On the outskirts of Riyadh military air base was a collection of huge air-conditioned tents, known because of the green light that suffused them through the canvas as the Barn. This was the first filter for the tidal wave of air intelligence photographs that had been flowing in for weeks and that would double and triple in the weeks to come.
The product of the Barn—a synthesis of the most important photographic information pouring in from so many reconnaissance sorties—went a mile up the road to the headquarters of the Royal Saudi Air Force, a great chunk of which had been made over to Central Air Force, or CENTAF.
A giant building of gray mottled concrete and glass built on piles a hundred fifty meters long, the headquarters has a basement running its full length, and it was here, one level below ground, that CENTAF was based.
Despite the size of the basement, there was still not enough space, so the parking lot had been crammed with an array of more green tents and prefab buildings, where further interpretation took place.
In the basement was the focal point of it all, the Joint Imagery Production Center, a warren of interconnecting rooms in which worked throughout the war two hundred and fifty analysts, American and British, of all three armed forces, and of all ranks. This was the Black Hole.
The overall air commander, General Chuck Horner, was technically in charge, but as he was often called to the Defense Ministry a mile farther up the road, the more usual presence was that of his deputy, General Buster Glosson.
The air war planners in the Black Hole consulted on a daily and even hourly basis a document called the Basic Target Graphic, a list and map of everything in Iraq that was targeted for a hit. From this they derived the daily bible of every air commander, squadron intelligence officer, planning ops officer, and aircrew in the Gulf Theater—the Air Tasking Order.
Each day’s ATO was an immensely detailed document, running to over a hundred pages of typescript. It took three days to prepare.
First came Apportionment—the decision on the percentages of the target types in Iraq that could be struck in a single day and the available aircraft suitable for such a strike.
Day two saw Allocation—the conversion of the percentage of Iraqi targets into actual numbers and locations. Day three was for Distribution—the “who gets what” decision. It was in the distribution process that it might be decided, for example, that this one is for the British Tornados, this for the American Strike Eagles, this one for the Navy Tomcats, this for the Phantoms, and that one for the B-52
Stratofortresses.
Only then would each squadron and wing be sent its menu for the following day. After that, it was up to them to do it—find the target, work out the route, link up with the air-refueling tankers, plan the strike direction, calculate the secondary targets in case of a no-go, and work out their way home.
The squadron commander would choose his crews—many squadrons had multiple targets designated in a single day—and pick his flight leaders and their wingmen. The weapons officers, of which Don Walker was one, would select the ordnance—“iron” or “dumb” bombs, which are unguided bombs, laser-guided bombs, laser-guided rockets, and so forth.
A mile down Old Airport Road was the third building. The Saudi Defense Ministry is immense, five linked main buildings of shimmering white cement, seven stories high, with fluted columns up to the fourth.
It was on this fourth floor that General Norman Schwarzkopf had been allocated a handsome suite that he hardly ever saw, frequently bunking down on a cot in the subbasement where he could be near his command post.
In all, the Ministry is four hundred meters long and a hundred feet high, a lavishness that paid dividends in the Gulf War, when Riyadh had to play host to so many unexpected foreigners.
Belowground are two more floors of rooms running the length of the building, and of the four hundred meters, Coalition Command was allocated sixty. It was here that the generals sat in conclave throughout the war, watching on a giant map as staff officers pointed out what had been done, what had been missed, what had shown up, what had moved, and what the Iraqi response and dispositions had been.
Shielded from the hot sun that January day, a British squadron leader stood before the wall map showing the seven hundred targets listed in Iraq, 240 primaries and the rest secondary, and remarked:
“Well, that’s about it,”
Alas, that was not it. Unbeknownst to the planners, for all the satellites and all the technology, sheer human ingenuity in the form of camouflage and maskirovka had deceived them.
In hundreds of emplacements across Iraq and Kuwait, Iraqi tanks sat and brooded under their netting, well-targeted by the Allies due to their metal content, picked up by overhead radars. They were in many cases made of matchboard, plywood, and tinplate, the drums of scrap iron inside giving the appropriate metallic response to the sensors. Scores of old truck chassis now mounted replica launching tubes for Scud missiles. These mobile “launchers” would all be solemnly blown apart by the Allies.
But more seriously, seventy primary targets concerned with weapons of mass destruction had not been spotted because they were buried deep or cunningly disguised as something else. Only later would planners puzzle over how the Iraqis had managed to reconstitute entire destroyed divisions with such unbelievable speed; only later would United Nations inspectors discover plant after plant and store after store that had escaped, and come away knowing there were yet more buried underground.
But that hot day in 1990 no one knew these things. What the young men out on the flight lines from Tabuq in the west to Bahrain in the east and down to the ultrasecret Khamis Mushait in the south knew was that in forty hours they would go to war and some of them would not come back.
In the last full day before final briefings began, most of them wrote home. Some chewed on their pencils and wondered what to say. Others thought of their wives and children and cried as they wrote; hands accustomed to controlling many tons of deadly metal sought to craft inadequate words into saying what they felt; lovers tried to express what they should have whispered before, fathers urged their sons to look after their mothers if the worst should happen.
Captain Don Walker heard the news with all the other pilots and aircrew of the Rocketeers of the 336th TFS in a terse announcement from the wing commander at Al Kharz. It was just before nine in the morning, and the sun was already beating down on the desert like a sledgehammer on a waiting anvil.
There was none of the usual banter as the men filed out of the tented briefing hall, each plunged in his private thoughts. For each, these thoughts were much the same: the last attempt to avoid a war had been tried and had failed; the politicians and the diplomats had shuttled from conference to conference, postured and declaimed, urged, bullied, pleaded, threatened, and cajoled in order to avoid a war—and had failed.
So at least they believed, those young men who had just learned that the talking was over at last, failing to understand that they had for months past been destined for this day.
Walker watched Squadron Commander Steve Turner stump away to his tent to write what he genuinely believed might be his last letter to Betty Jane back in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Randy Roberts had a brief, muttered few words with Boomer Henry, then they parted and walked away.
The young Oklahoman looked at the pale blue vault of sky where he had lusted to be since he was a small boy in Tulsa and where he soon might die in this thirtieth year, and turned his steps toward the
perimeter. Like the others, he wanted to be alone.