Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

Last (and most important), there was a causeway across the water to the island
of Bahrain. This causeway had been built for Saudis who needed a break from
condemning godless Americans and Europeans. They’d race across the narrow
highway, shedding robes and headdresses as they drove, to get to the bars and
women on the island—apparently, Allah doesn’t see them if they’re not in Saudi
Arabia. We didn’t care. We’d go there to eat and shop and sometimes spend the
night at a nice beachside resort. No scorpions, camel spiders, or military meals.
Bahrain was only a few miles off the coast but was truly another world compared
to the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1979, the Saudi government, feeling nostalgic about its desert past, built a
complex outside Dhahran for Bedouin tribesmen. This was intended for the elderly,
the sick, and those awaiting air-transportation to Mecca for the annual hajj. Over
fifty modern condos were built, with four units per floor and eight floors per
building. Each unit had a large living room with a kitchen on one end and a window
wall opening to a narrow balcony on the opposite side. Four bedrooms, each with a
bath and bidet, were accessible from this central area. Everything the modern
Bedouin family needed.
Except Bedouins don’t live in condos.
They don’t put their sick or old in hospitals and they don’t fly to the hajj. So,
this huge complex stood empty for eleven years until housing was needed for
American, British, and French pilots who arrived in 1990 to save the Ghawar oil
fields. Sorry—to save the peaceful and progressive Saudi people from their
monstrous northern neighbor.
The war ended but the infidels remained. The presence of non-Muslim soldiers
in the holy kitty-litter box of Saudi Arabia began to cause great offense throughout
the Kingdom and the Islamic world. It was fine for us to fight and even die for them
and their oil, but now that the danger was past they wanted us out. Even though
Saddam was a genocidal, homicidal butcher, he was, after all, a Muslim and
therefore preferable to the bacon-loving degenerate soldiers who had just saved the
day.
The temporary solution was to house us someplace out of the way and relatively
discreet. Dhahran was chosen, and the 4404th Combat Wing (Provisional) took up
permanent residence in the Bedouin compound outside the city.
It was called Khobar Towers—and it was as good as it was going to get.
One humid, sticky night in June changed all that. As the faint mournful echoes
of evening prayer floated over our compound, the lights flickered and for a fraction
of a second I felt an overpressure in my ears. My brain didn’t process the cause