The two of them swooped in like a pair of German Stukas as they activated the targeting cameras on their Mavericks. Her onboard targeting computer picked out four tanks to her immediate front, roughly ten kilometers away, assigning a missile to each of them. The computer also sent a quick burst message to her wingman as the two aircraft’s targeting computer systems deconflicted their targets, making sure they weren’t double-targeting a tank. All of this happened in fractions of a second as her heads-up display or HUD began to show green triangles over the targets her computer had found.
“Firing now!” radioed Hedge as he released his four missiles.
Sparkles depressed her own firing button once, then twice, then two more times as her Mavericks flew out in front of her toward their intended targets. Seconds after her missiles had fired, she saw a slew of what appeared to be bright objects flying right at her. Her mind instantly recognized this as incoming antiaircraft fire, and her training took over.
“Break right!” yelled Hedge as he broke to the left, dodging several lines of enemy rounds.
In the midst of her hard turn to the right, Sparkle’s missile warning alarm blared in her ears. She craned her neck around to look for the possible threat.
“Enemy missile, enemy missile,” announced the automated system. She pulled her plane into a steep climb and then banked hard to the left. Sparkles hit the flare button, firing out a series of flares every three seconds until all eight flares were spent.
She looked at her altimeter, which now read 5,500 feet. Then she looked behind her to see if she could spot the enemy missile that had been tracking her. “There you are,” she said to herself as she saw the missile explode amongst her flares. She quickly leveled her plane out as she looked around for her wingman.
In a brief flash, she saw his plane spitting out a second batch of flares just as an enemy missile exploded nearby. His plane was blown sideways through the air and instantly spouted smoke from the engine.
Hedge radioed in. “I’ve been hit,” he said. “I’m going to try and make it back to the airfield for an emergency landing if I can.”
“Death Dealers, good attack run. Re-form on me,” Beaker said over the radio. “Hedge, are you OK? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine — a bit shaken up, but I’m fine. I’m losing oil and hydraulic pressure though. I’ve got some pretty big holes in my wings, but she’s holding together so far.”
“OK, good to hear. If you need to ditch your plane though, try to get as close to the airfield as possible. The rest of you, get ready for our next run.”
“Holy cow, that was awesome!” Sparkles thought. The adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she couldn’t believe she’d just survived. When she’d taken a few deep breaths, she paused and sent Hedge a prayer — she hoped he made it back to the base all right.
“On this next run, we’re going to unload our rockets on the BMPs on the west side of the river,” explained Beaker. “Since there are only four of us, I’m going to take over as Sparkles’ wingman. Everyone needs stay frosty on this run. The enemy knows we’re here and will be gunning for us.”
“Beaker, or anyone else, do you guys know what kind of missile hit Hedge?” asked one of the other Death Dealers. “Was it a MANPAD or something else?”
“It was a MANPAD,” replied Beaker.
A collective sigh of relief washed over them. It meant they were dealing with a much smaller missile, and one with a limited range. Their planes could largely survive a hit from a MANPAD, as Hedge’s plane had just proven. If it had been a traditional SAM, they would have been in serious jeopardy.
Five minutes later, the flight of four Wolverines lined up from a different vantage point and descended for their second attack run on the enemy below. Sparkles saw the small cluster of vehicles she’d been assigned to strafe with her rockets and angled her fighter toward them. Once she was within ten kilometers of her prey, she increased her throttle, opening her engines up and pushing her plane to 530 mph. Her HUD indicated she was still a little too far away to release her unguided rockets on the cluster of vehicles, though she now saw her targets starting to scatter. They’d spotted her.
Seconds after the vehicles began to move, tracers flew right at her, attempting to blot her from the sky. She deftly banked her wings from left to right and made herself a harder target to hit by changing her flight path every couple of seconds. She continued closing the gap on her targets. With the enemy BMPs now scattering, she zeroed in on a group of four of them that were heading in the same direction. When the targeting reticle on her HUD turned green, she depressed the firing button on the stick, releasing two rockets every time she depressed the button. With six of her rockets away, she pulled up hard and banked to the right, while Beaker broke to the left in an effort to split the enemy groundfire.
“Good attack run, Sparkles. Did you happen to see those clusters of ground troops advancing toward the Rangers on the ground?” he asked as they both formed back up around 8,000 feet, several kilometers away from the hornet’s nest they’d just stirred up.
“Yeah, I saw it. How many soldiers you think are down there?” she asked out of curiosity.
“I have no idea. But our next attack run is going to focus on them with our remaining rockets. This time, instead of breaking off, I want us to also strafe them with our guns — we have enough ammo to make a couple of strafing runs before we head back to base. You think you can handle a strafing run?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s do it,” she replied, excitement evident in her voice.
Beaker radioed the other two planes in his flight and relayed their next attack plan. For the next twenty minutes, their flight of four Wolverines made two more passes at the enemy, pummeling them with rockets and .50 machine guns. Many of the enemy soldiers scattered when they saw the fighters swooping in, but the Death Dealers still scored plenty of hits. As they made their runs, a lot of ground fire flew up to meet them, but thus far, none of it had scored any critical hits.
When their ordnance was spent, they radioed back to the base, letting them know they had cleared the battlespace so the artillery guys could begin their own mission. When the fighters landed, Sparkles and the rest of the pilots were surprised to see their planes had sustained quite a number of bullet holes. The ground crews did their best to make sure nothing critical had been damaged and that the planes could get back in the air when the next mission was called for.
It was nearly 1700 hours. With maybe two hours of light left, Lieutenant Martinez weighed their options. The last couple of hours, they had been calling in one strike after another on the advancing mob of Indian soldiers several kilometers in front of them. Up to this point, they had only been probed with a few small-scale attacks, but eventually, the enemy was going to try and bum-rush their positions.
They could fall back to the airport now that reinforcements had arrived, but giving up their forward position right now also meant the enemy would be that much closer to encircling the air base. The longer they held this position, the more they made the enemy react to them, as opposed to the other way around.
“Lieutenant!” the sergeant manning the drone shouted in an excited voice. “They’re moving in,” he said, showing him the image of a mob of undisciplined militiamen surging toward their position.
Before Martinez could say a word, they heard the whistling sound of mortars starting to fall on their positions.