Bennett chuckled aloud. It was a reassuring sound; Bear had not heard the CO laugh since Claudia died.
'Yeah, I remember. And that's from a thousand-hour Eagle driver. I just hope none of our 15s gets buck fever and piles in. The way the Tiger Force honchos are keyed up, not to mention the F-5 troops, I wouldn't want to get within visual range of an Eagle today. '
Bennett recalled the briefing from the night before. The Israelis would come with everything: F-15s, F-16s, Phantoms, and Kfirs.
Bennett's word on aircraft recognition: 'If it isn't built in Hawthorne, California, shoot it!' It shaped up as Northrop against nearly everything in the Israeli inventory.
Rubbing his back, Barnes straightened up from the table. 'You know, Skipper, this is going to be one hellacious donnybrook. There will be bogeys all around the clock, heat-seekers and radar missiles, heavy ECM from both sides. It's going to be a jet-propelled
Bennett did not respond for several seconds. Then, softly, he replied, 'I used to feel that way. But I think a lot of good drivers are going to die pretty soon. The desert's going to be littered with smoking piles that once were beautiful flying machines.' He raised his gaze to Bear's face. 'You know something? I'm
Bennett turned to the situation map in the briefing room. The forward lines were revised every two or three hours, according to field reports and photographic reconnaissance. It was obvious that the Israeli Army, overextended into Jordan, had been unable to hold its ground in the face of the massive, violent assault. The units in danger of being encircled had made a reasonably orderly withdrawal toward the West Bank, fighting hard all the way. Low-flying jets with the Star of David had inflicted heavy losses on Arab troop columns, and antitank helicopters made sizable dents in enemy armored columns.
But from Amman to Al-'Aqabah, Israeli units had been forced to pull back in the previous three days. Those not actually in contact often were left in precarious positions, one or even both flanks exposed by the withdrawal of adjacent regiments. Fighting had stabilized on the East Bank of the River Jordan, mainly helped by Israeli armor and airpower. But nearly half the
Captain Levi Bar-El had had no time to think of his fixation on the American John Bennett lately. The intelligence officer had been fully occupied identifying nearby Syrian and Iranian units, interrogating occasional prisoners. Other than that, it was. a constant routine of filling in small pieces of the overall puzzle, making some order out of near-total chaos.
Bar-El was leading a recon ground patrol that afternoon, searching a gully south of the Jordanian capital. He was aware of the jets almost constantly overhead, but he paid them little attention. Israeli infantry were accustomed to having friendly aircraft around, and Bar-El's unit had only suffered two attacks from enemy aircraft:
Syrian MiC-21s which strafed the area before being run off by F-16s, and Iraqi Mirages which bombed and rocketed.
The point man in the patrol knelt at the bend of a ravine, scanning the area ahead. Bar-El had just placed the handset back on his radioman's harness when a movement caught the patrol leader's attention. Hefting his Calil rifle, Bar-El stood up and walked four paces to his left. He intently searched the scrub brush topping a small sand dune, signaling his corporal to spread out to the right.
Abruptly three Syrian commandos broke cover near the crest of the dune. Two opened an undisciplined fire with their AK-74 automatic rifles, wounding one of the Israelis. Bar-El's men returned fire with better accuracy, toppling the two in a cloud of noise, dust, and blood.
The third Syrian was visible from the belt up, perhaps twenty-five meters from the captain. Bar-EI saw the man retract his right arm to throw a grenade.
Despite its boxy appearance, the Calil rifle is an excellent-handling weapon. With his folding-frame stock extended for proper use, Bar-El instantly mounted the rifle to his shoulder, got a quick glimpse of his front sight settling on the man's pinkish camouflage shirt, and took the slack from the trigger.
The Syrian's hand already was moving forward, loosening the grip on the grenade which arced toward the Israeli officer.
The trigger sear disengaged from the hammer and the Calil bucked in a three-round burst.
The grenade, now well toward its target, was twelve meters from Levi Bar-EI, shoulder high.
When the first.223-caliber bullet hit the Syrian's chest, a gout of blood erupted from his shirt. The second and third rounds were wasted, going high. It had been a quick-and-dirty shot, not as well centered as a rifleman would have preferred, but it did the job.
The grenade struck the ground, bouncing once.
Bar-EI moved his sights, trying to realign on the soldier, who tumbled sideways and collapsed into a bush.
The grenade exploded knee-high, three meters to Levi Bar-El's left.
Operation Fadeaway was based on two elements, a hammer and an anvil. At daybreak Bennett watched his hammer sweep off the runway, Geoff Hampton leading twenty-two fighters from White and Blue Squadrons. They flew northeasterly to an auxiliary strip near the Kuwait border and landed on the single runway. Fuel tanks were topped off and ordnance checked. Then the former RAF flier led a taxiing procession of Tigersharks to the takeoff end of the runway and shut down. Fully fueled and armed, they waited.
The anvil was led by Ed Lawrence from Black Base. Forty F-2 °Cs from his own squadron, Rajid's Orange, and Ahnas's Green were dispersed along the taxiways and end of the runway. They also waited, as did one twelve-plane Jordanian squadron at Ha'il with Brad Williamson's Red Squadron in reserve. Tiger Force was glad to have the Jordanians-British-trained, experienced, and angry.
Bennett was not sanguine about the prospects for fully coordinating his plan. As a lifelong student of military history, he knew that even the simplest plan could turn to hash in the opening minutes of combat. But he knew that if even most of the elements came together, the Israelis would sustain losses they could not replace in time to make a difference. He checked the status board for the eighth time that morning. The Saudi F-15s had their schedules and the F-5s were deploying northward at that moment.
Everyone on the ground now sat back to wait.
Orbiting the most fought-over city on earth, Colonel Aaron Hali reduced power to the twin F100 engines of his F-15A, settling down to a five-mile-circumference turn at an indicated 285 knots. Below and behind him he could see his squadrons joining up with a discipline born of years of experience. Aircraft in two-plane sections joined into four-plane flights which became building blocks for squadrons. Soon the entire force of seventy bomb-laden attack aircraft and sixty-four fighters headed east, stacked between 8,000 and 14,000 feet above ground level. Behind them, E-2Cs took up station to lend electronic support and early warning.
The large size of the strike force required more fuel for join-up than a normal mission, and the Israeli Air Force had not been able to acquire enough aerial tankers to support such an endeavor. Realistically, it had not been needed very often. The aerial combat arena of the Middle East was small enough to cross in a supersonic aircraft in several minutes; long-range strikes were unusual.
True, the
Today's main target-Ha'il-was 450 miles deep into hostile territory.
