“They’ll be going nuts right about now then…” Major Schwarz replied from the seat in front of him with a slight grin. “Pity their flak guns will be lucky to even see us, let alone track us! Maybe they can — !”
“Weapon lock…! Weapon lock…!” Hauser shouted his surprised warning, cutting the pilot off mid-sentence. “Target acquisition radar just obtained a lock on us!”
“Scheisse…!” Schwarz snarled in response, taking control from the autopilot in an instant but holding the current course, wanting more information. “What’re we talking about? Guns…missiles…?”
“ELINT is evaluating…” Hauser replied quickly, his eyes never leaving his instruments. “Doesn’t look like standard NATO gear to me though…” the experienced weapons officer was working more on hunch than evidence. “Actually…the emissions look almost…Russian…” Another second and his Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) systems had the answer for him. “Definitely Soviet…!” He advised finally, neither man taking any notice of his use of a well-out-of-date name for what was now the Russian Commonwealth of Independent States. “Closest match are tracking and acquisition radars for a SA-19 ‘Grison’ mobile flak.”
“Interesting…” Schwarz muttered, alternating his gaze between his own instruments and the dark earth streaking past below them. “Wouldn’t have expected Russian equipment. We’ll have to watch that: the SA-19 carries SAMs and guns. Effective range…?”
“Around eight thousand metres for the missiles and about half that for the guns,” Hauser was stretching his memory for details he could barely remember from his pilot training.
“We’ve got a bit of time yet, then…we’ll keep to plan for the moment.” Schwarz banked the aircraft slightly to the west but held to the same low altitude as he thought back over the maps and details he’d memorised before take-off. “I’m going to take us further to the west and use the western heights of Hoy as a shield: there are cliffs along the coast there and also a couple of hills to the north-west the island that rise to nearly five hundred metres. With any luck their radars’ll be blind there: we can pop-up for our pictures and be away again before they know what hit them.”
“We’re going to be fucking close by then,” his partner countered, unnerved by the idea. “We can’t take anything for granted just because they haven’t fired on us yet! I’m working on memory for those bloody range figures…if I’m wrong, we won’t have much room to manoeuvre!”
“I know that, God damn it!” Schwarz snarled back, his own fear shortening his temper. “But if The Eagles want pictures of what they’ve got down there, I’m damned sure we’re going to get them! Those bastards took out Hans, Jürgen and the others, remember!” He reminded his partner of the friends they’d lost over Dorset the evening before. Significantly, although neither would never notice, he’d referred to Reuters’ New Eagles group as their command rather than the Wehrmacht High Command as a whole. That situation was common among those who’d arrived with Neue Adler originally but now ostensibly operated within the normal German armed forces.
“Doesn’t mean we have to end up like them as well…” the weapons officer growled sullenly, no happier than the pilot over the loss of their comrades.
The jet roared around and then up across St. John’s Head, the sheer face of the vertical cliffs invisible in the darkness but clear on their TFR systems. It took no more than thirty seconds before they were skirting the hills to the north-western end of Hoy Island, just fifty metres above the ground as radar mapped the course ahead with no need for vision. The Flanker hurtled past to the south-west of Ward Hill and the Cuilags — Hoy’s highest points — and followed a set of shallow, winding valleys east as they disappeared into ground clutter on the search and tracking systems at Scapa Flow.
“Ten seconds to window…” Schwarz announced and Hauser, no less capable at his job, prepared himself for the short ‘pop-up’ manoeuvre that would allow them to take their all-important reconnaissance pictures. “Nine… eight… seven… six… five…” as the countdown continued, he rechecked the camera pod’s systems once more to reassure himself all was working perfectly, which they were.
As the pilot’s countdown reached zero, the Flanker’s autopilot suddenly launched the aircraft into a tight climb, both passengers gasping for air as G-forces pressed suddenly down on them and their automatically-inflating flight suits fought to compensate. A second later and Hawk-3 was once more clearly visible for any radar to see.
“Search systems have us again…!” Hauser warned instantly, eyes glued to the main screens on his instrument panel. “UHF and EHF tracking have acquired us…” he advised with slow professionalism, his cool tone hiding the nervousness he inwardly felt. “They have target lock… now… now… now…!”
“Guess we’ll see what they’ve got then…”Schwarz observed through clenched teeth, mostly to himself.
The western Tunguska’s search systems had reacquired Hawk-3 the moment it climbed out of the protection of the valleys south-east of Ward Hill. The original operational variant of the 2K22 Tunguska, also known by the NATO reporting name of SA-19 ‘Grison’, had originally been fitted with eight 9M311 radar-guided surface to air missiles with a nominal effective range of around eight kilometres (double the range of the twin 30mm cannon also fitted). As the closest match available, the software of the SU-30’s ELINT systems had thusly identified the weapons on the ground at Scapa Flow.
Several years out of date by the time the Sukhois had been acquired by the New Eagles, their ELINT systems were completely wrong. The pair of vehicles Hindsight had brought with them had been upgraded extensively and were instead armed with an advanced, modular weapons system known as the Pantsir-S1, also known by the new NATO reporting name of ‘SA-22 Greyhound’. A vastly-upgraded variant of that original 2K22M, the pair of cannon remained but were now complemented by no less than twelve missiles of a newer and far more capable type known as the 57E6. Fifty percent faster than the system it replaced, the missile was also possessed of a far greater effective range: almost twenty kilometres.
Although Hawk-3 was well out of range of the Tunguska’s cannon, it was easily within the reach of its missiles. As the vehicle’s turret turned with its target, one of the six launch tubes on its right side spewed smoke and fire and a missile burst forth into the sky at incredible speed. It streaked into the night sky on a bright flare of exhaust before quickly reaching the summit of its low, fast trajectory and spearing earthward once more at lightning speed in pursuit of its target, appearing as no more than a pinpoint of light trailing smoke to the onlookers at the base. The distant horizon suddenly lit up with a spray of incandescent orange flares that followed fast behind the track of the invisible Flanker, the shuddering sound and force of the jet’s engines and sonic boom audible a few seconds later as the missile detonated downrange.
Hawk-3’s warning systems picked up the 57E6 instantly as it hissed from its launch tube and hurtled toward them.
“Missile launch…!” Hauser cried out a warning as he watched his screens. “Bearing two-nine-five and closing fast!” He rechecked his readings even as Schwarz began evasive manoeuvres and threw the Su-30 toward the safety of low level once more, flares and chaff cascading from the Flanker’s tail in an attempt to fool its automated pursuer. “Eight thousand metres’ range my arse…!”