Raven One - страница 4
CWO4 Gene Humphries — Ordnance Officer — Gunner
“Most of us, most of the time, live in blissful ignorance of what a small elite, heroic group of Americans are doing for us night and day. As we speak, all over the globe, American Sailors and Submariners and Aviators are doing something very dangerous. People say, ‘Well, it can’t be too dangerous because there are no wrecks.’ But the reason we don’t have more accidents is that these are superb professionals; the fact that they master the dangers does not mean the dangers aren’t real.
Right now, somewhere around the world, young men are landing aircraft on the pitching decks of aircraft carriers — at night! You can’t pay people to do that; they do it out of love of country, of adventure, of the challenge. We all benefit from it, and the very fact that we don’t have to think about it tells you how superbly they’re doing their job — living on the edge of danger so the rest of us need not think about, let alone experience, danger.”
George Will commenting after the loss of the
Space Shuttle Challenger, January, 1986
Map
PROLOGUE
The deck gun fired again, sending another ninety-six pound naval artillery round thundering into the night. For an instant, the muzzle flash from the big gun stripped away the concealing darkness, revealing the low angular profile of a U.S. Navy destroyer.
Part I
Lord, guard and guide the men who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky,
Be with them always in the air,
In dark’ning storm and sunlight fair.
Oh hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air.
Navy Hymn Alternate Verse
CHAPTER 1
The formation wheeled right, steadied on a heading of 165, and accelerated into the cold darkness. With Mosul just off to the left, the pilot selected the target bullseye on his navigation display.
Penetrating Iraqi airspace, the four FA-18 Hornets led a package of aircraft going downtown on night one. The pilot shifted the position of his back and legs in a vain attempt to relieve the strain of being strapped into his seat for the last two hours. He had at least another two hours ahead.
Three miles below was “friendly” Kurd territory, but from this height it seemed dark and foreboding. He checked fuel, checked his position off the lead, and scanned the horizon for threats. His eyes, though, always came back to the mesmerizing confusion of moving lights on the far horizon: the lights of Baghdad.
“Ninety-nine Buckshot, armstrong.” The voice of the strike leader was calm.
The pilot raised the MASTER ARM switch to ARM. Pulling the trigger now would send off a radar-guided missile to find and kill its assigned target. The radar cursor bounced back and forth across the display like a metronome, but the display showed nothing ahead, nothing yet for the pilot or his wingmen to kill. Where are you? Come on up! Come up, you dickheads, and fight!
The lights of Baghdad loomed larger.
Breathing through his mouth, the pilot realized his throat was bone dry. His eyes tracked the occasional flashes of cruise missile impacts throughout the metro area, which he could see in its entirety through the windscreen. The flashes grew larger as they neared the city.
All around Baghdad, ordered rows of lights lifted slowly and silently from dozens of locations to fill the sky above the city. Some gracefully turned this way and that before they reached their apex and died out. These great tentacles of AAA, almost elegant in their beauty when viewed through the night vision goggles, formed gnarled fingers of light as they, too, looked for something to kill. They wanted to swat down some piece — any piece — of American aluminum so that it made a flaming, cartwheeling plunge toward a fiery impact on the desert floor.
The pilot imagined, if he had to eject, the gunners pointing at his parachute and the raging mob below waiting to beat him senseless — or worse. This is the Cradle of Civilization. The pilot couldn’t help but think of the irony as he neared this web of death at nearly 10 miles a minute.
“Brooms, Excalibur
