display, Broomstick could even see the designated targets starting to shift and scratch as the lasers irritated their skins. Then, a gentle squeeze on the firing button and the first of the Hellfires streaked off across the desert. Off to her left, a split second later, Tango-one-five-Bravo fired its first missile with Tango-one-five-Charlie following an instant after that. Broomstick had already selected her next target when she fired her second missile, as soon as she saw the explosion from the first hit she swung the laser to her selected victim and watched the Hellfire missile obediently switch targets. The explosions four thousand yards away seemed an almost continuous rolling thunder as the six missiles devastated the command group.
“All Tango-One-Five elements, jobs done, let’s get out of here.”
“We got a problem ell-tee.”
Broomstick looked across at the burning patch of desert where the baldrick command group had been. Above it the harpies were heading for the position of her three Little Birds, coming in very, very fast.
“Bug out, everybody bug out now. Max speed.” She rammed the throttles forward, swinging her helicopter into its high-speed position, trying to get away from the cloud of harpies that was closing on her.
“No good ell-tee. They’re faster than us.”
Broomstick didn’t acknowledge, she didn’t have to. The AH-6 could do about 180 miles per hour flat out and the harpies were closing the range. She pulled back and swung the nose round, flipping her armament selector switch to the pair of Stingers mounted on the side of her cockpit. The annunciator tone was mixed, even in the cold of a desert night, they were having difficulty locking on. It was no good, whatever lock they had would have to do. She fired into the mass of harpies, watching as one missile went through the formation without exploding, the other struck home and she saw a harpy briefly outlined in fire as the Stinger tore into it. There was another flare as well, but Broomstick had no time to congratulate herself or anybody else. She was turning away, diving, obeying the old rule, no matter how little height you have, trade height for speed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Tango-one-five-Charlie had left it too late. The Little Bird was engulfed in jets of fire from the harpies, its fuel tanks exploded and the flaming wreckage fell out of the sky to earth.
She was back in the wadi, heading away from the cloud of harpies, grimly aware they were closing in on her. “Control, engaged baldricks, command group badly hit. We are under attack by company-strength harpies, Charlie is already down. Two harpies down. Issue is in doubt. Tell others, don’t close in on harpies.”
Duty done, Broomstick spun her helicopter again and went straight at the formation of harpies pursuing her, her two miniguns blazing a long, long burst. It registered briefly that there were two piles of burning wreckage on the desert floor now and that she was alone. Bravo had gone. So had at least two more harpies, torn apart by the stream of bullets from her miniguns. Then, there was a clank and silence, she’d run out of ammunition. The harpies were on her, clinging to the airframe, tearing at it with their claws, kicking at the skin with their hooves. One was clinging to the cockpit canopy, smashing at it with its claws, trying to tear its way in. She could see the demented, screaming hate on its face, she could smell the stink of jet fuel as the harpies tore their way into the Little Bird’s structure. That was all she saw and smelt because that was when Tango-one-five-Alpha exploded.
My thanks to Surlethe for his work in writing the middle part of this section and his most appreciated inspiration and encouragement.
Chapter Seven
309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona
She was an old lady, put away in her retirement home like all too many aged family members who were just too much trouble to look after. Her age showed in so many ways, her wrinkled skin, shabby appearance, general neglect. Another few months, a year or so at most, and she would have been gone, forgotten. Only now times had changed and those who had written her off as a relic of the past now found they needed The Gray Lady again.
“What about this one?”
The AMRG clerk looked at the tail number and turned to the page in the ledger. “This one’s a good prospect Sir. She hasn’t been stripped or cannibalized yet and she was in good condition when she arrived. I’d mark this one down as a definite.”
“Do it, we’ll get a team down here to work on her. The draft notices are going out this morning.” For once in its life, the U.S. Government was beginning to move fast. The re-institution of the draft had been authorized late the previous night with the highest priority being to get the maintenance and technical support personnel who had left the services over the last few years back into uniform. In a strange way, it was almost like the job being done here, inspecting the veterans and getting them back into service. The B-52G in front of them looked like an early candidate for a return to the colors.
“How many does that make?” Colonel Degan was in charge of this particular effort, a few hundred yards away, another team was going through the short line of eleven B-1Bs parked in storage. That team wasn’t doing well at all, the Bones here were in a hell of a mess. It was very doubtful if any of them could be repaired. The B-52s, that was another matter. Still, there had been some pleasant surprises, tucked away in one corner of the airfield had been a B-52H along with four B-1Bs and one of the surviving B-1As, all in perfect condition. What the latter was doing there was something of a minor mystery but it had been rumored for years that more B-1As had been built than the official records showed.
“There are 43 B-52s in repairable status Sir. Of those, 20 require a medium level of remedial repairs, the remainder, well, they’re a real mess. Take months if not years to fix them up. Shortage of engines is the main problem, they’ve all been stripped of those. Mind you. We’re not short of spare parts.”
That was true enough, Degan thought. There were 45 more B-52s in the Boneyard but they’d been scrapped. The wreckage was still here though, the wings shorn from the fuselage, the tails chopped off. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of fixing the wrecks?”
“No Sir,” the technical officer was quite firm on that point. “The wing spar’s been chopped and the forge to make new ones was scrapped decades ago. Those birds are gone, at best they’re spare parts for the rest.” Degan grimaced. Those planes were badly needed. The technical officer saw the expression and sympathized. “Good news though Sir, the tactical boys have been through the line of F-111s, there’s 169 of them here and they reckon we can salvage enough to equip a group, fifty or sixty if we’re lucky. And the transport guys did even better, Lockheed- Martin are coming down to refurbish all twenty of the C-5s we have here.” In some cases that would mean almost a new aircraft, it was an old joke, ‘repairing” an aircraft meant lifting up its registration number and sliding a new aircraft underneath.
“Any word from the Rhino drivers?” There were literally hundreds of surplus F-4 Phantoms here and several teams were working their way through them, trying to find how many could be brought back into service. Not many, was one guess but times were desperate and at least F-4 components were still in production. That was the second batch of draft notices going out, by tomorrow a lot of airline pilots were going to be trying on their old Air Force and Navy uniforms again.
The technical officer shook his head. Those teams had a lot of work to do and it would be days before they finished. He scratched his head, the Arizona sun was beating down hard and the aluminum foil lining his baseball cap was getting uncomfortably hot. Still it was better than having some baldrick invading his mind and turning his thoughts to jelly. “OK Sir, I think we’re done with the bombers. You want to have a look at the KC-135s? See if any of those are fixable?”
“Lead on.” Degan looked back at the B-52 behind them. Already, people were starting to go over her in detail, listing all the fixes needed. There were 84 B-52s in USAF service and another 9 in the Air Force Reserve, if they could bring that up to 120 with the aircraft salvaged from here, it would be a decisive step forward.
Oval Office, The White House, Washington D.C.
“Did it pass Dick?”
“It did indeed. 99 in favor, one against, you can guess who that was. Effective as of 1800 Washington Time, the United States of America has formally declared war on Hell. Unconditional declaration, first time we’ve had one of those for decades. We’ve issued a conditional ultimatum to Heaven as well. Unless they open the gates and surrender those who closed them for trial within 72 hours, a state of war will exist there as well. Civilian mobilization bill is through, reserves mobilization bill is through, first issue of war bonds will be released tomorrow.
