Read Initiative (The Red Gambit Series Book 6) for Free Online

implications, Major?”
    “Eight minutes difference in flight time. Alternate mission profile allows for increased enemy defensive measures, but nothing that would skip past our escort guys.”
    “Your recommendation?”
    “Get another check… we don’t need to commit for another…err… six minutes. A lot could change in that time, Sir.”
    Parsons nodded.
    “Make that call, Major. I need a drink.”
    The Naval officer disappeared to seek out one of the thermos flasks whilst Crail confirmed the latest from the Met planes.
    Five minutes passed in the blink of an eye, and Parsons, accompanied by Naval 2nd Lieutenant Jeppson, appeared back in the cockpit.
    Crail got in first.
    “No change on primary. Alternate One has increasing cloud cover. Alternate Two is clear, Sir.”
    Parsons exchanged looks with Jeppson, who simply nodded.
    “Alternate Two is the target. Send it, Major.”
    The radio operator, Staff Sergeant P.S. Jones the Third, fired out the one word transmission three times.
    ‘Burnside… Burnside… Burnside…’
    In Hiroshima, the primary target, and Nagasaki, Alternate One, no one felt relieved, no one celebrated, and no one thanked their God for sending a modicum of cloud to spare them from the horrors of Atomic warfare.
    Both cities, plus a number of others, had been spared from heavy attack until this day, a conscious cold-blooded decision made so that the bomb could be used on a relatively intact target, to permit proper understanding of its destructive force.
    The people in Kokura thanked their ancestors, or their God, for the continued sparing of lives, although they had no understanding of why the Yankees did not darken the skies above them, as they did most other places in the Empire.
    In Kokura, life went on as normal.
    The workers in the Arsenal, one of the last major production facilities available to the Empire of Japan, went about their business, blissfully unaware that a decision, made high up in the sky many miles away, was bringing death on a biblical scale to their front doors that very day.
    Centerboard One was coming.
     

0708 hrs, Wednesday, 29th May 1946, airborne, one hour from Alternate 2, Kyūshū Island, Japan.
     
    Jeppson was in the bomb bay, removing the final safeties from L-9, turning an inanimate object into an all-powerful weapon of war.
    The rest of the crew were quiet, the normal banter that broke up mission boredom absent, probably as the enormity of their task started to gnaw away at them.
    Hanebury surveyed the sky, seeking signs of enemy aircraft approaching, and saw nothing but the lightening sky.
    Once, he had caught sight of some of the escort, at distance, behind and slightly above them, intent on shepherding the trio of B-29s to the target and back to Okinawa intact.
    He unscrewed his thermos flask and took a belt of the sweet black coffee.
    As he tipped his head back he caught the minutest flash of light, a microsecond that revealed the presence of something sharing the sky with them.
    His reputation for having the eyes of a hawk was well deserved.
    “Tail gunner, unidentified aircraft above and behind, distant, probably six thousand.”
    The message galvanised the entire crew, with the exception of Jeppson, who remained working in the bomb bay, blissfully unaware that there was a possible threat close at hand.
    The three B-29s were flying in a relaxed V, but, with the imminent threat, drew in tighter.
    The radio waves burst into life, imploring the escort to deal with whatever it was that was closing fast.
     

0709 hrs, Wednesday, 29th May 1946, airborne, just over an hour from Alternate 2, Kyūshū Island, Japan.
     
    Hanebury had got it wrong.
    There were two of them, flying tight together, making the spotting error extremely easy.
    To give them their proper designations, the pair of killers were Nakajima Ki-87 fighter-interceptors, designed specifically to counter the B-29 threat.
    The creaking Japanese manufacturing base had managed to produce five