ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (44 page)

Lt Col Chan had passed the air raid warning to the
brigade headquarters for the troops at Vormundberg, but it had not been passed
to the people that it mattered most to in time.

The Flanker that had destroyed the British Army Air
Corps Gazelle splashed an Apache immediately after, both machines falling to
its 30mm cannon. It turned its nose skywards and exploded, hit by all three of
a Starstreaks
projectile’s
. The Royal Artillery crew
that had launched the high velocity missile died, their Stormer vehicle
disintegrating under the 3000mph impact of a Kh-31P missile, the anti-radiation
version of the Krypton anti-ship missile.

Venables fired the ten L-8 smoke grenades in the
dischargers either side of the main gun. He now knew why the artillery barrage
had ceased and he didn’t know what good the smoke would do but they were very
exposed on top of the hill, so it couldn’t hurt.

“Hello all stations this is Zero, Air Red, Air Red,
Air Red!”

The radios carried the very late air raid warning,
which elicited a variety of retorts amongst the listeners but only one gave
voice to his on the net

“No shit?”

A rather officious voice took exception to the tiny
lapse in radio discipline.

“Hello unknown station this is Zero, say again
callsign, over?”       

Despite, or perhaps even because of the situation, the
reply drew laughter.

“I’m sarcastic…..”
said ‘Unknown Station’
. “Not stupid.”

The Challenger reached the brow of the hill and was
beginning down the incline when a large hand plucked at it, lifting the rear of
the main battle tank as if it were a toy.

Ann-Marie Chan’s assumption that the type was a SU-25
would have been successfully challenged on technical grounds by an anorak
speaking in a nasal monotone. It was in fact an SU-39, formerly a two-seat
version of the SU-25 but with that rear seat removed to enable mid-air
refuelling.

The ‘Frogfoot’ had its trial by fire during the Afghan
War where it proved itself to be a reliable, close air support machine capable
of absorbing a lot of punishment. Of a somewhat similar appearance to an Alpha
Jet, it was the Red Air Force’s best ground attack aircraft. 

Colonel Ilya Morimsky had not had the best of days,
flying once to Belgium and back at first light, once to France and back in the late
morning, and each time with half the ordnance load his aircraft was capable of
carrying. This mission however, held the promise of actually putting enough
ordnance in the right place to
almost
justify the risks and the losses amongst his pilots.

The plan that had got them to the battlefield without
loss had been his, thrashed out over a secure radio link to an army officer who
had sounded almost intelligent. Leaving the same battlefield without loss was
another thing entirely, however. Despite the best efforts of the aircraft
designated to carry the AS-11 and Kh-31P anti-radiation missiles they were
still seeing missile launches from the ground. Frighteningly fast Starstreak
missiles blotted three of his aircraft from the sky on the first pass, and heat
seeking Stingers that his AAA suppression aircraft could not detect had brought
down another two of his regiment so far.

The regiment had divided into separate flights and
endeavoured to attack the targets the ground troops wanted taking out once
those assigned to AAA suppression had cleared the way. Morimsky himself leading
a flight of four, two pairs of aircraft with one to identify the targets in
question and then to highlight by laser designation whilst it was attacked with
500kg LGBs.

One of the targets the ground forces wanted
neutralising was described by them as a Milan anti-tank crew beside a large
tree on the hillside, but despite providing a ten figure map reference his
laser partner could not identify it. It was a long hillside with a lot of trees
on it and few features to get their bearings from. Eventually the voice on the
ground had a tank fire a smoke round at the spot they wanted attacking and a
laser was aimed at that point.

Not only the attacking armour had targets for them,
artillery spotters and the crews of the Soviet helicopters had targets they
believed were best dealt with by the SU-39s. Consequently it was not just 1CG
that was to receive their best efforts, but 2REP, 2LI and the Argyll’s also.

Once the lasing aircraft had identified the targets
the flak suppression elements attacked and the strike aircraft waited a few
moments before beginning their runs.

Morimsky had come straight across the valley, east to
west and thirty seven seconds behind the AAA suppression sortie, and all he
needed to do was follow a line projected onto his HUD until the automated
weapon release system pickled off the ordnance. With his right hand he held the
aircraft steady at 400 feet as the thumb of his left hand rose and fell on the
counter-measures switches, discharging flares and chaff from the wingtip pods.

The first thing he’d noticed was the amount of smoke
in the valley, and then he was passing above a trail of destruction as if some
child had thrown a tantrum with his toys, smashing and scattering them. The
trail ended at a line of stationary vehicles some eight hundred metres from the
first visible NATO foxhole, rendered immobile by the mines that had blown off
sections of track and then destroyed by tank rounds or missiles. The attack was
stalling and unless a serious cull of the enemy anti-tank units took place it
would never progress.

One of the AAA suppressors had already fallen; with
its tail blown off it had crashed into the forested slopes of Vormundberg,
whilst a second was limping home on one engine.

His aircraft rose as a bomb fell away and he banked
hard right to follow the side of the hill, wincing as he saw an SU-27, one of
their escorts, exploded by a missile.

The lasing aircraft reported the bomb he had released
had detonated exactly on the illumination but there had been no secondary
explosions, which led the Colonel to correctly assume they had attacked a
remoted firing point and not the crew. He extended the air brakes by twelve
degrees before reversing direction, having seen the whirling rotors of two
British helicopters hovering just above the hilltop, and the turn brought down
his speed even more.

Although he carried two AA8 Aphid missiles, one under
each wing, he selected the belly mounted 30mm cannon and used the rudder pedals
to line up on the first target. He fired a half second burst and saw fragments
of
perspex
glint in the sun as the rounds struck
home. He had kept the pipper of the gun sight on the engines above the cargo
deck but the helicopter, a Lynx, was turning towards him and the cockpit bore
the brunt. It immediately fell the short distance to the ground but he did not
see it impact, he was already using the opposite rudder to bring the nose into
line with an Apache gunship. His burst was high and he saw the cannon rounds
hitting the ground beyond it, throwing clods of earth skywards and there was no
time to adjust his aim.

Morimsky overshot and banked left, craning his neck as
he did so to see if the Apache was still in sight but it wasn’t. What he did
see though were smoke grenades going off, drawing his eyes to a tank he had not
noticed before.

He called his lasing partner but the man had kept his
eye on the boss and already the British Challenger was being illuminated.

Selecting another 500kg laser guided bomb, Col
Morimsky pulled back on the stick, gaining another 500 feet before turning
back. The tank was moving towards the brow of the hill, half concealed by smoke
but it was as good as dead. The Colonel had nothing against the men who were
manning the vehicle but he had a job to do and as such he chose not to notice
the figure stood in the commander’s hatch, so to him the fighting vehicle was
nothing more than some robot.

He heard the pilot of the aircraft illuminating the
target shout, the airwaves carried a half formed word, which he could not
recognise but the alarm in the voice was clear. The laser illumination ceased
and Morimsky de-selected automatic release of the weapon, turning instead to
manual at the precise moment something struck his aircraft hard. He cursed
loudly because the impact startled him into inadvertently releasing the
weapon.   

He did not try to see how close the bomb had come to
his target, the smell of fuel had seeped through into his mask and the needle
of the engine temperature gauge for his starboard engine was climbing rapidly.
He shut down the engine but found that something was causing a lot of drag on
the right side of his aircraft; far more than a dead engine would cause, and
only by keeping constant pressure on the left rudder was he able to correct the
yaw the drag was inducing.

Things got markedly worse a second later when he was
hit again as he overflew the French legionnaires, a wall of small arms fire
rose to greet him but he heard only one audible impact. It was no louder than a
loose chip flying up off a road makes when it hits the bodywork of a car, but
his instrument panel and radio died, the needles sinking to zero and their
illuminating lamps cutting out.

He made it past the NATO units to open countryside,
heading back towards the Elbe but without a compass he was uncertain of the
heading. Turning his head he tried to pick out a recognisable landmark but
instead he saw the fins of a Stinger missile protruding from the starboard
engine housing just behind where he was sat. After the initial shock of seeing
the unexploded weapon he shook his head in wonder.

“How lucky can a guy get?”

He obviously could not tempt fate much longer and he
was going to have to eject before the Stingers warhead decided to go off.
Removing his feet from the rudder pedals and reached down for the ejector seat
firing handle between his lower legs, but froze when he saw about two inches of
fuel sloshing about in the foot well. The voids in the fuselage behind him were
probably also awash with the highly inflammable liquid, and the rockets that
would throw the seat clear would ignite the jet fuel which would set off the
unexploded warhead.

Colonel Morimsky took back all he had said about being
lucky and abandoned all ideas of leaving the aircraft in flight, looking
instead for somewhere flat to put the machine down on.

He was still west of the Elbe but in territory the
advancing ground forces had already passed through so every road would
eventually be carrying logistical support convoys. He need not have to walk too
far before finding a ride on an empty truck heading back towards the river. It
was a mainly wooded area though and that was troublesome, because he had no way
of knowing when his remaining engine was going to flame out for lack of fuel.

Just as he was starting to think he would never find
somewhere to put down he saw a long clearing ahead, and he brought his damaged
machine down lower, overflying it as he looked for obstacles. It looked clear
as well as being a decent length so he circled around, jettisoning his
remaining ordnance over the trees and spotting an east/west running road about
two kilometres south. Easy walking distance provided he could get down in one
piece.

Once he was lined up he jettisoned the cockpit canopy,
tightened the straps holding him to his seat, and began the approach
for a wheels
up landing.

The SU-39 could glide, but without knowing the full
extent of the damage to his aircraft he couldn’t afford to shut down his
remaining engine, in case it was the only system left that was providing power
for the avionics. It would be ironic, he thought if in order to avoid burning
he shut down the engine and crashed, because there was no electrical power to
move the control surfaces.

The approach was straightforward and he cleared the
treetops at the end of the clearing by a foot and throttled back, bringing the
engine to idle without shutting it down. He flared, allowing the last of the
flying speed to bleed off and then lowered the nose to avoid the tail catching
and smashing the belly against the earth. Despite all that he was thrown
violently forward against the seat straps when the aluminium belly met the
earth, and the vibration, the bone shaking, jarring, seemed to go on forever.

The careering journey across the clearing ended as the
crippled aircraft came to a halt, brought up against a bank of earth and a few
moments later its pilot emerged without bothering to shut the remaining engine
down, rolling out of the open cockpit and hurriedly regaining his feet before
running a hundred or so metres and flinging himself to the ground behind an old
fallen tree trunk near the edge of the clearing.

The sound of the aircrafts single operational engine
carried beyond the clearing and through the trees, a noise as alien and invasive
as the stinking fumes it gave off. Smoke leaked into the air from the battered
fuselage but after a few minutes that had reduced to little more than whisp’s.
There was no fire, no explosion, and the pilot’s still helmeted head emerged
from behind a tuft of grass, peering at the noisy aircraft for long minutes. It
did not seem fitting to leave the aircraft here with its jet engine still
turning over, it had saved his life and it was only respectful that he showed
his appreciation of that fact. He slowly regained his feet and after a few
seconds hesitation he walked back to the aircraft, unaware that he was in the
crosshairs of several gun sights.