You eased the throttles forwards to a notch of blower, and instantly your 'vark threw itself forwards like a prize stallion bolting out of the gate. There wasn't a shred of hesitation as the big jet punched through the sound barrier. At what felt like inches off the waves, it devoured the placid waters of the Persian Gulf, beating them into a froth with the downwash from its tightly-swept wings and kicking up vast rooster tails of spray and steam with the flames leaping yards from its burners.
"On me, Jolly," you said more for your own benefit than others. Jolly's jet might as well have been welded to your wingtip. The air war was raging overhead, but your two Aardvarks were roaring over the water to line up a killing blow at Saadam's jugular. The Al-Basarah Oil Terminal—ABOT on your map—was a vast sprawl of spiderwebed steel girders that rose like the carcass of some enormous antediluvian leviathan a scant thirty miles offshore.
Every last drop of oil coming off the Basarah refineries flowed through its mighty hoses. Helos were already en-route to the precious terminal with mercenaries from three different oil companies, each wanting to be the first to seize the ABOT and the vast bounty that came with it.
Of course, that wasn't your job. Your job was to plow the way. You only had iron bombs, but that didn't bother you in the slightest. You'd take a good 'vark driver with a steady hand and Iron bombs over a Viper with paveways any day of the week. And Jolly… Jolly was more than good. You figure she had to be, to get as far as she did in such a male-dominated world. But whatever the cause, you'd seen her call shots to specific windows. She nearly always hit.
"With ya, boss." You heard her grunt as her 'vark turned with yours. It was a gentle enough turn, but at these speeds even the slightest twitch brought crushing G-forces. Both planes' wings bowed as they rolled into their approach patch, heavily-laden fuselages almost tearing them off at the roots.
"Good girl." You flipped your master-arm off. Leather and nomex creaked as you eased your finger off the trigger. Your two jets were barreling straight down the ABOT's long axis so low you're mildly worried about a fish-strike. You're not worried about Iraqi SAMs though. Closing at Mach 1.2 inches off the deck, you'll have barely over a minute before you're right on top of them. Odds are, a sharp-eyed lookout with binoculars would sight the rooster tails your jets are kicking up before the radar saw a thing.
You glanced at your map, mentally counting down the seconds until you broached the horizon. It'd been a quiet flight so far. Almost relaxing as far as 'vark runs go. That was going to change in three… two… one…
Triple-A filled the air, stiching the sky with brilliant strings of tracers. The Iraqi gunners must be on-edge today. They started shooting before their guns were even close to on-target. A gentle tap on the rudder's all you need to spoil their rudimentary solution.
"I'm on the left," you said, gently sliding your 'vark over to line up for a bombing run. "You take the right."
"Copy." Jolly's 'vark peeled off, setting up for her own attack run.
You allowed yourself a few seconds to evaluate the ABOT before picking your targets. It was mostly deserted now, with only one supertanker tied off on Jolly's side. Saddam's attack had been sudden, but the allied counter-attack had been anything but. Every company in the gulf knew what was going to happen, they had no excuse not to. But it looked like one of them was going to get a very expensive lesson on why dealing with a fascist maniac isn't good business.
You settled on taking out the SAM nests. Your 'varks were vast enough to almost ignore the hastily-trained missile and gun batteries. The helos following wouldn't have that luxury. You watched your bombsight pipper, finger coiled around the trigger. Wait for it…
ka-CHUNK! With a dull thump, your 'vark jumped into the air, suddenly several tons lighter. A stick of Mark-83s fell off your rack, supersonic ballutes inflating the instant they slammed into the supersonic slipstream. Suddenly burdened by mountains of drag, the bombs hauled away from your speeding jet like they'd stopped dead in the air.
If Hoss wasn't watching the 'vark's Pave Tack you wouldn't have even known if they hit.
But hit they did. Your bombs obliterated a SAM battey and two 23mm emplacements. On the other side of the ABOT, Jolly's run extracted a similar toll in blood and hardware, plus a pair of Mark-82s lobbed into the deck of the supertanker.
You looked over just in time to see a solid wall of fire erupt from the gashes she'd torn in the deck, sweeping across the ABOT like the fist of an angry god and cleansing everything organic from its iron expanse.
"Yee-haw!" Hoss hollered in the seat beside you, and you saw Jolly spin her 'vark in an aileron roll mere feet off the now-roiling sea. You couldn't blame her, it was a good shot. The helo teams coming down soon would have an easier time securing the place with everyone on it turned to crispy bacon.
"Nice drop," you said with a smirk.
"Why thank you," Jolly dipped a wingtip, and you saw her toss a cocky salute your way.
"Okay, into Goliath," you said. Goliath was the code-name for the city itself, distributed in case Iraqi air-defense managed to tap into allied comms. You didn't want to give those bastards any more warning than you had to.
Your two jets settled into the Arvand Rood river. Southern Iraq was a very flat place, but the river was the lowest place around, which made it at least slightly easier to hide. If nothing else, the consistently level river made it easier on the terrain-following radar, and made the thought of punching out seem fractionally less horrifying.
Minutes later, you were roaring over the city outskirts at full burner, flying so low you swear you were looking up at rooftops half the time. "There's the port," you said, thumbing over to your rockeye cluster bombs. The port and its adjoining structures had been conveniently laid out for you in a long parade directly along your direction of flight.
"'like they wanted us to bomb it," said Hoss with a most un-Texan giggle. You had to agree with him, it was uncharacteristically charitable of old Saddam. It would be a shame to let his hospitality go to waste.
You took the first run, liberally dispensing several tons of cluster munitions—and the handful of Iron bombs you still had left—over the riverside port. Explosions rippled in your wake as… most of your bomblets found their mark. The ones that didn't would hang around for a while, making life a living hell for anyone trying to actually use the port.
Jolly followed behind the moment the explosions died down, salting the wound with an extra dose of cluster bombs and lobbing her last Mark-82s into the tank farm at the north-western tip. "Alright," she sounded somewhere between excited and frustrated. "I'm skosh."
"Ditto," you said, wheeling around and getting an eyefull of the angry flak filling the sky that'd been so quiet moments before. "We have have got to go."
You barreled down your exfil rout, keeping one eye on your fuel gauges. The 'vark had range, but you'd spent an awful long time on blower. Should have more than enough to get home though.
You're over the desert when a call comes in over the theater-wide net. One of Saddam's precious Foxbats was winged in the furball over Kuwait. The lighting-fast MiGs had been racking up quite the butcher's bill over the past few days. This one—dubbed "Red Viper" for reasons unknown to you—had made ace three days ago, and hadn't rested on his laurels since. Now he was limping for home in a wounded jet, making for an emergency airfield less than a dozen miles out of your way.
And all you could think about were those two sidewinders slung under your wings.
"What do ya think, Python?" Jolly must've read your mind. She raised one of her 'vark's wings, showing you she still has her heaters too.
[ ] Too good a chance to pass up. When's the last time someone downed an enemy ace? In a 'vark no less!
[ ] Nah, too risky. Leave it for someone else.
[ ] (write in)
