He got tone at maximum range and pickled off two Magic II missiles before breaking high right, to break another missile lock on his Rafale.
Escadrille 24 and the S37s were now embroiled in a fur ball as the bulk of the Soviet strike raced by, and as advanced as they were, the French aircraft were outclassed in this dog fight.
The as yet un-engaged Rafale squadrons, Escadrilles 17 and 23, dived after the low-level Backfire regiments, leaving the disarrayed Escadrille 15 to get its act together PDQ, and take on the high level Floggers in a tail chase.
Two pairs of Spanish AV-8B Harriers remained on top CAP above the task force whilst the remainder from the Principe de Asturias and the British, Fleet Air Arm Sea Harriers from the French helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc, went east.
Aboard the Charles De Gaulle, Contra Admiral Bernard, the rear admiral commanding the task force, was fairly confident that the enemy had no precise fix on his ships. From the reports coming from his aircraft, the enemy had divided into two forces that were flying divergent courses at the time of interception, which he correctly assumed as meaning that they intended to divide up the hunting ground. He surmised that in the enemy game plan whoever came across the task force would send the co-ordinates to the other strike force, however, in reality the other force would know where they were the instant that the Hawkeyes stopped radiating and the ships went active in order to engage. Unfortunately for NATO they had to make things much easier for the Soviets than that, the Harrier force, both AV-8B and Sea Harrier FA2, were not supersonic and relied on their AMRAAMs to take out a faster enemy. The jamming prevented the radar guided AMRAAMs from acquiring the enemy so all Admiral Bernard could do was wait until the last possible moment before ordering the Hawkeyes to cease and desist. The ships would stay on standby and rely on the data-link feed from the AWAC to tell them what was going on and control the ships' air-defence systems, with fingers crossed that the aerial platforms were not downed or driven away.
His Super Etendard strike and the four Rafales that had ambushed the S37s earlier were now entering the pattern and would be turned around and sent off again, refuelled, and rearmed for air to air combat.
The Backfires called for help to get the Rafales off their backs and half of the Flogger Js in each regiment dumped their C-601 anti-ship missiles and went after the Frenchmen. The leading Rafales launched on the Backfires before going defensive, the Rafale M had a maximum speed of 2125kph and the Backfire 2300kph, and it was a race the French would lose. The Floggers were outmatched but they tied up the Rafales and allowed those still carrying anti-ship ordnance to leak through.
Pc Stokes sat outside the office that had been borrowed by Scott Tafler for the day. There was a tension in the air, increased by the last minute hold put on the mission, as the KC-135 tankers that were to be staged out of Andøya had been moved back to Kinloss, because of anticipated enemy activity of some kind over northern Norway, at least which was what Stokes had heard.
The shouting from behind the office door had ceased about three minutes before and although Stokes was not privy to anything concerning the operational detail or objective, he knew from the shouting that Major Bedonavich was no longer going.
Constantine stood at the window, looking out across the airfield but not looking at anything. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets and he had his back turned to Scott, who sat with a fax message before him.
“If you have quite done with the histrionics Major, I will explain the reason why you are no longer part of this operation… and why you may well have compromised operational security.”
Constantine turned with a glare. “What rubbish are you talking Scott?”
“The military attaché in Switzerland, Pyotr Cezechenko, was a classmate in the academy, was he not?”
“Pyotr and I are good friends, he was the best man at my wedding and he saved my life once, in Chechnya.”
“You telephoned him at his home in Geneva, from a payphone in Edinburgh… please do not deny it, Swiss intelligence sent us a tape to ID a voice, it was yours.”
“Well then, if you heard the tape then you know what the conversation was.” Constantine sat on a grey painted, stackable tubular steel chair with brown plastic seat and backrest.
“Pyotr agreed with me that this war is insanity, which we in the military have to do something to stop.”
“Have you ever seen an encrypted Russian military message text, Con?” Scott enquired. “Of course you have,” he said, and tossed across a sheaf of papers.
“The Swiss passed on the phone intercept and a batch of other stuff, a real flurry of encrypted traffic between the embassy and Moscow that day. It took a while for it to filter along to me.”
Constantine picked them up and looked at the top page.
“The first four biagrams identify the encryption settings,” Scott explained. “And the first triagram is the address group… in this case, LZV.”
“It is the premier's personal address group.” Constantine muttered.
“The second triagram identifies the sender, JHU… I am sure you recognise it too?” But Constantine said nothing; he kept his eyes on the page in front of him.
“On the second line you will see another triagram… it recurs another four more times throughout the message.” Constantine was still silent. “FDW, that’s your identifier isn’t it Con?”
“I told Pyotr that Svetlana was killed by the gunmen in the helicopter… what does the rest of the message say?”
Scott reached across and retrieved the message from Constantine, returning it to the file.
“I have no idea whatsoever, but as it was sent just forty minutes after you put the phone down in Edinburgh, I would say Pyotr made damn good time through the traffic to his office in order to send it. It mentions you five times Major so work it out for yourself. You told him you would be back in Moscow soon… worse still, you confirmed that you were still alive, and that Major, is why I scrubbed you.”
“Svetlana will not be safe over there without me.” Constantine told him.
“Yeah right, a whole militia with your picture and your lousy sense of judgement as regards the human character.”
Constantine’s nostrils flared.
“That is unfair of you Scott… a cheap shot, as you would say!”
“Well forgive-the-shit-out-of-me Major… but you did not just endanger your own and Svetlana’s lives, one hell of a lot of other men and women are in this!”
“I already told you Scott… they think she is dead!”
“Oh, grow up, for Christ’s sake!” Scott shouted. “When they took you, and that’s when, not if… how long would it be before you gave her up to them… and the Nighthawk mission… the ancillary personnel… . one day, two… ”
“I would never betray her… or them!” Both men were on their feet, facing one another across the desk.
“Never Con, never… your people wrote the book on interrogation. As brave and well-meaning as you are, you would tell them… you couldn’t help yourself.”