James Barrington - Foxbat

The blast deflector was raised behind the Hornet and the pilot ran up the two General Electric F414-GE-400 turbofans to full cold military power, then cut in the burners. The noise of the engines rose to a scream, and almost immediately the aircraft lurched forward as the catapult accelerated it down the deck. At the far end, the Hornet dipped down briefly towards the sea, then rose quickly and climbed away, but nobody except the officers in PriFly were watching it. Instead, they were busy preparing for the next launch, and the Hornet on the port bow catapult was already in place and spooling up its engines.

Five seconds later, the second Super Hornet was airborne, and in under three minutes all eight aircraft were in the air and climbing away from the Enterprise . They formed into two groups of four, climbed to thirty-five thousand feet and took up a south-westerly heading.

Mayang, North Korea

The tab-ryong was scanning the surveillance radar screens when a shout from one of his controllers drew his attention to two very fast-moving contacts approaching from the south-east. They were travelling at around five hundred miles an hour, and were heading straight towards the missile base.

‘Excellent,’ the colonel murmured, then picked up a microphone to make a broadcast.

‘Air raid warning! Air raid warning! Two aircraft approaching from the south-east. All anti-aircraft crews stand by. Fire at will, but wait until you are certain of your targets.’

Outside the bunker, every surface-to-air missile battery and antiaircraft gun position was fully manned, and the tab-ryong had also stationed an additional fifty soldiers armed with shoulder-launched missiles around the perimeter of the base. His orders had been most specific: the attacking aircraft were under no circumstances to be allowed to escape.

Next the colonel dialled a telephone number from memory, which connected him with the senior controller at Toksan, the closest interceptor base.

‘This is Mayang,’ he said. ‘We have two fast-moving contacts approaching on bearing one five zero, range twenty miles.’

‘Very good. We’ll vector four of our interceptors towards you. Ensure your crews hold fire when our fighters approach. I’ll advise you once they reach five miles from your boundary.’

‘Understood,’ the tab-ryong replied, then used his microphone to warn his gun and missile crews.

Cobra formation, Sea of Japan

Richter followed the Senior Pilot in a turn to port. When he’d steadied, he glanced briefly out to starboard to see the Vipers heading away to the north. He checked his weapon controls, making sure he knew exactly where the switches were, and almost immediately his Radar Warning Receiver sounded.

He studied the Zeus ‘frying pan’ display that surrounded the GR9’s HUD. A single line was showing in the ten o’clock position, meaning his aircraft was being intermittently irradiated by the lowest lobes of a North Korean surveillance radar somewhere on the coast to the southwest. That wasn’t a problem, but it was a definite attention-getter.

He checked the INGPS. They were seventeen miles from Mayang, their first target, and the coast of the Korean Peninsula was now clearly visible in front of them.

‘Two from One. Master arm on.’

Richter clicked his press-to-transmit button in acknowledgement, and made the switch, arming his weapon systems. Fifteen miles to go. The RAW, part of the Marconi Zeus ECM system, was now detecting numerous radar transmissions, but only from surveillance radars. No SAM fire-control radars or fighter sets yet but, if the Sea King bagman was right, that was going to change very soon.

And then Richter suddenly realized what had been bugging him ever since he’d seen those first satellite pictures of the North Korean missile sites. And he now deduced the probable reason for the sudden flurry of aircraft take-offs from the North Korean airfields.

‘All callsigns, Cobra Two. Abort! Abort! Abort! Vipers and Cobras abort. Haul off and reverse course. Cobras turn port, Vipers starboard. Opening heading south-east. Get the hell out of here, buster. Vipers acknowledge.’

And as he said the words Richter hauled his GR9 round in a tight turn to port.

‘Vipers, all copied. Reversing course.’

‘Cobra Two, Leader. What the fuck’s going on?’

Richter didn’t reply immediately, concentrating on getting his aircraft heading away from the hostile shore.

‘We’ve been sold a pup. It’s a trap. I suddenly realized what didn’t make sense. The North Korean military does almost everything underground. They’ve got the facilities to prepare their missiles in hardened shelters, so why are there four missile launch pads with No-dongs sitting on them, right out in the open and close to the coast, so they’re a really attractive target?’

‘To persuade us or the Americans to attack them?’

‘Exactly. And once we’d carried out the raid, and probably got our arses blown out of the sky in the process, Pyongyang would launch an attack across the DMZ and be able to claim they were acting in self-defence.’

Dick Long pulled alongside Richter’s Harrier as the two aircraft headed south-east at better than five hundred miles an hour. Before Long could reply, the AEW Sea King bagman broke in.

‘Cobra Two, November Alpha, all copied. Understand the hunt is off. Break, break. Vipers, Cobras right one o’clock range eight, similar heading. Call visual.’

‘Vipers visual with Cobras.’

‘So what now?’ Dick Long asked.

‘Right now,’ Richter said, ‘I don’t know. Let’s get south of the DMZ, just in case some of those aircraft November Alpha detected were Foxbats, out looking for an easy kill.’

Monday

USS Enterprise , North Pacific Ocean

‘Sir, the Hawkeye reports multiple aircraft contacts launching from the southerly airfields in North Korea, principally Kuupri, Nuchonri, Ŏrang, T’ae’tan, Toksan and Wonsan. Judging by their speed and rate of climb, they look like interceptors. And I’m – stand by. Sir, the four British fighters have turned back.’

Rodgers acknowledged the call and concentrated on the display in front of him, where the JTIDS was showing exactly that. Numerous new contacts were being displayed over the North Korean landmass, but Rodgers wasn’t interested in those – at least, not for the present. Instead, he focused on the Harriers. The southerly pair had turned hard to port, and the other two to starboard, and all were now heading away from the east coast of North Korea at a speed the computer calculated at around five hundred miles an hour, clearly aiming to link up into a formation of four in a matter of minutes.

‘What the hell happened?’ the captain murmured. Then, louder. ‘Did you detect any stand-off weapon release? Any sign that they’ve used long-range air-to-surface missiles?’

‘Nothing showing on JTIDS, sir. Stand by, just checking with Alpha Three.’ There was a short pause. ‘Negative from the Hawkeye, sir. No weapon release seen. It looks like they just changed their minds and decided to go back home.’

Mayang, North Korea

The tab-ryong was staring in disbelief at the radar screen beside his desk. The aircraft he’d been told would be trying to attack his site had suddenly turned around, and were already over twenty miles away, all without a shot being fired or a single surface-to-air missile launched. What could have gone wrong?

The colonel had prepared the missile site exactly as Pyongyang had ordered, with an old and battered No-dong, previously used for engine tests and other development work, mounted in the firing gantry, and with the fake warhead inside the nose-cone. He’d been instructed to take as long as he could to mount the warhead, to make sure the American spy satellites got at least one good picture of it.