Though it had drawbacks, the choice for this base fell on KKMC, less than fifty miles from the border with Iraq. As with Al Kharj before the Red Horse, it contained a runway and taxiways, and little else. More worrying, it could be a prime target for enemy artillery. For that reason, no aircraft would be assigned there. The birds would only come to refresh.

Now Horner needed someone to build a tent city, munitions and fuel storage, and an operations area, and set up intelligence, air traffic control, and maintenance services . . . all in two weeks—no excuses. To bring off that miracle, he brought in Colonel Bill Van Meter to be the wing commander at the quick-turn base.

On December 21, Van Meter appeared in Horner’s office, still groggy from his rush trip to Saudi Arabia. His challenge: to build a base at the end of the supply line, working his people day and night in an extremely new and isolated environment, while preparing them to survive missile or artillery attack and perhaps be overrun by an armor thrust.

With a rueful smile, he left to talk with Bill Rider and George Summers, the logisticians. Six days later, Horner flew up to KKMC. What he found there amazed him. The base was far from finished, but bulldozers were carving munitions storage berms out of the desert; pipes were being laid for the fuel farm that would enable the fighters to refuel and rearm without shutting down their engines; and a tent city was rising in the desert between the town and the base.

As they toured the base, Van Meter told Horner about a young female airman who had just arrived, disoriented and tired. During his briefing to the newcomers about their mission and responsibilities, she had sat calmly, but when he had touched on the possibility of enemy attacks, it had hit her that she just might die. And tears ran down her cheeks.

Flash forward to the days when Scuds were falling and pilots were beginning to die in shot-up jets. That same young woman proved to be one of the strongest combat leaders at KKMC.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Managing the vast aerial armada called for an immense, intricately connected command-and-control system. Here are some of its more notable elements:

• TACC Current Ops—Located in Riyadh, the Tactical Air Command Center was the central node for the planning and execution of the air war. Chuck Horner maintained his headquarters there.

• AWACS—A Boeing 707 command-and-control aircraft with a large, long-range radar that could see aerial targets at all altitudes, provided they had a velocity over the ground relative to the AWACS aircraft. Though this number was adjustable, it was usually set at speeds greater than seventy knots, so cars would not show up as aircraft. The AWACS provided an air picture to all the theater, and the AWACS air controllers provided navigation assistance and controlled aircraft from pre-tanker rendezvous to poststrike refueling, as needed. F-15s and F-16s, with their powerful air-to-air radars, did not need such help; other aircraft often did.