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eneath me, I stared across the pond at the launcher. Glancing at the video, men<br />
were plainly scrambling, and I blinked. They were swiveling the missile around by<br />
hand on its launcher. Maybe the motor had burned out or they’d lost power. I<br />
shrugged, refined my aim, and locked the base of the launcher. It wouldn’t matter<br />
in about forty seconds; as the missile swung around toward me, I hit the pickle<br />
button again.<br />
The right-hand Maverick leaped off the rail, and I instantly pulled up and over<br />
to the right in a kind of half-barrel roll. More chaff . . . and I knife-edged over the<br />
pond on my left wing. For a long second, I saw the whole picture, and realized why<br />
we hadn’t seen this junk before. It was all concealed in the ravine. Launchers,<br />
transloaders, trucks, and missiles. They were hiding here until they were ready to<br />
fire—then they’d scoot out, let the missiles fly, and scuttle back into the ditch.<br />
That’s why there’d been no revetments. They weren’t needed, and, in fact, the<br />
Iraqis had figured out those were dead giveaways.<br />
“AGNEW One . . . Rifle SA-2.”<br />
Zipping past an island in the Tigris, I headed west over the town at a thousand<br />
feet and 500 knots. As I screamed over the outskirts of Tikrit and zoomed up in a<br />
left-hand climb, my missile hit. There were several explosions and lots of tracer<br />
fire. Must’ve hit an ammo dump, too, I thought, and pulled the power back.<br />
Leveling at 6,000 feet and 425 knots, I checked my gas and gauges and sent a datalink.<br />
“AGNEW Two . . . request.”<br />
“Go ahead.”<br />
“Two would like to attack from the north. Tally a transloader at the eastern<br />
edge of the ravine.”<br />
I looked at the MFD. He was about six miles northwest of the target.<br />
“Say gas.”<br />
“8.2.”<br />
“AGNEW Two . . . cleared hot.”<br />
He zippered the mike, and I took a deep breath. A couple good hits from two<br />
successful H-model Mavericks. Kanga would get a woody over this. There were a<br />
dozen brownish crop circles about six miles west of town, so I slowed down more<br />
and began an easy orbit. There might be other sites down there, and I wanted to<br />
watch Juice’s attack. Slewing the radar off to my right, I was rewarded with a lock.<br />
And there he was. The F-16 was over the Tigris, heading south, and I began a<br />
gentle right turn to keep him in sight. Even though he was about eight miles from<br />
me, I plainly saw the Maverick launch beneath his wing. I caught a brief glimpse of
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