Russia
The next day: March 15, 10:15 GMT
Red Star sat at the side of the ops room, doing some paperwork. The Oktober Guard’s headquarters was quite. A situation that pleased the commander a lot. He had had his fill of dealing with Cobra after the crazy situation in space the previous year.
Red Star was therefore unhappy when a radar technician from the Russian Air Force who served in the ops room called out, “Sir, we have four bogies inbound. Low and fast.”
Red Star stood and moved over to the radar screen. Lt. Gorky moved over from where he’d been working as well.
“What else can you tell me, sergeant?” Red Star asked.
“Contacts are travelling at sub-sonic speeds, direct path heading for the base, sir. They came into range already at low altitude. They’re not broadcasting IFF codes. Definitely an attack profile.”
Gorky cursed and turned to another NCO. “Where’s Berkut?”
“He’s out in that new prototype fighter, the Sokol. Somewhere up near Murmansk, I think.”
Gorky cursed again. There was no way he would get here in time.
Red Star reacted quickly, “Sound the alarm, all crews to the SAM batteries. Ready the Shilkas.”
“Multiple missile launches!” the first sergeant shouted. “All four aircraft just launched four missiles each!”
Twelve missiles were now flying toward the base at supersonic speeds. Red Star could only hope none were targeted on the ops building.
The alarms were now screaming, as Daina and Big Bear entered the ops room.
“What’s going on?” asked the anti-armour specialist.
“Air attack,” Gorky replied tersely. “They’ve just launched.”
Outside, several crews were trying to lock on to the incoming missiles with their surface-to-air missile batteries, but the old Soviet equipment wasn’t up to the task.
The ZSU-23/4 ‘Shilka’ anti-aircraft guns, however, opened fire with a curtain of bullets in an attempt to shoot the missiles down.
The missiles were simply too fast and flying too low for that tactic to work. The main radar dish was destroyed first.
The next six missiles hit and destroyed all of the SA-8 ‘Gecko’ SAM batteries around the base.
The five remaining missiles hit the Shilka batteries.
Molot, one of the newest members of the Oktober Guard, knelt next to a BDRM armoured personnel carrier as the explosions rocked the compound.
He looked around at the sound of jet engines at full throttle, just in time to see four jets scream overhead.
Then he saw the bombs falling away from the straight-wing fighters and leapt to his feet and ran.
Explosions ripped through the air as several vehicles were destroyed. Molot skidded to a halt next to a hardened aircraft shelter. He looked back into the sky. The four fighters were executing climbing turns to come back toward the base.
He frowned; they looked like the Russian Air Force’s close-air support jet at first. But then he realised they weren’t Rooks, since these jets had engines mounted on their wings and he could see they were painted blood red.
“Nicheyvo,” he swore and started running again as the fighters came back toward the base, opening fire with the massive rotary machine guns mounted on their noses.
The four fighters strafed the base with 30mm cannon fire before climbing out and heading away from the base at high speed.
The paratrooper started running toward the ops building.
Inside, Red Star was in the radio room.
“They must’ve taken out the antennae farm,” one of the sergeants said. “We’ve just lost all our long-range radio signals.”
Red Star pivoted, spotted a field radio and snapped, “That works, right?”
The sergeant frowned and then grabbed it, “It ought to,” he said.
It didn’t take long for the sergeant to get the backpack set up and dialled in the frequency for the Air Force.
Red Star took the headset and began broadcasting. He soon got an answer from Borisovsky Khotilovo air base a hundred-odd miles northwest of Moscow.
“This is Red Star of the Oktober Guard,” he explained. “We’ve just been attacked at our base by four ground-attack fighters. We need interceptors here immediately!”
“We have them on radar,” the officer at the other end answered. “We were attempting to contact Moscow to request permission to launch a pair of MiG-25s to intercept.”
“Under Directive 678 of the Oktober Guard orders, I am hereby authorising you to immediately scramble aircraft to intercept and destroy those fighters,” Red Star said.
Directive 678 was a special powers order for the Oktober Guard commander to use to demand immediate cooperation from Russian forces. Red Star had never needed to use it before. As far as he knew, Colonel Brekhov, his predecessor, had only used it once.
“I understand, comrade,” the other officer answered. “I am scrambling my MiGs immediately.”
Ten minutes later, the Mig-25s screamed over the Oktober Guard base as they sped south, pursuing the four aircraft that had attacked the base.
The lead pilot was in contact with his home base’s radar operators.
“Alpha One, contacts now heading due south, fifty kilometres from your position. Maintain course and speed.”
“Alpha One copies.”
After a few more minutes, “Alpha One, contact now ten kilometres from you. You should have visual momentarily.”
The pilot searched the sky. “Acknowledged, control. I have a visual.”
The lead pilot switched frequencies. “Pasha, do you see them?”
“I see them, Gregori,” his wingman replied. “Are we clear to fire?”
“Affirmative,” Gregori answered.
Both pilots armed their missiles, activated their infrared tracking systems and waited. Moments later both locked on to the trailing pair of fighters. They immediately opened fire with a single R70 missile each.
The two missiles screamed across the Russian sky and detonated scant feet from the tails of the two planes. Both planes lost their rear tail-mount engine. The shrapnel cloud also punched holes in the attack jets’ tail fins and rear wings.
The leading pair of enemy jets broke away, firing off flares and chaff. The two damaged fighters began losing altitude rapidly.
Alpha flight’s MiG-25s ignored the wounded planes and split up to go after the others.
Gregori was bringing his MiG around to lock on to his target when it suddenly began spraying gunfire from a turret he’d failed to spot on the plane’s spine. The major rolled left and tried to lock on, but the turret tracked him. He rolled right and lost altitude, allowing the other aircraft to fly above him.
Searching his memory, he realised there was only one fighter equipped with a gun turret like that: the Cobra Rattler.
Enraged that those terrorists were attacking his homeland, Gregori reduced his speed; allowing his fighter to drop back.
He locked on his second R70 and fired. The missile flew straight and true toward the Rattler before detonating under its belly. The explosion tore the plane apart and sent wreckage plummeting ground-ward.
Pasha was having more trouble with his target, he saw now that the plane was a red-painted Cobra Rattler, with a strange skull-and-crossbones insignia on its tailfins. The damned pilot was uncannily good at evading his lock on. Pasha cursed the MiG’s lack of a cannon as well as the Rattler’s rear gun turret.
Once again, bullets sprayed out from the turret, causing him to jink his fighter away from the Rattler.
“Gregori, I could use some help here,” Pasha called over his radio.
“I’m on it, Pasha,” Gregori replied. “I see you.”
Even as the Rattler piloted rolled away from Pasha’s MiG again, he presented his fighter’s belly to Gregori’s heat-seeking missile and the major fired. The missile slammed into the Rattler a few feet aft of the huge Gatling gun in the nose. The explosion sheared the pilot’s cockpit away from the rest of the plane. The rest of the plane flew on for several more feet, its engines carrying it forward.
Pasha locked on his R70 and launched. The remains of the Rattler were an easy target.
Action Force Headquarters
Mons, Belgium
Three hours later: 14:55 GMT
Even though Action Force maintained bases across Europe – and even beyond, what with bases in Greenland, on Ascendancy Island and in Australia – their official headquarters were in Belgium, co-located with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe. Sharing facilities with SHAPE meant they could coordinate operations with NATO if needed and utilise SHAPE’s existing support facilities.
With the end of the Cold War, Action Force had begun efforts to collaborate more with the Oktober Guard. As such a video link between AF HQ and the Guard’s HQ had been set up. Normally, the screen simply sat in a corner of the radio room, displaying a test signal of multi-coloured bars. The two Z Force radio operators were startled when the monitor’s speakers suddenly emitted three short beeps and the screen switched to show the Guard’s crest.
The junior operator dashed out of the room, whilst the senior operator moved to the screen.
The crest was replaced with a picture of a Russian officer, after a moment, the radio operator recognised him as Red Star.
“Good afternoon, is your Commander available?” Red Star asked in Russian.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she replied. “I don’t speak Russian.”
Red Star muttered to himself and then repeated himself in English.
“My colleague’s just gone to get him, I believe,” the operator informed him.
Before Red Star could reply, The Commander strode into the radio room. The sergeant saluted and moved out of the way.
“Good afternoon, Red Star. What’s wrong?” The Commander asked, all business.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Commander, but the Red Shadows seem to be back,” Red Star informed him.
“We’ve heard about the mortar attack in Argentina. Has something else happened?” The Commander asked.
Red Star nodded, “Da, my headquarters were attacked three hours ago by Red Shadow Rattler jets. They destroyed our SAM batteries, radar array, radio antennae and killed a lot of our Russian Army support troops. Two MiG-25s were able to intercept them and shoot them down. At first we thought it was Cobra, but the interceptor pilots reported the Rattlers were painted red and bore the Red Shadows emblem.”
“Damn. That’s definitely not good news,” The Commander noted. “Have you heard about the mortar attack on Task Force 282?”
Red Star shook his head. “Nyet, what happened?”
The Commander briefly explained.
“I will report that to Moscow,” Red Star said. “If we develop any more intelligence we’ll let you know. Oktober Guard, out.”
The monitor switched back to the test signal.
The Commander turned to the radio operators. “Alert all bases; it’s confirmed, the Red Shadows have returned.”
Sydney, Australia
The next day: Thursday, March 16th, 06:00 GMT
The Australian headquarters of Action Force was a small facility located on the outskirts of Sydney. Built in 1988 after the discovery of a Cobra satellite launch facility beneath Ayer’s Rock, the facility had come about with the realisation that that incident had been the second attempt by Cobra to establish a base in Australia and those incidents had followed an attempt by the Red Shadows to invade.
The facility had less than a hundred staff, of which some thirty were combat troops, largely drawn from Z Force’s infantry troops and SAS Force’s Attack Troopers. Two thirds of the remainder served to maintain the base’s communications nexus which acted as a ground station for Action Force’s network of satellites, and as maintenance personnel for the small force of vehicles. The rest of the staff were medics at the base infirmary.
The base had a single approach road that was blocked at the perimeter by a checkpoint manned by two Z Force infantrymen.
Today’s luckless guards were Dingo and Devil. Both were members of the Australian 1st Commando Regiment before being recruited to Z Force. Dingo stood in the lower part of the checkpoint, drumming his fingers on the clipboard which held the day’s schedule.
Devil was supposedly manning the machine gun mounted at the front left corner of the upper level. In actuality, he was leaning against the armoured wall and wishing his shift could end so he could go and get a cool beer.
Devil suddenly turned as he heard a grunt of pain from behind him. He saw Skymate, an Australian SAS Regiment soldier who’d joined Action Force after a brief stint with the American GI Joe team, throwing his boomerang around.
“Looks like Skymate’s practicing again,” Devil commented.
Dingo turned to see the soldier catch the boomerang one handed, flip it over in his hand and then hurl it away.
The boomerang whirled out, looped and came back, straight to his hand.
The sound of a heavy truck’s engine on the road prompted Dingo to return his attention to the job at hand.
A deuce-and-a-half truck roared around the curve in the road, smoke belching from its exhausts.
…And two Red Shadow troopers hanging from the rear-view mirrors with AK-47s in their hands!
Dingo ducked, hit the alarm and unslung his Stoner rifle in one continuous motion as the truck smashed through the metal gate, both Shadows spraying automatic fire.
Dingo stepped out of the checkpoint as the truck raced straight toward the ops building, raised his Stoner and got off a single shot that missed the truck before a Red Shadow in the back of the truck fired a long burst and hit him in the legs.
As the alarm klaxon blared, Skymate turned and threw his boomerang at the truck.
“BLOOD! BLOOD FOR THE MAJOR!” screamed the Trooper, before the spinning weapon struck him on the arm, dropping him from the truck.
Skymate sprinted over to the Red Shadow as he dropped his Kalashnikov and clutched his arm.
“Ah, my arm!” the Shadow cried out.
“Tough Koalas, mate,” Skymate said and kicked him in the head. He snatched up the Shadow’s fallen weapon and sprayed a long burst at the truck as it smashed into the wall of the ops building at a good fifty miles an hour.
Before Skymate could react further, the truck exploded.
The explosion threw him backwards through the air and dumped him on the hard concrete parade ground on his back. A grunt of pain escaped him.
Skymate struggled to roll over and push himself up. The Ops building was burning badly.
Some of the maintenance personnel were running from the vehicle garage, carrying fire-fighting equipment, but Skymate knew it was probably too late for several of the soldiers inside.
Action Force Headquarters
Two hours later: 08:30 GMT
The Commander stood in the ops room, listening as Skymate briefed him on the attack. On two other monitors, Eagle and Skip were listening in as well.
“…In total, we’ve got 33 dead and another 26 injured. Casualty count’s not complete yet,” Skymate said. “But I’ve confirmed Digger and Tagger as among the dead.”
For a moment, none of the officers spoke.
“Very well. I’ll see if I can cut some troops loose to come down and help you out,” The Commander informed him. “In the mean time, don’t be shy about letting the Australian authorities help out.”
“Don’t worry on that score, sir,” Skymate said, nodding. “Australian military and civilian hospitals are taking care of the injured and we’ve got regular troops providing perimeter security.”
The Commander nodded approval, “Good work, carry on.”
Skymate nodded once more on the screen before cutting the communications link.
The Commander turned to Eagle and Skip.
“I’m going to send a message to the Americans and warn them,” The Commander said. “This is concrete, the Red Shadows have returned.”
