Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

shaking their heads. I thought it was great.
Anyway, about six months into this, I was dozing by the pool early one
afternoon when my handheld radio started squawking in highly excited pigeon
English.
“Captain Dan! Captain Dan . . . many planes come!”
Many planes
I opened an eye and squinted at the radio, debating whether or not to answer it.
It was the second day of the typical four-day weekend and absolutely nothing was
happening. Normally we’d drive out to the Red Sea coast and dive, or we’d go up
to Cairo, stay in the U.S. embassy apartment and get a real meal. But the other pilot
was on vacation in Greece, and the maintenance officer was in the States, so I was
just hanging around working on a really fine tan.
Deciding to ignore the noise, I then heard an unmistakable dull roar in the
distance. That unique manly whine that only comes from high-performance fighter
engines. I opened both eyes and stared straight up. The runway was about a mile
east of where I lay, and, as the noise got loud enough to drown out the panicked
tower controller, I saw them.
Four F-16s in fingertip formation, each about three feet apart and holding
position perfectly. I know my mouth dropped open, but I didn’t care. They flew
down the runway and pitched out in the classic “break” turn. Only fighters do this,
because you pull about six Gs and roll out heading back the way you came. The
leader got abeam the approach end of the runway and I saw his landing gear come
down. One by one, the other three followed as he dropped and turned to line up on
the runway. Egyptians didn’t fly that way.
“Captain Dan! Many plane . . . you come . . . please . . .” The poor guy was
practically in tears. Like he was going to be personally blamed for the unannounced
arrivals. Actually, he probably was, given the Egyptian military mentality.
“Easy, habibi,” I answered. “I’ll come now.”
I sighed once at the quiet pool. As I jogged to the villa, two other flights of four
came screaming overhead and pitched out. Throwing on my flight suit and boots, I
paused long enough to grab two six-packs of beer from the fridge. I was excited
now. Lots of countries flew F-16s, and the new arrivals were not Egyptians. Now
that the Gulf War was over and the danger was past, many of our NATO allies
were finally sending contingents of fighters to the “war” zone. These, I thought,
were likely Dutch or Belgians on their way into Saudi Arabia.
In any event, this was something different—and novelty was good.
I careened past the startled gate guards and hightailed it up the perimeter road to