by FARMAN, ANDY
“Hey Ulrika, I’m sure your higher had no idea you would be delayed, but four passes is way beyond sensible…it’s a bad neighbourhood we’re visiting so hold it down to two passes and we’ll stay with you.”
Talon’s leader knew that the delay would give the Soviet’s the recovery time necessary to concentrate their fire on whoever was in the air, and it was better that their guns be divided up on nine targets rather than four.
“Roger Gang, you got a deal…and again, we do appreciate it.” Arndeker could hear the smile in her voice and felt good about himself for the first time in several days.
His F-16s passed through the final cleft in the hills and he took them in a shallow turn to port, orbiting just above the treetops as they waited for the Gripen’s.
Arndeker listened to the radio chatter; he couldn’t speak French so he tried to judge from the tone of the pilot’s voices how it was going for them.
“Chain Gang lead this is Lion Dog Zero Three, the 2000D’s and Jag’s are doing a first rate job. I’m watching radars going offline all across the target area and I advise you to begin your run now, it doesn’t get much better than this, Gang?”
“Roger Dog, we’ll hold for Talon anyway.”
There was a hint of ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ in the AWAC controllers voice as he acknowledged Arndeker simply.
“Roger”.
If all had gone as planned the Armee de l’Air aircraft would still have been overhead when the Swedish and American aircraft went for the tanks and APCs, but the French had expended all their anti-radar ordnance and were already departing the area as the Gripen’s finally arrived. The two leaders hurriedly agreed on a simple plan to replace the original, the Gripen’s and the F-16s would make a north to south pass over the head of the column in extended line, four hundred metres between aircraft, with the Swedes on the left, they would then all swing left and make the second pass further down the column before egressing to the north.
The American and Swedish aircraft hugged the contours of the earth as they began their approach. Flying below electricity pylons and between trees, they headed for the pillars of black smoke in the distance that marked the positions of the victims of the French HARM missiles. On cue from the AWAC they popped up to 500 feet and began looking for targets of their own on the ground below.
The Wild Weasel sortie by the French had destroyed more than half a dozen AAA vehicles and intimidated the remainder into shutting down their radars, but it had not slowed the armoured advance. The scene that met Lt Col Arndeker was of a countryside crawling with machines of war, and all of them headed west. His first thought was that there were not enough munitions in the armouries of the west to deal with even half of the fighting vehicles spread out before him. Tracer began curling up towards him, travelling slowly at first but seemingly heading right for him. The tracer grew larger as it approached and suddenly seemed to accelerate, only to flash past harmlessly, but Arndeker still hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller. Each F-16 carried a pair of Rockeye II’s, slung in tandem down the centreline hard points and a Gator mine dispenser on each of the inside wing pylons. Arndeker touched the rudder to line up on a company’s worth of tank’s advancing in line abreast and pickled off a single Rockeye. The weapon fell clear of the aircraft before splitting open like a clamshell and releasing the 247 bomblets it contained, which fell like an ever expanding, elongated cloud. He wasn’t aware of what effect the bomblets had, he saw a road crossing ahead of him and selected the portside mine dispenser, leaving a trail of small munitions across the road and the fields either side of it.
Either his sensor suite was malfunctioning or none of the AAA vehicles within engagement range was emitting because the only sounds coming from his earpieces were voices, one female and seven male as the other pilots shouted to one another on the radio. Apart from the tracer there was little in the way of nastiness being directed their way, but the urge to be far from this place was very real. He pickled off his last mines in the path of a mass of self-propelled artillery emerging from a wood, and held his breath until the armoured spearhead had dropped away behind him and only open fields lay ahead. A quick call on his radio confirmed that his wingmen had also emerged unscathed, as had the Gripens, so he felt a lot more comfortable about the next pass.
The nine aircraft turned in a line to the left and then turned north once again, this time with the F-16s on the left. Arndeker found himself flying toward a line of poplars, and pulled back the side stick to clear the tops of the trees. Immediately a loud warbling sound in his headset told him that a SAM radar was illuminating him, and he felt the vibration as his ECM suite automatically punched out chaff. The warble changed, becoming a frantic two-tone siren as the transmitter locked him up. More chaff was ejected and the siren reverted to warble, and then cut out altogether. Arndeker was soaked in sweat and his stomach rebelled, churning in reaction.
Exhaust trails from ground to air missiles criss-crossed the sky, tracer from light, medium and heavy automatic weapons as well as from 23mm cannon slashed in front, beside, and all around the attacking aircraft. An aircraft hit the ground in a welter of fragments, careening through a potato field before exploding, but Arndeker couldn’t tell if it had been American or Swedish and his mouth went dry with the realisation that in the space of mere seconds the hunters had become the hunted. The pilots were shouting warnings to one another over the radio, spotting for one another the deadly ZSUs and mobile SAM launchers, but if they were close enough to identify the vehicles visually they were close enough to be engaged by them and the voices carried a sense of panic.
“Smoke in the air!”
“Watch out for shoulder launchers by the farm!”
“Oh fuck…SAM’s! SAM’s!”
“Zeus on the low hill, Zeus on the low hill!”
“I’m hit! I’m hit! Jesus Chri….”
A warbling returned to his headset and he ejected chaff himself, not waiting for the ECM suite to do the job. He caught his breath as he saw a ZSU-23-4s turret tracking him and kicked the rudder savagely whilst pushing the side stick forward enough to avoid the four seemingly solid streams of 23mm cannon that would otherwise have nailed him.
The warbling in his ears changed to a siren and then became a monotone that turned his blood to ice. His HUD told him a pair of SA-9s had been launched at him, and were guiding on his F-16 despite the chaff and automatic track breakers engaging. To go up into the clouds would only be to invite other launchers to attack as he entered their engagement envelopes, his last manoeuvres had brought him down too low for him to engage in drastic turns so the only direction left to him was downwards even more. Arndeker eased the side stick forwards, and the F-16 sank earthwards until it barely cleared the tops of hedgerows but the tone continued without missing a beat. The chaff was still being discharged, but the bundles were breaking on contact with the ground instead bursting apart in his aircrafts wake. The jet wash and his slipstream did kick up strips and scatter them, the foil strips swirled about before settling to the ground or snagging on branches of bushes and trees, but they did not provide the degree of radar reflection their normal deployment would have achieved. The fear was a physical force within his chest, squeezing his heart and compressing his lungs whilst reaching up to grasp his throat. He caught a brief glimpse of something fast moving that left a trail of dirty white exhaust behind as it passed a few feet above his canopy without exploding, and he looked about frantically for the second missile, where the hell was it! The second missile had flown into a tree but Arndeker was unaware, he never saw it, not a single visual clue as to its whereabouts, and then the warning tone in his ears ceased as the SAM launcher lost radar lock.
Arndeker had heard stories about airmen whose deaths had been so swift that they apparently never realised they were dead, and their shades appeared before the commanders who had sent them to their deaths, shocked and confused and asking for explanations. Arndeker took the flesh of his right bicep betwe
en the thumb and index finger of his left hand, squeezing it through the material of his G-suit until the pain made him wince. He let out a gasp of breath in relief but realised three things, firstly his legs were shaking uncontrollably, he had urinated without realising it, and thirdly he was staring at a Soviet tank commander stood upright in a tanks turret and gaping right back at him. It could only have been for the merest fraction of a second but the moment seemed frozen in time. With a start Arndeker realised the F-16 was still slowly losing height and he pulled back on the stick, rocketing up and over the T-80. Arndeker let out a little laugh in relief, but even he could hear the hysteria that edged it. Once back at 500 feet he pickled off his last Rockeye above a mix of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, looking over his shoulder as he did so and noting on the way the holes in his port wing. When the hell had that happened?
He was about to head down again but instead he broke hard left, avoiding by a hairs breadth a mid-air with a flaming comet that cut right across his path. The pilot of the stricken aircraft had an open radio channel, and over the roar of the flames could be clearly heard the pitiable screams of intense pain, the screams of a trapped animal enduring unbelievable searing agony. The burning aircraft wasn’t losing height, if anything it was slowly gaining altitude and prolonging the suffering of its pilot, trapped and burning alive in its cockpit.
Arndeker unplugged his headset, tearing the lead out of its socket to cut off the awful cries before vomiting into his oxygen mask, not just because a human being was being burnt to death, but also because that human being was female. Something else struck his aircraft and this time he felt it, the F-16 lurched with the impact and he snatched away the oxygen mask to spit out the bilious remnants of his breakfast as he waited helplessly for flaming fuel vapour to fill his cockpit too, but nothing happened and no master warning lights flashed.
A red light blinked on the HUD, flashing the symbols ‘00’ next to the Chaff icon. He was out of radar decoys, and on checking the store’s inventory for flares he noted that he had only four of those remaining. His heart was in his mouth as he flew, oblivious to the whereabouts of the rest of the aircraft, determining only to get clear of what had become a waking nightmare.
Without realising it he passed beyond the Soviet armour and was above open country once more, but he was still shaking and in his mind’s eye tracer was still seeking him out. He became aware of an F-16 at his left wingtip, its pilot looking worriedly at him, and beyond that F-16 was a single Gripen that was trailing smoke.
With great effort he pulled himself back to the present, attempting to replace the headset lead in its socket but only succeeding after several abortive tries, his hands just shook too much.
Beside his own aircraft, only the other F-16 and the damaged Gripen had got out. His No.2 was in the aircraft off his port wing, asking him for his situation and for further instructions. Should they make a third run, strafing with cannon, sir?
They had left dozens of enemy fighting vehicles in flames, scattered mines in the paths of others that would blow off tracks and hinder them, but they had not deflected the enemy one single degree from his purpose and the advance was continuing unchecked.
Arndeker could only respond to the radio requests with single syllable answers, and his voice sounded so weak, so frail, that his wingman assumed he had been wounded and took the lead, shepherding his squadron commander toward their home field.
The return flight was uneventful, which was just as well because there was no fight left within Arndeker’s frame. The control tower slotted them for landing in order of damage and injury. The Gripen and its pilot were in no condition to return to Sweden so it accompanied them west to their field. The pilot was losing blood so he entered the pattern first, and Arndeker followed behind him, flying woodenly in jerky motions like a nervous pupil on his first solo.
The Gripen was a quarter of a mile ahead of Arndeker, grey smoke still leaving a thin trail behind it as it let down toward the airfield. There had been a raid whilst the flight had been up, and thick black smoke rose from a dozen places within the facility. The runways had been prime targets for the raid this morning, as they had for previous raids and the longest was now peppered with small craters along a third of its length. A second runway was blocked, and a bulldozer was shoving the still smouldering remains of a Red Air Force Flogger from the tarmac but the runway they were lined up on was intact, and soon they would be safely down once more.
The whine of electric motors announced his gear was lowering, and he felt the triple thumps as the gear locked into place. The flaperon’s extended further as the airspeed bled off, and the F-16 followed the Gripen toward the tarmac.
The Swedish aircraft was above the outer marker when it exploded like a thermite grenade, and Arndeker gawped uncomprehendingly at the fireball, his brain not registering the warning shouts in his headset from the controller and his surviving wingman, or the tracer flashing past from behind, missing widely at first but zeroing in.
His ECM suite was silent, it hadn’t warned him of an approaching enemy because no radar energy was being radiated and no infrared systems had locked him up. They had been caught at their most vulnerable by a pilot who had gone back to basics, relying on nothing more complex than a gun sight projected onto his HUD.
Bangbangbang! The impacts snapped him out of his trance-like state and he realised his danger. He selected Gear Up and pushed the throttle all the way forward to Zone One Afterburner, needing to recover some airspeed fast before he could manoeuvre worth a damn but there was no accompanying kick in the pants. ‘AB Fail’ flashed on the HUD, informing him the Afterburner was non-functional. Bile rose into Arndeker’s mouth, it tasted acrid and he spat it out. His flight suit was already stained with vomit, and in truth he was past caring about such things as appearance. The turbulent wake of a Fulcrum shook the F-16 as it passed above him and to the right, its cannon still firing at him as it overshot. Arndeker looked down toward the Patriot site that guarded the base, but only a blackened, scorched area of earth marked where it had been when he had taken off for this mission, less than an hour before.
His heart was beating a tattoo in his chest as he watched the airspeed build, but far, far too slowly. Any drastic evasive action he took right now would only result in a stall but he tried a shallow bank to the right, to avoid being a sitting duck for anyone else that may be back there.
His F-16 wallowed drunkenly despite his gentle touch on the side stick and rudder, so the Fulcrum had damaged some control surfaces at the very least. He could land, and save his aircraft for the repair shop, or punch out here and now. What remained of his self-esteem rose to the surface and he determined to stay with the machine, to put it down in one piece.
He was at 400 feet as he crossed the airbase perimeter and his airspeed had risen to 200 knots. He couldn’t see the Fulcrum any longer and maybe it had cleared off back to its own lines. Arndeker called up the controller, telling him he was going around before trying to land once more.
230 knots and Arndeker was muttering aloud to himself, mouthing encouragements to the F-16 like a coach egging on a flagging member of a cross-country team.
“Come on, come on, that’s it, good girl, push it a little more, give me a little extra, that’s it, that’s it, not much further now.” The canopy exploded into a thousand fragments and the cannon strikes sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a trashcan as the rounds struck the fuselage. Arndeker screamed in pain and fear as something struck him hard in the side of the chest, he felt ribs snap but then a sheet of flame filled the bottom of the cockpit, lapping around his feet, ankles and lower legs. The Neoprene of his G-suit may be fire proof, but it didn’t prevent him feeling the heat of the flames.
The master fire warning light shone a bright crimson on his panel and the stall warning whooped in his ears as the nose of the F-16 rose drunkenly, announcing its departure from controlled flight and began a sideslip toward the earth. Arndeker blacked out momentarily as the blood wa
s forced from his brain by the acceleration of the ejector seat throwing him clear. He was oblivious to the sudden release of pressure to his shoulders and waist as the safety harness that bound him to his seat fell away, but he registered the nauseous vision of ground then sky, ground then sky, before his parachute opened. At a height of only fifty feet the canopy fully deployed, arresting his head over heels fall to deposit him on the grass beside the far end of the runway, the shrouds of the parachute settling behind him.
It took him a second to realise he was down on the ground and still alive, and he ran his hands over himself as he sought injuries. He felt pain in his chest whenever he breathed; shrapnel from an exploding cannon shell had come through the side of the cockpit but struck the 9mm Berretta he wore in the shoulder harness. The pistol had probably saved his life in a way not intended by the manufacturer, but it would never fire again. Arndeker was peppered with minor wounds from tiny pieces of shrapnel, including shards of Perspex but he was ninety nine per cent good to go, in body at least. There was nothing to prevent the flight surgeon from applying some sticking plasters and marking him fit for duty. He removed the Beretta from its holster and stared at it, perhaps he couldn’t put a round through some fleshy part of his body but maybe he could bludgeon a knee cap, and then they couldn’t make him fly again could they, at least not for a while?
He heard the pounding of feet approaching and looked over his shoulder. Men were running toward him, running past the dispersals in which sat the twisted and the charred skeletons of two A-10s. The blast walls on three sides had not protected them from the liquid fire of napalm.
The wreckage of his own F-16 belched smoke and flame a few hundred metres away and at the opposite end of the runway the Gripen burned fiercely, whilst in the field beyond was another burning F-16, that of his wingman. He was a squadron commander without a squadron, a pilot without an aircraft to fly or any nerve remaining to fight. The nearest man was too close now for him to be able to incapacitate himself without what he saw as his own cowardice being plainly obvious. He allowed the damaged firearm to fall from his fingers and sat, with shoulders slumped in abject despair.
