' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (33 page)

Two great fireballs, one to starboard and one astern of
Samara
were roiling skywards. A Harpoon had dived down to skewer the frigate, penetrating to below the waterline and detonate in its magazine. 
Yoshkar-Ola
blew apart and once the smoke had been carried a little distance away by the wind there was only burning fuel oil remaining upon the surface and wreckage falling from the sky. The Krivak was gone.

Belly Dancer
1 and 2 had met with complete success but they had ordnance left, so what to do now, run with the winning streak or play it as briefed? The
Bar Fighters
had expended all their anti-radiation ordnance and were heading home at wavetop level, so there would be no interference with other ships air defences and sensors other than that produced by the F111C’s own jamming pods. High above the clouds the Tomcats were mixing it with the Flankers, keeping them off the Australian bombers backs so they could make their planned attack and egress.

Discretion won over.

This was just Round 1 and they had succeeded because it had been a team effort. The F111Cs cleared the area on burner.

For the Nimitz Tomcats it was not quite as simple as for one thing they were heavily engaged, and for another they wanted some payback for the destruction of their carrier.

Nikki’s Sparrow had missed, her opponent rolling inverted and banking hard to get in behind 03 and 04 for missile shots. She followed, but instead of banking as the Chinese pilot had done she extended slightly, dropping beneath the Flanker
before pulling back on the stick. They were high above the cloud and by the light of a half-moon she saw her enemy’s outline above her when she craned her neck.

A touch of rudder and she selected ‘Guns’ for a difficult deflection shot to take the Flanker as it accelerated ahead. Just a caress of her thumb and the Tomcat shuddered, vibrating as the M61 Vulcan cannon barrels rotated. 20mm shells nailed the underside of the Flanker’s nose, shredding the radar assembly and tearing up the cockpit floor. The instrument panel and canopy exploded before the pilot’s eyes, and fragments of exploding shells wounded him in both legs.

The damaged Flanker broke right, the pilot choosing to stay with the machine and attempt a recovery aboard the
Mao
. His radar was out and he had a hurricane blowing through the cockpit at 32,000ft. If he had not been on oxygen he would have lost consciousness.

He was a good pilot and if his opponent was feeling chivalrous he would probably make it.

Lt Cmdr. Pelham’s family, her friend Chubby, and both of her ships were gone forever. Screw chivalry, she sent a burst of cannon fire into the side of the cockpit and the Flanker continued its right banking turn, rolling into a dive, a dead hand on the stick.

The second Flanker was attempting to get behind her wingman for a short range missile shot, so both Tomcats broke hard left before he could establish a lock. The Chinese pilot should have broken left also, to pass to the rear of the Tomcats and got the hell out of there, diving for the cloud but he didn’t, he kept that left turn hard on, trying for the missile shot they had denied him. His airspeed bled off rapidly, the stick got soggy in his hands and the aircraft departed from controlled flight. Before he could find the airspeed to recover, one of Nikki’s AIM-7 Sparrows found him, exploding the aircraft.

Two SU-27Ks were diving for the cloud and the flight reformed, less Smackdown 03 who had taken an AA-8 Aphid up a tailpipe, but two good chutes had been seen.

Four for one, and three of those scalps went to Lt Cmdr. Pelham.

Two fresh flights of bandits were coming up to do battle so Nikki took them home, turning east and calling for a tanker as they called it a night.

The Udaloy destroyer
Syktyvkar
was left behind by the fleet, as was
Samara
. But
Samara
had lost her mast and had no communications but she rendered aid to the other stricken ship’s company before putting about and making for the closest repair yards, those at the forward logistical supply and support base for the Australian invasion force, China’s 3
rd
Army, at Cebu in the Philippines.

Syktyvkar
burned all through the rest of the night until the fire at last reach the magazine and she too blew up.

The Pearce Wing had recovered to various regional airports and the
Smackdown
flight was given a steer to Perth Airport but this was a risky move. The wing’s aircraft were short on offensive and defensive ordnance, and vulnerable on the ground.

RAAF Hawks, flown by instructors, were the CAP for that part of Western Australia, tanking from a Japanese Air Self-Defence Force KC-135 and remaining on station until the approach of fatigue.

Nikki led her flight of three remaining F-14 Tomcats along the taxiways, the last to arrive. They followed a yellow airport services vehicle driven by a member of the airport fire brigade, and he wore a hazardous substances protection suit with its own oxygen supply. On the sun baked earth beside the north perimeter road she and Candice shut down and waited until fire hoses washed down their aircraft, every crevices was blasted with both water and chemical neutralizers. Then of course it was their turn but chemical foam showers spared their blushes.

Now at last they had proper NBC protection issued them, and fresh G-suits, their own not in need of laundering. The still
wet name tapes and squadron flashed were transferred to the bare Velcro patches on the new items.

They learned from the decontamination team that VX, Sarin and Mustard/Lewisite had been used along with Blister Agents in thirty two separate locations in Australia and eight in New Zealand. So far it seemed that they had all been delivered by submarine launched missiles, each vessel launching on multiple targets. Forty four had died at RAAF Pearce during the attack there. Six were service personnel whilst the remainder were civilians, all of whom had died in their sleep in houses beyond the perimeter, on the downwind side of the field.

The chemical agent used on RAAF Pearce had not been typed in its raw form due to the speed with which it had broken down into a harmless form, presumably by design, and thereby allowing troops to occupy the target area if need be. It was not one of the persistent VX family of agents, and it had killed even quicker than that wickedly deadly compound. The agent, even its name a secret, had been tentatively matched via WHO records with a weapon that had seen limited use in the 1980s in Afghanistan. A post mortem of the victims would confirm that later.

RAAF Pearce would be reopening for business after dawn as WHO reported that sunlight was believed to cause complete evaporation in harmless form. No one was taking chances. A small, former naval barracks, now a privately run retirement home on the coast of New Zealand’s South Island, had been targeted with Anthrax-R, delivered by another submarine launched missile. They had all died, not easily and not pleasantly either.

The Chinese opening offensive actions against Australia and New Zealand had been devastating in regard to Sydney, and highly effective in disrupting military operations. The Pearce Wing, for example, was now separated, albeit temporarily, from its base and its ordnance to launch further strikes. As far as the effects on the largely unprotected civilian population were concerned, they were both angry at the enemy and scared. An early figure for the dead was 200, but as VX had been used at Woolongong and its Port Kembla suburb, that town alone would likely see that figure exceeded.

With a clean bill of health from the decontamination team the Tomcats taxied to the International Terminal, parking between a Virgin Australia A330 Airbus and a 747 in Qantas livery. There were few civilian aircraft there though, at that terminal, the domestic side of the airport was far busier by comparison.

When the sun came up the crews sat under the wings, awaiting a fuelling truck if they were instructed to relocate any great distance to one of the RAAF reserve fields.

Lt j.g Candice LaRue was hyper at first, talking at fifty thousand miles an hour, replaying her first combat, over and over until the adrenaline wore off and she crashed, exhausted and depressed.

At last she looked at her pilot with normal eyes.

“Who is ‘Chubby’?”

Nikki stared at her.

“Why do you ask?”

“During the combat, you called me ‘Chubby’ a bunch of times over the intercom.”

Unwilling to explain, Nikki merely apologised.

Coffee and sandwiches arrived but before they finished them the exodus of military aircraft began, returning back to Pearce to rearm, and disperse again while they prepare for further sorties.

RAAF Pearce in the daylight looked almost tranquil but they were glad to be fuelled, rearmed and relocating before the day was done.

The post-strike assessment had been grim. Their own sortie had been far more successful than any other of the Pearce Wing missions. Six aircraft had been lost from their wing alone, nineteen in total from the aircraft available for the defence of Australia and New Zealand.

Invasion was imminent, that much was certain, and from the enemy fleets position it could land south of Perth, but why would it give itself a thousand miles of the Great Victoria Desert to cross to reach New South Wales, the obvious target for invasion? Quite what it would do once it reached New South Wales was a conundrum. Would it land in the west and roll up the major cities, Melbourne and Canberra?  

At lunchtime came the news that the Battle of Europe had ended in defeat for the New Soviet Union and the Red Army had ceased hostilities. A reconnaissance flight was despatched to confirm or deny that the fleet was fragmenting, but it returned shot up, and reporting that the fleet was intact and ‘a bit lively’. It could not differentiate between Russian missiles and Chinese missiles, or if the CAP that had pursued it was off the
Mao
or
Admiral Kuznetsov.
However, the pilot of the 3 Squadron RAAF F/A-18 was quite happy for anyone else to have a looksee using his Hornet, once the brown adrenaline was sponged off the seat of course. The pilot’s droll humour was typical of the Australian air force but the next news to reach them was sobering.

Sydney, so much the icon of Australia in the eyes of the rest of the world was gone and fires on the outskirts were being allowed to burn out of control. Initial tests indicated a high presence of an isotope that had no part in the highly complex chain reaction required to cause a nuclear explosion. The element, Cobalt-60, had only one purpose for its inclusion in the weapon. By adding cobalt to the casing of the device the Chinese had produced a very ‘dirty bomb’ as the element is a source of exceptionally intense gamma rays.

The so called ‘nuclear footprint’, the area where the highly irradiated dust was falling back to earth, was currently out to sea. It was being carried west on a wind off the arid desert, blowing through the Blue Mountains and taking the fall-out ocean ward. The normal prevailing wind for the time of year was north easterly though, and as far north along the coast as Corindi Beach people were taking to the Pacific Highway and evacuating. If the wind changed in the next two days, and was more northerly than usual, the scientists warned that three hundred miles of coast would be rendered uninhabitable.

Vast tracts of the subcontinent are arid desert where water is scarce so it is not surprising that major inland cities are a bit
few and far between. The majority of Australians lived within a few hundred miles of the sea. Where to relocate the displaced population was a major problem.

The crews, especially the Australians, were itching for another chance to hit back but a proper strike was being planned and the limited air and sea power was being preserved.

The best place to defeat an amphibious invasion is whilst it is still at sea and the second best is on the beaches themselves. The invading army cannot all land at once, it has to do so a piece at a time. If those pieces can be defeated on the shore and prevented from forming a beachhead, the invasion will fail.

To defeat those units though, you have to be at the right beach and with enough force to do so.

The Kiwis were in Australia; because that was the best chance they had of defeating the People’s Liberation Army. No invasion fleet was threatening New Zealand, and would not do so until Australia was subdued. The small New Zealand Defence Force, 11000 strong, including Reserves, were almost all of them in Queensland, involved in the defence of Brisbane.

The Australian Army, the US 5
th
Mechanised Division and the infantry brigades worth of troops from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore were in New South Wales.

They needed help, sooner rather than later, but the NATO armies in Europe had taken a hammering, and victory had been a close run thing. Everyone in Australia and New Zealand expected Britain to come to its aid, just as the Anzacs had done for them in two world wars.

Indian Ocean: 0952hrs.

They had been at the mercy of the wind and currents, drifting ever further towards that wild ocean with no restraining shoreline worth mentioning.