CHAPTER TWO: TO THE RESCUE (BEING AN EXCERPT FROM THE JOURNAL OF LIEUTENANT JIM PETERS, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE)

Sealed in the cockpit of our high-tech McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber, my navigator, Second Lieutenant Jon Nichol, and me, Lieutenant Jim Peters, rocketed through the night sky to a target deep in Iraq. We bounced hard in the turbulence rising from the desert floor. To circumvent radar, we had dropped from ten thousand feet, diving hard for the deck at five hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. Even now, at sixty feet, we wanted to be lower.

Below us was a barren ocean of sand. There was absolutely no cover. We crossed over a major north-south highway teeming with military vehicles, our first real sighting of the enemy. It was a shocker. Down there were several thousand men dedicated to the terminally simple idea of killing us before we could kill them.

As we began our attack run on the Ar Rumaylah airfield, anti-aircraft fire sprayed up at us. Shells burst into puffs of black and white smoke, sending shrapnel out in every direction. It was the first time we had ever been under fire, and it was dreadful.

Ten seconds to go. I checked once more around the cockpit, while Nichol took a last glance at the radar screen. The target was still marked precisely where we wanted it.

Adrenalin flooding, heart pumping… Five seconds. Then, I announced: "Three, two, one... pull!" My thumb jammed hard on the red button to drop the bombs. I felt a huge 'doosh' as the bombs fell away and blasted the target into oblivion. The Eagle lurched upwards as the weight came off.

Now, we had to get out of the range of anti-aircraft fire. I banked the jet through a hard turn to get onto the escape heading. Suddenly, there was a 'whump'. The plane jumped across the blue like a scalded cat. The force of the blast knocked the wind out of me.

"Oh, crap… we've been hit!" I growled.

A surface-to-air missile, with its infrared warhead, had locked onto the heat of our aircraft's engines. Traveling at twice the speed of sound, it had streaked into the Eagle's tail pipe, piercing the heart of the left turbine and knocking the war bird sideways.

"The plane's on fire, sir! We've got to get out of here!" shouted Nichol from the back seat.

I looked up to see a bright orange glow in the rear-view mirrors. An enormous fireball was devouring the back of the Eagle. Already it was halfway along the aircraft's spine, about three feet from Nichol. I stared, transfixed by the swiftness of the fire. Our plane was like a comet, trailing orange flames and long, gray plumes of leaking jet fuel.

In time of war, especially over enemy territory, it can be better to fly on in a burning aircraft, in the hope that the fire will burn itself out. But our luck was gone. We were ablaze from stem to stern. "Prepare to eject," I called out.

Nichol radioed our formation leader and gave our position. "We're ablaze," he reported. "We're baling out."

I yanked the stick back, and the nose of the aircraft came up. I yelled to Nichol, "Do it to it!"

We both pulled hard on the handles between our legs. I shut my eyes tight. Rockets under our seats fired, shooting us up at twenty times the force of gravity.

I remember the feeling of falling, end over end. Once the seat's stabilizing parachute stopped my whirling, the main chute deployed with a jarring crack. I opened my eyes to find myself hanging under the fabric of the parachute, floating down into the deathly silence of enemy territory. As I drifted down, I looked over and saw the Eagle crash. A humungous ball of flame went up, followed by a massive pall of black smoke. After the chaos of the preceding few minutes, the sky around me was icy calm.

Then, the ground came rushing up. I landed with a bang on my rear end, winded by the impact. Nichol touched down about a hundred yards away. I picked up my survival pack and ran over. Blood was streaming down my navigator's face from a gash over his right eye.

A vast stretch of mucky brown plain surrounded us in every direction. I could see red and black smoke curling up like a beacon from the burning Eagle a mile or two away. "Let's make tracks," I finally said. "The guys who shot us down are probably hunting for us."

Before taking flight, we got out our locator beacons to make contact with the search-and-rescue people. I transmitted that we were both down and both alive. We could only pray that someone friendly was receiving those signals.

We swung our packs – filled with water, food, extra clothing and knives – onto our backs, and I told Nichol to take his pistol out and make sure it was loaded. I could see he was still a bit unsteady from the smack on the head, perhaps from having hit the canopy as he ejected. He was also limping badly. His left knee had been damaged, probably on ejection.

Off we set, destroying our route maps as we went – the enemy must be denied anything of intelligence value should something happen to us. The sand was deep and slippery around our boots, treacherous. It was searing hot in our flying gear. Looking back, we saw our tracks – parallel footprints traveling through the sand from the point where we had landed. To me they read: 'enemy fliers this way.'

After an hour or so, we stopped. Each of us had the sensation we were being watched. I could literally feel my neck and scalp prickling. We crouched and tried to move more quietly, quickening our pace. A noise came from off to the right, and we dropped flat on the ground, lying there for what seemed like hours. Finally, we began crawling. I looked back at Nichol. He was obviously in pain. His leg was getting worse.

Then, we heard more noises. Something moved to the south – definitely people. A group of figures appeared on the horizon, advancing towards us.

We lay stock-still. I was hoping against hope: "Maybe they won't see us." Then a volley of shots rang out. The Iraqis were trying to scare us out of hiding, flush us out like game birds. I remained perfectly motionless, my heart hammering. Then I heard a loud shout. They had spotted us.

"Look, sir," Nichol said to me, indicating his gun, "they're going to get us anyway. Shall we go out with a bang?" He was suggesting that we at least make a fight of it.

"No, there's always hope," I replied.

Nichol realized I was right. The odds were very much against us. There were at least twelve of the foe, and they had Kalashnikov assault rifles. So, we looked at each other and, without a word, stood up very slowly, arms raised high in the air.

The whole world exploded around our ears. We dropped to the ground as fast as we could. They charged toward us, screaming their hatred and shooting wildly. Hearts thumping, we tensed ourselves for the kill. This was it… or so we thought.

Through blurry vision, I saw two burqa-clad little girls rush into the path of the advancing horde, shielding us from the flying bullets with their bodies. I could hardly believe my eyes – the pair remained unharmed. The Iraqis were as bewildered as Nichol and I – they ceased fire and faltered in their advance, not knowing what to make of the barely credible situation.

Both kids proceeded to draw snub-nosed Colt M4A1 carbines, complete with scopes and laser designators, from beneath their robes. "Your turn's over – now comes ours," said the taller and evidently older of the two to the Iraqis in faultless Arabic. Her pre-adolescent alto voice seemed to smirk as they took aim at our foes. The entire squad of soldiers died to a man in the span of less than five seconds.

"Hillshire, this is Triela. Objective secured," spoke the older girl again – this time in fluent Italian and almost certainly into a microphone cum earpiece – as she and her comrade approached us. "Elsa and I are preparing to move… two passengers on schedule, primary LZ, five minutes." She gave me an apologetic look and said to me in polished English: "Sorry for making it only in the nick of time, guys. We picked up your signals only a very short while back – our receivers went haywire prior to then when one of those darn AWACS aircraft your Navy uses to scramble Iraqi communications flew past us." Flashing me a smile, she continued: "This may sound hackneyed, but I'll say it anyway – we've come to get you out of here."

Triela helped me to my feet, and my mind reeled as I contemplated her. She could not have been more than thirteen years of age, and Elsa looked hardly a day over twelve. I descended even further into the depths of befuddlement upon noticing a fact that would certainly have gone unnoticed had I not been observing the girls very, very closely - they were not Iraqi, but white like us. Their bronzed complexions were undoubtedly the product of tanning. Triela had blue eyes, Elsa's were green, and ever-so-slight traces of blond could be seen in the roots of their dark hair, indicating the use of hair dye. Just who were they?

"This is totally unreal," muttered Nichol as Elsa swung his heavyset frame onto her shoulders with effortless ease. For want of anything better to say, he told her not to pull him by his muffler, for it was one hundred percent virgin wool.

"Whatever the sheep have been doing at night is none of my concern," snapped Elsa. "Let's not waste anymore time and get this show on the road already," she said to her comrade.

"I'll carry you," Triela told me as she hoisted me onto her back with only one hand. "You look totally knackered, and even if you weren't exhausted, I doubt you'd be able to keep up with us on foot."

What followed next was the utter surrealism of riding pig-a-back on diminutive human mounts through the desert, being ferried at a speed that no champion runner could even hope to match. The run culminated in us stopping at a wadi or dry stream bed, Triela and Elsa looking scarcely out of breath. Not two minutes went by before a huge MH-53J Pave Low helicopter carrying the subdued, low-contrast markings of our Air Force's 1st Special Operations Wing swept diagonally through a gap between two dunes and approached us, doing at least 140 knots with its nose only ten feet or so above the ground.

Shortly after the slick's wheels touched gravel nearby, Triela and Elsa had deposited us on board. As soon as they did so, they turned to leave.

"Aren't you coming along?" asked Nichol.

"I wish we could," sighed Triela, looking a little sad, "but we've got a lot of work on our hands. Locating and retrieving downed fliers is but our secondary objective - the main reason we're out here in western Iraq is to report on Scud missile launchers on the move. Can't have them lobbing germ or gas-loaded warheads into neighboring pro-Coalition states, you see."

Nichol and I nodded our understanding. Before the chopper climbed away from the wadi, the both of us locked eyes with our little rescuers and mouthed our gratitude.

Elsa turned away, her face as stony as ever. "Don't bother thanking us," she said in a low monotone. "We don't exist."

"Don't be like that, Elsa," admonished Triela. "You guys are most welcome," she called out to us, waving goodbye. "Stay safe!"

We slumped on the departing Pave Low's vibrating aluminum deck. The slipstream whipped through the two open gun hatches and cooled our flushed faces. We were tired but throbbing with exuberance at being alive and free.

After two crewmen tended to Nichol's wounds and made him as comfortable as possible, my navigator succumbed to his fatigue and was soon snoring loudly. I, however, remained awake. With an aerial chart on my knee, I stared intently at the helicopter's navigation computer. I heard the pilot say, "Sandy, this is Moccasin 05. We're crossing the fence." We were out of Iraq.

In the wake of our adventure in the desert, we attempted to find out more about the superhuman little girls who delivered us from the jaws of death. Nichol has made countless inquiries among his numerous contacts within the American and European intelligence and black-ops circles, but nobody has been able to give us an answer.

One thing is for certain, though. Whoever - or whatever - Triela and Elsa really are, we are eternally in their debt, and wish them nothing but luck in the years that lie ahead.

END OF CHAPTER TWO