“Roger Dog, we’ll hold for Talon anyway.”
There was a hint of ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ in the AWAC controllers voice as he acknowledged Arndeker simply.
“Roger”.
If all had gone as planned the Armee de l’Air aircraft would still have been overhead when the Swedish and American aircraft went for the tanks and APCs, but the French had expended all their anti-radar ordnance and were already departing the area as the Gripen’s finally arrived. The two leaders hurriedly agreed on a simple plan to replace the original, the Gripen’s and the F-16s would make a north to south pass over the head of the column in extended line, four hundred metres between aircraft, with the Swedes on the left, they would then all swing left and make the second pass further down the column before egressing to the north.
The American and Swedish aircraft hugged the contours of the earth as they began their approach. Flying below electricity pylons and between trees, they headed for the pillars of black smoke in the distance that marked the positions of the victims of the French HARM missiles. On cue from the AWAC they popped up to 500 feet and began looking for targets of their own on the ground below.
The Wild Weasel sortie by the French had destroyed more than half a dozen AAA vehicles and intimidated the remainder into shutting down their radars, but it had not slowed the armoured advance. The scene that met Lt Col Arndeker was of a countryside crawling with machines of war, and all of them headed west. His first thought was that there were not enough munitions in the armouries of the west to deal with even half of the fighting vehicles spread out before him. Tracer began curling up towards him, travelling slowly at first but seemingly heading right for him. The tracer grew larger as it approached and suddenly seemed to accelerate, only to flash past harmlessly, but Arndeker still hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller. Each F-16 carried a pair of Rockeye II’s, slung in tandem down the centreline hard points and a Gator mine dispenser on each of the inside wing pylons. Arndeker touched the rudder to line up on a company’s worth of tank’s advancing in line abreast and pickled off a single Rockeye. The weapon fell clear of the aircraft before splitting open like a clamshell and releasing the 247 bomblets it contained, which fell like an ever expanding, elongated cloud. He wasn’t aware of what effect the bomblets had, he saw a road crossing ahead of him and selected the portside mine dispenser, leaving a trail of small munitions across the road and the fields either side of it.
Either his sensor suite was malfunctioning or none of the AAA vehicles within engagement range was emitting because the only sounds coming from his earpieces were voices, one female and seven male as the other pilots shouted to one another on the radio. Apart from the tracer there was little in the way of nastiness being directed their way, but the urge to be far from this place was very real. He pickled off his last mines in the path of a mass of self-propelled artillery emerging from a wood, and held his breath until the armoured spearhead had dropped away behind him and only open fields lay ahead. A quick call on his radio confirmed that his wingmen had also emerged unscathed, as had the Gripens, so he felt a lot more comfortable about the next pass.
The nine aircraft turned in a line to the left and then turned north once again, this time with the F-16s on the left. Arndeker found himself flying toward a line of poplars, and pulled back the side stick to clear the tops of the trees. Immediately a loud warbling sound in his headset told him that a SAM radar was illuminating him, and he felt the vibration as his ECM suite automatically punched out chaff. The warble changed, becoming a frantic two-tone siren as the transmitter locked him up. More chaff was ejected and the siren reverted to warble, and then cut out altogether. Arndeker was soaked in sweat and his stomach rebelled, churning in reaction.
Exhaust trails from ground to air missiles criss-crossed the sky, tracer from light, medium and heavy automatic weapons as well as from 23mm cannon slashed in front, beside, and all around the attacking aircraft. An aircraft hit the ground in a welter of fragments, careening through a potato field before exploding, but Arndeker couldn’t tell if it had been American or Swedish and his mouth went dry with the realisation that in the space of mere seconds the hunters had become the hunted. The pilots were shouting warnings to one another over the radio, spotting for one another the deadly ZSUs and mobile SAM launchers, but if they were close enough to identify the vehicles visually they were close enough to be engaged by them and the voices carried a sense of panic.
“Smoke in the air!”
“Watch out for shoulder launchers by the farm!”
“Oh fuck…SAM’s! SAM’s!”
“Zeus on the low hill, Zeus on the low hill!”
“I’m hit! I’m hit! Jesus Chri….”
A warbling returned to his headset and he ejected chaff himself, not waiting for the ECM suite to do the job. He caught his breath as he saw a ZSU-23-4s turret tracking him and kicked the rudder savagely whilst pushing the side stick forward enough to avoid the four seemingly solid streams of 23mm cannon that would otherwise have nailed him.
The warbling in his ears changed to a siren and then became a monotone that turned his blood to ice. His HUD told him a pair of SA-9s had been launched at him, and were guiding on his F-16 despite the chaff and automatic track breakers engaging. To go up into the clouds would only be to invite other launchers to attack as he entered their engagement envelopes, his last manoeuvres had brought him down too low for him to engage in drastic turns so the only direction left to him was downwards even more. Arndeker eased the side stick forwards, and the F-16 sank earthwards until it barely cleared the tops of hedgerows but the tone continued without missing a beat. The chaff was still being discharged, but the bundles were breaking on contact with the ground instead bursting apart in his aircrafts wake. The jet wash and his slipstream did kick up strips and scatter them, the foil strips swirled about before settling to the ground or snagging on branches of bushes and trees, but they did not provide the degree of radar reflection their normal deployment would have achieved. The fear was a physical force within his chest, squeezing his heart and compressing his lungs whilst reaching up to grasp his throat. He caught a brief glimpse of something fast moving that left a trail of dirty white exhaust behind as it passed a few feet above his canopy without exploding, and he looked about frantically for the second missile, where the hell was it! The second missile had flown into a tree but Arndeker was unaware, he never saw it, not a single visual clue as to its whereabouts, and then the warning tone in his ears ceased as the SAM launcher lost radar lock.
Arndeker had heard stories about airmen whose deaths had been so swift that they apparently never realised they were dead, and their shades appeared before the commanders who had sent them to their deaths, shocked and confused and asking for explanations. Arndeker took the flesh of his right bicep between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, squeezing it through the material of his G-suit until the pain made him wince. He let out a gasp of breath in relief but realised three things, firstly his legs were shaking uncontrollably, he had urinated without realising it, and thirdly he was staring at a Soviet tank commander stood upright in a tanks turret and gaping right back at him. It could only have been for the merest fraction of a second but the moment seemed frozen in time. With a start Arndeker realised the F-16 was still slowly losing height and he pulled back on the stick, rocketing up and over the T-80. Arndeker let out a little laugh in relief, but even he could hear the hysteria that edged it. Once back at 500 feet he pickled off his last Rockeye above a mix of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, looking over his shoulder as he did so and noting on the way the holes in his port wing. When the hell had that happened?