AN: Again, Matt Wiser wrote the excellent interlude. I want to thank everyone for their reviews and questions. I am doing the best I can right now and considering this is the first time I've WRITTEN air combat scenes, I am hoping I am doing well. Hope you enjoy, this chapter is something for a placeholder as things are going to get a lot worse...just more quickly now.
8 miles SSE of RAF Scampton
F-111 s/n 72-1447
1420 ZULU/1420 Local
Tuesday, July 23rd, 1985
"Jane, tell me we lost him" Daria implored as she kept an eye on the terrain zipping by the aircraft. The TFR was set to HARD and usually, the auto-pilot came through, but occasionally…terrain and aircraft did intersect, painfully.
"Dunno, TWR doesn't have him, but I bet the limey sonofabitch is back there." Jane intoned, then she glanced at the air speed indicator
"Watch the speed boss, we're gonna "boom" a village or two down there." Jane was referring to the fact that going supersonic so low over the peacetime uK was frowned upon by the locals. An F-111 at 300-500 feet going supersonic could break a lot of windows.
"I know, but this asshole's running me out of options." Daria exclaimed. "We at the IP yet?"
"Coming up on it…NOW!"
"Awesome, let's pull our checklists for Bomb Run (Conventional) and..." Daria said, when a horrible sound crackled in their ears on the GUARD frequency.
"TAKA TAKA TAKA. I am sorry ladies, but you are some dead sepos." the voice said.
"SHIT!" Daria exclaimed, she turned apologetically "Sorry Jane, we lost"
"Least it wasn't for real" Jane shrugged "We'll do better next time".
"Thunder Lead, this Tuna 2, nice work. How did you get us? We didn't pick you up on the threat receiver?"
"Lots of gritted teeth and damn near Mach 1 at low-level, I turned the radar off and went for a guns shot. God you bloody 'Vark drivers are fast! Hope the Fencer troops don't fly as well as you."
"Well, you got us, so you should be able to get them." Dara said, a resigned tone in her voice.
"Yes, but I suspect others of your flight got past us, coming up alongside you from your 6 o clock left."
Daria craned her neck around, and fought to see the old F-4M come ease up alongside the F-111, waggling it's wings.
"If you'll look to your left, dear madam?" Thunder Lead intoned.
There was a hand written sign on a pilot's kneeboard from the backseater. It was held up against the pilot's glass. Daria had to reach for her binoculars to read it. It said simply "NEXT TIME YOU LADIES GRACE CONNINGSBY, YOU'RE BUYING THE BITTER!" It also had a string of numbers that could only be a phone number.
Daria turned a shade of red that could be noticed even under her helmet and mask, with her visor being up. She turned to Jane as her peals of laughter could be heard through the intercom system.
"Jesus Daria, we're supposed to be working, not keeping up relations" as Jane said, struggling with her laughter.
"Hey, he hit on me!" Daria exclaimed "He's better about it than Mr. Soesterberg, god what a creep!"
Nicely done, Daria, cover the fact you just might like the moron, ok, he is an F-15 driver with an ego the size of Texas and…
"..anyhow Tuna 2, we're at bingo and it's time for us to head back to Conningsby, thanks for the lovely chase."
"Roger that Thunder Lead, hope we made a good tackling dummy" Daria said dryly.
"Eh Tuna 2? Ah, yes, American Football reference. Really, ours is so much more civilized."
"Really, riots and all? Nah, not much of a sports gal, Thunder Lead." Daria said with a giggle.
"That's the Yobs, and I suspect many of them are going to be learning a little discipline soon. They signed Queen's Order 2 last night. As I said though, we should be off, good flight back to Lakenheath."
With that, the Phantom tipped over on its wing, broke away sharply and rejoined its fellow, who holding off at a distance.
Daria turned to Jane, who was still giggling "Gee Daria, you have a way with fighter jocks, mind telling me your secret?"
"Screw you, gimme a heading back to Lakenheath, and what happened to callsigns in the air?"
"Sorry Butch," intoned Jane "So, shall it be direct or the scenic route?"
"Let's go scenic, we can practice a low level pass over Bentwaters and scare the shit out of those A-10 pukes They're practically committing incest with the Army anyhow, Sundance."
Jane smiled at the last idea "See, Butch, a little schadenfreude and you are right as rain."
Daria smiled at that last thought. "You think?"
"I know my best friend, Butch, and we are bad motherfucking fighter pilots, losing gracefully is not part of the program! Now, since we have a while before we have to check in with the ADIZ, what shall it be Butch? Journey or AC/DC? I am feeling a little Steve Perry myself."
"Sundance, give us a little Journey for our journey if you would?"
"On it, bosslady!" Jane said with a flourish as she produced a tape cassette from the arm pocker of her flight suit and popped it into a tape deck crudely velcroed to the top of the instrument panel next to the TWR. She popped in the tape, pressed play, and the song Don't Stop Believin kicked in, filling the cabin with the kind of tempo that helped Daria get into the rhythm of putting the aircraft through her paces as they made a turn towards the North Sea.
45 minutes later
As Daria and Jane neared the coast, they killed the music and Daria dropped the aircraft down to 1500 feet, the F-111's wings in full sweep and her two turbofans glowing like twin blue orbs against the afternoon sky.
"Damn" Jane mused, "the mix tape was just getting to Highway to Hell!"
"Wanna get another speech about how the plane "belongs to the taxpayers", Sundance?"
"Not really, but I get you, Butch. By the way, your temper is up? Wanna talk about it?" Jane intoned
"Just pissed I got us whacked." Daria said ruefully.
"Hey, those Russians don't fly as well as the Brits do, comeon! You'll do better in the real thing. You always flubbed the practice SATs and then what happned, chica? You got an even 1650!"
"Guess you're right, just worried."
"And I appreciate it, Butch, but now's the time to fly casual, apply lessons learned and think on what we did wrong, and what we did right, ok? Anyhow, I'd like to cap this off by scaring those proto-Army guys at Bentwaters? Think we can do that. jefe?"
Daria nodded "Bentwaters Tower, this is Tuna 2, we're an F-111 from Lakenheath, requesting permission for a low level pass of the base from east to west, over."
The reply was short in coming
"Tuna 2, Bentwaters Tower, negative on your permission, climb to 3000 feet and continue on to Lakenheath at heading 250. Our pattern is full, over."
Daria tuned to Jane "This is new, Sundance."
"No shit. Wonder what's up."
"Damned if I know, let's do as the tower says, I really don't wanna piss off the tower today, Sundance."
"Got it, I'll watch for traffic."
"Thanks."
The sky was clear with barely a cloud in it up to ten thousand, so watching for traffic was easy, the troubling part was, is that there was so much of it. Even a base like Bentwaters shouldn't have been that busy…
It was then Daria noticed something. She dove for the binoculars and trained them on the base. Where are all the A-10s? There's supposed to be A-10s here. And what are those F-4s doing on the ramp? Wait. did they send the A-10s on to Germany? Are things getting that bad?
'Butch, we got traffic at our 4 O'Clock low, coming up fast, looks small, wait, it's a pair of F-5s, shit, it's the aggressor guys, probably up to hassle us."
"Fuck, another bunch of fighter pilots giving us grief today?" Daria intoned.\
"Looks like it Butch."
The two shapes resolved themselves into a pair of sleek, shark nosed F-5 Freedom Fighter IIs in Soviet style camouflage and "bort" numbers along the sides of the nose. These were aircraft from the 527th Tactical Fighter Training and Aggressor Squadron. Daria and Jane had had run ins with them before. They flew like Soviet and Warsaw Pact pilots and the F-5s simulated the MiG-21 quite well. Daria and Jane had been "killed" by them, a lot. It was a fate many an AF pilot had shared. In deflating egos amongst the rest of the Air Force, they had built theirs up.
But something was wrong with the F-5s as they pulled alongside. Daria couldn't place it at first, something just didn't seem right…but then it hit her like a damn thunderbolt from the heavens. It was the Sidewinders on the wingtip rails. Most of the time, the F-5s carried captive blue tipped exercise rounds on one tip, and a ACMI (Air Combat Maneuvering Instrumentation Pod) on the other, but this time, both tips had live, white tipped Sidewinders.
"Daria, are those live AIM-9s?"
"Hell yes!"
"Things are getting real, aren't they?"
"Damn straight."
As soon as the F-5s got a good look at the F-111, they both broke smartly away, lit their burners and dove back down to the deck.
"Guess they wanted to make sure we weren't Russians?"
"I hate to think what would have happened if we were, Sundance, I really do. Let's get the fuck out of here, gimme a steer for Lakenheath."
"I will, Butch, but let's fly casual along the heading they gave us, if the Aggressors are toting live warshots? No telling who else might be tight on the trigger around here."
Daria nodded, and both of them said little about it, or anything else beyond the minimum required the rest of the flight back to Lakenheath. It was as if both were lost in their own thoughts, and fears of the coming storm that now seemed to be becoming more inevitable by the day.
INTERLUDE 3
The White House, Washington, D.C.
1005 Hours EDT/1505 Hours GMT
Tuesday, July 23rd, 1985
President Reagan was in the Situation Room, meeting with the Vice Peresident and his National Security Advisers. Besides VP George Bush, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and Admiral Poindexter, the National Security Advisor, Gen. John Vessey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA Director William Casey, Secretary of State George Schultz, and the National Security Council's top Soviet expert, Dr. Condelezza Rice, were all at the Cabinet table. They were going over developments in Europe, and the likely response.
"So far, Mr. President, Admiral Crowe at CINCSOUTH in Naples is reporting that the Soviets in Yugoslavia have halted-for the time being at least, in both Slovenia and in Croatia." General Vessey was telling the President. "However, there have been some air clashes, and we've lost a couple of Marine Phantoms. But, we've also destroyed several Soviet aircraft."
"And we've told the Soviets not to get within a certain distance of our forces, correct?" Asked the President.
"Yes, sir." General Vessey replied. "So far, their ground forces are doing that."
The President turned to his Secretary of State. "George, anything out of Dobrynin?" Anatoly Dobrynin was the longtime Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., and knew America probably better than anyone in the Soviet Foreign Ministry.
"No, Mr. President,. Not a word. My people say that the Soviet leadership may be keeping him in the dark deliberately."
"They don't trust him. He's 'gone native', in other words?" Dr. Rice asked.
"That's what my people tell me," Schultz replied.
The President sighed. "All right. I've sent that letter to Cherenenko, offering to meet with him anywhere, anytime, to settle this without any further bloodshed. Mutual withdrawal from Yugoslavia, under UN supervision, a referendum in each of the three breakaway states in Yugoslavia to confirm their desire for independence, all of it. If I don't hear from him by noon, I'll make it public."
Everyone understood the need to show the world that the U.S wasn't pushing the Soviets into a war; and that Reagan was willing to go the extra mile to seek a negotiated settlement. Whether or not the Russians would see that was another question.
Dr. Rice spoke up. "Sir, they'll read the letter. And they'll ignore it."
Heads turned to her. "What makes you say that?" Weinberger asked.
"Mr. Secretary, we're dealing with a Politburo that has an average age of 66. If what the British are saying after Gordievsky's defection is true-and there's no reason to doubt that, we've got a major problem."
"Could you explain further?" CIA Director Casey asked. He had gotten the MI-6 debrief of Gordievsky, and he'd nearly turned pale reading it.
"Of course. The Soviet leadership, apart from a few Candidate-or nonvoting-Members of the Politburo, is not just aging, but paranoid. That Able Archer exercise in 1983 scared them:they honestly believed that it was a cover for a real attack. Despite what their own intelligence sources-whether KGB, GRU, or Stasi-told them. They're living in the world of 1941, not 1985, and are convinced that the West plans to attack them at the earliest opportunity." Dr. Rice said.
"They're that paranoid?" Vice-President George Bush asked. A former Director of the CIA, he knew the intelligence business.
"They are. None of the Politburo members-other than Foreign Minister Gromyko-have been to the West, though a few of the Candidate members have, but they have no influence on policy. And since 1941, the Soviets have vowed never again to be caught napping by a surprise attack."
Digesting this, the President nodded. He turned to Director Casey. "Anything to add?"
"Mr. President, we can confirm a few things, though I do agree with Dr. Rice's assessment," Casey replied. First, the Soviets have not discharged their time-expired soldiers, either from Eastern Europe, or in the Western Military Districts. They've called up their new draftees, who normally would be coming into service anyway. Second, we're getting signs via overheads of movement of trains and rolling stock to the Baltics, Beylorussia, and the Ukraine."
"Right to Soviet Army garrisons, Bill?" Poindexter asked.
"That's correct, Admiral. They're getting ready to move large numbers of troops west." Casey responded.
"Didn't they just run a major exercise?" Secretary Schultz asked.
"Yes, Mr. Secretary, they did. And they even called up some reservists for that. But those men haven't been discharged, either. And there's also activity at key Soviet naval bases on the Kola Peninsula, as well as the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific. They're getting ready to surge subs into the sea lanes."
"Any signs of a Soviet strategic forces alert?" The President asked.
"No, sir. They do seem to be going out of their way to avoid that: their missile subs at sea are in their normal patrol patterns, and none of their SS-20s have moved out of their garrisons. Also, no unusual activity has been observed at their ICBM fields, nor their strategic bombers. There is a lot of activity at their theater bomber bases-the Badgers, Blinders, and Backfires, but none of the Bears assigned to intercontinental missions have been active, apart from routine training." Casey reported.
The President digested everything he'd heard. "Recommendations?"
"Mr. President," General Vessey said. "General Rogers at SHAPE has formally asked for REFORGER. If we're going to hold them conventionally, we need III Corps and the reinforcements for V and VII Corps."
"Approved," Reagan said at once. "You can call up the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, and start getting those convoys organized."
Vessey let out a invisible sigh of relief. "Yes, Mr. President."
"Mr. President," Weinberger added, "some units tagged for REFORGER are National Guard-"
"Cut the orders Federalizing them," Reagan directed. "I can call up to 100,000 without Congressional approval. That goes for any Air National Guard as well."
Secretary Weinberger nodded. "That includes evacuation of military dependents, and nonessential civilian DOD employees from Europe, you do realize?."
"Who comes out first?"
"Mr. President, the dependents in Germany and the Low Countries. That includes West Berlin. In fact, we'd better get them out first, in case the Soviets decide to seal off the air corridors." Weinberger paused, then went on, "Phase II is Britain, Iceland, Italy, Greece, and Spain."
"I'd like to include nonessential Embassy and Consulate staff, and all Foreign Service dependents as well," Secretary Schultz added.
"Granted," the President said at once. "And get as many Americans out of Europe as you can; expatriates, tourists, whatever. And what's in the first wave of REFORGER?"
"Yes, sir, on the evacuation. Now, the first group for REFORGER will be the 2nd Armored from III Corps along with Corps HQ, the 4th ID for V Corps, and the 1st Infantry, the Big Red One, for VII Corps. Then the rest of III Corps follows." Weinberger said. "That's 1st Cav, 5th ID, and 3rd ACR, along with Corps aviation, artillery, etc."
"Very well, and the Air Force as well?" Seeing Weinberger and Vessey nod, Reagan asked, "Anything else?"
"There's one other thing, Mr. President. Do you with to increase the DEFCON level?" Weinberger asked.
"Not now. I don't want to be seen as pushing the Soviets into a war. If they do something, then we'll do just that. Keep everyone at DEFCON 4.."
Neither Weinberger or Vessey liked that, but they knew the President had a point. "Yes, Mr. President."
