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The deadly shape of another missile passed behind me on its way into the<br />
clouds. It had come up . . . it couldn’t have been one of the SA-3s. The “X” in the<br />
bottom of my HUD told me the decoy was still alive and transmitting. So, it had<br />
been an infrared-heat-seeking SAM . . . not a radar-guided missile.<br />
Son of a bitch . . . where there was one there were two. Still zooming upward, I<br />
turned sideways in the seat and tried to look down over my shoulder. But I stared a<br />
second too long and lost the picture of the world around me. Blue changed to gray<br />
and the horizon disappeared as I sliced into the cloud deck.<br />
“ELI Two . . . defending, Triple-A!”<br />
Perfect . . . there was nothing I could do for him at the moment—he was on his<br />
own.<br />
Suddenly the jet bucked wildly under my hands and my stomach came up<br />
through my chest. I’d been hit!<br />
But the F-16 kept flying and my eyes flickered to the warning-light panel.<br />
Nothing. What the fuck . . .<br />
My eyes darted around the cockpit at the warning panels and engine gauges.<br />
I must’ve flown through the disturbed air from the missile. I twisted my head<br />
back and forth, trying to find the horizon. Up was down and down was sideways.<br />
This sucked.<br />
“WARNING . . . WARNING . . .” Bitching Betty rang through my helmet as<br />
the fighter shuddered and ran out of airspeed.<br />
Eighty-six hundred feet over Baghdad, out of airspeed, and falling out of the<br />
sky. Not good.<br />
Staring at the attitude indicator on my front console, I gave up on the outside<br />
world for a moment and flew the jet out of the cloud using the big round<br />
instrument. As my wings fell through the horizon, the jet picked up speed, and my<br />
breathing slowed a bit.<br />
I’d come back down to 5,300 feet now, heading north and accelerating past 350<br />
knots. I still had a target to hit.<br />
“ELI One is ten miles south of the target, northbound at 5,300 . . . 6.9.”<br />
Ten miles. Barely a minute and a half. Sixty-nine hundred pounds of fuel and<br />
5,300 feet above the gray, smoky earth. Still high enough to keep me clear of Iraqis<br />
with AK-47s but in range of every anti-aircraft gun and SAM in Baghdad. No<br />
choice, really. To climb up would take time and make me slow, and that was not a<br />
good combination over a heavily defended city.<br />
“Two is 6.1 . . . thirteen south . . . uh . . . eastbound.”<br />
Thirteen miles southeast . . . he must’ve defended himself over there to stay
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