"Due to current circumstances, we have been forced to set foot on Yuktobania with weapons in hand. However, our true enemy here is the Yuktobanian military that started this unjust war. Therefore, I ask you, citizens of Yuktobania. Do not fear us, but rather join us hand-in-hand, harmoniously, to help us carry out this operation without bloodshed. I've instructed our soldiers to follow this order to the letter."
2 November 2010
Sand Island Air Force Base
Wardog Squadron was up in the squadron room all sitting around watching the news. Almost every Osean news outlet was broadcasting the speech given by General Brandon Howell, the general in command of the war effort on Yuktobanian soil.
"Christ." Chopper shook his head, his mouth full of cereal. "What are the chances all the Yuke civilians buy into that?"
"I want to believe, but…" Nagase shook her head in kind.
The phone at the front desk started ringing. With Ash nowhere to be seen, Chopper, as the next most senior officer, put his bowl down and went to answer the phone.
"Captain Davenport, Wardog." Chopper picked up.
"Major Hamilton. Get the squad down to Briefing 1, you have a mission." Hamilton was the man on the other side of the line.
"Yes, sir." Chopper hung up and turned around. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but grab your stuff and get downstairs."
"Mission?" Kitagawa asked from the back of the room.
"New mission." Chopper nodded, moving to the locker room so he could get his kit. Kitagawa stood up.
"I'll go get Miss Airhead." Kitagawa said, grabbing Ash's equipment on top of her own stuff and walking into the female shower stalls.
Ash had her head and back under the waterstream, looking down at the floor with her arms stretched out in front of her, her hands on the shower stall walls.
"Ash!" Kitagawa's voice echoed throughout the shower block. Ash spun the hot and cold water handles off and turned around to answer, only for Kitagawa to come barging in through the door. Ash yelped, attempting to cover her private parts with her arms. Kitagawa tilted her head sideways and grinned.
"Oh please, I've seen you naked before." She quipped. "Briefing 1, new mission."
"Oh shit, right." All of Ash's modesty left her body as she grabbed a towel from over the stall door, very quickly dried herself and hopped into her uniform and equipment. A wet patch was left over her collar from her improperly dried hair. Kitagawa sat down next to her and put her gear on.
"Others already down there?" Ash asked as she slipped her vest on over her g-suit.
"Probably." Kitagawa replied, adjusting her vest and standing up. Ash tightened the vest around her chest.
"Get down there." Ash ushered her WSO, jogging off downstairs and into the briefing room, a noticeable water stain around her neck from her hair. Kitagawa followed not long after her. The two went to take seats.
"All accounted for, sir." Ash said to Hamilton and Chaeny as she and Kitagawa sat down.
Hamilton nodded and looked over to Chaeny. "Sergeant."
Chaeny nodded in return, coughed to clear his throat and turned on the projector.
"The Yuktobanian force responsible for defending the Bastok Peninsula is set to stage a large scale withdrawal away from the peninsula. We assess that the Yuktobanians are pulling back to regroup their forces and strengthen the existing front line." Chaeny paused briefly to take a breath. "Yuktobania's eastern grouping of forces took heavy losses over the course of the landings, and we believe their defensive and offensive capabilities have been significantly reduced. Their withdrawal is being conducted under a dense electronic warfare blanket. However, the majority of their aircraft in the region are transport aircraft. Your mission objective is to intercept and destroy these planes, and halt their retreat… any questions."
Ash finished scribbling notes down and raised her hand. "Aren't there any units closer in the area to conduct the intercept?"
Chaeny shook his head. "Marine Corps and Air Force assets have all been tasked with defending the landing zones from air attack. Likewise, the Navy isn't in much position to assist. The Kestrel suffered the loss of much of her air wing and the Hawk is limping her way back to Saint Hewlett."
Ash whistled to herself. "I understand. That's all from me."
Chaeny looked around the room. Silence and a lack of raised arms. "Very well, you are to depart immediately."
Mounting up and taking off was a straightforward process. With all of their aircraft loaded to the gills with Sidewinders, AMRAAMs and external fuel tanks, Wardog Squadron collectively sat in for the cross-ocean trip.
WARDOG 1 / BLAZE, SAMURAI / F-15E
WARDOG 2 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E
WARDOG 3 / EDGE, CORVUS / F-15E
WARDOG 4 / ARCHER / F-16C
As was the case for just about every trans-continental flight they had made in the past few months, this flight was uneventful and, above all, boring. About half an hour through their journey, Blaze felt like leaning her head against the seat, putting the aircraft into autopilot and falling asleep. Unfortunately, as both a pilot and the squad leader, she couldn't get away with it.
"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with F." Samurai got a little banter going to help pass the time.
"F-16." Blaze guessed.
"Close, but no cigar." Samurai snickered. Blaze rolled her eyes and smiled behind her mask.
"F-15." Blaze said the only other object that came close to an F-16 thirty thousand feet above sea level.
"Bingo." Samurai replied.
"Cheeky bastard." Blaze shook her head in disapproval.
These little talks would continue for the next hour and a half as Wardog transited the ocean from Sand Island to the target area over Yuktobania.
"Hold up, slow the fuck down." Nastasya took a moment to collect her thoughts. "Let me get this straight. Yuktobanian fighters have been poking and firing at Osean assets since August?"
Bartlett and Ghost nodded in unison.
"Six… no, seven incidents from late August to the declaration of war." Bartlett explained. "Intercepts, dogfights, cruise missile attacks. Quite a large loss of life between both sides even before the formal declaration."
"Probably what, a hundred, give or take a couple of dozen?" Ghost harboured a guess at a number.
The cogs were clearly turning in Nastasya's head and it was showing. Something wasn't adding up.
"Yuktobania never publicly acknowledged operations across the ocean until after the attack on Murska…" She was thinking about the whole scenario. Something didn't fit.
"Tell that to the gravestones of everybody on our side of the pond who bit the bullet." Bartlett muttered. Nastasya winced slightly and nodded. The cogs in her head were really turning now. She huffed, standing up and grabbing her glasses. "Woah, where are you going?"
"To work. I have access to our information framework, I'm going to see if I can find any information pertinent to what you've described." Nastasya explained.
"Sure you won't get in trouble for looking at things you shouldn't?" Ghost voiced his concerns.
"I can handle myself." Nastasya replied confidently, grabbing her keys and jacket and disappearing out the front door in a flash. She locked the door behind her and before long she was gone. Ghost looked between the door and Bartlett.
"If the FSB gets a hand of us, we're in a world of shit." Ghost was now voicing his concerns to Bartlett.
"Steady, Ghost." Bartlett rebutted his WSO. "She won't rat us in like that."
"Oh my god, it's like a damn shooting gallery up here." Chopper observed the sheer number of contacts he could see on his scope. Blaze was a bit more wary than her second in command.
"Make visual contact with whatever you're shooting at if at all possible." Blaze cautioned the squadron. "There's way more contacts up here than there should be."
"Archer, copy."
"Edge, copy all."
"Chopper, roger that."
"Wardog, engage."
And thus the carnage began: with an overwhelming barrage of radar noise and interference. Blaze could see a handful of contacts on the edge of her radar's scanning arc, but everything else was being interrupted by a blinding array of mixed returns that was indecipherable. Blaze growled quietly.
"Thunderhead, Wardog, give me a bogey dope for enemy jammer aircraft." Blaze requested, seeking to knock out the enemy's source of obscuration. She prepared her kneeboard and pen to write down Thunderhead's answer.
"Wardog, picking up three jammer aircraft. Bearings 270, 280 and 294 for 130, 114 and 190 respectively." Thunderhead gave Blaze the bearing and distance to all three jammers. Blaze wrote all of this down. 270 - 130. 280 - 114. 294 - 190.
"Chopper, Edge, push 280 for a hundred and fourteen, intercept and destroy the EW aircraft on that bearing." Blaze started delegating tasks out to her squadron. "Archer, push 294 for one ninety, same task, find and destroy the jammers."
"Copy." The reply from the squadron was in unison. Chopper and Nagase broke off to chase down the closest enemy jammer aircraft, while Grimm broke off to chase down the jammer aircraft that was the furthest away. Blaze kicked the tempo up a notch and went chasing after the third target, the aircraft immediately to the north-west. Getting a radar lock on the target was impossible with the sheer amount of electronic noise being put out by the Yukes, so Blaze was forced to close to within visual range. As the Mudhen lacked passive search sensors like an IRST or EOTS, Blaze and Samurai looked around using the good ol' reliable Mark One Eyeball.
"Edge, splash one!" Nagase sounded off, indicating that she and Chopper had downed their target. Not a moment too soon, Blaze spotted an aircraft above them in the distance.
"Tally one, one o'clock high." Blaze gave a direction and aspect for Samurai's sake.
"Eyes." Samurai saw the dot getting closer ahead and above. She slewed their targeting pod in the direction of the target and zoomed in. "Looks like an Il-76… are we sure that's our guy?"
Blaze looked down at her radar. They were totally jammed frontally.
"I'm confident that's a jammer." Blaze replied, pitching up slightly to get above the Yuktobanian EW aircraft, an Il-76PP. Cutting back on the afterburner, Blaze crawled forward towards the target, flicking a switch on the stick to select the Mudhen's gun. Once she had sufficient altitude and spacing, Blaze dived down on the Il-76 and fired one quick burst at the jammer aircraft's right wing root. An engine flamed out as the wing separated from the body of the aircraft. De-winged, the Il-76PP spun out of control and dipped down towards the ground.
"Blaze, splash one." Blaze declared. She looked down at her radar display. The radar image had cleaned up significantly, and she noticed considerably fewer contacts. "Archer, how we looking?"
"Give me thirty seconds." Grimm replied, still approaching his target well off in the distance with his slower F-16C. Blaze counted to thirty in her head. Right when she hit thirty, Grimm spoke up. "Archer, splash one!"
One final glance at the radar confirmed that they had done their job. The radar screen was no longer cluttered, now it only showed the defenceless transports making all haste trying to get away from the Osean fighters.
"Alright…" Blaze muttered to herself. "Wardog, stack them up and knock them down. Clear out these transports."
Spread out over an impossibly large area was a fifty-something strong group of Il-76 and An-124 transport aircraft, the Yuktobanian equivalents of the C-17 and C-5 respectively. Wardog didn't have enough missiles or cannon ammo to take out every single aircraft, even assuming that one missile equaled one kill, but downing even half of the formation would result in the loss of at least a battalion of troops and their associated equipment.
Blaze backed away from the falling jammer aircraft and lined up a column of targets that were in an arc away from the returning Grimm. She didn't want to risk an AMRAAM pitbulling on the Viper pilot, therefore causing a blue on blue incident. Blaze locked onto and fired at ten targets, firing every single AMRAAM she had in a single volley.
"Wardog 1, Fox…" At that very moment Blaze had to yawn. "Fucking hell. Wardog 1, Fox 3."
There was a chuckle from Chopper and Pops over Blaze's mid-sentence yawn. She rolled her eyes and slowed down to keep her nose pointed towards the transports she had fired at.
"Chopper, Fox 3, Fox 3."
"Edge, Fox 3!"
Blaze felt bad attacking transports with no escorts and no defences. But ultimately under the rule of law they were fair game and orders were orders.
Behind Wardog Squadron, at the very edge of the frontline separating Osean controlled airspace from Yuktobanian airspace, Thunderhead was sitting in an operator's console aboard an E-2 Hawkeye. The luxuries of a Hawkeye were a far cry from that of the larger E-3 Sentry, but even so it was much more cruisy than sitting in the cockpit of a fighter.
Thunderhead rubbed his eyes and yawned. Midway through yawning, he faintly heard a beep in his headset that indicated the detection of a new contact. Rubbing the tears of fatigue out of his eyes, Thunderhead squinted at the screen looking for what was new. Beep. A new beep indicating that a contact had faded. Thunderhead frowned. He hadn't seen anything. He leant forward and pressed a few buttons on a keyboard, accessing the plotting chart. Thunderhead hit the rewind button. Beep. New contact. It took a couple of seconds but finally he saw. Two unknown radar signals out to the north-east. The two contacts were heading west before contact was lost.
"What the hell…?" Thunderhead mumbled to himself.
Peculiarly, the two contacts Thunderhead had detected were not Yuktobanian aircraft. They were Oseans, or at the very least they were flying the Osean flag. Their pilots may have worked for Osea, but they were not of Osean nationality.
"Watch the mountain walls." Colonel Ashley Bernitz cautioned her squadmates. Grabacr Squadron was out in force today, but their target was not military. It was not industry, nor commerce, nor infrastructure. In a clean war, no fighting force would ever attack what Grabacr was attacking. But this war was far from a clean war and Grabacr Squadron's pilots weren't afraid to get their hands dirty.
"Time on target, two minutes." Grabacr 2, the pilot at the head of the formation, stated. Bernitz checked her navigation panel. At their current speed, they'd arrive at the target in precisely two minutes. Bernitz flicked off her mastersafe key and put the Mark 82 Snakeeye high drag bombs she was carrying on her Rhino's wingtips on her trigger. The moment they pulled out of the canyon system, they'd be ready to drop.
Much like almost every citizen in Yuktobania, Andrei Anatolov was aware that the Oseans had managed to establish a foothold and were fighting the Yuktobanian military on their home soil. But much like almost every Yuktobanian citizen, Andrei figured the issue was a world away. The Bastok Peninsula was at least a few hours away by car. With the Army putting up a fight, there was no way Osea would break through to Dresdene so quickly.
With his morning classes concluded and with an hour to kill before his afternoon classes, Andrei fetched lunch and sat down to watch videos on his laptop at the recreational area around the back of Dresdene University. The university was built on the edge of a cliff that led down to a hundred metre drop into the neighbouring river.
Idly munching at a box of hot chips, Andrei was watching a video about steelmaking when he heard a faint roar. He spun around at the table he was sitting at. The roaring sounded like a group of aircraft flying at low altitude and it sounded like they were getting closer with each passing second. Sure enough, his hunch was right. From over the valley at the backdrop of the university came a small group of aircraft, no more than four strong.
Andrei's degree was in civil engineering, not aerospace engineering, so he wasn't sure what he was looking at exactly, but everybody and their mother knew the Osean roundel when they saw it. Andrei noticed all four aircraft had the blue and white roundel as they passed overhead at low altitude with their engines roaring loud enough to deafen people. Putting his hands over his ears to protect his eardrums from the noise, Andrei neither saw nor heard the small green objects the Osean aircraft dropped onto the university.
There was a massive series of earthquake-like vibrations in the ground as Andrei was thrown from his seat and onto the ground. A blast wave violent enough to shake the water vapour out of the air slammed the uni student in the chest simultaneously with an impossibly intense blast of heat burning off his facial hair. Concussed to high hell, Andrei covered his ears and curled up into the fetal position. When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, what had once been a university had been converted into little more than rubble.
Back in the air, targeting the transports was like shooting fish in a barrel, but there were so many transports that Wardog Squadron was collectively running out of missiles.
"Do we have to bag all of these planes?" Chopper asked, completely out of missiles and down to only the two hundred rounds of ammo his Mudhen carried aboard.
"You think every enemy transport aircraft in the area is up and flying?" Grimm posed a question.
"Well, let's ask them. Hey, how many planes do you have up there?!" Chopper sighed. "Man, this is making me cry."
"Chin up Chopper, come on." Zoomer jokingly reprimanded his pilot. Blaze giggled.
"Zoomer's right, Chopper. We're almost done here." Blaze said. Ironically her statement was correct but not for the reasons she had been expecting.
"Wardog, this is Thunderhead." Thunderhead chimed in. "Emergency transmission from Sand Island. Halt operations and RTB at all haste."
Blaze frowned. "Thunderhead, Wardog 1, there are still transports on the withdrawal."
"Understood Wardog, but this is coming from above my paygrade. RTB." Thunderhead insisted. Blaze looked around at the twenty transports that were still intact and flying away. She sighed.
"Copy that, Thunderhead. Wardog Squadron is RTB."