Her threat receiver screamed an alarm, moments before a tail gunner put a handful of rounds into the Tempest, which screamed in pain. She heard noises she had only heard in simulations as the aircraft started to disintegrate around her, but she couldn’t eject, not in the middle of the battle. That would almost certainly be guaranteed suicide; the Russians had fired on ejecting RAF pilots before, another trick to weaken the RAF still further. She still had weapons and options; she still had some possible tricks she could pull…
And there was one weapon left. Pointing the remains of her aircraft towards another aircraft, she reached for the ejection lever… too late. Her Tempest crashed into a Russian transport and both aircraft vanished from the sky in a tearing fireball. No one ever found a trace of Flying Officer Cindy Jackson, or her aircraft.
General Shalenko gritted his teeth as the losses came in. They had expected losses, and they had almost wiped out the Royal Navy in exchange for losing several transports and ASW craft, but the losses in fighter craft were appalling. It hardly mattered; they had crippled the RAF and slaughtered the Royal Navy. They still had most of the transports intact and the soldiers were waiting now for a chance to come to grips directly with the enemy. He wouldn’t let them down; Russians knew that victory was worth the price.
He turned to his aide. “Give the order,” he said, addressing her directly. “Deploy the landing force.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Operation Morskoi Lev, Take Two
Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan…. Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement — not a single step back without order from higher command
Battlezone, English Channel
The transport nearest his aircraft blew up in a massive explosion, tossing Colonel Boris Akhmedovich Aliyev’s aircraft across the sky, sending a ripple of muttered curses up from the parachutists as they braced themselves for their coming mission. They had prepared for it as best as they could, but Aliyev knew — they all knew — that it would be their most dangerous yet. Nearly the entire paratrooper force had been committed to the mission, under a GRU General; failure was not an option.
“That was a RAF aircraft ramming a transport,” Captain Boris Lapotev called back. Lapotev had been delighted to be at the controls of a genuine military transport again; the modified civilian aircraft would have been sitting ducks in the raging air battle, and the British would have known that they were hostile. All British civilian aircraft had been sent to the west of England, or to Scotland, where they laboured to evacuate as much of the population as possible. Aliyev knew enough about logistics to doubt that they had a serious chance of evacuating the entire population; it was far more likely that they wouldn’t be able to get more than a few hundred thousand out at most, assuming that the Americans and Canadians were willing to keep taking them in. “Poor, brave, stupid bastard.”
Aliyev shrugged. He had spent time fighting the Poles when they had rallied, only a few hours too late, to attempt to retake the airport. They had been brave as well, and determined; the few prisoners had all been heavily injured before the Russians had captured them. The civilians caught in the war zone had suffered badly; they would be repatriated to their home countries as soon as possible. Aliyev had promised them that and… well, he wasn’t an FSB butcher. He wouldn’t have hesitated to drive over them if they had been blocking his route, as the FSB had done in Warsaw, but he wouldn’t slaughter for no tactical purpose.
“Five minutes to jump point,” Lapotev said. Aliyev found himself tensing; he would be first out of the aircraft, as happened most of the time. Once they landed, they could expect to be attacked almost at once; if they were unlucky, the British might even shoot at them as they were falling out of the sky. It was early morning, but by now the British would be on the alert and gunning for the Russians with everything they had. “The air force is moving in first.”
“Air farce,” someone muttered, in the semi-darkness of the plane. Aliyev ignored it; the soldiers could bitch and moan as much as they liked, provided they obeyed. The policy of openness had transformed Russian life and it would not be failed in his unit. “They’ll probably have left so that we get roasted as well.”
“Two minutes,” Lapotev said. “Prepare for jump.”
Aliyev shuffled towards the hatch as it yawned open, revealing the English Channel being replaced by beaches and patchwork fields, heading over a large motorway and back into the countryside. The sky was lit up by explosions and glowing missile trails; the British had their backs to the wall and knew it. It was possible, more than possible, that they would fire a missile at his aircraft; he would have no time to pitch himself out of the aircraft and survive the fiery death of his comrades.
The Russian air force had been intended to assault their landing zone with bombs and napalm; the British could not be allowed a moment to realise that they had suddenly been dropped right into the front lines. Russian Intelligence had gone through all of the satellite images and other photographs taken by reconnaissance aircraft and had concluded that the British had prepared defences along the A20, between Dover and Folkestone; it made sense, from a tactical point of view. The British had to know that they would be assaulted from the sea and there weren’t that many places to land, short of a suicidal dash into a port. Denmark had been taken by the Trojan Horse trick, but the British would never let anything land in a port without inspecting it carefully. Once bitten… twice very shy; it would be a long time before anyone relaxed their guard.
“One minute,” Lapotev snapped. His voice was becoming more excited as an explosion rocked the aircraft. “The bombers have gone in!”
Aliyev counted down the moments as the paratroopers lined up behind him. The aircraft had been built purposefully for the deployment of paratroopers and it showed; they would be tossed out of the aircraft, along with some boxes of equipment, very quickly, and then the pilot would return to France and pick up more paratroopers. Aliyev wouldn’t be allowed to remain without reinforcements; the mission was too important for them to be allowed to fail. They would take the British in the rear, and then they would allow the naval infantry to assault the beach and allow the soldiers to land. Failure was not an option.
A shrill whistle blew; seconds later, he was falling through the air, the wind blowing at him as he plummeted towards the ground. The thrill of it reached through to him, just for a moment, as the English countryside grew in front of him; the war didn’t exist as he screamed in exultation…
Professionalism reasserted itself and he pulled the chute, sending it billowing out above him, catching the wind and slowing his fall to the bare minimum. The old Soviet Union had used dangerously slow descents; the newer Spetsnaz parachutes barely slowed the soldiers enough to prevent them from breaking their legs as they fell. Bursts of smoke were rising up from the ground; he could smell the sickly-sweet roast pork smell of burning human flesh. He had smelled it before, but it never failed to make him sick; there were few fates worse than being burnt alive.