He grimaced. The base was damaged, they were losing aircraft, and everyone was on the edge of exhaustion. Poland’s ground forces were “regrouping” to meet the unexpected EurCon invasion. If they didn’t regroup soon, Tad thought, it would be too late.
He found his shelter, and was relieved to see a well-maintained, if worn, Eagle loaded and ready. The crew chief, a stocky, unshaven staff sergeant, still had enough energy to salute and report the aircraft ready.
Tad took his time going over the plane. Tired people make mistakes and mistakes kill pilots. So he looked carefully for unfastened access panels or improperly mounted bombs and missiles. He needed help from the staff sergeant as well, to check the arming wires on the unfamiliar Russian ordnance.
He climbed up into the F-15’s cockpit, checking the upper wing surfaces at the same time. With a twinge in his nether regions, he settled himself into the ejector seat and ran through his checklist while he hooked up. Satisfied, he hit the starter and waited while the engines spooled up, bringing life to the plane’s instrument panel.
With both engines roaring, Tad took his Eagle through the shelter’s open armored doors and out onto the runway. He already had clearance for a fast taxi and takeoff as soon as he was outside. Poland’s aircraft were more vulnerable on the ground than in the air.
Even fully loaded with bombs and missiles, the Eagle still seemed to leap skyward, and some of his fatigue seemed to stay behind on the ground.
Turning north, Tad cruised at low level until he picked up the Oder River valley, then turned northwest to follow it, dropping lower. By doglegging north along the valley, he planned to avoid the enemy troop concentrations deployed across the A4 Motorway. Frontline troops were never easy targets. Dug in, concealed, and ready for trouble, the odds were against him. His primary target for this mission was further back, one half hour’s flying time from Wroclaw — most of it spent on this detour down the Oder.
He hugged the water, now silvered as the sun rose, constantly moving his head as he scanned his instruments and the sky. EurCon aircraft did not have complete air superiority, but the numbers were usually on the wrong side for the Poles, and the last thing Tad wanted now was a dogfight. Not only would he have to jettison his air-to-ground ordnance and abort the mission, but he might lose, and Poland needed every plane it had. Standing orders repeated by Broz this morning, were that he was to “preserve” his aircraft, and coincidentally himself, so that they would both survive to fight tomorrow, and the day after that.
The river started to curve around to the west, as it approached Brzeg Dolny, a sleepy river town that was still in Polish hands. The waypoint cue on his HUD shifted, and Tad carefully nudged the throttles forward a little.
Banking left and climbing out of the valley, he turned southwest, skimming over alternating patches of forest and farms with freshly planted crops. The land was all thickly settled, and he could see the invasion’s impact on the roads. Orderly groups of military vehicles, presumably Polish, since they weren’t shooting at him, moved to the west. Refugees, dark, ragged shapes on foot or packed into heavily loaded cars, fled to the east.
He thought of his grandparents, and wondered if they had looked like that in those first terrible days of World War II, trying to flee a merciless enemy. His hand tightened on the F-15’s stick. Now his mother and father faced the same dangerous, heart-wrenching trek.
His parents lived, or had lived anyway, in Wroclaw. His last communication with them had been a hurried phone call three days before. Life in the city was difficult, his father had said, but not as hard as what you are doing. Tad knew that wasn’t true. Doing one’s duty was easy. Especially when it meant fighting Germans.
Then they asked him if they should stay or go, a sensitive question to ask one of the city’s defenders. With his mind full of bleak situation briefings, Tad had told them to go — erring on the side of caution. Now they were somewhere on the road, heading to the east and uncertain safety in Warsaw.
Anger built up, but he tried to channel it, turning it into concentration on the job at hand. Maybe he could buy his mother and father a little more time to reach a safe haven, if any place in Poland could truly be said to be safe. He only wished his parents had kept their American citizenship so he could have wangled them a place on one of the evacuation flights back to the States.
The halfway point on his southwest leg was the road from Sroda Slaska and Wroclaw. According to this morning’s intelligence summary, the city was still in Polish hands, so he’d planned to pass west of the town.
The summary was out of date.
As his Eagle sped past the outskirts of town, the right side of his cockpit came alive. The radar track, and launch warning lights all lit up at virtually the same moment. The enemy radar signal showed dead ahead.
Tad looked up from the panel and saw two dark shapes arrowing toward him, rising on billowing white columns. Radar-guided SAMs!
Reflexively he turned hard left — almost too hard. The F-15’s nose dipped toward the ground, and he hurriedly corrected, adding more throttle. At the same time, one thumb punched both the chaff and flare buttons. He wanted chaff in the air to confuse the enemy launcher’s radar, and he wanted flares spewing out behind him in case the SAMs had a backup IR tracker.
The F-15’s nose spun to port, and Tad put the missiles on his right rear, about five o’clock. He couldn’t outrun them, but the Eagle had a smaller radar signature from that angle, and if he could just get beyond the horizon of the ground-based radar guiding them, the missiles should lose him.
He pushed the throttles forward to full military power, and even lowered the jet’s nose a little — diving lower still. Flying so low was hazardous in this built-up maze of power lines and buildings, but it beat getting his tail blown off. He fought the urge to crane his head back and see where the missiles were. At this altitude, taking his eyes off his flight path for that long would be suicide.
The Eagle built up speed quickly, although the drag and weight of the bombs prevented him from going supersonic. Hopefully it was enough. Wojcik counted the seconds, trying to figure ranges and speeds. And the threat display went dark, just as quickly as it had lit up. Pulling up a little and throttling back, he risked a glance behind him.
The Eagle’s bubble canopy gave him an excellent view to the rear, and he could see the two smoke trails, curving smoothly upward, angling off to the left. He was clear. Some bastards on the ground had tried to kill him and they’d failed.
Tad let out his breath and turned back toward his target, following the steering cues on the HUD in front of him. He made a mental note to warn intelligence that EurCon’s forward units were now past Sroda Slaska.
A small village loomed ahead — surrounded by fields and small orchards.
It was time. He changed his weapons settings, selecting the cluster bombs instead of the Sidewinder he always had prepped in transit. As he double-checked his settings, the cockpit threat receiver lit up again, this time warning him about a search radar probing somewhere up ahead. He knew the signal’s source, the SAMs guarding the Cicha Woda River crossing.
Retreating Polish troops had dropped the highway bridge as EurCon forces approached, but enemy engineers had quickly rigged a replacement across the narrow river. But that wasn’t his target. Pontoon spans were easily replaced.
Instead, Wojcik was going to hit the traffic waiting to cross that pontoon bridge. No temporary bridge could be as efficient as the original span, so the area’s already-crowded roads were backed up with every type of enemy vehicle. The military term for the traffic jam was “chokepoint.” The drivers stuck in it probably had their own, considerably more profane terms.