He ran through their various options, which were very limited. They didn’t have a MANPAD with them, so shooting the helicopter down with a missile was out of the question. Trying to run away in the van was also not going to work; it was 2100 hours and this far out in the county, there wouldn’t be a lot of traffic. They would be easily found.
Ivanov looked around at the faces in the van, and then he made the only sensible decision he could in this situation. “Listen up,” he said. “There’s a helicopter coming our way. If that chopper discovers us, it’s going to attack us. We do not have a lot of options. If we have to return fire, I want you guys to focus your firepower on the cockpit of the helicopter or its engine. We need to disable it quickly and then do our best to get away and blend back into the population. If we make it out of this and get separated, go to Alternate Plan Charlie and stand by for further instructions. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sir,” they replied.
Ivanov’s radio crackled to life. “Viper Six, this is Viper Two,” said Lieutenant Nikolaev, who sounded out of breath from running toward the entrance of the park to meet up with the team. “We have a Lynx helicopter inbound to our position… he just flew over me. He’s headed right for you guys!”
Ivanov yelled, “Everyone out! Shoot it down as soon as you see it!” Their vehicle ground to a halt on the dirt trail. Seconds later the doors opened, and everyone spilled out of the van just as the roar of a heavy machine gun pierced the air and bullets ripped through the vehicle.
Captain Ian Pendleton was aggravated. He took a long pull on his cigarette and slowly released the smoke through his nostrils, trying to let out all of his frustrations with it.
“How am I going to get back into the action that’s happening on the Continent?” he wondered.
He had been sidelined for a while. During one of the failed offensives in Ukraine, Pendleton had been on a flying mission when his Lynx had taken heavy enemy fire and had been shot down. While he’d survived with just a bullet wound to the leg, his copilot and two crew members had all perished when the helicopter had caught fire. Ian had barely had enough time to get himself out of the chopper before it had blown up, let alone try and drag all three of the unconscious crew members out of the wreckage.
Pendleton had been plagued since then with the constant cycle of memories from that day. He felt terrible about not having tried harder to see if any of his crew members were alive before he’d fled from the wreckage. All that had run through his mind was that the helicopter was on fire, his leg was bleeding badly, and he knew he needed to get away before he passed out from blood loss.
Following his recovery, Captain Pendleton had been assigned a new helicopter and crew and sent to Menwith Hill to give support to the local RAF bases in case they came under ground attack. It tore him up not being sent back to a frontline combat unit, but even though he wished he were on the front lines, he was slowly trying to accept his new role.
Once a night, Pendleton and his crew would fly around the bases where they were assigned and use their infrared and thermal sights to see if they spotted anything out of the ordinary. Due to a mechanical problem on the earlier shift, they were now two hours behind schedule.
Captain Pendleton finished his cigarette break just before the crew chief, Staff Sergeant Linda Faux, gave him the signal that she had just finished her systems check of his new Lynx.
Suddenly, there was an odd thump in the distance. Then the noise disappeared.
“Did you hear that, Chief?” asked Pendleton as he quickly jumped to his feet.
A second later, they heard the unmistakable whistling sound of the mortar flying in. Bam! The round exploded next to one of the radar domes.
“Everyone in the helicopter now!” yelled Captain Pendleton. “We need to get airborne and find where that’s coming from!” He quickly ran to his own helicopter and jumped in. Before the next round could land, Ian skipped 99 % of his preflight checks as he immediately turned the engine over and got the blades going. His copilot jumped into his seat and grabbed for his helmet. The other two crew members hastily did the same.
“Sergeant Faux, make sure the machine gun is ready. When we find out who’s firing those mortars at the base, you need to light them up! Understood?” He shouted to be heard over the now rapidly spinning blades.
Before she could respond, explosions suddenly rocked the base. Multiple mortar rounds landed among the radar domes that dominated the southern half of the base. It was clear by looking at where the explosions were cropping up that the attackers were targeting the early-warning radar systems and not the actual members who manned them.
After a few tense moments, Pendleton took the Lynx off the ground. At first, they skidded and slid along the grassy field, and then they rose a little. Finally, they gained more altitude as their power ramped up. Once in the air, everyone scanned the nearby area, trying to see where the mortars were coming from.
“Over there, three o’clock!” shouted Sergeant Faux as she spotted three more mortars lifting off from behind a cluster of trees.
Ian scanned that area, and while he could not see the exact launch point, he did catch a glimpse of the mortar rounds as they reached their zenith point and fell back to earth. He turned the helicopter in that direction and applied some speed.
Lieutenant Samantha Corbyn, his copilot, turned the infrared on and scanned the area. Not seeing anything pop up, she switched over to thermals. Immediately, she and Pendleton saw a cluster of people doing something in the trees and then piling into two vehicles. One person appeared to have lit off some sort of thermite grenade, because whatever he dropped in the glowing hot mortar tubes flared up with almost instant heat.
“That’s them. Call it in, Corbyn!” Pendleton directed. He angled the Lynx to come in for a better attack run. With two machine guns fitted next to the side doors, he was going to angle the helicopter to come in with a slight bank to the left so Sergeant Faux would have a good angle to attack them from.
“I see them. Engaging now!” shouted Faux as she depressed the butterfly trigger on her machine gun. Her weapon chattered, spitting out rounds at a high rate in the direction of the lead vehicle. She saw the red tracers hitting just in front of the vehicle, with one or two slamming directly into it. Adjusting her fire, she depressed the trigger again and let out another burst of machine-gun fire. Then she walked the fire back to the second vehicle as Captain Pendleton veered the helicopter to the left and slowed them down.
As she was adjusting her weapon to open fire again, she saw half a dozen muzzle flashes. One of the weapons was using green tracers, which quickly whipped through the air in their direction. The helicopter jolted, and Linda felt bullets hitting the side of it. She fired back at the attackers, desperately trying to silence them before they got lucky and shot them down. One of the vehicles caught fire and summarily exploded, engulfing at least two of the attackers.
“We’re taking fire!” Corbyn yelled to Pendleton as he jinked the helicopter hard to one side, giving the chopper additional throttle as he tried to gain altitude. Thwap, thwap, crunch. The helicopter continued taking hits.
Alarm bells blared in Pendleton’s helmet. He and Corbyn continued to try and pull them up higher to get them out of range of the ground fire. “Is everyone OK?” he shouted over the intercom, hoping no one had been hit.
Sergeant Faux turned to look at her partner-in-crime, who gave her a thumbs-up sign that she was fine. “We’re OK back here,” Faux replied. “How about you guys in front?”