Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

the main canal and everything down there was some shade of gray.
“ELI Four is blind.”
I kept my eyes on the SAMs. The wingman would be fine. It was hard to say
which of us was targeted, since the RWR was still saturated. Flying by feel alone, I
pulled the power back a bit and brought the nose up. Still looking back past the tail,
I checked left and thumbed the decoy on again just in case. I also sent a data-link.
“Four . . . stay above ten thousand until visual. One is re-attacking from the
north.”
Cranking up hard on one wing, I swung around in the no-man’s-land between
the highways and put Baghdad on the nose again. With the target in the HUD, I
pushed over and called up the CBU symbology again.
Even as I watched, another immense cloud of light smoke billowed up against
Iraq’s greenish-gray background. Slewing the diamond left, I put it directly over the
smoke and stabbed forward to make a new steerpoint.
“ELI Four’s visual.”
I zippered a reply and squinted through the HUD. Like tan warts, I could make
out several raised berms in a flat area just north of the canal. But without a better
picture, I’d have to get a lot closer.
Where’s the fucking targeting pod when I need it
Up the Pentagon’s ass.
Suddenly, several glowing streams shot upward from the site, and I flinched.
The heavier Triple-A looked like fiery tennis balls as they rose quickly, hung in
space, then fell back toward the earth. These seemed to be aimed right at my
forehead, and for a long moment, I pressed ahead directly toward the ground fire.
Descending through 9,000 feet, I was in range of anything down there except a kid
with a slingshot.
That was probably next.
Leaning forward, I followed the last hanging smoke trail back to the ground and
. . . there! In front of the center earthen berm were four horseshoe-shaped
revetments. Where the smoke trail began, I could plainly see the light-colored,
pointed tips of missiles. Triple-A began flashing from the top of the center berm,
but I ignored it and concentrated on refining my aim just a hair. As the white-hot
balls whizzed up past the nose, I put the tiny pipper on the center of the revetment,
bunted forward slightly, and mashed the pickle button.
One CBU canister kicked off, and I instantly pulled straight up and shoved the
throttle to mil. They’d been leading me with the anti-aircraft fire, so I had to
change position now. As the jet came through the horizon, I snapped over onto my