Imminent Threat Read online

  Allen, PBJ, and Cosmo came into ops as we were leaving. They were still flying with Captain Willie though the rest of the crew had been changed around. They looked like they were getting by.

  My attention turned to Gentleman Bob as he began. “Today, gentlemen and ladies, we are supporting a very special mission package.” Gentleman Bob liked to play things up so they seemed bigger than life. He let the words hang there ominously.

  We’d been through the intel briefings already. For the most part, we knew what to expect. He began again, “Priority targets remain early warning and radar sites, airfields and aircraft. As you know, a substantial number of Iraqi fighter jets have fled north. More fighters in our area mean a substantially greater threat to our missions. Like you, I’d prefer that we destroyed every one of those damned fighters to make our job safer.

  “However, as you know, special emphasis has been placed on completely eliminating the Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear threat. Toward this end, part of the package has a very special target.” Gentleman Bob paused and Derrin from intel flicked on the overhead projector. “This picture is of a suspected Iraqi chemical warfare depot.”

  He began pointing with his pointer. “You can see from all the activity here that something is going on. Also, most of those fortifications are new. A contingent of Falcons will be striking those bunkers circled in red with smart missiles. The Buffs will follow and lay down a fine carpet.

  “To support this package, we’re going to have to be airborne longer than usual. I want you all at your best out there today. I know you’re tired and it’s been a damned long week. Together we can do it if we just hang tough,” concluded Gentleman Bob. It was a nice close to an invigorating speech. It was clear he wanted us charged up when we were in the air that day. At the moment, we definitely were.

  Tennessee Jim did his thing next. He wasn’t good with words like Gentleman Bob. In fact he was rather blunt, but in his own way I guess it was endearing. Spit cup raised to his lips, he began, “I’m not sure if any of you looked at the big board or not, but it looks like we have an afternoon Go tomorrow. This being morning, war, and God willing, we should be finished by late afternoon. Crew beers in my quarters after the flight. I know that Cowboy has the first case.”

  Cowboy tried to argue that he wasn’t buying, but it didn’t work. He knew the rules. Tennessee continued, and somehow his mixed drawl moved us just as much as Gentleman Bob’s pep speech.

  Stress affects different people in different ways. For Crow, it was pushing him way beyond anything that could be considered normal even on the beaches of Oahu where he grew up and his mind seemed to be. The weird thing was that with Cowboy and Happy beside him, they seemed the perfect trio. Sparrow was the quiet type. She didn’t say much. Tammy was quite the opposite. She spoke her mind, yet her youth was clear in her words.

  Popcorn and I were also quiet, pensive types. We never said much while waiting in the crew lounge. It was always after a mission that we exploded to life.

  Bobby was driving the crew van today. When he entered the lounge, we knew it was time to go even before Jim shouted, “Time to saddle up!”

  We gathered up our things. I grabbed two bottles of water from Life Support on the way out. One I’d guzzle during the flight while I ate my pork and beans and fig newtons. The other I’d bring back to the PME with me.

  The drive to the flight line seemed less forbidding than it had those first few days. I was beginning to get a good grasp of my surroundings now.

  As the van turned onto the taxiway, through the back window of the crew van I saw the warplanes waiting on their pads. It was always inspiring to see Falcons and Eagles loaded to the teeth and ready to go. It was clear they had the tougher job of getting in and out of enemy territory unscathed, but every time we approached the Gray Lady and we clambered in through the crew entrance door, I always felt a little awed. The Gray Lady had her own mystique; and if we, the crew, treated her just right, she’d purr. That meant we’d be able to provide jam support when jam support was needed most.

  I looked back on the week and envisioned all the close calls I’d had. I’d been as close to death as I ever wanted to come; but in the confusion of it all, I was caught up in the rapture that was war. War that was devastating, destructive, and even deadly.

  Over the past days, a number of U.S. and allied planes had been shot down or had crash-landed in Iraqi territory. The Iraqis were using their first prisoners of war as propaganda tools. We all had our blood chits, our evasion plans, our .38s, our chemical gear, and our survival gear. To a man, we hoped we’d never have to use any of it.

  As I climbed into the seat on position Six, I no longer thought about dying and returning home in a dark plastic bag. I thought about surviving, living to tell the story, and seeing Katie.

  It’s odd how little things mean so much, but on the back of the evasion plans there’s a tiny American flag. When the time came, I’d set the stars and stripes beside me and go to work.

  Before long we’d be humping the combat zone. The radios would be singing in my ears. The Iraqis would be coming at us once again. For now, though, I had checks to complete.

  I checked my position top to bottom, and then ran through the radio checks with Cowboy, who was sitting Seven. “MCS, Six, preflight checks complete,” I called out afterward, and Tammy, Happy, Sparrow, Popcorn, and Cowboy followed suit.

  “MCC, MCS, we’re all ready to go back here,” relayed Chris.

  Crow and Happy were working on something feverishly as the pilot began the Before Takeoff Combat Entry Checklist. Soon afterward the engines were rising to a roar. We were almost ready for departure.

  Crow ran back to his seat as we got clearance for taxi and takeoff. He was strapping in just as my headset tweaked. “Crew, we’re rolling,” Captain Sammy said.

  I gripped the armrests of my chair as we rolled down the runway and lurched into the sky. The Gray Lady seemed exceptionally sluggish today.

  We were climbing out of 5,000 feet when my headset tweaked. What followed sounded like a drum roll and I nearly shot out of my seat except the safety straps held me tight. Suddenly I heard music and Martha—Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. She was singing, “Nowhere to run.”

  The music was playing over Private A, so the front-end hadn’t really heard it yet, except for the Nav, but old Bill didn’t say a word. In fact I later heard that he tapped the pilot on the shoulder and told him to pull out Private. Later we switched the music to ship’s PA, which we could punch on or off more easily.

  As we were still thirty minutes or more from the sensitive area, music really caused no harm. It was just another channel of chatter we could push in or pull out if we wanted to. No one said anything though it was clear it’d be punched off prior to entering the sensitive area. A tradition began. Martha became our go-to-war chant. When she sang there’s nowhere to run, I imagined she was telling it to Saddam Hussein himself.

  Thirty minutes passed with surprising swiftness. The music was turned off. It was time to earn our pay.

  “Stations, in ten mike,” called out the MCC. “Four clear to the rear for spotting. AMT, any slugs in the system today?”

  “She’s hummin’,” Crow replied.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. Nav, MCC, ETA to package ingress?”

  “On my mark, seventeen mike,” Bill replied, “mark!”

  “Crew, MCC, clear to log in and get ready to work. Prepare to give ‘em hell. MCS, MCC, what’s the word from Phantom?”

  “Phantom’s not airborne today. We’re on our own on this one. What’d Gypsy just pass?”

  I keyed Select and said, “Traffic advisory and two of the Eagles just pedaled off to juice up with Gas Station.” Afterward, I completed my log in.

  “Crew, Pilot, Before Combat Entry Checklist.”

  Crow blackened out the crew entrance portal and dimmed the interior lights from white to red. Staring at a darkened screen with red overhead lights put a definite strain on t
he eyes. I adjusted the little spotlight over my position so that it shone down on my position, ensuring that it, too, was properly dim.

  “Crew, we’re on orbit. Environment is left,” hissed the pilot’s voice into my headset, “Nav, ETA to package ingress?”

  “Environment left,” confirmed Jim.

  “Seven mike.”

  “Roger, Nav, seven mike.”

  “Let’s get those targets!” yelled Tennessee Jim.

  As I started to work, I glanced at my watch. The first wave would be over Iraq for a long time. I knew that soon we’d be at the very edge of our box making sure we could support them one hundred percent as they went in deep. In fact, we probably would be over Iraqi airspace as we had been before but we’d still log our O-2s—combat support—as we had before. Our “official” O-1 flights over the heart of Iraq were only a few scant weeks away, but at the time none of us knew this.

  Time rips by when one is working so intensely. We only registered its passing when the pilot whipped the Lady through a well-practiced combat turn. It was right then, when we felt our hearts leap into our mouths and we either clung to our seats or attempted to continue working through the turn, that we knew time had slipped by.

  Then just as abruptly, the wings were level. We were facing the environment working up a frenzy, fingers pounding madly at the controls in front of us and giving it all we had, “giving it hell,” as Jim said. It was a definite emotional high.

  “MCC, MCS,” Chris called out.

  “Go ahead, MCS.”

  “Sir, I’m happy to report that the first wave has successfully reached its target and is, as we speak, working over target!”

  A cheer went up from the mission crew, breaking the tension we’d all been feeling. I found myself screaming, “Yes!” into my headset.

  “It’s not over yet,” cautioned Jim. “Let’s make sure they get home safe.”

  “Roger that, MCC,” Chris said.

  I turned back to my keyboard and my displays. The inevitable emotional slump came when the first wave at long last began its egress, and we took that first real breath. The smell of jet fuel was all around us, clinging to everything as it tends to do in an EC-130. We sucked it in real slow, only to find that the second wave had started their ingress.

  We could no longer think about that first wave or their special target. Now we had to focus on the second wave. They were bound for several Iraqi airfields; and so when we went back to work, the intensity level jumped back off the scale.

  Minutes slipped away one by one. Hours followed. After we landed, we were tired and spent as he headed for debrief. Later, I could have easily gone back to the PME, crawled into my military issue sleeping bag, zipped it up tight and gone to sleep. But I would’ve awakened in the middle of the night again to find a darkened and cold room filled with sleeping crewers.

  The big board said we were flying the afternoon line tomorrow with a 12:00 alert. We were all due for a little R&R, and we aimed to take it. Cowboy was, after all, buying the first case of bravos.

  The rest of us did eventually chip in for two more. For thirteen tired crew dogs, that was just about right.

  Saturday, 26 January 1991

  I had my first real break since the start of the war. I blew off a lot of steam. It felt good.

  During the festivities it was someone’s bright idea that our crew all get “crew” cuts—well, marine high-and-tights, actually. We became Tennessee Jim’s “crew” crew. Little did we know we would start a crew war. Captain Willie’s crew raced out to the Base Exchange during their off time. Who would’ve guessed that they would’ve had a fresh supply of Dick Tracy dusters? They had their dusters, we had our crew cuts. Pretty corny, I know, but it was a way to clear the air. I wondered what the other crews would do now.

  Although the air war was still going strong and the push was on to force Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait, everything seemed to slow down. Perhaps it was that the disorientation and newness of war were finally fading away. We’d certainly come a long way from those frightened souls who’d trembled in the darkness on the flight line in a wet ditch while an Alarm Red sounded.

  In a war zone, things happen fast and always have a way of balancing out. The first suspected terrorist attacks on Turkey began as I feared. An explosion damaged a car outside the U.S. consulate in Adana. A second explosion blew out the doors of the Turkish-American Association also in Adana. Adana was the city right outside the gates of the air base.

  We were alerted at 11:00 and entering ops not long afterward. Two hours later Cowboy was calling out in his Texas drawl, “Time to saddle up!” On his heels was the duty driver, Chubby, whom I hadn’t seen in a long while. Earlier I’d been busy in the back of the van fussing with my bags. I hadn’t paid much attention to who the driver was then.

  Chubby was a good guy. I thought he was supposed to be on the recently formed crew four. At least that’s what had been on the big board. “Hey, Chubby, aren’t you supposed to be on crew four?”

  “They’re flying with an empty seat now. Three crewers are due in on the next C-5. I can’t wait to fly.”

  I smiled a crooked smile and climbed into the back of the van.

  As things were finally worked into a quasi-routine, today there were only eleven of us heading out to the flight line. The AMT and the Eng went out to the plane an hour early, as they normally did. Crow and Patrick were supposed to be ensuring that the systems were ready to go, but I had my doubts.

  Seated so I had a good view out the rear window, I got a good look at the surroundings that it seemed I had only noticed yesterday. About a block away from base ops was the rear command center. It was housed in a tin-roofed building with several makeshift buildings around it. The complex was surrounded by rows of barbed wire and barriers. There was a gas station past it to my right. The same fortifications surrounded it. After the gas station, there was a transportation depot. Further along, the area became somewhat barren.

  Right then, I wanted to see the Lady more than anything else. When I climbed up the steps and went through the crew entrance door behind Cowboy, the interior lights were still off and we stumbled around in the half-dark trying to get to our positions. External power was hooked up, so I was able to switch on the little spotlight over my position, turning it from combat red to white so I could read by it. I slapped down my flight crew checklist on the tabletop beside position Six—the checklist I’d looked at a thousand times and had virtually memorized but was supposed to have open to follow procedure.

  I opened it about midway to a page titled Normal Procedures and followed the list. After flicking on the O2, I attached my helmet to the appropriate hose and began sucking oxygen through my helmet mask to check it out.

  Next, I began radio checks. One was already on headset, so I conducted radio checks with her. Setting the helmet down, I grabbed my headset and tweaked the mike, doing a similar radio check with it. Then I quick-fitted my parachute using the numbers that were penned onto the straps to adjust them.

  “MCS, One and Six, stations and radio checks complete.”

  Chris gave a thumbs up, then replied, “Six, MCS, you got me on radios.” I went through the headset checks again with Chris, noticing he didn’t test out his helmet today as he had the previous days. He looked tired and worn. We all were.

  A few minutes later, Chris called out, “MCC, MCS, all checks complete. We’re ready for Before Starting Engines Checklist.”

  Tennessee Jim relayed the message to the AC.

  The chocks were pulled and then I heard the engines begin to whine as the front-end went over the starting engines checklist.

  Soon we were taxiing to the runway for takeoff. I turned to the dark blue inserts that were not normally a part of my checklist and to a page titled: Before Takeoff Combat Entry Checklist. By now, it seemed old hack.

  “Checks complete,” was repeated by the front-end and the MCC. We gave a quick thumbs-up, saying the mission crew was ready for takeoff, and the MCC
relayed it. “Pilot, MCC, mission crew ready for takeoff.”

  “Roger, MCC. Crew, we’re rolling.”

  I gripped my armrests less tensely than I had on previous days, never thinking that perhaps I was being lulled into a false sense of security. Still, today’s flight was my ninth combat flight and the newness of it all was wearing off.

  A short while later, as we leveled off, I heard Martha playing in the background. As Crow passed, I handed him a Bruce Springsteen tape. “I’ll play it on the way home,” his voice said in my ears through Private. “Damn system’s not coming up again. It was working fine on the ground, but then it always works fine on the ground.”

  I watched him bring the system down and then up, working as fast as he could. When things went right there was little for the maintenance tech to do; but when things went wrong, he certainly earned his pay. It was still early, though, so he had plenty of time to fix things, unlike previous days.

  Roger Daltry was singing, “Don’t let the sun go down on me,” on ship’s PA. I relaxed a bit, taking the momentary reprieve in stride. Some days it seemed we were pushing the time envelope, racing to get on orbit to support the package. Other days like today, it seemed we had all the time in the world. On ship’s Interphone, I heard the AC tell the Co, “Slow the pedals down,” which meant to cut back the throttles.

  The back of my head felt cold as wintry air from the overhead cooling and heating shafts hit me. This was especially so due to the lack of hair from my new crew cut. “AMT, Six, when you got a minute, could you turn up the heat?” I called out on Private.

  “Yeah, give me a minute,” he responded dryly. He was still having a hard time getting the system up and running.

  “Thanks,” I clicked in afterward.

  I cracked open a can of ready-to-eat soup, which would have been more appropriately titled ready-to-heat soup. I ate it cold from the can despite the fact that the plane had an oven heated by hot air generated from the engines—the same hot air that could have been blowing out of the overhead ducts right now but wasn’t.