“I don’t expect you to tell me what your target is,” he began slowly, “nor do I in truth wish to know, as I do not like the thought of my own countrymen dying…” he lowered his eyes slightly, as if ashamed of what he was about to say, “but if this can stop the Nazis and what they’re doing in Europe… then I wish you God speed and good aim.” The moment that passed between the two men as they locked eyes was palpable, and Thorne nodded once in recognition of the German’s significant support.
Having purposefully stayed up working most of the previous night, it was relatively easy for Thorne to sleep for most of the afternoon as a result. Corporal Thomas knocked at the door to his quarters at 18:00 hours to wake him as requested, and Thorne showered and donned his flight suit quickly, preferring to keep his mind active. At 18:30 he stepped aboard an MTB and began the trip to the Alternate strip on Eday.
The camouflage netting had been completely removed from all the aircraft, and from the entire length of the runway, all packed tightly away in the cargo hold of the KC-10A Extender. Each of the aircraft’s flight crews were on standby, and could get their planes into the air and relative safety within minutes should the alarm be raised. The Extender would in any case be assisting Thorne during the mission that night, and its crew were busily engaged making last-minute pre-flight checks. Their ‘stopover’ airstrip on the sub-continent, ‘Waypoint’, had been alerted and was prepared to receive them in the next few days should they need to evacuate, as was their final destination at ‘Bolthole’.
The area surrounding the southern end of the runway had changed substantially over the last forty-eight hours. As those members of the Hindsight unit who’d been posted all over the country on various assignments (mostly men of the USMC) had arrived back during the last two days, they’d all been transferred by boat to Eday. The rest of Hindsight’s remaining personnel were also there, sheltering beneath the wings of the Galaxy, and numerous surplus oil drums had been put to use as fireplaces to keep them warm. A number of 10-man army tents had been erected around the area and for the next few days, Hindsight would call that tent city their home. Should the enemy reaction to the upcoming strike be immediate and hostile, they’d be in a perfect position to quickly embark and get into the air in relative safety.
While the Extender had been moved out onto the runway in preparation for take off, the Lightning now stood in the open space between the two transports. Its internal tanks were full of fuel, yet it would still require refuelling later over the Irish Sea before commencing its run in to the target. Even with the F-35E’s excellent combat radius, the lengthy detours they were taking as precautions against detection meant there’d be a need for refuelling both before and after the attack if Thorne was to make it back to Scapa Flow.
Each of the aircraft’s two internal weapons bays carried single AIM-120D AMRAAM and AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles. Although only two of the AMRAAMs had survived the August, Thorne was pleased that they still had a good store of the Sidewinders. Barely useful against piston-engined aircraft at best, the state-of-the-art heat-seekers were quite deadly against jets, and with his helmet-mounted targeting system, they could be launched at targets more than ninety degrees off the firing aircraft’s direction of flight. If he did run across the remaining Flankers at any stage, those missiles might give him an invaluable edge over their older-generation weapons and attack systems. It would be an ‘edge’ he’d need desperately, should the situation arise.
As the car carrying Thorne cruised along the runway past the Extender, he could also see the dark shape that now hung beneath the Lightning’s belly. The 25mm gun pod had been removed to allow use of the centreline stores position, and even from that distance he could see that it was a tight squeeze to fit the 3.6m-long bomb and its mounting carriage into the space behind the jet’s front undercarriage. The B83 freefall thermonuclear device had a diameter of slightly less than fifty centimetres, weighed slightly more than a tonne, and had entered service with the United States’ nuclear arsenal in the early 1980s, although the weapon mounted beneath the Lightning had actually been manufactured in the mid-1990s.
The weapon was capable of what was known as ‘Dial-A-Yield’, and could deliver a blast ranging from 120 kilotons to 1.2 megatons — the latter being an explosive force equivalent to 1.2 million tons of TNT. After much discussion and soul-searching on the part of all concerned, particularly Thorne himself, it was the larger yield that had been selected. As they had no specific data on the target area, there was always the possibility they might miss the actual building, or attack another in the area by mistake: as such, it was vitally important that regardless of where ground zero was, the blast would be powerful enough to destroy everything and everyone in the target area. With the weapon yield set to its maximum, the B83 would easily completely vaporise anything within a four kilometre radius and wreak total destruction over a far greater distance.
Ten minutes later, the Extender had lifted off and was circling high in the night sky above as Thorne settled himself into the front cockpit and strapped himself in. At his own request, Alec Trumbull was secure in the seat behind him, and Thorne had been happy to agree. Trumbull was eager to learn more about flying the aircraft and play a significant part in the proceedings, and watching his CO run through an important ground attack mission seemed like an excellent chance to do just that. Thorne was glad the man had asked, and was happy for the company and for the positive effect Trumbull’s presence would have on his courage and spirit. He hadn’t spoken with any of the others before climbing into the jet: they’d all said everything necessary earlier that day, and he wasn’t certain he could bear saying goodbye under such circumstances, particularly to Eileen.
Ground crew cleared the immediate area as the Pratt & Whitney turbofan wound up to an angry howl, the cockpit canopy closing the men inside their pressurised cocoon as Thorne built up for take off as quickly as the cold engine would allow. He ran a last minute check on his systems and made sure all were functioning correctly, which they were, and couldn’t help but dwell on the digital readout listing the B83 bomb beneath his belly as he cycled through his weapons on his instrument panel’s CRT display. Hal had checked and activated the device following its mounting beneath his fuselage, and all that was required now was for him to arm it as he turned into a final approach to target. Once he designated a specific target on his ground attack radar, the aircraft’s automated delivery systems would do most of the work.
Thorne pushed his throttle forward to full power, keeping his eyes on his readouts as the F-35E started to roll forward. He caught sight of Eileen then in his peripheral vision, standing a dozen metres away to his right and watching with a terrible expression of fear on her face. He turned his head just once, their eyes met, and he gave a reassuring, characteristic grin as he raised his hand in a gesture that was half wave, half joking salute. He hoped it helped make her feel better in some way… it hadn’t done much for him. In seconds, the F-35E Lightning II was powering along the strip in a short take-off run and leaped nimbly into the air, clawing its way into the sky as its undercarriage folded away beneath its fuselage. Another minute and they were heading south at 10,000 metres, Thorne in radio contact with the Extender and quickly catching her up.
The flight down the western coast of the British Isles took slightly more than an hour, the fighter and tanker cruising easily at high-altitude and in loose formation. Thorne would occasionally break away to complete a few full circuits of the area, checking with his active and passive radar systems for any threat, but none materialised, and German ground radar was unlikely to pick them up so far west of the continent.
They refuelled high over the Irish Sea, the dark waters completely invisible below, and spent nervous minutes connected to the long boom beneath the tail of the KC-10A as it pumped vital jet fuel back into the Lightning’s emptying internal tanks. Trumbull watched intently throughout the whole of the tense business, asking questions only when absolutely necessary and respecting Thorne’
s need for concentration: it was a manoeuvre the man had only carried out a few times, and never before at night.
With tanks filled once more, they bid the Extender farewell as the F-35E turned east and the tanker flew on to the south-west and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Thorne and Trumbull were now ‘on their own’, and he immediately took the Lightning down to very low level and engaged the aircraft’s autopilot. The jet’s computers took over and implemented the mission’s pre-programmed flight plan, turning them onto a south-easterly course and heading for the first preset waypoint fifty kilometres due west of Abbeville and the French coast. At no time did the aircraft stray above 200 metres as it hurtled through the darkness at a steady 500 knots: approximately 925km/hr.
The flight path took them low past the Welsh coast and then south of Liverpool, down the mouth of the River Dee before crossing into England. Terrain-following-radar kept the aircraft just a few dozen metres above the surface of the earth as they thundered on, the howl of the engine the only evidence of their passing as they hurtled on in complete darkness. At such low altitude, the landscape was clear enough below them in the light of a newly-risen moon that was almost full, and the sight of the ground rushing past so quickly was breathtaking indeed.
The jet crossed the East Sussex coast north of Brighton and slipped out across the southern reaches to the Channel, the unbroken surface of the water glistening in the moonlight as the Lightning flew on. Thorne had brought along his iPod as usual, and a selection of instantly forgotten tracks had played softly in the background of a journey during which there was surprisingly little conversation between the two men. Thorne kept his eyes squarely on his instruments, alert for any possible threat, and the mood was tense and serious. Although Trumbull didn’t completely understand the magnitude of what they were about to do, he clearly recognised how much it meant to the man in the cockpit ahead of him, and he was therefore content to sit back and silently take everything in.
Six minutes into their flight across The Channel, the F-35E’s autopilot decided it had reached Waypoint One and automatically turned the craft sharply onto a course due east without any change to their incredibly low altitude.
“Stay alert, Alec,” Thorne remarked softly over the intercom, “we’re only about ten minutes to target now, and things might get a bit rough after the drop.”
“Are we in danger of being damaged by the bomb ourselves?” Trumbull asked slowly, carefully considering the question before asking it.
“There’s some danger… but not a lot, all things considered,” Thorne admitted. “We’ll be climbing to about three thousand feet to acquire the target and then make the drop. The bomb itself is retarded by a parachute that will bring its rate of descent down to around seventy feet per second after release, which should give us about forty seconds to get clear. I’ll be able to push this thing past 700 knots after the drop, meaning we should be able to put almost ten miles between us and the target before it detonates.” Converting to imperial measurements for Trumbull’s benefit wasn’t difficult — Thorne was old enough to remember the system himself well enough as a child before Australia had really converted to metric — and he could pretty much make the calculations on the fly. “At that distance, we’ll probably still get battered around in the air a bit as the blast washes past us, and it’ll light up the sky behind us like a bitch, but I’m hoping we’ll be safe enough… assuming this ‘old girl’ holds together okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it…?”
“Well, this particular aircraft is actually a bit of a mock up,” Thorne explained quickly with a shrug. “Something Lockheed kinda ‘threw together’ at the request of Hindsight itself. There are really only three models of F-35 — the ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ variants, of which all are single-seat aircraft, and the ‘B-model’ is the only one capable of vertical take off and landing. The ‘E’ at the end of this aircraft’s designation is really just an indication that it’s an experimental prototype. There was already some talk at the time that the Israelis and a few other nations were interested in a two-seat variant, so Lockheed was more than happy for us to help fund a one-off test model for the conversion.” At no stage did it occur to Thorne that Trumbull had no knowledge whatsoever of the modern Realtime nation of Israel. “That was something that also suited our peculiar needs.” He shrugged again. “So far, she’s been operating fine, but there wasn’t really much time for proper testing under high stress loads, and I’m not sure how she’ll handle the kind of hammering we’re likely to get from a nuclear blast. Fortunately, being a ground burst at least, the EMP won’t bother us at that distance.”
“‘EMP’…?” Trumbull asked, uncomprehending
“Electro-magnetic pulse,” Thorne explained, forgetting his colleague’s lack of knowledge in that area. “It’s a by-product of a nuclear detonation that burns out electrical circuits and transistors around the blast area, but the effect has a far greater radius in the case of an air burst than it does when the weapon’s detonated at ground level, as this one will be. We’ll be far enough away for that not to be an issue.”
Thorne glanced down as a light began blinking on his instrument panel accompanied by a faint warning tone in his headset. “Oh-ho… looks like we have company. EW’s picking up broadband emissions, which would have to be German coastal search radar.” There was a pause as he checked the details. “Sites to port and starboard now, each about seventy kilometres off beam… probably those sites at Boulogne and Dieppe intelligence warned us about.”
“Will they see us?”
“Unlikely,” Thorne mused slowly. “At only a couple of hundred feet off the deck, we’ll be a bit low for them, and their emissions don’t seem to be completely overlapped. That’s why I chose this direction going in, hoping to slip right between them. The only thing their systems are likely to pick up at all is the bomb under our belly anyway, which is bloody small all things considered, and even if they do see us, it won’t be for long… we’re not doing much short of six hundred miles an hour.”
“Then, if they do see us,” Trumbull deduced quite correctly, “they’ll immediately know who it is…”
“Yes,” Thorne agreed with the astute but unpleasant conclusion as they hurtled on toward the French coast. “That they certainly will!”
The pair of NCOs rostered on that night at the Luftwaffe radar station at Boulogne-sur-Mer did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Lightning at the very limit of their radar’s range as it flew past to the south. The corporal stared into the hooded cover of his pale, green display for a few moments, trying to lock the intermittent signal down before calling over his staff-sergeant. The signal was gone again a moment, but whatever it was had been travelling fast enough to warrant calling the incident in. There’d been other occasions when objects had been picked up moving very fast — much faster than any normal aircraft — but those times had usually been preceded by forewarning from Fliegerkorps, and normally accompanied by an expected flight plan.
“Low level, extreme range, and heading due east,” The senior NCO mused slowly, staring at his partner. “I think we should definitely report this one to headquarters…”
Thorne and Trumbull flew on, crossing the French coast between Ault and Le Tréport as they held a steady easterly course, and Thorne was fully prepared as the jet reached Waypoint Two, a few kilometres south-west of Abbeville. This time their course changed by only five or so degrees, and the autopilot also took the F-35E into a sudden climb. Thorne reached across and manually deactivated his iPod, leaving the cockpit silent, and he rested his hands on the controls, ready to take over if anything unexpected occurred as g-forces pressed them into their seats for a moment. Any positive movement on the joystick would’ve deactivated the autopilot, but Thorne kept his hand steady, instead flicking through his various systems a few times as he switched from navigation, to air-, to ground-search.
His AN/APG-81 radar suddenly picked up three separate airborne contacts at ranges from sixty to one hundred
kilometres, all three well dispersed across their frontal arc. The flight profiles suggested they were regular, piston-engined aircraft — they were travelling at speeds far slower than any Flanker was likely to be capable of.
“Looks like one of those radar sites did see us… we have some company,” Thorne observed, getting Trumbull’s attention immediately. “I’m picking up centimetric radar from three inbound bogies… almost certainly night fighters.” He shrugged the news off, far less concerned than his passenger. “They won’t worry us any… too far away.” He gave a slight grimace. “Gonna switch over to ground attack now and see if I can lock onto the target: there’s some more of those broadband ground radars up ahead, and one’s real close to where the target should be… I’m thinking it’d make sense they’d have a search system set up in the area to support any protective flak sites.”
“I suppose they’d normally expect more warning that this,” Trumbull observed quietly.
“We’ll definitely catch they by surprise,” Thorne agreed, speaking more to himself as he adjusted his ground-search modes and increased the range reading to take in the approaching target area. As the aircraft levelled out again at 1,000 metres, the radar was able to pick out much more of the landscape ahead, and the largest contact by far was almost exactly in the same position as the nearest of the ground radar emissions he was picking up.
“Have a look at that on the target screen, Alec… there’s a big contact sitting in the middle of nowhere up ahead that’s emitting radar, and its surrounded by a whole cluster of smaller ones… what do you make of that?”
“Large structure or cluster of buildings surrounded by flak emplacements…?”
“Works for me,” Thorne said grimly. “Batten your hatches, Alec: I think we have our target.” He designated the largest signal on his radar, and with a last, deep sigh of released breath, he armed the B83 thermonuclear bomb clamped beneath the F-35E’s belly.
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