6 OCT 2010
Sand Island Air Force Base
While the rest of the base was suffering from a collective hangover, Wolf was busy cleaning up the mess left behind in Wardog's squadron room from the previous night's celebrations. Surprisingly people had been diligent to clean up the majority of their mess. Wolf picked up a couple of empty cans and bottles from tables around the room, chucked those into the recycling bin and then brought the recycling bin down the stairs, outside and emptied its contents into a skip bin behind the administrative building. By the time Wolf got back upstairs, Wardog's presence had been bolstered by the arrival of Ash.
"Good morning, Blaze." Wolf welcomed his commanding officer.
"Morning." Ash muttered back, hanging by the coffee machine. She had bags under her eyes.
"Long night?" Wolf asked as he put the recycling bin back.
"Too much alcohol, not enough water." Ash replied, grabbing her bottle of water from the fridge and chugging it down. Wolf smirked. "What'd you end up doing at the end of the night?"
"Making sure people got to the barracks alive." Wolf replied.
"Noble." Ash commented as she filled a mug with a double shot of black. Bitter, but it was what she needed to wake up.
"Somebody's gotta do it. It's like the whole designated driver thing." Wolf shrugged. To him it was merely a role he took. Ash smiled sincerely.
"You're the best suited for it. You're like the dad of the squadron." Ash said as her coffee mug filled up. She took a short sip and recoiled. A little too bitter. Wolf chuckled.
"I'm only what, ten years older?" Wolf did the math.
"Twenty five, twenty four, twenty three, fifty something, twenty seven, twenty two…" Ash tried to remember everyone's age. "It averages out around there."
"Case in point." Wolf realigned some chairs and put the pool balls and cue back in position. The door opened. Ash and Wolf turned their heads in that direction. Chopper entered.
"Oh hey, it's dumb and dumber." Chopper joked as he made his entrance. Wolf rolled his eyes, smiled and returned to what he was doing. Ash flipped Chopper the bird with her free hand.
"If they're dumb and dumber, does that make you dumbest?" Grimm's voice rang out from the hallway as he made entry to the room. He was wearing a tee shirt and his aviator pants, but not the jacket like everybody else who wore the two-piece aviator uniform.
"Clothing malfunction?" Ash asked when she noticed.
"Nope." Grimm replied, walking over to the pool table. He knelt down and grabbed an olive green jacket with his rank slide, name and patches. "Forgot to bring it out with me."
"Classic." Wolf retorted.
"Who's on the CAP roster today?" Grimm asked. "Hell, are we doing anything today?"
"I got here like a minute ago, give me a second." Ash was opening a laptop and signing onto the OADF's administrative portal to check the timetable and any rostered events. The only thing Wardog Squadron was rostered for in the next week was a CAP rotation tomorrow. "Nothing."
Grimm sighed, grabbed a laptop and sat down on one of the lounges. It was more than half an hour before they were joined by either of their remaining crew members. Pops was probably busy with administration somewhere else given his rank, but Nagase was a mystery and it was anyone's guess where the usually punctual Kitagawa was. Exactly thirty one minutes later Nagase walked in.
"Gym." Nagase stated her reason for her absence. "Kitagawa's not far behind."
"I was just about to call you." Ash replied. At least they were accounted for now. Sure enough, Kitagawa ran in, still wearing her PT uniform. Ash smiled when she saw her WSO, something that Kitagawa returned in kind. She paused briefly when she walked past.
"You've got a hickey on your chest." Kitagawa whispered. Ash looked down her shirt. It was barely visible, the majority of it hidden by her shirt, but it was still there. Ash did up an extra button on her uniform.
"Thanks." Ash whispered back. Kitagawa went into the locker room, presumably to go take a quick shower and get changed. Everybody seemed to be doing their own things. The atmosphere was quiet this morning, no doubt a result of the fatigue as a result of last night. Ash could almost smell the lingering whiff of several hangovers. A phone rang. Ash picked up the phone swiftly.
"Captain Paige, Wardog Squadron." Ash answered the call.
"Master Sergeant Chaeny. You and one squadron member are needed in Briefing 1 for a short-notice operation. Bring your gear." The base briefing SNCO was on the other side of the phone.
"Be there in two mikes." Ash put the phone away and closed the lid of the laptop she was using. "Grimm! Grab your kit and get down to Briefing 1."
"Just me? Yes ma'am." Grimm put down his laptop and went into the lockers to grab his gear. Ash followed him to grab both her own kit and then Kitagawa's kit on top of that. She went into the shower block, where she could hear water running from the very end of the room.
"Sam!" Ash called out her WSO's callsign. "Mission brief!"
"Thirty seconds!" Kitagawa called back. The showerhead stopped flowing. The towel on the booth door was pulled down. The uniform followed that. A few seconds later, Kitagawa left the shower, very clearly not dry. Ash dumped her kit on the bench for her. "Thanks."
"Don't sweat it." Ash replied, putting her own gear on. The pair left for the briefing room. They found Grimm already haven taken a seat and with Chaeny and Hamilton waiting for them. "All accounted for."
"Top?" Hamilton deferred to Chaeny. The Master Sergeant pulled up a battle map. It was focused on what appeared to be an empty section of ocean.
"A Yuktobanian cruiser was disabled in an engagement with a pair of OMDF destroyers roughly four hundred kilometres west of the mouth of the Eaglin Straits." Chaeny started the briefing. "The destroyers left the area, but the cruiser is adrift with no power and no propulsion. Your mission is to fly out and finish the ship off."
Ash raised her hand. "Should we be worried about enemy aircraft in the region?"
Chaeny shook his head. "Yuktobanian carriers in the region are staying on their side of the pond. The skies should be clear."
"What about ships? Anything within quick reaction distance?" Grimm asked.
"Not that we know of. Thunderhead will be out with you on the flight, if he sees anything, he'll call it out for you. Any other questions?" Chaeny answered, looking for additional questions. The flight understood their task. Appropriately, they were dismissed and sent off to the flight line. The runway was active as a CAP patrol returned and another squadron departed. Ash and Kitagawa mounted their Mudhen while Grimm mounted up into his Viper. The weapon and fuel crews were doing their thing, fitting bombs to the undersides of the attacking aircraft. Not long after, they were cleared to depart.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / ARCHER / F-16C
Their target was a long journey away from Sand Island. Grimm was carrying a pair of drop tanks loaded with fuel to give him the legs to make it to and from the area of operations. They were running dark, Blaze in the lead with Grimm behind and to her left. The only indication of outside activity was via radio, the datalink system and their radar warning receivers. In other words, they were relying on Thunderhead being able to do his job of spotting and calling out targets.
It was an hour's transit each way. The cockpit was unusually quiet on the way there. Blaze was doing her job pointing them in the right direction, Samurai was keeping an eye on the sensors and scanning the skies around them for contact. Unsurprisingly nothing. This close to the Osean coast after the failure of a major offensive, the chances of coming upon enemy aircraft were close to zero.
The clouds formed a thick layer of dark grey covering the ocean as far as the eye could see. Blaze had no doubt it was storming like hell below the clouds.
"That's gotta be at least sea state six or something, damn." Samurai looked out towards the clouds.
"Seven. Sea state seven." Thunderhead corrected Samurai. "Crosswind must be forcing the target off course. I've got no track on it."
"We're continuing on this bearing. It can't have gone too far." Blaze maintained her current heading. The ocean was a big place, but it had only been an hour. The cruiser couldn't have gone too far.
"Wardog, belay. Bogies, 310, 450, Angels 60, inbound hot." Thunderhead called out a contact far west that was beelining straight for them.
"So about there not being any-" Grimm spoke up.
"Hold it." Blaze ordered. "What and how many?"
"Four MiG-31s." Thunderhead replied.
"Fuck." Blaze muttered. "Do they see us?"
"They're heading right for you. Caution advised." Thunderhead answered.
"Archer, dive." Blaze ordered, pushing forward on the stick in an attempt to get them below the radar horizon and below the clouds. Turbulence was high in the clouds, and once they were below it they got an idea of quite how bad the storm was below their feet. The ocean was churning like one big cistern while it was being hammered by rain and hurricane-like winds. With any luck, ice formations in the clouds would distort the radar image that the Foxhounds received. Hopefully.
"Bandits are turning, now heading 070." Thunderhead called out. The Foxhounds were flying across Wardog's direction of travel. They hadn't seen them yet.
"What's the play?" Grimm asked, an uncertain tone in his voice. Blaze thought for a moment. Just because they hadn't been seen immediately by the powerful Zaslon radar of the MiG-31 didn't mean they were now invisible.
"Follow my tail, four hundred knots, Angels 1. Thunderhead, we're tracking those Foxhounds." Blaze figured out a plan on the fly. They might have been on a bomber mission, but the Osean pair were still carrying a dangerous load of AMRAAMs.
"Roger. Foxhounds are maintaining course." Thunderhead tracked the enemy's movement.
"No radar emissions." Samurai remarked. "What are they doing?"
"Dunno. That's what we're finding out." Blaze replied, keeping an eye on her altimeter and horizon. The Foxhounds were moving at breakneck speed, as if they were in a hurry. Soon enough they were to the pair's east quarter, placing Wardog firmly in their blind spot.
"Breaking high, increasing speed to trail." Blaze stated her intentions before doing it, climbing back above the cloud layer and pushing the throttle forward to keep up with the Foxhounds, or at the very least increase the amount of time they had before the Foxhounds slipped out of range.
"New contact- wait. Missile launch detected." Thunderhead reported. "The Foxhounds are firing at something."
Blaze frowned. "What are they firing at?"
"I don't know." Thunderhead admitted. "Standby, I'm calling this… Bogies, 060 from your position, 300, Angels 10, moving south-south-west."
"Three hundred?" Samurai looked at the tactical map and did some maths. "That's over the Osean mainland."
"Wardog, standby, I'm calling this into the nearest air base." Thunderhead went off the air for a moment to report their findings to the nearest air base. This warranted reinforcements. Four Foxhounds and now four unknowns.
"Slow up Archer." Blaze said to her wingman, pulling back on the throttle. Now that there were no less than eight contacts around, Blaze suddenly didn't want to rush head first into the thick of a fight with only a bomb-laden F-15E and F-16C. Grimm peeled off to Blaze's left.
"Hey, check the datalink." Samurai told Blaze. "Su-30s to our south marked as friendly."
"Su- what?" Blaze expressed a moment of bewilderment. She put the datalink menu on one of her displays and looked where her WSO had directed her. Samurai was right. A four ship of Su-30 Flankers marked as Osean fighters were travelling south to north at high speed. The IFF tagged them as Su-30OAs, callsign Corvids 1 through 4.
"Oh shit." Grimm muttered. "That's gotta be an aggressor squadron. Uh, a friendly one."
"Yeah…" Blaze changed one of her radio frequencies to see if she could get in touch with the Flanker's squadron leader. "Corvid 1, Wardog 1, radio check, wide band channel, over."
The Flankers were three hundred kilometres away, but that was still within encrypted radio range.
"Wardog 1, Corvid 1, reading you loud and clear." The Flanker squadron leader, an older sounding man, replied on the same channel. "Wardog 1, are you the flight two hundred north of my position?"
"Affirmative, Corvid." Blaze replied. "We're stalking Yuktobanian fighters north-east of my locstat. Situation's tight."
"Roger. Sit tight, we're on our way to you." Corvid Leader instructed. Their speed increased to faster than the speed of sound. They'd be on scene shortly.
"We're on channel sixty-eight. Switching." Blaze switched the radio back to the channel they normally used for operations.
"Corvid Squadron, radio check, channel sixty-eight." Corvid Leader checked in on their channel.
"Loud and clear Corvid." Thunderhead read back their transmission. "Welcome to the party. MCAS Birchwood is sending up an alert flight of Lightnings. Additional reinforcements are gonna be at least half an hour."
"Roger. What's the enemy composition?" Corvid Leader asked.
"Four Foxhounds and four unknowns." Blaze answered for Thunderhead.
"Lovely. We'll be on station in three mikes." Corvid Leader stated. Blaze and Grimm flew in a racetrack formation until the friendly Flankers met with them. As opposed to the air superiority grey that the majority of the OADF's fighter aircraft used, Corvid's Su-30OAs were painted a three-tone blue splinter camo with lo-vis Osean markings. They were definitely aggressor fighters. "We'll take point."
"Please, ladies first." Blaze remarked, earning a scoff from the Flanker element lead. The two-seater Flankers formed an arrowhead around the Mudhen and Viper, heading on a bearing that would place them right on top of the Foxhounds.
"Painting them." Corvid 1 stated once they were within weapons range of the Foxhounds. The party of unknowns were still out of weapons range. "Corvid 1, fox 3."
"Corvid 4, fox 3."
"Corvid 2, fox 3."
"Corvid 3, fox 3."
Blaze noticed that all of the pilots of Corvid Squadron sounded like grizzled veterans. It didn't surprise her given that the squadron were a bunch of aggressors, but the thought would remain in the back of her head for the rest of the day. Blaze and Grimm remained dark, even as the Foxhounds realised they were being fired upon and turned away. The Foxhounds turned tail, lit their burners and started running home. Odd. Blaze would have pointed at them and fired before committing to evasive manoeuvres. The Foxhounds weren't just simply evading, they were turning tail west.
"Splash three." Thunderhead watched three of the four Foxhounds disappear from radar. The fourth had survived and was escaping their weapon range.
"Let the straggler go." Blaze suggested. "No way in hell we're catching up to him."
"Concur. Thunderhead, where's that other squadron?" Corvid was now on the hunt for the unknowns.
"Unknown. Second squadron has disappeared from radar." Thunderhead declared. "Last seen bearing 050, heading 100, Angels 5."
"Probably flew into the mountains once they saw you." Grimm suggested.
"Aye. Thunderhead, we're burner to intercept bogies." Corvid Leader declared, splitting away from Wardog and heading on their way towards the mainland.
"Roger."
"Thunderhead, any track on our target?" Blaze asked. If the aggressors went after the unknowns, that would let herself and Grimm look for and finish off the cruiser they had initially been dispatched to sink.
"Negative, no sign of her on radar. Continue to search." Thunderhead ordered.
"Ack." Blaze replied, turning her Mudhen's radar on and setting the search pattern to scan the ocean floor. She'd spot such a large target from a distance even through any weather interference Poseidon had planned for them today. However, a search pattern covering a few thousand square kilometres turned up nothing. No sign of the cruiser.
"It can't have gone too far." Samurai mused, looking at her sensors and then looking around with the Mark One Eyeball.
"Anything?" Blaze addressed a question to both her wingman and Thunderhead.
"Nothing yet." Grimm replied.
"Negative." Thunderhead saw sweet fuck all. "The storm must have finished her off. Wardog, return to base."
Blaze sighed. So much proximity to action, yet they didn't get their noses in it. "Roger, we're RTB."
The flight home was just as eventful as the flight to the area of operations. That was to say that nothing of interest happened. There was something of a tense air between the pilot and the WSO of the Mudhen, but neither of them wanted to say anything to break that tension. An hour passed until they finally returned to Sand Island. Blaze noticed that the landing ship that had been part of the island's defense, OFS Butterfly, had departed the island, but aside from that everything else looked like it was where it had been when she and Grimm had left. They touched down and taxied back to the flight line. There was no debrief organised for them when they got back. Blaze, Samurai and Grimm placed their gear back in their respective lockers and that was it for the day.
Later in the day, Ash was on her laptop searching for something in the OADF's database. She wanted to figure out who the OADF Flankers were. Searching up Corvid Squadron had turned up no results, so she went looking up information about Osean Su-30s. According to the database, Osea had two squadrons flying Su-30OAs, both aggressors. The first was the 773rd Aggressor Squadron stationed out of Naval Air Station Peroon in the east. Not her people. The second was the 2011th Aggressor Squadron, based out of Mckay Air Force Base in the west. The 2011th looked like her guys.
"Whatcha looking at?" Nagase had noticed what Ash was doing.
"We were flying with these Osean-flagged Flankers north-west of the Eaglin Strait. I'm trying to figure out who they were." Ash explained. She digged deeper. The 2011th had been established in 1996 under the command of one Michael Krafte and had originally flown Typhoons.
"Typhoons? Is that the-" Nagase began.
"Oh shit, that's gotta be one of the Belkan squadrons." It suddenly clicked in Ash's head. In 1995, shortly after the end of the Belkan War, the Osean Defense Forces recruited willing Belkan Air Force veterans to help train future OADF, OMDF and OFMC pilots. Ash scrolled down. Indeed, one of their reporting names was Corvid Squadron. These were the same people she had flown with a mere few hours before. "Why didn't that show up…"
"Somebody probably forgot to update the hyperlink. I wouldn't worry about it." Nagase waved away whatever the issue had been.
"Yeah, probably." Ash agreed. She closed the lid on the laptop and put it back. It wasn't worth looking any further into it.