by Andy Farman
Having received the last course and bearing from the Ust’-Kamchatsk radar operator, the regional air commander decided to take a chance that the Americans would not change course once clear of enemy radar. The John F Kennedy’s CAG had gambled that the Russians would assume just that, but he was wrong.
Alerting the Hawkeye and the remaining CAP, Donny mentally kissed his ass goodbye and reefed the Sea Harrier around to face the oncoming Russians.
Being subsonic, Nikki Pelham overhauled the Sea Harrier flown by Sandy Cummings, her Tomcat and her wingmans passed him before he was in firing range to loose off his AMRAAMs. They all saw the radar track of Papa Zero Two disappear from the screens but so too had a pair of the fast approaching enemy.
Admiral Dalton was on the bridge when the first of the returning strike aircraft entered the pattern. He was the son of a sailor man, as were his father and grandfather before him, the only difference was that he was the first of the Dalton’s to have joined as a commissioned officer. The heaving ocean was causing the flight deck to roll and pitch, reminding the Admiral of tropical storms during his own flying days. On one such night, returning from a strike in the Ia Drang valley, he recalled holding his breath as his F-4s undercarriage slammed onto the deck as the bow began its uproll with a vengeance. His nosewheel tyre had burst and the main undercarriage collapsed, fracturing a fuel line and the fighter-bomber had been engulfed in flames before it even stopped sliding along the deck. Firemen in silver suits pulled him and his unconscious RIO from the wreck. Lt (jg) Dalton had puked his guts up on to the wet deck, which made a hat trick, because his bladder and bowels had let go before he had been rescued. A salty old Petty officer had stood beside him as he completed his embarrassment, chewing on a wad of tobacco and watching the foam being played over the bent and blistered airframe. Spitting out a brown stream of tobacco juice the Petty Officer had at last spoken.
“Could’ve been worse.” Dalton had wiped his mouth and looked up at the man.
“You mean I could have been killed?” The Petty Officer kept on looking at the fire fighting activity, never once looking at the shaken young aviator.
“Nope…” the ‘sir’ being noticeably absent, “…could’ve been me in that thing, and that really would have upset your mother” Dalton’s father had not been a man to show emotion.
The Admiral smiled at the memory and looked out once again at the rolling deck and black, ugly seas, letting a shiver run through him. The tannoy crackled.
“Air raid warning, air raid warning…close all hatch’s and bulkhead doors…damage control crews, close up!” The Marine on duty saluted as the Admiral hurried off the bridge, heading to the CIC.
Nikki selected targets for her two AIM-54s and as soon as they closed to 120km she pickled them both off, as did her wingman. She thought it had bought them some time, the tracks on her screen jinked to break the Phoenix’s locks as soon as they detected them. At thirty miles they loosed the AMRAAMs and she called up the remaining pair of Tomcats that were making a beeline for them from the ships. “Get your asses in the game as fast as you can boys, we are not going to hold them long on our own.” Two minutes later and they were completely engaged with four Mig-31s, whilst the remaining nineteen continued on, clearing the way for the Backfires that were five minutes behind them.
Closer to the edge of the storm as they were, Sandy Cummings saw the first hint of dawn appear as a dirty grey haze whilst looking over his shoulder for the last pair of Tomcats, and he wondered how cold it was in the angry water below. His threat warning brought him back to the present, screaming at him that there were missiles locked onto him. He could not see anything ahead, to the west all was blackness. He ejected chaff and flares whilst pulling back into a vertical jink before rolling over into a split S, by which time Mig-31s were passing him by with the exception of two that peeled off, turning hard to get into firing position behind him. In the dark neither Russian could see what aircraft it was that they were up against, and both assumed it was a Tomcat or a Hornet. It was for that very reason that they overshot the Sea Harrier, which had come to an almost dead stop in mid-air. Sandy heard the growl of his Sparrows seeker heads acquiring the Russian advanced fighters and pickled one off, waited to a count of three and fired a second heat seeker. He cancelled the vectored thrust and closed the speed brakes, allowing the aircraft to travel earthwards as he again picked up flying speed before he turned back toward the west. He could see a thick cluster of new tracks appearing at the edge of his screen.
“There’s never a witness around when you need one!” he said to himself. No one would believe the ease…or fluke, with which he had downed the two Russian machines. He had two missiles left and wanted to avoid the jumbled dogfights ahead, in order to get in amongst the Backfires. They were travelling at supersonic speed so he would only have a chance with a head on engagement.
Nikki had accounted for one Mig-31 since the furball had started, but her wingman had mid-aired with a Russian so she was having a touch of déjà vu right now, mixing it on her own with two enemies. On the last occasion the pilots had been experienced, in an air force that allowed its pilots to fly and train every day, unlike her present foes that thought twice a month was extravagant. After two minutes she got tone on one, and blew his ass away with a deflection shot using guns. His buddy lost his nerve and broke away, diving to the west. As tempting as it was to waste the little fucker with a missile as he ran away, her business was keeping away airframes that could kill ships and that didn’t mean fighters.
In the John F Kennedy’s CIC the staff were casting apprehensive glances at the plot to westward, where the Russian were coming from. The foul weather and high seas had caused the first three aircraft attempting to land to bolter, they were all short on fuel and they needed to get down, refuel and load up air to air ordnance asap. That wasn’t going to happen though, Admiral Dalton knew it and so did everyone else in CIC. It was going to come down to his ships air defence systems alone that would either pass or fail the task of keeping away the ship killers.
Sandy glanced at his fuel gauges and did his mental arithmetic, he had been aloft for an hour before the first enemy aircraft had appeared and he’d used a frightening amount since then. He did the sum twice and both times the answer was that he was going swimming. He counted twenty-five aircraft approaching as he set up his missile shots, once they were away he switched to guns. A fireball in the sky ahead told him that one of his missiles had scored, then he got tone on his guns without being able to see the fast approaching bomber. He touched his finger to the guns and held it down, he was still doing so when the vertical tail fin of a Backfire took off the last six feet of his left wing and the Sea Harrier began a sickening roll to the left. At 12,000’ Sandy was inverted as he ejected from the stricken aircraft, blacking out as the seat shot him clear.
“We’re losing oil pressure on the right engine Nikki; something must have come loose back there.” Chubby informed her. They were in burner, closing in fast on the bombers. She checked her gauges but didn’t let up on the throttle as she bore on westwards. Somehow the smaller Sea Harrier had overtaken them when they had been knife-fighting with the Migs; they did not know which of their friends was flying the one ahead of them.
“Bye, fella.” Chubby put his hand on the radar screen and whispered when they saw its track merge with an oncoming bomber, both tracks faded out within seconds after that.
They had two AMRAAMs left and punched them both off at optimum range. Behind her, Chubby punched the air as both scored and then she got off a sustained burst of cannon before killing the afterburner and sweeping the wings forward to grab air. Pulling around in a six-G turn that had their flight suits inflating uncomfortably, squeezing legs and stomach in an effort to keep blood from draining from their brains. Despite this her vision dimmed, became tunnel like and her biceps knotted in order to retain her grip on the stick as they turned in behind the bombers.
The Backfires now had the first ships on radar a
nd they dived toward the sea, splitting up as they did so to make the defenders jobs that much more difficult.
Nikki and Chubby had lost airspeed and ground in their turn, and Nikki swept the wings back and shoved the throttles to their stops. If it had not been for the storm the enemy would have stood out against the rising sun, as it was the east was only a slight shade lighter than the west and they could see nothing with the naked eye.
On radar the nearest Backfire was five miles ahead as Nikki double checked she was on guns and put the nose down, closing on the Russian who sat 100 feet above the waves. The oil warning light for the right engine was a harsh red glow as the engine temperature grew but she kept right on going. The heads up display gun reticule turned to green, at the same time as the right engine, fire warning light lit, but Nikki walked the tracer from one Backfires left wing tip to its right before pulling back to avoid flying debris. Only then did she shut the engine down and engage the fire extinguisher, by which time they had rolled out of the top of a half loop, heading west once more. They still had a few gun rounds remaining but with only one engine they could never catch the Russian bombers again in order to expend them.
“Oh shit, oh shit…is it out, please tell me it is out!” Chubby was ashen faced in the back as he struggled to see if flames were licking out behind them. Once satisfied that they weren’t going to be barbecued he turned back, slumped in his seat.
“Fuck me…cheated death again…jeez I’m good!”
“What about the driver?” Nikki prompted.
“What?…Oh her!…I guess she qualifies as suitable to bear me many warrior sons.”
They discussed what to do next, they couldn’t head back to the John F Kennedy while an air raid was in process, they were likely to be targeted by their own sides missiles. So they elected to orbit where they were until they got the all clear from the carrier to come on home.
Two of the surviving Migs attempted to attack the outlying picket ships with cannon, but were splashed by SM1-MR missiles, and the remainder ran for home. They knew what was coming and wanted a lot of distance between them and the ships.
The Backfires were carrying four AS-17 sea skimmers each and on the command of the senior regimental commander, they launched them all together. Eighty missiles accelerated towards the ships 30 miles away, seventy-four carried 380lb conventional warheads, and six carried 500kt nuclear warheads, the bomb that had devastated Hiroshima was only 20kt in yield.
Four aircraft from the shipping strike were down on the deck of the John F Kennedy when the air defence missiles started to fly from the picket ships. Five minutes later the Aegis cruisers USS Vincennes and USS Chancellorville, just a few miles to landward of the John F Kennedy began firing; they emptied their magazines in just four minutes.
Admiral Dalton deliberately ignored the plots and screens; it was all beyond his control now. He was stood with his hands behind his back, watching the TV screen as a Tomcat approached on finals when the bow and stern Phalanx guns began to fire. The picture disappeared, two thousandths of a second before the great warship herself did, along with eleven other warships and their entire ships companies.
No satellites were overhead during the attack on the American carrier group, they had already passed over the horizon by the time the Russian strike had arrived. The machines witnessed a temporary dawn over the horizon; it was far more brilliant than usual as three temporary suns were born within a second of each other.
In the war room shelter at space command, audible alarms sounded as the photonic flashes were measured for intensity and came up atomic in source.
When the next satellite passed over the Kamchatka Peninsula, the typhoon had disappeared as though it had never existed. The water vapour that powered it had been boiled off and the sky was a cloudless blue.
In California, British Columbia, Hawaii and besieged Japan, geological survey equipment to measure the planets seismic activity registered the detonations.
There was no sign of the American and British warships, the only vessels that remained were the surviving fleet replenishment ships far to the south. They had parted company with the warships when they had emptied their holds of munitions, and were now headed to the Hawaiian Islands to replenish. Satellite transmissions from the warships had ceased at exactly the same moment the orbiting sensors detected the nuclear detonations.
The enemy ships remained, although there were four less than before and others showed the damage resulting from near misses by Harpoons and direct hits from the much smaller anti-radiation missiles. Even worse was the scene in the bay, where the carriers and two destroyers were making ready to get underway once more.
The Premier of the People’s Republic of China, and the Premier of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, verbally slapped one another on the back in a rare videoconference between the two.
It did not matter to either man that the USSR presented a clutch of medals to some new Heroes of the Soviet Union, and declared the battle a Russian victory, or that the late Chinese Admiral Li was proclaimed the architect of China’s mastery of arms over America.
By late afternoon Lt Chubby Checkernovski was becoming very concerned for his pilot. Their Tomcat had been facing southwest when the false dawn had turned to daylight, with an intensity that had them slapping down the thick green visors on their flight helmets. It was as if they were flying directly at the sun, even though the light was behind them, so harshly brilliant that both had been left blinking to clear the after-images from their eyes, once it faded.
They were 67 miles from the outer screen of ships when the blast wave struck them, by which time it was but a murmur of its original force. Nikki fought to level their wings in the most violent turbulence either could remember, and when calm returned, they had gained over six thousand feet in altitude.
Both aviators had been too stunned to speak at first, Chubby had tried to raise first the John F Kennedy on the secure, directional beam before he had switched to Guard and listened to the static. Finally he dialled up each squadrons distress beacon frequency, listening for survivors in the water. All were silent.
With only fifteen minutes fuel remaining they had debated making landfall before punching out, to escape and evade, but neither really thought much of that one. It would take them two years and then some, to walk to Germany as they evaded capture and starvation, every step of the way.
The very faint likelihood that a ship would pick them up, and its crew could be persuaded to head for the states, held better odds. Say, 300,000 to 1 in fact!
They punched out at 5,000’ at barely above a stall, but even in those favourable conditions Nikki had been unconscious when she hit the water. Chubby had managed to paddle his one-man life raft over to her but it had taken a half dozen attempts, and all his reserves of energy, to drag her into her own life raft. He had only achieved it by tying a line from his own raft to his wrist and diving, or rather flopping into the water. He couldn’t believe what a dead weight an unconscious person could be, even one as petite as Nikki. The damn life raft of hers kept shooting away whenever he tried to get her head and shoulders over its side. Eventually he had gotten into her raft, placed his feet against the inflated side of a narrow end, reached forward, grabbed her under the arms and leant back, straightening his body as he did so. The action drove the end of the raft down below the surface and in the end he was lying beneath the pilot in a completely swamped life raft. He had struggled out from beneath her and back into the frigid water, before mooring the two rafts side by side and bailing both out, after which he lay exhausted for a full hour. He had seen the deep rent in the back of her flight helmet soon after he had first reached her, and as he lay in his raft he debated whether or not to remove the helmet, to see what damage was visible. Eventually he elected to leave it on; it may have been providing some tiny measure of insulation against the cold. If she had a skull injury it would require the skills of a surgeon to treat, and Chubby could just about manage a sticky plaster on a
cut thumb.
It was now after three in the afternoon and Nikki had a pulse but that was about the only sign of life she showed. He was shivering with the cold and thirstier than he could ever remember when he heard a voice. It was difficult to look around without tumbling out of the raft and he didn’t exactly have a panoramic view, as the swells improved his range of vision, the troughs reduced it.
Eventually he saw another life raft as the waves briefly synchronised to raise them all at the same time. The strange raft was of a different design to that of the Americans; it was larger, circular and enclosed, providing more protection from the elements. Chubby had thought to take out his tiny survival compass, to get a bearing on whoever had shouted, always providing it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him in the first place. The other raft was about a hundred meters to the north but he was unable to paddle towards it, with both rafts tied together he only succeeded in turning in a circle.
After an hour the other raft was closer though, its larger area allowed the wind to act on it, pushing it along and he recognised the Scots Sea Harrier pilot. Sandy Cummings had his head down as he leant out of an opening, industriously using a length of driftwood as a paddle to steer them together.
The first hint of dusk had arrived and it seemed the Scotsman’s raft would overtake theirs, passing a good fifteen feet to the west, but the Scotsman dived in, towing the raft behind him. Before long the Royal Navy pilot was in trouble, the wind was pushing his raft south whilst he was now swimming almost due north, his strength failing fast. Tying his own raft’s painter around his waist, Chubby flopped over the side and swam toward the pilot. They reached one another but it seemed they both must drown; the cold seas leeched the strength from muscles, and the will to fight on from their spirits. It took a last supreme effort to gain the side of the larger life raft, where Chubby had to combine his strength with the pilots to heave him aboard.