by Andy Farman
Zero Four lay on its starboard side, upon the ruined wing and collapsed landing gear. The port wingtip was visible in the light of the flames when the thick swirling smoke was not clinging to it like a shroud.
The best efforts of the Cayenne Airport fire service could never extinguish those flames given the equipment they had. A single tender, such as theirs, was judged sufficient to carry out a rescue of the passengers and the crew of an aircraft, but a minimum of three tenders would have been required to save the airframe and engines from further damage.
The raised port wingtip first sagged as the main spar buckled in the intense heat, and then launched upwards and outwards, cartwheeling into the jungle a hundred metres away as the port wing tank finally exploded in a spectacular display of petrochemical based violence that any Hollywood SFX technician would be proud of.
Bombing up Poseidon One Eight and hot refuelling the aircraft, the refilling of the fuel tanks without first shutting down the engines, took place even closer to the terminal than it had before. If the airport manager had any fresh objections to these further breaches of regulations he kept them to himself.
With six depth charges and four Mk-46 torpedoes in the bomb bay, virtually all the remaining available ordnance, plus two active and five passive sonar buoys in the belly launch tubes, One Eight taxied further down the tarmac, disappearing into the acrid black smoke before pivoting to face back up the runway.
The enshrouding smoke was whipped away by the twin Rolls Royce Tyne turboprop engines as they ran up.
Two hundred metres behind, the flames flared, fanned by the prop wash and sending myriad sparks gusting away.
With two hundred metres less runway to play with, full tanks and a full bomb bay, the brakes remained on until the Atlantiques nose dipped, like a bull pawing at the earth. The brakes were released and the Atlantique rolled forward, the engines temperature gauges right on the limit of tolerance but they could not reduce the rpm. One Eight stayed stubbornly reluctant to leave terra firma until well past the point of no return, committing them to the take-off and only then reluctantly, did the nosewheel become unglued.
Poseidon One Eight left the tarmac perilously close to the runway’s end and raised its undercarriage immediately, roaring just above the trees before banking left across sleeping Cayenne, and out over the Atlantic once more.
A satellite’s life is dictated by its fuel supply at the time of having stabilised at its correct orbit. Ten to fifteen years of use remains before it is boosted away from earth into a scrapyard orbit, three hundred kilometres further, out once only three months’ worth of normal station keeping fuel is remaining. and a commercial satellites fuel use is mainly spent on north-south station keeping in geostationary orbit.
The small communications satellite lofted towards geosynchronous orbit above the Volga River by the Italian Vega rocket carried a larger number of hypergolic propellant tanks for its maneouvring thrusters in order to survive the game of orbital dodge ball that had been running since day one of the war.
The Vega’s satellite would control not only the B61 weapon for attacking the bunker, but the Nighthawk’s air to air and ground attack ordnance also. But it needed a RORSAT to provide the required radar and thermal data on the targets.
Russia
Major Caroline Nunro allowed herself a glance at the watch on her wrist as if distrusting the digital time being displayed on the instrument panel before her.
“I don’t know.” Patricia said, anticipating the question.
The plan called for dedicated satellite support and that support simply had not materialised.
There was no way to know if there was a delay or whether…
Her comms panel lit up as the communication satellite that the Italian Vega had carried aloft sent an authentication query. It would not open a downlink until it was satisfied with their bona fides.
Patricia’s fingers flew, inputting the correct response and then breathing a sigh of relief at the data which flooded down.
The cockpit screens and panels giving virtual views through 360 ° began to light up with updated mission specific information on static and mobile air defences. It was being fed to them in the form of an encrypted datalink from a CIA ground station in Illinois where the mission was being run. There was no voice transmission only data.
“How current is this?” Caroline queried.
“Thirty six hours.” Pat replied.
“Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick…” Caroline responded “Can you bring up the target area as a map overlay?”
The rolling hills had given way to open ground with little in the way of habitation on their line of flight. She let the aircraft systems take over and concentrated on what was her first look at their target.
They were both silent as they took in the defences they needed to defeat, by stealth or force.
“Tatischevo, Sharkovka, Petrovsk, Engels, Saratov West and Saratov airport.” Caroline read off the airfields nearby.
“Tatischevo is a deactivated ICBM base; Sharkovka is a MiG-29 base, ditto Petrovsk….” Patricia narrated the intelligence data for the area that had been collated since they had sent the information supplied by Svetlana’s contact.
“…Engels is a bomber base, Tu-95 ‘Bears’ and an aircraft museum, Saratov is a civilian airport and Saratov West is deactivated, a graveyard for old military helicopters.”
“Saratov West is the closest to the target but it is thirteen miles away…” Caroline mused.
“Doubting Svetlana’s contact?” Pat asked.
“We have no reason to trust them.”
“The runway looks well maintained.” Patricia was bringing up the satellite photos of the base taken a year before. Beside the runway, on the untended grass field were row upon row of early production troop transport Mi-8s, and many of those without rotor blades.
For a downgraded airbase though the tower and hangars looked better maintained than the other buildings.
The mine workings near Topovka were thought to be a mile deep but what was above ground just looked as you would expect a mine that had been worked out for twenty years to look like. The satellite images, being a year old, bore no signs of recent activity, or the lack thereof, to confirm or deny its alleged purpose.
“Would you have a car park next to a mine shaft?” Patricia asked.
“I’ve no idea why you wouldn’t, if that is any help, so I guess we just waste the place and hope the information was kosher.”
A Soviet nuclear bunker could reportedly survive a hundred kiloton near miss owing to them being super-hardened boxes supported on all sides by giant shock absorbers, so their B61 weapon’s relatively small dialled-in 30kt yield warhead had to be delivered on target and bury itself as deep as possible. After a time delay in which the F-117X needed to put distance between itself and the target the weapon would detonate, and produce a shockwave that would destroy the bunker.
However, despite having a small shaft to aim the thing down and a narrow, defended valley with interceptors based nearby this would not be a re-run of Luke downing the Death Star.
The 5000lb weight of the weapon seemed excessive for its size, but the body had originally been part of the barrel of an 8” artillery piece and the penetrator was constructed of depleted uranium. Attached to the tail was a JDAM tail unit containing GPS, FMU-143 delay fuse, a satellite downlink for guidance, along with a solid fuel rocket to assist ground penetration.
The F-117X would have to pop-up to five thousand feet to toss-bomb the weapon but from the moment of its release, getting out of Dodge would be the young women’s principle concern.
Kourou
Six thousand two hundred and eighty five miles away the Ariane rocket carrying the first RORSAT dedicated to Guillotine cleared the tower in French Guiana.
Nine thousand miles north-west of the launch site and one hundred and thirty miles above the sand sea of the Taklamakan Desert, Èmó 16, a Chinese ‘Demon’ killer satellite, init
iated a fourteen second burn to alter its orbit and speed to intercept. The speeds and trajectory range of the Ariane for reaching the required orbits for their payloads was a matter of record and all technical details of the Vulcaine 2 engine had been freely shared, pre-war. It was therefore a cause for concern at Chinese Space Command when data on the launch arrived from a surveillance satellite tracking the Ariane on radar. Its trajectory was as predicted but its speed was not, in fact if anything the flight profile was that of an older engine, a Vulcaine 1.
250,000 pounds of force was being exerted against the pull of the Earth’s gravity, 51,000 pounds less than the Vulcaine 2 was capable of.
Èmó 16 had accelerated from 17,000 MPH to 23,000 MPH in order to make the interception and in non-technical terms it was now seriously over-cooking it.
The Èmó 16 carried out a radical maneouvre, pivoting about its axis whereupon its small main engine began a sustained burn. The problem the Chinese now faced was in deciding why the older engine was being employed by the French. Had ESA simply run out of their most modern engines? If that was the case then the second stage should be the twelve year old Aestus booster.
Those who were trying to solve this puzzle were rocket scientists and it did not occur to them that the substitution of a Mk 2 for a Mk 1 was simple game-playing, a deception designed to wrong foot the Chinese and buy a little more time before the inevitable happened. The calculations were made and at the appointed moment Èmó 16 pivoted about its axis once more, held steady for 4000th of a second and self-destructed, sending 10,000 small cubes at the point in space where the Ariane’s second stage would be in three minutes and nine seconds.
The second stage cleared the planned point of interception a full one point four seconds ahead of the gradually expanding cloud of cubes and its powerful modern HM-7B engine cut out prior to payload separation.
Russia
“Bingo!” Pat said with feeling, punching the air within the confines of the small cockpit behind Caroline. The ‘At-a-glance’ system truly came to life as real-time data populated the screens.
“We …are…in…business!”
"Ordnance uplink underway..." Once completed, they could guide all air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons via data-link to their satellite support. The targets would be unaware that they had been locked-up.
"Time until Vandenberg launches number two?" Caroline asked.
"Nineteen minutes, forty two seconds, and ESA should have the second Ariane on the way to the launch tower at Kourou. So if our luck holds out we will have continuous support for the mission’s duration...perhaps for the egress too."
So much time and effort had gone into this mission, Patricia mused, so many weeks kicking their heels in the farmhouse waiting for Svetlana's end of the mission, Guillotine, to bear fruit. If she had been told this time last year that she would be behind the lines in a war, creeping around in the night with a silenced pistol she would have found the suggestion ludicrous, she was an electronic warfare officer and not made of the stuff of a secret agent. A life was one of discoveries, both of the unexpected and also the unsuspected it seemed.
With that thought she stared for a moment at the back of Major Nunro's helmeted head.
"What is it the Brits say? Take off in the morning, save the Free World and then home for tea and cookies!"
Caroline's head was on the business of flying, or rather monitoring the instruments to ensure the aircraft was flying itself, but she keyed the intercom with a correction.
"Biscuits."
"Whatever..." Patricia satisfied herself that Russian ground radars and Mainstay AWACs were alert for generalised threats from without, rather than a specific threat from within. The Russian air defences would be crapping bricks if they knew a stealthy aircraft had breached their security, but they continued to look beyond their borders rather than inside of it.
"So any plans for after the war?"
"That is a red jersey question, but no." there was no humour in the answer and the set of Caroline Nunro's shoulders was stiff.
"You just know that after all this that guy's magazine is going to triple its offer to get you on its centrefold." Patricia meant the remark to be light-hearted but Caroline did not take it that way.
"So go ahead and broker a deal then; myself and Svetlana in the buff and "Look who I did in the war" as a caption." Her tone was cold; the embarrassment of Pat catching her with the Russian girl earlier was now turning to anger. No matter how courageous and resourceful a combat pilot she may be, her career in the military would be finished once word got out. She hadn't liked the label 'Pinup Pilot', especially as she had turned the offer down, and 'USAF's hottest dyke' would be equally demeaning.
In complete contrast, Svetlana's reaction to their being caught in the act was one of indifference. She did not have a bashful bone in her body. But to come back to the earlier question, what was she to do after the war; did she and Svetlana have a future?
Patricia was silent for a minute; she regretted straying from the business at hand and wanted a return of the old status quo.
"You were stationed at Nellis, weren't you?"
After a frigid moment she got a reply.
"Sure, in '05."
"Ever use the base pool"? Patricia asked but continued without waiting for a response from her pilot. "There was a lifeguard, Hispanic with lots of muscles and a bunch of clichés he tried on unaccompanied females..."
"Juan long One...the Puerto Rican love muscle." Caroline interrupted "Yep, I got his "Signorita, for one night with a Goddess such as you I, Juan, would die happy!" I think one of his biceps was even larger than the other because there is no way that would work, despite the accent and the speedo bulge."
Far ahead, a symbol appeared on the screen as their RORSAT detected the Mainstay's tanker cousin lifting off from the bomber base. Patricia assigned it a target ID. It turned northeast and began climbing toward the Mainstay and the CAP.
"So what line did he try on you, Patty?"
"I have no idea, I was mesmerised by the bulge and hoping it wasn’t a rolled up sock."
"You didn't?"
"I sure did."
"But he was enlisted?" breaching the rules on fraternisation with the enlisted ranks had ended many a promising officer’s career.
"I was married once; back when I was an impressionable and newly commissioned officer in this here air force, married to a college professor."
"I didn't know that." admitted Caroline in a surprised tone.
"Well it’s no biggie, we didn't make it to the first anniversary on account of his dedication to his profession and being too tired for me after getting home late, showering and flopping into bed exhausted."
"Uh huh?" her pilot commented, having heard similar sagas.
"One night there had been a burst water main and he couldn’t hide the scent of nubile-Sophomore-intent-on-good-grades, and that 'enlisted' not only had me walking like John Wayne for a week but he was just what the closure doctor ordered." She could see Caroline struggling to find the words that would not
“...so that kind of makes us even, huh?"
They flew in silence for a while, closing on their target.
"Okay, twenty one minutes to the IP and no one knows we are here, no threats and not even a mildly curious glance in our direction. We have green lights in every place it counts. The weapons status is good to go, and we have a ten knot tailwind." Patricia stated.
"Thanks Patty." her pilot replied, but she was not referring to the upcoming bomb run.
Russia, Militia Sub-District 178: 2322hrs.
Major Limanova led the way, at first making a bee-line for the airstrip until encountering thick undergrowth in the trees which was as noisesome as it was obstructive. He gave the task of carrying the heavy P-159 man-pack radio to Petrov as he himself took point and tried to feel his way through. With Petrov stumbling along behind him, he only succeeded in becoming disorientated, tripping and falling as brambles staged his ankles twice.
Animals, large hares most likely, took fright and bolted which caused both militiamen to jump on each occasion at the sudden disturbance in the undergrowth. They thundered away, their powerful hind legs making the fall of the wide rear paws extraordinarily loud with each step, and being rather larger than rabbits they did not corner as sharply either. To the militiamen they sounded like charging bears, not fleeing rodents.
Emerging from that block of forestry had come without warning as the once starlit sky had given way to cloud. Limanova stopped in surprise at the edge of a firebreak and Petrov, his hearing hindered by the radio headset, had walked into him from behind, uttering a “Sorry, sir!” that had seemed as loud as a shout in the silent forest.
“Shhhhh!” Limanova hissed loudly in annoyance before realising how ridiculously like a comic opera they sounded. Ninjas they most assuredly were not, in fact an infantry recruit would have made a better job of it.
He stood for a moment as he considered their situation and then moved one of the earpieces aside to whisper in Petrov’s ear.
“Listen, this is no good, stumbling about in the dark like this, so we will follow this firebreak up to a logging trail which leads nearby the old airstrip, okay?”
Petrov nodded in the dark but then asked a pertinent question.
“Which way, sir?”
Major Limanova opened his mouth to answer but realised he was not one hundred percent sure so he knelt, taking his torch from his breast pocket, his map from the thigh pocket, and there then followed a patting of pockets and a despairing look back the way they had come. At some point he had lost his compass, probably upon falling and there was absolutely no chance of finding it again until day break, well not tactically anyway, but he was damned if he was going to embarrass himself further by waving his torch around trying to find it.
Left or right?
He tossed a mental coin.
