It was one of the only two E-8A J-STARs in the Gulf War that caught the signal that morning of January 27. The J-STARs had been still experimental aircraft and were flying with largely civilian technicians on board when they were rushed in early January from their base at the Grumman Melbourne plant in Florida halfway across the world to Arabia.
That morning, one of the two flying out of Riyadh military air base was high over the Iraqi border, still inside Saudi air space, peering with its Norden down-and-sideways radar more than a hundred miles into the western desert of Iraq.
The plink was faint, but it indicated metal, moving slowly, far into Iraq, a convoy no longer than two, maybe three trucks. Still, that was what the J-STAR was there for, so the mission commander told one of the AWACS circling over the northern end of the Red Sea, giving the AWACS the exact position of the small Iraqi convoy.
Inside the hull of the AWACS the mission commander logged the precise spot and looked around for an airborne element that might be available to give the convoy an unfriendly visit. All the western desert operations were still keyed toward Scud-hunting at that time, apart from the attention being given to the two huge Iraqi air bases called H2 and H3 that were situated in those deserts. The J-STAR might have picked up a mobile Scud-launcher, even though it would be unusual in daylight.
The AWACS came up with an element of two F-15E Strike Eagles coming south from Scud Alley North.
Don Walker was riding south at twenty thousand feet after a mission to the outskirts of Al Qaim, where he and his wingman, Randy Roberts, had just destroyed a fixed missile base protecting one of the poison gas factories targeted for later destruction.
Walker took the call and checked his fuel. It was low. Worse, with his laser-guided bombs gone, his underwing pylons contained only two Sidewinders and two Sparrows. But these were air-to-air missiles in case they ran into Iraqi jets. Somewhere south of the border his assigned refueling tanker was patiently waiting, and he would need every drop to get back to Al Kharz. Still, the convoy location was only fifty miles away and just fifteen off his intended track. Even though he had no ordnance left, there was no harm in having a look.
His wingman had heard everything, so Walker gestured through the canopy to the flier half a mile away through the clear air, and the two Eagles rolled into a dive to their right.
At eight thousand feet, he could see the source of the plink that had showed up on the screen of the J-STAR. It was not a Scud-launcher, but two trucks and two BRDM-2s, Soviet-made light armored vehicles on wheels, not tracks.
From his perch, he could see much more than the J-STAR could. Down in a deep wadi beneath him was a single Land-Rover. At five thousand feet, he could see the four British SAS men around it, tiny ants on the brown cloth of the desert. What they could not see were the four Iraqi vehicles forming a horseshoe around them, nor the Iraqi soldiers pouring down from the tailboards of the two trucks to encircle the wadi.
Don Walker had met the SAS down in Oman. He knew they were operating in the western deserts against Scud-launchers, and several of his squadron had already been in radio contact with these strange-sounding English voices from the ground when the SAS men had tagged a target they could not handle themselves.
At three thousand feet, he could see the four Britishers looking up curiously. So, half a mile away, were the Iraqis. Walker pressed his transmit button.
“Line astern, take the trucks.”
“You got it.”
Though he had neither bombs nor rockets left, tucked in the glove of his right wing, just outside the gaping air intake, was an M-61-A1 Vulcan 20-min. cannon, six rotating barrels capable of spewing out its entire magazine of 450 shells with impressive speed. The 20-mm. cannon shell is the size of a small banana and explodes on impact. For those caught in a truck or running in the open, they can spoil everything.
Walker flicked the Aim and Arm switches, and his Head-Up Display—his HUD—showed him the two armored cars straight through his screen, plus an aiming cross, whose position had already taken account of drift and aim-off.
The first BRDM took a hundred cannon shells and blew apart. Raising his nose slightly, he put the swimming cross on the Plexiglas of the HUD onto the rear of the second vehicle. He saw the gas tank ignite. Then he was up and over it, climbing and rolling until the brown desert appeared above his head.
Keeping the roll going, Walker brought the Eagle back down again. The horizon of blue and brown turned back to its usual position, with the brown desert at the bottom and the blue sky at the top. Both BRDMs were flaming, one truck was on its side, the other shredded. Small figures ran frantically for the cover of the rocks.
Inside the wadi the four SAS men had gotten the message. They were aboard and rolling down the dry watercourse and away from the ambush. Just who had spotted them—wandering shepherds, probably—and given their position away, they would never know, but they knew who had just saved their backsides.
The
Eagles lifted away, waggled their wings, and climbed toward the border and the waiting tanker.
The NCO commanding the SAS patrol was one Sergeant Peter Stephenson. He raised a hand at the departing fighters and said:
“Dunno who you are, mate, but I owe you one.”
As it happened, Mrs. Maslowski had a Suzuki Jeep as a runabout, and though she had never driven it in four-wheel mode, she insisted Terry Martin borrow it. His flight to London was not until five that afternoon, and he set off early because he did not know how long he would be. He told her he intended to be back by two at the latest.
Dr. Maslowski had to return to his office but gave Martin a map so he would not get lost.
The road to the valley of the Mocho River took him right back past Livermore, where he found Mines Road running off Tesla. Mile by mile, the last houses of the suburb of Livermore dropped away, and the ground rose. He was lucky in the weather. Winter in these parts is never very cold, but the proximity of the sea gives rise to thick dense clouds and sudden banks of swirling fog. That January 27the sky was blue and crisp, the air calm and cold.
Through the windshield he could see the icy tip of Cedar Mountain far away. Ten miles after the turnoff, he left Mines Road and turned onto a dirt road, clinging to the side of a precipitous hill.
Down in the valley far below, the Mocho glittered in the sun as it tumbled between its rocks. The grass on either side gave way to a mix of sagebrush and she-oak; high above, a pair of kites wheeled against the blue, and the road ran on, along the edge of Cedar Mountain Ridge into the wilderness.
He passed a single green farmhouse, but Lomax had told him to go to the end of the road. After another three miles he found the cabin, rough-hewn with a raw stone chimney and a plume of blue woodsmoke drifting up to the sky.
He stopped in the yard and got out. From a barn, a single Jersey cow surveyed him with velvet eyes.