Coming out of the Czech Republic at treetop level, skimming the Bohemian Forest, were twelve exceedingly futuristic looking aircraft. They were swing-wing, high performance combat aircraft previously seen only at air shows in its experimental prototype form during the late 1990s. Their wings swept forward instead of backwards, in a reverse of the conventional norms and the horizontal stabilising canards at rear of the cockpit, were more familiar on Sweden’s Viggen and Drakken airframes.
The Su-37 Berkut or ‘Golden Eagle’, was designed in response to the USA’s stealthy generation of airframes and was of RAM, radar absorbent material, construction, nothing new there, except that the ordnance it carried was also stealthed and launched from two rotary bomb bays.
At 40,000’, 25 miles south of Leipzig the NATO JSTARS and AWACs played follow-the-leader, in a monotonous racecourse pattern with their intensely bored F-15C Eagle escorts in tow.
Major Caroline Nunro was one of the US Air Forces prime recruiting assets, adorning posters that stated women could be fighter pilots, or anything else they wanted to be, in the modern United States Air Force, and tonight she commanded the rear element. Caroline had turned down the opportunity to adorn the centrefold of the world’s most famous men’s magazine and the $750,000 cheque that went with it. The magazine had envisaged a strong visual image of Caroline stood in a flight suit, fists on hips, legs spaced apart and the distinctly non-regulation flight suit unzipped beyond the crotch, revealing that there was nothing fake about the blue-eyed blond jet jockey. Caroline knew she was a smart, shit-hot pilot but she did not need to undo the hard work she had put in overcoming the sexual prejudices of her male colleagues. Her logbook showed seven different types of aircraft she had flown since getting her wings, from the high tech but un-sexy F-117A to the USMC Harrier; she had fought to be where she now was, quite literally. A month before she had been placed on administrative suspension following an incident at a Washington charity ball. In dress uniform she had been dancing with a Senator who had allowed his pre-conceptions, and Champagne cocktails, to get the better of him.
“Honey,” he had whispered in her ear.
“Why risk your cute butt flying fighters when you could make a fortune, in perfect safety on your back?” He had emphasised the financial offer by dropping his hand from the between her shoulder blades to her ‘cute butt’. The reporters and photographers for the various papers, society pages had raced to file their stories and pictures, of Caroline’s right hook and her sprawling dance partner.
The Senators spin-doctors had moved fast and before midnight they were plugging a different version of events to both the media and the Pentagon, so by the next morning Caroline was facing charges of conduct unbecoming due to excess alcohol and by her propositioning him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, was the exact quote from the Senators legal rep.
The Senator had always been a strong supporter of the Air Force, it came as no surprise to her that he had called in markers, and her investigators came on hostile and aggressive. A blood test took care of the drink allegation which was really only calculated to increase the size of the target area for the mudslinging.
During her interview the chief investigator had asked why she had punched the Senator, so she’d replied that her uniform’s, evening dress skirt was too restrictive to permit the permanent re-location of his testicles, a knuckle sandwich was the most she could manage, but thank you for asking anyway.
Although she did not know it, the president himself had been following the events and had seen details of a resulting FBI investigation into her private life. He knew the Senators reputation, not his public one but the one known by those in power. The middle-aged satyr had got his long overdue come-uppance and a message had been sent, ‘back off and let the story die of old age’, which was about a fortnight on the hill. He wasn’t going to stand by and let good officers career be wrecked. There was no indictment so the FBI buried the file and Caroline got to cool her heels for a while as punishment for losing her temper.
The incident had earned her a new nickname and she accepted it with glee, even though the air force aren’t into nicknames in the same way that the navy is, but as a flight commander and deputy squadron commander, it put her mark on her subordinates too.
With the radar set to standby, not generating any energy, Caroline’s flight of four covering the JSTARS had nothing to do but be ready for the AWACs, five miles ahead to alert them of any trouble.
To the south, the twelve Su-37s split, with two flights of four turning north and the remainder going single, heading for the first targets on their lists.
At 0139hrs precisely, the Russian advanced fighter-bombers began launching their ordnance without once switching on their own radars. A satellite down-feed was passing them data from ground stations within Germany itself; radar information hacked from civilian, air traffic control radars. The first targets were the AWACs and JSTARS above them; the second were the civilian radars themselves, along with a number of military ones. The data was in turn passed to the air-air missiles, guiding them toward their targets without radiating a single erg of radar energy.
Last but not least were ground targets of strategic importance, such as the Hauptbahnhof, Leipzig’s railway station beside Willy-Brandt-Platz in the centre of the city, and the autobahn junction where the Nuremberg to Berlin route joined the east/west A14, northwest of Leipzig/Halle airport.
Major Nunro’s life was saved purely because she had a stiff neck and was turning it from side to side when she saw the tell-tale fiery trail of approaching missiles.
“Smoke in the air… Prize Fighters break!” she called out on the general frequency of all the aircraft engaged with her, as she broke left towards the missiles, rolling inverted and pulling back on the yoke, vertically jinking to break lock. The manoeuvre wasn’t quite a wasted exercise as none of the weapons was as yet guiding, but a second later they were, sent active by the aircraft that had launched them and Caroline was heading in the most survivable direction when that happened.
The huge K-99 missiles ramjets were already driving them along at an economic Mach 2.4 from their launch point 130 miles distant. On acquiring the targets for themselves they accelerated to Mach 4.2. The missile headed her way didn’t have her name on it, just her initials, as its proximity fuse set off the warhead eight feet from her tail pipes. She was in burner and headed earthwards when the missile went off behind her and she dragged the throttles to the rear as the engines turned to expensive scrap. Glancing at her airspeed she saw she was travelling far too fast to eject safely and pulled back on the stick, extending speed brakes as she did so.
Danny Gray, her wingman, was also in burner when his aircraft was hit, shrapnel tearing a hole in the joint where fuselage meets left vertical stabiliser. Danny did not kill his speed as Caroline had done because his engines were still good to go so he continued to accelerate. The increasing stress acting on the damaged stabiliser snapped it off when he was travelling at over twice the speed of sound, and the aircraft began to spin around its own axis. Fighting the blackness that threatened to overcome his senses Danny thought he had done well to punch out, but the sense of achievement was fleeting. His seat flung him out into a vortex of opposing forces, which dislocated his arms and legs and snapped his neck like a twig.