With the majority of the people that I know, if they were in the wrong they'd double down on their mistakes and escalate. I thought after shooting down that Flanker that all hell would break loose. So imagine my relief when the Yuktobanians withdrew from our side of the ocean and returned to port.
The situation's very hush-hush, though. We've got a media blackout regarding everything that's happened. Can't say that I blame them, not wanting panic to spread and all.
Squadron exercise coming up. Unluckily for me - or luckily depending on which way you look at it - I've got a leave block encompassing that timeframe. I'll be in Angel Province visiting my mother. She's been wanting to see me for a while now.
September 23, 2010
Sand Island Air Force Base
Kitagawa watched from the Wardog crew room as the fighters on the flight line left their hangars for the runway. Wolf was sitting down at the back corner of the room on his phone.
"You know, we could have formed a crew between the two of us." Wolf mentioned from the back.
"Mmm. But that'd take a fair bit of paperwork for what's just an exercise. Do you want to go through all that effort for one flight?" Kitagawa justified going against that approach.
"I take your point." Wolf conceded.
"I'm sure as shit not complaining. I wanna hear stories of that journalist fella turning green." Ghost joked. The trio heartily laughed.
Sitting in the cockpit of Heartbreak One, Bartlett wasn't worried about his irregular passenger. This wasn't Albert Genette's first rodeo. In a previous career, the freelance journalist had been a member of the Osean Maritime Defense Force. An F-14 Tomcat pilot, a breed that was now extinct with the retirement of the Tomcat last year.
"So, how does it feel to be back in the seat?" Bartlett asked his squid passenger as they taxied.
"Weird, almost. Never thought I'd be getting back in for any reason." Genette replied.
Bartlett grinned. "Never really leaves you, does it?"
"It does not!" Genette seemed to agree.
With the majority of Wardog Squadron - minus two aircraft - in tow behind him, Bartlett brought the squadron to the runway. Including him, ten aircraft. Bartlett waited for the rest of the squadron to get in formation on the runway before slamming the throttle forward and zoomimg off. The current serving pilot and the retired pilot were both forced back into their seats. Genette had his camera looking out the left side of the aircraft towards the base facilities.
"This place used to be massive!" Genette exclaimed as they touched off.
"Wardog, push 310 for one hundred." Bartlett gave a navigation order. "Climb to Angels 5, maintain five hundred knots. Yeah, the drawdown after '95 got almost everybody deactivated and pulled back to the mainland."
"That's crazy. So much infrastructure just left behind?" Genette almost couldn't believe it.
"I wish I could say I'm joking when I say that more than half the base is on the verge of collapse. We don't have the personnel to maintain everything." Bartlett almost sounded sad.
Off to Bartlett's starboard quarter, Nagase was keeping pace with the flight lead. She was taking Blaze's place for this flight while she was on leave. Captain Svenson was in Chopper's spot. The sun was out in full force, but there were plenty of small cloud formations and squalls below them. Captain Lamster - Lammy as literally everybody called him - was in Nagase's back seat. Nagase looked down at her kneeboard.
WARDOG 1 / HEARTBREAK ONE, GENETTE / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / EDGE, LAMMY / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / SVENSON, HAZARD / F-15E
WARDOG 4 / BAKER, CHEF / F-15E
WARDOG 5 / JIVE, LIZARD / F-15E
WARDOG 6 / CAVALIER, APACHE / F-15E
WARDOG 7 / AERO, RIPPER / F-15E
WARDOG 8 / BARNEY, HIGHLANDER / F-15E
WARDOG 9 / BETTY, CATZ / F-15E
WARDOG 10 / MUSTANG, BIRD / F-15E
If Vampire Squadron had been airborne, it would have been the single largest deployment of aircraft from Sand Island in almost a decade. Unfortunately it was just Wardog at full strength today, minus a few WSOs.
"Radar live, weapons ready. I'd say we're good for the shoot." Lammy reported from the back seat. While it wasn't unheard of for the higher-ranking officer to be the WSO, it certainly wasn't commonplace.
"Heard." Nagase registered Lammy's report. "With any luck we'll hit something."
"Trust in the AMRAAM, Edge." Lammy sounded like he was tapping something. "Heh. That must be a misreading."
"What's it?" Nagase asked. Lammy could be talking about damn near anything.
"A large cluster of objects almost three hundred klicks out. The ionosphere's probably being fucky. Lotta solar activity lately." Lammy answered.
Kei shrugged. "Birds."
Down in the operations command and control centre underneath the air traffic control tower, men and women were keeping tabs on the airspace surrounding the base. Sand Island had three layers of sensor coverage it could rely on.
First was the variety of satellites that Osea used to keep tabs on anything that could be occurring over the other side of the pond. While the satellite network couldn't give precise guidance on smaller targets, it could tip off the island's defenders to an incoming major attack wave. Bomber groups, warships, the like.
Second was the array of mechanically-scanning radars that were maintained on Sand Island that provided more local, precision tracking for individual aircraft and smaller groups transiting through the region. Most of the time these radars interrogated airlines for their transponders. Sometimes they picked up Yuktobanian aircraft and surface vessels trying to be cheeky and sneak up to Osean territory.
Last were the tracking and fire-control radars used by the MIM-104 Patriot SAM batteries stationed on Sand Island. If anything got past the CAP barrier in a wartime scenario, the Patriots were the last line of defense against incoming cruise missiles and aircraft.
This morning, Airman First Class William Reyteur was the senior airman in the control centre manning one of the many radar consoles. His display showed a thick orange line rotating around a green circle on the screen. Bearing indications were displayed on the outside of the radar's scanning radius. Some distance to the south-west of the base were ten aircraft sending back IFF codes and their relevant identification. HRTBRK 1, EDGE, SVENSON, BAKER, so on. Wardog Squadron. An airliner, its transponder identifying it with the code VIX147, was travelling from overseas to Osea moving west to east.
As the radar dish made its rotations, a new contact was registered far out to the west, over the ocean. No transponder signal and not squawking a valid IFF code.
"The fuck…?" Reyteur muttered. He glanced at the return information. 270 relative to the base, three hundred kilometres away and closing fast. The single contact was soon joined by one more. Then two more. Five more. Eight unidentified contacts, all in a diamond formation. "Hey LT?"
"Yeah?" The officer in the room that morning, a silver-bar first lieutenant, approached Reyteur's console.
"I've got a group of eight aircraft west of the base and approaching fast. Range three hundred." Reyteurs explained. "No transponders, no IFF."
The lieutenant seemed to think for a moment. "Keep an eye on them."
"Yes sir." Reyteurs stayed glued to his console.
"Edge, fox 3!" Nagase called as she fired an AMRAAM at the target locked on her radar. A target drone that was part of their exercise. The AIM-120C-7 detached from the pylon and lofted itself up, looking to gain some extra distance by throwing itself through thinner air up high.
"Barney, fox 3!"
"Baker, fox 3 out."
Other members of Wardog were launching air-to-air missiles at other drones in the target area. As the AMRAAMs hit their targets, the drones started disappearing from the sensor network. After a volley of missiles, the range was clear. All QF-16 Zombie Vipers that were airborne had been destroyed.
"Yup, they work." Bartlett remarked regarding the performance of their AIM-120s.
"The missiles?" Genette wasn't a hundred percent on what Bartlett was referring to.
"Yeah. This new block of AMRAAMs, the Charlie Sevens? Killer." Bartlett was very happy talking about the accuracy of the newest version of the AMRAAM that had been rolled out to full operational capability earlier this year.
"You people still in the air are lucky. We still had the Phoenix up to 2008!" Genette remarked on his experience with an older generation of air-to-air weapon.
"Tomcats never got fitted with AMRAAMs?" For once, Bartlett was surprised by something.
"There were prototypes for it, but they never made it to the fleet. Sidewinders, Sparrows and Phoenixes only." Genette recalled the air-to-air ordnance an F-14 could carry.
"Aah. Wait one." Bartlett issued a hold order. He sounded annoyed. "Give me a break, I'm babysitting nuggets up here!"
"Command room to Wardog Squadron, we have leakers, aircraft type unknown, crossing the border at Cape Landers bearing 200. Major Bartlett, you're the only group close enough to make the intercept." An emergency call came in over the radio from the control room back on Sand Island.
"Got an altitude for me? I can't see jack." Bartlett requested a target altitude.
Silence. "Angel 8."
"Roger, we'll check it out." Bartlett switched the radio to his nuggets. "Change of plan, we've got leakers to our south-west. Baker, Svenson, go trail and stay close. The three of us will get eyes on. All other aircraft stay low and out of the fight."
"Ack. Baker coming around on your left." Captain Baker acknowledged the order and formed up on Bartlett's port quarter. Captain Svenson mirrored the formation by taking the starboard quarter. The trio pitched up and climbed from Angels 5 to Angels 8. Genette faced his camera out to the right side of the aircraft, capturing Svenson's F-15E as he kept pace with the leader.
Nagase, as Wardog 2, was suddenly leading the part of the squadron that was staying low. Luckily, she had a captain in her back seat to direct things.
"Red Flight, form a diamond. Let's watch Mister Heartbreak yell at some Yukes." Lammy gave formation orders to the squadron.
"I thought last month was the end of it…" Kei was suspicious of something she couldn't put her finger to.
"You never know with international affairs. Carry on." Lammy dismissed Nagase's tone of suspicion. She continued to sit on that feeling while they made transit from the target range to the unknown aircraft. Nagase referenced the radar screen. Eight contacts moving towards Sand Island. At their current pace the two groups would meet somewhere in the middle.
"-Baker, Svenson, go trail and stay close. The three of us will get eyes on."
Kitagawa and Wolf glanced at each other.
"Wonder who that could be." Kitagawa said with all the tone of sarcasm in the world.
"No idea." Wolf replied with equal sarcasm. He retreated to the locker rooms and came out with his gear in hand. "But I don't like the fact that they're here."
Genette might have been a retired pilot, but even as a civilian with camera equipment in the cockpit it was in his blood to be looking around every section of sky for contact. The F-15E's radar equipment was foreign to him, so he didn't even bother looking at any of the screens.
"Twenty klicks ahead… should be able to see their trails by now." Bartlett said mostly to himself. He couldn't see anything off his nose, which was where the bogeys were supposed to be. Genette leant out, camera in hand, so he could see over Bartlett's seat.
"Nothing. Maybe it's not humid enough to be drawing them?" Genette suggested.
"It's the Pacific, it's always fucking humid." Bartlett muttered. "Just a question of where the bloody hell are they in the sky."
Genette looked forward and panned out to the right, which was when something in the lower halves of his peripheral vision caught Genette's attention. He looked down. Contrails, clear as day. A good two or three thousand feet below them.
"Are… are those fighters below us?" Genette pointed out.
Almost directly below Bartlett's flight, Nagase was tracking the trio of Strike Eagles gliding along overhead. The rest of the flight was forming a diagonal line off to Nagase's right. What confused her was the lack of any vapour trails ahead of Bartlett's flight that would have quite visibly pointed out the presence of other aircraft.
"Lammy, do you see them?" Nagase called to her WSO, seeing if the captain could see anything.
"Nothing. Heartbreak's at the right height- wait a minute." Lammy cut himself off. Something had caught his attention. Nagase stopped staring at Bartlett, Svenson and Baker for long enough to look forward. She saw a white cloud trail. At first she mistook it for a cloud. No, clouds weren't that narrow. Or that small. Or get larger rapidly.
Wait a fucking sec-
A missile shot past Nagase's canopy. Luckily for her and Lammy, the missile hadn't been pitbulling towards them. Unfortunately for Jive, the aircraft directly to Nagase's starboard quarter, that missile had been aimed at them. Wardog 5 caught a missile directly to the canopy, killing Jive and his WSO instantly and shredding their Mudhen into pieces. Nagase pulled left out of instinct to get away from the wreckage.
"What?!" Nagase was taken completely by surprise. "We're under fire!"
"-We're under fire!" A panicked voice shot out over the radio back at home. Kitagawa and Wolf glanced at each other for a split second.
"You're flying." Wolf decreed before dashing off, helmet in hand. Kitagawa was right behind him.
"Flares!" Nagase yelled, spotting a smoke trail ahead of her. She started an offset spin while Lammy slammed down a button to throw out chaff pellets and flares. A missile intended for Nagase and Lammy shot past them and exploded, baited out by the flares. Fighters roared over Wardog's heads. Nagase recognised the silhouette of that kind of aircraft. Su-27s. Flankers. Curiously in a dark grey paint scheme. That wasn't her pressing concern however, her most immediate concern was watching two more Wardogs getting slapped out of the sky by missile fire. Nagase brought her aircraft around hard right to merge with the attacking Flankers. Gimme tone, gimme tone!
"Edge, fox 2!" Nagase yelled, firing off an AIM-9X at the closest Flanker and almost colliding with another F-15 on the attack run back in. The Sidewinder tracked the Flanker, ignored the flares that it dumped and proceeded to bury itself within the Flanker's tailpipe. "Splash one!"
"Edge, two bandits pincering!" Lammy called out two Flankers turning one-eighty and beelining right for them. Nagase responded by pitching down and diving to gain some airspeed. In theory the Flankers would pass overhead before getting shots on target. That theory kind of worked, but one got a missile off.
"Smoke in the air!" Lammy called, dropping flares all the way. The missile didn't track for either the flares or their aircraft. Nagase pitched up and climbed straight up, looking to gain altitude against the attackers. She spotted a ball of flames. A Wardog fighter had bagged another Su-27. Nagase brought the Eagle over so that she was facing the ocean and chased after a Flanker that was gunning for her head-on. The Flanker chose to use guns. Nagase cued an AIM-9 and launched that, jinking right as to not get shot. The Flanker attempted to manoeuvre but there was no space. It caught a Sidewinder right through the intakes and shattered into a million pieces.
"Splash one!" Nagase yelled.
"Tally one above, break right!" Lammy instructed, looking up and at a Flanker diving on them. Nagase shoved the stick right and the aircraft banked with her.
Genette stowed his camera. He was in action mode, scanning the skies for contact. Bartlett slammed the stick forward and dived down on the Flankers attacking his squadron.
"Tally one, three-o-clock low!" Genette called the first fighter he saw crossing their belly.
"Heartbreak, fox 2." Clunk. One AIM-9 out. A moment later, one splashed Flanker. Genette scanned the skies. He spotted a fireball off to their right. An Eagle.
"Barney, mayday may-" The panicked voice of the pilot rang through the radio before he went silent.
Bartlett had a Flanker in his gunsight for a moment and fired a burst of twenty-millimetre at it. The Flanker climbed above Bartlett before his shells could connect. Genette watched that Flanker climb to meet one of the captains, Baker. They must have both gotten tone, because the Flanker launched an R-73 while Baker fired a Sidewinder. The Flanker popped flares and evaded, successfully breaking the lock. Baker was less fortunate. He attempted to evade by flaring and banking away, but failed to break the lock when he was hit in the belly directly by the missile. Baker's aircraft went into a violent flatspin and disintegrated.
"Mustang, punching out!" The voice of another Wardog pilot made itself apparent, followed by a lot of microphone noise and then silence.
"I see chutes, Wardog 10's safe!" Lammy reported while under audible strain. Nagase was making a hard turn to get on the tail of a Flanker. Bartlett spotted a lone Flanker being chased by Aero. He turned to assist Aero. Svenson broke off from Bartlett to help Nagase and Lammy.
The fight was a clusterfuck. Both sides were closely involved in tight manoeuvres trying to get guns or missiles on each other. Nagase was out of Sidewinders, so she was resorting to using her cannon and waiting for the perfect opportunity to pull lead and claim a third kill. Safely on the Flanker's six, Nagase pulled the nose forward and bled some of her airspeed. As soon as the Flanker pilot saw that Nagase was coming around for a shot, he yanked back the stick and suddenly Nagase found herself coming face-to-face with a Flanker looking right at her. A Cobra manoeuvre.
"Oh shi-" Nagase rolled and pulled away, not intending on getting shot in the face with a Flanker's twenty-three mil gun. She saw tracers flying towards her as the Flanker passed by. Nagase heard a couple of shells loudly ricochet off the canopy. Metal shredded somewhere on the side of the nose. One of the shells blew through the canopy, depressurising the cockpit. Nagase almost felt her ears blow out, but she still heard a muffled shout followed by something spattering against the back of her helmet. Nagase turned around and was met with bright red blood hitting her straight in the face.
"Oh god, Lammy!" Nagase exclaimed. Lammy had caught shrapnel to the throat. He had his hands shoved into the wound, desperately trying to stop both the blood spraying from his severed carotid arteries and stopping himself from choking on his own blood. Blood was everywhere. It was soaking his uniform, spraying onto the seat and the WSO console in front of him, shooting out and covering the back end of the canopy, some flew far enough to hit Nagase in the face. She recoiled back in horror, temporarily blinded.
"Hold on!" Nagase shouted over the noise in the cockpit. "Wardog 2, combat ineffective, pulling back!"
"I've got you covered, go!" Bartlett had Nagase's rear covered in case any of the Flankers wanted to chase after her. "Splash one."
Bartlett had shot down the bandit that had gunned at Nagase. Nagase lit the afterburners and zoomed off east towards Sand Island. She was really in a hurry, uncertain if Lammy would last that long. Nagase looked back for a moment.
"Lammy?!" Nagase shouted above the noise. Lammy was limp in his seat, his uniform and g-suit soaked bright red instead of the green it should have been. His hands had come loose from his neck and there wasn't much blood physically coming out of him anymore. Nagase didn't want to believe it but logic told her the truth. "Captain?!"
"Shit, one on our tail!" Genette was calling out target bearings. "Smoke in the air, smoke in the air!"
Bartlett popped flares and turned like mad to evade it. They narrowly made it out of the R-73's proximity fuze detection.
"Svenson, where are ya?" Bartlett asked with some urgency in his voice.
"On your six! Svenson, fox 2!" Svenson came in clutch, loosing off a Sidewinder at Bartlett's pursuer. The Flanker was too busy coming after Bartlett to notice the rapidly approaching smoke trail. A distinct boom. "Splash one."
"Fuckfuckfuckfuck-" Aero was in a panicked state. "-Wardog 7, punching out."
Genette looked over. Aero's Eagle was spitting fire from the engine bays. The canopy ejected itself followed shortly by the pilot and WSO getting thrown out by their ejection seats.
Bartlett and Svenson flew head-on towards the remaining two Flankers. Bartlett had AMRAAMs on his rails but no Sidewinders and in any case he was within the minimum engagement distance of an AMRAAM. For him it was about to be a gunfight. The unknown Flankers merged with the Osean Eagles. Bartlett threw his Eagle around into a nose-to-nose fight: the one circle fight.
"Brace yourself." Bartlett gave little warning to Genette before pulling the stick back and the throttle forward. Genette felt like he was being crushed in his seat in the ensuing nine-gee turn. Bartlett was really pushing the Strike Eagle to the edge of what it was capable of. He was also bleeding airspeed like a motherfucker, but it was all worth it when he got guns on against his opponent. Bartlett fired a long burst of twenty-mil from the Eagle's M61 Vulcan cannon. Genette got to follow the tracer rounds within the burst intersect with the Flanker's flight path and damn near cut it in half. Splash one Flanker.
Bartlett brought the aircraft around to go help Svenson. As it turned out there was no need, by the time that Bartlett had turned in Svenson's direction, Svenson had already gotten the kill.
"Splash one." Svenson sounded relieved. "Fuck me. Still up, Jack?"
"Always." Bartlett surveyed the scene. All bandits splashed. Nagase was dashing home towards Sand Island. He figured that the nugget had run out of ammo in the fight. Either that or something much, much worse.
"Is that it?" Genette remained alert, unsure if there was anybody else out there.
"That's it." Bartlett replied shortly after. "Control, Heartbreak One. All bandits splashed."
"Acknowledged, Heartbreak. Get back home before somebody else jumps you out there." The instructions from Sand Island control were short, simple and had an understandable motive. Bartlett popped his mask and let out a deep breath.
"Wilco. Wardog Squadron is RTB."