' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song)

by Andy Farman

  A touch of rudder and she selected ‘Guns’ for a difficult deflection shot to take the Flanker as it accelerated ahead. Just a caress of her thumb and the Tomcat shuddered, vibrating as the M61 Vulcan cannon barrels rotated. 20mm shells nailed the underside of the Flanker’s nose, shredding the radar assembly and tearing up the cockpit floor. The instrument panel and canopy exploded before the pilot’s eyes, and fragments of exploding shells wounded him in both legs.

  The damaged Flanker broke right, the pilot choosing to stay with the machine and attempt a recovery aboard the Mao. His radar was out and he had a hurricane blowing through the cockpit at 32,000ft. If he had not been on oxygen he would have lost consciousness.

  He was a good pilot and if his opponent was feeling chivalrous he would probably make it.

  Lt Cmdr. Pelham’s family, her friend Chubby, and both of her ships were gone forever. Screw chivalry, she sent a burst of cannon fire into the side of the cockpit and the Flanker continued its right banking turn, rolling into a dive, a dead hand on the stick.

  The second Flanker was attempting to get behind her wingman for a short range missile shot, so both Tomcats broke hard left before he could establish a lock. The Chinese pilot should have broken left also, to pass to the rear of the Tomcats and got the hell out of there, diving for the cloud but he didn’t, he kept that left turn hard on, trying for the missile shot they had denied him. His airspeed bled off rapidly, the stick got soggy in his hands and the aircraft departed from controlled flight. Before he could find the airspeed to recover, one of Nikki’s AIM-7 Sparrows found him, exploding the aircraft.

  Two SU-27Ks were diving for the cloud and the flight reformed, less Smackdown 03 who had taken an AA-8 Aphid up a tailpipe, but two good chutes had been seen.

  Four for one, and three of those scalps went to Lt Cmdr. Pelham.

  Two fresh flights of bandits were coming up to do battle so Nikki took them home, turning east and calling for a tanker as they called it a night.

  The Udaloy destroyer Syktyvkar was left behind by the fleet, as was Samara. But Samara had lost her mast and had no communications but she rendered aid to the other stricken ship’s company before putting about and making for the closest repair yards, those at the forward logistical supply and support base for the Australian invasion force, China’s 3rd Army, at Cebu in the Philippines.

  Syktyvkar burned all through the rest of the night until the fire at last reach the magazine and she too blew up.

  The Pearce Wing had recovered to various regional airports and the Smackdown flight was given a steer to Perth Airport but this was a risky move. The wing’s aircraft were short on offensive and defensive ordnance, and vulnerable on the ground.

  RAAF Hawks, flown by instructors, were the CAP for that part of Western Australia, tanking from a Japanese Air Self-Defence Force KC-135 and remaining on station until the approach of fatigue.

  Nikki led her flight of three remaining F-14 Tomcats along the taxiways, the last to arrive. They followed a yellow airport services vehicle driven by a member of the airport fire brigade, and he wore a hazardous substances protection suit with its own oxygen supply. On the sun baked earth beside the north perimeter road she and Candice shut down and waited until fire hoses washed down their aircraft, every crevices was blasted with both water and chemical neutralizers. Then of course it was their turn but chemical foam showers spared their blushes.

  Now at last they had proper NBC protection issued them, and fresh G-suits, their own not in need of laundering. The still wet name tapes and squadron flashed were transferred to the bare Velcro patches on the new items.

  They learned from the decontamination team that VX, Sarin and Mustard/Lewisite had been used along with Blister Agents in thirty two separate locations in Australia and eight in New Zealand. So far it seemed that they had all been delivered by submarine launched missiles, each vessel launching on multiple targets. Forty four had died at RAAF Pearce during the attack there. Six were service personnel whilst the remainder were civilians, all of whom had died in their sleep in houses beyond the perimeter, on the downwind side of the field.

  The chemical agent used on RAAF Pearce had not been typed in its raw form due to the speed with which it had broken down into a harmless form, presumably by design, and thereby allowing troops to occupy the target area if need be. It was not one of the persistent VX family of agents, and it had killed even quicker than that wickedly deadly compound. The agent, even its name a secret, had been tentatively matched via WHO records with a weapon that had seen limited use in the 1980s in Afghanistan. A post mortem of the victims would confirm that later.

  RAAF Pearce would be reopening for business after dawn as WHO reported that sunlight was believed to cause complete evaporation in harmless form. No one was taking chances. A small, former naval barracks, now a privately run retirement home on the coast of New Zealand’s South Island, had been targeted with Anthrax-R, delivered by another submarine launched missile. They had all died, not easily and not pleasantly either.

  The Chinese opening offensive actions against Australia and New Zealand had been devastating in regard to Sydney, and highly effective in disrupting military operations. The Pearce Wing, for example, was now separated, albeit temporarily, from its base and its ordnance to launch further strikes. As far as the effects on the largely unprotected civilian population were concerned, they were both angry at the enemy and scared. An early figure for the dead was 200, but as VX had been used at Woolongong and its Port Kembla suburb, that town alone would likely see that figure exceeded.

  With a clean bill of health from the decontamination team the Tomcats taxied to the International Terminal, parking between a Virgin Australia A330 Airbus and a 747 in Qantas livery. There were few civilian aircraft there though, at that terminal, the domestic side of the airport was far busier by comparison.

  When the sun came up the crews sat under the wings, awaiting a fuelling truck if they were instructed to relocate any great distance to one of the RAAF reserve fields.

  Lt j.g Candice LaRue was hyper at first, talking at fifty thousand miles an hour, replaying her first combat, over and over until the adrenaline wore off and she crashed, exhausted and depressed.

  At last she looked at her pilot with normal eyes.

  “Who is ‘Chubby’?”

  Nikki stared at her.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “During the combat, you called me ‘Chubby’ a bunch of times over the intercom.”

  Unwilling to explain, Nikki merely apologised.

  Coffee and sandwiches arrived but before they finished them the exodus of military aircraft began, returning back to Pearce to rearm, and disperse again while they prepare for further sorties.

  RAAF Pearce in the daylight looked almost tranquil but they were glad to be fuelled, rearmed and relocating before the day was done.

  The post-strike assessment had been grim. Their own sortie had been far more successful than any other of the Pearce Wing missions. Six aircraft had been lost from their wing alone, nineteen in total from the aircraft available for the defence of Australia and New Zealand.

  Invasion was imminent, that much was certain, and from the enemy fleets position it could land south of Perth, but why would it give itself a thousand miles of the Great Victoria Desert to cross to reach New South Wales, the obvious target for invasion? Quite what it would do once it reached New South Wales was a conundrum. Would it land in the west and roll up the major cities, Melbourne and Canberra?

  At lunchtime came the news that the Battle of Europe had ended in defeat for the New Soviet Union and the Red Army had ceased hostilities. A reconnaissance flight was despatched to confirm or deny that the fleet was fragmenting, but it returned shot up, and reporting that the fleet was intact and ‘a bit lively’. It could not differentiate between Russian missiles and Chinese missiles, or if the CAP that had pursued it was off the Mao or Admiral Kuznetsov. However, the pilot of the 3 Squadron RAAF F/A-18 was quite happy for anyone el
se to have a looksee using his Hornet, once the brown adrenaline was sponged off the seat of course. The pilot’s droll humour was typical of the Australian air force but the next news to reach them was sobering.

  Sydney, so much the icon of Australia in the eyes of the rest of the world was gone and fires on the outskirts were being allowed to burn out of control. Initial tests indicated a high presence of an isotope that had no part in the highly complex chain reaction required to cause a nuclear explosion. The element, Cobalt-60, had only one purpose for its inclusion in the weapon. By adding cobalt to the casing of the device the Chinese had produced a very ‘dirty bomb’ as the element is a source of exceptionally intense gamma rays.

  The so called ‘nuclear footprint’, the area where the highly irradiated dust was falling back to earth, was currently out to sea. It was being carried west on a wind off the arid desert, blowing through the Blue Mountains and taking the fall-out ocean ward. The normal prevailing wind for the time of year was north easterly though, and as far north along the coast as Corindi Beach people were taking to the Pacific Highway and evacuating. If the wind changed in the next two days, and was more northerly than usual, the scientists warned that three hundred miles of coast would be rendered uninhabitable.

  Vast tracts of the subcontinent are arid desert where water is scarce so it is not surprising that major inland cities are a bit few and far between. The majority of Australians lived within a few hundred miles of the sea. Where to relocate the displaced population was a major problem.

  The crews, especially the Australians, were itching for another chance to hit back but a proper strike was being planned and the limited air and sea power was being preserved.

  The best place to defeat an amphibious invasion is whilst it is still at sea and the second best is on the beaches themselves. The invading army cannot all land at once, it has to do so a piece at a time. If those pieces can be defeated on the shore and prevented from forming a beachhead, the invasion will fail.

  To defeat those units though, you have to be at the right beach and with enough force to do so.

  The Kiwis were in Australia; because that was the best chance they had of defeating the People’s Liberation Army. No invasion fleet was threatening New Zealand, and would not do so until Australia was subdued. The small New Zealand Defence Force, 11000 strong, including Reserves, were almost all of them in Queensland, involved in the defence of Brisbane.

  The Australian Army, the US 5th Mechanised Division and the infantry brigades worth of troops from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore were in New South Wales.

  They needed help, sooner rather than later, but the NATO armies in Europe had taken a hammering, and victory had been a close run thing. Everyone in Australia and New Zealand expected Britain to come to its aid, just as the Anzacs had done for them in two world wars.

  Indian Ocean: 0952hrs.

  They had been at the mercy of the wind and currents, drifting ever further towards that wild ocean with no restraining shoreline worth mentioning.

  Figures clinging to the mattress on a wave tossed sea, far from land. Each was wondering who would be lost next and to what, the sharks or hyperthermia.

  There had been plenty of bodies, floating face down in the water, dead submariners from the diesel electric vessel HMAS Hooper, but the sharks dragged those off and still returned for more.

  They were oceanic White Tips and the largely lifeless deep water oceans were their highway from one coast to the next.

  Blood leaking from Derek Penman’s head wound had probably attracted them in the first place but the petty officer had not been their first victim.

  Four hours after Commander Hollis had spotted the first shark, Midshipman Chloe Ennis let out an involuntary squeal when something brushed her leg and a second later Leading Seaman Brown was snatched away. Derek Penman died from hyperthermia two hours later, his body drifting away before sharks found it. The dead are at least silent when sharks consume them.

  Dawn had arisen but the day brought no respite, just more horrors. They had seen a fin circling them. As it grew bolder it closed in and the survivors collective splashing had scared it away, but it did not leave. More fins appeared and five more times they splashed and shouted but with each occasion the survivors were a little more tired, the splashing less frightening, and LS Craig Devonshire had died when the sharks were just not frightened anymore.

  The captain of the PLAN hospital ship, Shén ēn, the Divine Mercy, had witnessed the predator’s boldness for himself. The Shén ēn came across the figures in the water as it was looking for survivors from its own ships, lost in the air attacks on the fleet earlier that day. It hove-to and its launch collected the survivors from the water, but even after they were in the ships boat the predators had nudged its sides, unwilling to let the remaining sailors escape.

  Commander Hollis, Stephanie Priestly and Phil Daly were led below in a state of shock, the screams of Chloe Ennis still fresh, coming just minutes before the ship had reached them.

  They were now prisoners of war but the captain would not report their presence immediately, not until they had at least had a chance to recover from the shock of their ordeal. He had two sons in uniform and he hoped that if they were in danger then an enemy would act mercifully towards them also.

  Port Kembla.

  1100hrs.

  Within ten minutes of the VX chemical attack, following so closely on the heels of the Sydney blast, the combat team had been on the move, off the hill and westwards to the wooded lower slopes of Mt Kembla.

  5th US Mech’s decontamination unit set up in a field well clear of the population and the Brits were the first through, driving on to just below the escarpment, in the aptly named Windy Gully.

  The team’s personnel carried out personal decontamination in pairs, the buddy-buddy system ensuring no square inch missed the puffer bottles of Fullers Earth or the bang-and-rub of the DKP1 pads.

  Vehicle by vehicle, and then the vehicle interiors were also subject to the neutralising powder.

  It was an hour before dawn before they were done, but there were no complaints. The American master sergeant had been well liked and popular, even winning over the very protective technicians and mechanics of Rebecca’s light aid detachment.

  The entire division had upped sticks and moved location, even those units unaffected by the attacks.

  Heck’s combat team slept in their vehicles, with a crew member on radio watch, and at two in the afternoon Captain Danny King came to collect Heck for an O Group at the 902nd Infantry CP, informing him that he had been attached to this unit for two days but word had somehow failed to reach the Brits. Still an oddity and despite the addition of the leftover ammunition from the main gun evaluation tests the combat team had found itself shunted off once more like an unwanted child to stay with distant relatives.

  The O Group was not a happy event as the 902nd’s CO was bigger on rhetoric than he was on contingency planning.

  “After due consultation with the local mayor, and after careful consideration of the input of all parties involved, I have assured him that this unit will meet the enemy on the beach and pin him there, regardless.”

  Heck was pretty sure that the Chinese 3rd Army fitted the category of the ‘all parties involved’ but they had not been consulted.

  The 902nd had wonderfully prepared forward positions. On the walk through that it’s CO, Lt Colonel Taylor had conducted, and Heck was half expecting to see hot and cold running water in individual soldier’s holes.

  “He’s not very flexible is he?” Heck had remarked to Danny and Briant Foulness, OC of the 902nd’s attached tank company.

  Fall-back positions existed as marks on a map, not holes in the ground, ready for occupation. There were no forward fighting positions for his team’s tanks and IFVs and Heck was about done with being no more than a potential ‘spent johnnie’.

  The news that the war in Europe had ended was welcome but as there was no physical sign that the Russians were
calling it a day in the Southern Hemisphere, they, the defenders, were no better off. The Russian ships remained with the approaching invasion fleet.

  On the conclusion of O Group, Heck and the American tankers had their own meeting before Heck returned to Windy Gully with a plan of his own. He called in at a local plant hire depot on the way.

  Macquarie Pass 1

  The combat team’s available manpower was sent down onto the plain behind the town where JCBs from the plant hire depot joined them in creating fighting positions there. Heck and Tony McMarn then travelled west along the Illawarra Highway to the Macquarie Pass. The Pass led the way through the escarpment and on to Canberra a hundred miles beyond, an obvious target for any invader. One other road led through the same gap, the Jamberoo Mountain Road, looping around from the south to join the Highway at the top of the Macquarie. Heck found a good piece of ground to defend, one that dominated both the pass and the mountain road. This was the men’s and the JCB digger’s next task.

  Mao carrier group, south west of Adelaide, South Australia: 1200hrs, same day:

  The attacks on the fleet had clearly been an uncoordinated, knee-jerk reaction by the defenders; coming in the wake of the nuclear strike and chemical weapons attacks. The losses in surface ships had been far lighter than Vice Admiral Putchev had expected they would be. However it seemed that the Australian and allied units had launched their own operations, a piecemeal effort instead of a solid counterpunch. Only in the air had their enemy found any real success. The Chinese pilots were still inferior in training and experience, but that was only to be expected. One cannot win the Le Mans twenty four hour race after just one driving lesson.