"We've got fighters lifting off at Petrovsk and Sharkovka… and air defence radars coming up…'Tombstones', 'Clamshells'…" the screen began to populate with ground threats and the airborne variety alike."…shit, did someone suddenly get wise to us?" Patricia meant the question for herself, but she spoke aloud.
"Or they were waiting for us, and this is all just an elaborate trap." Major Caroline Nunro muttered.
"You got to stop sleeping with spooks Caroline, it’s making you paranoid…I think maybe someone just noted the orbits of the Vega package and the Ariane's RORSAT and connected the dots together, but it kinda verifies Svetlana's intel though.
Previously unknown air defence sites were appearing on the screen, most of them mobile and air portable weapon systems which could follow the Premier around as he moved from bunker to bunker.
"They seem to have 'Favorites' and 'Grumbles' for long and medium range, a trio of 'Geckos' and a 'Zeus' or six for point defence of the target site…oops, check the high ground at the IP!" a ZSU 23-4 and a Gecko mobile launcher sat at a little pre-war picnic spot overlooking the river. The RORSAT had them identified by their thermal signatures and radar returns. The symbols appeared on the screen accordingly, sat dead ahead.
Caroline automatically put the nose down to skim the rivers surface as close to the tree lined bank as she dared, hiding from the feared 'Zeus' in the ground clutter but this only made their own thermal fingerprint a little more obvious to the Gecko. Both systems were linked, although the heat seeking missiles could not guide on the ZSU’s radar. The ZSU’s turret traversed to point up-river, its quad 23mm automatic cannons dipping below the horizontal, slaved to the mobile Gecko launchers thermal sensor. A whir of servos also sounded as the Gecko's erector also rose up into the firing position. It was too faint for a lock but it grew in intensity by the millisecond.
Aboard the A-50 the general alert by Moscow Air Defence had come as a rude shock. Major Limanova's sighting report was now the subject of reappraisal by the watch keeper’s immediate superior. The absence of any radar trace was now being regarded as evidence of the presence of at least one enemy stealth aircraft operating in the skies near the capital, rather than a lack of evidence of a conventional one being abroad.
The scrambling of fighters and active use of radar and thermal sensors in and around Moscow had spread rapidly to surrounding air defence zones and beyond.
Two pairs of MiG-29s north of the Volga received the Gecko’s feed via the A-50 Mainstay and banked hard, heading in their direction.
"I have the Zeus and Gecko locked up via our support and if that A-50 keeps coming we will have him at extreme range in thirteen seconds."
"Okay, let’s get busy." The nose came up twenty degrees, the belly launcher cycled and a single AGM-65E sped away, aiming for a spot on the small shingle covered parking area midway between the two launchers, which were only forty feet apart. The amount of ordnance they carried was limited so any opportunity to buy-one-get-one-free was welcomed by Patricia.
Caroline levelled off at two hundred feet above the river, holding steady for a few seconds. The launcher cycled a second time and an AIM-120 dropped free to light off twelve feet below them and accelerate ahead, climbing sharply and also under third party control.
Caroline jinked left, putting warmer trees in their background instead of the cooler River.
Aboard the A-50 the heat source disappeared from the operators screens five seconds before the AIM-120 impacted with the underside of the A-50’s right wing. All beyond the starboard inner folded backwards and upward before shearing away. With the one remaining starboard engine on fire the huge aircraft rolled onto its back, beginning a long terminal dive with a two hundred foot tail of flame streaming behind it and its large radome still rotating.
Command and control was disrupted, although the hunters knew enough to know where to start looking.
Caroline throttled back, raised the nose ten degrees and stood the Nighthawk on its wingtip in order to make the turn into the narrower valley.
As the aircraft left the river valley it was illuminated by exploding Gecko missiles which were tearing apart the burning launch vehicle, and hazarded by the spectacular fireworks display created by cooking-off 23mm cannon ammunition in the flame enshrouded ZSU now laying on its side. Tracer flew off in all directions, including into the path of the F-117X, and worryingly there were six cannon rounds they could not see for every tracer round that they could.
Caroline held the turn, her jaw set and half expecting to feel a hammer blow resound through the airframe but they were through and clear without damage. She levelled the wings and let out a relieved breath, but that relief was premature.
"Mother of..!" Caroline exclaimed a heartbeat later.
They should have expected that this close in the KGB ground troops, the Premier’s Pretorian Guard, would also be defending the site by any means at hand. Tracer arose to meet them from scattered positions where AFVs sat in defensive berms and hull-down fighting positions. Firing blind, trying for the Golden BB shot, the 20 ruble bullet that brings down the billion dollar aircraft.
The small arms fire flicked by but the heavier guns sent apparently molten globs of green fire aimed directly between the pilot’s eyes. It emerged from the darkness below as small glowing green dots that rose towards them with deceptive slowness before suddenly growing in size and velocity. It seemed that each one must inevitably smash straight through the cockpit screen, but at the last moment they curled away, flashing passed either below, to the right or to the left.
An audible alarm sounded as a super cooled sensor in their tail detected a shoulder launched heat seeking Strela missile locking on. Flares were pumped out automatically and the alarm fell silent.
Patricia saw none of this; she secured the uplink between the weapon and the Vega, updated the status of the Vandenberg launch and set to with the business of the bomb run.
"Twenty seconds." she keyed calmly "Weapon is hot and the uplink is established, this is as good as it gets…"
Caroline centred the icon for the mine shaft at their 12 O-Clock.
"Fighters coming down" Patricia warned. "That kerfuffle back there zeroed our location for them, we have two Zhuk radars crossing our six from the eight o-clock position at six thousand…now four thousand, those boys are hustling."
"Bad country to be diving on burner…this is where those boys find out how well built their rides are…but we will be outahere in seconds."
Behind them the Fulcrum’s Klimov 33D turbofans were indeed producing over eighteen thousand pounds of thrust but the afterburners were cut as warnings sounded in their pilots ears from the Russian’s ground proximity warning systems.
"Pop-up in five…four…SHIT!" The symbols and icons vanished from the screens as the RORSAT turned into an expanding cloud of low orbit debris. Their up to the second threat coverage vanished and the Vega communications satellite lost its targeting data.
“Patty, what’s the status on Two and Three?”
“One minute fifty and six minutes forty five…the second Ariane is launching as we speak.”
Caroline silently blessed the triple redundancy and the mission planner’s foresight, but made a mental note to check on whether theirs was the single most expensive sortie in history.
"Warm up a pair of Sidewinders, we are going around again!" Caroline declared, pulling back on the side stick, taking them up in a half loop and rolling out at the top to loose off an AIM-9L Sidewinder at each of the MiG-29s that were now entering the valley. She laughed cruelly as they received the same greeting from the ground defenders as they had. There was the sudden appearance of a tail of flame followed by a ball of fire as the trailing aircraft of the pair, seriously damaged by friendly ground fire, flew into the hillside. A parachute opened briefly, rewarding its pilot for his quick reactions. The lead MiG-29 released flares and pulled up into a vertical jink, avoiding a direct hit by the Sidewinder targeting it but the missile’s proximity fuse activated ten feet from its tail. It departed eastwards trailing smoke. The second AIM-9L flew into the already burning wreckage of its target which was scattered over the valleys steep side.