Miles behind, Sella picked up the transmission and relayed it on. Inside the bunker, Ivry breathed a private sigh of relief. At least the men were past H-3. He told Eitan, who picked up the secure line and phoned Begin in Tel Aviv: “They’re in Iraqi airspace, three-quarters there.”
Raz changed his course 30 degrees north, heading straight for Bahr al Milh Lake, west of Osirak. The lake was a critical staging point for the mission: it was the IP, the all-important initial point, sixty miles from the target. There, the pilots would arm ordnance and commence final ingress. It was also the point at which the F-15s would rendezvous before climbing to their predetermined barcaps—that is, predetermined protective overhead combat stations—where they would circle on patrol at twenty-five thousand feet between the Israeli strike force and the Iraqi airfields. Raz and Operations had used a satellite photo (one of the “ill-gotten” KH-11 photos) of the area to fix the IP at the eastern bank of a tiny island in the middle of Bahr al Milh. That would be the final navigation fix from which pop-up, tracking, targeting, everything was calculated. Raz would break radio silence one last time to confirm their position.
At 1734 he spotted the lake up ahead. He was right on time. As he approached from the west, Raz noticed that the lake looked larger than it had on the satellite photo. He began searching for the tiny island so he could update his INS and fix his final navigation. He glanced down. There was nothing. The lake surface was flat and empty as far as he could see in every direction. He was rapidly traversing the length of the lake. He couldn’t believe his eyes. His stomach knotted. Where the hell was it? This had to be Bahr al Milh. At six and one-half miles a minute, Raz, the mission leader, did not have long to make up his mind. He was soon soaring past the eastern edge of the lake. The roads below matched his military map. There was a town to the left with a tower. There was another village on his right. Ar Rahhaliyah . . . ? That had to be Al Mardh. Was he crazy?
It suddenly struck him! It had rained heavily throughout the winter of ’80–’81. The lake had obviously swollen with the flooding and the rising rivers. The island was underwater! The waypoint cross on the HUD was sitting some four feet under the muddy waters below.
Abuk! Shit! Raz swore to himself, using the Arab word, since profanity does not exist in Hebrew.
Following on Nachumi’s left wing, Col. Iftach Spector was alarmed. Throughout the flight the commander had maintained his own navigational record, tracking times and degrees and checking off map points in a little four-inch pocket-sized book he had whimsically entitled “Paradise Found.” Spector saw immediately that Raz had missed the IP. It was a critical miscue. If they were off by as much as one hundred meters, the entire targeting approach would be off. At the IP, Nachumi’s team, trailing Raz’s squadron at two miles, was to drop back to four miles, or thirty seconds behind, to allow enough time during attack for the concussion and frag pattern of the first bombs to subside before they followed in on target.
As a fallback, the veteran commander Spector had before takeoff selected his own secondary IP: Akhdar Castle, a famed, historical Arabian castle he had read about during his studies, and that he noticed was on the flight path. He had always wanted to see the castle and, since he needed his own backup IP, Spector had factored it into his preflight navigation. Now, as he and the mission team flew above Akhdar, Iftach looked down, satisfying his curiosity as a tourist and student of history, and at the same time verifying their position as yet another enemy invader.
As his group approached the Euphrates River, Spector quickly identified a unique curlicue bend in the river he had noted and circled in ink on the operational map while still at Etzion. Despite the fact that Raz had missed the IP, according to Spector’s calculations, the strike force was still on point, some two minutes from pop-up. But the missing IP had thrown Raz a curve, and the squadron leader was clearly doubting his own navigation. But because of radio silence, he could not contact Raz. Spector prayed that Raz would quickly see that he was on track.
Up ahead, Raz rechecked his INS. It showed the squadron to be exactly where he would have assumed they were had he verified the IP. He was right, the IP was simply underwater. But he had overflown the point in any event. Raz reentered his new position and had the computer rescramble the computations. He turned his plane slightly south, some two hundred yards, heading directly for al-Tuwaitha.
On Raz’s left wing, Yadlin prepared for the bombing run. He tucked his F-16 in tight to Raz in what was called a “weld wing” formation. He could see Yaffe and Katz maneuvering similarly on the right wing. The pilots would attack in staggered pairs, each pair thirty seconds apart. Yadlin was concerned. He had seen Raz miss the IP and second-guess himself. In fact, Yadlin thought Raz had seemed a bit off the entire flight, but radio silence prevented him from checking in with the leader. Maybe the 129’s navigation system was off. Ironically, the 107 aircraft Raz had swapped to Yadlin was flying beautifully. He looked over at Raz on his right and could see his white helmet inside the cockpit. Yadlin felt his hand grow tense on the control stick. This was no time for the leader to hesitate.