Nelson Demille - The Lion's Game

Lieutenant Chip Wiggins, Weapons Systems Officer, United States Air Force, sat silent and motionless in the right seat of the F-111F attack jet, code named Karma 57. The aircraft was cruising along at a fuel-saving 350 knots. Wiggins glanced at his pilot, Lieutenant Bill Satherwaite, to his left.

Ever since they'd taken off from the Royal Air Force Station Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, some two hours before, neither man had said much. Satherwaite was the silent type anyway, Wiggins thought, and not given to useless chatter. But Wiggins wanted to hear a human voice, any voice, so he said, "We're coming abeam of Portugal."

Satherwaite replied, "I know that."

"Right." Their voices had a slight metallic ring to them as the words filtered through the open cockpit interphone that was the actual verbal connection between the two men. Wiggins took a deep breath, sort of a yawn, beneath his flight helmet, and the increased flow of oxygen caused the open interphone connection to reverberate for a second. Wiggins did it again.

Satherwaite said, "Would you mind not breathing?"

"Whatever makes you happy, Skipper."

Wiggins squirmed a little in his seat. He was getting cramped after so many hours of sitting restrained in the F-lll's notoriously uncomfortable seat. The black sky was becoming oppressive, but he could see lights on the distant shore of Portugal and that made him feel better for some reason.

They were on their way to Libya, Wiggins reflected-on their way to rain death and destruction down on Moammar Gadhafi's pissant country in retaliation for a Libyan terrorist attack a couple weeks ago on a West Berlin disco frequented by American military. Wiggins recalled that the briefing officer made sure they knew why they were risking their lives in this difficult mission. Without too much spin, the briefing officer told them that the Libyan bomb attack on La Belle disco, which killed one American serviceman and injured dozens of others, was just the latest in a series of acts of open aggression that had to be answered with a display of resolve and force. "Therefore," said the briefing officer, "you're going to blow the shit out of the Libyans."

Sounded good in the briefing room, but not all of America 's allies thought this was a good idea. The attack aircraft from England had been compelled to take the long way to Libya because the French and the Spanish had refused them permission to cross over their airspace. This had angered Wiggins, but Satherwaite didn't seem to care. Wiggins knew that Satherwaite's knowledge of geopolitics was minus zero: Bill Satherwaite's life was flying and flying was his life. Wiggins thought that if Satherwaite had been told to bomb and strafe Paris, Satherwaite would do it without a single thought about why he was attacking a NATO ally. The scary thing, Wiggins thought, was that Satherwaite would do the same thing to Washington, D.C., or Walla Walla, Washington, with no questions asked.

Wiggins pursued this thought by asking Satherwaite, "Bill, did you hear that rumor that one of our aircraft is going to drop a fuck-you bomb in the backyard of the French Embassy in Tripoli?"

Satherwaite did not reply.

Wiggins pressed on. "I also heard that one of us is going to drop a load on Gadhafi's Al Azziziyah residence. He's supposed to be there tonight."

Again, Satherwaite did not answer.

Finally, Wiggins, annoyed and frustrated, said, "Hey, Bill, are you awake?"

Satherwaite replied, "Chip, the less you know and the less I know, the happier we will be."

Chip Wiggins retreated into a moody silence. He liked Bill Satherwaite and liked the fact that his pilot was of the same rank as he, and couldn't order him to shut up. But Satherwaite could be a cold, taciturn son-of-a-bitch in the air. He was better on the ground. In fact, when Bill had a few drinks in him, he seemed almost human.

Wiggins considered that maybe Satherwaite was nervous, which was understandable. This was, after all, according to the Ops briefing, the longest jet attack mission ever attempted. Operation El Dorado Canyon was about to make some kind of history, though Wiggins didn't know what kind yet. There were sixty other aircraft somewhere around them, and their unit, the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing, had contributed twenty-four F-111F swing-wing jets to the mission. The tanker fleet that was flying down and back with them was a mix of the huge KG-10s and the smaller KC-135s-the 10s to refuel the fighters, and the 135s to refuel the KC-lOs. There would be three midair refuelings on the three-thousand-mile route to Libya. Flying time from England to the Libyan coast was six hours, flying time toward Tripoli in the pre-attack phase was half an hour, and time over target would be a long, long ten minutes. And then they'd fly home. Not all of them, but most of them. "History," Wiggins said. "We are flying into history."

Satherwaite did not reply.

Chip Wiggins informed Bill Satherwaite, "Today is Income Tax Day. Did you file on time?"

"Nope. Filed for an extension."

"The IRS focuses on late filers."

Satherwaite grunted a reply.

Wiggins said, "If you get audited, drop napalm on the IRS headquarters. They'll think twice before they audit Bill Satherwaite again." Wiggins chuckled.

Satherwaite stared at his instruments.

Unable to draw his pilot into conversation, Wiggins went back to his thoughts. He contemplated the fact that this was a test of endurance for crew and equipment, and they'd never trained for a mission like this. But so far, so good. The F-lll was performing admirably. He glanced out the side of his canopy. The variable wing was extended at thirty-five degrees so as to give the airplane its best cruise characteristics for the long formation flight. Later, they'd hydraulically sweep the wings back to a streamlined aft position for the attack, and that would mark the moment of the actual combat phase of the mission. Combat. Wiggins really couldn't believe he was going into actual Jesus H. Christ combat.

This was the culmination of all they'd been trained for. Both he and Satherwaite had missed Vietnam, and now they were flying into unknown and hostile territory against an enemy whose anti-aircraft capabilities were not well known. The briefing officer had told them that the Libyan air defenses routinely shut down after midnight, but Wiggins couldn't believe that the Libyans were quite that stupid. He was convinced that their aircraft would be picked up on Libyan radar, that the Libyan Air Force would scramble to intercept them, that surface-to-air missiles would rise to blow them out of the sky, and that they would be greeted by Triple-A, which did not mean the American Automobile Association. "Marcus Aurelius."

"What?"

"The only Roman monument still standing in Tripoli. The Arch of Marcus Aurelius. Second century A.D."

Satherwaite stifled a yawn.

"If anybody hits it by mistake, they're in big trouble. It's a UN designated world heritage site. Were you paying attention at the briefing?"

"Chip, why don't you chew gum or something?"

"We begin our attack just west of the Arch. I hope I get a glimpse of it. That kind of stuff interests me."

Satherwaite closed his eyes and exhaled in an exaggerated expression of impatience.

Chip Wiggins returned to his combat thoughts. He knew that there were a few Vietnam vets on this mission, but most of the guys were untested in combat. Also, everyone from the President on down was watching, waiting, and holding their breath. After Vietnam, and after the Pueblo fiasco, and Carter's screwed-up rescue mission in Iran, and a whole decade of military failures since Vietnam, the home team needed a big win.

The lights were on in the Pentagon and the White House. They were pacing and praying. Win this one for the Gipper, boys. Chip Wiggins wasn't going to let them down. He hoped they wouldn't let him down. He'd been told that the mission could be aborted at any time, and he feared the crackle of the radio with the code words for abort-Green Grass. As in the green, green grass of home: