Kevin Miller - Raven One

Wilson looked left and saw a wild, gyrating fireball. The dazzling, white-hot light almost washed out his goggles, but he saw the unmistakable planform of a Hornet wing poking through the flames before it, too, became engulfed. Horrified, he looked under the goggles and saw the yellow and orange flames of the fireball spinning in a steepening dive. Flaming pieces of debris ejected from it and trailing black smoke could be seen against the radiance of the city lighting.

Two huge flashes underneath him caught Wilson’s attention, and he overbanked to see concentric circles emanating from tall geysers of water and smoke. Flaming pieces of debris cartwheeled through the air from where the skipper had laid his bombs, bullseye hits. Two more flashes erupted next to them, one on the wharf pier and another one on an adjacent warehouse. They produced circular supersonic shock waves as more debris floated into the air in slow motion.

Wilson pulled hard up to the left and watched the flaming wreckage continue to gyrate out of control. “ Get out! ” he cried on strike common, and then repeated, “ Hammer one-one, get out!”

Receiving no response, Wilson called to Olive, “Olive, keep your knots up, egress southeast! Dutch, you with us?”

“Affirm, visual two, coming out your left seven high. No chute yet!”

“Roger, bug southeast!”

Wilson noted AAA fire above with more streams in front of him as he kept his turn in to egress. His fist banged out more chaff, as he violently maneuvered the jet in order to keep sight of Olive above him. He then overbanked to see Raven 400 in its final plunge. The aircraft had now disintegrated into several flaming pieces, with the largest one falling toward the mouth of the harbor. He checked his airspeed — a slow 300 knots— Dammit! — and crammed the throttles to burner as he punched off his drop tanks. Looking down, he saw only splash circles on the water south of the wharf — all that remained of his skipper’s aircraft.

Wilson keyed the mike on aux frequency and shouted in vain. “Cajun! You up?”

As he jinked left, a bright flash burst to his right. Fuck! The flash was followed by a rapid bap, plink, plink off to his right. Did they hit me?

Wilson bunted the nose to regain precious airspeed while his threat receiver was going off — the aural warnings in his headset were constant. He could barely think. Instinctively, he continued to jink in three dimensions to throw off the gunners aim and ran away from the threat on brain stem power and a very human will to survive. He spotted Olive and Dutch several thousand feet above as all three aircraft clawed their way toward safety.

A transmission from the Iron lead broke through Wilson’s fog. “ Hammers , you guys okay?”

Still jinking and searching the ground for threats, Wilson recognized the voice of the Moonshadow XO and answered between breaths. “ Hammer one-one could be down. Any Hammers see a chute?”

“ Hammer one-two negative.”

“One-four negative.”

“ Hammers from Iron , we have the impact marked.”

“Roger,” replied Wilson.

Now running to the briefed get-well point, with the threat from the AAA appearing to subside, Wilson almost allowed himself to relax. But he couldn’t. No chute. No emergency beeper. Instead, the horrific image of Cajun’s jet being torn to pieces by both an antiaircraft shell and the forces of nature. His skipper, Cajun, gone . Yet, if anyone could survive, it would be Cajun.

The familiar voice of CAG Swoboda broke the short silence. “ Hammer lead, this is Sweep zero-three. I’ve got the on-scene command with Sweep flight. Hammers and Iron , RTB. Tron three-one and Zaps, remain at your orbit, max conserve. Knight , pass to mother… Hammer one-one is missing and appears to be down. Launch the Alert CSAR and send bucket brigade Texaco to the briefed get-well point.”

Still jinking south of the target and looking for any AAA batteries on the islands, Wilson remained beneath Olive and Dutch who were in formation above him. He fought the urge to disagree with CAG, but impulsively keyed the mike. “ Sweep, from Hammer one-three, request remain behind to help, have the posit marked.” He got the answer he expected.

“ Negative, one-three. I understand , but get your people home and send your post-strike report.”

Embarrassed, Wilson replied, “ Hammer one-three wilco.” He banged the top of his instrument panel in frustration at his inability to help. At this distance from the ship, CAG knew that the Hornet strikers were marginal on fuel even after they topped off from the Viking tankers and pushed out.

Once out of the AAA envelopes, the Hammers transited over the strait and into the GOO. They hugged the Omani airspace to put as much distance between them and the Iranian coastline as possible. This allowed Wilson to flick off a bayonet fitting and take in lungfuls of air. His Hornet was flying fine — no flight control anomalies or engine problems — so, if he had been hit, it was superficial. Still thousands of feet underneath his wingmen, Wilson pulled the canteen from his g-suit pocket for a long drink, taking wary glances north and east for SAM launches. He then stowed the canteen, reset his mask, and climbed up to their altitude on the left.

“Flip has the lead on the left. Check in with state,” Wilson transmitted.

“You’ve got the lead on the left. Two’s five-point-eight,” Olive replied.

“Three’s six-point-one,” Dutch added.

Wilson responded, “Lead’s five-point-three. Everyone get their hits?”

“Affirm,” Olive said.

“Got everybody’s,” Dutch answered. His FLIR tape had picked up the impacts from all four Hammers , invaluable intel once the analysts in CVIC could review it.

With this information, Wilson made his report through the Knight to relay to the ship. He also added the aircraft status and a request for a tanker once they got to Valley Forge .

Transiting to the southeast, Wilson looked at the port of Jask to their left and saw faint streams of AAA, then two bright flashes on the waterfront, followed by two more. On the goggles he strained his eyes to see the 1B strikers overhead, but could not discern them, lights out, among the stars. Nevertheless, something was hitting Jask, and Wilson figured Weed was involved. It was fascinating to watch, live, from over 40 miles away.

“Check out the action to the east,” Dutch transmitted on aux. Wilson acknowledged him with two mike clicks.

As they continued in glum silence, Wilson’s thoughts soon returned to Cajun. No way was Cajun going to bring those bombs back . But why were their GPS receivers bad when the Irons had no problem? Was the AAA too hot? Should they have aborted? Was that level of intensity the go/no-go standard now?

Wilson thought again of the World War II aviators diving into the ring of fire, and the Korean War and Vietnam aircrews facing sophisticated integrated air defenses. They had set the standard his generation had to uphold. Cajun, too, was on government time — and he had delivered. Did he get out?

Wilson thought of Billie Lassiter in Virginia Beach. What is she doing now? Welcoming the kids home from school, figuring out what to feed them? Maybe turning on the TV to learn right now that American aircraft are attacking Iran in response to the Richard Best attack. Billie has been around this business long enough to know that the Ravens would be involved, with her husband leading from the front. In less than two hours, the Commodore and the chaplain could be knocking on her door with bad news, or uncertain news… Either way, it would be devastating.