as the airspeed dropped, I selected the maximum-endurance mode. This would give me an ideal altitude and airspeed to arrive at my selected point with minimum fuel. We used it a lot, because F-16s were always running short of gas. I continued pulling the throttle back until the airspeed matched the little V-shaped caret next to my airspeed readout in the HUD.

Two hundred and five knots.

So slow it felt like stalling. I ran my eyes over the cockpit and quickly flipped the master arm to
SAFE
and also switched off my flares. Not that it mattered, since I’d used them all up long ago. It was March 24, and I’d just come out of the blowing, sandy mess around Nasiriyah. I didn’t know if the Marines were safe, but I’d shot up the Iraqi convoy and stopped their reinforcements.

I wiped my face, took a deep breath, and ignored the flashing
FUEL
symbol in the HUD. Twelve hundred pounds of gas left. Under normal conditions, that’s what you shut down with after landing. But I was nowhere close to landing. Even without the SAMs, Triple-A, and MiGs, all flying is dangerous. This is particularly true with bad weather in fighter jets that burn fuel at appalling rates. During “normal” operations, with a hundred or so fast movers all trying to take off or land from the same piece of concrete, situations can get out of hand very quickly. However, years of training and experience took over again and I immediately began flipping through steerpoints and checking distances. Keying the mike, I said, “LUGER . . . this is ROMAN 75.”

Nothing.

I tried the other radio. “ROMAN Two . . . ROMAN One on Victor.”

Nothing.

I sent a data-link, but if he’d changed radio frequencies, he’d never get it.

Running my air-to-air radar out to eighty miles, I stared at the screen. There were little white squares drifting across the top, but no way to tell if they were tankers. Glancing at my kneeboard, I punched in the air-to-air TACAN channel for the refueler that was supposed to be in the DOG South track.

Nothing.

This really wasn’t my day. Rummaging through the disorganized bag of mission materials was useless. Pages and pages of radio frequencies and even a copy of the
Laws of Armed Conflict,
in case I wanted a little light reading. You’ve Gotta Be Shittin’ Me.

“If I get out of this, I swear no one else will have to deal with this
horseshit
. . .” Muttering disgustedly, I stuffed all the paper back into my helmet bag. Maybe I could start a fire with it after I ejected.

The sun had disappeared into a really nasty wall of sand that was growing along the horizon. The orange glow had faded fast into the haze, and soon it would be dark. Rejoining on a tanker, assuming I could find one, at night, in a sandstorm, with no gas, was enough to pucker anyone’s sphincter.

“Fuck it.”

Bringing the F-16 around in a slow turn, I headed for Kuwait. There were two big air bases in that country, plus Kuwait International Airport. I’d find a piece of concrete. Just then, of course, my VHF radio came alive.

“ROMAN One, this is Two on Victor!”

“Go.”

“One . . . Two is Bull’s-eye one-six-zero for two-seventy, Angels 22 . . . tanker in tow.”

Immediately reversing, I came back heading southwest and slewed my radar cursors to the position he gave. There! About fifty miles off the nose. I locked onto the brightest return and was rewarded with an aircraft symbol at 22,000 feet, heading directly for me at 300 knots.

“ROMAN One is radar contact. I’m off your nose, fifty miles, Angels 20.”

“Two is contact. The tanker is TENDON 31 on Carmine 33.”

“Just give me the frequency.” Radio freqs were always color-coded and you had to have the daily communications list to break the code. I didn’t feel like tearing through the bag again and, frankly, couldn’t care less if the Iraqis heard me air-refueling.

“Copy . . . that’s 310.6.” He sounded a little abashed. But the boy had done good work by somehow persuading the tanker to come north toward me. Tankers were understandably reluctant to venture into Indian Country, and who could blame them? Switching frequencies, I stared through the HUD at the distant contact. I couldn’t see the tanker, but the radar could. Close enough—this just might work.

“TENDON 31 . . . this is ROMAN 75.”

“Loud and clear, ROMAN . . . we’re northeast-bound at twenty-two . . . Bull’s-eye—”

I cut him off. “ROMAN is radar contact and visual.”

“Copy that.” He sounded relieved. “Starting a right-hand turn back to the border.”

“Negative.” I eyeballed the radar and did the geometry in my head. “Repeat, negative. Come ten degrees right and continue. I don’t have the gas to maneuver or chase you down.”

In fact, I’d be lucky to rejoin and take fuel before flaming out, but I didn’t say that. “TENDON copies. We’ll come to you.” To the tanker pilot’s everlasting credit, he added, “We always wanted to see Iraq.”

In fact, coming across the border into what was definitely hostile territory, with potential MiGs and certainly some SAMs, was a ballsy thing to do in an unarmed, non-maneuverable flying gas-can.

So I held my breath, flew silky-smooth, and willed the few remaining pounds of jet fuel to remain in my nearly empty tanks. At about twenty miles, I stared through the HUD and picked up the edges of the fat-bodied tanker emerging from the fuzzy orange background. A truly beautiful sight; I actually sighed with relief.

T
O EXECUTE A MIDAIR REFUELING, THE IDEA IS TO END UP
about a half-mile behind the tanker and a little below. As the tanker’s boom extends, you then ease up into the pre-contact position—about twenty feet back from the tip. You’re then cleared to “contact” and you ease the jet forward very, very slowly, until the boom operator, called a boomer, can plug the end of his receptacle into your jet. In peacetime, there’s lots of talk back and forth between the boomer and the receiving pilot, but in combat, there’s none.

Once you’re plugged in, there is a double row of lights on the tanker’s belly that indicates your vertical and horizontal position relative to the boom, and you just “fly the lights” to keep your aircraft in position. Think of your wet tongue stuck to a frozen pipe being towed behind a car at 300 miles per hour, and you get the idea. It’s even more fun at night.

Anyway, there wasn’t time for any of that now. I also didn’t have the fuel to overcome any maneuvering mistakes, which is why I told the tanker to just continue straight ahead. At about eight miles, I was pointed directly at him and pushed the throttle back up to mil power. By three miles, I was directly off the tanker’s left wing, and I could make out my wingman flying formation off the big KC-135’s right wing.

Without looking down, I carefully felt along the left console and toggled a big, square switch that opened the air-refueling door behind my cockpit. At a mile, I was about 100 knots faster than the tanker and still pointed directly at him. Squaring the corner, I brought the F-16 around directly behind him as the airspeed bled away from the turn. The boom bounced down then and fully extended. Another lovely picture.

Sliding in the last fifty feet, I fanned the speed brakes several times until my airspeed was just high enough to move forward. I was at eye level to the boom now, and it was about ten feet in front of me. Using the boom’s position as a reference, I flew straight at it. When it seemed as if it would shatter the canopy and spear me in the face, the boomer nudged it sideways and I saw the tip disappear behind me. Finessing the throttle, I matched the tanker’s airspeed and stopped in position.

For several long moments, nothing happened. If he couldn’t pass gas, or I had any type of receiver issue, then I was truly screwed. I’d be lucky to make it back across the border to eject in friendly territory.

But then came the gentle push of the boom against my jet and, staring up at that wonderful wide belly, I saw the director lights come on. Of the hundreds of times I’d done this, it had never felt so good.

“G
OOD AFTERNOON, SIR!
W
ELCOME TO
TENDON 31. W
ILL THIS BE LEADED OR UNLEADED
?”

Everyone’s a comedian. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I exhaled with a relieved chuckle and made my voice sound calm. I got paid to be calm and, no matter what, you had to sound good.

“Premium please. Check the oil, too.”

He laughed. “You should be taking gas now, sir. Looks like you’ve had quite an afternoon.”

I didn’t want to look away to see if my fuel counter was increasing, so I just flew. After a few moments, I wriggled my fingers and toes to relax the death grip I had on the throttle and stick. After a couple more minutes, I risked a glance and saw the fuel had increased to 3,000 pounds. Enough to make it to Kuwait. I swallowed and exhaled again.

“Mind if we take a few pictures, sir?”

“I missed my bikini wax this morning.” See, I’m funny, too.

“None of us have ever seen the burn marks from the cannon.”

With that, there were some flashes from the bubble turret beneath the tanker, where the boomer lay. I squirmed my completely flat butt around and shrugged a pair of very tired shoulders against the harness. A few minutes longer, I’d be full up, and we could go home. I thought about the Marines in Nasiriyah and wondered if they’d gotten out. I had passed the last target area coordinates to the AWACS, and maybe a flight of night fighters could scope out the area.

As the tanker came around heading west, the last rays of sun were vanishing and the ugly haze looked a lot closer than it had before. Above me, the sky was already dark, but since we were still in Iraq we all kept our lights off. My jet was comfortably heavy with fuel again, and when we rolled out, the boomer said, “All full, sir.” He whistled softly. “Fourteen hundred and seventy gallons.”

I jotted it down and did the math in my head. More than 10,000 pounds of fuel.

Clicking the disconnect switch, I slid slowly back and down away from the boom, and waved to the boomer. Closing the refueling door, I added a little power and took up a loose formation on the tanker’s left wing. We’d stay with him until he got back across the border then we’d head south to Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh. I wanted a gallon of water to drink, and an enormous, hot meal. What a day.

“ROMAN 75 . . . this is TENDON.” It was a different voice. Probably the tanker pilot.

I clipped the oxygen mask back over my face. “Go ahead.”

“Ah . . . AWACS just passed that KKMC, al-Batin, and Rafha are zero-zero, due to blowing dust.”

Zero-zero. Slang for “zero ceiling and zero visibility.” Another way to put it would be
complete shit
. No way to land. Those were all bases in northern Saudi along the border with Iraq. Glancing ahead of us there was nothing but a rolling carpet of dust and I wasn’t surprised. All 1.4 million square miles of Saudi (about one-third of the continental U.S.) could disappear under blowing sand in a matter of hours, and I’d been busy that long. This was worse than I’d ever seen it; picture an undulating, brown sea stretching as far as you can see. The haze generated by this monster was so high that the stars were dimmed. It was like staring through a brown frosted glass.

“TENDON . . . can you get the weather for Prince Sultan and Riyadh?”

“Already got it. Riyadh is a quarter-mile vis, blowing dust. Prince Sultan is still at one mile.”

“Good enough, TENDON. We’re RTB at this time. If you get any updates would you pass them on Victor 130.225?”

“Wilco.”

“And TENDON . . . thanks for coming to get me.”

“We heard what you were doing down there . . . how could we say no?”

I chuckled drily. “You could’ve said no . . . so thanks again.” I could barely make out the tanker pilot’s outline in his cockpit, and he waved.

“Be hard to sleep at night if I did that. Best of luck, ROMAN.”

I gently pulled up above the tanker, and my wingman followed from the other side. We were over a point called Customs House, on the Saudi-Iraq-Kuwaiti border, although I couldn’t see it. Beginning a gentle left turn, I automatically switched to the AWACS coordination frequency. This was a standard procedure over Customs House, and I knew my wingman would be there, too.

“LUGER, LUGER . . . this is ROMAN 75.”

Normally, jets coming out of Iraq would do a battle-damage check for holes, leaks, hung weapons, and generally anything bad that would keep you from getting home. But tonight it seemed the least of my problems. Centering the steering on Prince Sultan Air Base, I switched on the autopilot, pulled the night-vision goggles from their canvas bag, and clipped them on my helmet.

“ROMAN 75 this is LUGER. Go ahead.”

“ROMAN is two by Fox-16s, five hundred rounds of twenty mike mike expended, checking out, RTB.”

“Ah . . . ROMAN . . . confirm you’re RTB to PeeSab?” Prince Sultan’s identifying letters were PSAB—get it?

“Affirm.”

“PeeSab latest observation is one half-mile, sky obscured. Winds are three-zero-zero at thirty gusting to fifty.”

Nice.

I said it again—what a shitty day. The storm was moving west to east toward the bases along the Persian Gulf and in Kuwait, so there wasn’t much time.

“Copy that LUGER. What’s currently open?”

He had more good news. “Sheikh Isa is a half-mile, blowing dust, and Dhahran is one mile but falling.”

Sheikh Isa was in Bahrain and Dhahran was on the coast. Terrific. So the only reasonably clear air was where I was now flying, and it was disappearing fast. When I looked outside, it didn’t look that clear anyway. The lights from Kuwait and the big cities down the Saudi coast were usually visible, but now there was nothing. I couldn’t even see the oil fires through the goggles, and a tiny sliver of uneasiness poked up through my belly. I’d been in countless bad situations before, right? Right.