Punk's War

"Well, if you give us five minutes, we could launch another tanker,” Smoke heard the air ops officer say into the phone.

“What’s one-oh-three’s state?” Smoke asked in a panic as he rushed across the space toward the commander.

The air ops officer didn’t answer and turned his torso around in his chair, trying his best to ignore the fighter pilot. Smoke looked at the status board and saw 3.9 next to 103.

“You cannot be thinking about bringing one-zero-three back here,” Smoke said to the back of the air ops officer’s head. “He’s on a bingo profile.”

The air ops officer hung up with a smash of the tactical phone against its box and angrily responded, “Would you please get the hell out of our way here? I was just on the phone with the battle watch captain—you know, the admiral’s direct representative?”

Smoke trusted that Punk and Spud were doing the right thing, but he wanted to make sure. “Can I talk to one-oh-three?”

“For what?”

Smoke couldn’t grasp a legitimate reason, having lost the mental edge needed for rational thought. “I just want to talk to them!” he screamed.

“No, you can’t,” the commander replied smugly as he turned his back to pick up the tactical phone once again.

The sounds on Strike of the battle watch captain repeatedly demanding one-zero-three’s return filled the control center and caused Smoke to shake with rage. He was convinced now men willing to sacrifice assets and perhaps lives while fighting a pretend war surrounded him. He stood with clenched fists, implicitly begging for someone, anyone, of a higher rank to jump in and stop the madness, but as he scanned the bleachers for an ally with clout, he came up empty.

The battle watch captain transmitted his order to 103 yet another time, and Smoke stormed through the side hatch into the adjacent Tactical Force Command Center. Without hesitation, he relieved the battle watch captain of the UHF handset, said, “Your signal is ‘bingo,’ Punk,” into the mouthpiece and then ripped the radio connection out of the wall, snapping it at the adaptor.

“Sorry, sir. I won’t let anybody get killed for this,” Smoke declared defiantly. The commander stood completely unnerved by the cool violence with which Smoke executed his act, and did nothing but utter, “Hey . . .” as the lieutenant commander marched out of the space and back into the control center.

Smoke’s reign of terror continued as he walked over to the air ops officer’s position, pushed one of the tabs on the phone cradle, disconnecting the commander, and demanded that somebody call Al Jabar and tell them that 103 was headed their way.

“I was talking to the air boss about launching a tanker, goddam it!” the air ops officer said.

“Screw the tanker!” Smoke replied. “We’re past that. Let’s get them into Kuwait!”

“I’m getting sick of you, pal,” the air ops officer shot back as he rose to square off with Smoke.

“Look, commander, I’m not looking for a fight,” Smoke explained, palms outward in a disarming gesture. “I’m just trying to cut through the bullshit and assist a jet that’s dealing with an emergency.” The fighter pilot picked up the pocket checklist from where he’d thrown it and said, “A bingo profile is an emergency, sir. That’s why it’s in this book.” He pointed toward the nearest phone. “Now please call Al Jabar and let them know one-zero-three is inbound.”

The air ops officer slowly reached for the phone while keeping his eyes on Smoke. He raised the receiver and dialed a series of numbers, and as he waited for an answer at the other end of the line, shook a trembling finger at Smoke and said, “I’m going to do this for you this one time, but not because you told me to.”

After the first call on Strike, Spud had simply turned the radio to a different frequency and decided to plead temporary equipment failure in the event it became an issue. The principles of naval aviation were semi-amorphous compared to some other undertakings, but one of the absolutes Spud had learned to cling to while swimming in a sea of gray was when a jet reached bingo state, it assumed a bingo profile without deviation for any reason other than a MiG on its tail.

But now their problem shifted from too much communication to the inability to communicate. First Spud wrestled with the clipped English of a Kuwaiti controller on the country’s sole air control frequency. Then, once they were inside forty nautical miles from the field, he switched up Al Jabar’s tower frequency to clarify their intentions with an American, but after six attempts to talk to the tower and with no lighting visible to Punk from the direction of the field, it became obvious that there was “nobody home” at Al Jabar.

“What the hell are you saying?” the air ops officer screamed into the phone. “You’re supposed to be open!”

“Ah, that’s a negative, sir. We’ve been closed since 2200 local,” the Air Force enlisted phone watch replied.

“That’s bullshit! We requested that the field remain open throughout the night!”

“Whom did you talk to?”

“I don’t frickin’ know! I do know that one of my—”

There was a click in the earpiece. “That little shit hung up on me!” the air ops officer said as he redialed the phone.

“Al Jabar air operations, Major Holmes.”

“Yeah, Major. I’m calling from the aircraft carrier in the Gulf and—”

“Did you just curse at one of my men?”

“Huh?”

“Are you the Navy officer who just called and cursed at one of my men?”

“Yeah, I guess I am . . . look, I apologize. We’re kind of stressed out here. Look, Major, I need your help right now.”

“I can’t have the Navy calling at three o’clock in the morning and cursing at my men.”

“I said I was sorry!” the commander screamed, veins popping from his forehead and throat. He regained his composure and in a more civil tone repeated, “Look, Major, I said I was sorry.”

The lieutenant across the control center, who seemed to be in charge of bad news in air ops, shouted, “Strike just relayed from the airborne Hawkeye that the crew in one-zero-three told them they were unable to talk to Al Jabar on any of the published frequencies. They think the field might be closed.”

“I know that,” the commander returned with his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. “I’m talking to Al Jabar now trying to get them to open the goddam thing back up.”

The commander put the phone back to his ear and tried to calm himself. “Major, again, I apologize for cursing at your man. I meant nothing by it. Now, I have a jet on its way to your field with very little gas.”

“What unit do you claim to have talked to here to get approval to keep the field open?” the Air Force major asked.

“My phone log indicates air operations,” the commander answered.

“Well, there’s your problem,” the major said with a chuckle. “Air operations doesn’t approve those kinds of requests. They don’t have the authority. You needed to talk to the command post.”

“So can you open the field for us?”

“No way.”

The bad news lieutenant called out once again. “Commander, the captain wants to know why Al Jabar is closed.”

The air ops officer winced and dejectedly hung up the phone.

“So, are they going to open the field for us?” Smoke asked.

“No.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Get fired.” The commander pushed his way past Smoke and left the space.

Maybe I could pick up the runway with the landing light if we did a low approach,” Punk suggested to Spud over the intercom. “I mean, I can see some lights from the buildings down there, and we know about where the runway is. It might work.”

“The only problem with that is we’d have to drop the gear to use the landing light,” Spud replied. “We’ve only got fifteen hundred pounds of gas left as it is. We’d better just stick with the max endurance profile overhead the field and hope the ship works this out quickly.”

As Spud finished his sentence both low-fuel warning lights illuminated on Punk’s advisory panel. “We’ve only got about twenty minutes of flight time left, Spud,” Punk said, “maybe even less than that. This fuel gauge starts to get unreliable below about eight hundred pounds, or so I’m told.”

Spud petitioned the E-2, their sole contact due to the distance to the Boat, for help once again on Strike. “Hawkeye, any word on the status of the field opening up?”

“Negative.”

Spud ran the situation through in his mind, and reconsidered Punk’s idea from a minute ago. “All right, let’s drop down to one hundred feet and fly the runway heading and see if we can make anything out. If not, we’ll climb back up, head out to sea and get ready to punch out.”

Punch out? Spud made ejecting sound so matter-of-fact, such a perfectly normal option. Punk pushed the nose of the Tomcat below the horizon and started the descent to a hundred feet.

Smoke asked one of the enlisted men for any of the numbers to Al Jabar. He was handed the phone log, and inside the front cover more than a hundred numbers were scrawled, with half of them scratched out. After several lifetimes of running his fingers through the maze of ink and lead, he located the listing for Al Jabar air operations.

“It’s like I told the other guy,” the major said emphatically to Smoke through a filter of static on the line. “The command post controls when the field is open, not air operations.”

“There’s a Tomcat coming to you to land!”

“I can’t help you. The colonel’s asleep and even then it would take a half-hour to get the crew out of their tents to turn the runway lights on. Sorry.”

Smoke hung up in a huff and muttered, “Well, jointness is alive and well. Thank you very much, United States Air Force.” He was about to slam the phone log shut
when another listing grabbed his eye: Kuwait International Airport. It was a long shot, but worth a try at this point. He knew 103 had to be close to flaming out by now, but Kuwait International was only about forty nautical miles north of Al Jabar. They might be able to make it.

It was a commercial number, not a seven-digit military theater network number like the one for the Air Force at Al Jabar. Smoke endlessly pressed the digits into the phone, and wondered how many satellites he was going to have to hit to complete the call. Although they were only 150 miles from Kuwait, the carrier’s phone system was routed through the communications center in Norfolk, Virginia, so his voice was traveling about 10,000 miles. After listening to several international busy signals, Smoke got a legitimate ring.

“Hello?” a meek voice called from what sounded like deep space.

“Hello, can you hear me?” Smoke heard his voice echo several times as the signal bounced between the earth’s surface and the near-reaches of the universe.

“Yes, I can hear you,” the voice came back, obviously Arabic, but apparently possessing an adequate command of English.

“Is the . . . is the field open?”

The echo was confusing, and Smoke tried to talk without being too distracted by his own voice through the receiver.

“No, the field is closed. We will open tomorrow, eight o’clock.”

“I need your help, sir.” Smoke slowed his speech as he passed the details of the situation. “I am calling you from an aircraft carrier out in the Gulf off the coast. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“There is an F-14 . . . Tomcat . . . fighter jet . . . just south of you . . . low . . . on . . . gas. It is an emergency. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Aircraft call sign?”

“Slinger one-zero-three.”

“Roger. Zinger one-zero-three.”

“No, Slinger one-zero-three.”

“Singer one-zero-three.”

“No, er, whatever; close enough. Could you turn the runway lights on and let . . . him . . . land at Kuwait International.”

“Yes. I am the facilities manager.”

It seemed too easy. Smoke wasn’t convinced that the Arab understood. “I mean right . . . now.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll turn on the lights. Give me two
minutes to call the tower to make sure the runway is clear.”

Smoke couldn’t believe dealing with a Kuwaiti at a foreign international airport was easier than working with a U.S. Air Force officer, but then again, maybe that wasn’t such a big surprise. He felt a bit maudlin bathing in the light of his apparent success, and he closed the conversation with, “God bless Kuwait, and may she enjoy independence forever.”

Smoke hung up the phone with a sigh and the hope he’d helped remedy the situation. The battle watch captain burst into air ops accompanied by two security force members. As the three moved hurriedly across the space, the battle watch captain pointed a shaky finger at Smoke and said, “Arrest this man for the destruction of government property.”

Punk flew around the area of Al Jabar’s runway between one and two hundred feet, paralleling its published axis, trying to somehow identify the smooth surface, but there was no discerning the asphalt from the desert. They’d also hoped buzzing the field might alert someone to their presence and cause the runway lights to come on; Punk even dropped the gear briefly and flashed the landing light off and on, but the field remained dark as death save the lighting around the tents and at various spots along the perimeter of the base.

Punk added up the tapes on the fuel gauge: eleven hundred pounds. “This ain’t working, Spud,” Punk said with resignation. “We’re outta here.” Punk lifted the nose once again and headed due east.

As they passed through ten thousand feet, communications were reestablished with the E-2 on Strike. “ . . . and your steer is Kuwait International.”

Spud wasn’t sure what he’d heard. “Say again for Slinger one-zero-three.”

“Hawkeye says again: your steer is Kuwait International. Initial vector zero-zero-five. They’re turning on the lights for you.”

Spud punched the coordinates into the system, hooked the symbol with his cursor on the navigation display and passed the bearing to Punk, who confirmed that the heading pointed them toward the bright lights of Kuwait City. He flew to the coast and followed the shoreline for the short trip to the north so that if they flamed out, he’d be able to convert his altitude and last bit of hydraulic control into a heading change over the water, away from the oil fields and populated areas.

Fifteen miles from the field, absent communications with the airport, Punk established the Tomcat on the final portion of the published approach. At ten miles, he dropped the landing gear and flaps. The city was a well-lit major metropolitan area, but he still didn’t have the runway lights in sight.

“This may have been the final insult, my friend,” Punk passed over the intercom. “I don’t see a field here.” He looked at the fuel again: roughly eight hundred pounds, but the gauge had ceased to provide any meaning.

At three miles, he leveled off at one thousand feet. He stayed level and passed over the field, left wing slightly down in another attempt to find a prepared surface.

“Sorry, Spud,” Punk offered, banking the jet to the right, away from the city, as he raised the gear and flaps again. “I’m afraid we’re going to get wet.”

“Oh, well,” Spud responded without emotion. “It’s a good thing my survival swim quals are up to date.”

Then the runway lights came on at their seven o’clock, about two miles away. Punk looked at the fuel: 600 pounds. They could make it.

“Gear’s coming again,” Punk said. He threw the handle down and waited for the jet to slow to two hundred knots so he could lower the flaps. As he fished for the flap handle with his left hand, the right engine’s RPM began to decay. “We just lost the right, Spud. Hold on here.” At that call, Spud reached between his legs and located the lower ejection handle. . . .