Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

Suddenly a thin, pole-shaped object shot up exactly between the F-4 and
myself. For a second, I was too surprised to react. But Orca instantly weaved away
to the west and I saw a string of glowing flares drop away from his tail section.
“Shit . . .” Weaving the other way, I also thumbed out some flares. Rolling up
on my left wing, I stared down and realized what had happened. The Iraqis had
lugged some shoulder-launched missiles, MANPADS, onto the 12,000-foot peaks,
and they were shooting at our contrails.
Orca knew it, too, because he shoved the nose over and descended below the
layer of air that caused contrails. And then we were past the peaks and into Turkey.
More lessons. Don’t ever fly in the contrail layer unless you want to be seen, and
never relax in enemy territory.
Exhaling, I shook my head as we headed for the air-refueling tanker track over
Lake Van. What a morning. But we were back in Turkey, relatively safe and—
“CONAN One . . . pop-up threat . . . Bogey . . . nose fifteen . . . low.”
CONAN was the flight of F-15s above us.
What the fuck
“TORCH flight . . . bracket . . . bracket!” Orca snapped and instantly rolled hard
away to the west. Reflexively, I cranked away from him to the east, and we were
set in a classic pincer maneuver that was supposed to force an enemy fighter to
pick a side. This would expose him to the jet he didn’t attack—and then he’d die.
“CONAN . . . this is CHAINSAW . . . say again” The AWACS controller
sounded incredulous.
But we were in Turkey. How in the hell did a MiG slip past and get behind us
The tankers, I realized, as I fumbled with my mask and tried to pull my head out of
my ass. The MiG must be attacking the tankers! There was no time for a radar
search, so I pushed in with my left thumb and instantly brought up the “Slewable
Air Combat Maneuvering” mode. This was a quick-reaction mode, utilized to point
the radar at threats less than ten miles away: it would automatically lock on
whatever it found.
I glanced up, saw the Eagles making contrails and eyeballed where the threat
must be. Slewing the pointing cross left and down in the HUD, I let go and waited
as the two F-15s began their attack. They’d called it a “Bogey” instead of a
“Bandit” which meant they couldn’t positively identify it as hostile. Identification
could be done with a variety of electronic systems on both the F-16 and F-15, but
there hadn’t been time. So the aircraft would remain “unknown” until it could be
visually identified or committed a hostile act. Like shooting at one of us.
“LOCK . . . LOCK . . .”