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SPECTRE WASN’T A HUGE fan of the new plan, but after talking with Woody and Kruger at length about it, he agreed it was the only way. Their original plan to use the DARPA EA pods to cloak themselves and run away together during maneuvering was no longer valid. The single engine performance of the Flanker had put them at an extreme disadvantage.
It was a shortcoming he was about to experience firsthand. As part of their plan, they had swapped aircraft to give Spectre the wounded bird with Kruger in the backseat. It was the only way Spectre would approve such a risky mission – he wanted to personally fly the bad aircraft and assume the higher level of risk.
Spectre had more training than Woody from his time at Project Archangel and would be better suited to handle himself if they were shot down and had to evade North Korean forces to get back to South Korea. Besides, Spectre reasoned, he had talked Woody into this mission. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to him.
He taxied his Flanker behind Woody as they held short of the runway and two MiG-29s thundered down the runway doing a formation takeoff. They would serve as the adversaries for the tactical trials.
The North Koreans wanted proof of the SU-30’s Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) and Infrared Search-Track Pod (IRST) capabilities before buying the specially designed Flanker. To test it, the two MiG-29s would accompany them to the working airspace just off the west coast of North Korea. They would each take a corner of the airspace and then turn toward each other for the simulated fight.
The engagement would be recorded through North Korean surveillance radar, video on all aircraft, and GPS data gathered from the participating aircraft. After the long-range engagements, another flight of two MiG-29s would replace the first two, and Woody and Spectre would be expected to demonstrate the Advanced Flanker’s dogfighting capabilities against a formidable foe like the Fulcrum.
“Just relax, bub, everything is going to work out,” Kruger said over the intercom from the backseat. “The plan will work.”
As they had briefed, Kruger had decided it would be best for him to personally chaperone Spectre in case something went wrong and they ended up evading in country. He knew Cowboy would also do a good job, but Kruger believed it would be better for him to assume the risk since it was mostly his plan.
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Spectre said. “I just hope the water is warm if we have to jump out.”
The Sunchon Tower controller cleared Empire 11 flight for takeoff. Woody taxied onto the left side of the runway and pulled forward slightly. Spectre followed and continued to the right side, lining up next to him before looking over Woody’s jet and giving a thumbs up.
Woody flipped Spectre off and then lit the afterburners. The earth shook as the Flanker accelerated down the runway. Spectre counted to five and then pushed the left throttle to afterburner. Typically, he would’ve waited ten seconds, but on one engine they had decided that five would be sufficient spacing. They were in uncharted waters and making up rules as they went.
The aircraft felt like it was taking forever to get up to speed. Impatiently, Spectre rotated slightly early, which caused the takeoff roll to increase even more. As they reached the mid-point of the runway, they finally went airborne and Spectre retracted the landing gear.
Spectre used the aircraft’s datalink to follow Woody’s aircraft through the overcast layer. When he emerged at just over three thousand feet, he called “visual” and Woody cleared him to rejoin.
“This thing is a pig,” Spectre said over their aux frequency. “I’m crossfeeding the tanks but the fuel imbalance in blower is getting pretty massive.”
“How much?” Woody asked.
“Four hundred pounds,” Spectre said, indicating that his right fuel tank was four hundred pounds heavier. Without the right engine operating in afterburner, the left engine was siphoning off fuel faster than crossfeeding from the right fuel tanks would allow.
“Keep me posted,” Woody replied. “FENCE in.”
“Two!” Spectre replied as he completed his “FENCE” check to ensure his systems were setup for the mission.
Woody checked in with the Ground Control Intercept (GCI) controller. The controller gave him a heading and told him that the MiG-29s were seventy miles away on the west end of the airspace. They reported that they were ready to engage.
“Empire One-One is ready,” Woody replied.
The controller gave them a vector to the west to begin the intercept. Spectre flew a mile off Woody’s wing as they pointed at the two radar contacts on his screen. The Advanced Flanker’s AESA was already tracking them, ready to hand off to the IRST for passive detection.
As they climbed through twenty-thousand feet, Woody called, “Action,” over the aux radio.
“Good luck, brah,” he added.
“C’ya!” Spectre replied as he rolled inverted and began a 5G pull.
He kept the burner lit as he put the first waypoint on their egress route to South Korea on the nose and descended in a forty-five-degree dive. The airspeed accelerated through five hundred and fifty knots as he punched through the undercast layer.
“Music on,” Kruger announced from the backseat, indicating that their DARPA jammer was now on and cloaking them from North Korean radar. As far as the North Koreans were concerned, that would be Spectre’s last known location as if he’d crashed into the water.
He shallowed his dive as they punched through the clouds, breaking out at two-thousand feet. The airspeed climbed through six-hundred knots as he reached one hundred feet off the water and leveled off.
The Advanced Flanker screamed by a few fishing vessels as Spectre did his best to keep the Flanker straight and level. The thrust from the lone operating engine caused a severe yawing moment to the right, requiring a near full boot of left rudder.
“Feet dry,” Kruger called out as they made landfall and he sequenced to the next waypoint.
Spectre continued low over the flat land as he nervously watched the distance to Osan Air Force Base click down. They were low enough to see people in cars and make out foliage on the trees. The airspeed was pegged at five hundred and fifty-two knots – more than Spectre expected a lone engine in afterburner could hold.
As they crossed over highways and a water way, they reached mountainous terrain. Spectre used it as best he could, hugging the terrain and rolling inverted on the other side of ridges to stay beneath the radar coverage. Although the cockpit was cool, he was sweating as he tried to maintain the nose track with the rudder pedal. He had never flown a low level with only one working engine before.
“How are we looking?” Spectre asked as he looked at his radar warning receiver. It was showing an SA-2 SPOON REST surface to air missile target tracking radar active in the area, but it didn’t appear to be tracking them yet.
“You’re doing great,” Kruger said. “The pod is still working.”
The distance clicked down below fifty miles. Spectre worked the Flanker as hard as he had ever flown an airplane before, using every bit of terrain he could find to keep the aircraft hidden. He just didn’t trust the technology to keep him safe.
As they neared Kaesong in their last dash toward the South Korean border, Spectre suddenly yelled, “Shit!”
“What’s wrong?” Kruger said, grunting as he tried to stay balanced and keep his helmet from bouncing off the canopy through the violent maneuvering.
“That was a KN-06 SAM site we just passed!”
“They’re not tracking us,” Kruger replied. “We’re good, bub.”
“Yeah, but we might’ve just stirred them up for Woody and Cowboy!”
“Nothing we can do about that now,” Kruger said.
Spectre knew Kruger was right. They had to maintain radio silence to stay cloaked throughout their run to safety. Any transmissions might be intercepted and triangulated. They also had to maintain the appearance that their aircraft had gone down over the water, to keep up their cover story once Il-Sung’s death was eventually discovered.
They passed Kaesong and over the DMZ, climbing up and cancelling the afterburner as he traded airspeed for altitude over South Korean territory. Kruger flipped off the EA pod and switched the squawk to the pre-assigned code they had been given for their crossing into South Korea.
“Freedom One-Two, radar contact, cleared direct Osan,” the controller said in English as Spectre checked in.
Spectre dropped his mask and breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived, as Spectre immediately remembered that Woody was still in the middle of bad guy land.
“I hope Woody makes it okay,” he said softly.