Every Man a Tiger (1999) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  I - Into the Wild Blue

  Chapter 1 - Every Man a Tiger

  Chapter 2 - The Big Lie

  Chapter 3 - The Vision of Bill Creech

  II - Shield in the Sky

  Chapter 4 - Mission to Jeddah

  Chapter 5 - CENTCOM Forward

  Chapter 6 - Planning the Storm

  Chapter 7 - Band of Brothers and Sisters

  III - The Thousand-Hour War

  Chapter 8 - Storm!

  Chapter 9 - Hits and Misses

  Chapter 10 - Lost and Found

  Chapter 11 - Punch and Counterpunch

  Chapter 12 - A Day in the War

  Chapter 13 - The Ten Percent War

  Chapter 14 - Shock and Awe

  Chapter 15 - Building Coalitions

  Chapter 16 - Beyond Iraqi Freedom

  Acknowledgements

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PRAISE FOR

  Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

  by Tom Clancy

  with General Carl Stiner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz

  “Some action vignettes from [Special Forces] roots in WWII and Vietnam rival Clancy fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “The plethora of insider history and firsthand operation specifics . . . will please the historically minded.” —Publishers Weekly

  PRAISE FOR

  Into the Storm: A Study in Command

  by Tom Clancy

  with General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.), and Tony Koltz

  “A ground-level account of the Persian Gulf War.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A damned exciting read . . . A fascinating blend of a first-person account, a third-person narrative, a compact analysis of military philosophy and warfighting theory, and an absorbing piece of history . . . There will be some—in the future when our army again goes to war—who will take this work to the battlefield as a reminder of how great commanders accomplished the mission.”

  —ARMOR Magazine

  “Two areas of this book merit special attention and should be mandatory reading for all military officers. Clancy’s narrative of the army in transition and his chapter on maneuver warfare are superb . . . What the reader gains from [Franks’s] candid admissions is a deep appreciation of the mind of a commander charged with employing 146,000 soldiers and 50,000 vehicles across 120 miles of enemy territory in the face of determined resistance.”

  —ARMY Magazine

  “Franks manages to tell a good story, offer insights into leadership, and set the record straight.”—Scripps Howard News Service

  NOVELS BY TOM CLANCY

  The Hunt for Red October

  Red Storm Rising

  Patriot Games

  The Cardinal of the Kremlin

  Clear and Present Danger

  The Sum of All Fears

  Without Remorse

  Debt of Honor

  Executive Orders

  Rainbow Six

  The Bear and the Dragon

  Red Rabbit

  The Teeth of the Tiger

  SSN: Strategies of Submarine Warfare

  NONFICTION

  Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

  Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment

  Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

  Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

  Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

  Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

  Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces

  Into the Storm: A Study in Command

  (written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Every Man a Tiger (written with General Charles Horner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

  (written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Battle Ready (written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY

  Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell

  Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda

  Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Checkmate

  Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Fallout

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND STEVE PIECZENIK

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Games of State

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Acts of War

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Balance of Power

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: State of Siege

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Divide and Conquer

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Line of Control

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mission of Honor

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Sea of Fire

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Call to Treason

  Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: War of Eagles

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Hidden Agendas

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Night Moves

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Breaking Point

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Point of Impact

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: CyberNation

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: State of War

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Changing of the Guard

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: Springboard

  Tom Clancy’s Net Force: The Archimedes Effect

  CREATED BY TOM CLANCY AND MARTIN GREENBERG

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Politika

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: ruthless.com

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Shadow Watch

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Bio-Strike

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cold War

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Cutting Edge

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Zero Hour

  Tom Clancy’s Power Plays: Wild Card

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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eISBN : 978-1-429-58668-9

  Clancy, Tom.

  Every man a tiger / by Tom Clancy, with Chuck Horner.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-429-58668-9

  1. Horner, Chuck. 2. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Biography. 3. Persian Gulf War, 1991—United States.

  4. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Aerial operations, American. I. Horner, Chuck. II. Title.

  DS79.724.U6 H-53339 CIP Rev.

  956.7044’2’092—dc21

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  DEDICATION

  Normally, a book like this would be dedicated to those who paid the ultimate price in the desert; but here a different view is in order. Those of us who deployed were proud to be there; it was an honor to be allowed to participate in the effort to free Kuwait. At the same time, we felt gratitude for the troops who didn’t deploy and were supporting us with spare parts and doing the other things that needed to be done back home or at their bases overseas. We were also extremely grateful to the reservists who were activated to man our home bases—guarding the gate, or working in the hospitals, or taking care of our families. Most of all, we felt a deep sense of gratitude to the people who supported us so vigorously with mail, cookies, and encouragement. They didn’t fully understand why we were in the desert; they sure were concerned about a war and its attendant casualties; but they gave us their love and prayers without reservations.

  INTRODUCTION

  Ionce observed that fighter pilots are little boys who never really get past the stage of buzzing past little girls on their bikes. I still believe this to be true. But then how does one deal with a general of fighter pilots? All the more so, how does one deal with a professional warrior who has the most elegant and subtle intellectual disguise this side of Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber?

  Well, okay, you need a few things right off. To fly an F-16 fighter plane, you have to have the skills of a concert pianist—in fact, you need to know how to play two pianos at once, since all the buttons you use to fight the airplane (that’s why it’s called a fighter) and all the buttons that work the radar, guns, and missiles are located on the stick and throttle quadrant so that you can kill people without having to look down. So, there you are, flying an aircraft that looks and evidently acts like a Chevy Corvette (but in three dimensions), head up, eyes out of the cockpit, looking for some Bad Guy to give a Slammer (AIM-120 AMRAAM missile) to. . . . Well, just flying the damned airplane isn’t all that easy—which is why, as anyone can tell you, one of the differences between a fighter pilot and an ape is that it doesn’t cost $1,000,000 to train an ape.

  There are numerous other such differences between fighter pilots and apes, of course—you can, for example, trust your wife around an ape. . . .

  Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah. There you are, at 20,000 feet with a highly expensive fighter plane strapped to your back, flying it with the sort of skill the average guy with perfect eyesight, the reflexes of a mongoose, and the killer instinct of Jack Dempsey after a few hard drinks can develop in, oh, ten or twenty years of practice. Right hand is on the stick, identifying the various weapons-control buttons by feeling with your fingertips, while your left hand is doing the same on the throttle quadrant. There are other people out there who want to kill you. Some in their own airplanes, others on the ground with surface-to-air missiles, which are like fighter planes, but dumber, though somewhat faster, and still others with various firearms ranging from the ubiquitous AK-47 7.62mm (.30 caliber) to 100 millimeter (four-inch, and these bullets explode when they hit or get close to you), because, amazingly enough, not everyone likes fighter pilots.

  But, getting back to business, this fighter jock is a general officer. He isn’t merely supposed to mount his gallant steed and tilt off against a willing foe on the field of honor. He’s supposed to lead, and command others like himself, because all of this fighting stuff is supposed to make sense, because you’re not merely a well-paid and highly trained ape-substitute. You are, in fact, supposed to make a plan on how to use all those three-dimensional Corvettes that carry bombs and missiles with the purpose of enforcing your country’s will on somebody who might not quite see things our way.

  A fighter pilot is, when you get down to it, a warrior, a person who puts himself in harm’s way, and does it all by himself. Such people are both the same as, and different from, other warriors. The differences are mainly technical. The fighter jock drives something sleek, neat, and expensive, and loves driving it (as the wife of a naval aviator once wrote: “I’m his mistress—he’s married to the airplane”) because it’s what sets him apart. That’s what makes him bigger than other men, and this is something the fighter jock never forgets. And so, in the tradition of armored knights of medieval times, there he is, up there for everyone to see, proud and alone, doing his job for his country.

  They don’t have to look like killers. We so often think all professional soldiers should look like John Wayne. A good and serious man, the Duke, but he got no closer to combat operations than the offensive line of USC’s football team back in the 1930s. I mean, nobody will ever mistake Chuck Horner for Duke Wayne. This transplanted Iowa farm boy is so laid back that one sometimes wants to stick a needle in his arm to make sure he’s still alive, but then you remember that we don’t select fighter pilots or flag officers off park benches, and you look a little closer and try to penetrate the disguise. What’s the difference between a fighter pilot and an ape? You don’t entrust an ape with the safety of your country.

  This overage farm boy has the eyesight of a gyrfalcon, and he can play two pianos at the same time. As a team member of Lockheed-Martin, he still has access to his beloved F-16. Along the way, he’s picked up a few long tonnes of knowledge, and more than that, he’s got a place inside his brain where he’s systematized the science and application of air power in the same way that Isaac Newton once organized physics. It’s not just longer-range artillery. It’s a way to attack an enemy systematically—all over, all at the same time. And you can do real harm that way. Not just punching him in the nose. Not just twisting his arm. Going after every square inch at once: Hi, there, you are now at war, hope you enjoy the ride.

  Horner also, to quote John Paul Jones, has something a professional officer must have: “the nicest sense of personal honor.” Right and wrong are identifiable in Chuck’s universe, and separate. In a community where a man’s word is his life, Chuck Horner’s word is found in gold lettering on an adamantine wall of granite. He is a man of the American Midwest, and he has all the values and qualities one associates with such an origin: honesty, fair play, respect for others who may look or talk a little differently. He is the shrewdest of observers, and he’s a man who enjoyed being a Wild Weasel, a fighter jock tasked to finding and killing SAM sites—that is, eliminating the people and things whose job it was to eliminate him. Weaseldom was dangerous. Chuck Horner enjoyed the game.

  For this reason, and others, Chuck Horner is regarded as a “fighter pilot’s fighter pilot” by a friend of mine who went “downtown” over Baghdad a few times himself back in 1991. The combination of brains, skill, and pure physical talent kept him alive when other men were less fortunate. When the Air Force nearly collapsed in the 1970s, he was one of the men who saved it, and rebuilt it in the 1980s, not just fixing the broken parts, but defining what an air force is supposed to be. What such organizations do came largely from Chuck’s mind. It’s business for Chuck, and a serious one, in which at best the people who die wear the other sort of uniform, something General Horner keeps in mind.

  Chuck’s also a superb storyteller, as you are about to see, with a keen eye for detail, and he’s blessed with a puckish sense of hu
mor that shines over a glass of something adult in a comfortable corner of the local O-Club, while you also learn a lot of things, because he’s a dazzlingly effective teacher. The short version is: Chuck Horner is a hero who has paid his dues many, many times. He’s been there, done that, and he has the T-shirt to prove it. In the first war of smart bombs, computers, and high-performance aircraft flown by true professionals, Chuck led the winning side, proving that the difference between a fighter pilot and an ape is that the pilot is quite a bit smarter, and better to have on your side.

  —Tom Clancy

  DESERT SHIELD / STORM TIMELINE

  AUGUST 1990

  2 Iraq invades Kuwait

  6 U.S. forces gain permission to base operations in Saudi Arabia

  7 F-15s depart for Persian Gulf

  7 USS Independence battle group arrives south of Persian Gulf

  8 1st TFW and 82nd Airborne arrive in Persian Gulf

  NOVEMBER 1990

  8 200,000 additional troops sent from United States

  29 United Nations authorizes force against Iraq

  JANUARY 1991

  12 Congress approves offensive use of U.S. troops

  15 United Nations withdrawal deadline passes

  17 D day. Coalition launches airborne assault