After Action Report: Operation Persian Freedom Phase 3 Mission 17: Munitions Factory at Aghar Jan 11.14.04 Page 23

By SimHQ on June 22, 2006 in _air6, hide

“Stand!” yelled the guard to Pokey, grabbing him under the arm and pulling him to his feet. “You and your friend are going to be famous,”he sneered.

Famous? What in the world was he talking about? Pokey gave a look to a battered Coyote, slumped into a heap in the corner, who returned the same puzzled look.

The guards dragged Pokey and Coyote from their cell and into a room down the hall. One of the things that the two captives noticed was that they were not blindfolded and were not kept from seeing their surroundings like they had been in Iran. This scared them though, because it gave further support to the notion that they were so far behind enemy lines that it didn’t matter to the opposition that they could see where they were. Even worse, this could also mean that they didn’t care what happened to Pokey and Coyote. Add to that the fact that they had not heard or seen from Kemal, their supposed benefactor, since they were moved from Iran.

As they rounded the corner, Pokey and Coyote were not prepared for what they saw.

“Seagull, Magic.You are cleared hot, the range is hot.”

Sacha crossed herself as her mother had taught her, and flipped two switches on her left console, canceling out the terrain-following autopilot. Ramming the throttles into afterburner, she popped Su-27 11-Red up over a small hill, rocketing up through 1500 meters to steady out at 3000. She swallowed the lump in her throat, thumb hovering over the switch to activate the aircraft’s SPS-171 ‘Sorbtsiya’ jammer system, should hostile missile systems pick her up. So far, no emissions from the airbase, and she was fast approaching it from the northeast. Twisting a rotary switch, she put the aircraft into ‘zem-lya’ mode, the ground-attack mode, and aligning herself with the apron at the base, prepared to switch on the camera pack.

The lights were bright in their eyes, and Pokey had to squint to see without his eyes hurting him. Coyote’s eyes were already puffy enough to block some of the light, but his natural reaction was to squint, and this gave him considerable pain. He groaned, “Agghh, man, those lights!”

“Quiet!” yelled the nearest captor. Pokey was really nervous now. He had seen this kind of set-up before. Looking around, he saw the flag of Iran as well as Abkhazia. Men stood around them with AK-47s at port arms, with masks on. And the biggest guard stood there with a huge scimitar.

Through the brightness of the lights, Pokey could make out a television camera in front of them. Coyote and Pokey were then forced to their knees, and another masked captor pulled out a syringe from the kit on the table. He snickered as he walked toward the two men.

Check out all of Cat’s “Sacha” chronicles here in the SimHQ Air Combat Zone.

We want your Feedback. Please let us know what you thought of this article here.