officers surveying the destruction. Four of Oskar Kiraly’s best bodyguards moved with him, each carefully watching in a different direction. Having already lost one of the democratic revolution’s top leaders, Kiraly had no intention of losing another.
The air force officers stiffened to attention as he approached. Although he held no place in the formal military hierarchy, his position as national security advisor to the provisional government commanded respect.
“Is this as bad as it looks?” Hradetsky saw no point in beating around the bush. The new government’s ministers had crucial decisions to make and they were waiting for his first hand report.
“It’s worse.” The brigadier general now commanding Hungary’s air force spoke bluntly and bitterly. “They hit every one of our active airfields within a single hour last night. Aided by picture-perfect intelligence, no doubt.”
Hradetsky understood the other man’s anger. Four of the nation’s top-ranking air force officers were among those who had fled to join the EurCon-supported “government-in-exile.” Their inside information on Hungary’s bases, radar and SAM systems, and tactics must have proved invaluable to the French and Germans. “What about our losses?”
“Crippling.” The air force commander nodded toward the devastation in front of them. “This field is typical. Our preliminary estimates show that we’ve lost well over half of our interceptor and ground attack aircraft. Plus thirty to forty percent of our attack and transport helicopters. Our ordnance stores were hit, as were our maintenance facilities. Those that fly won’t be able to fight very well.”
Hradetsky whistled softly in dismay. In just sixty minutes, the French and Germans had destroyed at least eighty MiG-21s and MiG-23s, and maybe another fifteen Hind-A helicopter gunships. For all practical purposes the Hungarian Air Force had been destroyed before it could get off the ground. Now enemies controlled the skies over his native land.
With its embattled troops naked to EurCon air attack and in full retreat, Hungary would need every scrap of help its new friends to the north could provide, and soon.
Four twin-tailed aircraft slid through the cold night air. Navigation lights that would have been left on in peacetime for flight safety were off now. Poland’s F-15 Eagles were going to war.
Inside the lead Eagle, First Lieutenant Tadeusz Wojcik kept wanting to shove his throttles forward, to hurry and catch the EurCon aircraft he was after before they could make their strike. But the geometry was all wrong.
The battered Hungarian air defense system hadn’t detected the incoming raid until it was halfway to its target — the helicopter base at Veszprem, a city nestled in the Bakony Mountains near Lake Balaton. More precious minutes were wasted while the information passed down the chain of command to where Tad and his three flightmates had been sitting in their cockpits for half the night. By the time they’d got the news and scrambled off the airfield and into the air, it was too late to catch the strike aircraft before they dropped their bombs. They’d have to settle for jumping the bastards on their way home.
Within hours of Poland’s decision to aid Hungary’s democratic government, Wojcik’s squadron had moved south — to the Czech air base at Brno. That put them only a hundred klicks north of Vienna and the EurCon airfields around the Austrian capital. Right now, the Polish and Czech planes were operating under strict, defensive rules of engagement. They could only attack French and German planes in Hungarian airspace and only conduct strike missions against EurCon ground forces inside Hungary itself. If those rules changed, though, they’d be perfectly placed to attack right down the enemy’s throat.
Wojcik glanced down at the map board strapped to one knee, mentally tracking his position as ground controllers fed them course changes. The men controlling this intercept had first swung them east, then almost straight south. They were trying to bring the four F-15s in from the enemy’s two o’clock, so that the Eagles wouldn’t have a tail chase. Careful positioning was vital, but it all took more time and fuel than he liked.
At least coming in from slightly to the side would help them detect the enemy aircraft. German Tornados had radar-absorbent material on their engine intakes and gold-coated canopies to make them tougher to see on radar, but those stealth modifications would only help from the front.
Tad glanced at his fuel gauges. Even with drop tanks, they were going to have to be careful if they wanted to make it back to Brno. Any Hungarian air base could refuel them, but landing at one would put him smack in the middle of a shooting gallery. It was dangerous enough up here.
He returned to his careful scan of the sky, the symbols on his HUD, and back down to his cockpit instruments again. Even when racing to an intercept and certain air combat, attention to detail was vital. He forced himself to follow procedure, to think ahead. “Buck fever” was a real threat, especially on his first combat mission.
His four F-15s were each armed with four Sparrow and four Sidewinder missiles, along with a centerline drop tank. Although the Eagles could carry the new and better AMRAAM missile, there were only a few of those “silver bullets” in the Polish inventory at the moment. And the brass had ordered them retained for the defense of Polish territory. Their decision made sense, Tad guessed, but right now he was more worried about the piece of Polish territory inside his cockpit.
The flight moved south at 750 knots. They were flying at ten thousand meters, well above a solid cloud layer. Below the clouds, rain and low visibility made it a dirty night for flying, but that was perfect intruder weather. The Polish planes had their radars off, to avoid alerting the enemy to their presence. Part of Wojcik wanted his fighter’s “eyes” on, but he knew they were too far away to pick out fleeting contacts flying only a few dozen meters above the rolling landscape.
“Blue flight, raid is seventy kilometers, bearing one seven five.” The intercept controller’s voice was perfectly calm.
Tad felt his own heartbeat starting to speed up. It was almost time to energize their radars. His four aircraft would be in radar guided missile range in another thirty kilometers — only minutes at their present closing speed. The idea was to turn on the radar, lock up quickly, and fire Sparrows before the Tornados could react. Although they’d be firing at extreme range, the first salvo should break up the EurCon formation and force them to maneuver, wasting precious fuel. Right now the enemy pilots were outbound and tired, anxious to escape unfriendly territory, maybe even damaged or short on fuel. In other words, vulnerable. The fact that they were Germans was icing on the cake.
Minutes passed, seeming slower now as adrenaline pulsed through his bloodstream and altered his time sense. He glanced down at the clock on the F-15’s control panel. They should be within range. But his threat receiver was still quiet, so Tad continued on silently. The closer to the enemy, the better. He risked a glance aft, but the other three Eagles spaced out at half-kilometer intervals and staggered altitudes, were invisible in the darkness.
Another minute brought him a dozen kilometers closer to the enemy’s estimated position, close enough for his tastes. He keyed his mike. “Blue flight, energize.” Microphone clicks acknowledged his order.
The first few radar sweeps showed only a hash of dots as the F-15’s computer tried to sort out ground clutter and weather effects. On the third sweep, though, Wojcik saw a cluster of dots in a regular pattern. There they were — three pairs of enemy aircraft and one singleton trailing slightly behind.
In a long-range, radar-guided attack like this the trick was to avoid wasting missiles by having two aircraft engage the same target. Believing that the simplest methods were always best, he’d briefed the other pilots before takeoff to engage their opposite numbers, left to right. Tad’s wingman for this hop, a young rookie pilot named Milan Rozek, was flying to his left and slightly back, so he would take the leftmost German jet. Wojcik would fire on the Tornado just to the right of that. Training made target selection automatic, and it could be done without time- consuming radio chatter.
He thumbed a button on his stick, designating one of the distant EurCon aircraft as his target. A box appeared around the symbol on his radar screen. The enemy plane was too far below him for any kind of a cueing box to appear on his HUD, but he was ready to shoot. Wojcik waited one beat for the rest of his flight to finish locking up, then squeezed the trigger on his stick.
A
The Eagle’s weapons computer had already selected and tested another Sparrow and Tad pulled the trigger
