The Cobalt Haze squadron had caught their targets flat-footed, and torn their throat out. Already, the E-2 Hawkeye's radar picture showed clear of any hostile bandits. Two of the MiG's and three Mirages had been torn out of the skies by Jefe, Calico, and Peacenik, and the air defence radar disabled. The ship in the port was billowing smoke, and the islands air defences were all-but out of the picture, barring the ZSU's and any shoulder-fired weapons or heavy weapons emplacements pressed into desperate service. All that was left was sweeping up to secure the airbase and rout any last hangers-on.
Linosa was more active; two of the helicopter sites were down and two of the truck convoys, leaving two of each remaining. The ships were - unfortunately - doing better. The one struck by Scott was aflame and seemed to be listing heavily, and was out of the fight after the pair of JDAM's he'd unleashed had hit it dead on the waterline. But the other Corvette was still in the fight and hunting for the Cobalt Haze fighters with its' weapons. The escorting missile boat that Mykhailo had hit was sinking rapidly at the stern where his 20mm shells had chewed through it, but the remaining three small, fast and lethal boats were still on the prowl and hungry for blood, and nowhere was this more evident than with the sound of the warbling tones of the pilots' radar warning receivers advising of searching radar sweeping the skies. Small arms fire and anti-aircraft fire from the ships' autocannons began to sweep the skies, desperately fending off any attacks.
Scott wasn't about to give up and turn tail, however; not when they'd already got off to such a promising start. He guided the Harrier's nose around, dipping starboard wing and kicking in rudder, a shimmering cloud of compressed air shrugging off of the almost square-shouldered looking jets' fuselage as he came around on a new attack profile.
"Cobalt Lead to Stingray, Valkyrie and Brightspark. Good job hitting them so far, Stingray and Brightspark. Let's finish the job and send these bastards to the bottom. Brightspark; you and I get the missile boats, since you already got one. Valkyrie, give that untouched Corvette a hit; see if it gets the message. Stingray, you come around and mop up anything left floating, over!"Scott nudged in a little more altitude, and toed his rudder over, jinking slightly as he honed in on a course that would intersect a pair of the
Osa-class missile boats. His helmet-mounted display counted down the distance as he thumbed the selector for his APKWS pods, and the LITENING pod under the fuselage slewed to highlight the shape of the nearest boat as it electronically coordinated with the radar picture from the E-2 Hawkeye. As the numbers rolled down and the laser dot locked onto the centre of the boat, Scott squeezed the trigger on the AV-8B's joystick and a ripple of flashes burst forth from the cylindrical pods under the harriers' wings. The volley of anti-armour rockets smashed home in a rolling bloom of explosive power across the missile boat, and as they hit the canisters containing the large anti-ship missiles on deck, they went up spectacularly, a shockwave rippling out across the surface of the ocean and raining flaming debris across the area.
Scott hauled the Harrier over, pumping out chaff and flares to decoy any follow-on missiles. He kicked in a little bit of vectored thrust, just forcing his nose around that little more to bring the second boat square into his sights, and as it did, he switched weapon and sucked in a breath as he pulled the trigger again.
This time, there was a dull rumble through the airframe as the 25mm rotary cannon on the belly of the jet fired. The five-barreled gun was heavier with its' weight of shot than the Vulcans carried by some of the other pilots' planes, but smaller than the almost absurd GAU-8 carried by Kat's A-10. Nonetheless, it did the job and with the characteristic
BRRRRRRBBBB of a weapon with a rate of fire of
thousands of rounds a minute, it let off a stream of firepower that was barely a blink or a heartbeat, but still massed dozens of hotdog-sized shells that drew a line of angry fire across the boats' superstructure and sent debris and smoke flying. Wounded, the boat didn't sink immediately, or even explode, but it slowed and began to zig-zag, as its' firepower dropped off.
Even at the A-10's comparatively 'slow' speed, Linosa was
not a big island. barely over a mile and a half, from the direction she'd approached from, and with the A-10 at low speed, it was under the wings and she was over water again in mere moments. Starboard wing down and nose up, she soared into a banking climb as she put on some speed to get an overview and reacquire her targets. Thankfully, with the island being small, it also made it a hell of a lot easier to find anything. There weren't many places to hide... well, anything; the island wasn't built up and there were very few 'terrain features' to hide behind; just the two not even especially tall 'mountains' in the north and south, on the islands' eastern side. Smoke was already rising from various points where her flight had struck and hit the Libyans positions on the island, where they'd scattered through the fields that patchworked the islands gently rolling terrain.
Tracer fire licked up sporadically, as nervous gunners on the anti-aircraft guns in the back of the remaining pickups lashed at the skies. On the far side of the island from her, she could see more tracers flashing up from the distant shapes of the ships, marked by their wakes on the water, and the pillars of smoke. The relayed radar picture from the E-2 AWACS showed her that the helicopters were starting to take notice, and two of the Hinds had gotten airborne, but were sticking to low level, scudding around and trying to terrain-mask.
"Well, that just won't do" she said to herself as she lined up on a northwest-southeast pass that would take her between the 'mountains'.
She uncaged the seeker heads in the AIM-9X's under the A-10's port wing. The supercooled 'eye' in the nose of the missile was slaved automatically to her helmets' visor. The
warbling tone of the searching heat-seeker filled her ears and she nosed the A-10 lower once more, gently playing the rudder pedals under her booted feet to try and pinpoint the Hind attack helicopter against the terrain -
There! The predatory shape of the attack helicopter, like some kind of angry insect, hung low to the ground and twisted in the air. It side-slipped, as only a helicopter could, and the nose came up as he pulled altitude. All at once, her own radar warning receivers sounded, as the Hind opened fire in return, the air-to-air missiles under its' down-turned wingtips hunting her down. Undeterred, Kitten, pressed the lock
"You cheeky little son of a bitch! I'll show you who does the shooting around here~!"The audio cue for the sidewinder changed to a steady buzz, and then as she pulled the trigger, a solid tone.
"Kitten, Fox Two!"Meanwhile, In The Skies Above Lampedusa...
The astonishing speed with which their wingmen had been taken down had shaken and unsettled the remaining fighter pilots assigned to protect their acquired airbase, and their brothers in arms on the ground below. Three of the Mirages and two MiGs gone, with barely even a swat back at the attackers. Even their ground-control radar was gone, and those aboard the ships that had come into the AO. They had nothing but themselves and the resolve of their fellows on the ground, manning the powerful ZSU anti-aircraft guns.
Even now, their search-and-tracking radars swept the skies, hunting down the mercenaries that had swept in and obliterated the men they'd been joking and chatting with only mere minutes earlier.
Three versus four; and all their opponents were in much more capable aircraft than their own. One of them barely seemed visible on radar; a stealth jet, if things needed to be any worse.
But their anger gave them wings, and they used them to hunt. The remaining pair of Floggers doubled up as soon as they cleared the runway they were on the offensive, rolling in behind Calico's Sukhoi. The disparity in size was like wolves nipping at the heels of a bison as they jockeyed for advantage and position, the wings on the high shoulders of the single-engined jets smoothly sliding to a mid-position for the optimum mix of lift and speed as they bombarded the sky with hunting signals to lock on.
Meanwhile, the remaining Mirage burned hard and hammered the G's as the delta-winged jet fought to live, thundering low enough over the terrain of Lampedusa that windows shattered and walls vibrated, before shooting up and clawing for altitude to come up under Peacenik's F/A-18, searching for an angle and letting fly with a burst from both 30mm guns at the blacker-than-black Hornet as the lights from below barely gleamed off of its' glossy paintwork.
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