Armageddon?? (99 page)

F-105D
“Frankenwhoosh” 273rd Fighter Group, Over the Sixth Ring of Hell

The
fact that any F-105s had survived at all wasn’t so unusual, but the sheer
number of them had been remarkable indeed. The search through the museums had
found no less than 103 F-105s of assorted marks, in conditions varying from the
derelict to the pristine. Some had even had their engines and cannon still
installed and three had been in immediately flyable condition. Over the last
three months, 15 more had joined the 273rd making up one of its squadrons. They
were all a blend of the most intact airframes with parts taken from the
airframes too far gone to bring back into service, hence they all bore names
starting with “Franken”. The single-engined aircraft were old and tired, all
the museum salvaged aircraft were that, but they could still fly and haul
bombs. They would do, they would fill the gap, until new aircraft came into
service in enough numbers and the Thunderchiefs could return to their quiet
life in the aircraft museums of America. Only this time, they would be sporting
the red-and-gray camouflage scheme worn by the aircraft that fought in Hell.

Captain
Casey “Loco” Jones angled his wings slightly and turned to follow the Styx as
it meandered down below. The five other F-105s following him did the same. The
aircraft were sluggish, the F-105 was stunningly fast low down but nobody had
ever described it as agile. With six 750 pound bombs hanging under its belly,
four more on each inner wing rack and one on each outer, a total of 12,000
pounds, the old aircraft were really hard to fly. It had been a wrench for him
to be taken out of his Boeing 767 and put back into a Thud, but the old-timers
who had flown the bird before were getting thin on the ground.

Down
below, he could see a long black snake following the river. It was the column
of baldricks he was hunting, apparently they were advancing on an area of Hell
that had been liberated. Well, there were things he could do about that.

“All
Frankenstein aircraft, target is below, roll out and follow me down.” Jones
rolled his wings to vertical, feeling the aging spars and frames creaking in
protest then pulled the stick back, hauling the nose of the Thunderchief
around. Then, he leveled the wings, dropped the nose and rammed the throttle
all the way forward. The F-105 responded gallantly, its engine surging with
power, even through the filters built into its engine intakes.

Under
his nose, the column was now stretched out before him, his flight path taking him
along its length. Something that hadn’t been obvious before, there was a wall
between them and the river, an old-fashioned, crenallated wall that marked the
division between the fifth and sixth circles of Hell. That wouldn’t make much
difference, it offered little cover and wouldn’t even get in the way of the
bombing and strafing passes.

The
target below was growing rapidly, this was a part of the attack that needed
care. The Thud dived very fast and was too ponderous to pull out quickly. More
than one F-105 pilot had been so interested in strafing his target that he’d
left pulling out too late and flown right into the ground. A gentle pressure on
the stick, pull the nose back and then release the bombs. Behind him, the dark
green 750 pounders dropped clear, their tail fins spreading sideways as they
opened up to slow the fall of the bombs. Those retarding fins and the long fuse
extenders made sure that the bombs would explode above the ground, maximizing
the radius covered by their fragments. The F-105s streaked over the column of
baldricks, unleashing their total of nearly a hundred bombs onto the figures
below, then used the energy they had built up in their dive to get clear. By
the time the bombs exploded, they were already miles away and thousands of feet
above the devastation their bombs had caused.

At
the top of his climb, Jones rolled over again and started his second pass. The
bombs had mostly hit around the head of the column so he thought it would be
only fair to give the rear some attention. He put the pipper of his cannon
sight on the last ranks and squeezed the trigger, haring the vicious rasp of
the M-61 as it pumped its shells into the scattering mass of baldricks. Then,
he lifted the nose, marching the tracers along the column, only ending when he
was getting too low for comfort. Still, he had some ammunition left and a part
of it was used on a harpy that staggered across is nose. Then he was away
again, once more climbing for altitude.

“Frankenstein
aircraft, formate on me, we’re going home to get some more goodies.” If there
were any he thought quietly, the rate we’re using the stuff up, the day when we
run out can’t be that far off.

The
six Thunderchiefs formed up into a loose arrowhead and started back towards the
Hellmouth and home. Up ahead of him, Jones saw something that he couldn’t quite
identify so he angled his course to take a closer look. It was further away
than he had thought, mainly because the objects were so much larger.

“Just
what the blazes is that?” the voice on the radio wasn’t quite identifiable but
Jones shared the sentiments. It was a huge, misshapen beast, flying in an
ungainly pattern, not quite holding a true course or height. He looked harder,
it had wings of course, and a tail that seemed to act as a rudder. Then he
caught his breath – it had seven heads.

“It’s
a hydra, a flying hydra. And its huge, those wings must be three, four hundred
feet across. Uh-oh look out guys. There’s wyverns with it and we haven’t seen
ones like this before.” The wyverns were far larger than any that had been
reported to date and were a brilliant gold in color. Jones started to count
them and as he got to twelve, they broke formation to attack his aircraft.
Simultaneously, the hydra dived away and started to break for cover, it might
be ungainly but it was fast.

Jones
picked out one of the Wyverns, the old Thud was no dogfighter but this wasn’t
the time to argue matters. Once again he firewalled the throttle and felt the
surge of power from his engine. The formation of six aircraft split into three
pairs, one heading up and right, one up and left, the center pair with Jones in
the lead went straight up. He glanced at the speed tape-gauge, he was pulling
almost 18,000 feet per minute in a climb that was close to being straight up. As
his speed bled off, he timed his climb, then rolled the F-105 over and dropped
the nose. The wyverns were beneath him and his chosen target was in the perfect
position for a gun pass. The Thud accelerated downwards and he moved the pipper
so that it was on the tail of the monster. Then his cannon rasped again and he
saw the tracers thudding into its body.

It
was a short burst, it had to be he’d used most of his ammunition up on the
column of troops. He saw tracers flashing past his wing, his wingman was firing
as well, using up what was left of his cannon ammunition on the stricken
wyvern. The creature was flailing, dying, the ball that ended its tail whipping
through the air. That ball was dangerous, it had already cost the humans
aircraft and that had been from the much smaller wyverns seen over the
Phlegethon. It didn’t matter though, the Thuds were clear and three of the
wyverns were dying, shot to pieces by the 20mm gatling guns in the nose of the
F-105s.

“Any
sign of that hydra?”

“It’s
gone Loco.”

Jones
swore quietly, a modern aircraft would have an air-to-air radar that could have
found the beast in the dust laden air but the F-105 was old and obsolete.
Still, she’d done her best at an age when any aircraft should have expected
genteel retirement. The hydra had got away but the troops on the ground hadn’t.
Nor had three wyverns.

Sixth
Circle of Hell.

Xisorixus
pulled himself out of the ditch that he had managed to find when the human sky
chariots had found him. It had been so sudden he hadn’t had time to think about
what to do, the chariots had screamed out of the sky and dropped their
mage-bolts all over his column. Then they’d come back and repeated the
performance, spraying fireflies into his foot soldiers. A few seconds that was
all it had taken. They’d gone and left this shambles behind them.

The
road was torn up, the stones shattered and cast around by the mage bolts that
had left craters where they had landed. Around them were torn fragments of
black flesh that was all anybody would ever find of those unlucky enough to be
hit. Further out from the mage-bolt craters the wounded were sprawled on the
ground, wailing with pain from the injuries inflicted by the iron splinters in
their bodies.

“Get
up, get moving. His Infernal Majesty did you the honor of inspecting you in
person. Now show yourselves worthy of that privilege.” Then Xisorixus looked up
at the city of Dis towering overhead and saw the great cloud of dust that
masked where Satan’s palace had once stood. Others were looking at it as well.

“He
might do the inspecting but he’s not around to do the fighting is he?” The
voice from his troops was unidentifiable but the murmur of agreement that swept
through the ranks showed that the speaker had a lot of agreement. Xisorixus was
about to challenge the speaker, whoever he was, but then he decided to let it
slide.

“How
many have we lost?” Instead it was time to take stock of his losses.

“About
eight hundred.” The reply was from the senior ‘Baron’ who Xisorixus had
appointed to lead his first Legion. A ‘Baron’ who had led nothing larger than
an octurbinium before and whose aristocratic rank was unrecognized by anybody
outside Xisorixus’s hastily-assembled Army.

Eight
hundred out of thirty thousand. A sharp loss for an attack that had been over
in seconds but one that his army could swallow. The whispered words about the
fighting on Earth and now along the Phlegethon were that a human attack usually
created far more havoc than this.

“Resume
our march. We will overrun the rebelling humans and gain great glory. And much
favor in the eyes of His Majesty. We will have succeeded where Abigor and
Beelzebub have failed!”

A
ragged cheer went up and Xisorixus’s Army started to move again, leaving its
dead beside the road. As they did, not a few were wondering when the
Sky-Chariots would return and what form of death they would bring next time.

Chapter
Sixty Nine

RAF
Akrotiri, Cyprus.  Wing Commander Martin Winters eased Vulcan B.2 XH558 down
onto the air station’s long runway after taking her up for an air test. RAF
Akrotiri was being used by the RAF as a staging post for aircraft bound for
Iraq and onwards for operations in Hell.

The
station was crowded with military aircraft and was busier than it had been at
any point in its history, since the old days of the Near East Air Force anyway.
In fact apart from more modern aircraft like Typhoons and Tornados it even looked
like something out of the old NEAF days. Other than XH558 there were three
other operational Vulcans and two Victor K.2s, a line-up of twelve Buccaneer
S.2s, some of which had come all the way from South Africa, now wearing the
markings of a reformed 208 Squadron, while four Phantom FGR.2s sat at the end
of the row of Buccaneers, their paintwork looking a little faded, but were
every bit operational. On the opposite side of the runway parked among
ultra-modern Typhoons were a pair of Canberra PR.9s and a T.4. Winters expected
to see the Battle of Britain flight with its Spitfires, Hurricane and other
Word War Two veterans turning up an any moment. Then he reminded himself that
those aircraft had been assigned to the Home Guard and were patrolling over
cities in case of any more lava attacks. Of course, there was always the
Shuttleworth Trust……

Ground
Traffic Control was bleating as usual, they just weren’t used to having this
many aircraft on the ground at once nor were they accustomed to the big bombers
being around. Wing Commander Winters taxied the big bomber to the end of the
row where the rest of the V-Bomber Flight was parked and shut down the four
Rolls Royce Olympus 201 engines. Within seconds with the air conditioning
turned off the cockpit began to get unbearably hot.

“Come
on, lads, let’s get out of here before we all fry.” Winters said jocularly to
his crew.

Like
many of the aircrew in the flight Winters was a recalled pilot who had last
flown the Vulcan in the early 1980s. The flight had the highest average age of
aircrew of any unit in the Royal Air Force, and the highest average seniority,
there were far more Wing Commanders and Squadron Leaders in such a relatively
small unit than there normally would be. The air force was now attempting to
rectify this situation by transferring some aircrew from the Nimrod and Tornado
force to the V bombers. Since the RAF was hoping to buy some of the B-1Cs that
the Americans were planning to put back in production the experience of flying
large bomber aircraft would be valuable. Just as was happening all over the
world, the museum-pieces were filling the gap until new production could
replace them and allow them to return to retirement.

Winters
climbed down the crew ladder, making sure he remained in the shadow of the big
bat-winged bomber while he waited for the four other men to climb down. While
he was doing so he heard the sound of another pair of aircraft making their
approach. He did not recognise the engine sound and decided to go take a look, perhaps
it was a visiting aircraft from another NATO unit.