Dmz this is the future o.., p.12
DMZ: This is the Future of War (Future War Book 7), page 12
The North Koreans had not left their jammer unprotected.
Beside the ruined Catholic church at Mount Chilseong, the North Korean MAS-537 jamming unit was blind to the threat above. It had no aircraft detection capability. It was meant to work in concert with anti-aircraft radar and missile systems but the North Korean rebel unit was on its own. To make up for its vulnerability it had carefully sited itself on the southern slope of the hill, with its rear wheels inside the collapsed hall of the old church.
The two HARM missiles from the South Korean Boromaes slammed into the ruins of the church from the south and the east, the thunder of their detonations closely followed by the sonic boom of their supersonic wakes. The thick church walls shook, but they didn’t collapse.
The blasts rocked the truck, throwing its crew out of their seats and killing two of the men standing outside the truck, smoking, including the crew commander. It took two long minutes for the men inside the truck to gather themselves and realize what was happening.
As soon as they did, they shut down their system and a driver clambered into the cabin of the truck, started it up and slammed it into reverse, pulling it deeper into the ruins of the church hall. Smoke and dust covered them.
From the rear of the truck, two men pulled down a crate and desperately tore the lid off. From inside they lifted a Flying Crossbow portable ground to air missile. They might have been blind and deaf to the enemy threat, but now they knew it was out there, they weren’t toothless.
Keys heard the American escort identify a new ground radar threat, but had worries of his own. His flight’s missiles had struck the target. Its signature was gone. But he was certain it had still been radiating for a good minute or more after the missile strike.
“Magenta two, the target was still radiating, right?”
“Confirmed, Captain. I don’t think it was a clean kill. I think they’re playing dead.”
Damn it.
“All right, Magenta flight, hold here. Keep an eye on that new ground radar location, don’t get too high.” He knew where the North Korean jammer was now. That doubt had been removed the minute it went dark. If he had loaded iron bombs he could have safely pickled them from ten thousand feet and obliterated the old church and any vehicle hiding in or behind it. But all he had was HARM missiles – which he could use without his target radiating if he locked in GPS coordinates – and his 20-millimeter Gatling gun. GPS mode would be useless, though, if the vehicle had pulled into cover, and stupidity was repeating the same action and expecting a different result. “Umbra leader will make a low pass and try to identify an attack vector.”
On the hilltop inside the ruined church, the North Korean jamming crew could hear the South Korean jets circling. They had no intention of lighting up their transmitter again. In fact, they were getting ready to bug the hell out. The track up the side of the hill that they had negotiated to get into position was more goat track than vehicle track though, and their MAS-537 was a modified heavy hauler, not made for a downhill sprint. They would have to be sure the South Koreans had left the area before they started creeping down the steep slope.
“Aircraft, south, low!” one of the men called. Four ran for the protection of the north side of the ruins, two stepped out into the open to get clear of the smoke still shrouding the site – one with the Flying Crossbow launcher on his shoulder, the other with the missile in his arms, ready to load. He opened the missile receiver, pushed the missile in and locked it in place, then tapped his comrade on the helmet.
Through the Flying Crossbow’s digital zoom scope the man could see the South Korean aircraft approaching from treetop height up the valley, below their position. He couldn’t fire on it from this angle because the missile would drop about five feet before boosting and risked hitting the hillside before it corrected. Whether the South Korean pilot knew this or not, his ultra low level approach kept him safe, for now.
“Repositioning!” the man with the launcher called. The aircraft would have to climb to their level to try to attack. He would hit it after it passed.
Keys saw low shrub and bushes streaming in a blur past his wingtips as he hugged the contours of the river valley below the smoke-covered target. At the last moment before he would have slammed into the hillside he twitched his stick and zoomed up the slope, rolling his machine onto its side so he could get a good look at the hilltop as he passed overhead. He would only have a second to …
There! The truck was backed into the rubble of the old church, facing southeast. Only an attack from that direction would give them a chance of a kill. Out the corner of his eye he saw something else.
Instinct kicked in before he even had a chance to register the thought.
Rolling his machine through 180 degrees to the right he punched out a stream of anti-missile decoy flares and pulled into a high-g turn that slammed him back into his seat and caused his flight suit to inflate to try to keep the blood flowing to his brain. His vision grayed…
From the hillside receding below him, a missile screamed upward.
“Miss,” Noname reported.
O’Hare breathed heavily in relief as the ground to air missile flew wide of her Kingsnake, blasting past her at twice the speed of sound. She had to get low. She pointed her nose at a line of hills.
Noname spoke again. “More missile contrails. Four o’clock.”
She screwed her head over her shoulder, and saw them. Two more ground to air missiles, behind and heading away from them. Her Kingsnake wasn’t the target. So, who …
She heard a panicked voice. Snake. Her eyes darted to her tactical display. He was still at 10,000 feet. “Umbra leader, hostile missile lock!”
It was the last thing she heard him say.
The Flying Crossbow fired at Keys was a Chinese copy of the Russian Verba man-portable missile, and recently upgraded to include computer-controlled maneuvering vanes that enabled it to follow a target through a 4G turn at supersonic speeds.
Keys Ban had almost no chance of evading it but that didn’t stop him trying. He grunted loudly, fighting on the edge of a blackout as he pulled his machine into a turn so tight it took it to the edge of a stall and an alarm started sounding in his ears as …
The North Korean missile, drawn by the heat of his engines, closed within twenty feet of his port engine nozzle and detonated, sending blast fragments into the body of the engine. More warnings sounded in Keys’ ears and the machine began to yaw crazily across the sky as though a huge hand had smacked it in the ass. Fire warnings began flashing as the port engine automatically shut itself down and fire retardant filled the engine compartment, dousing the fire before it could take hold.
Trailing ugly black smoke, Keys fought to get control of the Boromae back and rolled his machine right to compensate for the uneven thrust of flying on his starboard engine alone. Desperately checking instrument readouts he saw that it was still delivering full power and responding to throttle commands. His flight controls felt wrong, though. He could roll and pitch but the machine was yawing as though …
He craned his head around over his left shoulder and saw the problem. The port stabilizer fin was missing, chopped off at the base. OK, he was well and truly out of this fight. He nursed his machine higher, bringing it to 25,000 feet, where his comms were not affected by the jamming below and he was out of range of shoulder-fired missiles.
“Magenta leader to Magenta flight, I’ve been hit. Port engine flameout, port stabilizer missing, but I have control. Am going to make for, uh, Yanggu airfield … Magenta two?”
“Magenta two,” his wingman responded.
“The target is parked up in the ruins of the old church, facing out south-southeast. Put your HARM in pre-briefed mode, set GPS coordinates for the church and make your attack from the southeast. You should be able to smack your missile right into his ugly face. Engage from outside MANPAD range.”
“Understood, Magenta one. Magenta two coming around.”
“Magenta one bugging out, it’s your mission, Two,” he said.
“Two is lead,” the man replied. “Good luck, Captain.”
Keys very carefully pointed his machine at Yanggu airfield. With the North Korean jammer down, he would get air to ground radio comms back and could alert the Yanggu controller to his emergency. His Boromae really wanted to roll onto its back and put him in the ground but he wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction.
Keys had another reason to try and end the day above ground. Two reasons, really. His twin nine year old daughters, Eun and Min, who had already decided they were going to be pop stars when they grew up and spent every free waking moment either at singing lessons, or perfecting their dance routines. Their mother indulged them reluctantly, but Keys saw no reason at all why they couldn’t be.
His own father’s belief had been the reason Keys had succeeded in becoming a fighter pilot. Keys had watched the American planes flying over their house in Osan and he told his father, “One day, I’m going to fly planes like those.” His father had bought him a plastic model of an F-35 Panther and helped him build it. As they painted and glued the pilot into his seat, his father said to him, “There. That’s you one day.” And he said it in such a way that Keys knew he believed it. Believed the young Keys could do it.
One evening during home leave he’d been reviewing some vision from a simulated engagement on his laptop and then realized his daughter, Min, was standing at his elbow, watching the planes circle around each other in the simulated sky.
“I want to be a fighter pilot too, one day,” Min had said. “Just like you.”
He’d pulled her onto his knee. “I thought you wanted to be a pop star. In a band, with Eun.”
“I do. But our teacher saw us rehearsing some moves and he said what are you doing and we told him we are going to be pop singers when we grow up and he said that’s not a real job. He said why not be pilots like our father? Fighter pilots are more important than popstars.”
Keys had closed his laptop. “Well, I’m a fighter pilot and I don’t agree. I think the world needs a lot more pop stars, and a lot fewer fighter pilots.”
Mind on the task, Keys.
It took his full concentration to keep his machine level. On the horizon, he saw a parachute falling through the sky. His day had started badly, and gotten worse, but he was determined it was not going to finish with him hanging from silk or burying himself in a mountainside below.
The faceoff across the Bukhan River had reached an impasse. The North Korean drone hovered on one side of the river following Kronk, and he was on the other side of the river angrily trying to ignore the constant whine of its rotors.
He’d been hiking for a couple of hours and had hoped that getting a few miles away from the crash site might help him get a line of sight link to his Shikaka so he could run a patch and hook himself into the comms system. If he didn’t do it soon, the thing would switch to autonomous mode and land itself at Busan anyway, taking with it any hope he had of using it to send out a mayday.
He’d heard the sound of jets in the distance and it suddenly grew louder, so he turned to face what he thought was the direction of the sound, and saw a fighter trailing smoke plow into a hillside about a mile away.
“Kingsnake,” he decided, from what he’d seen of the aircraft’s profile. Standing with his hands on his hips he let out an expletive. “Great. Another carcass to attract the scavengers.” But then he felt bad, because there had probably been an American pilot inside that …
No. Floating through the sky directly ahead of him was a parachute.
And it was going to come down right in the middle of the river.
An Imperfect Storm
Bukhan River Valley, DMZ
Kronk had dropped his duffel bag and was pounding up the rocky riverbank toward the falling pilot, water splashing around his feet at times, plunging into pools up to his knees at others, then hammering across hard shale beaches before he was splashing through the water again.
He wasn’t going to get there in time.
The pilot didn’t appear to be steering the chute, as he was dropping straight toward the river. Or maybe a water landing was better – softer than hitting the dirt?
Kronk’s constant companion, the surveillance drone, kept pace with him along the parallel bank. He doubted it had even seen the destruction of the US fighter and the ejection of its pilot, so fixated was it on him.
The chute was only about a hundred feet over the river now, slicing diagonally through the air, but almost as though whoever was in it was deliberately trying to land smack in the deepest part of the river.
Except now he was so close he could see the pilot’s helmeted head, slumped onto their chest, arms limp at their sides. They weren’t ‘steering’ jack.
And two seconds after they hit the water, they were going to start drowning.
Lungs heaving and legs burning, Kronk flung himself through the water, still ten yards away when the guy hit the river and went straight under. The parachute hit the river right after it, but filled with water and acted like a sea anchor, the fast-flowing current dragging the downed pilot toward him.
If he wasn’t quick enough, the guy was going to pass him and keep going downriver!
Throwing himself awkwardly into a dive, he plunged under the water and groped blindly ahead. Hitting nothing he struggled to the surface and batted his way forward in a floundering crawl. His slapping arms finally hit something and he grasped at it, winding a parachute cord around his forearm to stop it slipping away.
Now he was being dragged downriver too.
But slowly. The pilot’s boots and clothes had filled with water and he was being hauled over the rocky bottom. Kronk could feel the pull every time he snagged and then came free. He unwound his arm and then, hand over hand, feet flapping, pulled himself down into the dark water, toward the object at the end of the cord.
Jerking backward through waving weed at the bottom of the river was the pilot, still strapped into his harness, helmet still covering his head. The current wasn’t as strong at the bottom of the river and with a final flailing kick Kronk grabbed onto the harness going across the pilot’s chest. If the harness was like the ones he’d had to wear on transport flights, there should be …
There! He pulled desperately on the buckle to release the harness and it fell away, the pilot immediately starting to float free, but their arms were still tangled in shoulder webbing. Kronk had no purchase and his lungs were starting to burn, so he tugged at the pilot’s legs and let the river current and his bodyweight do the work.
Suddenly the pilot started fighting him!
They’d regained consciousness and began punching and kicking him. Kronk had to let go and in a welter of bubbles they both broke to the surface. Kronk struck out for the nearest bank, the pilot, weakly treading water, got pulled into the same bank by the eddying current but tried to stay out in the water, away from Kronk.
He put his hands in the air at shoulder height. “Hey, I’m American!”
Fumbling with his helmet, the pilot pushed his visor up. Kronk could see a frowning brow above the oxygen mask.
“American!” he yelled again, advancing slowly. He wasn’t sure if the pilot was armed, and if he was confused about his identity …
But the pilot paddled to the shore, flopped onto his back and pulled off his helmet.
It wasn’t until Kronk got within six feet that he saw the tattoo that crept down the man’s neck from the corner of his ear. A serpent of some sort.
The pilot turned his head toward him. “Hey man. Name’s ‘Snake’. How’s your day goin’?”
Special Agent Helen Lee did not think things were going particularly well. After all, their helicopter had escaped from Panmunjom through a haze of smoke with anti-aircraft batteries still firing at unseen targets above. And now she’d landed in the middle of what seemed to be a coup d’etat.
She’d passed on to her old Security Service Commander every scrap of intelligence she had gathered about the Prime Minister’s detail and their plans for the day. She’d been brought into a limited circle of need-to-know by the detail commander, a barrel chested bully called Yeo, and told there was intelligence of a plot to disrupt the Peace Accord ceremony.
“We have reports of traitors in the police services and armed forces,” he had said, ominously. “Anti-reunification conspirators. Stay alert.”
For a moment, Lee had wondered if her old mentor, Park, could be part of that plot. Had she stupidly allowed herself to be placed inside the PM’s security detail as some kind of unwitting mole? Lee started to see anti-reunification conspirators in every dark corner.
But when they had suddenly deviated from the plan and moved into the Peace House basement for an unscheduled, and unusually long ‘toilet break’, her sixth sense had been alerted. She should have made an excuse, found a way to get a message out to Commander Pak at that point, but then the bombs started falling, and it was too late - they were running for the already prepared helicopter through a haze of smoke and explosions, and everything the old man had warned her about was coming true.
And from the conversations she was overhearing, it was becoming obvious where the plot to disrupt the Peace Accord ceremony was centered. Not Park. Not any mysterious cabal of conspirators hiding in the shadows. It was the very people riding in the chopper with her, because it was their damned plot!
Helen Lee did not need 20 years in the Security Service to see that being the only person on the Prime Minister’s detail who was apparently not in on the plot was Not A Good Thing.
South Korean Prime Minister Ted Choi ran from the helo with a hand over his head to stop his heavily lacquered hair being ruffled. He had a nationwide broadcast to make soon and while it would be all right to look a little ruffled, he did not want to look disheveled. He had to project an air of calm control, of concern, but confidence. He had to …
