What saved them from almost certain immolation was that Bondarev’s Sukhoi had struck the cliff face about six feet over the chute. Smashing into the rock, its fuel tanks had ruptured and spewed flaming fuel into the chute, but the plane itself had simply pancaked into the cliff above the chute, exploded with huge force as its ammunition and fuel detonated, and then dropped to the rocky beach below.
Ironically, the smoking wreck served to obscure the chute from anyone who might have been looking for it from the air or sea.
When the fire subsided, Bunny stuck her head up and peered down the chute, still seeing unobstructed daylight ahead. “Missile, you think?”
“Had to be,” Rodriguez agreed. “But they missed. Come on, we can’t expect they’ll keep missing. And you can bet it’s just a matter of time before they’ll dropping some heavy harm on that cave mouth. Let’s hustle!”
Having installed the new fuel cell and locked it down, they booted up their last drone without any further drama and got it ready to launch. Rodriguez had no way of knowing how many of their fighters out there were still operational, but they had now put two electronic-warfare aircraft and five armed with A2A in the air. If the S-FADs had done their job, and each Fantom just killed two Russians each, they would have accounted for the best part of a full enemy squadron. That would have to hurt. She checked her panel. Oh what now!?
She deciphered the data on her screen. “Cat is overheating,” she told Bunny. “We can push it, risk that it seizes, or wait and let it cool.”
“How long?”
“Ten… nine minutes.”
At that moment they heard a mighty crash outside as something, probably one of the combatants, smashed into the water in the harbor outside the cave mouth.
“We might not have ten minutes,” Bunny said. “I say take the shot, even if the damn thing blows up.” Her words were all fire and brimstone, but Rodriguez could see the woman was about to pass out if she didn’t kill herself with overexertion first.
“I’ll see if I can bypass the Cat safety lock,” Rodriguez said. “You run up to the trailer, try to get a read on what is happening out there. Grab some electrolytes, then get back here.”
“Yes ma’am,” Bunny said, without hesitation. She wanted to know what was happening above the Rock just as much as Rodriguez did. Rodriguez noticed she didn’t run over to the trailer, but moved with a shuffling jog.
With a heavily armed enemy circling outside, the cavern under the Rock seemed smaller to her now than it ever had before. The wet stone ceiling lower, the rippling water in the Pond more threatening. She realized screens full of menus and commands were just cycling unheeded in front of her on the shooter’s control panel and she forced herself to focus. They just needed to get their last Fantom away. Then they could rest… forever if need be.
Bondarev hit the hard ice covered rock and rolled. As he tumbled he tried to keep his head and his arms tucked in, but his head took a heavy blow that made him see stars even through the helmet. When he stopped rolling, he tried to stand, but found he couldn’t balance, even to get up into a crouch. Brain injury, something told him. Concussion. Take it easy. No one is shooting at you down here.
He decided to lie still where he had landed, knees curled up to his chest. He pulled his parachute up around himself to keep warm, felt down to his trouser leg and triggered his emergency beacon. No rescue could come until the area was secure, but at least aircraft above would know he was down and still alive!
Which, miraculously, he seemed to be. He gingerly rolled one foot, then the other, to test for a broken ankle. The same for his wrists and hands. He knew he might not feel any pain for a few minutes, the amount of adrenaline that had to be flowing, but it seemed he had gotten down in one piece. He still had spots in front of his eyes when he opened them, and a massive headache, but no pain in his back, no splintered bones.
He was, however, lying on the stone and ice roof of an enemy airbase in the middle of a shooting war and if his pilots could secure the airspace over the island there would be an air strike blowing in any minute now.
Gathering himself, he rolled into a crouch. About two hundred feet to his left he saw what must have been the remains of the American radome. It was nothing more than blasted metal stumps and rough foundations but it offered the only potential shelter on the whole rock, in case any of the incoming Russian munitions went high.
He looked up at the clear blue sky, could see some contrails, and far away, a burning machine falling from the sky. He had no idea if it was American or Russian. But judging by the first ten minutes of the battle, he wasn’t hopeful. It was the first time he had ever gone up against an autonomous sub-launched air defense system.
And it had kicked his human ass.
Yevgeny Bondarev might have been more cheerful if he could have seen the data Bunny was running as she chugged a bottle of non-carbonated energy drink. The screen told its story in a format she could digest in seconds, but she kept looking at it for as long as it took her to finish the pint of fluid she was throwing down.
Skippy, the Fantom in the bay, had been linked into the hex data feed and was tracking the aircraft overhead. It had faithfully recorded every kill and loss. She looked at the data in disappointment. The S-FAD ambush had claimed just 14 aircraft for its 24 missiles. There were still 4 Russian fighters, all 6th generation Mig-41s, reforming south of the Island. They were not giving up.
She put down her empty bottle, reached to take one for Rodriguez, and saw a group of new icons appear on the screen at the absolute limit of Skippy’s range, about twenty miles out. They flickered in and out, indicating they were stealth aircraft, but the AI was confident enough it could identify them from their radar and signals cross sections.
Nine Su-57s in the company of Okhotniks. Six of them! They were spearing straight toward Little Diomede, and that could only mean one thing. She touched the comms button on her helmet. “Boss, I got mud movers inbound! I’m going to stay in the trailer, make sure my formation has its head in the game, OK?” she called urgently.
“Acknowledged. Keep them out of our backyard O’Hare, I’m still working on this Cat.”
“Yes ma’am.” Bunny pulled off her plane captain helmet, jammed on her virtual-reality rig and plugged it in. Bunny’s hex, holding low and optimized for stealth north of Little Diomede was programmed with priority targets and a 20-mile defense perimeter around the island it was tasked to defend. Knowing that pilot kills hurt more than drone kills, Bunny had programmed her Fantoms to seek out and attack Su-57 or Mig-41 aircraft first and foremost. Each Fantom was armed with eight Cuda medium-range missiles — 40 in total. Her aggressor algorithm gave the three lead aircraft in the formation the role of engaging first, and as soon as Tzubya’s reformed flight of four Mig-41s entered the kill zone south of Little Diomede — their own radars marking their place in the sky like neon lights — they were immediately locked with eight Cudas, two per aircraft.
No! She needed to re-task them to stop the ground attack Hunters! Right now they were the biggest threat to Rodriguez and O’Hare.
She was too slow. Homing on the Russian Migs targeting radars, her Fantoms let fly with a volley of Cudas and the sky south of Little Diomede was suddenly a mosaic of contrails.