Kevin Miller - Raven One

“ Nails , don’ matter, any head’n will do. Do you see the town?”

Through the milky haze the town, another packed jumble of small, boxy structures surrounded by disorganized fields, came into view south of the highway. Wilson called to Bowser that he had it in sight.

“Roger, Nail , we’re near a small minaret on the southwest part o’ town. Jus’ took a mortar. How far you out?”

“One minute, Bowser. Looking for you,” Wilson assured him. He told Smoke to take high cover and continued down in a shallow dive to the deck. In his mind he recited the low-altitude training dive rules: 15 for 750 . The airplane intakes were moaning at high speed, and he looked at his fuel: 5.4. With the ground rushing up at a steady pace, and a large bird whizzing past his left side, he realized he was no longer bored.

Taking a cut to the right to set up a southwest-northeast run over the city in order to put the low afternoon sun at his back, he leveled off at 200 feet and scanned the fields in rapid motion for signs of small arms or MANPADS. There were single trees here and there, and he saw a stand of trees to the south.

Bowser’s excited call filled his ears. “Gotcha in sight, Nail! Bring it!”

At treetop height over the fields, Wilson approached the low wall that surrounded the town at over 500 knots, a high transonic airspeed that would rattle the windows but not break them. When he saw Bowser’s minaret, he made a quick jink away from it, then rolled out to fly over the center of town at 200 feet. Smoke, 5,000 feet above, watched for threat fire.

The town appeared quiet as he approached. A few people walked along the dusty streets and alleyways and cars were parked here and there, but very little moved. Color in the form of green date palms and various Arabic signs dotted the cityscape, a light brown hodgepodge of row houses and courtyard walls, everything cut at right angles by east-west streets and north-south alleys. An Iraqi flag flew from a modest building to his right.

At this speed the people could not hear Wilson approach until his was right on top of them. He noticed a man flinch on the sidewalk as the jet thundered past, and a second later he caught a glimpse of an abaya -clad woman trudging down an alley with a small child dressed in a nightgown. Wilson threw up a wing and jinked right a few degrees to look for telltale flashes of small arms fire and MANPADS launches. A brown blur of rooftops covered with water tanks, antennae and satellite dishes whizzed underneath him. Another minaret, this one larger, passed down his left wing. More people were outside in this part of town, and as they saw him approach, they darted inside buildings and alleys. He rolled up on his left wing and looked down, just in time to see the face of a boy, mouth agape, looking up in wonder from a courtyard below.

He traversed the town in less than 10 seconds, and at the eastern wall pulled up and to the left. He traded airspeed for altitude and punched out some flares as he looked over his left shoulder for threats.

“I’m high at your left eight, six clear,” Smoke called.

Wilson replied, “Visual, six clear,” and continued up.

“ Fuckin’ sweet! I mean nice job, Nail. That’s jus’ what we need. We were startin’ ta’ get some trouble down here. I’ve got ‘nuther mission for you, right now!”

Wilson had about five minutes of fuel before he had to bingo to Exxon . “Make it quick, Bowser. We’ve got five minutes of playtime.”

“Yes, sir, this will be a talk-on. See the road ‘long the town’s southern border? See where it kinks?”

Wilson saw it and replied, “Affirm.” He leveled off at 8,000 feet in a shallow bank north of Balad Ruz.

“OK, that corner is bisected by a dirt road that leads southeast, connectin’ with the corner of a parallel road, ‘bout a mile.”

“ Nail, four-one contact.”

“OK, using that measure of distance, ‘bout two thirds of the way down from the city and to the north of the dirt road is a maroon sedan parked in the field. Need ya t’ hit that with a GBU on a zero-niner-zero run in. You’ve got friendlies to the north in town.”

“ Nail, four-one, roger. What’s in the car?”

“We filled it with a bad-guy arms cache and IED explosives. The car belonged to an insurgent we captured, and his friends are pissed, ‘specially his ol’ lady!”

“Roger that… looking.”

Wilson extended to the west, and slewed his FLIR on the road south of town, running the aiming diamond to the kink in the road. He was now at bingo fuel, but could stay a few minutes more for Bowser . He widened his field of view, took a guess at the distance, and narrowed his FLIR picture. A white smudge stood out in the display, likely the “hot” infrared image of a car left out in the midday sun. Wilson kept his turn in and was now flying east and closing the “smudge.” Several seconds later the smudge began to take on the shape of a sedan. He overbanked and pulled his nose down to put the aiming diamond image in his HUD. It showed a vehicle in the distance, the maroon color discernible — but barely — against the dark green field.

“ Nail, four-one, captured ,” Wilson said and took a fleeting look at Smoke, who joined to the inside in tac-wing. “Switches set, armstrong ,” he relayed on aux while pulling up to level off.

“Two has contact, visual, roger, armstrong. ”

The mission computer calculated a heading and a time to release the 500-pound, laser-guided bomb: … 14 seconds, 13 seconds, 12 seconds…. Wilson triple-checked his switches: weapon — SELECTED; laser — ARMED; tape — ON. He monitored the greenish FLIR imagery and slewed the aiming diamond with small corrections to keep the diamond centered on the target. It was now easily identifiable on the FLIR as a compact sedan with the hood open.

“ Bowser, Nails are five seconds, wings level,” Wilson called.

“ Nails , gotcha in sight. Yer cleared hot,” Bowser responded.

“Roger, cleared.”

In the last few seconds before release, Wilson “sweetened” the computed solution and saw no life around the vehicle. With three seconds left, he placed his right thumb on the pickle switch and pushed.

The 500-pound weapon left the aircraft with a familiar twitch from the sudden release. He looked over his shoulder at Smoke, flying a little above on his right side in time to see Smoke’s LGB release and fall away, wings extended. He turned his attention to the FLIR and looked at the time of fall countdown … 10 seconds, 9 seconds… then returned his focus to the diamond to prevent drifting off the car.

At one second to impact, a white dash shot from the top of the display and into the sedan, causing the display to burst into images of explosive flash and smoke. Wilson selected “WIDE” field of view and rolled up to his left in time to see Smoke’s weapon enter the maelstrom of smoke and fire. It detonated with a white concentric shock wave that expanded in rapid fashion away from the explosion. One huge secondary explosion, then another, caused additional shock waves to ripple away like high-speed rings. Wilson saw tumbling fragments thrown into the air, leaving thin smoke trails above the dark roiling cloud. Debris pelted the field hard enough to kick up small dust clouds all around the sedan’s former location.

“ Nails — SHACK! A hun’rd over a hun’rd!” In the background, Wilson overheard one of Bowsers’ mates exclaim, “Fuckin’ —A!” to his buddy as they watched the scene.