4th Story. "Angels High"
"Angels High"
"Homeplate,
this is Striker One. We are being jammed by probable enemy force from the North
West. Enemy raid strength and raid direction is unknown. Please advice."
The
radio officer on the damaged Iowa was momentarily startled by the voice,
before he realised who was speaking to him on the net.
Flight
Lieutenant Catherine 'Vixen' Scarlett was the first female combat pilot in the
United States Navy. She was a damn fine pilot, with the reflexes of a cat and
the killer instinct of a tiger. But it had been a hard road to the Mark III
Martin-Baker ejection seat of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat for her…
She reckoned that half of her time was
spent fighting off the attentions of both male chauvinistic pigs (who sought to
get her sacked) and overenthusiastic Romeos (who sought to get her into the
sack) rather than actually engaging the Reds.
It
wasn't her fault that the Romeo's on the Iowa swarmed to her like bees to a
flower… In fact, Scarlett had often cursed her good looks. She acknowledged
that looks had helped her a lot when she was trying to get her way… or avoid
getting into trouble for her many brushes with the military police. However,
more than one superior officer had looked upon her with contempt as an empty-headed
blonde bimbo (she cut her hair to shoulder length in a fruitless attempt to
avoid the stereotype) who was going to get good REAL men killed trying to take
care of her.
And
dealing with female superior officers was hell… Scarlett had gone around with her
hair tied back in a severe bun, worn baggy clothing, and stooped her posture in
vain attempts to avoid the hostile attentions of other females in the service
with heavier shoulderboards who were jealous of her youth and looks.
The
Vixen reckoned that the Reds were easier to fight… At least it was pure skill
against skill… no backroom politics to worry about.
Vixen
did not have the stocky build that most pilots, male or female, had. Rather,
she was rather tall and lanky, with a set of magnetic green eyes that had
perfect twenty-twenty vision. She was best described as a 'waif… only on the
tall side' as quoted by her backseater, Flight Lieutenant (jg) Howard 'Bear'
Jones. He had gotten the job of being her RIO (Radar Intercept Officer) for two
of his qualities… A fine sense for the F-14 Tomcat's electronics, and a neutral
attitude towards females in the Navy. Meaning, he didn't try to put her down or
get her into the sack… And Scarlett was infinitely grateful for that.
The
Vixen chewed on her lower lip, a habit that she unconsciously displayed when
nervous or excited. The radio crackled.
"Wait
one." There was a pause as the radio officer conferred with Rear Admiral Burke,
the overall commander of the Iowa's battlegroup. The four F-14's continued cruising
in a wide, slow figure eight pattern to economise on their fuel.
The
Iowa's flight deck was still fouled, it wouldn't do to start losing planes
before the battle due to 'flames-outs' –Navy jargon for "running out of fuel in
mid-flight". Carriers needed clean decks for flight ops… even the smallest
piece of debris could end up being sucked into an engine and bring down an
expensive plane and experienced pilot. For this reason, the fuel-carrying A-6
Corsairs were unable to take off to give the fighters a top-up of fuel via
mid-air refuelling before the upcoming battle.
Vixen
was worried… She knew that the Russians had an air force… Thankfully, it wasn't
any match for the air-power of the Allies. In her youth, she had listened to
stories of the massed MiG attacks of the Stalin War. During those dark days,
Allied airmen had an average lifespan of a few days, the Russians enjoying a
numerical advantage of ten to one. Entire columns of good men had died before
ever seeing the front-line.
Now,
the tables had turned and it was the Allies that enjoyed numerical advantage,
if only in numbers of fighter jets. However, Vixen was no fool…
With the
battlegroup crippled by the submarine attack, the Russians would be idiots to
give up the prize of the Iowa and her support vessels.
Now
two questions remained… Would the Russians hold off their air attack force and
wait for the fighters to start flaming out? Or would they come in with a full
swing and roundhouse punch… relying on brute force to shoulder past the Allied
CAP (Combat Air Patrol) and attack the crippled fleet?
Either
was not good… Vixen had no desire to end up in the freezing waters of the
Artic. She was certainly not overly enthusiastic to become a frozen Popsicle
snack for some commie-loving polar bear.
Her
RIO suddenly called out from the backseat.
"Vixen.
The Reds are going for the unsubtle approach. Jamming has increased and
distance to source is getting lower fast. These guys are definitely on
afterburner… anxious buggers eh? The commander of the jammers is smart… he is
using on-off tactics so that the Phoenixes cannot use their home-on-jamming
lockon feature."
He
was referring to the AIM-54 Phoenixes carried by the Tomcat. With their
extremely long range of over a hundred
miles, the Phoenixes were a crucial advantage for the Allies, giving them the
'first-strike' advantage that was so important in air combat. The multi-million
dollar missiles also had 'home-on-jam'… which allowed the Phoenix to lock onto
jamming planes without needing a radar lock from the Tomcat.
Problem
was that the jamming effected the radars of the Tomcats and Phoenixes, reducing
the Allied advantage. The Phoenix had a good chance of hitting with optimal
conditions. However, given the weather conditions and the on-off jamming, the
pilots might as well throw stones at the MiGs. The on-off jamming was working
very well for the Reds… The HARM air-to-ground missiles had a memory feature to
memorise the location of a ground-based radar site even if it had shut itself
down for self-preservation. Such a memory feature was useless in a Phoenix, the
targets being able to move in the time that the missile had lost the jamming
signal.
Vixen
cursed softly under her breath… This was going to be close. However, she told
herself that this was what she got for daring to be a fighter pilot instead of
a desk jockey or base-camp commando.
She smiled
grimly. It was time to kick ass and take numbers. No prizes for second place in
air-to-air combat… Only a place on the menu of a commie polar bear with an
autographed picture of Romanov over his dining table.
(Bear didn't
take offence at her frequent use of 'polar bear' jokes… But then, Bear was
Bear. Even Vixen had trouble sometimes trying to get more reactions out of his
placid exterior.)
The
radio crackled again. This time, there was no hesitation in the radio officer's
voice.
"All
flights, this is Homeplate. Proceed forward and engage at maximum range. Do
not, repeat, do not engage afterburner unless under missile attack. Flight deck
will be clear in the estimated time of fifteen minutes… Hold off Russian attack
and break away on command to clear the way for the Aegis SAM's. We will get
fuel to you asap."
"Good
luck."
The
Vixen's lips curled in a half-smile as she pointed the nose of her Tomcat
towards the incoming Reds.
"You
ain't getting me for lunch, my furry buddy."
Vixen
kept her eyes straight ahead… searching for the tell-tale pinprick of light
that could grow into the head of an enemy missile in the space of an eyeblink.
Her systems were still lost in the fog of jamming… There were at least a dozen
Russian jammers out there with the bulky jamming pods tucked underwing and
spewing out EM noise.
Bear
counted down the range. They passed eighty… seventy… sixty.
Suddenly,
Bear became animated.
"Burnthrough…
We have burnthrough." Bear was referring to the Tomcat's AWG-9 radar having
closed to a range where its signals were able to overwhelm the jamming.
"Vixen. Raid
count is fifty-plus inbounds west. Figure a dozen jammers hanging back. They
are coming in at two thousand feet… Can't be sure of plane types yet. Could be
MiG-29's though, so watch out."
Vixen
toggled the radio. "Homeplate, This is Striker One. We have burnthrough. Raid
count fifty at two thousand west. Plus dozen jammers. Request weapons free."
She reached down without taking her eyes off her front and flipped open the
master arm switch, pulling the lever down into 'Fire' mode from its previous
'Safe' position.
"Striker
One. This is Homeplate. Weapons free. Go to afterburners but watch the fuel.
Good hunting."
Vixen
kicked in the afterburners, the Tomcat surging forward to Mach 2.34 as the
AWG-9 started to lock onto individual Russian planes. Around her, the other
Tomcats were gunning their engines as well… Twenty-four F-14's against
sixty-plus aircraft.
The
odds were against them this time… However, the incoming planes were at a severe
disadvantage. When the Phoenixes started to come for them, it would be a
toss-up between dumping the anti-ship weapons that slowed them down, or holding
on to them in hopes of breaking through the F-14's to launch them at USS
Iowa and her battlegroup.
The
radar locked onto the first target. Vixen automatically switching to Phoenixes
and pulling the trigger. A white-painted missile dropped from the Tomcat,
firing its motors. Another followed the first a second later.
Around
her, smoke trails from the brilliant wakes of the AIM-54 Phoenixes lighted up
the grey sky, each one a bundle of sensitive electronics and high explosive
fitted with a remorseless robot brain, boosted by a rocket motor giving them a
velocity of around Mach 5. They screamed in for the Russians, who were now just
thirty miles out from the Tomcats and two hundred from the fleet.
The
wave of blips indicating the Phoenixes closed in on the Russians… And twenty of
the incoming wave were blotted out, terminated by the forty-eight Phoenixes.
Vixen saw the blip targeted by her first Phoenix disappear off the scope with
grim satisfaction. However, her second missile went wild, losing its target and
falling harmlessly into the sea. Twenty kills out of forty-eight launches was
bad.
"Damn
it… The Phoenixes are suffering in this sort of weather… We are shooting down
on the bastards and the winds are mucking up the sea's surface, giving the
seeker heads false targets at water-level… Some of our birds must have gone
into the drink instead." Bear commented dryly.
Vixen flicked
the weapons over to Sparrow radar-seeker missiles. The other Tomcats of
Twilight, Roland, Ukelele, Vandal and Wombat flights, each comprising of four
F-14's, doing the same thing.
"They
have a lock!" Bear hollered a moment before the alarm cut in. "Launch!
Radar-seeker! Eleven o'clock low!"
Vixen
glanced at the radar-warning display… Some Russian had gotten a lock on her
Tomcat and launched a radar-guided missile.
She
twisted the stick violently, letting the Tomcat fall over in a snap roll before
executing a series of corkscrews and
turns that confused the Russian radar-seeker head. At the same time, her left
thumb triggered off a series of chaff bundles, the aluminium-coated plastic
shreds cluttering the radar and offering the Russian missile a large number of
ghost targets.
The
rolls were punishing, Vixen straining for breath as the she fought to keep her
eyes towards the direction the missile was incoming.
There
A
streak of light… and the Russian missile was gone, carrying on into empty
space. Vixen pulled the Tomcat's nose back up to face the Russian planes. Both
sides were now about fifteen miles from each other, knife-fighting range for
fighter planes. The first black dots appeared on the bubble canopy and grew
rapidly.
A
explosion, a flare of light to the right… Roland Two was gone, a tumbling wing
falling away from the rags of what had been a Tomcat, a dirty black cloud
hanging in the sky as mute testimony to the F-14's last moments.
Vixen
kept the aiming circle over an incoming single-tailed plane… A MiG-23.
The
MiG-23 was hellishly fast, but a notoriously poor dogfighter with too wide a
turning radius. A pin-point of light flashed under the Red's wing an eyeblink
after Vixen fired off her Sparrow… She rolled away to the left, flares tumbling
out the back of the Tomcat as the Russian's missile screamed past.
The
Red wasn't so lucky… Vixen got an upside-down eyeful of the MiG-23 exploding in
an orange fireball, the two unarmed 550 pound AS-14 anti-ship missiles falling
away from the incandescent pieces of the one-man fighter.
She
turned hard right as another Russian tried his luck… 30mm cannon fire streaked
by the rolling F-14. She fell under the twin-tailed MiG-29, went vertical and
fired a snap-shot Sidewinder. The AIM-9L missed, but the Russian was spooked
enough to pull up too hard.
He
hung there for a moment, twin engines struggling to pour out the power for a
split second as the plane slid sideways with the pilot trying to pull its nose
up too abruptly.
That
was all the time Striker Two needed to unleash a Sidewinder from six miles out…
The blue-painted missile blew the Russian asunder in a deafening explosion that
Vixen heard over the roar of her own engines.
Twin-engined
planes, larger than fighters, charged past at low level towards the east. Vixen
saw the missiles hung under the wings and rolled her fighter in pursuit of the
Badgers. She counted at least thirty of them, each one armed with a couple of
massive 2600-pound Kerry antiship missiles.
"MiG
on our six!" Bear snapped as Vixen was going full-bore for the bombers.
A
MiG-29 riding shepherd on the three bombers appeared to materialise out of
nowhere behind them… it launched two missiles, both of them heat-seekers
tracking on the hot afterburner exhaust of Striker One and Two.
Vixen never had
the time to warn Striker Two, evading the heat-seeker meant for her as another
lethal smoke trail crossed from the smaller Russian plane to the American in
less than two seconds. Striker Two disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame.
The shattered remains dropped like a stone, disintegrating as it tumbled,
chopped to pieces by the shrapnel.
The MiG-29
rolled under Vixen and went for Wombat Four as the latter was manuevering into
position for a shot at the Badgers, loosing a snaking stream of 30mm tracer
rounds. The metal skin of the American jet peeled away in flashes of smoke and
light as the heavy rounds chopped into the fuselage and twin tails… The F-14
heeled over sharply and fell away, one engine sputtering out and the other
venting smoke like a chimney. The plane
shuddered as the pilot fought for control, his RIO slumped in his seat with the
back of his head sprayed over the shattered cockpit glass.
Vixen
fired off a Sidewinder, but the heat-seeker was confused by the burning wing of
a crippled Badger, swerving from the MiG to cleave the big bomber in two… The
halves exploded, hurling wreckage through the air as the Red fighter pilot
evaded and dove for the deck, Vixen's Tomcat hot on his heels.
Vixen took one
last look at the retreating bombers as they streaked away from her at full
military power… The surviving bombers are now headed into SAM country, an area
a hundred miles in radius around the Iowa and her escorts… Any plane,
friendly or not, risked being hit by friendly Surface-to-Air Missiles. A quick glance at her fuel supply as she
chased the MiG-29… This was going to be a tight one.
She had no doubt
now that the MiG pilot was an ace, a top pilot of the Russians.
And that was why
she wanted him dead.
"Fuel status,
Bear." She called as the Tomcat dove after the MiG, grey rain clouds scudding
past the canopy. The F-14, large and stable firing platform that it was, was
taking the hammering from the rain and weather well… However, the electronics
were being downgraded…. Vixen could not get a solid lock on the MiG with her
remaining Sparrow missile.
"We passed bingo
fuel two minutes ago." Bear reported calmly. Vixen bit her lip… Bingo fuel was
the point of no return. Anymore than that meant that the fighter would
flame-out before reaching the carrier… Now she was depending on the A-6's
getting to her with fuel before she ran out and had to ditch.
It also meant
another thing… Turning back now served no purpose. The aggressive spirit in her
demanded to take out the Red MiG. Let caution take a ride in the wind… That
Commie was going down.
The MiG was
still ahead of her, but presently it started to pull up as the pilot detected
Vixen coming for him. The turbulence must have been rocking his plane like a
amusement park ride, but the pilot used the weather to help his plane with the
jinks, letting the MiG ride the winds as it began to turn away to the right for
an attempt to circle vertically around Vixen's diving Tomcat.
Vixen was
reminded again of the pilot's skill as he pulled up, using the raw power of the
twin Tumansky R-33D turbines with their eighteen thousand pounds of thrust to
hurl the fighter into a Mach 2.8 vertical climb.
The next
instant, the fighter had cut its engines and pulled its nose up in a 'Cobra'
manuever… Vixen's Tomcat charged past as she snapped her fighter right in a
hard roll, the G-forces slamming her into the seat with sufficient force to
knock all the breath out of her.
The MiG-29,
hanging in mid-air with its nose pointed up , now tipped over and locked its
radar onto Vixen's plane.
An Alamo
air-to-air missile screamed for her blood.
Vixen flipped
her plane and pulled to the right, the combined manuever putting her into a
side-slip and raising her nose to point more or less towards the Russian
fighter as it thundered down after its missile.
A flash and a
tremendous concussion. Vixen felt consciousness slip away for a moment as the
Alamo detonated scant meters behind the Tomcat. A loud exclaimation from Bear…
Vixen was too stunned to wonder what it was as the Tomcat began to spin.
Her mind cleared
in a hurry as she forced the falling Tomcat into a nose-up position. Already,
she knew that the F-14 had been struck a mortal blow… The sounds of the engines
were all wrong.
30mm fire laced
the sky… The MiG was now diving vertically, its tracers streaking past the
Tomcat as the latter began to fall over on its back in a death-dive. It was
coming on fast… aiming to finish off the falling F-14 together with its crew.
The twin-tails
of the MiG filled her crosshairs… And Vixen let rip a volley of M61 Vulcan 20
mm cannon fury.
Smoke and flames
as the MiG was hit, the plane appearing to spasm with the strikes, the flashes
of the cockpit canopy catching the light as they fragmented from 20mm hits…
then the sky was abruptly replaced by the roiling sea as the F-14 fell
gracelessly onto its back.
Vixen snapped
the dying bird over onto its belly… It responded, but immediately began to roll
again as the winds pulled at it. The smell of jet fuel suddenly brought the
cold realisation that she could be dead in a single hellish moment should the
plane explode.
"Eject! Eject!"
Vixen screamed into the intercom. She couldn't hear the reply over the
screaming of the wind (the engines had fallen silent). However, a sudden roar
and a blast of freezingly cold wind told her of Bear's ejection.
Vixen tore the
radio and oxygen leads from her mask, reaching her hands over the back of the
seat and grasping the ejection handlebars. She yanked them a moment later.
A powerful "Blaamm"
as the ejection rockets fired, and she was kicked from the dying Tomcat.
"Ejecting!"
The Badgers
closed in on the fleet… At eighty miles, the twenty-two surviving bombers
released a flock of 42 Kerry missiles. One unlucky Badger suffered a
malfunction in one of its antiship missiles, the latter damaged by 30mm
cannonfire… The resultant explosion blew the bomber and its luckless crew into
a mix of body parts and flaming metallic rags.
The remaining
six MiG-23's continued towards the fleet at full-afterburner… Their AS-14's had
a range of only ten miles.
"Vampire!
Vampire!" The call went out on the three Aegis cruisers, USS Archer, USS
Samson and USS Bunker Hill. The SAM launchers trained out to the
west, and the first SM-2 SAM's howled aloft.
Missile met
missile in head-on explosions of molten white and orange… The incoming vampires
dropped as SM-2's, guided by the three Aegis cruisers computers, took out
Kerry's in intercepts with closing speeds of over Mach 6. Five of the six
MiG-23's were blasted out of the skies… along with two Tomcats of Twilight
flight, killed by friendly SAM's.
Eleven missiles
broke throught the SAM cloud as the fleet fell back to its final defense
systems. 20mm Phalanx Close-In-Weapon-Systems (CIWS), called R2D2's because of
their shape, loosed off a literal rain of depleted-uranium head rounds from
their six-barrelled cannon, punching five missiles out of the sky in thundering
explosions that were visible to the crewmen diving to cover on Iowa's
exposed flight deck.
Two of the
remaining six lost themselves in chaff clouds… One slammed into the sea without
exploding, the other losing its original target before regaining its lock and
going into a terminal dive.
Two missiles
found the USS Archer… A total of 5,200 pounds of missile and high
explosive blasting the Aegis cruiser six feet out of the water in twin thundering
outlashings of raw power. A savage series of secondary explosions ripped the
length of the shattered ship, leaving behind a blazing husk of dead seamen and
warped metal sinking into the roiling water.
The remaining
three missiles were collected by Iowa… The first exploding twenty meters
over the flight deck in a lethal ball of pure-white fire and slicing
shrapnel. On the bridge, Rear Admiral
Burke brought his hands up instinctively as the plate glass windscreen blew
inwards, a fragment the size of a small coin tearing away his larynx. Half of
the flight deck personnel died instantly, the concussion literally compressing
their brains into mush and crushing their ribcages as flat as a soda can under
a sumo wrestler. The other half were wiped out a moment later when a second
Kerry penetrated the inferno that was once a flight deck and blew up on the
third deck.
The front half
of the flight deck folded up like a can of sardines, 4 inch thick steel melted
and warped by the sheer power of the Russian warhead. The inside of the ship
was gutted by the shrapnel, people actually falling apart in an eyeblink as the
hail of white-hot fragments cut through metal, flesh and bone. The fireball
rushed through the mangled entrails of the Iowa, consuming what the
shrapnel had sliced to ribbons.
The final Kerry
went off five feet from the carrier's island, the massive structure that sat
off-center on US carriers… A few crewmen actually saw the building-like
superstructure crumple, the sheer force of the blast wrenching the island from
the deck and hurling it into the sea reduced to a third of its former size. A
massive chunk of the carrier's side plating went with it, exposing the
carrier's innards to the hungry sea.
The USS Iowa
shook with secondary explosions as she began to list…
Two-thirds of
her crew never got off before she went down to join the shattered hulk of the USS
Archer. Over five thousand Americans died.
Voices…
Vixen came to
with a violent heave. She was dead…
No, she was
alive… But it was cold, mind numbingly cold. She shuddered, and nearly screamed
as the movement triggered off a paralysing starburst of pain from her neck.
For a single
moment of cold dread, she thought that she had broken her spine… Maybe it was
better to release the clasps on her life-vest and allow herself to slip into
the depths of the water rather than spend the rest of her life as a cripple.
But then, there
was someone in the water with her. She felt her head being moved into position
and gave another pain-filled cry. Something clicked around her neck… Her mind
didn't seem to be working properly… The water, the water… It was warm… Yet why
was she shivering?
She felt
consciousness rush back… Now she was in something noisy. She tried to roll
over, but couldn't… So that was how dead was like… held down in a noisy place
that smelled like jet fuel and the sea.
It took her
sometime before Vixen was coherent enough to realise that she wasn't dead
afterall… And there was an aircrewman… (No, an aircrew-woman!) looking at her
and talking to her.
"How, what…" She
began, her mouth feeling like it was full of cotton.
Five minutes
later, she knew it all.
Flight
Lieutenant Catherine "Vixen" Scarlett wept silently… For the people of the USS
Iowa and USS Archer, for the fallen pilots and RIO's of the Tomcats…
And for the man
who lay beside her… silent and still in a zippered bag of navy-blue. A final
hibernation from which one never awoke.
Vixen hand
clenched… Another name, another face…
Lost in the
insanity of war.
