Sword of Allah

Arafura Sea, 15 000 feet

Seventy-fifth Squadron’s Flight Lieutenant Andrew Corbet and Flying Officer Robert Burns had taken off from RAAF Tindal base after sunrise and covered the three hundred odd kilometres tracking north-west to Darwin in around fifteen minutes — easy with a little application of afterburner at thirty thousand feet. They’d then been vectored low over the city, the third flight to do so, a bit of flag waving to reassure the city that the air force was on the job. Corbet glanced down as they skimmed the rooftops; it was more of a town really, small and vulnerable. His mind wandered to the drone. Finding it would be an almost impossible task — everyone at the squadron knew that — especially with F/A-18s. They climbed quickly to twenty-five thousand feet and accelerated to five hundred knots. They’d been given a patch of sky to search way out in the middle of nowhere — east of Ashmore Reef and the Cartier Islands where the Timor Sea met the Indian Ocean. During transit, they were given a complete sit-rep. The clock was definitely ticking.

‘Shogun one, Darwin control.’

‘Shogun one,’ Corbet replied.

‘Shogun one, squawk code 2907.’

‘Shogun one, squawking code 2907.’ Corbet keyed the numbers into the transponder.

‘Shogun one. Radar contact. Strategic Command confirms UAV launched and inbound Darwin. Repeat UAV inbound Darwin. Good luck, guys. Keep your eyes peeled,’ said the voice over the radio, becoming human all of a sudden.

Corbet breathed deeply into the oxygen mask and felt some of the stress ebb away. Funny, but a part of him was relieved that the nightmare was real at last, and not an exercise. They’d been told that intelligence sources had a UAV loaded with nerve agent possibly headed to Darwin. And now it had been confirmed. It was fact. ‘Shogun two. Did you get that?’ he asked Burns.

‘Roger, Shogun one. Now what?’

The question was rhetorical and Corbet knew it. He didn’t have a clue. Practically every serviceable aircraft the RAAF had was in the air — C-130s, Caribou, submarinehunting PC3 Orions, Hawk trainers and Hornets — searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack and all of these aircraft, with the possible exception of the slower flying C-130s, Orions and Caribous, were unsuited to the task.

It was apparent at the hurried mission briefing that the RAAF had a fair bit of intelligence on the target UAV itself, but that hardly helped. The Prowler cruised — or rather crawled — at around seventy knots. It was small, too, with a length just shy of three-point-three metres and a wingspan of just under five and a half metres. More than likely it would be hugging the wave tops and, to make matters still worse, its lines employed stealth technology augmented with radar absorbing material — RAM. On top of that, the RAM was tinted a pale blue, so not only was it almost invisible to radar, the naked eye would also be hard pressed to pick the UAV out against the sky or sea.

The F/A-18’s radar was the new, sexy APG-73 Raytheon unit that provided air-to-air and air-to-ground capability. It was truly an amazing piece of high-tech wizardry that gave the F/A-18 the reconnaissance capability equal to that of a U-2 spy plane. Or so the blurb from Raytheon promised. But it wouldn’t help them find a low-tech bug smasher a third the size of the Hornet flying low enough and slow enough to troll for fish. Even if they managed to be nose on to the UAV, the radar worked on the Doppler theory that measured and detected closing speeds. It wouldn’t ‘see’ the Prowler for the simple reason that the thing wasn’t travelling fast enough.

The other variable, just to make the task seem truly impossible, was that the UAV’s flight plan was unknown and, most probably, unpredictable. Okay, so it was heading for Darwin, but what were the chances that it would take the most direct route there? Unlikely. If he were a terrorist, Corbet reasoned, he’d get the UAV over Australian soil and have it approach the city from the south, apparently the route least expected for some reason that escaped him. So there was a chance the thing was already over the Australian coastline, coming up on Darwin from the blind side. If that were the case, with the RAAF’s assets all deployed over the sea, then it would deliver its deadly cargo unchallenged.

All Corbet and Burns could do was fly their designated patch of sky, low and slow, keeping their eyes on their fries. It didn’t escape either pilot that what they needed to help them find this thing was a miracle, pure and simple.