Without warning

Part of him could not believe he was doing this, that it was even happening. But the two aircraft ripping down the tarmac right after his were real. As were the dozen flights he’d watched leaving earlier for much farther flung locations. He’d known many of those pilots. Commanded some of them, trained others. Their goodbyes were restrained but heartfelt. Unlike Molenz, they were flying single-engine F-16s with modified drop tanks to get them all the way to Iran while flying low and fast through the wastes of northern Iraq. They would traverse the edge of the Kurdish regions, where years of British and American enforcement of the no-fly zone had denuded Iraq of air defence assets. Even with drop tanks, however, there would not be enough fuel for them to return. Extraction teams were standing by to evac anyone who made it to the preset rendezvous points. But Molenz knew from looking into the men’s eyes as they shook hands, and in some cases hugged, that they were going to their deaths.

The Israeli Air Force flights left in groups of three. One F-15 carried the warhead while the two escorts carried air-to-air load-outs. Those headed for targets in Iran and Iraq did not expect to encounter any significant resistance en route. The top-secret electronic warfare suites installed for this mission were designed to maximise the escorts’ effectiveness against any allied planes they might encounter. It was possible that Coalition aircraft might try to stop them, but Molenz and his peers figured they had enough on their plate as it was. They were no threat.

The colonel pulled back on the stick and the Strike Eagle clawed its way up into the stars. At twenty thousand feet he performed his usual contortionist feat anyway, straining to catch a glimpse of the capital off on the northern horizon. It was definitely dimmer, but not completely blacked out. What would be the point? Modern sensors meant that pilots no longer had to feel their way through darkened enemy airspace, seeking out targets to bomb. Iraqi Scuds had been landing in Israel for days, despite the best efforts of the Patriot batteries and the promises of General Franks that Coalition special forces would own the western deserts, from where the missile threat originated. The promises meant nothing. The threats issuing from the Iraqi dictator in hiding, however, they had to be taken seriously, and ever since the flooding of Baghdad those threats had become increasingly shrill and apocalyptic. It almost seemed as though Hussein and the Iranian president were racing each other towards a rhetorical abyss. And now, thought Molenz, the abyss races towards them.

Behind him, Ephron ran through another check of the Elisra SPS-2110/A Modified Electronic Warfare System and the LANTIRN pods while Molenz checked the APG 70 terrain-mapping radar. Even in the foulest weather, in the darkest hours of night, the radar provided him with a picture-perfect return from the ground, making it possible to pick out even small targets like mobile batteries tucked away in a dry wadi. At just under 4000 metres in length, and 114 metres tall, containing 43 million cubic metres of concrete and fill, there wasn’t much chance of him missing the dam.

Molenz edged their nose around to the south, to skirt Beersheba and trace the length of the border with Jordan, on a course for the headwaters of the Gulf of Aqaba. The three jets flew low and fast, operating up near the edge of full military power, shrieking over the ghostly blue-black desert at Mach 2.5. They maintained radio silence, each man alone with his thoughts, as the demands of the mission allowed.

A few minutes before they would overfly the resort city of Eilat, he pushed the stick over and sent them rocketing towards the Egyptian border. Beyond lay the Sinai Peninsula and the rocky wastes of the biblical Wilderness where David and the Israelites wandered for so many years. Mountains lay ahead, a jagged-edged void of darkness blotting out the stars, corresponding to the image scrolling down the APG 70 screen, bathing him in the softest of glows.

During a brief interlude, they traversed a particularly desolate and empty stretch of mountainous wasteland, and the pilot became aware of the beating of his heart. For one perverse second he couldn’t help thinking of the millions of hearts he was about to still forever. Pushing the thought away like a fearful spectre, he concentrated on the return from the radar and the threat boards. Nothing untoward. The Egyptian Air Force was steadfastly refusing to offer even the slightest provocation to its neighbour, for fear of unleashing exactly the sort of hellfire that Molenz now carried with him. They didn’t seem to know he was even in their airspace.