Dan Hampton - Viper Pilot

No guesswork this time. I knew exactly where to aim. There was one serviceable hangar beside the shredded runway, and I reasoned that if there were spare helos, then that’s where they’d be. One more pass with the cannon, and we’d get the fuck out of here.

Suddenly, a string of bright orange balls dropped out of the gray sky. They were going down, not coming up. Flares …

I grinned under my oxygen mask. It was Zing doing for me what I’d done for him and trying to attract attention. Good man.

4.1 one miles.

I could plainly see the mess we’d made of the airfield. Fires glowed beneath the oily black smoke that only came from burning machines. Up a bit higher, the smoke changed to a lighter gray and spread out, like a widening ripple on a pond. The entire oblong smear was drifting slowly south.

But there was the runway. I angled a little left, held it a few seconds, and then came back to the right. The hangar was now clear of the smoke and I pushed the throttle up. Switching to the GUN symbology, I lowered the nose and concentrated on aiming. Off to my left were flashes from Triple-A, which had to be from Baqubah, another airfield, about ten miles north of me. A few remaining guns on Khan Bani Sad also opened up, generally in Zing’s direction, but I knew he was far enough east to be clear.

At 3.4 miles, I cracked the throttle back a notch, noted that my decoy was transmitting, and lined up the steering cues. I put the pointing cross at the top of the HUD on the center of the runway, and the gun pipper on a road south of the field. Bunting forward, I held the picture and flew straight at the hangar. As I descended, the pipper inexorably moved up toward the long, low rectangle of the hangar.

Three thousand feet.

Almost there… I pressed lightly on the stick to adjust the steering and the pipper came up through a row of straggly trees just behind the hangar.

Twenty-six hundred feet. Pipper coming up… almost… twenty-four hundred feet. The pipper skipped over the trees, touched the base of the hangar doors, and I squeezed the trigger.

“BUURRRPPP.”

The jet shuddered violently as the cannon fired. Twenty-millimeter shells spat from the gun port behind my left shoulder and streamed toward the hangar. I released the trigger and began to pull up and right away from the airfield.

“BEEP… BEEP… BEEP…”

My eyes instantly swiveled to the radar warning display.

“6.”

Directly behind me and very, very close!

Mother of God…

The nose came up through the horizon and I rotated the throttle outboard and shoved it forward. Thirty-six thousand pounds of thrust kicked in with the afterburner, and the fighter leapt forward.

Slapping the chaff button with my left hand, I pulled off left and down. Twisting sideways, I stared behind me for the SAM.

“BEEP… BEEP… BEEP…” The RWR frantically tried to tell me that the missile was close enough for its on-board guidance to take over. Terminal guidance.

I hoped not.

Mouth dry, eyes wide, I twisted back right and brought the jet around with me. Down! down! Yanking the throttle out of afterburner, I slapped out more chaff.

“ELI One… defending SA-6… eastbound over the airfield!”

His reply was instantaneous. “ELI Two… No joy on the SAM. Blind at 6,000 feet…”

So he’d lost sight of me and didn’t see the SAM. I was now heading south right off the end of Khan Bani Sad. Bottoming out at 3,000 feet, I yanked the nose up, slammed the burner in again, and rocketed upward.

“ELI Two… climb up above ten thousand and head one-five-zero… ELI One is passing five thousand.”

Staring right, to the west, I forced myself to quarter the sky rather than let my eyes dart back and forth.

Off the wing… high… low. Check the HUD… Between the wing and the tail… high… low. Check the HUD. Fifty-five hundred feet and 400 knots… roll and pull. Inverted now, I looked toward where the SAM must be. Behind me and high.

But there was nothing.

“WARNING… WARNING…”

I flipped the jet upright and glanced at the display. FUEL… FUEL… was blinking at me.

Pulling hard with my right hand, I brought the F-16 back to the left. To the northeast, away from the airfield and away from Baghdad. If he was heading 150 degrees southeast, he’d be off my right wing by four or five miles.

Data-linking a position request, I pulled the throttle back to hold 400 knots and continued my left turn around to the south. Before Khan Bani Sad disappeared, I saw fires from my last pass glowing through the haze. I couldn’t see the hangar, but that was good. This meant the building, and whatever was inside of it, was burning.

I never did see the SAM. Maybe it hadn’t really launched. Or maybe I’d reacted quickly enough to send it off into space. As I spiraled upward through a cloud break well east of Baghdad, the data-link came back. Zing was also alive and well, cruising about three miles behind me and to the west.

Breaking through the clouds, the sunlight hit my face, and I blinked for a long, happy moment before lowering the tinted visor. Still several hundred miles deep inside enemy territory, I didn’t relax. But I felt the familiar rush of gratitude that always came on after an intense combat mission. Later on, lying on my cot in the darkness, I’d think of what could’ve happened. But for now, as the salty sweat dried on my face and the chaffing dampness under my harness cooled, I was grateful to be living and breathing.

Gently banking the F-16 to the left, I noticed my chaff dispenser said EMPTY, and the decoy had been shot off. Wonder when that had happened? So there had been a SAM, after all. That was a chilling thought—I decided not to think about it.

As my breathing returned to normal, I caught a flash of sunlight on metal and saw the other F-16 shoot up through the clouds. The friendly radar symbol appeared on my radar warning display, and I knew Zing had locked onto me. Staying well clear of Baghdad, we kept climbing in order to put some altitude between us and the clouds. Clouds hid SAMs and Triple-A.

And I’d had enough of that for one birthday.

IT LOOKED LIKE A GIRAFFE.

I blinked.

Then blinked again and raised my visor. Rolling up on one wing, I skirted along at 400 knots just over the Baghdad rooftops and stared at the thing loping across the road below me.

It was a giraffe. No shit.

This was the morning of April 8 and I’d just crossed the Tigris River in southern Baghdad and was heading north toward the al-Quds district to kill tanks. The river made a huge, thumb-shaped loop near Dora Farms and the old Baghdad Muthenna airport. Just above it lay the Baghdad Zoo, from which the animal had evidently escaped.

Grunting against the Gs, I reefed the fighter into a hard level turn back toward the west. Below me was a huge, semicircular complex dedicated to Saddam’s megalomania. At the far end lay a wide boulevard with arches at both ends. Letting up on the Gs, I realized the arches were actually enormous arms, each grasping a sword.

Saddam’s Arches of Victory.

Smirking a bit at the irony, I reversed the turn and came back around, heading northeast toward the Tigris. Arches of Victory—well, there wouldn’t be much of that for Hussein, since infidels like me were buzzing overhead and wild animals were running loose in the street.

Just ahead, the sluggish, seaweed-green river cut startlingly through the browns and grays of Baghdad. There were a half-dozen bridges I wanted to scope out, because enemy troops were using the northern suburbs as a safe haven. If they tried to come south to fight, they’d have to cross those bridges. Two of them, the Sinak and Jumhuriya, were right at the center of the action.