Redback

by Lindy Cameron

  ‘I guess so,’ Jesse-Jay said. He wished he appreciated what Micah was on about but he’d never been fond of anybody’s damn laws or permits, let alone their notions of what he should be responsible for. His Pa had always told him that federal regulations and law enforcement types were to be ignored or obstructed, but the local Sheriff was to be heeded. Why? Because someone had to keep the peace, which was just plain stupid. But then, given his Pa was a violent drunken SOB, no advice he had to impart was worth digging him up to have him explain it better.

  It also never made sense that the other militia boys always did whatever Micah told them to, including, ‘defy all authority and obligation’. As far as Jesse-Jay was concerned, taking orders from Micah or even the Colonel, was as odious as obeying anyone else - whether it be his Pa, the FBI or the damn President. Only difference was, he really liked what the Colonel was telling him to do.

  So Jesse-Jay moved from bird to bird, screwing the one-inch camera-pods into the bespoke brackets on the underneath of each fuselage. Kero had always said the pods looked like scary little snow globes, which was pretty weird coming from a guy who collected pickled eyeballs. Wow, that was the first time he’d given that idiot a thought since leaving Dallas. He wondered briefly if he’d gotten away from the truck in time - he didn’t care, just wondered - then he returned his attention to the mission.

  The test flights on the radio-controlled Spitfires, back in Carthage, had confirmed that the additional 12-gram-load of the pods had a negligible affect on control. Besides, the cameras had been counter-weighted by the precise distribution of the cargo, just over half of which lined the Spitfire’s 56-inch fibreglass fuselage. The other two pounds of plastic had been moulded, along with the caps, to form the wings, then covered in a Solartex fabric painted black as pitch. In-flight manoeuvrability was unaffected by the optional extras, and take-off and landing had been a snap. Not that landing would be on the cards tonight.

  ‘When you think about it,’ Micah continued, ‘the only reason we need a national force of armed soldiers is because this illegitimate government keeps on using its so-called ‘emergency war powers’ to remain in charge. It’s been one war after another, after another. Every time we got a chance for a peaceable life, this damn government goes off ready-cocked to find somewhere else, foreign and filthy, for Americans to die.

  ‘And now look what we’ve got - a war on terror. Fuckenhell, that’s like the perfect excuse to finance their military machine forever, you know, until old Lucifer his-self gets frost bite. There ain’t never gonna been an end to terror - and our unconstitutional government knows it. I mean it ain’t like terror is a place or people, like Russia or Iraq or the Canadians.’

  ‘You sure are right on that point,’ Jesse-Jay said, although he wondered just who Micah would dispatch to defend their borders if the Iraqis or Canadians decided to invade.

  He, on the other hand, had confidence his warbirds would help the Colonel’s mission to re-arm America against the real terror of what he called complacency. Squadrons of real Spitfires had won the Battle of Britain in World War II, and this, the second mission of the Star Brigade, should light the fuse in the Battle for Freedom.

  One-sixth the size of the piloted originals, Jesse-Jay’s RC

  Spitfires were powered by 4-stroke nitro engines running on his own blend of homemade wood alcohol, castor oil and 38 per cent nitromethane. It was a highly combustible mixture he’d developed for competition racing and would certainly do the trick tonight.

  He sat cross-legged on the grass and opened the laptop. It was already running, so it was just a matter of logging-on and verifying that the spycam program and the cameras were talking to each other. He reconfigured the camera system from motion-sensor mode to continuous live-feed and from standard to night-vision. Three image windows opened up on his screen, showing him the views from the three closest planes.

  ‘Okay Micah. We’re all set to go.’

  Micah checked his watch. ‘Great, a couple minutes to spare. Harlan and the boys will be lighting up dead on 7 pm. We launch at five after. What’s the picture like?’ He stepped around behind Jesse-Jay to get a look at the screen. ‘How come there’s only three view windows operating? Shouldn’t we be seeing something from all four cameras?’

  ‘Yeah, it was working a second ago,’ Jesse-Jay lied. ‘Do me a favour and go check the end bird. Make sure the pod is attached properly.’

  ‘Sure,’ Micah said stepping back to pick his way through the darkness to the furthest Spitfire, about 30 feet away.

  Jesse-Jay scooted across on his knees and felt around the ground where the nearest plane had been concealed earlier. He found the loose piece of turf, retrieved the last vital piece of equipment then got up to wander over and see if Micah had worked anything out yet.

  ‘It’s damn hard to do this in the dark, Jess,’ Micah said, glancing over his shoulder.

  ‘Yeah well, if it was easy anybody’d be able to do it.’

  Even though the men had been expecting the explosion of sound from the other side of the lake, they both jumped as the combination fireworks and rockets were launched into the night sky.

  ‘Here, let me help,’ Jesse-Jay offered. He squatted down behind the Commander of the Carthage Thunder Militia, raised the semi-auto M9 to the back of his comrade’s skull and pulled the trigger.

  Micah O’Brien had no idea it was a single 9 mm bullet that blew his brains out through his eye sockets. He certainly didn’t feel anything and, what with their distance from the camp and the noisy illegal fireworks, no-one else would’ve heard the shot either. His body fell heavily forward crushing the dummy Spitfire.

  Having carried out his personal assignment from the Colonel, Jesse-Jay Baggett turned his attention back to the functional warbirds. He had a mission to finish.

  Robert Gray Army Airfield, Fort Hood

  Tuesday: 7 pm

  Specialist Mickey ‘Blades’ Garber, 21st Cavalry ground crewman, was standing at the head of Longhorn Strip contemplating the crapola those stupid re-enacters were going to be in when the MPs found them. Hell, even when the army wanted to light up its own pyrotechnics the red tape that bound the paperwork was mind-boggling. So for these civvy-motherfuckers to think they could just do it at any time was just plain brainless - especially today after that bomb going off in Dallas.

  Despite the spectacle exploding so colourfully overhead to the east, when First Lieutenant Angie ‘Hawk’ Tovey joined him on the tarmac, the two soldiers stood in silent admiration of a different kind of firepower. Their charges, killing time on the ground before them, were primed for the next day’s CALFEX, like three hungry black panthers.

  Fort Hood’s 21st Cav Brigade was the US Army’s Executive Agent for fielding, equipping, training and certifying all AH-64A/D Attack Helicopter Battalions. A world apart in background, professional expertise and rank, the ground-based Garber and airborne Tovey nonetheless relied on each other for survival. Specialists like Blades kept the Apaches humming and deadly so that pilots like Tovey could take the hunter-killers into battle.

  Wednesday’s combined arms live-fire exercise was part of the regular sustainment training required by all Apache battalions to ensure combat readiness. Not that readiness training was such a necessity in the middle of a war. Most of the aviation units had been on active battle rotation somewhere in The Sandpit pretty much full time since 9/11.

  Even the lieutenant, one of the cavalry’s five women aviators rated in the AH-64A/D, was herself just back from Afghanistan. Longbow-rated, and temporarily assigned to Fort Hood, she was leading tomorrow’s run as chief combat trainer.

  In fact, Blades had almost finished the avionics check of Tovey’s Apache when the illegal fireworks show had started. The base sirens had gone off, and what looked like half the 1st Cav and 4th Infantry had come out to help locate the culprits, so he’d decided to take a break. As usual Blades only wandered far enough to enjoy his favourite view, although at this time of night the three hul
king black Apaches were withdrawing into the darkness. They even absorbed the glow cast from the hangar lights.

  Talk about shock and awesome - these primo tank-killers put fire in the pants of Specialist Garber. He had no idea what affect they had on the lieutenant, her not having any stand-up gear as such; but just looking at these babies made him hard.

  The helos spearheaded the airborne division of the Army’s digitised battlefield forces. The Apache AH-64D and the radar enhanced Longbow were, fundamentally, highly evolved versions of the Apache AH-64A. The rugged combat proven airframe of the baseline Apache hadn’t needed much improving. Its bad-arse muscle power already had unprecedented damage tolerance and a host of survivability features.

  The twin-engine, four-bladed attack helos had a combat mission speed of 167 mph, a range of 1024 miles and were specifically designed as highly stable, aerial weapons delivery platforms. The Apaches carried Stingers, Hellfires, Sidewinders and other folding-fin rockets as well as the 1200 rounds of ammo for the 30 mm automatic Chain Cannon under the fuselage.

  The tandem seating arrangement, with the pilot above and behind the co-pilot/gunner, afforded unobstructed views through the acrylic blast-shield of the cockpit canopy. Although Blades often wondered why the Helmet and Display Sighting System, that both pilots wore, didn’t confuse the hell out of that same view. The mono eyepiece of the integrated HADDS displayed data from different sources: the Target Acquisition Designation Sight, the Night Vision Sensor and the Forward Looking Infra-Red. As the FLIR alone provided three fields of view, direct into the right eye, Blades had decided that info-overload explained why most pilots were crazy.

  With enhanced survivability, including Kevlar and boron armour shielding - which could absorb hits from shrapnel, spall, and even 23 mm rounds - the AH-64Ds had the same firepower as all Apaches, and then some. The highly integrated digital weapons suite; onboard systems linked by software; enhanced navigation; and a modem datalink for sharing threat and target info with other helos in the unit, made it answerable to nothing - except the Apache ‘Ds’ that also carried the complete Longbow weapons systems. Like Hawk Tovey’s machine.

  ‘Ain’t they pretty,’ Tovey said.

  ‘Aha,’ Blades agreed, knowing she wasn’t admiring the fireworks any more than he was.

  Flanked by two regular AH-64Ds,Tovey’s Apache Longbow - with its 16 vicious Longbow Hellfire missiles - was the brawn and brains of the modern Apache Squadron.

  Aesthetically, the only noticeable difference between the regular Ds and the Longbows was the latter’s Fire Control Radar rotodome. Blades reckoned the mast-mounted dome, for the FCR assembly, looked like the topknot on Will Robinson’s robot and spoilt the sleek lines of the otherwise mean and perfect Apache.

  There was however, no doubting that the Longbow enhanced the attack helo’s status as the supreme tank killer and battlefield disrupter. Only the dome, above the rotors, needed to be exposed in order for the Apache to detect, track, ID and prioritise surface targets. The fire-and-forget Hellfire’s could then be launched from a concealed position to take out multiple targets, while the pilot moved out of range, and all before the enemy even knew they were there.

  Its superior fire control, and the hunter-killer nature of the Longbow weapons system, gave the machine unparalleled independent lethality. But as an attack scout, its digital comm system also enabled it to hand-off targets to the other Apaches in the pack, making them all covert killing machines.

  ‘Think I’ll call it a night.’ Tovey shoved her hands in her pockets.

  Blades rolled his shoulders. ‘See you on deck in the a-m then, Lieutenant.’

  Tovey half-turned to walk away then heard something and stopped dead. ‘What’s that noise?’

  Blades didn’t even bother to hide the, ‘what the hell do you think it is’ expression on his face as he raised his hands to the incandescent rainbow still filling the eastern airspace.

  ‘Not that noise, Blades,’ Tovey said impatiently. ‘It’s a way lower buzzing noise. It’s…’

  The rest of her sentence was walloped by a deafening explosion on the far eastern side of the hangars. Smoke, flames and a mangled jeep soared up towards the now-insignificant pyro display way overhead.

  A second later, 750 yards away down the airstrip, the entire wall of the furthest building blew out across the Longhorn tarmac.

  ‘Fuckin crap,’ Blades swore. ‘The goddamn building blew up. What are those idiots doing?’

  ‘No idea. But, that is still not the noise I’m talking about,’ Tovey insisted.

  Blades squinted, as he tried to make out what she could hear; until something else caught their attention.

  Three westward-heading streaks of red light, which barely skimmed the hangar roof, sped long-and-low across the airstrip and pinged into the concrete.

  ‘Tracer rounds,’ Blades shouted, breaking free of the pilot’s grip. He started running for the Apaches which, right now, were nothing but lame ducks squatting in the totally wide open.

  ‘Blades don’t,’ Tovey yelled, until she realised the cockpit of her helo was still open and took off after him. She didn’t get very far.

  A limo-sized crater burst open, like a hellhole in the tarmac, as some kind of bunker-busting rocket hit the ground about 150 feet beyond the helicopters. A shower of concrete debris rained down.

  By the time Tovey got back to her feet there was so much cement dust and smoke in the air that she couldn’t even see the Apaches. Worse than that, she couldn’t see Blades Garber.

  Swearing at any and every old god that was listening, Hawk Tovey stumbled forward searching for the Specialist. She’d survived Afghanistan for Christ’s sake, why the hell was she dodging rockets in Dallas?

  ‘What kind of goddamn frigging nonsense crap is this, you bastards?’ she yelled.

  ‘A SMAW.’ It was Garber’s voice, coming out of the smoky dark. ‘It was a shoulder-launched rocket, ma’am.’

  Tovey turned to her left and fell to the ground beside Blades. Filthy grey-white from head to the arse he was sitting on, the man looked like a ghost. But he was alive and appeared to be in one piece - unless his knees, drawn up to his chest, were holding his guts in. If it’d been appropriate she’d have hugged him. Damn it, she thought, and kissed the top of his head. ‘You hurt, soldier?’

  ‘No ma’am, just winded; you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Tovey said. ‘Thought for a second you were in that hole out there.’

  ‘Thought for a second I was that hole.’ Blades cleared his throat, spat and excused his manners. ‘What’s goin on ma’am? Are we’re under attack?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I doubt those Civil War fools are playing with modern assault weapons.’

  The explosions, including the fireworks, had stopped but the night air was now screaming with every type of alarm and siren that Fort Hood possessed.

  As the crap in the air began to settle the two soldiers saw with relief that, although surrounded by great chunks of displaced tarmac, the three Apaches seemed to be totally unharmed.

  ‘Now that’s what I call a miracle,’ Blades said.

  ‘Well don’t ask me who performed it. I’ve been cursing God, Allah, Thor and Darth Vader. And I can still hear that weird whiny noise.’

  ‘I can’t hear nothing but you and the sirens,’ Blades began. ‘Oh, that,’ he added as a buzzing approached them from behind.

  Before they had a chance to turn, however, the thing - correction ‘things’ - flew right over their heads. If they’d been standing with their hands in the air, they would have been knocked down again.

  ‘Jesus H. Christ. No fucking way!’ Blades said. ‘Spitfires.’

  ‘Model planes,’ Tovey stated in disbelief, ‘big model planes.’

  ‘Six-foot wingspans I reckon,’ Blades said, checking behind for any other incoming aircraft before struggling to his feet. He grunted in pain.

  ‘What the hell are they doing now?’ Tovey, already standing, was staring open-mout
hed at the Spitfires. They had flown over her helo and straight on for 20 yards, before banking west and turning to fly back. ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Oh no, yes.’ Blades took off for the Apaches again, but he was limping this time so it was easy for the Lieutenant to stop him.

  ‘Stay here, soldier. Don’t move; stand down,’ she ordered. ‘Sit down even.’

  ‘But I really need to secure your cockpit ma’am. I don’t know what the hell those things are doing here, or who is flying them, but - oh fuck it, it’s too late. Look, they’re actually circling your helo.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah, because they could only do that if they have onboard cameras.’ Knowing the lieutenant would’ve knocked him to the ground if he tried to run again, he bent down instead, picked up a chunk of debris and threw it at the model planes. He missed.

  ‘What’s more they ain’t here with those idiot re-enacters’ pretty sky-rockets. I reckon they belong to whoever’s throwing the concrete-busting and hangar-wrecking rockets at us.’

  Both Spitfires suddenly headed north again before repeating the previous manoeuvre; although this time, on the way back, they parted company. One returned to circle widely around the Apache Longbow. The other, decreasing its altitude as it flew, headed for the helicopter nearest the hangar.

  ‘That one’s going to land,’ Tovey said.

  ‘Oh no it’s not. It’s going to crash land. Run, that way.’ Blades hoicked his thumb back over his shoulder.

  Blades Garber and Hawk Tovey backed away from their prized machines as fast as they could. Scattered debris made their retreat difficult, but they were mostly hindered by the fact that neither of them could take their eyes off what they knew was about to happen.

  At precisely the same moment, one Spitfire flew into the rear-underside of the regular AH-64D and the other dived straight into the open cockpit of the Apache Longbow.

  In that moment only Lieutenant Tovey’s gods saw what happened inside her helo; but the two cavalry soldiers witnessed the explosion as the other helicopter’s fuel tanks erupted in a wall of flame.