Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “Go with him, Angus…” Knowles said suddenly, laying a hand on the tall Scotsman’s shoulder. “You stay with him… keep him company…”

  “But… but… the tank… you need a driver…” Connolly mumbled, confused and torn between his loyalty to the only commander he’d ever known and his sense of duty to the rest of his crew.

  “Whaddya think, sir?” Ingalls turned to Thorne, a raised eyebrow asking a question over and above the words spoken. “All of us know how to drive a tank if push comes to shove, and maybe it’d be best if the Captain had a mate with him when he wakes up…?” It was clear from the expression on the tank driver’s face that he hadn’t caught on to what Ingalls was really saying, but it was clear enough in Thorne’s mind that Ingalls didn’t expect any of them to survive the coming ground assault.

  “Good idea, lance… I think it might be a fine idea for the captain to have a friend nearby,” Thorne nodded slowly, both men clear that they understood each other. “Come on, Angus: hop in the back with Jimmy and we’ll get him looked after.”

  “If you’re sure, sir...?”

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, corporal,” Knowles reassured, convincingly sincere as he patted the man on the shoulder. “We can drive if need be, like Lance-Corporal Ingalls said, and I think Jimmy might indeed need a friend or two with him when he wakes up.”

  They were all interrupted momentarily as the seventh missile detonated off to the south-east on the opposite side of the canal, so far away its passing was little more than a background rumble. Regular artillery also began falling at the same time with the distinctive sound of smoke shells landing all around at much closer range.

  “They’re comin’ fellas,” Thorne pointed out, all of them knowing that smoke shells meant the enemy was on the move. “If anyone’s comin’, they’d better make their mind up right now!”

  “Go on, Angus,” Ingalls slapped Connolly on the shoulder again, seizing the initiative and forcing a convincing grin. “You know officers can’t bloody cope without an NCO lookin’ after ‘em:… keep an eye on him for us!”

  “Oh, aye… that I’ll do, orright…” he agreed finally, clambering into the back of thye jeep beside Davids.

  “We really gotta go, Nick… Neville…” Thorne added, extending a hand which both men accepted and shook quickly in turn. “Good luck...!”

  “We’ll take care of that big bugger for you, Old Man…” Knowles grinned in return. “Make sure those Jerry bastards don’t get their hands on her.”

  “Good man!” Thorne grinned, clambering into the driver’s seat and throwing a glance across to the still shirtless Hacking. “What about you, squadron leader? Coming with us?”

  “Someone should stay behind and look after the CP I suspect, sir,” Hacking replied after a second or two, mostly keeping the nervousness out of his tone. “Might as well be me as anyone else.” He shrugged. “Probably not the best news to have right now, sir, but radar just picked up a mass of enemy air formations approaching at high speed: at least a hundred or more, coming in from the west… bombers and fighters. Maybe seven or eight minutes, if we’re lucky…”

  “They were always gonna try crashing the party sooner or later, mate,” Thorne shot back with a wry smile. “Best of luck to you, too, Andrew,” he added, throwing the young man a very irregular salute. “I’d have said it might be an idea to throw a shirt on, mate, but on second thoughts, the awesomely dazzling whiteness of that bloody chest of yours might just send the enemy blind!”

  Hacking, Knowles and Ingalls all grinned too in spite of their fears, and with another silent nod of acknowledgement, Thorne gunned the jeep’s engine and swung the little 4WD around, powering back the way he’d come in a spray of dust and gravel. In just a few moments the vehicle had completely disappeared within the white/grey clouds of artillery smoke that were now drifting lazily across the entire area.

  “Engineering reports tube door open sir,” the weapons officer called out loudly, relief evident in his tone as the red light on his panel suddenly went dark at the same time a similar green light above it illuminated. “Weapon ready to fire…”

  “Clear to launch, Herr Leutnant,” Kretschmer acknowledged with a smile, poking his head through the open hatchway from the main control room. “Better late than never: fire when ready…”

  The last Aggregat A-4C roared from its tube a moment later, arcing high into the sky toward the south through a the vague, floating haze left in the air from the earlier launches. Two minutes later, U-1401 had disappeared beneath the surface of the Mediterranean, once more at home in its true element as a silent, undetectable killing machine.

  20. Exodus

  RAF Station Kibrit

  30km North of Suez, Egypt

  A flight of four Corsairs howled past overhead, heading the other way and so low that both men ducked instinctively at the sudden noise as the jeep finally burst into the open once more on the other side of the growing clouds of smoke and dust. Their 20mm wing cannon hammered away within seconds of their passing, suggesting to Thorne that whatever was advancing toward the base beyond that smoke was now quite close indeed.

  He was both outwardly angry and inwardly very relieved to see the towering tail of the Galaxy in the distance, ramp closed and engines turning over but still waiting patiently at that end of the runway. That the aircraft was waiting for them was obvious and there might – possibly – be a place for recrimination over disobeyed orders at a later date, however right at that moment it was something he was willing to overlook considering that he’d half expected it to happen anyway. Something that was less of a pleasant sight was that of the F-35E also still on the ground with crew fussing about it, refuelling and working to fit the last two Sidewinder missiles into the Lightning’s internal weapon’s bay.

  Thorne drove the jeep up to within a dozen metres or so of the nose, doing his best to ignore the howl of the huge engines nearby as a side door opened below and slightly aft of the cockpit, producing a long set of folding steps that stretched right down to the tarmac. Lloyd was first out the opening and running across the concrete toward them with a pair of corpsman in hot pursuit.

  “I have wounded here! Medic! Medic…!” Thorne’s cries were superfluous – their need for medical attention had been clearly evident from the cockpit and their arrival had been anticipated.

  “We got her, Max, we got her… oh, fuck…!” Evan blurted upon finally getting a good look at Davids’ injuries as he slipped an arm around Eileen’s shoulder and guided her from the vehicle, still in shock and barely conscious.

  “”He’s well fucked, mate , Thorne shot back quietly as he climbed from the driver’s seat, hoping Connolly was too distracted to overhear as he stared up at the incredible bulk of the C-5M. “Dunno what we can do for him, but get him upstairs and get some plasma into his arm. If we can maybe get him as far as a hospital at Habbaniyah we might still stand a chance.”

  It’s looking like a bloody abattoir up there,” Lloyd grimaced, considering the various wounded already being cared form on the Galaxy’s upper deck, “but we’ll do what we can. Come on, mate…” he continued, nudging the still-staring Connolly into action. “Let’s get Jimmy upstairs and see if we can make him comfortable…”

  Evan assisted Donelson toward the forward access door while Angus and the two medics followed on behind, Davids’ limp body between them, with Thorne bringing up the rear. The moment he was on board he scrambled up the internal stairs to the upper deck, trying to ignore the cries and moans of the numerous wounded being tended to there among the rows of seats and dived straight into the cockpit. Taking note of his arrival, Harvey Weems was already edging his throttles forward in anticipation of take-off.

  Staring out through the side windows at the F-35E, Thorne dragged the radio mike from his belt and keyed the transmit button.

  “Are you thinking about getting airborne any time soon, Alec?” He growled with obvious sarcasm. “Every bloody plane in the entire bloody Afrika Korp
s is gonna be here in a few minutes and it would be nice to have a little bloody top cover up when they get here!”

  “Each one of these blasted Sidewinders is ten feet long and weighs nearly two hundred pounds,” Trumbull’s acid reply came back within seconds, the tension in his own voice quite evident. “It takes three men just to lift one of these… blasted things… and with ‘the entire Luftwaffe’ headed our way, as you so succinctly put it, I suspect it would be for the best if I had every… blasted… weapon available on hand!”

  “A hundred bloody Sidewinders won’t be worth a shit if you’re still on the bloody ground when they show up, Alec…” Thorne snarled back angrily as Lloyd appeared in the cockpit door behind him, taking note of the discussion. “Get that fucking airplane off the ground now…!” He paused for a split second as a fleeting but quite distinct moment of déjà vu washed over him, then shrugged it off with a dismissive shake of his head.

  “…Whereas being airborne will be equally useless if I have no weapons on board!” Trumbull pointed out, his tone becoming increasingly heated. They could hear the exertion in the pilot’s voice as they watched him clamber the rope ladder and seat himself in the cockpit. “Much as it’d be jolly nice having an ion cannon handy to ‘fire a few shots to clear the way’, these missiles and my belly gun are unfortunately all I have so best I have them all ready, hmmm…? They’re jolly-well finishing the last blasted one now, if you must know,” the terse reply cracked back at him from the mike speaker as they watched Trumbull strap himself in and lower the cockpit canopy. The ground crew completed their tasks in that moment, turning and running headlong for the Galaxy as the loadmaster stood in the open side door, waiting for them.

  “You know, where I come from there are names for people who quote from Star Wars all the bloody time,” Thorne observed, realising he was pushing too hard and forcing his temper down slightly.

  “There are also plenty of f–… names I’m thinking of right now, Max, but decency prevents me from using any of them… Preparing for take-off now… Trumbull out…!”

  “I think I nearly made him say ‘fuck’ then,” Thorne remarked drily, as usual attempting to calm himself down through irreverence.

  “He said ‘bollocks’ while you were gone,” Lloyd observed with a grin.

  “‘Are you fuckin’ with me, Ted’?” Any surprise felt on Thorne’s part transformed into fully-fledged astonishment upon hearing those words.

  “Right out loud, just like a ‘real person’…”

  “Dude, you can’t be tellin’ me shit like that and not get it on camera… you’ll be saying you saw Bigfoot next… you know the ‘rules’, man: pics, or it didn’t happen!”

  They all heard a growing roar off to the aircraft’s left as the F-35E’s engine wound up for take-off. Hatches opened behind the cockpit to expose the lift fan while the rear jet nozzle angled downward to provide added lift. White-hot flame speared from the exhaust as the afterburner kicked in and the Lightning began to accelerate along the concrete taxiway at an incredible pace. It was in the air in less than 200 metres, lurching upward and spearing into the sky at an almost vertical angle.

  The last of the ground crew climbed aboard at that moment and the side door was slammed shut, confirmation coming up to the cockpit within seconds.

  “If you gentlemen are done dicking around on my flight deck,” Lieutenant Weems declared, the master of all he surveyed when seated in the pilot’s seat, “we are cleared for take-off and I’d really like to get out of here too before the Bad Guys arrive…”

  “All yours, Harvey,” Thorne advised, patting the man on the shoulder. “Evan, let everyone know and tell ‘em to hold on to whatever they can: it might get a bit shaky for a few minutes once we get off the ground.”

  Lloyd left without a word, leaving Thorne to take a seat at one of the empty flight engineer’s stations behind the pilot where he was provided a fine view of the proceedings. Weems and his co-pilot pushed the throttles forward – the huge General Electric F138 turbofans were already warmed up and needed little urging as they rose toward take-off power. What had been a low whine suddenly became a fully-fledged howl as all four engines ramped up, and everyone on board could feel the Galaxy straining against its wheel brakes at the head of a combined 236,000 pounds of thrust.

  Weems didn’t hold the aircraft for long, releasing the brakes as soon as all four engines were up to speed. The Galaxy surged forward, everyone feeling the sudden acceleration, and many of the frightened passengers in the cargo hold, inexperienced in such situations as they were, cried out or screamed in alarm. Children began crying in terror as the transport’s load crew moved through the crowds, having identified a few English-speaking nationals amongst them and using them to translate words of calm and assurance.

  “Phoenix Leader… Phoenix Leader…!” Trumbull’s urgent warning came through over the speaker, any annoyance completely forgotten in the face of a real threat. “Missile inbound… repeat… missile inbound, bearing three-zero-eight…! Impact imminent…”

  The information became redundant as U-1401’s final A-4 missile struck the centre of Runway 14R, very close to the far end. Smoke and earth again fountained high into the air and they all felt the shockwave as it swept past moments later, shaking the 380-tonne aircraft heavily and causing it to swerve slightly as debris and earth clattered across the fuselage and cockpit glass.

  Weems immediately reached for the throttles and slammed them fully forward, increasing the already crushing acceleration.

  “Ahh… what are you doing?” Thorne inquired nervously from between the pilots, having leaped from his seat the moment the missile had hit.

  “That would be taking off, sir.” Weems replied tensely between thin lips, knuckles white as his hand clenched the wheel. Lloyd was standing slightly behind Thorne now, looking equally concerned about the situation.

  “Ahh… hate to be a killjoy and all…” Thorne continued in the same desperately worried tone “…but I suspect there’s probably a fucking great crater in the middle of the runway up there, under all that smoke and shit… just sayin’…”

  “Yes, sir, I suspect you’re probably right…”

  “Much as I’d love to avoid being taken prisoner and having the SS running a few thousand volts through my nuts, the concept of being spread all over the desert in a flaming ball of jet fuel doesn’t inspire me all that greatly either…” Thorne pointed out in a snarl, falling back on venomous sarcasm under tension. “Anything you’d like to add at this point…? Anything at all…?”

  “Sir, records indicate this runway is almost nine thousand feet long. The take-off run on a standard Galaxy’s about eight thousand four hundred, and with this baby being an upgraded C-5M model with one hell of a lot more thrust, the amount of runway needed should – I repeat, should – be significantly less…” Even as he continued to explain, teeth clenched and eyes never leaving the runway ahead, Weems maintained a level tone that completely concealed the tension and abject fear he was feeling within regarding his own decision to press on. “By my reckoning, that missile landed pretty damn close to the far end of the strip, which should give me maybe five hundred to a thousand feet to play with…”

  “And you’re sure about that?” Thorne demanded, his tone loaded with more than a little incredulity.

  “Not at all, sir… and that’s not even taking into account the danger of FOD from sucking smoke or debris into the engines on the way past either… but it’s my best guess all the same and, in the interests of saving your nuts and all those poor, dumb bastards back there in the hold, I’m willing to give it a shot. That being said, sir, I’ve been flying transports like this big, beautiful bitch for ten years now, so I reckon I oughta know my shit by now…” He almost grinned for a moment. “If I were you, sir, I’d let everyone back there know they need to brace themselves for a real rough take off and then find a seat to strap yourself into.”

  “You sold me, Harvey, you sold me…” Thorne conceded af
ter a moment’s pause, patting the pilot on the shoulder and settling back into his seat at the rear of the flight deck. “Evan: pass the word along would you – people are gonna need to hang onto whatever they can…”

  He fastened a belt across his own lap as Lloyd disappeared, tension still evident in his expression as he continued to stare out through the windscreen between the pilots. The concrete runway continued to disappear beneath the huge nose as the Galaxy accelerated at an ever-growing rate, the roar of the engines building with the general shudder and rumble of vibration through the airframe as its ground speed rose.

  The last A-4’s point of impact also drew ever-closer, the upheaval of smoke and dust the blast had produced now towering hundreds of metres into the air, dwarfing even the substantial bulk of the approaching transport. The surrounding environment was also becoming increasingly thick with dust as a direct result of the detonation, and Weems could feel the aircraft’s engines begin to falter slightly.

  The sensation was imperceptible for most, but a quick glance at his co-pilot suggested that he too was able to feel the huge GE turbofans’ thrust suffering due to the far greater impurity of the air being ingested. How much worse it would become and how much that might affect the aircraft’s ability to lift off was anyone’s guess. The two men could only pass a meaningful glance between each other and turn their eyes back to the runway ahead as the Galaxy hurtled on.

  Youssef Al-Hakim still wore his waiter’s uniform, although the pristine white of the jacket was now heavily stained and blackened with soot. The youngest of four brothers at just twenty-six, he worked hard to provide for his wife and new-born son and was proud of his job as an orderly at the Officer’s Mess of RAF Fayid, 26km north of Kibrit. He spoke fluent English and had been well-regarded by the officers there… at least, as well-regarded as any Egyptian servant might’ve hoped to have been in the employ of the British, whom he generally tried not to think as Occupiers or Imperialists.