Flame poured in torrents from the remnants of the shattered wing as the IL-78 turned onto its back and Jack Davies hurtled past just three thousand metres to starboard. In another moment it was all over and the entire aircraft became a fireball as the rest of its huge reserve of unused jet fuel detonated in a single huge, blinding explosion. There was no possibility of evading or surviving the blast for the crew of the A-50 Mainstay, following so close on the tanker’s tail as it was, and it too was engulfed in fire as thousands of litres of jet fuel went up in an instant.
Even for Davies, a veteran of 20 years service including several tours of Iraq, it was the largest single explosion he’d ever seen. People walking on the Scottish coast watched it from the other side of the North Sea and thought it to be a falling star, as did many in Belgium and Northern France. As the F-22 turned back toward the north-west, flaming lumps of wreckage that had a moment before been two aircraft holding two dozen human beings began their long fall to Earth and the water below.
“Eyrie, this is Phoenix-One… do you read, over?”
“We read you loud and clear, Phoenix-One…” Thorne’s voice came back through his helmet speakers in an instant. “How are things…over?”
“Splash one Mainstay and tanker, Ground Control. I repeat: splash one Mainstay and tanker support. On my way home now…I’ll keep an eye out for any gatecrashers…over and out.” Davies pushed the Raptor back into supercruise and began his flight back to Scapa Flow at almost twice the speed of sound as the burning wreckage continued to fall.
Standing by the table beside Reuters and Müller, it was Schiller who became the first of the men in that Amiens briefing room to receive news of the destruction of the A-50 and IL-78 tanker, the phone call coming direct from their group commander at Wuppertal Air Base in the moments following receipt of the Beriev’s final data burst-transmission. The usable data they’d received wasn’t much, but it was enough to confirm some of what they’d suspected regarding the composition of the force that had arrived at Scapa Flow.
As he lowered the phone and returned it to its cradle, Schiller was actually surprised he wasn’t more affected by the news. He’d been dreading a call of exactly that kind and was expecting at any moment, as were they all, to hear of the destruction of Hawk-3 over Scapa Flow. Yet the Flanker that had all but flown into the veritable jaws of the enemy and back was safe and on its way home to base, yet the AWACS aircraft they knew as Sentry, which had been hundreds of kilometres away from any danger — or so it had seemed — had instead been lost with all hands along with their vitally-important tanker.
The destruction of the Mainstay and Midas were far greater losses for New Eagles in a strategic sense, but it now somehow almost came as an anti-climax. Schiller felt the eyes of the others upon him as they watched in nervous silence: the expression on his face was enough to suggest he’d received news they didn’t want to hear.
“They’re lost…?” Reuters asked finally, meaning Schwarz and Hauser in the Flanker. His voice thick with tension, and the slow, lifeless shake of Schiller’s head struck at the Reichsmarschall’s heart as much as the reply that came with it.
“…Sentry and the tanker…” he took a breath before continuing, allowing the unthinkable situation to register in the others’ minds and sink in. “Wuppertal lost contact fifteen minutes ago at about the same time an emergency data-dump came through. The decoded information indicates they picked up a missile launch from close range — there was no time to react. They picked up nothing before that…no enemy aircraft at all…yet whatever it was launched from within twenty kilometres. There was a fleeting return from something at the moment of launch detection, but it was gone again before they could identify…” he shrugged. “Schenke and the rest of them at Wuppertal just don’t know. One moment, they were there… the next they were… gone…”
“Hawk-Three and -Four…?” Müller had to ask, but was afraid of the answer that might come.
“Probably landing as we speak…confirmed back over German airspace twenty minutes ago.” There was little relief in that small piece of good news.
“Should we send them back out…?” Müller ventured. “They’re already armed — they just need refuelling… they could follow back down the track of whatever it was and perhaps overhaul it…?” His gaze turned to Reuters as he voiced the idea, as did Schiller’s, and for a moment there was no reaction.
“No…” the Reichsmarschall finally stated with soft certainty as he met both men’s gaze each in turn, and then repeated with more volume and strength. “No…we do nothing… yet…”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Kurt?” Müller reasoned carefully. “They’ve hurt us badly…twice…in just twenty-four hours. If we let Hindsight keep the initiative now, we might actually end up with a real battle on our hands…”
“No, Joachim…” the reply wasn’t angry, but would accept no argument nevertheless. “Sending our last Realtime fighter jets back into danger against aircraft invisible to radar, without knowing exactly what they have, there would be playing even further into their hands. Raptor…F-35 Lightning…whatever they have there closed to within spitting distance of an AWACS aircraft with a radar antenna nine fucking metres wide without anyone seeing it. Those Flankers are multi-role fighters, not interceptors — one of them wouldn’t stand a chance against an F-35 in a stand up fight, let alone against a fucking Raptor!” He shook his head slowly, following his own instincts. “We wait until we get the images from the recon pod and we know what they have: if there is an F-22 out there, an entire squadron of Flankers wouldn’t be enough! When we know, we can plan properly…” a cold, vicious light glowed then in his eyes “…and we can wipe them from the face of history!”
It was late into the night by the time Davies had landed once more at Scapa Flow, his F-22 parked safely on a hardstand alongside the F-35E. Thorne was standing on the flight line awaiting his arrival, and accompanied the pilot on the long walk back to the barracks.
“Hell of a thing that,” Davies observed solemnly, thinking more about what he’d just done from a moral perspective now the adrenalin of combat had drained away. “A whole bunch of people just like you and me were in those aircraft. It’s been nearly ten years since I fired a live shot at anyone, and it don’t get any easier to take afterward.”
“Yeah it’s a real ‘We ain’t in Kansas anymore’ thing, isn’t it,” Thorne agreed with nod as they walked. “The crew of one of those Flankers I hit went up with their plane last night…they were the first people I’ve ever killed…” He gave a faint smile that held little mirth. “Part of me — the rational part — thinks ‘fuck ‘em!’…they were out to get me too, and they deserved what they got…” he shrugged “…but they’re still two people I just killed…” The smile grew a little as he decided to lighten a mood that was becoming decidedly sombre. “Anyway, fuck it…we should be celebrating your safe return and another successful effort at sticking it up Reuters and his ‘boxhead’ mates! You’ll feel a shitload better once you’ve got a few JDs into you!”