Free Warriors by Barrett Tillman by Barrett Tillman Page A

force in the world.
           The Israelis were the global standard. They knew von Clausewitz chapter and verse. They trained hard and they fought to win.
           Bennett thought of his cousin Mike, an electronics specialist on the USS Liberty in 1967. The Israelis had torpedoed the intelligence-gathering ship with PT boats and strafed her with jet aircraft. Later they said it was a mistake. They'd thought she was an Egyptian vessel flying the American flag. Mike had lost a leg but thirty-four of his shipmates lost their lives. He was still bitter-as much at the Johnson Administration for accepting the Israeli version as at the Israelis themselves. When Liberty's captain was presented the Medal of Honor for his valor in remaining at the conn despite disabling wounds, the citation never even mentioned the identity of the "hostile torpedo boats and aircraft."
           Mike's name for the attackers was specific and unprintable.
           It came to Bennett in a sudden rush. He might have within his grasp a means of maintaining or even expanding American influence in the Middle East while perhaps preventing a recurrence of the cycle of disaster his country had experienced in the region. Liberty in 1967, Iran in 1979, Beirut, the Stark and Vincennes episodes during the 1980s. Each military crisis had resulted in unnecessary loss of American lives or a loss of prestige and confidence in American institutions. Now the Saudis, by seeking to strengthen their own hand, were offering him a chance to do more good for the United States than he ever had done while wearing an American uniform.
           While on active duty Bennett had attempted to convince people in authority that the most important element in the fighter equation was the pilot; that a superior aviator usually will beat an inferior pilot, regardless of their respective aircraft. Superior equipment-within certain broad limits-only mattered at the top of the league, between evenly matched pilots.
           It had been proven time and again, yet the decision makers of years before had opted for high-tech, highly "capable" aircraft that cost $25 to $40 million each. This, combined with an overriding concern with safety, actually led to a denigration of combat skill. Bennett thought of the Air Force colonel who said, "I'd hate to see an epitaph on a fighter pilot's tombstone that says, 'I told you I needed training.' How do you train for the most dangerous game in the world by being as safe as possible?" But the pilot was to become the lesser of the equation. Many budgeteers believed that computers and technology had rendered the human mind and hand obsolete. That was bad enough. But they also discounted the human heart.
           Bennett fell asleep, feeling somewhat optimistic about prospects for "his" fighter force serving to enhance U. S. influence in the Middle East while perhaps deterring wider war. He slept fitfully until shortly before dawn, when he drifted into the deepest sleep phase. Usually he dreamed in those hours, though he seldom clearly remembered his dreams. Cynical about such things, he never attached any importance to them. But throughout his adult life one dream had recurred.
           It had begun after an exchange program with the Marine Corps between tours in Vietnam. Bennett had ridden in the backseat of a Phantom on a night mission. But in the dream he seldom saw the evolution from the cockpit. It was as if he stood watching from an elevated platform as the attacking jet screamed down at him from the darkness. Sometimes the plane was an F -4, often a Skyhawk-usually delta-winged.
           Bennett stood alone, watching the bright jet exhaust as the aircraft arced straight up, tossing its single bomb in a high parabola which was lost to sight in the night sky. He always remembered seeing and hearing the jet top out of its two-mile-high Immelmann turn, rolling right-side up and diving away until even the noise