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“HEADS UP, JABOS, THREAT, BRAA three-zero-zero, thirty, twenty thousand, hot, hostile, two ship,” Spectre heard the flight lead of his F-22 escort call out as he finished his safe escape maneuver after shooting rockets at an approaching convoy of soldiers. “Status, Chariot?”
As Spectre turned back toward the train, he looked down and saw them load Woody into the helicopter. “Millertime,” he replied, indicating they had completed the mission and were returning to base.
“Razor One-One copies, green southwest, Razors commit,” the F-22 flight lead called, indicating that Spectre’s path to the southwest was clear and that he and his wingman were turning to engage the potential threat of fighters thirty miles behind Spectre and the helicopter.
Spectre banked hard to his left and put the egress waypoint on his nose. The plan was for him to fly out in front of the helicopter, scanning for and engaging threats along the egress route to South Korea. It would have ordinarily been done with two A-10s, but Spectre had long since learned to work with what he had.
The sun had started to rise by the time the team had loaded Woody. Spectre had taken off his night vision goggles and was visually scanning for threats. Their egress was far more treacherous now since they no longer had the cover of darkness to help conceal their escape.
Spectre pushed the throttles to the military power stop and accelerated as he descended to one hundred feet above the ground. He was searching for any ground threats along the route as the helicopter trailed behind him. He still had around five hundred rounds of 30MM, one Maverick, and rockets to use if he found any troops, tanks, or other threats along the way.
As he flew just above the treetops, Spectre’s Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) suddenly detected a MiG-21 coming from the direction of Kaesong. Neither the F-22s nor Coolio watching the AWACS and early warning radar feeds had mentioned it, but the RWR indicated the MiG-21 clearly heading right toward Spectre and the helo. He had no idea what the distance was, but given the direction and their distance from Kaesong, he assumed it was inside of fifteen miles.
Spectre looked down at the EA pod control panel, confirming both pods were working. There was no way the MiG was tracking him, but his RWR was still picking up its radar. The MiG was heading toward the site of the train attack and would soon become an imminent threat. The EA pods seemed to be working but would not stop the approaching fighter from picking them up visually.
“Jabos One-One spiked one-six-zero,” Spectre called, informing the Raptors that he was receiving the radar signature of the MiG-21 from the southeast.
“Razor One-One clean,” the Raptor lead replied, indicating that he had not picked up the threat on his sensors. “Recommend lean west.”
With terrain to his southwest and his fighter escorts out of range, Spectre had no choice but to turn to engage the threat. “Chariot, lean west, Jabos One is engaged.”
“Chariot copies.”
Spectre switched to an air-to-air mode and selected the AIM-9X. It wasn’t the F/A-18 that he had spent most of his career flying air to air in, but with a helmet-mounted cueing system and the high off-boresight capability of the 9X, Spectre liked his chances against the old Soviet fighter.
The sunrise made it hard for Spectre to see anything, and with no radar in the A-10C, visual was all he had. All he could do was put the RWR indication on his nose and hope the DARPA pods continued doing their thing to mask him while he looked for the threat.
As he accelerated through three hundred knots and started a shallow climb, Spectre saw a speck on the horizon. He used his helmet reticle to uncage the AIM-9X on it. A solid tone in his headset indicated that the AIM-9X was tracking and ready to unleash hell.
Spectre held the shot, wanting to get the visual ID as he had trained to do so many times in his career. As he started to turn to engage the single fighter, it suddenly made a hard turn away from Spectre. Its afterburner plume was clearly visible as it rolled out heading northeast away from the helicopter.
“The MiG has gone cold!” Spectre announced over the frequency.
“Should no longer be a factor,” Coolio replied. “I was able to give their early warning radar system a false target twenty miles north of the train. Should be clear to the DMZ now.”
“Nicely done!” Spectre replied as he banked hard to his left to intercept the helicopter and escort it the rest of the way home.
Spectre used the datalink to find the helicopter and rejoin ahead of it. The rest of their egress route was clear. Spectre watched it land on the roof of the hospital at Seoul and then he landed at Osan Air Base.
He went to the de-arm area where crews safed his remaining weapons and the gun. When they were done, he taxied to the isolated hangar they had been working out of and shut down. As he opened the canopy, Joe climbed the ladder to meet him. Spectre put his helmet on the canopy rail and exhaled as the stress finally caught up with him.
“Welcome back, sir! Looks like you cleaned off most of your ordnance over there. Mission accomplished?”
“I think I just started World War III actually,” Spectre said as he started to unstrap. “No biggy.”
“Holy shit, sir,” Joe replied, descending the ladder to allow Spectre out.
“I’ll be back later. Good jet, by the way!”
Spectre left his gear in the jet and headed straight for the hangar. He went straight in and headed for Coolio’s workstation.
“Well?” Spectre asked impatiently. “How is he? Did he make it?”
Coolio spun around in his chair, his eyes were bloodshot. Spectre wasn’t sure if it was from crying or just the lack of sleep in the last two days.
“I don’t know,” Coolio said softly.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“The Air Force PJ said he crashed twice on the flight to the hospital. They just rushed him into emergency surgery. Kruger is staying with him.”
“Dammit! What about the North Koreans? Are we going to war now?”
Coolio shrugged. “Their artillery is quiet so far. I hacked their intelligence servers and blamed it on a separatist group. That might buy us a few hours or even a day or two until they sort it out.”
“And then?”
“And then we hope having Il-Sung out of the picture is enough to keep the peace talks going.”