England Expects el-1

by Charles S. Jackson

  From a distance of 600 metres, Keller’s cannon sent a deadly burst of fire past Trumbull’s cockpit just thirty seconds later. The British pilot tried a ‘Split-S’ manoeuvre but didn’t have enough speed to make it effective and he felt the Spitfire reel as 13mm machine gun slugs ripped through her. One struck the back of his armoured seat a glancing blow, not penetrating but denting it to the point that he could feel it intruding into his back.

  He almost lost control for a second or two, the thought of how close the slug had come to killing him shaking his frayed nerves almost as much as the impact had physically jarred his body. A 20mm cannon shell smashed straight through the top of his canopy above his head at a shallow angle, showering him with glass fragments before punching right through the centre of his windshield. It finally detonated itself against his already-damaged engine cowling, tearing another hole in it at the very front near the propeller. Coolant fluid spewed across what was left of his windscreen and his face also through the huge, ragged hole left in the glass.

  As he frantically tried to wipe the foul liquid from his goggles in an attempt to clear his vision, he imagined the fleeting image of a huge, dark shape streaking past him in the opposite direction at incredible speed followed closely by a sound much like the howl of a cyclone. The rear-view mirror was miraculously still intact above his ruined canopy frame, and through it he rather unexpectedly saw one of the pursuing enemy fighters explode in a fiery ball a moment later.

  With no time to truly be intrigued by what had just happened, Trumbull concentrated on maintaining level flight and waited for the other fighter to blow him apart. He was absolutely astounded to suddenly catch sight of the second enemy fighter in his peripheral vision, and he turned his head to find it was racing away to the west at what had to be full throttle, all the while dodging and weaving for all it was worth.

  “Bloody hell…!” Trumbull remarked in astonishment, for the moment he caught sight of what was pursuing it he understood why it was running. What he saw was like nothing he’d ever encountered before: a huge grey machine the size of a medium bomber, it had no propellers he could see. Instead, a pair of gaping, angular ‘radiator vents’ of some kind were fitted on either side of the fuselage below and to the rear of a long, two-seat cockpit.

  Trumbull couldn’t pick out any national insignia on the aircraft as it roared past, although its overall mid-grey paint scheme appeared to sport some kind of unit crest on its twin tails and several pieces of printed lettering along its fuselage and wings that were unintelligible at that distance and speed. There was just one flash of variation however that he could see — a thin strip of multiple colours along the fuselage from just aft of the large ‘vent’ on one side running back to the point where the leading edge of the large, swept wing blended seamlessly into the body of the aircraft. Trumbull was somewhat relieved as he realised the one thing he could make out from that ‘bar’ of colours was the distinctive pattern of a small Union Jack, and that at least suggested the newcomer was a ‘friendly’.

  Beneath the belly of the aircraft, a large, angular pod of similar colouring was suspended from a thick pylon, and Trumbull realised that this housed what must’ve been a large an quite powerful cannon as it opened fire on the second fleeing Messerschmitt at what had to be a range of at least half a mile in his estimation. A huge muzzle flash flared ahead of the pod as it fired and a torrent of streaking, pink tracer literally tore the J-4A to pieces.

  Trumbull was suddenly forced to take his mind and eyes away from the other strange aircraft as a minor explosion reverberated through his Spitfire and he immediately began to lose power once more. The smoke that poured from his exhaust turned from grey to black, and he could now see sparks carried with it. As he struggled on he prayed fervently that he’d have enough time and altitude to reach dry land.

  At the commencement of his attack run on the hapless J-4A fighters, Thorne had ‘lit up’ his main radar systems to obtain a target range for his fire control computer. Its emissions had instantly been detected by a Luftwaffe surveillance aircraft flying high over the French coast, a hundred kilometres north-east. Word of the detection was then passed on quickly through various channels to the OKW Western HQ near Amiens, and as that news reached the hands of Albert Schiller, all hell had broken loose. Within seconds he was bursting through the doors to the briefing room as Reichsmarschall Reuters looked up from that same table, still pouring over production reports and figures.

  “Kurt, Sentry just picked up a temporal violation west of the Channel…!” The words struck Reuters almost physically, leaving him momentarily unable to speak as his mind assimilated the unthinkable information. Another moment and he was all business once more, the initial shock dissipating as training and adrenalin took over and the Reichsmarschall leaped from his chair, reaching for a phone at the far end of the table.

  “Details…! What are we talking about…?”

  “They don’t know yet…emissions were erratic and of an unidentified type…”

  “How is that possible?” Reuters demanded with a sharp stare. “We had Sentry’s database upgraded with the signatures of every known operational military aircraft on record prior to our departure!”

  “Sentry’s Chief Intel Officer can’t explain it, other than to say that other than the radar emissions, they could detect no sign of the aircraft itself on their main search radars, and at an estimated range of a hundred klicks there was no way any normal aircraft could’ve stayed hidden. The bloody radar signal simply ‘appeared out of nowhere seconds before the bastard ‘bounced’ a pair of J-4As south of Swanage, sprayed them all over the Channel in less than two minutes and then bloody-well disappeared again off their scopes…” Schiller grimaced, recognising the enormity of what he was about to add “…whatever it was, the nature of the emissions suggested a phased array transmitter and that it must have been stealthy to have evaded detection at that range.”

  “They detected just one aircraft?”

  “Only one aircraft detected…” Schiller conceded, then added “…but who’s to say how many might’ve been out there that weren’t using active radar?”

  “Guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there,” Reuters snarled and finally turned his attention to the operator at the other end of the phone who’d answered the moment he’d picked it up. “This is Reichsmarschall Reuters! Get me Wuppertal Air Base immediately!” As the NCO at the other end took note of the tone in his Commander-in-Chief’s voice and hurriedly complied with the request, Reuters turned momentarily back to Schiller.

  “Get back to Sentry: tell them to head east and stay well out of the way of the sneaky bastard…they mightn’t be able to see him, but he’ll damned sure see them and I don’t want them inadvertently finding themselves at the wrong end of a heat-seeker as a result! Make sure they keep their eyes open: even if they play it safe and move back into German airspace, they’ll still be able to pick up his emissions if this fellow ‘lights up’ again, and I want to know about it the moment that happens! I want to know what the bastard is up to and I damn sure want to know where’s he’s going! Make sure they stay high and stay alert — I’ll have a pair of escorts up shortly to look after them!”

  “Wuppertal Air Base for you, Herr Reichsmarschall…” the operator announced quickly. There was a crackle of static, followed by a new voice on the line as Schiller bolted from the room without waiting to be dismissed.

  “This is Oberst Ernst Pohl, Herr Reichsmarschall… Is there a problem?”

  “You’re damned right there’s a bloody problem!” Reuters snarled, in no mood for pleasantries. “Get all four of the Flankers fired up and into the air now! I want two of those fucking planes as a protective escort for Sentry and the other two heading for the English coast in five minutes or I’ll have someone’s skull as a pisspot!”

  “May I inquire as to the mission of the second two jets, Mein Herr…?”…came the return query in a tone decidedly unnerved by the mental imagery that last s
tatement had created.

  “Never mind that all that shit…they can report in directly with Sentry and the area controller once they’re up! Just get those bloody planes flying!” He slammed the receiver down and stormed off in pursuit of Schiller.

  Near the outskirts of the city of Wuppertal in the German Ruhr Valley, two pairs of jet aircraft thundered into the sky exactly four minutes later, their wing and fuselage pylons loaded with fuel tanks and air-to-air missiles. The aircraft, once known as Sukhoi Su-30MK multi-role fighters, were each the length of a Heinkel bomber and twice the weight. Often still referred to by the outdated NATO nickname ‘Flanker-C’, the four sleek, shark-like craft climbed easily to altitude and roared away westward toward the French frontier. None carried any unit markings, and the only variation to their completely black fuselages and wings were a white-bordered swastika on each of their twin tails beneath which was a single red number — the aircraft numbered ‘1’ through ‘4’ respectively.

  “Hawk-One, this is Sentry: do you read…over?” The call from the area controller was picked up immediately even though the high-flying Sentry aircraft was more than 200 kilometres away.

  “We read you, Sentry — this is Hawk-One…over….” the response was instantaneous.

  “Hawk-One, we’ve detected a temporal violation over the western end of the English Channel, approximately thirty kilometres south of Bournemouth…over…”

  “Identity…?” The pilot frowned deeply at the unpleasant news.

  “Unknown, but potentially stealthy: it appeared approximately eight minutes ago, immediately attacking and destroying a pair of J-4A fighters that were in pursuit of a damaged British fighter at the time, then disappeared again from our screens. We suspect it’s acting alone but have no confirmation on that…over…”

  “A ‘stealthy’ aircraft…?” Hawk-1’s weapons officer was apprehensive. Although both German, he’d participated in exercises against the USAF and had gained first hand experience of the dangers of coming up against stealthy aircraft in combat. “We were given guarantees there’d be no ‘contemporary’ opposition!”

  “Shut up a moment!” The pilot snapped from the forward cockpit, trying to think. “Hawk-Three and –Four: mission is to protect Sentry at all costs. Hawk-Two and I will investigate the unidentified aircraft: give us a bearing, Sentry — we’ll intercept…over…”

  “Escort detail: come about to three-zero-four for rendezvous heading. Hawk-One: initial bearing to unidentified target is two-seven-zero…over….”

  “No problem, Sentry — two-seven-zero it is…Hawks out.” He switched frequencies. “Hawk-Two, the heading is two-seven-zero…let’s take it to ten thousand and go to reheat.”

  As Hawk-Three and –Four peeled out of formation and turned onto a northerly heading, intending to meet up with the Sentry they were tasked to protect, the remaining pair of jets banked as one and turned due west toward the dark horizon. Raw jet fuel pumped into their exhausts as their afterburners kicked in and in moments both were at 10,000 metres and cruising effortlessly at nearly twice the speed of sound.

  The impact tore the bottom out of the Spitfire and threw Trumbull hard against his harness, but the fuselage remained in one piece as the ruined fighter came finally to rest just short of the beach in a metre of water. As he climbed from the cockpit, shaken and disoriented but otherwise unharmed, he stepped gingerly onto the shattered engine cowling and took stock of his surroundings in the dying twilight. He’d come down off the Dorset coast somewhere west of Weymouth, and having some knowledge of the area through family holidays as a child, he suspected the section of beach he was looking at was most likely somewhere between Abbotsbury and Swyre.

  The beach, which might’ve appeared inviting were it not for the lateness of the day and the icy wind that gusted about him, ran about forty metres up from the water to a narrow, asphalt road and dark, open fields beyond. Trumbull once again heard the roaring of that strange aircraft’s engine and turned to his right to catch sight of the jet as it banked slowly in across the coast from behind him, settling in above the lane bordering the beach at what seemed to be an impossibly low speed. Navigation lights blinked from its body and wingtips, but it was otherwise very difficult to see anything in great detail in the failing light.

  Hatches drew back above and below the fuselage, directly behind the cockpit, and a powerful jet of ducted air suddenly blasted downward from the opening, matching the rear exhaust nozzle which at the same time rotated quickly through ninety degrees and added its thrust to the maelstrom beneath the aircraft.

  Trumbull continued to watch, dumbstruck as the machine incredibly came to a complete halt and hovered over a small section of the road. Landing gear lowered from beneath its nose and belly and the beach was suddenly awash with stark, white illumination as landing lights came on from somewhere beneath it. The aircraft finally settled itself onto the surface of the road after a slow and somewhat awkward descent as debris, sand and vegetable matter sprayed up all around. As it finally came to rest, the deafening howl of the engine began to fall away to something that was merely painful and the landing lights flicked off again, just the red and green blinking of its wingtip navigation strobes remaining and allowing Trumbull to at least able to stare directly at the aircraft without almost being blinded.

  Ignoring the coldness of the water as he jumped in to the depth of his thighs, Trumbull drew the Webley revolver at his belt and strode purposefully toward the new arrival, determined to find out what was going on. He trudged awkwardly across the beach and found himself quite out of breath by the time he’d reached the road, a few metres ahead of the aircraft’s nose. Even from that distance, he could feel the faint pull of suction from the gaping intakes behind the cockpit, and he didn’t want to think about what fate might befall anything unfortunate enough to be sucked inside.

  The intensity of the rushing air abated somewhat as the main powerplant spooled down completely and left just a soft whining sound emanating from somewhere within the airframe, a small auxiliary turbine continuing to supply power to the jet and allow it to remain prepared for an engine restart. The bubble-like canopy tilted upward and forward on a large, hydraulic hinge and Trumbull noted that the two-seat cockpit held just one man in the forward seat. The pilot inside wore a large, bulky black helmet with a dark, reflective visor that appeared to cover his entire face above a small oxygen mask. As he rose in his seat, hands holding the left edge of the cockpit for support, the pilot flipped up the visor of the helmet and leaned his head out through the opening created by the raised canopy.

  “G’day, mate…!” He yelled in a cheery Australian drawl over the dying howl of the engine. “Squadron Leader Trumbull, I presume?” The attempted lightness of the tone belied the adrenalin-laced nervousness behind it.

  “And just who the bloody hell are you?” Trumbull demanded angrily in return, frustrated and feeling completely out of his depth as he waved the revolver loosely at the jet in a rather cavalier fashion. “…And what the bloody hell is this bloody monstrosity?”

  “Squadron Leader, there are a hell of a lot of things you won’t understand at this point…” Max Thorne yelled back, never losing his good humour but letting an authoritative tone creep into his voice all the same. “When we’ve more time I’ll be happy to explain everything to you, but right now time is something that we really don’t have.” Thorne turned and reached around behind his seat before throwing down a narrow rope ladder that hooked onto the side of the cockpit. “If you’ll just get yourself up here, we have to be going.”

  “There is not a chance in Hades I’m getting in to that contraption!” Trumbull snapped back nervously, not getting any happier about the situation and more than a little bit unsettled by the idea.

  “Mate…” Thorne began, the quickly changing tone suggesting the RAF pilot was anything but. “In no time at all, some really nasty pricks are probably going to come sniffing around looking for me and I’d much prefer not to be around when they t
urn up. I sure as shit don’t want to be stuck on the bloody ground when they turn up! Now I can take off with you or without you, but I am taking off again in about thirty bloody seconds.” His patience eroded by stress and the need for haste, Thorne decided that the genial approach wasn’t working. “…You can either get your Pommy arse up here with me and get a lift to somewhere warm and safe or you can bloody-well freeze it off right here: either way, I’m leaving! Your choice, mate…the clock’s ticking!”

  Completely unused to being spoken to in such a manner, particularly by a colonial, Trumbull’s initial reaction was to return the full broadside of his temper, but something in the intensity of the glare Thorne gave him changed his mind. There was a darkness behind those eyes that suggested there were far bigger things afoot than Trumbull’s current situation or displeasure, and instinct suddenly told him it’d be in his best interests to bite back on his anger and comply. With a single, sour nod and not a word, Trumbull holstered his Webley and jogged quickly to the dangling ladder. With a gulp of swallowed nerves, he put one foot on the lowest ‘rung’ and accepted Thorne’s reaching hand of assistance as he hauled himself up.

  Hawk-1 and -2 skimmed the English coast south of Dorset, thunderous sonic booms trailing in their wake as the surface of The Channel hurtled past just 200 metres below them. Their own radars had found nothing of the ‘phantom’ jet Sentry had detected, but they had picked up the RAF fighter it had saved momentarily before the stricken Spitfire had disappeared into ground clutter a few kilometres west of Weymouth. Sentry’s more powerful systems however had been easily able to pick out the point where it had crash landed and was able to vector the two German jets onto an interception course.