by Andy Farman
With the missiles gone, the low radar profile was restored and the track-breakers did their job.
The super-cooled IR sensor in the Nighthawks tail detected the heat signatures of the missiles and activated an alarm.
“Missile launch!” The automated counter-measures system ejected chaff bundles sideways out the left and right dispensers.
One Aphid locked onto the chaff, it had not been in flight long enough for the proximity fuse to engage and curved right, flying through the chaff without exploding, and turning in an attempt to reacquire, it impacted against the valleys side.
The second missile failed to lock on to anything and streaked past the F-117A, still seeking a target. Both American’s let out the breath they had been holding.
Up ahead the AA-10s Tombstone radar locked up the fast approaching Mig-29 and launched two missiles at it. They were not expecting visitors and not prepared to ask questions first.
“Podonock!” Cursed the Fulcrums pilot, the literal translation of the Belarus oath being “Wankers!” as the missiles acquisition of his aircraft was conveyed via the screeching in his ears. He punched out chaff and flares before initiating a vertical jink in an effort to break the missiles lock.
There was a blinding flash and he was thrown hard forward against his shoulder straps, master-warning lights lit the console and alarms screeched.
The Migs twin stabilisers had been sheared off the airframe and shrapnel from an AA-10 peppered the starboard Turmanski turbofan, which disintegrated, trashing the port engine as it did so. With a very poor opinion of the army, its pilot ejected clear of his aircraft as it came apart.
The ZSU detected an incoming HARM and its operator switched its radar to standby whilst the SA-10s operator failed to react in time and was vaporised as the first HARM struck home.
Switching off a search radar does not ensure safety when HARMs are in the air, the memory within its processor remembers where the signal originated if it gets a long enough look, if not it will circle the area until its fuel runs out or the radar comes on again.
The ZSU-23-4 operator had only detected the one missile, when the Tombstone radar and control vehicle was destroyed the ZSU radar went active again.
Coming within 500m of the ZSU the F-117A had no background clutter to hide in, the turret spun to lead the aircraft and its quadruple 23mm cannon poured four streams of armour piercing shells into its path.
The ZSU was still expending rounds at a rate of thirty-two hundred a minute when the second HARM re-attacked, lighting up the area with a brilliant flash as it struck.
A series of loud impacts and a mushy feel to the controls told Tobias that they were in trouble; he did not need the master alarms to tell him that. A gale was blowing in the cockpit and a strong vibration was shaking the airframe. He was trying to gain some altitude when the engine fire warning lights came on and the aircraft suffered a 100% failure of its avionics.
“Time to go Billy!” he shouted, glancing at his navigator as he reached for the ejection handle, only Billy had no head and didn’t reply. The sight caused Tobias to freeze for a moment as his hands closed over the ejection handle and it was the split second difference between life and death. Tobias was still staring at his crewmate when Hawk 01 exploded in a ball of flame.
Germany, east of the Wesernitz: 0027hrs, 31st March.
With the local residents of that area of Germany having, for the most part, fled their homes, the night was absent the usual activity associated with the hour. No lights lit the horizon with the sulphurous glow of street lighting, no car headlights, no car engines in the distance, no sounds of human activity except their own breathing.
The Warriors had carried them from the rear of the Battalion area to the rear of 1 Company where they had continued on foot through the lines and down the wooded slope to the river.
The only thing distinguishing Colin from the other patrol members was the ½” x ¼” rectangle of white material on the back of his helmet, denoting him as the patrol commander. It was fixed to his helmet by the only piece of velcro present on any of his equipment. velcro, nylon hook and eye fasteners held closed cuffs, pockets and fulfilled any number of other tasks on the issued equipment. It may be cheap and handy but Colin hated the stuff, hated the audible ripping sound it made at night. He had removed all of it from his own, replacing it with old-fashioned brass press-studs, hand sown and painted black. The minute and muffled noise they made when used was far, far quieter. He rarely wore the wind-proof and wet proof clothing either, nylon is noisy when it brushes against objects, and if he wore it at all it was beneath a layer of cotton or wool.
A footbridge crossed above a weir beside a timber mill, although the mill was still a functional part of the local industry, the great mill wheel was stilled. The mill and the few cottages nearby were devoid any sign of current human occupation.
A breeze gently shook the branches of the trees, and in the sky was the narrow crescent of a quarter moon. Patches of cloud, moving slowly with the wind masked it from time to time, reducing visibility further. The unlit windows of the habitat’s they passed starred back at the passing troops like empty eye sockets, the cry of a Nightjar added an eeriness to the night.
As briefed, Colin would pick a recognisable feature along their route and pointing at the ground made wide circular motions, the action was mimicked by each man as they reached the spot, if they were bumped between there and the next point he chose, that is where they would RV.
Colin was the second man in the column, before him was the point, feeling for trip wires and looking for trouble ahead. Oz was at the rear, preserving the command structure if Colin were taken out at the front, Oz was also there to ensure no one got lost and to command the gun group that watched their ‘6’. Colin really wished he had an SLR in his hands right now. He missed its reliability and heavy, high velocity 7.62 round. If you hit the target it went down and stayed down with the first hit. The thing in his hands lacked the SLRs dependability and that stopping power. There were a couple of the new L85-A2 models in the Battalion, its new barrel with different rifling allowed it to fire the SS-108 round, the current round was pushed to penetrate soft skinned vehicles. H & K had got the contract to sort out the rifles many failings and the SS-108 round had a steel penetrator, which should improve stopping power. The Marines had the upgraded weapon prior to going to Afghanistan but came back seriously dissatisfied. It didn’t like cold weather, the metal contracted and it suffered stoppages. It didn’t like hot weather, the metal expanded and it suffered stoppages. It didn’t like dirt, but then no weapon does, the SA80 just had a far, far lower freshold of tolerance for sand and grit, than most.
Every man had an assigned arc to cover, looking and listening for anything out of place. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, movement and noise are the big give away's in camouflage and concealment. Merge in, don’t stand out, move slowly when you must and don’t make a sound, if you can achieve all that then you’ve got it cracked.
The ears are the most important sense in the dark but you have to know how to use your eyes to the best advantage. Stare at an object and it may disappear or fade to indistinction because of the light receptors in human eyes. The human eye has rods and cones, so called because that is their shape. The rods are at the front, receiving reflected light frequencies from objects that the brain translates as shapes, they have a narrow aperture to assist focus. The cones are at the side and their wide aperture collects more reflected light so you can see better at night by looking through the corners of your eyes. It takes a little while for eyes to adjust to the dark and any light exposure ruins it until the eye can adjust again. The drill for safeguarding night vision is to close your shooting eye until the flare, or whatever the source, is gone. Illumination at night is a double-edged weapon; you use the one open eye to take advantage of the additional light, carefully and slowly looking about.
At the end of each leg the patrol took up all round defence, facing outwards, legs splayed an
d over-lapping their neighbours. Viewed from above, the fighting patrol might resemble a synchronised swimming team at dry practice, but it was a means of communication and not intended to draw a six-six score from the Luxembourg judge.
Each man had his right leg over the lower left leg of the man on his right, when Colin signalled them to move out, it was done by raising his left leg twice, nudging the man beside him who would then pass the message on anti-clockwise. Colin would know when everyone had received the message, when his right leg was nudged in turn. At the end of each leg the navigators set the bearing for the next leg and looking through the compass prism would pick a landmark to march on. Colin remembered a Welsh Guardsman from his own Junior Brecon, on one exercise they had marched through the night across a featureless landscape, yet the Welshman had stopped periodically to take a bearing. Colin hadn’t been able to make out what the hell he could see that Colin couldn’t so he asked him, the man had pointed above the horizon to the full moon that crept across the sky…he had been leading them around in a wide circle.
At each stop they would listen whilst in all round defence, for upto fifteen minutes, for any sound that was out of place; in that time it is not unheard of for tired soldiers to fall asleep.
At the end of the last leg before the FRV, Colin did not receive his confirmatory nudge despite repeating it again, so he went looking for the broken link in the chain. Number eleven had fallen asleep, he awoke to find the blade of Colin’s fighting knife against his jugular. The CSM put his lips next to the man’s ear and whispered.
“If I ever catch you asleep on duty again sunshine, you’ll need a hundred fucking years of beauty sleep to sort the mess I’ll make of your face…understand?”
Although they were not the only patrol out that night, both sides had ambush, fighting and recce patrols out, they neither saw nor heard anyone.
They stopped again just short of the chosen FRV location whilst Colin went forward to recce it. They would be here for much longer than the previous, end of leg RVs, he had to confirm its suitability and check there were no enemy camped on the doorstep.
He used both binoculars and his MIRA night sight to scan for trouble, binoculars magnify the available light, ergo it is easier to see with them at night, they pick out detail lost in the mixture of green shades you see when using a night sight. Day or night, the correct way to scan is to break up the panorama into three areas, near, middle and distant. Its common sense that you start looking close to home, near distance before checking middle distance then the far distance, with any other combination you may find yourself staring at the horizon when someone taps you on the shoulder, uttering the words “For you zee vor ist over!”
He returned to the patrol and was challenged by the lead man, at night or in poor visibility it is foolish to assume the figure approaching you is the one you are expecting. If all cats look grey in the dark, then the same holds true for soldiers of opposing armies.
The simplest, yet secure method of challenging is to employ the number variation method. He had picked the number 42 for this patrol, the patrol members had been given it at the briefing. The lead man challenged Colin by saying.
“Thirty?”
Colin replied
“Twelve”.
He could have picked any number up to 41 to challenge with; Colin merely added the figure that added it up to forty-two.
In the FRV they still lay listening for ten minutes before dividing into their three groups, dropping off their bergens, less side pouches of course. The three men in the rear protection party stayed put whilst the fire support group went north and Colin’s snatch squad went east.
According to the Recce Platoon, there was a field that had a sharp rise that elevated it above the surrounding land, it wasn’t much but it was enough to qualify as a good OP site. When Colin had studied the map he reckoned it was a barrow, a grave mound. He wondered what the occupant would think, if he knew the land was still being fought over, still being invaded by men from the east.
Colin had an eye on the wind, he led the four men with him in a wide arc, staying downwind of the mound and keeping hedgerows between themselves and it. He was relieved to see that gorse bushes studded the mound, offering cover from view for his close target recce when he would decide how they would do the snatch. The wind carries noise and he wanted that advantage for himself.
Once he was satisfied with their own position he quietly slipped out of his webbing fighting order, Kevlar helmet and radio headset. He left his weapon behind, carrying only a cheese wire garrotte and fighting knife. If the British army followed the Yanks example of issuing handguns as back-up weapons in addition to their principle personal weapon, he would have been happier, but it all came down to money. Politicians who had been no closer to a fire fight than a war correspondents footage, decided they knew what was best, what the armed services needed.
Colin could see nothing through either binoculars or night sight to indicate life on the mound before he began his stalk. He picked his route before putting the optic devices away and crawling forward on his belly, using clumps of nettles and depressions for cover with a twig as a feeler, seeking trip wires. The field obviously had held sheep until recently, the grass was close cropped. Tufts of wool hung from protrusions here and there. He found the first booby trap midway to the mound and two more on its sloping side, the first had been a tripflare, and the next two were fragmentation grenades. Pins removed and spring-arms retained by the sides of the tin cans they had been put into, trip wires were attached to the grenades, ready to be pulled from the can by someone less cautious than he. After making all three safe he continued on.
He heard the enemy recce troops before he saw them, heard the sound of nylon against gorse, they had donned the garments as extra protection from the night air. He moved at a few inches at a time, listening between movements until he saw their forms, in a depression normally occupied by sheep as a windbreak. Their weapons were poked through the gorse ahead of them, which was okay if you knew that you were going to be attacked from that direction, otherwise it would just delay there being brought around to face the threat.
The figure on the right used an optical device whilst Colin watched, he could be the officer, or maybe not. They would sort that out when they had control of them.
Colin moved back the way he had come, just as carefully as before.
He briefed the four Guardsmen after replacing his kit and got on the radio.
“Hello Zero Alpha and Nine Nine Bravo, this is Nine Nine Alpha, radio check over?”
“Zero Alpha, okay over.”
“Nine Nine Bravo, okay over.”
Both the battalion CP and Oz acknowledged they were receiving his signals.
“Nine Nine Alpha, Snapdragon, over.”
“Zero Alpha, Snapdragon, out.”
“Nine Nine Bravo, Snapdragon, out.”
The target had been found and the snatch would follow, the CP would call up the mortar platoon to standby in case required. Oz would now be preparing to put a lot of fire down on another OP, to distract the targets and prevent the other OP from assisting the targets if word got out they were under attack.
Colin was more than relieved that they had not been detected on radar, if they had then their OP would have been more on their toes than they were.
In single file the five British soldiers made their way to the mound, out of sight of the OP, as they did not need to see it, they would follow Colin.
“Oz?” he whispered into his mouthpiece. Two clicks answered him.
“Standby.” Another two clicks and he knew Oz would be watching the moon as he was.
A nice fat cloud approached the crescent and masked it. Colin breathed into the mouthpiece.
“Go, go, go.”
The response was immediate, 800m away tracers lashed out, converging on the corner of a copse, accompanied by the ploop of M203 grenade launchers and their subsequent detonations. In the quiet of the night the booms of the grenades
and roar of the automatic weapons carried, drawing the attention of the enemy soldiers and masking the pounding thud of boots that approached them. The method of subduing them was crude but effective, if something heavy lands on the back of a prone person; it drives the air from their lungs.
A grown man provided the heavy weight in this case, feet first. Whilst they gasped for air the masking tape covered their mouths, arms were pinned and the plasticuffs applied to wrists and elbows. Last of all, masking tape blindfolded them whilst their equipment was cut off and searched for anything of intelligence value.
Colin sent them off back the way they’d come and found a fresh use for the two booby-traps he’d found before joining them.
As they headed back to the FRV with their prisoners, incoming artillery from the east, moaned overhead and impacted a hundred meters short and right of where the fire support had come from, at least someone was still alive in the other OP. The next salvo was in line but only fifty metres short, good shooting by the gunners and good spotting by whoever was calling it in, Colin thought, the next salvo would be ‘on’.
Oz and the fire support group were back at the FRV, safe and sound when the snatch squad arrived. The brief had been for ninety seconds sustained fire; the group had been long gone by the time the enemy artillery worked their old fire position over.
The patrol regained their bergens and moved out on the first homeward leg and Colin kept the speed down. People would know they were around and now was the time to be extra careful, possible pursuit or not. The homeward leg is always the most dangerous, with the danger of the missions objective behind them, soldiers can feel it’s safe to relax, feel it’s safe to relish the prospect of climbing into a sleep-bag, the venerable ‘green maggot’ and going to kip.
Behind them Colin heard the sound of a AFVs engines, five minutes later he heard the double crump of grenades going off.