The small flotilla of riverine craft were a mess after the round of attacks by the Black Knights flight dedicated to ground-attacks. With Kei's assault rounding off the run on the small force of repurposed civilian boats, the reinforcements were left treading water, floundering or drowning - or floating in charred, dead lumps with the flow towards the ocean. The attack on the ground had, for the moment, been broken. A breathless message from Major Constantine confirmed as much; the Gendarmerie and Militia forces had been able to take back positions to the edge of town, forcing the surviving rebels to fall back to earlier positions, and giving the defenders a line to hold, until the Thunderbolt Black ground reinforcements arrived with armour and heavy weapons. 
The majority of his ordnance expended, Scott turned his attention back to the skies, bringing his flight back into formation - and was immediately alerted by St Helen to the ongoing duel between the air-to-air flight, and their newly arrived opponents.

***

The quick reactions of Marciano and Dmitry kept them alive and unhurt. The inbound AAM's were fired from long-range, and with a poor initial lock from the front angle. As the ADV and the SU-35  broke sharply and blasted out countermeasures, the brightly burning flares were enough to distract the inbound missiles - or at least, for long enough that they had trouble re-acquiring their targets, and self-destructed instead. 
From the direction of the missiles, a pair of aircraft blasted past, performing their own superbly executed break, splitting wide and curving in the morning skies, faint trails of vapour gleaming from their wingtips as the two sleek, angular tactical aircraft turned to engage. 
The pair were a mis-matched duo; an SU-37 Terminator and a Dassault Rafale. Both were coal-black, with the Rafale having electric blue accents on the wingtips, canards and rudder, and the Terminator having deep orange in the same places. Both also sported a horned skull insignia in various places, and the numbers '2' and '5' in gothic script. Each were laden down with ordnance, both aerial and ground-attack, and at the sight of the Black Knights, turned to engage their aircraft. The Rafale began to pursue the Tornado, positioning itself between Marciano and Stalin, while the Terminator harassed its' sukhoi stablemate, driving hard towards Charnel with the powerful radar in the SU-37's large nose hunting down the Ukranians' aircraft as it banked to 270 degrees at the apex of its' climb, hammering down hard toward his plane.

Scott observed the situation from his position. St. Helen had fed the image from the powerful and huge AESA radar in the ASF-14's nose to his console and he quickly assesed the situation. His ordnance for ground attack was virtually depleted. Both Kei and Rodrieguez had more rounds to expend, however, and the airstrip was visible. The pair of bandits hadn't dallied with the ground-attack flight as of yet, and Austin looked to be in the clear too: perfect opportunity for a two-on-two. 
"Short Round, Spirit. Go turn that Airstrip back into a jungle clearing. Break. Viking, this is Heartbreak; go give Charnel a hand with his new fan, I've got Stalin's tail, over"
He pushed more power into the ASF-14's engines, the wings sweeping back that little more as he climbed and banked, angling to slot in on the SU-37's tail as it dove for Stalins' jet. "Razorblade, lock that fucker up for me!" he grunted over the intercom, keeping his eyes fixed on the gleaming shimmer of the Terminator, a good half-mile distant above the sea of green below.

The skies over the airstrip were clear; the airstrip itself was nothing more than a logging camp roughly repurposed into a temporary strip. Sheds for construction equipment, now left out in the open, shielded the few light aircraft and helicopters in position, and sandbagged heavy machine-guns or truck-bed mounted guns were the only air defences along with handfuls of shoulder-fired SAMs dotted here and there. 
Traces, aimed manually and fired too early or on reflex, curved wildly up into the skies along with small-arms fire, and it was easy to see people running in terror as the sounds of the oncoming jets was heard. The last Dragonfly from the earlier attack was still at the end of the runway, waiting for whatever the rebels had planned for it.