“Try it again,” the chief said.
“No go.”
He had no choice: he would have to change planes. Unlike Raz, who had so cavalierly switched planes with Amos Yadlin, Nachumi was far more traditional in his attachment to his aircraft. After spending hours and hours in the fighter, depending on it literally with his life, he had begun to think of it as alive. Now the plane he had trained in for months and learned to depend on had failed. What did that mean? Nachumi worried. Was this a good sign or a bad sign?
Nachumi, like so many fighter pilots, was superstitious. Indeed, Spector and Katz had at first balked at taking part in a preflight group photo, thinking it might be bad luck to tempt fate. Nachumi’s mind raced. Ten minutes before takeoff, he would have to get used to an entirely unfamiliar airplane. The bomb-sighting would be slightly different, the plane would handle differently in the air. Shit, he thought. He unbuckled and popped the cockpit, a furnace blast of Negev air pummeling him. He shimmied down the ladder and ran to the Quonset hangar to requisition a backup plane and begin preflight checkoff all over again.
Roaring down the runway, the F-15s began taking off in pairs, the deafening roar of their engines thundering across the tarmac, shaking the ground beneath the maintenance crews. Raz watched Nachumi taxi the new plane onto the runway. He was not happy about the mechanical glitch, but what were you going to do? Things happen. Hopefully, this would be the worst. Once Nachumi was back in rotation, Raz taxied the F-16s to the beginning of the runway, then halted the squadron. The aircraft formed two staggered, diagonal lines. Four tanker trucks pulled up to the planes from the shoulder of the runways, careful to avoid the exhaust of the thrusters. Using hand signals and wearing protective earmuffs, the fuel crews climbed up the wings, dragging the hoses with them. As the planes idled, the crews began the “hot refueling,” topping off the fighters, which had already burned up some four hundred pounds of jet fuel during checkoff and taxiing. A precious eight minutes of flying time.
The crewman outside Yaffe’s plane was having a hard time. For some reason the fuel was not transferring from the tanker hose into the tank of the F-16. The crew chief signaled some mechanical glitch. Yaffe grew anxious. The extra fuel could mean the difference between landing safely back at Etzion or flaming out somewhere over the Saudi desert. I didn’t train an entire year to turn back now, he thought. The hell with it. He waved off the ground crew. Raz looked behind him through the glass cockpit. Yaffe gave him a thumbs-up along with the rest of the pilots.
Raz checked his watch: 1557. He pointed his forefinger down the runway. The ordnance crews pulled the safety pins on the MK-84s, the ground crews, hunched over and holding on to their caps, circled beneath the planes for one final inspection, then Raz and Yadlin began taxiing slowly to takeoff, being careful not to put needless stress on their landing gears. Any sharp dip or angle and the landing struts could simply crumple. The rest of the group followed the two lead planes.
Raz pushed the throttle forward all the way, the asphalt beneath him becoming a blur as the fighter picked up speed down the runway. He shoved the stick into afterburner, heard the engine whine and roar, a plume of exhaust shooting behind him. He passed the 1,000-meter marker. His airspeed was 90 knots. The 2,000-meter mark flashed by. He was at 124 knots. On a routine mission he would be lifting off now. But the landing gear hugged the ground.
I’m too slow, he thought.
He needed to make 180 knots in order to get airborne.
Then 3,000 meters; 4,000 meters. He was still at only 145 knots. Raz’s stomach tightened. He could see the 5,000-meter marker racing toward him. He was running out of runway. He cursed the extra weight. It would have been better to skip the extra fuel and risk flameout and ejecting over the desert than wind up a pile of charred, twisted metal at the end of the runway. He eased the nose back a bit. The plane seemed to slow for a nanosecond, then it thundered forward, finally lifting off at 5,200 meters. His airspeed indicator read 180 knots as the fighter climbed into the blue sky, already leaving the ground shrinking behind him.
Raz untensed. He looked to his side. Yadlin was there, just off his wing. He began a long, slow, banking turn southeast, leveling off for the “running rendezvous,” the rest of the planes already dropping into group formation behind him. They were in a spread formation abreast, boxed in pairs: Raz and Yadlin, Yaffe and Katz, Nachumi and Spector, Shafir and Ramon. The eight fighters screamed east toward Aqaba, tickling the tops of electrical poles, one hundred feet above the ground, heading toward Baghdad and destiny.
Major Rani Falk watched the last of the eight attack planes go wheels-up through the glass cockpit of his F-16, idling at the head of the runway, ready for takeoff had he been called. He had watched the six F-15s flying support and two two-seater F-15s flying Com disappear into the southern skies an hour earlier. In all, sixteen aircraft. It was a bittersweet moment for Falk as he watched the fighters bank south, following in the direction of the F-15s. He felt happy that the mission was finally under way after years of training and preparation, and relieved that his squadron mates had successfully lifted off while flying dangerously overweight. But at the same time, Falk found himself fighting an undeniable disappointment, a longing to be with the fellow pilots he had trained with day in, day out, month after month, for two years.