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ack and sliced back toward the farmland north of the city.<br />
Slapping the throttle back, I was now passing through 5,000 feet and 500 knots,<br />
and I yanked violently right, then rolled out. Bunting again, I came back to the left<br />
in time to see the puffy white bursts overhead. Pulling back hard on the stick, I<br />
popped some chaff and zoomed up a few thousand feet, adding power as I climbed.<br />
Twitching my tail like this would hopefully defeat the stuff I couldn’t see but knew<br />
they were shooting.<br />
Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw a large, dirty-brown cloud rising from<br />
the center of the site and knew the cluster bomb had hit.<br />
“ELI Four . . . see any secondaries” Secondaries were one very visible<br />
indication that you’d hit something. But even without them, my CBUs could still<br />
really mess up a SAM site. Close detonations can knock launchers off their<br />
mountings and put fatal holes in things that don’t burn, like radars or people.<br />
“Four . . . negative.”<br />
Well, I hadn’t, either.<br />
But I also hadn’t seen any more missile launches, so maybe the Iraqis were<br />
dazed or hiding in shelters with their skulls ringing. Maybe not. Didn’t matter. What<br />
did concern me was the fact that there was an entire SAM site down there no one<br />
had known about. A missile battery that could kill our attack helicopters on their<br />
way into Baghdad to support the Army and Marine ground units.<br />
AT 10,000 FEET AND TEN MILES FROM THIS NEW TARGET , I crossed Highway 2 and<br />
pulled the power back to hold 400 knots. ELI Four had reappeared and was<br />
hanging fairly close off my left wing. I smiled. It was always disconcerting for<br />
young wingmen to get separated from a flight lead, especially being shot at while<br />
over enemy territory. But it happens, and he’d managed to rejoin without garbaging<br />
the radios, hitting me, or getting himself shot down.<br />
“ELI Three is 6.1.”<br />
“ELI Four . . . 7.2.”<br />
I nodded. I’d done a lot more maneuvering than he had, so I’d be shorter on fuel<br />
and it was better that way. Beginning a wide, right-hand turn, I looked back at<br />
Baghdad, and switched over to the AWACS.<br />
“LUGER . . . this is ELI 33.”<br />
The Tigris was a sage-green ribbon against the darker green fields on either<br />
bank. A good-size suburb known as Taji lay just west of the city. As a vital rail<br />
depot for Baghdad, this place was supposed to be a nest of SAMs, including a few
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