Out over the Gulf, a young USAF sergeant manning part of the battery of consoles in the hull of the AWACS plane summoned his mission commander in perplexity.
“We have a problem, sir. Bluejay Leader has engine trouble. He wants to RTB.”
“Right, noted,” said the mission commander. In most airplanes the pilot is the captain and in complete charge. In an AWACS the pilot has that charge for the safety of the airplane, but the mission commander calls the shots when it comes to giving orders across the air.
“But sir,” protested the sergeant, “Bluejay Leader spoke in clear. Gave the mission target. Shall I RTB
them all?”
“Negative, mission continues,” said the controller. “Carry on.”
The sergeant returned to his console completely bewildered. This was madness: If the Iraqis had heard that transmission, their air defenses at Tikrit East would be on full alert.
Then he heard Walker again.
“Bluejay Leader, Mayday, Mayday. Both engines out. Ejecting.”
He was still speaking in clear. The Iraqis, if they were listening, could have heard it all.
In fact, the sergeant was right—the messages had been h
eard. At Tikrit East the gunners were hauling their tarpaulins off their triple-A, and the heat-seeking missiles were waiting for the sound of incoming engines. Other units were being alerted to go at once to the area of the lake to search for two downed aircrew.
“Sir, Bluejay Leader is down. We have to RTB the rest of them.”
“Noted. Negative,” said the mission commander. He glanced at his watch. He had his orders. He did not know why, but he would obey them.
Bluejay Flight was by then nine minutes from target, heading into a reception committee. The three pilots rode their Eagles in stony silence.
In the AWACS the sergeant could still see the blip of Bluejay Leader, way down over the surface of the lake. Clearly the Eagle had been abandoned and would crash at any moment.
Four minutes later, the mission commander appeared to change his mind.
“Bluejay Flight, AWACS to Bluejay Flight, RTB, I say again RTB.”
The three Strike Eagles, despondent at the night’s events, peeled away from their course and set heading for home. The Iraqi gunners at Tikrit East, deprived of radar, waited in vain for another hour.
In the southern fringes of the Jebal al Hamreen another Iraqi listening post had heard the interchange.
The signals colonel in charge was not tasked with alerting Tikrit East or any other air base to approaching enemy aircraft. His sole job was to ensure none entered the Jebal.
As Bluejay Flight turned over the lake, he had gone to amber alert; the track from the lake to the air base would have taken the Eagles along the southern fringe of the range. When one of them crashed, he was delighted; when the other three peeled away to the south, he was relieved. He stood his alert down.
Don Walker had spiraled down to the surface of the lake until he levelled at one hundred feet and made his Mayday call. As he skimmed the waters of As Sa’diyah, he punched in his new coordinates and turned north into the Jebal. At the same time he went to LANTIRN, with whose aid he could look through his canopy and see the landscape ahead of him, clearly lit by the infrared beam being emitted from beneath his wing.
Columns of information on his Head-Up Display were now giving him course and speed, height, and time to Launch Point.
He could have gone to automatic pilot, allowing the computer to fly the Eagle, throwing it down the canyons and the valleys, past the cliffs and hillsides, while the pilot kept his hands on his thighs. But he preferred to stay on manual and fly it himself.
With the aid of recon photos supplied by the Black Hole, he had plotted a course up through the range that never let him come above the skyline. He stayed low, hugging the valley floors, swerving from gap to gap, a roller-coaster zigzag course that carried him upward into the range toward the Fortress.
When Walker made his Mayday call, Mike Martin’s radio had squawked out a series of preagreed blips. Martin had crawled forward to the ledge above the valley, aimed the infrared target marker at the tarpaulin a thousand yards away, settled the red dot onto the dead center of the target, and now kept it there.
The blips on the radio had meant “seven minutes to bomb launch,” and from then on Martin was not to move the red spot by an inch.
“About time,” muttered Eastman. “I’m bloody freezing in here.”
“Not long,” said Stephenson, cramming the last bits and pieces into his Bergen. “Then you’ll have all the running you want, Benny.”