In my right mirror, I saw two two bright FLASHES and could see Shorty wrenched around back there, looking over his right shoulder at something down our 4 o’clock wing line.
The fading orange light was moving shadows upward on my canopy as the flares Shorty had instinctively popped were falling to the ground.
“Boss! I just saw ...muzzle flashes; right!"
Shorty losing his chill shocked me more than the words he was saying.
Shorty Bone never lost his chill.
I had rolled the jet and pulled 30 degrees right, still down on the deck, having just retracted gear and flaps.
We were accelerating low and fast in the gloomy dark air past 380 knots before dawn - over the brownish-gray mud walls and houses just outside the wire north of Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.
In the backseat, Shorty was unstowing our Sniper targeting pod to look at the dirt.
"Shorty - What The...."
Before I could say it, Shorty was directing our wingman:
"TWO CHECK 30 LEFT"
