Cáel Defeats The Illuminati: Part 18.
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Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand.
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Novels.
So exactly who was going to be sympathetic to their plight,
Beyond my fevered dream of making a difference there was a pinch
of reality. See, the Cabindans and the people of Zaire were both
ethnic Bakongo and the Bakongo of Zaire had also once had their own,
independent (until 1914) kingdom which was now part of Angola. The
Bakongo were major factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
(formerly for a short time known as the nation of Zaire, from here
on out to be referred to as the DRC and in the running for the most
fucked up place on the planet Earth, more on that later)
- and Congo (the nation) yet a minority in Angola. Having an
independent nation united along ethnic and linguistic lines made
sense and could expect support from their confederates across
international boundaries.
The Earth and Sky operated under one constant dilemma;
when would Temujin make his return? Since they didn't know and it was
their job to be prepared for the eventuality if it happened tomorrow,
or a century down the line, they 'stockpiled', and 'stockpiled' and
That was why they maintained large horse herds and preserved the
ancient arts of Asian bowyers, armoring and weapons-craft. That was
why they created secret armories, and sulfur and saltpeter sites when
musketry and cannons became the new ways of warfare. They secured
sources of phosphates and petroleum when they became the new thing,
All of this boiled over to me being shown yet again I worked with
clever, creative and under-handed people. The Khanate came up with a
plan for a 'Union' Air Force {Union? More on that later} within 24
hours, and it barely touched any of their existing resources. How did
they accomplish this miracle? They had stockpiled and maintained
earlier generation aircraft because they didn't know when Temujin
would make his re-appearance.
They'd also trained pilots and ground crews for those aircraft. As
you might imagine, those people grew old just as their equipment did.
In time, they went into the Earth and Sky's Inactive
Reserves; the rank and file over the age of 45. You never
were 'too old' to serve in some capacity though most combat-support
related work ended at 67.
When Temujin made his return and the E and S transformed into the
Khanate, those people went to work bringing their lovingly cared for,
aging equipment up to combat-alert readiness. If the frontline units
were decimated, they would have to serve, despite the grim odds of
their survival. It was the terrible acceptance the Chinese would
simply possess so much more war-making material than they did.
Well, the Khanate kicked the PRC's ass in a titanic ass-whooping
no one (else) had seen coming, or would soon forget. Factory
production and replacement of worn machines was in stride to have the
Khanate's Air Force ready for the next round of warfare when the
Cease-fire ended and the Reunification War resumed.
Always a lower priority, the Khanate military leadership was
considering deactivating dozens of these reserve unit when suddenly
the (Mongolian) Ikh khaany khairt akh dáé
(me) had this hare-brained scheme about helping rebels in Africa,
West Africa, along the Gulf of Guinea coast/Atlantic Ocean, far, far
away, and it couldn't look like the Khanate was directly involved.
They barely knew where Angola was. They had to look up Cabinda to
figure out precisely where that was. They brought in some of their
'reservist' air staff to this briefing and one of them, a woman
(roughly a third of the E and S 'fighting'/non-frontline forces were
female), knew what was going on. Why?
She had studied the combat records and performance of the types of
aircraft she'd have to utilize... back in the 1980's and 90's and
Angola had been a war zone rife with Soviet (aka Khanate) material
back then. Since she was both on the ball, bright and knew the score,
the War Council put her in overall command. She knew what was
expected of her and off she went, new staff in hand. She was 64 years
old, yet as ready and willing to serve as any 20 year old believer in
Subtlety, scarcity and audacity were the watchwords of the day.
The Khanate couldn't afford any of their front-line aircraft for this
'expedition'. They really couldn't afford any of their second-rate
stuff either. Fortunately, they had some updated third-rate
war-fighting gear still capable of putting up an impressive show in
combat; providing they weren't going up against a top tier opponents.
For the 'volunteers' of the Union Air Force, this could very
likely to be a one-way trip. They all needed crash courses (not a
word any air force loves, I know) in Portuguese though hastily
provided iPhones with 'apps' to act as translators were deemed to be
an adequate stop-gap measure. Besides, they were advised to avoid
getting captured at all cost. The E and S couldn't afford the
exposure. Given the opportunity; this assignment really was going
above and beyond; not one of these forty-six to sixty-seven year olds
No, they rolled out fifty of their antiquated aircraft, designs
dating back to the 1950's through the mid-70's, and prepared them for
the over 10,000 km journey to where they were 'needed most'. 118
pilots would go (72 active plus 46 replacements) along with 400
ground crew and an equally aged air defense battalion (so their air
bases didn't get blown up). Security would be provided by
'outsiders'; allies already on the ground and whatever rebels could
be scrounged up. After the initial insertion, the Indian Air Force
would fly in supplies at night into the Cabinda City and Soyo
14 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighters; though she entered
service in 1959, these planes' electronics were late 20th century and
she was a renowned dogfighter. 12 were the Mig-21-97 modernized
variant and the other two were Mig-21 UM two-seater trainer variants
which could double as reconnaissance fighters if needed.
14 Sukhoi Su-22 jet fighter-bombers; the original design, called
the Su-17, came out in 1970, the first 12 were variants with the 22M4
upgrade were an early-80's package. The other 2 were Su-22U two-seat
trainers which, like their Mig-21 comrades, doubled as reconnaissance
fighters. The Su-22M4's would be doing the majority of the ground
attack missions for the Cabindans, though they could defend
themselves in aerial combat if necessary.
6 Sukhoi Su-24M2 supersonic attack aircraft; the first model
rolled off the production lines in the Soviet Union back in 1974. By
far the heaviest planes in the Cabindan Air Force, the Su-24M2's
would act as their 'bomber force' as well as anti-ship deterrence.
8 Mil Mi-24 VM combat helicopters; introduced in 1972 was still a
lethal combat machine today. Unlike the NATO helicopter force, the
Mi-24's did double duty as both attack helicopter and assault
transports at the same time.
4 Mil Mi-8 utility helicopters, first produced in 1967. Three
would act as troop/cargo transports (Mi-8 TP) while the fourth was
configured as a mobile hospital (the MI-17 1VA).
4 Antonov An-26 turboprop aircraft, two to be used as tactical
transports to bring in supplies by day and two specializing in
electronic intelligence aka listening to what the enemy was up to.
Though it entered production in 1969, many still remained flying
2 Antonov An-71M AEW and C twin-jet engine aircraft. These were an
old, abandoned Soviet design the Earth and Sky had
continued working on primarily because the current (1970's) Russian
Airborne Early Warning and Control bird had been both huge and rather
ineffective; it couldn't easily identify low-flying planes in the
ground clutter so it was mainly only good at sea. Since the E and S
planned to mostly fight over the land,
They kept working on the An-71 which was basically 1977's popular
An-72 with some pertinent design modifications (placing the engines
below the wings instead of above them as on the -72 being a big one).
To solve their radar problem, they stole some from the Swedish tech
firm Ericsson, which hadn't been foreseen to be a problem before now.
See, the Russians in the post-Soviet era created a decent AEW and
C craft the E and S gladly stole and copied the shit out of for their
front line units and it was working quite nicely; the Beriev A-50,
and wow, were the boys in the Kremlin pissed off about that these
days. Whoops, or was that woot?
Now, the Khanate was shipping two An-71's down to Cabinda and
somewhere along the line someone just might get a 'feel' for the
style of radar and jamming the Cabindans were using aka the Swedish
stuff in those An-71's. The Erieye radar system could pick out
individual planes at 280 miles. The over-all system could track 60
targets and plot out 10 intercepts simultaneously. NATO, they were
not, but in sub-Saharan Africa, there were none better.
Anyway, so why was any of this important?
Why the old folks with their ancient machines? As revealed, since
the Earth and Sky had no idea when Temüjin
would return, they were constantly squirreling away equipment. World
War 2 gave them unequaled access to Soviet military technology and
Afterwards, under Josef Stalin's direction, thousands of Russian
and German engineers and scientists were exiled to Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan who were then snatched up
(reportedly died in the gulags/trying to escape) and the E and S
began building mirror factories modeled on the 'then current' Soviet
So, by the early 1950's, the E and S was building, flying and
maintaining Soviet-style Antonov, Beriev, Ilyushin, Myasishchev,
Mikoyan-Gurevich, Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev airplanes. First in
small numbers because their pool of pilots and specialists was so
The E and S remedied this by creating both their own 'private'
flight academies and technical schools. They protected their
activities with the judicious use of bribes (they were remarkably
successful with their economic endeavors on both side of the Iron
Curtain) and murders (including the use of the Ghost Tigers).
By 1960, the proto-Khanate had an air force. Through the next two
decades they refined and altered their doctrine; moving away from the
Soviet doctrine to a more pure combined-arms approach (the Soviets
divided their air power into four separate arms; ADD (Long Range
Aviation), FA (Front Aviation), MTA (Military Transport Aviation) and
the V-PVO (Soviet Air Defenses; which controlled air interceptors).).
It wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
independence of the various former SSR's that the E and S program
really began to hit its stride. Still, while Russia faltered, China's
PLAAF (Peoples' Liberation Army Air Force) began to take off. Since
the Chinese could produce so much more, the E and S felt it had to
keep those older planes and crews up to combat readiness. The younger
field crews and pilots flew the newer models as they rolled off the
Then the Unification War appeared suddenly, the E and S-turned
Khanate Air Force skunked their PLAAF rivals due to two factors, a
surprise attack on a strategic level and the fatal poisoning of their
pilots and ground crews before they even got into the fight. For
those Chinese craft not destroyed on the ground, the effects of
Anthrax eroded their fighting edge. Comparable technology gave the
Khanate their critical victory and Air Supremacy over the most
What did this meant for those out-of-date air crews and pilots who
had been training to a razor's edge for a month now? Their assignment
had been to face down the Russians if they invaded. They would take
their planes up into the fight even though this most likely would
mean their deaths, but they had to try.
When Operation Fun House put Russia in a position where she wasn't
likely to jump on the Khanate, this mission's importance faded. The
Russian Air Force was far more stretched than the Khanate's between
her agitations in the Baltic and her commitments in the Manchurian,
Ukrainian, Chechen and Georgian theaters.
With more new planes rolling off the production lines, these
reservist units began dropping down the fuel priority list, which
meant lowering their flight times thus readiness. Only my
hare-brained scheme had short-circuited their timely retirement. Had
I realized I was getting people's grandparents killed, I would have
probably made the same call anyway. We needed them.
The Kanate
The Khanate's #1 air superiority dogfighter was the Mig-35F. The
#2 was the Mig-29. No one was openly discussing the Khanate's
super-stealthy "Su-50", if that was what it was, because
its existence 'might' suggest the Khanate also stole technology from
the Indian defense industry, along with their laundry list of thefts
from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the PRC, Russia and half of NATO.
Her top multi-role fighters were the Su-47, Su-35S and Su-30SM.
The Su-30 'Flanker-C/MK2/MKI were their 2nd team with plenty of 3rd
team Su-27M's still flying combat missions as well.
Strike fighters? There weren't enough Su-34's to go around yet, so
the Su-25MS remained the Khanate's dedicated Close Air Assault model.
Medium transport aircraft? The An-32RE and An-38. They had small,
large and gargantuan transports as well.
Bombers? The rather ancient jet-powered Tu-160M2's and Tu-22M2's
as well as the even older yet still worthwhile turboprops; from
Helicopters? While they still flew updated variants of the Mil
Mi-8/17 as military transports, the more optimized Kamov Ka-52 and
Mil Mi-28 had replaced them in the assault role.
Bizarrely, the Khanate had overrun several Chinese production
lines of the aircraft frames and components; enough to complete
fairly modern PLAAF (Peoples Liberation Army Air Force) FC-1 and J-10
(both are small multi-role fighter remarkably similar to the US F-16
with the FC-1 being the more advanced model, using shared
Chinese-Pakistani technology and was designed for export,).
They did have nearly two dozen to send, but they didn't have the
pilots and ground crews trained to work with them, plus the FC-1 cost
roughly $32 million which wasn't fundage any legitimate Cabindan
rebels could get their hands on, much less $768 million (and that
would just be for the planes, not the weeks' worth of fuel, parts and
munitions necessary for what was forthcoming).
Meanwhile, except for the An-26, which you could get for under
$700,000 and the An-71, which were only rendered valuable via 'black
market tech', none of the turboprop and jet aircraft the Khanate was
sending were what any sane military would normally want. The
helicopters were expensive; the 'new' models Mi-24's cost $32 million
while the Mi-17's set you back $17 million. The one's heading to
Cabinda didn't look 'new'.
The Opposition:
In contrast, the Angolan Air Force appeared far larger and more
modern. Appearances can be deceptive, and they were. Sure, the models
of Russian and Soviet-made aircraft they had in their inventory had
the higher numbers; the Su-25, -27 and -30; plus they had
Mig-21bis's, Mig-23's and Su-22's, but things like training and
up-keep didn't appear to be priorities for the Angolans.
When you took into account the rampant corruption infecting all
levels of Angolan government, the conscript nature of their military,
the weakness of their technical educational system, the complexity of
any modern combat aircraft and the reality that poor sods forced into
being Air Force ground crewmen hardly made the most inspired
technicians, or most diligent care-takers of their 'valuable'
stockpiles (which their officers all too often sold on the black
market anyway), things didn't just look bleak for the Angolan Air
Force, they were a tsunami of cumulative factors heading them for an
It wasn't only their enemies who derided their Air Force's lack of
readiness. Their allies constantly scolded them about it too. Instead
of trying to fix their current inventory, the Angolans kept shopping
around for new stuff. Since 'new'-new aircraft was beyond what they
wanted to spend (aka put too much of a dent in the money they were
siphoning off to their private off-shore accounts), they bought
'used' gear from former Soviet states; Belarus, Russia and Ukraine;
who sold them stuff they had left abandoned in revetments (open to
the elements to slowly rot) on the cheap.
To add to the insanity, the Angolans failed to keep up their
maintenance agreements so their newly fixed high-tech machines often
either couldn't fly, or flew without critical systems, like radar,
avionics and even radios. Maybe that wasn't for the worst because
after spending millions on these occasionally-mobile paperweights,
the Angolans bought the least technologically advanced missile, gun
and rocket systems they could get to put on these flying misfortunes.
On the spread sheets, Angola had 18 Su-30K's, 18 Su-27, 12
Su-25's, 14 Su-22's, 22 Mig-23's, 23 Mig-21bis's and 6 Embraer EMB
314 Super Tucano (a turboprop aircraft tailor-made for
counter-insurgency operations), 105 helicopters with some combative
ability and 21 planes with some airlift capacity. That equated to 81
either air superiority, or multi-role jet fighters versus the 12
Union Air Force (actually the Bakongo Uni o de Cabinda e Zaire, For
as Armadas de Liberta o, For a Area; Liberation Armed Forces, Air
Force (BUCZ-FAL-FA) Mig-21-97's.
It would seem lopsided except for the thousands of hours of flight
experience the 'Unionists' enjoyed over their Angolan rivals. You
also needed to take into account the long training and fanatic
dedication of their ground crews to their pilots and their craft.
Then you needed to take into account every Unionist aircraft, while
an older airframe design, had updated (usually to the year 2000)
technology lovingly cared for, as if the survival of their People
A second and even more critical factor was the element of
surprise. At least the PRC and the PLAAF had contingencies for
attacks from their neighbors in the forefront of their strategic
planning. The Angolans? The only country with ANY air force in the
vicinity was the Republic of South Africa (RSA) and they had ceased
being a threat with the end of Apartheid and the rise of majority
Black rule in that country nearly two decades earlier.
In the pre-dawn hours of 'Union Independence Day', the FAL-FA was
going to smash every Angolan Air base and air defense facility within
375 miles of Cabinda (the city). Every three hours after that, they
would be hitting another target within their designated 'Exclusion
Zone'. Yes, this 'Exclusion Zone' included a 'tiny' bit of DRC
(Democratic Republic of Congo) territory. The DRC didn't have an air
force to challenge them though, so,
Inside this 'Exclusion Zone', anything moving by sea, river, road,
rail, or air without Unionist governmental approval was subject to
attack, which would require neutral parties to acknowledge some
semblance of a free and independent B U C Z. Worse for Angola, this
'Zone' included Angola's capital and its largest port, Luanda, plus
four more of their ten largest urban centers. This could be an
economic, military and humanitarian catastrophe if mishandled.
The Angolan Army did not have significant anti-aircraft assets.
Why would they? Remember, no one around them had much of an air force
to worry about. The FAL-FA in turn could hit military convoys with
TV-guided munitions 'beyond line of sight', rendering what they did
have useless. It got worse for the Army after dark. The FAL-FA could
and would fly at night whereas the average Angolan formation had
Zip-Zero-Nadda night fighting capacity.
Then geography added its own mountain of woes. As far as Cabinda
was concerned, there was no direct land line to their border from
Angola. Their coastal road only went as far as the port of Soyo where
the Congo River hit the South Atlantic Ocean. Across that massive gap
was the DRC where the road was not picked back up. Far up the coast
was the DRC town of Muanda (with an airport) and though they did have
a road which went north, it did not continue to the Cabindan border.
Nope. To get at Cabinda from the south meant a long, torturous
travel through northeastern Angola, into the heart of the DRC then
