Rogue Element

Central Sulawesi, 1010 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

The clearing filled with noise and wind as the V22 descended slowly through the darkening sky, carefully, through the hole in the canopy, rotors clearing the thrashing foliage by less than a metre. The rear door was down. McBride and the LM, both lifelined to the fuselage, waved at them to hurry aboard. Above, an AV-8 blocked the sun as it screamed overhead.

Ferris and Robson helped Suryei and Joe aboard the instant the aircraft’s wheels settled tentatively on the spongy ground. The shriek of the turbines tore at Suryei’s eardrums.

Ferris and Robson then immediately turned back, jumping off the ramp to cover the MAG’s retreat. Wilkes and Littlemore carried Curry aboard between them, while Morgan half-carried the hobbling Coombs. Beck leapt on and then Ferris and Robson climbed on last. Where the fuck was Ellis? Wilkes had seen him running through the jungle earlier. Where had he gone? Wilkes was starting to feel a tightening in his stomach.

And then he saw Ellis running awkwardly across the clearing from the far end, something large and green over his shoulder. It was Gibbo’s body. Ellis arrived at the rear door just as an enormous explosion threw a mushroom cloud into the air. ‘The rest of our shit!’ yelled Ellis over the engine noise. He’d blown up their cache, denying Indonesia the opportunity of parading any gear in front of the media. The LM helped Ellis and Wilkes inside with the body. He said something into his boom mike and the aircraft lifted off immediately, the rear door closing on the jungle as the V22 rose tentatively through the opening in the canopy.

McBride shouted into Wilkes’s ear above the noise, ‘Joe Light, alive! Amazing!’

Sergeant Wilkes nodded and pushed past, concerned about his men.

Curry’s wound was bad. The bullet had shattered the clavicle and was still lodged in his shoulder. He was losing a fair bit of blood and his skin was grey-white. Beck did what he could with field dressings, but there was nothing they could do without an operating theatre and an orthopaedic surgeon. He immobilised the shoulder and gave Curry a shot of morphine. The LM had the wounded soldier carried to a stretcher fastened to a bulkhead, and strapped him in. Gibbo’s body was also secured in the same way. He gestured to the soldiers to take their seats, belt up and put their headphones on.

Suryei watched the men load the bodies on stretchers and realised again how much had been sacrificed by these men to keep Joe and her alive.

‘Ferret Handler. Six bandits. Six bandits. West. Eighty miles. Angels Twelve. Heading zero-niner-zero.’

‘Ferret Leader. Roger that. Request bandit type and weapons intel.’

‘Bandits inbound F-16. BVR capabilities negative.’

‘Ferret Leader.’

Let’s get ready to rumble, Captain Pete ‘Toad’ Sanders said to himself. The call came from an Airborne Warning and Control System, an aircraft with enormously powerful radar, orbiting well outside Indonesian airspace and out of enemy missile range. Its job was to provide the flight over Indonesian territory with Airborne Control Interception — letting the good guys know what the bad guys were up to without the fighters having to turn on their own radars.

The ACI provided by the AWACs had just painted a picture that made Toad’s scrotum tighten with fear. And, if he’d been asked, a whole lot of excitement. Uncle Sam had spent millions training him to dogfight, and he was finally getting a chance to put that training to good use.

Six enemy aircraft, F-16s, were inbound from the west. They were at angels twelve or 12 000 feet, on a course that was taking them due east. West to east. Toad was tracking north. He checked his own display to verify the call. There they were, closing at roughly twenty miles a minute off his port wing, at a range of eighty nautical miles. Six against two. Not terribly good odds on paper. In reality, however, they were heavily stacked in the AV-8s’ favour.

Out in front of the AV-8s was the replacement EA-6B Prowler. The Americans turned towards the Indonesians. Almost immediately, the pods on the Prowler’s wings would begin blasting them with so much energy they’d be stumbling around like Ray Charles. Totally blind.

The guys in the AWACS had said that the bandits were BVR negative, which meant they didn’t have beyond visual range missiles. That was a relief. Fire-and-forget over-thehorizon missiles were expensive and only America and her best buddies had access to them. They weren’t even available on the black market. It meant the aircraft closing on them had nothing smart they could launch at them and then bug out. The Indons would have to get up close and visual and use AIM-9 heaters — heat-seekers — and guns.

Indonesia was not a rich nation. They’d be running older F-16A Falcons, planes that had been superseded more than ten years ago by F-16Cs with numerous upgrades, including more powerful engines and weapons. Toad and his wingman were up against aircraft that, while not quite museum pieces, were not far from it. Their AV8Bs, on the other hand, were the upgraded Harrier 11 Radar type, AV-8s with more powerful Pegasus engines, avionics, and the OSCAR on-board computer, which made life in the cockpit about as difficult to manage as playing a Nintendo game. Toad’s weapons systems could define who was friend or foe, acquire targets, as well as arm and deploy the aircraft’s weaponry, and do it all in the same instant. Once on its way, the AMRAAM missile’s own systems would take over, directing the warhead to the target. Toad didn’t even have to keep the target painted or illuminated in any way. Once launched, the missile was its own extremely smart, extremely deadly master.

Toad checked his ordnance by setting the correct mode and toggling from one weapons station to the next; two Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles and a couple of AIM-9M missiles, the new, more intelligent heaters with a longer range, and a 25 mm fuselage-mounted machine gun loaded with HEI, high-explosive incendiary shells. His wingman was similarly armed. The V22? Zip. Not even a spitball. Toad glanced left and right and was reassured by the sight of his own AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Seeing them snuggled under his wing gave him an enormous sense of security.

Toad wondered what would be going through the minds of the F-16 pilots. The poor bastards would be shitting bricks. Their threat indicators would be frying like eggs on a skillet under the barrage emitted by the EA-6B. Those Prowlers were bloody frightening. Get too close to one of them while it was emitting and you could forget about ever having any children. It was highly unlikely that the Indons would have experienced anything like the EW they were now being subjected to. It meant that they were literally heading into the unknown, against an unknown enemy of unknown strength from an unknown origin. It was a fighter pilot’s nightmare.

Less than four minutes to intercept. He was running passive, emitting no radar waves. Given the probable state of confusion in the cockpits of the Indonesian F-16s, he was being overcautious. But why take the risk if it was avoidable? The AWACS was providing intelligence on the F-16s rushing towards them, then beaming the ACI straight into Toad’s aeroplane. He was getting all the information he could have asked for, without giving his existence away by emitting his own radar energy to get it. His threat indicator had all six bandits. Closing speed, 1.9 Mach.

Toad banked sharply and took in the terrain below. The dominating feature was the threatening cone of a huge volcano that rose from the jungle around ten klicks to the south. It towered into a duvet of cloud.

The V22 sucked negative gs as it hugged the contour of a ravine and plunged into a deep volcanic channel. Suryei just managed to pull a bag from the seat pocket in front of her and place it under her mouth before her stomach let go. The extreme movement recalled the terror of the final moments of QF-1, and the memory of it now made her gag with fear. The SAS men were all clipping in their shoulder straps and the negative-g strap between their legs. Suryei followed their example between stomach convulsions.

Toad checked his fuel pressure. Barely enough, but so what else was new? Fuel load was the AV-8B’s Achilles heel. The aircraft’s range, or lack of it, was a bit of a joke. He was carrying external tanks and they’d been topped off three times by KC-135s yet, despite the numbers they’d been flying to ensure best range since the last fill, he’d burned a high percentage of the aircraft’s juice already.

Major Loku Shidyahan rolled his F-16 left and right, trying to pick out anything unusual against the green of the jungle below. He had the eyes in his head but nothing else to help him find the intruder. His radar was being jammed. The major had never experienced it before but he’d read enough about it to know it was happening to him and his flight.

His younger brother, Wyan, had phoned him out of the blue to ask him whether Indonesia had anything that sounded suspiciously like a V22 Osprey, because one had just flown in from the sea at wave height and disappeared inland. Of course we haven’t, he’d said. It was an American plane being tested by their army and marines. As it happened, Shidyahan had just read a performance review on them that suggested they were too dangerous and would probably never see service. His brother’s enquiry was just another coincidence in a day full of them. Hasanuddin AFB had been experiencing all kinds of unusual radar interference, but couldn’t trace the problem to its source. And then the call had come from Wyan. There was definitely something odd going on. There were also the orders from the top to be particularly vigilant. Why? The major had no idea but he had enough muscle at Hasanuddin to get a flight of F-16s fuelled and airborne to investigate.

His brother had provided an estimated heading and speed of the suspected intruder but the plane would most likely have altered course once it had made landfall. In short, the V22 could be just about anywhere. The major wished his country had the resources to afford blanket radar coverage. With its tens of thousands of islands, having that kind of support would make the air force’s job so much easier. He rolled left and right again. Nothing. A gnawing in his gut told him the radar interference hid a malignant force. He gave brief instructions into his oxygen mask and the flight made a descending turn to the left, and decelerated.

Toad’s threat indicator showed the Indons making the turn. It was decision time. The Prowler had reached the agreed point where it, too, would turn away from the inbound flight of F-16s, and hightail it out of the area. Almost immediately, the Indonesians would get their radars back and the three intruders would be revealed on their scopes. The Indonesians were fifteen miles out. Toad and his wingman held the tactical advantage. He selected the AMRAAMs and his wingman did the same.

Toad, being the flight leader, chose the two leading aircraft in the approaching formation, as his wingman knew he would. Toad’s OSCAR confirmed that the two leading aircraft had been targeted. He watched the Prowler turn away on his scope. As it did so, Toad thumbed the fire button. One, two missiles away. The AV-8’s airframe rocked with the energy expended by the departing ordnance. OSCAR calculated time to impact.

Toad’s wingman had targeted the next two closest F-16s. As Toad manoeuvred his aircraft out of the way, the wing-man popped up from behind and launched his missiles. They had launched a total of four AMRAAMs between them.

On his radar, Major Sanders saw the effect on the F-16s of the missile launches. The enemy formation split, aircraft spearing left and right in a deadly dance of evasion. The AV-8s pumped, turning aggressively through 180 degrees, to resume their sweeping fore and aft of the Osprey still hugging the treetops below.

Major Shidyahan happened to be peering at his radar display when the storms of electrons sweeping across it broke up. He saw three contacts, bandits, turning away and four inbound foxes, missiles, heading towards his flight. He instantly began to sweat. Inbound missiles! Who fired them? Where did they come from? What were they? He hoped and prayed that they would be something old and inaccurate. An equally assertive voice within him told him not to be stupid. The missiles would be coming in at Mach three. No time to think. He jerked his control stick back and the F-16 bucked, clawing for altitude. No, he wanted the ground, not sky. He pushed the stick forward. His shoulders strained against the straps and blood gushed into his brain as the F-16 hit four negative gs.

A warning horn went off in his phones from the threat indicator. Beep. Beep. The missile was hunting for him. The tone changed. Wah-wah-wah. Now it had found him. He threw the F-16 through a 90-degree left turn and pulled back into a climb. Blood rushed to his feet. His vision narrowed, blackout imminent. He released pressure on the stick, allowing a little blood back into his brain to restore sight, then jammed the stick back again.

Condensation formed at the wing roots, pressure waves squeezing the vapour out of the air. Wah-wah-wah. The horn might be the last thing he’d hear. Shidyahan jinked right. Then left. Wah-wah-wah. He looked behind him. He could see the trail left by the exhaust of the missile’s solid rocket propellant. A deadly white finger reaching towards him. Wah-wah-wah.

Two towering, converging volcanic cliffs reared in Major Shidyahan’s forward view. He was going to drill into them. Faced with a certain, violent death, he screamed. Unconsciously, he flicked the F-16 into a knife-edge turn and pulled the control stick back hard. The vertical volcanic rock wall seemed to suck the F-16 towards it. His vicious manoeuvring forced the AMRAAM to go stupid when its sensors lost the target against the noise of the ground. The missile slammed into the cliff behind him, the concussion wave from the ensuing explosion tossing the F-16 into a yaw.

Major Shidyahan sucked in the oxygen to steady his nerves. Sweat dribbled down his forehead into his eyes and stung them. He scanned his instruments. No damage, Allah be praised. As his aircraft climbed smoothly away from the rockslide caused by the AMRAAM’s impact, he fought to regain control of his body and tried to think through the implications of the battle in progress. He radioed his position and situation quickly to Hasanuddin AFB. They asked him to clarify. He ignored the request. Aviate, navigate, communicate, he reminded himself, the three most important things for a pilot to remember, in their order of importance. Remembering the maxim from his early training days reassured him. But where was the avoid-incoming-missiles-at-all-costs bit? he asked himself, elated by his improbable escape from certain death.

Shidyahan pondered the origin of the enemy aircraft he’d seen on his screen. Given that they were probably somehow related to the sighting of the Osprey, and that the Osprey itself was only in service with American forces, that meant he was up against the US army, navy or air force. The United States of America, shooting missiles at him within the airspace of his own country!? Shidyahan’s fear turned to anger. He tightened his shoulder straps.

Three bandits winked out on Toad’s radar screen. Two. Three. Four. Where was bandit number one? Shit. Bandit one must have outrun its AMRAAM. And the pilot in that plane had had less time to react than the other three. Yes, there he was, number one, painted on his display. He must have gone low. And survived. He silently toasted the F-16 pilot’s good luck and obvious skill. The bastard should buy himself a lottery ticket, Toad thought.

On his display, Toad saw the three surviving aircraft turn towards him. Shit, he thought, that was definitely not a good sign. Those guys would be seriously pissed. He wished he had more AMRAAMs under his wings, or more aircraft in his flight. It was time to bug out. Carefully. Museum piece or not, the F-16 was a formidable enemy in the right hands, even an F-16A armed only with AIM-9s and guns. And, as he’d just witnessed, at least one of those guys could fly it. That meant their training was probably pretty good across the board.

He was checking his weapons stores again; a couple of AIM-9Ms and the gun, just as the picture presented on the small screen display went blank. What the hell…? The transmission to the AV-8s from the AWACs had suddenly been cut. Just when I need them most, those bastards break for lunch, Toad fumed. He was in the process of cursing them out loud when he saw why the link had gone down. He’d just put the towering volcano between himself and the AWACS, and one thing radio waves would not penetrate was solid rock. He checked his fuel stores. Christ, they were getting marginal. His flight was now being stalked by a force that was numerically superior, and on their home turf. And he’d lost his link to the AWACS. Definitely time to bug out, thought Toad. But where the hell was that slow-mover, the V22?

The V22 accelerated to around 100 knots as it barrelled into a volcanic channel. The pilot swung through a tight turn in the channel at sixty degrees angle of bank. The bend in the channel tightened, forcing the Osprey to make a tighter, higher-g turn. The wall of the channel edged closer to the outside wing, threatening to clip it, and then suddenly it widened, allowing the aircraft to slip through unscathed. Ahead, the walls narrowed again. The pilot and co-pilot hoped the channel would lead away from the volcano, rather than snake back towards it.

It was difficult to know what was going on. Suryei couldn’t rely on her inner ear for bearings at all. She couldn’t see a horizon line; the window was small, revealing little detail. At one stage she was convinced they were flying nearly straight up, and then the aircraft felt like it was falling backwards. It was a very awkward motion, and bad news for her stomach. Suryei retched bile. She had never suffered from airsickness before and it was not a pleasant feeling.

A flash of green coloured the small window diagonally opposite. The blue of the sky followed. Then black rocks. She worked out that the aircraft was banking savagely through a narrow passage. Suryei wondered if there’d be any warning before they hit a mountain. Probably not, she thought, if they hit it head-on.

She remembered looking into the muzzle of the Indonesian soldier’s rifle and knowing that she was about to die. Her attitude at the time had been one of resignation to her fate. She remembered feeling beyond fear. Death had failed to panic her. It was the same now. Airsickness, however, was something else entirely. The thought of dying gave her some relief. Her stomach convulsed, but nothing came up.

The V22 jinked violently up and down, then banked sharply left. It was a wild ride and Suryei found it an effort keeping her head from lolling about uncontrollably. The pressure was on her shoulder straps — they were holding her down in her seat. Her stomach felt light, as if it was trying to find its way up and out of her mouth. She retched again dryly into the bag. She was then forced the other way, driven into her seat, the air forced out of her lungs and her eyeballs squashed into their sockets. She tried to lift her hand out of her lap and found it impossible. It seemed to weigh four or five times more than usual. Suryei tried holding her breath to stop the heaves. It didn’t help and she vomited through her nostrils instead.

Toad called up the V22 and got the aircraft’s position. They were all participants in a game not unlike chess, where the individual pieces were capable of moving in specific and particular ways. The slow-mover was somewhere directly below him. Now, where were those bandits? Then just as quickly as it went down, the display on his screen came back up.

Shit! The F-16s were coming up behind the V22! Jesus, they’d managed to get there damn quick. Toad immediately rolled inverted and fed back pressure into the stick. His wingman followed. The AV-8s both pulled five-g half loops and accelerated towards the F-16s. The V22 Osprey was his responsibility. He was there to protect it, which meant getting it back on friendly ground in one piece; and with its cargo alive and kicking. There was a time to fight and a time to run. With no BVR missiles left, it was definitely time for the latter, but not until the V22 was secure.

Unfortunately, while the AV-8s could sprint away at the speed of sound, around 580 knots at sea level, the V22 had its balls hanging out at around 270 to 280 knots. With a top speed of well over 1000 knots, an F-16 would mow them down. There was no alternative but to engage the Indons and either try to shoot them out of the sky or persuade them to go home. Toad and his wingman were above and behind the F-16s. With a bit of luck, the Indons’ radar might not have picked them up.

As only Murphy’s Law could predict, Major Shidyahan crossed over the end of the channel at the same time as the V22 exited it. Shidyahan’s eyes went wide at his sheer good fortune when he looked over the nose of his Falcon and saw the V22 sitting in his one o’clock low position like a fat grey cockroach waiting to be stomped on. He selected heaters and went for a tone. He couldn’t get one. The angle was rear three-quarter. Perhaps the thing’s engines weren’t radiating enough heat for a lock. Shidyahan toggled through to gun mode. He had to be quick. His mind calculated angles and speeds. With a little deft feathering of the throttle, he might just manage to get off a burst of cannon into the odd-looking aircraft before overshooting it.

The V22 shook as a handful of 20 mm shells ripped into it and exploded, punching jagged holes in the fuselage and across the upper wing. The V22 staggered and the engine pitch heaved to a different, desperate note. Oil and smoke exploded with a ball of orange flame from the port engine. The sudden change in torque loadings threw the aircraft into a temporarily divergent flight path. The odd motion brought the paper bag back in front of Suryei’s face. She took a quick look around. No one seemed hurt, but she could see blue sky through the ragged holes in the ceiling.

Toad did a conversion turn, another half loop, putting his AV-8 on an F-16’s tail. The Indon was already pulling up into a high-g yo-yo, positioning itself for another run at the Osprey. Whatever damage it was capable of causing on its first pass was done and there was nothing Toad could do about it. He swore and hoped that the V22 was not in a terminal state.

Suryei’s eyes nervously flicked over the V22’s interior. The SAS soldiers were all in their seats. Astonishingly, one of them, Ellis, Lance Corporal Ellis — yes, that was his name — was asleep, a little drool running from one corner of his mouth onto the headrest. She wanted to kick him awake.

On the flight deck, the pilots quickly brought the aircraft back under control. They realised they’d been hit when a ribbon of tracer arced across the nose of the plane and the airframe shook with impacts. This was the first time the V22 had seen action, let alone received battle damage. They were now way outside the aircraft’s test envelope, charting territory only explored in simulation. How she would perform in the real world was a mystery that would now be revealed. The instruments indicated that the port engine was next to useless. Oil pressure was nonexistent and the temps were well into the red. Fuel pressure was dropping. Fortunately, the starboard engine appeared to be running sweetly with temps and pressures all normal.

The co-pilot shut the port engine down while the captain went to full power on the remaining turbofan. A shaft running through the Osprey’s wing automatically transferred power from the good engine to the failed engine’s rotor, preventing the torque imbalance that would have made the aircraft virtually impossible to fly.

The Osprey’s pilots were surprised at how well the aircraft took the damage. The flight computers had assessed the radically altered static and dynamic loads on the aircraft and adjusted the outputs to the control surfaces accordingly. They’d had this sort of scenario in the simulator, of course. It was reassuring, and somewhat surprising given the plane’s uncertain flight test history, to know that, for once, reality was presenting nothing different to the virtual.

The engine nacelles had only just finished transitioning to the horizontal position, the V22 approaching its cruising speed, when the aircraft took the hits. The Osprey had immediately dived for the nearest cover, a deep ravine at right angles to its track, and in the opposite direction to that of the three F-16s that ripped through the air overhead.

Going on the offensive was Toad’s only alternative. No communication with the Osprey was necessary; they could all see each other on their radar screens courtesy of the AWACS. Unseen by the Indon pilots, he accelerated quickly to the AV-8’s maximum velocity and shot under the F-16s as they climbed. The AV-8s reached a low escarpment with an overhang just as the F-16s completed their 180-degree course change, flying inverted high overhead. Toad and his wingman threw their thrust vectors into reverse, bringing their aircraft to such a violent negative-g stop that their eyeballs felt as if they would be plucked out of their sockets. Toad hovered there with his wingman, hidden from the F-16s by the overhang, and watched horrified as their fuel levels dropped before their eyes, the AV-8’s Pegasus engines gulping through the juice like dehydrated athletes after a long race.

Major Shidyahan was feeling angry and vengeful and, he had to admit, also pretty damn good for the first time all day. He had an enemy to shoot at, at last. And he also knew pretty much where that enemy would be — somewhere in his slipstream. He didn’t care who they were. They had fired on him, murdered his comrades, wrecked his squadron’s beautiful F-16s. He would kill them for it.

The F-16 was responding well to his commands. Today, Major Shidyahan was at one with the aircraft. Had he not just evaded a deadly AMRAAM? He would be the toast of his squadron tonight. Maybe even a little secret alcohol perhaps? He had time to reflect on the hero’s welcome he would receive as the F-16’s nose came around. The V22 was just where he knew it would be, in his sights, even though it was trying to evade him by diving down another channel. This time, there’d be no overshoot. He selected heaters and closed for the kill.

Shidyahan throttled back. He wanted to make absolutely sure this time, but then the fear that every fighter pilot gets of something hiding in his six, in the blind spot behind him, filled him with a moment of paranoia and made the flesh on the back of his neck tingle. He glanced around, straining as he tried to take in as much sky as possible. The Falcon’s bubble canopy provided panoramic views, but when a threat could come from any quarter, the view was never perfect.

The F-16 roared over the ledge shielding Toad and his wingman from sight. Toad smiled as the F-16 shot past. The hunted was now the hunter. He’d lost the ACI from the AWACS again but this time he was prepared for it. He made a brief call to his wingman to sort out targets. When they were both a suitable distance behind the F-16s, they selected their AIM-9s, and counted down from three. At zero, both brought their missiles’ infrared targeting systems to bear on the opposite outside F-16s, which they chose for maximum weapons separation. It took less than a second for the locked-on tone to sound in their headphones, indicating that their missiles had chosen a target. Toad and his wingman pressed the fire buttons on their control side sticks simultaneously. The missiles instantly accelerated from their wingtip rails.

The two targeted F-16s had time to make panicked half-turns away from the centre aircraft before the high-explosive warheads in the AIM-9s detonated behind their engines. The lock tone provided by the F-16s’ threat indicators barely gave the pilots any time to react, let alone begin effective evasion. Toad watched both aviators eject as their crippled aircraft nosed forward and broke up in the sky, rolling over into fireballs and spraying the canopy below with liquid flame and molten aluminium.

Major Shidyahan bugged out of the engagement. He had flown in with five other aircraft, the pride of the TNIAU, with men he had loved and respected as fine aviators, professionals and warriors. Now, most of those comrades were dead, and all the aircraft except his had been shot down. Shidyahan was filled with rage and frustration. He was against a force with superior weapons and tactics and he felt he had no choice. Whatever these people — these Americans — were doing illegally in Indonesian airspace, he was powerless to prevent. The major executed a 180 degree turn just as his engines started sucking vapour. Fuel! He couldn’t remember hearing the low-fuel warnings in his headphones. He tried to gain as much height as he could but his airspeed was low. There was no alternative and he pulled the ejection handles. The bubble canopy blew off and rocket charges blasted the major’s seat clear of the doomed aircraft.

‘Ferret Leader. Ferret Rotor. We have cannon shell damage and falling fuel gauges. We will need a tanker in approximately thirty minutes.’

Jesus! The V22 had indeed taken hits. ‘Roger that, Ferret Rotor,’ Toad responded. This sortie was going to hell, just as things were starting to look up.

‘Ferret Handler. Bandits. Bandits. Bandits. Seven. Repeat seven. West. Eighty-five miles. Angels ten. Heading zeroniner-zero.’

Toad wished he hadn’t tempted the Big Feller Upstairs by blaspheming. Things were about to get really fucking hot.

The call from Ferret Handler, the AWACS, sounded mighty familiar. It was almost identical to the call that had announced the arrival of the previous flight of F-16s. Only this time there were more bandits, and he had only one missile left, and merely a heater at that.

They really had to get the hell out of Dodge now. Toad’s eyeballs stood out on stalks when he checked his fuel pressure. It was touch and go whether he’d even make it back to the tanker, let alone a friendly carrier deck. He looked across at his wingman and got a hand signal for low fuel from him. Fuck-all ordnance, fuck-all fuel. They wouldn’t last another round of air-to-air combat.

‘Ferret Rotor. Are you airworthy?’ Toad enquired.

‘Affirmative, Ferret Leader. Some damage. One engine gone. She’s flying well but losing fuel.’

‘Ferret Rotor. Time to go. Do you have a maximum estimated cruise speed?’

‘Estimate cruise two-fife-zero…’

Toad was impressed. The V22 had taken hits, lost an engine, and had who knows what other damage, yet it was still capable of flying at 250 knots, only a handful of knots shy of the maximum cruise speed available when both engines were turning. Toad had that clammy feeling on the back of his neck. The fresh Indon fighters could jump them at any time, and probably would. There was nothing they could do about it, except fly as low and as fast as they could, hugging the ground where radar was least effective. And keep their fingers crossed.

Toad saw on his screen the seven bandits approaching from the west at 3000 metres. About three minutes remained to interception. Toad guessed that they would be able to survive the first pass — maybe — but the V22’s goose was cooked. Their options had run out. It was goodnight.

Then six new idents appeared on the screen, closing on the group of fighters from the east at frightening speed. The Indonesian planes scattered like chaff before them. Toad looked up and saw six missiles cross the sky 1000 metres above him from right to left: AMRAAMs. Jesus — a beautiful sight.

‘Finger-lickin’, this is Hound dog inbound from the east. Apologies for the dee-lay,’ drawled the thick Louisiana accent.

Major Toad Sanders was up for Colonel and the word was out. Colonel Sanders. He smiled. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard jokes about changing his call sign from Toad to Finger-lickin’, or even Secret Herbs and Spices, for Christ’s sake!

Three new idents appeared on Toad’s screen, inbound at phenomenal speed. Super Hornets. The navy’s new all-purpose attack fighter. A beautiful plane. In fact, Toad had to admit that he would have welcomed even a few determined Cessnas.

The Indonesian fighters were dispersing, the fate of the last flight of F-16s having stolen their bravado. They departed as quickly as full afterburner could take them. Two AMRAAMs found their marks. The other four timed out, but their job was done.

Three F/A-18Es lined up beside the AV-8s and saluted Toad and his wingman. Toad acknowledged the salute from the naval aviators with a wave. Navy dweebs. At that moment, he loved every damn one of the sons of bitches. They would take over the duty of sweeping for the V22. The Super Hornets peeled away from the formation. Toad radioed the tanker to stand by. It was unlikely he’d make it unless the tanker could meet him inside Indonesian airspace. As it was, he’d be flying on fumes, and his wingman was in the same shit.

As the Indonesian coastline slid behind the V22, its passing was acknowledged by the Australians with relief. But the news wasn’t all good. Curry was dead. Beck had been out of his seat as soon as the plane had stopped bouncing through the sky. He’d worked feverishly by Curry’s side for a minute but couldn’t do anything for him. Shrapnel from one of the exploding shells had entered his skull behind the ear, severing the spinal cord before exiting.

Suryei looked on helplessly. There was no justice in it. The man was an easy victim, held down by straps in the stretcher so that death couldn’t miss. She looked up at the flapping fabric around the holes in the aircraft’s ceiling and tempered her criticism of the fates. Most, if not all of them, had been bloody lucky. They could easily have been blown out of the sky, or a shell could have found her. Joe opened his eyes and forced a smile. ‘The feature over yet?’ he asked, sweat sheening his forehead.

Joe was always ready with a quip, thought Suryei. She liked that. Mostly, she reminded herself. ‘How you feeling?’

‘Only hurts when I breathe.’ Joe shifted slightly in his seat, the pain disfiguring his face.

‘You want another shot?’ she asked.

‘No thanks. Gives you bad dreams. Been in a plane crash, shot at… Bloody scary.’ The aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence jolting Joe in an awkward way. The pain almost made him pass out. ‘Well, maybe a bit later,’ he said, grunting with the effort needed to keep the pain under control.

Wilkes returned to his seat, sliding in beside Suryei. He was angry about losing Curry. Angry at himself, although he knew that wasn’t very logical. What could he have done? It was just bad luck. At least Curry would have died instantly.

Wilkes reflected on the mission. It had already taken on the perspective of a dream half remembered. The whole thing seemed surreal, vicious.

Suryei was frowning, examining the blood and dirt crusted on Wilkes’s face. He felt her eyes on him. ‘I’m okay,’ he said, before she could ask. He’d completely forgotten about his own wound. His nerve endings were still numb from the shock. ‘Cut myself shaving.’ Wilkes looked across at the bodies of Curry and Gibson, rocking gently with the motion of the aircraft. He recalled their faces. Gibbo and Curry. They’d been mates. All the men in his section were mates. They risked their lives together, drank together, lived and died together. It was difficult losing people you were close to, but he’d lost them before and, no doubt, he’d lose more in the future. But that knowledge did nothing to ease the regret.

More than a few men had died on this day, and not just Australians. The Indonesian soldiers and airmen — they were just doing their job. It was their territory and they were just defending it against uninvited intruders.

McBride appeared beside Wilkes. Neither of the men had their headphones on. There was now a lot of noise in the cabin caused by the airflow ripping through the holes in the fuselage. The cacophony gave them privacy. ‘Everyone else okay, mate?’ shouted the captain.

There’s that word… ‘mai-yt’. Jesus, the Yanks sure knew how to murder the English language. There was something about this captain that didn’t fit, things he’d said. McBride had known his identity when they’d arrived at the carrier — so right from the first, something had been wrong about this bloke. Also, he seemed more informed about the mission and what had led up to it than a captain in the Marines had a right to be. We’ve got a proper military sat on this for you now… Wilkes was not even aware that the satellite intelligence he had in his possession was anything other than military. And then there was that comment as they’d come aboard just now: Joe Light, alive! Amazing! What was so special about Joe? Wilkes decided to go fishing. ‘What have you got to do with all this, McBride? You’re not a Marines captain, are you?’

McBride’s smile disappeared, as if a cloud had passed over his face. He held Wilkes’s stare. ‘Yes. And no.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s not important.’

‘Bullshit! What can it hurt, Charles — Chuck — if that’s your real name?’ Wilkes knew he was right. The captain, if he was a captain, was more than likely some kind of agency spook. But whose? ‘Look,’ he said, holding his temper in check, ‘there are more than four hundred dead people back there. I’ve lost two men. I want to know why they had to die. I’ve got a feeling you have the answer to that. So tell me! What the hell’s going on here?’ It wasn’t often that Wilkes got angry, but he was working himself up to it.

What would it hurt? thought the captain. There wasn’t much he could or would divulge about the NSA, but there was nothing really preventing him from giving up his cover. And the sergeant had a point. He’d certainly earned the right to know more than he did. ‘Look, Sarge, there ain’t nothin’ sinister goin’ on here. The name really is Charles McBride. Once upon a time I was a Marine looey working in special ops. Now I’m National Security Agency.’

‘Well thank you, Chuck. Nice to meet the real you,’ said Wilkes sarcastically. ‘What’s the NSA’s interest in this shite?’

‘We unravelled this puzzle — one of our guys back in Maryland. I’m out of Canberra, keeping an eye on things for SIGINT, Stateside. We don’t usually get involved at this level, on the ground so to speak but, well, call it a reward for being on the ball. Fact is, all this caught everyone napping. The US has been building up its intel infrastructure throughout Asia over the last couple of years — since all those religious crackpots came out of the woodwork — but it seems we’ve still got a few gaping holes to fill. And a few lessons to learn. We should be able to put a country like Indonesia under the microscope and prevent this kind of thing from happening, but obviously we can’t. Yet.’ The captain shrugged.

‘A stable Indonesia is important not just to the region, but to the world. A Muslim nation that’s actually friendly to the West? No one wants that boat rocked. Now, if the wrong regime gets in power…’ he raised his eyes to the ceiling, ‘it could do a hell of a lot of damage throughout the rest of Asia, and the Muslim world. And that interests the hell out of us.’

Wilkes looked McBride over. He wasn’t sure what answer he was expecting, but at least his hunch was proved right.

‘He can tell you more than I can,’ said the captain, nodding at Joe.

‘I need to use that radio.’ Wilkes looked around: it was Suryei. He saw the determination on her face, the grit that had kept the woman alive and out of the rifle sights of the Indonesian soldiers.

‘I’m sorry, Miss, but there are no radio broadcasts, and especially not until we’re clear of Indonesian airspace,’ said McBride, weighing in.

‘No, I’m sorry but you don’t understand.’

‘Suryei, I know I said you could use the radio, but I have no clearance for that use.’ Wilkes’s tone suggested that argument was pointless. ‘There are obviously security issues involved here that go way beyond my mission parameters.’

Suryei’s temper flared. Jesus Christ! She hadn’t survived the last three days to be patted on the head and told to run along. But then she thought that maybe these guys had their reasons for doing things. They did this stuff for a living. She calmed herself down and thought things through. Suryei wasn’t sure about the American. But the Australian sergeant? She liked him. And she trusted him. Hadn’t he just risked his life for her? Suryei wanted to pass on her knowledge, unburden herself, make someone else responsible. What she knew was too much for one person to keep secret. And who, exactly, was she going to call anyway? She didn’t know anyone in power, except maybe her former editor. Jesus! She kicked herself. Of course, the paper!

‘There’s nothing stopping you from telling us,’ Wilkes said.

Fair enough, thought Suryei. She could tell the man who’d saved her life. She owed him that much at the very least. Images from the past three days swam before her eyes. ‘The plane crash. Surviving it was just luck. Then the Indonesian soldiers arrived. I thought they were there to rescue us. I told you — they shot an old couple in cold blood, survivors like Joe and me. I ran… Joe…’ It wasn’t coming out quite as controlled as Suryei had hoped. She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

‘Joe and I, we found one of the engines from the plane in the jungle. We saw remains of a missile inside it — an Indonesian missile. Joe freaked. It suddenly all made sense to him.’

‘What made sense to him?’ asked Wilkes.

‘Why the plane was shot down, the Indonesian soldiers hunting us. When Joe was back on the plane, he’d hacked into the Indonesian army’s computer and found something they obviously wanted to keep to themselves. Somehow, the Indonesians traced the call back to the Qantas plane.’

McBride didn’t know where to look. This conversation was getting dangerously close to US national security issues. He’d been briefed on COMPSTOMP. Its continued secrecy was imperative.

‘What did he find?’ Wilkes asked.

‘Plans to invade Australia.’

‘Shit!’ said Wilkes.

‘That’s why they blew us out of the sky.’

McBride felt hot, sweat flaring on his forehead. The 747 had been shot down as an indirect result of the NSA’s desire to earn an income outside of government funding. So many people were now dead because of that. He felt the urge to apologise, but couldn’t. It was a desire and a failure he would have to live with. ‘Have you any idea how much the authorities in Australia will want to put Joe through the wringer?’ he said instead, changing the subject.

Suryei wasn’t listening. She was seeing the invasion map Joe had described to her. Strangely, she visualised it in her head as if she’d been the one who’d found it. Australia was gone. In its place was Selatan Irian Jaya, Southern High Victory. When? When would the invasion begin?