Sword of Allah

S10°51′12″ E126°17′09″, Timor Sea

Commander Drummond had brought Arunta through a forty-five degree course change and was now steaming south, the edge of the Timor Gap a few miles off its port beam, a long, curved white road of foam behind the stern. ‘Jesus wept,’ he muttered under his breath. Commander, the fact is we have your ship, two Hornets and a KC-130. That’s it. What happens from here on in is up to you and those aircraft. They’d received the message only minutes ago from Canberra. In other words, there was virtually nothing between the Bayu-Unadan gas and oil fields and a load of VX gas. So the target wasn’t Darwin after all. I wish the buggers would make up their bloody minds… Drummond was back out on the starboard wing with his Zeiss binoculars, scanning the horizon, the band of grey-white haze that obscured the transition between sea and sky.

Leading Seaman Mark Wallage stepped onto the confined space and announced himself to the captain.

‘Mark, you know the task. What are our chances of finding the UAV?’ said Drummond, scowling. It had been a long cruise and the men all knew each other well enough to dispense with rigid navy formality.

‘Sir, the Vectronics is an amazing piece of technology, but it’s not magic,’ he said, the airflow tearing the words from his mouth so that he had to shout. ‘The UAV we’re looking for’s designed not to be seen. It’s constructed with RAM — so we’d be lucky to get a primary even if it was sitting right on top of us. If we get it at all it’s likely to register on our screens like a couple of birds, and small ones at that. And if it’s clipping the waves like everyone suspects, well, for us to see it it’s going to have to pass within nine miles of us, otherwise it’s going to be over the horizon.’ And there’s a lot of bloody sea out there… ‘We’re going to be looking for it as hard as we can and we might get lucky, sir, but, frankly, the best chance we’ve got of finding it is if it knocks on our door and asks to borrow a cup of sugar.’

‘I think I get the picture. Okay, Mark, I know you’ll do your best.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the leading seaman, aware that his best wouldn’t be nearly good enough. ‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘On your way back, ask the XO to join me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Drummond scanned the horizon again while he waited for the executive officer. ‘Captain?’ said Briggs moments later.

‘X, how many pairs of these have we got on board, do you think?’ Drummond asked, holding up his binoculars.

‘No idea exactly, sir, but there’d be a few.’

‘Post as many lookouts around the ship as possible. Looks like eyeballs are the best chance we’ve got of finding the damn thing.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Briggs, the hopelessness of the task now confirmed by their reliance on binoculars.

Drummond resumed his search. He trained the lenses on the horizon, realising as he did so that the UAV could pass the ship closer in and he’d miss it completely. He followed an albatross heading away from the boat, watching it wheel and bank through the sky on its three-metre wingspan. The bird’s flight was graceful and flowing, carving circles against a background of mist. And then it abruptly shifted course, appearing to stop in mid air before climbing rapidly. Drummond lowered the binoculars to see what had spooked it and saw what appeared to be a handful of flying fish flickering across the wave tops. And that’s when he saw it. Or at least, he thought he saw it, a patch of water that — oddly — appeared to be travelling faster than the sea around it.

‘Mark,’ he said, finding it hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘You back in operations?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wallage as he sat in his seat.

‘forty-five degrees off the starboard bow,’ said the captain. ‘What do you see?’

‘Intermittent contacts, sir. Hard to tell. Could be a couple of birds,’ said the radar op.

‘I saw one bird out there,’ said Drummond, ‘not two. Mark that spot!’ he commanded. ‘Anything else?’ Drummond was talking into his microphone out on the ship’s waist but the exchange was heard over the bridge’s PA. Briggs picked up a pair of binoculars and hurried to join the captain.

‘There,’ said Drummond pointing in the direction of the sighting, but not taking his eyes from the binoculars. ‘A slow mover, fifteen or maybe twenty metres above the water.’ As he said it, the sea and the sky swallowed the shape, and it disappeared like a fragment of morning fog.

‘Can’t see it, sir,’ said Briggs, wondering whether he was looking in the right place.

‘Jesus Christ, X. I’m not sure it was there either,’ said Drummond after a handful of long seconds, trying to will the UAV into view.

‘Sir,’ said Briggs, lowering the binoculars and turning to the captain, ‘can you be sure it wasn’t there?’