“No time, Jack… he’s coming in supersonic… should be on top of us in less than ninety seconds. Has to be going for a photo run… and he’ll be gone by the time you got off the ground… you’ll never catch him.”
“A Fido could… He’s gotta turn around and come back sometime…”
“True… and an AMRAAM would also tell him we’ve still got jets here. He’s headed straight over the middle of Hoy, not Eday, and there’s a damn good chance he won’t see anything except the ruins and the wreckage left by the raid.”
“And if it’s a strike…?”
“I’m willing to take that chance. He’ll have to come a lot lower if he wants to try anything funny, and the Tunguskas can take him out if he does, but right now he’s just daring us to come up after him. They think we’re already out of the picture… if we let him take his pretty pictures and piss off again none the wiser, that’ll confirm to them that Hindsight’s aircraft were destroyed, and we’re that much safer. We take a shot at him, and hit or miss, and they’ll come looking for where we did land last Saturday with a lot more than just fucking cameras. Best option right now is to do nothing and ride it out.”
“Your call, Max,” came the dubious reply. “Keep me informed…”
Major Schwarz and Oberleutnant Hauser kept a careful eye on their instruments as Hawk-3 skimmed the black surface of the North Sea at a altitude of just 50 metres, their airspeed steady and barely below the speed of sound. Four huge fuel tanks hung beneath the Flanker’s wings, and launch rails outboard of those tanks and on the wingtips carried four Russian R-73 ‘Archer’ heat-seeking AAMs to complement the larger R-27 ‘Alamo’ radar-guided weapons beneath their fuselage.
Hawk-4 had already hurtled across the sky ahead of them, far above the island of Hoy that now lay just thirty kilometres off their nose, and they were purposefully following on behind in case their enemy launched any aircraft in pursuit… specifically any jet aircraft. If they did, Hawk-3 would be able to hide from radar in low-level ‘ground’ clutter until the last moment, and remain in a perfect position to strike before the Flanker was ever detected. The aircraft’s fine IRST visual search systems would enable them to target any prospective enemy, stealthy or otherwise, without the need for radar.
As intelligence had suspected however, no enemy jets rose into the air to intercept their high-flying colleague, and it appeared the enemy’s contemporary fighter opposition had indeed been eliminated.
“We’re about thirty seconds away from returning a solid signal on their ground radars,” Hauser advised, his attention never leaving his EW systems. “That eastern transmitter is painting us continuously now, and we won’t get any warning if one of those Tunguskas is still down there.”
“Hawk-Three to Hawk-Four,” Schwarz contacted the other aircraft after a few seconds’ thought. “How does the area appear, over?”
“Hawk-Four reading you, Erwin,” The reply came back in an instant. “We’re now well clear of the target area… main systems and Doppler are both clear… looks like this is going to be the no-show we were expecting, over.”
“Loud and clear, Hawk-Four,” Schwarz released a relieved breath. “I’m going to abort and clear the area… we have no threats on our screens either… see you at the rendezvous in fifteen…” He took manual control of the SU-30MK, hauling back on the stick and turning it into a sharp, banking climb to starboard as it headed north and away from Hoy, skirting the eastern edge of the Orkney chain.
Hawk-3 appeared on radar at Lyness within seconds of its climb to higher level, rising out of ground clutter as it turned north and away from what had been a direct course for Hoy. One of the Tunguskas has been moved to a camouflaged position near the Cantick Head lighthouse on South Walls, well east of the main base at Lyness, and from that vantage point the retreating Flanker was well within range of its missiles. Nevertheless it remained dormant, the crew of the Su-30 never knowing they’d been so close to death as the flak vehicle’s gunner tracked the aircraft’s retreat through high-powered optics, the turret turning slowly to follow it as it disappeared to the north.
For Thorne, it was a solid vindication of his decision to keep Davies and the Lightning grounded: even with the advantage of stealth, the F-35E would’ve been a sitting duck for the undetected second Flanker’s heat-seeking missiles and cannon, had it taken off in pursuit of the first enemy. It was now obvious that using the first Sukhoi as bait had been the plan all along, with reconnaissance pictures an added bonus should no attack materialise. Without the element of surprise, Thorne wouldn’t have liked to risk the Lightning against two heavily-armed and well-prepared opponents, regardless of the F-35’s supposed technical superiority and invisibility to radar.
Far out to the north-east over the freezing expanses of the North Sea, the pair of Hawks rendezvoused once more and formed up for the trip back home. They had the pictures they’d been sent to obtain, and no losses had been sustained in the process: in the eyes of the Sukhois’ aircrew, the mission was therefore an unqualified success. It was quite an irony that their success also turned out to be of such benefit for Hindsight.
Sunday
September 1, 1940
At Thorne’s own request, intelligence reports and communications had been flooding in from sources all over Britain and the continent since the days following the raid over Hindsight. The amount of information was incredible, and filtering through it consumed most of both Thorne’s and Eileen’s waking hours as they desperately searched for something that might produce a target valuable enough to be worthy of attack. By the evening of that first day of September, a number of potential targets had presented themselves as the pair now sat together at a table in that same small briefing room, their options laid out before them in separate piles.
The reports were mostly raw information — often data collected from intercepted German radio chatter between forward HQs and the OKW — and the fact that the huge majority of it was in mostly unbreakable codes had done nothing to help either of them in picking out a suitable target. It was only as Max flicked through one of the last of the piles before him, ready to concede defeat for the evening, that he finally came across something that was instantly recognisable as significant.
“Got it…!” He stated with feeling, holding up the three-sheet report for Eileen to see. “Plain language transmission between Berlin and an officer at an SS Q-store regarding a request for extra linen…”
“Sounds just captivating…!” Eileen countered with more than a little tired sarcasm, not trying anywhere near hard enough to sound truly interested. “What thread-count were the sheets?”
“Oh… smartarse…?” Thorne grinned back, not offended in the slightest. “How about a request for extra linen for guests staying at Reuters’ forward HQ near Amiens? Only top quality items required, as all needed to be supplied to members of the general staff and high-ranking dignitaries…” He handed Eileen the papers as her interest became genuine for the first time. “Take a look at how many bloody sheets the bastard is asking for…”
“That’s enough to look after dozens of guests,” Eileen noted, the implications behind that information sinking in. “What kind of meeting requires that many members of the general staff to all be in the one place at the one time?”