The aircraft that had emerged from the revitalized J-UCAV program, the N-G Boeing F-47, was a real killer. Twenty-six feet long, with a wingspan of 33 feet, it was powered by a hydrogen-fuelled Reaction Engine Scimitar powerplants giving it the ability to hit a maximum airspeed of Mach 1.8 or 1,300 mph and carry a payload of 10,000 lbs. - ranging from recon pods and GPS guided precision air-to-ground munitions, to the latest Cuda air-to-air, hit-to-kill missiles.
Unlike Rodriguez, and despite her frustrations, Bunny liked Little Diomede. She had grown up in the Australian outback, and she liked it being cold. She also liked the idea of being the only pilot on an island with two dozen aircraft to fly. Did she miss bossing her F-35 around the sky in the real? Hell yeah, but unlike a lot of other aviators, Bunny already lived in the future and the future was remote-piloted, semi-autonomous and she would never go back. In her F-35 Bunny only ever felt in control of her own machine, even flying as flight leader. Hell, half the time whatever fool she had on her wing didn’t do as they were ordered, or screwed it up. Chewing out one too many fellow pilots for shitty results in training exercises was one of the things that got her transferred to drones, but she couldn’t help calling human error for what it was — dumb ass error. And you couldn’t afford a wide margin of error in modern combat where the distance between dead and alive was measured in milliseconds.
At the stick of a Fantom though, she commanded not one machine, but six. Not one wingman, but five. She flew the queen bee in the formation, and the other five machines were slaved to hers, executing her orders exactly as she issued them, right or wrong. If she screwed up, lost a machine, missed a target, there was no one to blame but herself.
She didn’t often screw up, but when she did, Rodriguez was glad they had a few hundred feet of solid rock over their heads, because she was sure the Russians could have heard Bunny swearing down in Vladivostok. And right now Bunny was only getting flight time on simulators, so Rodriguez could only imagine what she’d be like if she was in a fight for real. Like a lot of combat pilots Rodriguez had met, Bunny seemed to start every day looking for a target to hit.
And today, that target was Air Boss Alicia Rodriguez’s catapult officer.
“With respect you said ‘tomorrow’ three days ago Lieutenant,” Bunny was saying, staring at the ops ready Fantom waiting to be loaded onto the electromagnetic aircraft launch system, or catapult, down on the flight deck. She was facing down Rodriguez’s shooter, Lieutenant KC Severin and several of Rodriguez’s flight operations personnel were sitting on their asses on a rock shelf behind her, enjoying the show.
“And that aircraft has been ready for two days, as promised, Lieutenant,” Severin said. He was a small man, but he was all muscle and had been Rodriguez’s assistant on the Trump. “It’s the Cat that’s the problem. No matter what we dial into the catapult, it’s delivering 196,000 pounds of thrust and by our reckoning, that will send your little paper planes into the lip above the egress chute like bugs into a windscreen.”
“So I’ll punch in a little elevator trim,” Bunny said. “Stick the drone to the rails.”
“Good idea Lieutenant,” Severin said, irony his voice. “Tell you what, why don’t we tie your butt to the shuttle, send you through that chute with 196,000 lbs. of thrust, you hold your arms out and flap, see if you can stick to those rails.”
They’d had to come up with their own terminology for the world under the rock. The drones were launched through a fifty by fifty-foot smooth bored tunnel straight through the rock that emerged from a cliff face five hundred feet above sea level. It was called ‘the chute’. The drones landed by flying under the overhanging rock and into the mouth of the cave at sea level, which was called ‘the slot’. The artificial harbor inside the cave consisted of a simple rectangular submarine dock beside which the drones launched, and the seawater filling the cavern was known as ‘the Pond’.
The chute exited the Rock directly east, toward Alaska, masking the egress of the drones from anything but a luckily placed satellite or high altitude recon overflight. To further confuse any imaging, a mooring had been created outside the egress port, and several old fishing boats were tied up there, the remnants of the fishing fleet that had once sailed out of Little Diomede. Demasted, they were small enough that there was no risk to the drones taking off and landing, but numerous enough that any overhead image would just see a cluster of ships, with a launching drone, if it was unlucky enough to be caught entering and leaving, just a blurred dot.
“This base is supposed to go to Phase II in six months, you know that Lieutenant,” Bunny sighed and turned to appeal to Rodriguez. “Between now and then I have to do the forms on 30 drones ma’am. There’s going to be a submarine full of Secretaries of this and Admirals of that, docking in the Pond in about 20 something weeks, and after six hours underwater in some stinking tin can, followed by a shower, some strong coffee and crappy food, they are going to stand right here…” she pointed at the platform they were standing on next to the flight deck, “… expecting to see me fly a Hex of Fantoms out that chute, dodge a few lurking F-35s, blow the hell out of some barge in the Eastern Strait, and then watch as I gracefully and professionally glide them back through the slot to a perfect water landing and recovery.”
No matter how annoying, arrogant and disagreeable she could be, Bunny O’Hare was seldom wrong, and although she was bitching she did it with a smile and a rolling Australian brogue. Rodriguez turned to her catapult officer. “How much longer Lieutenant?”
Severin bought himself some time to answer, looking down at a tablet screen, “We’re reconfiguring the catapult software ma’am. Four hours. Then we have to test and recalibrate. Six hours total. If we can, we’ll get it done by 2300, midnight latest. Next shift can do the fueling and pre-flight for the Fantom, 2 hours. If all goes well, we’ll be good to launch at 0300.”
To anyone else but Bunny O’Hare, laying down a flight time of 0300 would have gotten Rodriguez at least a groan. The Australian just smiled, “Permission to get some beauty sleep ma’am,” she said, before saluting and turning on her heel.
Rodriguez watched her go, then returned to Severin and his smirking team, “If that Cat hasn’t been reconfigured, test fired and made ready by 0200 it’s your asses I’ll be launching off that catapult, gentlemen.”
OPERATION LOSOS
Major-General Yevgeny Bondarev, Commanding Officer of the Russian 6983rd Air Brigade, stared at his unshaven, grey-skinned reflection in a mirror, stuck in the act of trying to decide whether to shave or throw up.
A lot of things made Bondarev feel like throwing up, but this time it was the 13 glasses of brandy he’d put down yesterday afternoon and evening with his Division staff and as a man who didn’t drink heavily, he was hurting badly. It had started innocently enough, a group of his officers inviting him to dinner to mark the anniversary of the death of his grandfather, Hero of the Russian Federation, Nikolaevich Bondarev. After a nice three — course meal with wine however, the night had descended into speeches, each accompanied by a toast to his famous grandfather, but when the speeches ran out, there was still brandy left, so there were more toasts; to absent wives, newly born children, newly married daughters or sons, recently departed fathers or mothers and of course, to the apparently immutable President Navalny, now in his 10th year at the helm of a resurgent Russia.