Moscow Machination

Three hundred nautical miles into the Atlantic, the F-35 pilots were thoroughly hypnotized by Ke dollar sign ha’s thumping message. If not for the caramel macchiato piped through their hi-tech helmets, the entire squadron would have abandoned the fjords for sunny Hollywood.

Just as Ke dollar sign ha repeated her feelings for Mick Jagger, the Norwegian pilots heard massive boom. Moments later their incredibly expensive helmets went dark. Frantic jiggling of the touch controls did nothing to revive the unit, forcing the pilots to remove their helmets. At 45,000 feet and 0.6Mach they were allowed to do that.

BOOM!

A second boom.

“Bodo base this is Spread Eagle. Our helmets just blacked out.”

After some static, Bodo base responded, “Spread Eagle. This is Bodo Base. Repeat your message.”

“Bodo base, this is Spread Eagle. Our helmets just blacked out.”

“WTF? Did you spill macchiato into the helmet again? Jesus man grow up.”

“Bodo Base this is Squadron Leader Aas. All our helmets have blacked out.”

“All six at the same time?”

“Affirmative, Bodo base.”

“So you are saying… that all six of you spilt your macchiatos? Hows that even possible. Just the probability…”

“No! No one spilt anything.”

“Aha… so you guys puked… It’s that air sickness thing again isn’t it? Jesus, I thought we fixed it with the Ram’s piss. This is beyond ridiculous… way beyond ridiculous. No wonder we don’t get invited to the annual bombing campaigns…”

Squadron Leader Aas swore. He slowed his breathing and channeled his inner Ke dollar sign ha before resuming the tug of war with Bodo base. “Bodo base. I repeat no one puked or jerked off into the precious helmets. There was a loud boom from the outside and then we all just blanked out.”

“Oh… ok Spread Eagle… so what do you think it was… is someone shooting at you?”

“Nope. Radar is clean. Probably a bug in the onboard computer.”

“No, no… remember, no talking shit about the F-35s.”

“Perhaps an EMP.”

“Whaaat…” began the dude in Bodo base before switching tones, “Spread Eagle. Fuck me.”

“Spread Eagle, we just picked up 6 Bear bombers, Tu-160s. They are headed for you… already very close… Deploy evasive measures.”

“Bodo Base,” replied the frustrated Squadron Leader Aas, “Dude, nothing other than the fucking million dollar macchiato maker is working… Plus how can the bombers attack us? Do they plan to ram into us? What the freak are they thinking?”

“Well I don’t know. Fly fast or something. For fuck’s sake man… you are flying the most advanced jet of the generation.”

“Bodo base, we are still quite heavy on fuel. We should have got the F-22s… just saying.”

“Enough with the F-22s… the Bears will be there within thirty seconds.”

“Rodger that.”

“Try and hang on for twenty minutes. Brits have scrambled their Typhoons.”

“Spread Eagle out.”

The F-35s after a brief contemplation, engaged their after burners and turned south. One minute after hitting Mach 2, the onboard radar informed the Squadron Leader Aas about an incoming intruder. Unfortunately, the radar couldn’t really say what the hell the intruder was? It was sort of free falling but coming towards the Norwegian jets… like a JDAM… abandoning its database, the onboard computer checked Wikipedia and confirmed that it wasn’t a bomb.

It was a carbon based biped.

* * *

“Fuck me,” whispered Aas.

“Fuck fuckity fuck. How do we dodge this bum?” shouted one of the other pilots, a Larsson.

The radar suddenly beeped again, indicating that two more objects — again human beings — were floating towards the F-35s.

“Try dodging.”

“I tried. They have some JDAM shit attached to their asses. How is this even possible?”

The F-35’s super advanced electronic array radar beeped again. There were in total nine kamikazes. The presumably Spetsnaz dudes were within 500ft.

“Too late to turn around. Let’s do a rapid dive to 10,000ft.”

As the pilots began their dive, all sorts of alarms started to blare up inside the F-35 cockpits. The words CPU OVERLAOD began flashing in a very friendly font — Comic Sans MS — rendering every knob and control useless.

As the Norwegian pilots thrashed around their cockpits, the onboard computer was ballsy enough to flash a ‘Would you like to send bug reports to Lockheed, Nevada?’ Incredibly the popup’s NO button was grayed out. Hoping to unfreeze the darned jet, the pilots hit YES.

As the upload began, the six jets levelled out at Mach 0.5 and settled on a straight line.

Moments later, a smiling Spetsnaz dude landed right on top of Aas’ cockpit with a loud thwack. The Spetsnaz agent wore a suit … Not some pressure suit… but a sweet Reservoir Dogs style suit… bizarre, but definitely not uncool. The Russian was smiling.

Within seconds, other Spetsnaz agents landed on the F-35s. Some got two.

To the Norwegians’ horror, the Spetsnaz dudes pulled out hammers and sickles and got to work on the F-35’s multimillion dollar cockpit.

CLANG. THANG. WOMP.

CLANG. THANG. WOMP.

CLANG. THANG. WOMP.