ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (30 page)

His F-16s had broken up the formations of strike
aircraft before their escorts had intervened and from there on in it had become
a fur ball. Arndeker’s wingman, a young woman from Idaho, had been on her
second mission had mid-aired with a Mig-29. The two aircraft had exploded, the
wreckage locked together in an obscene embrace as they’d fallen towards the
German countryside.
Arndeker had watched
until they disappeared into low cloud but no parachutes had appeared.

His last AIM-9L had been a clear miss, defeated by a
combination of his intended victims ECM suite and some damn fine flying. He’d
lost contact with the rest of the squadron and was almost entirely defensive,
loosing off snap shots at fleeting targets of opportunity until a Mig-29 had
unwisely shown him its rear end, flying straight and level for just a little
too long and offering a minimum deflection shot. He had put a long burst of
cannon into it, watching the shells explode in a line from the tip of its port
wing to the wing root. The wing had folded up, sending the aircraft into a
spin. Just before entering the low cloud that had swallowed his wingman an
object shot clear of the crippled aircraft before blossoming into a parachute.
Finally with his HUD warning him of a fuel state approaching critical and a
pair of Mig-31s, also shy of air-air ordnance but hard on his tail, he’d dived
for the ground somewhere north of Duisburg, losing them in the ground
clutter.  

Everyone there had similar tales to tell, but not in
the tones of bravado, rather in a matter-of-fact manner that sounded almost
bored.

All the aircrew in the orchard, with the exception of
the Swedish flier, were showing the signs of fatigue, a weariness that ran as
deep as the bones and permeated the nerves. It was the result of flying ever
more sorties each day as losses reduced the numbers of men and women available
to fly the missions. It was also through watching that band of colleagues who
had been the core of the squadron, thin out or disappear altogether, leaving
the survivors to wonder when it would be they who failed to come back.

By unspoken agreement the talk of combat and lost
friends petered out, turning instead to peacetime flying, famous gaffs,
non-fatal yet spectacular screw-ups and the like. For a time at least the war
was pushed aside, replaced by the laughter the recounting of these tales and
anecdotes caused.    

The fuel truck returned, its own bowser now refilled
and the small international tea party finished up the lukewarm beverage and the
sandwiches that were curling up at the edges.

Arndeker was the last in line and the other aircraft
had already departed by the time the fuel truck had given him enough to get
back to his own field. He was alone in the orchard and the warmth of the other
flier’s spirits had departed this place. There was eeriness about it now and he
was eager to be gone. Fifteen minutes later he was airborne again and heading
home at treetop height to avoid trouble.

Australia: Ian McLennan Park, Kembla: New South
Wales.

Australia’s
immensely
long coastline had but eighty thousand full time and reserve personnel of the
Australian Defence Force to guard it against invasion at the outbreak of war,
but this had swollen to two hundred thousand men and women under arms. In
addition they welcomed others to the task.

Japanese, Taiwanese and Singaporean personnel wore a
French design behind their cap badges, a
fleur-de-lis,
signifying volunteers from Chinese occupied counties. These were in main
service personnel who had escaped in order to fight on when their own countries
surrendered to the People’s Republic of China. There was even a Moro commando
brigade in training near Brisbane, its instructors were Australian SAS as a
deal of suspicion existed between the available US instructors and the Muslim’s
from Mindanao in the Philippines.

Two divisions of the US 2
^nd
Army, plus air and sea assets, had arrived from evacuated South Korea and a
further division from the USA, 5
^th
Mechanised. Along with major units of the US Pacific
Fleet this went a good way to having a credible defence force to face off the
invasion force that was heading their way.

3
^rd
Marine Expeditionary Force and the majority of the
former USFJ army and air force units relocated to New Zealand from Japan.

There were no force relocations from Taiwan. All US
units that had fought on the island had perished along with the Taiwanese armed
forces on that last terrible day. 

A very small component from the British Army was also
present in Australia, albeit accidentally despite the current British Defence
Minister’s attempts to spin it as largess.

Four British Mk2E Challenger main battle tanks of the
1RTR, Royal Tank Regiment, were sat in hull down positions on the high ground
above the Princes Highway and Kembla Grange Racecourse, the temporary ‘home’ of
the 5
^th
Mechanised Division, to which the troop of British
tanks, an infantry platoon of 3
^rd
Battalion Royal Green Jackets and support troops were
attached.

The division had the daunting task of defending a
stretch of coastline from the port of Kembla, situated forty miles south of
Sydney, to Bateman’s Bay, ninety miles to the south, and west as far as the
northern edge of the city limits of Canberra, in all a mere seven hundred and
twenty square miles.

Officially the British troops were part of the
divisional reserve and therefore had no pre-prepared forward fighting positions.

Having been at Fort Hood on exercise
‘Commanche Lance’
at the outbreak of war the small British contingent known as
unofficially as ‘The Queen Elizabeth’s
Combat
Team’ had embedded with their hosts, the 52
^nd
Infantry, for a return to Europe
via Atlantic convoy’s with 5
^th
(US) Mechanised Division but the division had been turned around on reaching
the docks in Texas and entrained again to be sent west as reinforcements for
Australia.  

‘Heck’, Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah
Wantage-Ferdoux, RTR, Lt Tony McMarn, RGJ and Captain Danny King, their US
liaison, walked together across the dusty and uneven hilltops west side of Ian
McLennan Park, a bike scrambling and off-road dirt track area beside a football
ground and small covered spectators stand, the home of the South Coast United
Soccer Club.

In appearance the hill was spookily similar to that of
an ancient Briton hill fort of the stone age, the camouflaged twenty first
century armoured fighting vehicles whose barrels poked outwards at its crest
somewhat at odds with that. However, as the Brits had dug in they had found
nothing to excite viewers of the Discovery Channels ‘Ancient Aliens’ but plenty
of evidence of landfill. The terraced sides engineered for stability rather
than defence.

Both officers carried mess tins, mugs and ‘scoffing
rods’, knife, fork and spoon clanking in one hand as they headed over to the
covered football stand to join the breakfast queue.

The stand was the cookhouse and feeding area for the
combat team, the changing rooms were the ‘barracks’ for the cooks and REME
L.A.D, Light Aid Detachment, and the car park sported a covered workshop
constructed of scaffolding with a ‘wriggly tin roof’, which means ‘corrugated
metal sheeting’ to civilians.  

“So we have a spare barrel and a bunch more rounds per
tank?” Tony asked.

When the Australian Defence Force was looking to
replace its ageing German Leopard 1s it had tested the contender’s main
armament. The German Leopard 2s L44 main armament also ‘gunned’ the US M1A1
Abrahms, and an L44 was tested for comparison beside the British L30 tank gun.
The rifled British gun could throw a HESH, shaped charge road, 8,000 metres, a
full five miles, with great accuracy and twice the range of the smoothbore
German gun. But accessibility to spares and upgrades from the other side of the
Pacific as opposed to the other side of the planet was a factor in Australia’s
choosing the American tank over the German and British MBTs. It also meant that
in a magazine in Darwin there was sat 144 rounds of ammunition left over from
that testing.

Heck’s troop of Challenger 2s had arrived in Australia
with just their ‘Front Line loads’ of forty nine rounds per tank and the
commander of  5
^th
Mech, ‘Duke’ Thackery, had little use for the Brits
other than as a forlorn hope and as casualty replacements as the Abrahms and
Challengers ammunition was not compatible.

“In the big scheme of things we have thirty six
reloads per vehicle, which is good for one engagement perhaps…still, it’s
better than jack-all, isn’t it?” Heck responded.

“Not enough for General Thackery to change his plans.
You are still a throw away quick reaction force to plug any penetrations.”
“Throw away?” Heck muttered aloud.
“Penetrations?” he continued. “I am not sure I like the parallels with those of
a ‘spent johnnie’.” he concluded.

Danny frowned.

“Pardon?”

“A used, prophylactic.”
Tony
informed him.

  They joined the end of the queue, standing
behind Sergeant Rebecca Hemmings and Master Sergeant Bart Kopak. Rebecca still
wore a drawn look on her otherwise pretty features. Becoming a widow early on
in the war was not a matter that she had fully come to terms with yet, but the
ever hopeful Bart was there if and when she did.

Bart was ‘not on rations’ with the British unit
anymore. They no longer warranted a liaison team, just Danny King the captain
from the 11
^th
Armoured Cavalry. The three officers were aware of
the situation but none of them made any comment. Rebecca and Bart were good
people.

     The line shuffled on, closer
to the heavy
‘ Hay
Boxes’, the insulated metal
containers for transporting cooked food to the troops. Such containers had once
been lined with dried straw to retain the heat and as such the name ‘Hay Box’
had remained.

Eventually each officer was served and found a spot to
sit together in the stands to eat.

A slice of fried bread, a fried sausage, a fried egg,
two tinned tomatoes, half a dozen tinned mushrooms and a half ladle of baked
beans.

Be it Chelsea Barracks or Camp Bastion, Catterick or
Kembla,
  the
high cholesterol breakfast was an
even surer sign than a bugler sounding reveille that the British Army had started
a new day.

Russia.

A day, which had started badly, was steadily getting
worse for the deputy commander of Militia Sub-District 178. His boss had been
slightly vocal when the men had not been in position and ready to go a half
hour before dawn, rather vocal when the dawn came and no move was made, and
screaming dire threats into radio microphones thirty minutes after that.

The trouble was, the thousand and twelve men they had
were policemen, not soldiers, and lining them up twenty feet apart along the
forest’s edge was not as easy as it sounded.

Shortly after they had stepped off, the real
difficulties had become evident. Gaps appeared where men elected not to push
through heavy brush, but rather to walk around. Men walked alongside friends
chatting, and where the going was easy the line surged forward, leaving others
struggling through underbrush far behind.

It was not happening as the sub district commander had
envisaged, the evenly spaced line of his briefing was not going to sweep evenly
along at three miles an hour, uncovering the killers as it flushed them from
hiding, and apparently it was
all his
deputy’s fault.

The commander had been unwilling to listen to other
opinions, which was nothing new; he was an arrogant individual at the best of
times.

The deputy had put forward the possibility that the
culprits could have put a
lot
of distance between themselves and the scene of their
crime, which was why the search of farms and buildings in the region had come
up empty, and why the reconnaissance helicopter the previous day had not
uncovered any clusters of skulking humanity in the trees of the forest.

His opinions and theories carried little weight at the
best of times, and these earned him a contemptuous rebuke.

The deputy had initially been in charge of the line of
militiamen, then humiliated in front of the men by his superior when all did
not go according to plan, he had been despatched instead with two BMP-1s to
check on the men cordoning the forest.

It had taken an hour for the deputy to accept that he
was better off away from the line of ‘beaters’ because things would only get
even more fraught as time went on.  His boss, the commander, was an idiot
and what is more everyone knew he was an idiot, so what did it matter that he
had treated his deputy like an imbecile in front of the lowest ranks?  All
he had to do was ensure there were no problems with the cordons, and generally
keep his head down for the duration of the operation. It would take several
days to comb through the forest so he would take the opportunity to enjoy the
time away from the overbearing buffoon who held the next rank, savour the
independence and autonomy whilst he had the chance.