“That’s why we need to attack,” Patrick said. “Let’s get back to Jaghbub and get our planes in the air.”

CHAPTER 7

OUTSIDE ZILLAH AIR BASE, CENTRAL LIBYA
 THAT NIGHT

“Grumble Twelve, this is Lion Seven at checkpoint two- nine-three.”

Dead on course. With all the activity around the base as the division got ready to go to war with the Egyptians, it was a relief to have a helicopter crew where it was supposed to be, especially at night. “Acknowledged, Lion Seven,” the Libyan air defense radio operator replied. “Radar contact, four-eight kilometers bull’s-eye. Verify altitude.”

“Altitude four hundred.”

Checked—right on course and altitude, although he was very late checking in. If only all the army aviation guys did it this well, the air defense operator thought, his job would be a lot easier. “Acknowledged. Descend to two hundred meters on course. Are you a single ship?”

“Affirmative, Lion Seven.”

The commander of the S-300 surface-to-air missile site stood behind the radar station and optronics officer’s station, listening in. He narrowed his eyes in thought. “He is very late—almost outside the code change time limit,” he said, verbalizing his thoughts to the backs of his crew’s heads. Radio and identification codes were changed daily, and deployed units had to return to receive new ones within three hours of the changeover time or risk getting shot down without warning. “Does his transponder check?” he asked his radio operator.

“Yes, sir.”

Something still didn’t feel right. The commander keyed his command channel radio button: “Lion Seven, are you single ship tonight?”

“Affirmative.”

“Where are your wingmen?”

“One unit is daeyikh,” the pilot of the inbound helicopter reported. That meant it had been destroyed. “The other unit has stayed behind to assist. We are returning for a code change.”

“Acknowledged,” the commander said. That was standard procedure: Perhaps an officer aboard the undamaged helicopter had returned with this crew to pick up new decoding documents, because no aircraft could approach Zillah, especially at night but anytime under this wartime posture, without a valid transponder code.

The S-300 commander, situated thirty kilometers northeast of Zillah, had already alerted his battery and the two flanking missile batteries of the approaching helicopter five minutes ago when it popped up on radar. The S-300 air defense system, one of the best all-altitude long-range surface-to-air missile systems in the world, had managed to pick up the low-flying helicopter ninety kilometers away even though it was only four hundred meters above the desert—the S-300’s powerful multiscan radar could pick up aircraft as low as thirty meters’ altitude or as high as thirty thousand meters and as far as three hundred kilometers away.