The A-50 was also discharging counter measures, but it did them no good. The Vega brought in the AMRAAM for a head-on attack and for the second time that night one of the big Soviet AWACS fell victim to the Nighthawk. The forward twenty feet of the fuselage disintegrated and the aircraft crashed to earth upon the Templiner See Causeway on the outskirts of Potsdam.
With loss of guidance from the Mainstay the AA-8 Aphids IR seekers went active and Svetlana’s world got turned upside down.
Caroline immediately rolled them inverted and pulled back on the side-stick, the automated defence systems spitting out flares as they dived. On her screen there flashed a red ‘AIRFRAME OVERSTRESS’ warning and an audible ‘Whoop’ in her headset until she eased off the manoeuvre but a shudder through the aircraft was a signal that something had just broken.
“Come on girl.” She cooed soothingly and stroked the control panel. “Just a few miles more, honey.”
The Aphids killed two flares and the MiG-29s overshot.
Caroline took them down to a thousand feet and back towards the west again.
The pair of MiGs took it in turn to go active on their radars, as much to tempt a response as it was to find the stealth aircraft. They flew a racetrack course before they too headed west, the logical destination for their enemy.
Their Zhuk-M radar came up empty, but the flight leader selected Aphids once more. The missiles sat on their pylons, the IR seekers active and discovered exactly what had broken on the Nighthawk.
A thermal shielding panel had come adrift and the weapons signalled a solid lock-on.
The MWS’s pulsing tone told both Caroline and Svetlana that they had again been found as the Aphids were launched, accelerating to Mach 2.7.
Flares lit off in their wake again and the Nighthawk began a vertical jink.
A severe, school ma’amish voice intoned.
“All Flares Expended!…All Flares Expended!…All Fla…”
‘AIRFRAME OVERSTRESS’ flashed on the screen, the warning Whoop cut across the school ma’am, sounding twice, and the F-117X came apart at twelve hundred feet above the Ausruhen im Wald, still sixteen miles east of the Elbe.
The crackle of flames, burning vehicles and the screams of the wounded were most evident as Dougal led Recce Platoon back yet another tactical bound.
The Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 2nd Canadian Mechanised Brigade were being reduced by the moment, hammered by a full division, the Russian 32nd MRD. The brigade commander had expected that rough weather would follow their kicking the legs out from under 3rd Shock Army’s logistics, but he had never imagined anything on this scale.
He had contacted SACEUR and asked for permission to save what was left of the brigade, and so began the nightmare fighting retreat through the woods to the river Saale.
Dougal did not know at what point battalion headquarters had gone off the air, but brigade headquarters went silent around the same time, which left the Black Watch CO as senior officer with the unenviable task of getting them across the river and into the French 8th Armoured’s lines where their combined numbers gave them a better chance of fighting off the Russian division.
Sergeant Blackmore brought up the rear, shouting a warning as a Leopard C2 of the Canadian VIII Hussars reversed, its main gun pointing back down the track they had taken but silent for lack of a suitable target; its machine guns though were firing short, economic bursts at the Russian infantry dogging their steps.
They had some two hundred metres to go to a harbour area where their LAV IIIs awaited.
The Leopard’s main gun suddenly lowered slightly and fired at something in its thermal sight. Down the muddy track a fireball arose through the trees and small arms ammunition began cooking off in the wreckage of a BTR-70.
The platoon took up firing positions and waited for the A Company platoons to fall back through them.
In the darkness a vicious fire fight broke out as A Company hit the Russian infantry again. HE and smoke grenades were thrown to assist the Canadians to break contact and they passed through Dougal’s men, carrying their wounded as they did so.
Dougal and his men lay there in the rain as the sound of A Company dimmed with distance behind them, and was replaced by cautious movement ahead in the dark woods.
A voice growled what sounded like a rebuke much further back, either an infantry officer forcing his men onwards or just as likely a KGB Political Officer urging an infantry officer to greater effort.
A flash and a bang from beside the track, just barely beyond minimum engagement distance and the Leopard staggered as a Sagger struck its right track, and in the flash of the missiles detonation he saw the Russian infantry coming through the trees.
The Leopards machine guns opened fire and Dougal’s men poured it on to for several moments.
The driver’s hatch of the Leopard opened and a figure pulled himself out.
“They’ve pulled back.” The driver said. “Time to do the same, if you don’t mind us coming with you, sir?”
Out of the turret came the loader and gunner, but not the commander.
“He’s staying to see it’s destroyed.” The loader answered Dougal’s query.
Dougal led them back but there was no A Company waiting for them. Perhaps they had received other orders, but either way Dougal now headed directly for where their vehicles had been camouflaged and left hidden.
After several minutes at a slow trot, their way ahead was obscured by a wall of thick, acrid black smoke from the burning tyres of a Coyote armoured reconnaissance vehicle. Dougal, coughing and his eyes smarting emerged from the smoke beyond it to find he had arrived at the harbour area. He took a pace forwards and stopped, aghast. Everywhere he looked there were smashed and burning vehicles of the Nova Scotia Highlanders. Shell craters pitted the area, evidence that it had received the attention of a full regiment of artillery.
There was no one else about, just fallen and splintered trees, and burning LAV III IFVs.
“What now, sir?” Sergeant Blackmore asked.
Back down the track they had come along the Leopard’s machine gun began firing. The vehicle commander had for reasons best known to himself decided to stay to the end.
“The river” Dougal replied “as fast as we can and over one of the ribbon bridges to join the French.”
They moved out quickly, leaving the fiery vehicle graveyard behind them, slipping on the muddy track as they pushed on.
Behind them tank guns opened fire and the Leopard’s machine gun sounded no more.
At last Dougal could hear the sound of running water and see flickering light through the trees. The smell of war was here too and the throb of an idling diesel engine was discernable.
The track ended suddenly and the encroaching trees gave way to the river bank with the Hungarian built ribbon bridge.
The diesel engine he could hear was directly opposite them, and a tank sat astride the ramp cut into the bank on the French side of the river.
No night viewing device was needed to identify it; the flames from a pair of burning French Leclerc tanks were already illuminating the T-80 of the 77th Guards Tank Division as its machine guns opened fire.