Raid on the Sun(64)

No one at the ministry was more anxious than Ariel “Arik” Sharon, the notoriously hard-nosed tank commander. He had been a longtime family friend and comrade-in-arms with Yaffe’s father. When Avraham had suddenly passed away in 1969, leaving Doobi, not even out of high school, to be the man of the house, Ari Sharon turned up on the Yaffe family’s doorstep two days after the funeral. After consoling Mitka and the children, the bulldog-faced general and lifelong rancher took Doobi aside and swore an oath to him: “I will come here every Saturday morning at 7 A.M., and you and I will ride horses together.”

Sure enough, for the next three years, until Yaffe was accepted into IAF flying school, every Saturday morning at precisely seven o’clock, the old warrior-statesman would be at the front door, dressed in English riding garb, complete with shined leather boots and riding crop, ready to head out to the nearby stables. The figures of the rotund, genteel general and the beanpole kid beside him would then ride off together on horseback, talking of family, history, and horses, or just nothing at all, except the cool mornings and the clean smell of freshly turned earth. To Yaffe, Arik Sharon revealed a sensitivity and tenderness few could ever guess, and by the time Doobi moved to Hatzerim, the general had become like an uncle to him.

For his part, Sharon felt no less close to Doobi. Now, waiting along with all the other ministers, he worried for all the pilots. But it was especially painful to know that his “adopted” nephew was deep inside enemy territory in harm’s way. And there was nothing he could do to help. He tried to keep up a good front for Mitka, but seeing the expression on her face did little to help his own doubts.

Time had stopped. And all Israel, it seemed, waited.



As Raz began to nose his F-16 toward the dome, he quickly double-checked his INS. Something was not right. Osirak was almost directly beneath him already, and he was still on his approach. With rising horror, Raz realized that in the distraction caused by missing the sunken IP, he must have overflown the pop-up point by half a mile. All his calculations had been based on a false point! Now, as he should be beginning his dive, he was too close to the target for his approach on final.

“I am too close!” he yelled out.

Yadlin saw that Raz, instead of beginning a steep 30-degree dive, was still angling straight up. As the leader, Raz was the number one bomber. Yadlin was number two. Yadlin could see the arc of the dome clearly beneath him as he rolled back over. His threat alarm was now ringing loudly. Iraqi radar was finally beginning to lock on. Yadlin’s headset was suddenly filled with the jumbled, harried voices from the Iraqi AAA batteries below. The panicked garble grew increasingly intense. The piercing wail of the threat receiver bounced off the glass canopy around him. All hell was breaking loose.

Yadlin knew that he had at most a four-or-five-second window before the Iraqi radar fixed him. He had seen half a squadron lost to SAMs in ’73. Nine good men from his unit killed.

The F-16s were already outgunned, and now the leader was hesitating. Yadlin decided in a flash he could not wait.

“I’m not going to end up being hanged in some square in Baghdad because of a screwup,” he swore.

Yadlin dropped his nose and cut in beneath Raz’s plane, heading straight down “the chute,” hurtling 480 knots at the target. He focused complete attention on the HUD, careful to keep the bomb-fall line across the target. He was in a zone: The threat receiver, the engine, the noise of the Iraqi defenders on the ground—everything just faded away. Five thousand feet. The dome raced toward him; the pipper on the display screen creeped ever closer along the bomb line to the target icon. Forty-five hundred feet. Four thousand. He was almost at the predetermined bubble of the frag pattern. The death dot at the end of the bomb-fall line, like a pendulum, crept toward the target icon. Out the glass canopy, Yadlin saw the dome beneath growing larger as he grew closer. He felt the pressure of the tiny red button on top of the control lever. He checked to make sure his wings were level. He had to avoid slipping or the bombs would miss their target.

Thirty-eight hundred feet. The altimeter whirled. Thirty-six hundred. The death dot edged into the target. Thirty-five hundred feet . . . the dot centered, blocking out the dome icon like an eclipse. Yadlin squeezed the pickle and pulled back the control stick. He felt the release clips free the two bombs and the plane seemed to jump ahead with the sudden loss of four thousand pounds. Yadlin quickly clicked the selector button to the Sidewinder fire-control and hit the afterburner, at the same time turning the stick hard left. The F-16 responded immediately, banking radically and climbing as the G-suit bladders ballooned with air, pressing Yadlin’s thighs, chest, and head tight against the seat, preventing the blood from rushing to his extremities, which would cause him to lose consciousness. At four Gs, his 165-pound body weighed the equivalent of 660 pounds. He looked over his shoulder back down at the Osirak dome and watched both of his bombs pierce the shell of the cupola and disappear inside, then he was gone like a rocket, racing to high altitude.