Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

the boy. He didn’t have any HARMs to shoot, but called it anyway for the benefit
of the Iraqis listening to our frequencies. Maybe it helped, maybe not. Made me
feel better though.
Punching up the cannon symbology, I watched the circle with the dot in the
middle wobble a second, then I stared outside. Another decrepit town that had
languished under Saddam’s rule flashed under my wings as I roared southward.
Several belated Triple-A bursts shot out of the rooftops, but they were too late. I
was flying at better than 900 feet per second, and without radar guidance, I
doubted anything would hit me. I was also counting on surprise and being a lot
lower than the gunners were accustomed to seeing.
Passing the highway, I immediately racked the jet over about twenty degrees to
the left, snapped upright, and began to count.
Two.
“SAM launch . . . SAM in the air over Baghdad. Two of ’em heading east!” I
had no idea who called that but, sure enough, there were missile trails emerging
over the downtown skyline and climbing upward, toward the southeast. I hoped
ELI Five didn’t abort.
“ELI Five is five miles.” Good man.
“LAPEL Three . . . Magnum SA-3, northwest Baghdad.” More spoofing.
Three. Slamming the throttle back to mil, I pulled straight up. The ground
dropped away beneath me and the horizon rapidly expanded. When the F-16’s
nose touched about fifteen degrees above the horizon, I rolled smoothly to the right
and sliced back until the steering lined up in my HUD. As I flipped upright, one
glance took it all in. I was 1.9 miles from the SAM complex at 470 knots, passing
3,200 feet on my way down.
If the target was the center of a clock face, I would be at three o’clock pointing
inward, and ELI Five would be at twelve o’clock heading toward the six position.
The big green canal was plain to see, and there wasn’t any smoke remaining from
the previous attacks, but I quickly found the center berms.
Twenty-five hundred feet now and almost 500 knots. Too fast. Tugging the
power back, I fanned the boards a moment to slow down.
There! A shark-tooth protrusion in the perimeter fence and, a bit farther west,
was the northern corner of the compound. Squinting through the HUD, I called up
the cannon symbology again and put the pipper just inside the fence.
Fifteen hundred feet and about a mile away at 440 knots. If my timing was right,
then ELI Five would be around four miles from the target. I came over the outer
fence at a thousand feet and saw tiny figures of men scurrying over the berms.