ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (8 page)

“High tide shortly after dusk tonight if memory
serves, and I trust that coming ashore high up the beach isn’t going to put you
in a minefield buried in the sand is it?”

“We will not be bothered by mines on the beach.”
Huaiqing replied with certainty.

    Li looked at him quizzically.
Triggering a land mine on the beach would strip away the vital element of
surprise that the operation relied upon.

    “Another part of the briefing I
slept through?”

“A little reptilian told me we will only have bored
and sleepy sentries to contend with.”

Captain Li shook his head slowly. This soldier was an
odd one, always with his nose in a book when not working out in the limited
space of the torpedo room, absorbing the most random information like a sponge.
Nevertheless, he was intelligent, resourceful, and well respected by his
troops.

As this new plan was their only viable option at
completing the mission with the remaining resources, he had to trust Jie’s
abilities.

“Well I hope your reptile informant is correct or we
are all screwed.” He gathered up the maps and documents and returned them to
the safe.

“Tonight would seem to be the night
then, Major.”

Chapter 2

Lambeth, London

It was curiously quiet in the forest, although Colin
could hear the drone of outgoing shells passing far overhead and impacting in
the distance.

Looking up through a gap in the foliage he could see
the base of the clouds toward the horizon briefly illuminated by the flashes of
the shells exploding but it was several seconds before the crump of their
detonation reached his ears.

The flashes of light also served to illuminate the
shapes of Russian paratroopers silently emerging from the trees across the fire
break, the light flashing off the long bayonets attached to their assault
rifles. AKs have their own folding bayonet but these were at least two feet in
length with serrated edges.

None of his men were opening fire though!
“Enemy to the front…fifty metres…rapid…
FIRE!
”

No one fired a single round despite the Russians being
all out of the trees now and clearly visible in the firebreak, and then he saw
all his men were Corporal Bethers and their lower jaws were missing.

Their shoulders shook with mirth as they turned to
stare at him, the only one of the fighting patrol not dead, the only one not
disfigured.

He rose to meet the Russian’s bayonet charge and
gripped his own rifle firmly, but he felt it crack and then crumble to dust in
his grasp.

His men were still shaking in silent laughter and not
attempting to help.

“Give me a rifle someone!”

If anything they found his predicament even more
hilarious and some were rolling on the ground.

“Here sir, come and get mine!” the voice sounded from
behind him.

Robertson stood there holding out his own rifle, his
face missing.

“But you are dead, you died yesterday!”

Colin turned back and froze at the sight of a Russian
paratrooper charging directly at him, an impossibly long bayonet pointing
unwaveringly at his midsection.

Colin tried to move, to dodge out of the way but his
legs moved in slow motion.

He screamed aloud as the sharp steel transfixed him,
driving through to pin him against the tree behind.

“Nikoli…help me mate!” he called out to his friend who
had appeared in front of him.

But Fanny M glared with hatred at the British soldier.

“You killed me Colin, and I was just doing my duty. I
saved you and you killed me…”

A nurse leaned over the mumbling, sweating patient,
feeling for a pulse on the wrist handcuffed to the metal
bedframe in the ICU at King’s College Hospital in
Lambeth.

Outside the sterile unit, two prison officers sat
staring through a large glass window at the nurses’ ministrations to their
charge.

She took his temperature, noting and updating his
progress chart before she moved on, and the prison officers attention returned
to the paperback book and Angry Birds that were helping to pass the time.

RAAF Pearce, nr Perth: Western Australia.

The Australian continent was not yet under threat of
immediate air attack but blackouts were in force across the country so as not
to assist the enemy photo-reconnaissance satellites when they passed overhead.

The F-14 Tomcat entered the circuit with its crew
spending a moment to peer down at an earth that was darker than the sky.

A vehicle with hooded headlamps on what had to be the
Great Northern Highway on the right and a long and dimly lit train on the left
satisfied the pilot that runway ‘36 Right’ of Royal Australian Air Force Base
Pearce was down there between them and the controller was not lying.

They were on finals and thirty seconds from the outer
marker before the landing lights came on, and then they dimmed perceptibly the
moment their wheels had touched the tarmac.

At the end of the aircraft’s rollout the runway lights
were extinguished, leaving the Tomcat with its engines idling. It sat there in the
darkness at the end of the runway until a vehicle drove in front and a ‘Follow
Me’ sign illuminated. The vehicle led the aircraft off the runway and along
taxiways at a rate of knots greater than that demanded by the speed limits
posted at intervals along the route.
To
the sides they could vaguely make out the dark outlines of war planes of
various nations occupying No.2 Flying Training School’s flight lines and
dispersals that were meant for the PC-9 trainers. Those trainers were now off
on one of the many Australian Air Force airfields that were otherwise occupied
just by caretakers, who maintained the runways and limited facilities for times
such as these.

Eventually the marshalling truck led the US Navy
aircraft toward a track of temporary roadway panels to the open rear of a
camouflaged netting hangar that faced back towards the runway.

Nikki Pelham shut down the engines prior to reaching
the threshold before the ‘hangars’ interior, coasting inside and braking to a halt
between blast walls created by old shipping containers filled with earth.

Filtered torchlight was the only illumination to
assist her down from the cockpit, and she stretched and groaned at almost eight
thousand miles worth of stiffness in her back and joints.

“So where’s the welcoming committee of hunky Aussie
surfers?”

Nikki turned to smile at her RIO.

Lt (jg) Candice LaRue hailed from Alabama and this was
her first time outside the States, having only graduated as a Radar Intercept
Officer four days earlier.

Nikki and Candice had been paired off at Nellis AFB
where the Boneyard airframes were being delivered following refurbishment and
upgrades to weapons, navigation and avionics systems. The parking ramps at
Nellis had been crammed with early model F-14, 15 and 16s, rubbing wingtips
with dozens of previously retired A-10 Thunderbolts, A-6 Intruders, AV-8B
Harriers and venerable B-17s, the ‘Buffs’, known affectionately to the crews as
the Big Ugly Fuckers.

Here at RAAF Pearce, some nine thousand five hundred
miles from Nellis, a dark shape with an Australian accent bid them collect
their gear and step aside as other dark shapes with American accents closed in
on their aircraft and began the business of preparing it for flight once more.
The external fuel tanks were removed, leaving the aircraft ‘clean’ until the
armourers arrived but the internal fuel tanks were refilled.

All they had carried had been three hundred rounds of
20mm cannon ammunition for their rotary barrelled Vulcan.

Being curious, they had a little wander around and
found a bunch of other USN F-14s, which had already been armed up. None of
those aircraft were Ds; four were model Bs, including Nikki’s, whilst the
remainder were even older ‘A’ models with Pratt & Whitney turbo fans that produced
less thrust than their own General Electric power plants. Beyond the F-14s they
found the first Australian airframes, in the form of an RAAF Hawk with war
shots on its hardpoint’s, and a pair of venerable Aussie F111C bombers that
were fully bombed up for anti-shipping strikes.

The F111Cs were forty or so years old but upgraded and
certainly not looking their years. Australia had supposedly
phased
them out and replaced them with F/A-18s, but this pair certainly had somehow
avoided being buried ignominiously in landfill sites with the rest of
Australia’s F111 fleet.

“Wow, ‘Varks…I thought these were all scrapped?” said
Nikki.

A voice from the shadows made them jump.

“A consortium wanted them for air displays; one to fly
and one for spares…but the end user certificates were a problem so we kept them
mothballed while they sort it out in the courts.”

Beneath the port wing
they made out two shapes on camp beds. One was snoring softly whilst
the other arose.

“Gerry Rich.” He said, and right on queue the runway
flights came on, illuminating rugged and tanned features along with a broad,
raffish smile.

“Flight Lieutenant Gerry Rich, and twenty five percent
of the newly reformed 15 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force at your
service…oh, and we call them ‘Pigs’, not Aardvarks’.” He jerked a thumb back
over his shoulder at the snoring form. “That’s Macca, he’s me ‘Wizzo’, and he’s
from over your way originally.”

“Oh really, where’s that then?” asked Nikki.

“Alberta.”

“That’s Canada, not the USA.” laughed Candice.

“Can you drive to the US from Alberta in a single day
and without getting yer feet wet?” he queried.

“Sure, but…”

“Around here we’d class that as being next door
neighbours.”

Candice laughed in a way that told Nikki she was
batting her eyelids furiously.

“Does that Mick Dundee style ever get you anywhere?”
Nikki asked.
He smiled at Candice but he positively beamed at
her pilot.

“Shaving with a Bowie knife right about now would have
been hazardous.”

Behind them a squeal of tyres and the roar of four Allison
turboprops changing pitch to reverse signalled the flare path dimming to barely
visible and then extinguishing as the Hercules finished its roll out.

“Lieutenant Commander Pelham, VFA
154, USS
Nimitz
.”
Nikki said by way of introduction,
very formally and not leaving an opening for him to be otherwise.

“Lieutenant Candice La Rue, but you can call me Candy
if you want.” another voice wishfully added.

“Have you got a first name to go with that, Lieutenant
Commander?”

“She’ll tell you that it’s
Ma’am,
but
she’ll answer to Nikki.” said Candice.    

The taxiing aircraft, a Royal New Zealand Air Force
C130 drowned out what Nikki said to her RIO as it past and she firmly steered
her away by the arm and back toward their Tomcat.

“You got to admit he’s cute?”

“Nah.”
Said Nikki “Too much
twisted steel and sex appeal.” But she looked back anyway.

When the ground crew were done they all crowded into
the back of a truck for the journey to the base cookhouse, and this was open
for business 24/7 according to the ground crews.

Australian steak and eggs tastes pretty much the same
as American steak and eggs but the fries were called ‘chips’, not that it
mattered as neither aviator had eaten since somewhere over the mid Pacific and
then the  sandwiches had been curling up at the edges in the hot sun that
shone through the Perspex.

It wasn’t until the plates were empty that Nikki found
her eyes drooping.

There were no comfortable barracks for the two tired
aviators, and they were shown through a side door and along a short pathway to
a small building, guided through the darkness by an armed RAAF corporal with a
small torch. They were the only female crew there and as such shared a room
which held nothing more than two canvas camp beds, plus pillows and blankets.

“Keep your flight gear handy, if you hear a siren it’s
an air raid warning and also the order to scramble…reveille is at 0600 and
breakfast is at 0630 at the building two down from here. The Dunny’s at the end
of the hall…g’night.”

Once the door had been closed they had looked at one
another and shrugged. Candice rolled into the blankets upon one of the camp
beds and fell asleep almost immediately, but Nikki lay staring at the ceiling
for a while. 

When Nikki had arrived at Nellis she had been feeling
pretty low, and not without cause. A weeks’ worth of tears and utter disbelief
at losing her family in such a shocking manner was not nearly enough time to
mourn and come to terms with it.

She had other commitments too and these kept her from
wallowing in self-pity at the bottom of a bottle.

Arlington National Cemetery was too close to the
Washington fall-out zone and had been closed until some future intensive clean
up could be undertaken, so Chubby’s funeral had taken place at his hometown
near Detroit.

Someone had tipped off the press that she would be
present, so she had spared his family, and herself, the embarrassment by
telling the cab driver to continue on past the cemetery and the assembled
circus outside. She had telephoned her apologies to Chubby’s parents from the
airport before catching a flight to her own hometown where she had avoided the
media by laying a wreath on her father’s grave at night. There was not, as yet,
any final resting place for her mother or younger brother whose bodies had yet
to be recovered and identified.

The navy public relations department would dearly have
loved to have paraded Nikki to the media as the female warrior who had downed
four confirmed enemy aircraft and survived the destruction of the
John F Kennedy
battle group, but the circumstances surrounding the death of her father
had made that impossible, even had she been willing.