Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

8
Sandstorm
SOUTH OF NASIRIYAH, 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.