18 November 2010

Bastok Forward Air Base

WARDOG 1 / CHOPPER, ZOOMER / F-15E

WARDOG 2 / NAGASE, CORVUS / F-15E

WARDOG 3 / ARCHER / F-16C

While Chopper had some experience as Wardog 1 after Blaze had been shot down last time a bit over a month ago, it still wasn't a position he was comfortable in, a position that he thought Blaze was much better at. Unfortunately he was the most senior officer after Blaze and the squadron's second in command, so he had been forced into the role regardless of his wishes. Right now Wardog was sitting on the flight line at FAB Bastok being fueled and armed for their mission, escorting a flight of HH-60 Pavehawks and AH-64 Apaches back to Glubina so that they could rescue their downed squad mates.

Closer to the active frontline, a column of six green armoured trucks drove along a dirt road to a clearing in the middle of a forest. These weren't just any normal cargo trucks, these were trucks with a rocket launcher module on the flatbed tray, Osea's High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, the ubiquitous M142 HIMARS. Once the six wheeled MLRS vehicles reached their designated firing position, they stopped, reversed and turned until they were facing the general direction of their target area.

Under the cover of darkness, the stranded pilots, pararescuemen and helicopter crewmen had hiked out of the abandoned mining tunnels they had hunkered down in overnight, heading east about a kilometre and up a rather steep hill until they reached a cliffside, surrounded by a forest on the hill side and backed by a lethal drop behind them. There was only one path on and off the hill, which gave the party of survivors one killbox with which to halt an enemy assault, but no exit if they got boxed in, trapped and overwhelmed by Yukes.

Lying down in a hasty foxhole she had dug into the snow, Ash had her GAU-5 rifle in hand keeping a keen eye through the woods in front of them for any signs of the enemy. Five metres to her left, Kitagawa was in a similar foxhole looking generally in the same direction. Ash and Kitagawa were holding the left flank of their defensive perimeter. Andrew, Hartmann and Gully were holding the middle, and the three uninjured Pavehawk crew members were holding the right flank. From her foxhole, Ash could hear Andrew communicating with somebody over the radio.

"Rhino, Goblin, my position is 1190-1101. I say again, 1190-1101. All incoming requests will be outside two hundred metres of my position and within one thousand metres of my position." Andrew was establishing a killbox.

"What's he calling in?" Kitagawa called across to Ash.

"We have a rocket artillery battery tasked to us." Ash replied. "Probably M270s with ATACMS."

"Don't those have five hundred pound warheads?" Kitagawa asked. "And isn't that danger close?"

Ash bit her lip. "I hope the fire direction officer doesn't misplace a grid…"

As they were talking, the roar of jet engines could be faintly heard overhead. Ash looked up looking for a silhouette.

"That one of ours?" Andrew asked from his foxhole.

Ash looked around. She saw a group of four large aircraft very high up in the air.

"Flankers." Ash replied. "Su-35s. Yuke aircraft."

The flight for the Osean party of aircraft on the other hand was relatively uneventful since much of the airspace on the approach to Glubina Oblast was under Osean control. Yuktobanian aircraft had been suffering extremely high rates of attrition against Osean fighters and air defence in the past few weeks.

"Do you think Blaze and Samurai landed okay…?" Nagase asked quietly as they flew to the area of operations.

"It's Blaze and Samurai. Their luck knows no bounds." Grimm did his best to sound reassuring. "I'm sure they'll be fine."

"Make sure you don't get shot down in her place." Thunderhead checked in. "Picking up fighters dead ahead. 270 for 400, Angels 20. Wardog, they're heading right for you."

"Oh boy, here we go." Chopper muttered, clearing his throat and preparing himself to give orders. "Archer, break high to thirty thousand feet and get on top of them! Edge, follow me, approach head on!"

"Copy, Edge, engaging!"

"Archer, engaging."

While Grimm broke high away from the two Mudhens, Chopper and Nagase lit their afterburners and went straight for the four Su-35 Flankers ahead of them. The distance closed from four hundred, to three hundred, to two hundred and then finally to a hundred kilometres. For once, Grimm was ahead of the Mudhens and had already started engaging the Flankers.

"Archer, Fox 3." Grimm volley fired four AMRAAMs at max range while continuing to close the distance between himself and the Flankers. Knowing that they were probably being fired upon, the Flankers got to within ninety klicks and fired back with a large volley of R-77s before turning around and running away from the Osean missiles. Seeing this, Chopper bit his lip as he and Nagase cranked out to the side to avoid the incoming missiles. The Yukes were starting to wise up to Osean missile tactics. He looked around for Grimm. Not surprising him in the slightest, he saw the Viper pilot aggressively pushing the Flankers at full speed.

"Don't fly too close to the sun, Archer!" Chopper warned Grimm to be careful.

"Copy." Grimm replied calmly as he gave chase to the retreating Su-35s. Chopper started popping chaff to break the lock of any missiles heading towards him. Nagase mimicked his actions.

Grimm leant back as he raced towards the Flankers. He had closed the distance somewhat on the enemy aircraft, but the Flankers, with their twin engines, could outrun the single-engined Viper. Knowing this, Grimm drew back on the throttle and started notching at thirty five thousand feet, popping chaff in the process. Despite being within the effective kill radius of the R-77, because the Flankers had turned cold, their missiles had no mid-course guidance and lost their lock on Grimm.

"Chopper, they can outrun me, you need to take point." Grimm requested of his teammates as the Flankers started turning back towards Wardog. Noticing, Grimm kicked the afterburner in and raced off towards the enemy again, seeking to close the distance once more and kill the enemy. This time Grimm managed to get to sixty klicks, where he fired another volley of four missiles at the Flankers. In kind the Flankers returned fire with another volley of their own. Sitting in the danger zone against the Yuke's missile wave, Grimm started notching again, this time heading in Chopper and Nagase's general direction. He started cashing in altitude for speed, diving from thirty five thousand feet to twenty five thousand feet. The Flankers had turned cold once again, running directly away from Grimm's AMRAAMs. This time however, Grimm had closed the gap enough that his missiles could just barely catch up to the Flankers. He watched as three of the four contacts disappeared from radar.

"Archer, splash three." Grimm made known his kills. With the sudden explosions of all of his wingman, the fourth and final Flanker withdrew westwards and kept heading that way until he disappeared off radar in the distance. With the destruction or forced retreat of the four aircraft, the way forward was clear for the package of Pavehawks and Apaches.

Down on the cliffside, Ash had seen four of the Flankers fly over them heading east, but ten minutes later she saw only one withdrawing at high speed due west. Something was up, the Yukes rarely ever operated solo and especially not when they had previously been flying with a squadron. She figured the squadron had been bumped by Oseans and was retreating. Unfortunately, the slight elation Ash felt from seeing a Flanker flight getting punched in the teeth was inversely complimented by a sense of dread when she heard a quiet buzzing noise coming from somewhere overhead.

"The fuck is that?" Ash heard one of the helicopter crewmen ask.

"Shit, that's a fucking Orlan." Hartmann pointed out. "Orbiting above us."

"Oh, fuck me." Andrew muttered. "Knuckle up! Enemy knows we're here!"

Ash heard Kitagawa curse as she crawled forward in her foxhole and posted the front of her rifle on the edge of her dugout. Ash decided to do the same, knocking some snow out of the way to clear the line of sight for her rifle.

The constant whirring of the Orlan-10 reconnaissance UAV orbiting overhead was starting to drill into Ash's eardrums, complemented only by the faint thrumming of helicopter rotors that could be heard coming in from the west. That was not a good sign, as it meant that the Yuktobanians had dispatched helicopters to drop off infantry in the area. Ash's muscles tensed, ready for a fight.

"Rhino, Goblin, fire mission. Two rockets, fifty metres east of the far treeline in the killbox." Andrew was calling in the fire support they had on standby. "Goblin, shot. Splash in three minutes."

The helicopters closed in on their position, eventually coming into their line of sight. Ash saw a flight of six Mi-17 Hip transport helicopters swing in from over the woods, pitching their noses up and slowing down to come in for a landing on the flat stretch of snow opposite of the woods from the Osean positions over the cliff.

"Copy, splash in thirty seconds."

Ash was fairly certain the fire support tasked to them were either M270s or HIMARS armed with ATACMS ballistic missiles, but as she didn't know for sure, she was hesitantly waiting for explosions and a shockwave. By the sounds of it, at least some of the Mi-17s had landed on the other side of the woods and were unloading their troops. Off the top of her head, a single Hip could carry twenty fully equipped soldiers.

"Five seconds, heads down!"

Ash withdrew into her foxhole and pressed her body as flat against the earth as she could. There was a whistling noise off in the distance, quickly followed by a large explosion accompanying what felt like an minor earthquake shaking the ground, ruffling the trees hard enough to dislodge the snow resting on their branches. A few seconds later there was another deep boom as a second missile slammed right into the middle of the Yuktobanian helicopter formation. The snow on the alpine trees ahead of the group was now entirely dislodged. There were secondary explosions as fuel lines ruptured and the Mi-17s that had been caught in the blast exploded spectacularly. Unfortunately the missile strike hadn't knocked out all of the helicopters, because once the noise died down Ash could still hear helicopters fully spooled up.

"Rhino, Goblin, give me two more rounds, same coordinates as last fire mission." Andrew called in for a second fire mission. "Copy, splash in three minutes."

Ash peeked out of her foxhole once more to see what was going on. She saw the faint glow of flames fanning out from the other side of the woods some three or four hundred metres away, but what she also saw were man-sized silhouettes dashing from tree to tree.

"Hey LT!" Ash called out to the pararescue officer. "I see movement ahead! Four hundred metres, passing down the middle from tree to tree!"

"Stack them up, knock them down!" Andrew called back. Next to the officer, one of the PJs set his sights on a target and started firing, the suppressed gunshots of his HK416 puncturing the freezing cold air. Emboldened, Ash put her iron sights over another Yuktobanian soldier, started leading him and fired a pair of shots. Unlike the PJs, her weapon was unsuppressed, the loud bark of her GAU-5 ringing out for hundreds of metres in every direction.

Ash fucking missed. She cursed. The only times she handled a rifle was during annual rifle qualifications, outside of that she focused solely on her job of flying around the equivalent of a flying dump truck. One of the PJs swung onto Ash's target and dropped him with two well placed shots to the torso. As the enemy squads of soldiers reorganised themselves after their helicopters were destroyed, the Oseans started receiving sporadic rifle fire, five-four-five AK rounds cracking over their positions. The PJs immediately returned fire with pinpoint accurate shots, quickly backed up by Ash, Kitagawa and the helicopter crewmen taking more general shots in the direction of the enemy. Ash lined up her iron sights with a Yuke sticking out from behind a tree. She pulled the trigger. There was a small pink puff as the man flinched, dipping properly behind the tree.

"Splash in ten seconds, heads down!" Andrew yelled. Ash fired a couple of extra shots before withdrawing into her foxhole, curling up and pressing her face against the freezing snow. A few seconds later there were another series of familiar booms as another two ballistic missiles slammed into the same positions on the other sides of the woods. Above the trees belched a column of smoke and flame, an indication that at least one and possibly more of the remaining Mi-17s had been destroyed. When the shaking stopped, the gunfire paused and the crackling of explosions died down, Ash stuck her head out of the foxhole to listen for the sounds of a rotor. Unfortunately, at least one of the Hips had survived, landing in the distance.

"Tally two bandits on radar." Grimm received a hit on two low-flying aircraft at thirty klicks. Given their altitude and their low speed, most likely helicopters. "Hips, maybe?"

"Whatever they are, they're definitely not friendly." Nagase reasoned.

"If you've got a shot, take it." Chopper instructed.

"Copy." Grimm replied, locking the two choppers up on radar and launching his final two radar guided missiles at them. "Archer, Fox 3, Fox 3."

Ash ducked into cover as the bolt locked back on her rifle indicating an empty magazine. Rolling onto her side to pull out a magazine from her vest, a torrent of fire cracked loudly overhead while the suppressed pops and unsuppressed bangs of the various Osean AR-15 platforms in the hands of the defenders. Racking the charging handle to chamber a round, Ash crawled forward and began firing at anything that moved. A handful of squads worth of Yuktobanian troops had pushed up from the chaotic landing site and towards the entrenched position.

"Mmmpth!" Somebody yelled out in pain off to Ash's right. One of the PJs had caught a bullet.

"Hartmann!" Gully called out.

"I'm good, I'm good!" Hartmann called back, continuing to lay down fire against the approaching enemy. At the very least the PJ could still shoot and in any case there were bigger things to fret about, the two transport helicopters flying over and pivoting over the cliff to flank them, for instance. The snow that was kicked up by the rotor wash of the two Hips considerably reduced Ash's visibility. Cursing to herself, Ash rolled onto her side with her rifle at her shoulder and popped a couple of shots off at the lead chopper. Through the miniature snowstorm she couldn't see if she had actually hit anything, but what she did see was the outline of a door gunner swivel a machinegun in their direction.

"Heads down!" Ash screamed, ducking down into her two foot deep foxhole to take cover from the machine gun fire that was sure to come their way.

BANG!

Then a couple of seconds later…

BANG!

Ash frowned, knowing the sound of an aircraft exploding when she heard it. She poked out of her hole for one moment as the shooting stopped to look for the source of the noise. She found it in the falling fireballs that used to be a pair of Mi-17s. Unless somebody in their group had brought along invisible MANPADS and elected not to talk about it, the survivors hadn't been the ones to shoot down both Hips back to back, which got Ash thinking as she crawled forward and resumed firing, popping shots at the Yukes who returned the fire in kind, somebody landing two shots close enough to her to make her leap back into cover fearfully.

"Reinforcing flight?!" Kitagawa yelled over the noise of gunfire as the gunfight picked back up.

"Sea Goblin 1, Goblin Actual, say again, over?!" Ash heard Andrew communicating with somebody over radio with one hand while laying down suppressing fire with the other. "Affirmative, you are ten mikes out!"

Over the sounds of nature and the back to back cracking of gunfire, the faint roars of jets could be heard overhead getting closer and closer, this time coming from the east instead of the west. Between the sounds of aircraft, the helicopters being shot down out of nowhere and the radio call between Andrew and a Sea Goblin callsign, Ash connected the dots and put two and two together. Rescue was nearby, respite was ever so close.

Her optimism buoyed, Ash crawled forward once more to take shots. Her optimism was almost immediately shattered when a bullet slammed into the snow in front of her, sending fragments flying outwards, one of which hit her in the cheek. Yelling out in pain, she crawled back into cover and touched the source of the pain to figure out the damage. Dark red blood dripped onto her gloves and onto the snow. The blow stung like a motherfucker but it wasn't lethal, so Ash slammed a fresh magazine into her rifle, took up her position and continued firing.

"Splash two." Grimm called out as the two helicopters were shacked. He looked down at the fireballs in the distance, spotting the two fallen Hips and the carcasses of four additional Mi-17s bunched up close enough to make a singular large stack of black smoke. The Viper pilot flew in between the two smokestacks and banked over the cliff to get physical eyes on the troops in contact.

"See anything, Archer?" Chopper asked from his position defending the rescue choppers some kilometres back.

"Our guys are in trouble." Grimm answered after ascertaining the situation. "Backs against the wall and outnumbered. Yukes are closing in fast."

"Shit… Sea Goblin is at least a few minutes out." Nagase swore, a rarity for the ordinarily passive Second Lieutenant.

"I've got one card up my sleeve." Grimm leant back into the seat and turned on a dime back towards the point of contact. Sighting the treeline, Grimm put the gun symbology on his HUD, pushed the stick down to point towards the inner bounds of the treeline and fired a long burst into the woods. A twenty millimetre cannon wasn't the best weapon out there for attacking ground targets, but as a suppression weapon against soft squishy infantry, it would do. Grimm dumped a hundred rounds into the treeline in a high aspect guns pass before pulling away and levelling out.

Blood soaking into her collar as Ash's cheek continued to seep blood, Wardog's squad leader pushed through the pain to continue popping shots off at the enemy. Or at least that's what she would have done if it weren't for the sudden ripping wave of snow being kicked up by explosions. Overhead there was a high pitched buzz. The distinctive firing noise of an M61 Vulcan cannon. She looked up to see a singular Viper.

"Oh shit." Ash said aloud. "It's one of ours!"

"Not out of this shitstorm yet!" Andrew yelled out. "Rescue is here in two mikes! Hartmann, Gully, pull back to Ruiz and get the casualty ready to load!"

From her peripheral vision, Ash saw the aforementioned PJs pull back from their foxholes and rush back to their fallback position where Ruiz and the wounded door gunner were dug in while there was a lull in the gunfight. She took the time to reload, pulling her last full magazine from her vest and slamming it into the magwell. Resting against the edge of her foxhole, Ash anxiously waited for their rescue to arrive before the fight picked back up. Waiting… waiting… waiting…

From the same aspect that the now destroyed Hips had come from came a pair of helicopters whose presence was much better appreciated than the prior hellicopters: HH-60G Pavehawks. Osean helicopters.

Ash had to restrain herself from leaping up in ecstatic joy as the Pavehawks swung into view. As they came broadside on to the edge of the cliff, the rearmost helicopter's crew chief spun up the minigun on that side of the Pavehawk and started firing a stream of rounds over their heads and into the treeline. Any Yuktobanians still alive in the mess were either cut in half by the minigun fire or forced to keep their heads down as six thousand rounds per minute cut through the trees. While the rear Pavehawk provided covering fire, the forward Pavehawk swung up to the edge of the cliff. The cabin door swung open and a pair of pararescuemen beckoned Andrew and his team of PJs to approach with their casualties.

The first man aboard was their stretcher-born door gunner, quickly followed by the injured Hartmann with a gunshot wound to his upper arm. Andrew and Ruiz personally ran like demons possessed to usher the remaining helicopter crewmen to mount up on the Pavehawk. The three green-dressed "lesser" rotary wing crewmen ran up and into the cabin of the chopper. The door slammed shut behind them and the Pavehawk moved forward, its crew chief taking over from the follow up Pavehawk to provide suppressing fire. Andrew and Ruiz ran up to Ash and Kitagawa.

"This is our ride, let's go!" Andrew yelled to get over the rotor noise. The Mudhen pilot and her WSO stood to their feet, turned around a hundred and eighty degrees and sprinted in the direction of their respite, the second HH-60G whose crew had opened the cabin door and were ushering the remaining survivors still on the ground to get in. Two PJs saddled up on that side of the Pavehawk shot over their heads in the direction of the enemy, the cracks of gunshots still audible from suppressed HK416s.

Ruiz was the first to mount up, followed by Kitagawa and Ash practically leaping into the Pavehawk, finally followed by Andrew jumping up and sitting down with his legs dangling off the edge of the passenger cabin.

"Last man!" Andrew called out to the crew chief. The crew chief relayed this to the pilot, who relayed this to the flight leader, and before long they were speeding up, forward and well the fuck away from the fight. As they flew due east, Ash saw a pair of Apaches slowly roll in parallel to the woods, their belly mounted autocannons flinging high explosive cannon shells into the remnants of the enemy infantry in the area.

One of the pararescuemen who had come with the helicopter grabbed Ash by the chin and wiped the blood off her cheek.

"Shot in the face." The PJ could be seen grinning behind his facewrap. "Fucking warrior."