by Dale Brown
“So, bottom line, Captain Mako,” said Rubeo, thankfully interrupting the analyst’s dissertation. “Target them at long range, and don’t let them behind you.”
McCarthy turned to him. “I’ll defer to Captain Mako on the precise tactics,” he said. “But you have it in a nutshell.”
“That’s pretty much the best way to deal with any enemy,” said Turk, even though he knew it was much easier said than done in this case.
“Good luck, Turk,” said Breanna.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He switched off the feed and went to get suited up.
16
The Cube
JONATHON REID STOPPED Breanna as she started to leave the situation room.
“A minute alone?” he asked.
“Of course.” She glanced around. Except for the two duty officers at the front, everyone else had left to take a break or get something to eat.
“I couldn’t help but notice, you looked a little upset,” said Reid, his voice barely above a whisper. “Are you worried about the operation?”
“I’d feel better if we had all our assets in place,” said Breanna. “And if we had a full force.”
“We will in another eighteen hours.”
“The UAVs will probably come with this attack,” said Breanna. “We really should have our people there. In a perfect world—”
“In a perfect world we’d all be millionaires. But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”
“Things aren’t right with Turk. He doesn’t trust me.”
“Why not?”
“Iran. The order I gave Stoner.”
“You did what you had to do,” said Reid. “Right?”
“I know, but . . . I can’t take back the fact that if he was killed, it would have been on my orders. My fault. My responsibility.”
“And what about the several million people your order saved?” asked Reid. “That mission—if we hadn’t destroyed the bombs, don’t you think Iran would have used them at some point?”
“It’s more complicated than that. And maybe they wouldn’t have,” added Breanna. “We don’t know.”
“That’s true. We can’t see the future. What we do know is what happened—the bombs were destroyed, and Turk is still alive.”
“No thanks to me.”
“On the contrary. You sent the one person who had a chance of saving him. You don’t give yourself credit for that. Why not?”
“Because Turk doesn’t,” said Breanna.
17
Malaysia
TURK STEADIED THE F-35B into a comfortable orbit at 20,000 feet. The night was clear, with not even a whisper of wind. The plane felt solid around him, responding precisely to every input. Taking off the other day, he’d been unsure of himself, and the aircraft seemed to have sensed it, reacting with slight jerks and the occasional stutter through the early parts of the flight. Now his muscles moved with smooth assurance, and the plane responded accordingly.
Cowboy flew about a half mile ahead in Basher One. They had the sky to themselves.
“Two, scope’s clean. How you lookin’?” asked the Marine, telling Turk he had no radar contacts.
“Copy. Same. Systems are good. Looks like you dialed up an easy one for us.”
“The night is still young,” answered Cowboy. “Ospreys are off the mat in zero-two.”
“Roger that, I copy,” said Turk.
As soon as the aircraft carrying the Marine assault units were off the ground, Cowboy swung south, aiming to overfly the area where the rebels were advancing. A Marine UAV was already in the vicinity, providing real-time infrared reconnaissance.
Turk stayed with the Ospreys, tucking down toward 12,000 feet. The transport aircraft were far lower, close to the jungle treetops, hugging the curve of the Earth as they sped south.
Three miles from the landing zone the lead Osprey began to slow. The flaps on its wings deployed as they approached the LZ, and with the airspeed gently dropping, the long engines and their massive rotors began to rotate. The aircraft seemed to swing out as if they were on a trapeze, descending smartly to the ground.
The landing area was a hard-packed dirt road, and there was only room for one of the aircraft at a time. The second Osprey banked a short distance to the north, revolving slowly around a hilltop. Within a minute and a half the Marines on Osprey One were off; it rose and its companion came in. Ninety seconds after touching down, the second aircraft pulled up, having disembarked its platoon.
Still escorting the rotobirds, Turk swung back in the direction of the base. His sensors scanned the air at long range to make sure the enemy UAVs hadn’t chosen this moment to appear. The Ospreys had a short run back, but they were extremely vulnerable to enemy aircraft, with no weapons to defend themselves.
Cowboy remained over the LZ. He made radio contact with Captain Thomas and the CCTs—combat controllers—with each platoon.
While the Corps had its own personnel trained to act as ground controllers, they sometimes “borrowed” similarly trained men from different services. In this case they had two of the profession’s finest: Air Force special ops pararescuers, both of whom had seen action in Libya just a few months before, working clandestinely with the rebels there.
The Air Force combat controllers were descendants of the World War II pathfinders, paratroopers who’d dropped into Europe ahead of D-day. As the war evolved, the pathfinders had called in air strikes, helping the allies move quickly across Europe. Given jeeps and allowed to ride with the tanks in Patton’s spearhead, the small band of sky-dropping daredevils had revolutionized warfare.
In the contemporary military, their Air Force descendants trudged through the mud and gravel alongside troops from every service, from “ordinary” grunts to Tier One SEALs. Able to do anything from locating the landing zone for a parachute drop to creating an airfield in the middle of a jungle, their job today was to direct air strikes if things got hairy. They’d spent a month working with the MEU on the other side of the island. Cowboy had worked with both; they recognized his voice as well as his call sign, and gave him a little bit of ribbing along with their sitrep.
It was a sign that things were going well, Turk thought—they didn’t fool around when the situation was tight.
With the Ospreys safely home, Turk returned, taking a high track above and slightly behind the figure eight Cowboy was cutting in the area. He stayed at 18,000 feet—high enough to assist in a ground attack if necessary, while still at an altitude he thought sufficient to deal with the UAVs.
Both F-35s carried two AMRAAM air-to-air missiles in one of their bays, along with a pair of Sidewinder infrared heat-seekers on their wings. Because of the way the aircraft was designed, the wingtips of the F-35B were bare; the Sidewinders were mounted on the last of three hard points on each wing. That left the other four external points and one internal bay for a mix of Redeye cluster bombs and “small” SBD-II bombs. The SBDs were fitted four to a rack, giving the two aircraft considerable versatility if called on for ground support.
Twenty minutes of flying loops and crazy eights left Turk bored, and he found himself half wishing the UAVs would appear. He knew it was wrong—bad karma and all that—but still, he was ready.
Finally, the lead segment of rebels left the jungle and headed for the road north, aiming directly at the ambush point Captain Thomas had plotted. But only a few minutes passed before they left the road again, splitting into two columns along the western side and moving north. The move complicated things for the Marines, but they quickly adjusted, setting up an ambush about a mile deeper in the jungle. That was a good thing for the F-35s—it gave them a little more room to maneuver without going over the border. While Indonesia was powerless to stop them, it had radars in the area able to detect the F-35s when they were carrying weapons under their wings, and any transgression of the border would bring protests at the UN.
On the ground, time was moving quickly; the Marines were hustling through the jungle as quickly as they could
, scrambling to make sure they were in place. In the air, time dragged. Turk rehearsed a dozen scenarios in his head, then rerehearsed them.
“They’re saying zero-five from contact,” Cowboy told Turk after the Marine controller with West Force checked in.
“Roger, I heard.”
“I have nothing on long-range scan.”
“Copy,” said Turk.
“They engage the lead elements, and then we get called in if they have enough of a target for us,” said Cowboy, who was simply repeating the basic briefing. Turk realized he was bored, too. “We may not have a target in the early stages.”
“Roger. Got it.”
“There’s a hill about two miles south of the ambush point, overlooking the road,” added Cowboy. “I’m thinking that if the rebels retreat, they may try to take a stand there. We may end up hitting that position.”
“Copy.”
As Turk began scanning for the position, West Force radioed that they had made contact and taken the rebels under fire. Now came the hardest part of the mission for the pilots: waiting for something to happen, while knowing that the guys on the ground were taking fire.
The battle on the ground—in a jungle, at night, in terrain unfamiliar to both sides—was a confusing mélange of explosions, bullet rounds, and blind cursing. The Malaysians and Americans had the advantage of night vision and superior communications; the rebels had numbers. Surprise was a factor at first, and greatly aided the American force. Their initial volleys of fire drove the rebels back in confusion. But the thick jungle made it difficult to see even with the night gear, and before the allied force could take real advantage, the rebels rallied. The two columns retreated and then consolidated. Better trained or at least better disciplined than the force the day before, the rebels managed to organize a line of defense along a stream that ran down the center of a shallow rift. Lying on the high side of the ground, they used machine guns to stop the Malaysian and Marine squads pursuing them.
But that just gave Cowboy and Turk something to do. With a clear line marking where the enemy was, Basher One and Two went to work.
In the not too distant past, precision ground support meant getting very close and personal to the target—the lower, the better. That subjected the airman to a fair degree of danger from the ground. Most enemy soldiers didn’t particularly like being bombed, and could be expected to fire whatever they had at their attackers. Even a rifle could potentially bring down an airplane; there were, in fact, stories of American soldiers in the Pacific taking down Japanese airplanes with their M-1s by striking the pilot.
Getting close to the enemy still worked well in certain situations and with certain weapons, but in this case it was unnecessary. The small-diameter smart bombs the F-35s were using allowed the pilots to hit targets beyond sixty nautical miles—making the word “close” in close-air support a misnomer. With a multimode sensor—the bomb could be directed to its target by radar, infrared, and laser as well as GPS and an inertial guidance system—the weapon was as versatile as it was accurate.
Officially, the bombs had a margin of error that allowed them to strike within about a four meter radius of any given target. Unofficially, the margin of error was much less than that, depending on the guidance mode.
Just inside five miles from the target area, Basher One unleashed four bombs, all guided by GPS locations that he had double-checked with the friendlies on the ground. The bombs hit in a staggered line on the rebel side of the creek, devastating the middle of their position and eliminating both machine guns.
“Woo-hooo,” said the controller over the radio as the explosions lit the sky. “Good hits!”
Now it was Turk’s turn. He lined up his crosshairs on a cluster of rebels about three hundred yards farther south and closer to the road. Coded with the GPS coordinates from the F-35’s weapons system, the two bombs he dished sped toward their destiny. With those off, Turk moved to a second cluster of bad guys in the jungle to the west about a quarter of a mile away. There were about thirty rebels there, gathering for a counterattack; with more area between them and the Marines and a larger count to boot, Turk selected his cluster bombs. The weapons were like dump trucks carrying small packages of destruction; rather than concentrating hundreds of pounds of explosives in a single area, they spread out smaller bomblets, showering the enemy positions.
Turk got another ya-hoo for his efforts.
The air strikes broke the rebels’ will. They retreated in confusion and panic, small groups of two and three men bolting through the trees in the general direction of the Indonesian border. The American and Malaysian ground units moved south, capturing stragglers and the wounded. The battle was done. It had lasted less than half an hour.
Back to being bored, Turk blew into his mask. The muscles in his shoulders and his forearms ached, not from exertion but from the almost unconscious tension. His flight suit was damp; he’d been sweating the entire time without even realizing it. It might be a push-button war in a lot of ways, but it was still war; danger waited at the edges, always ready to push its own buttons.
“How’s your fuel?” asked Cowboy from Basher One.
“Good,” said Turk, checking the gauges. “I have about an hour before bingo.”
“Copy. Me, too. You fight well, Air Force. So when are you joining the Corps?”
“When are you joining the Air Force?”
“The hell with the Air Force. I want to be in Whiplash,” said Cowboy. The serious note in his voice surprised Turk.
“Really?”
“Hell, man. You bet.”
“It’s not as glamorous as you think.”
“From what I’ve heard, it’s even better.”
“I don’t know about that . . .”
“I’m serious.”
“I can tell,” said Turk.
“We’ll talk about it when we get down.”
Turk started to acknowledge, but Cowboy suddenly sounded an alert.
“Two bogie contacts, bearing 290 degrees, moving like all hell,” said the Marine pilot. “Gotta be the UAVs—looks like our night is about to get a lot more interesting.”
CLOSING IN
1
Malaysia
DANNY FREAH LISTENED to the progress of the battle via radio as he watched the feeds from the Global Hawk and the smaller battlefield UAV. As fractured and contradictory as they were, he felt the radio transmissions gave him a better sense of what was going on. They were more visceral, and he could judge from the excitement in the voices what the men on the ground were feeling about the battle.
They were done; it was over, it had been a good mission, and now things were going to be easy for a day or two or three.
The sudden appearance of the drones changed everything. The two aircraft popped up over the water a few miles from the coast. As they did, the elint-equipped Global Hawk II being commanded from back in the Cube detected a transmission.
The game was on.
“Basher Two, you see those aircraft?” asked Danny.
“Affirmative,” said Turk. “We just got them on radar. I was about to radio you.”
“Aircraft are considered hostile,” said Danny. “You are authorized to shoot them down.”
“Copy that. Basher One, you copy?”
“Basher One copies. We’re cleared hot. Bandits are hostile and will be engaged. I’m talking to ground now.”
Danny got up to reposition his slate computer against the console to his left. Just as he lifted it, the ground shook with two tremendous thuds. He lost his balance and fell to the ground as a third and a fourth round exploded, these much closer.
“Mortars!” yelled someone as Danny struggled to his feet.
“Find those mortars!” yelled Jack Juno, the lieutenant Thomas had left in charge at the base.
Danny got up and looked at the UAV screens to see if he could help. But the Marines were too fast for him.
“Located!” shouted one of the men working the radar that tracked t
he rounds.
“Well, get some fire on the damn thing!” shouted Juno as the shelling continued.
While the mortar radar had located the source of the rounds, the IR feed from the UAV didn’t detect anyone there. Danny punched into the Whiplash com line to ask for help.
He was surprised to hear Ray Rubeo’s voice.
“You’re under fire,” said the scientist.
“Yes.”
“Either your enemy is very lucky or they have an extremely thorough understanding of the technology the Marines are using. My vote is the latter, but it’s irrelevant,” he said. “You notice the thick foliage area where the mortars are firing from?”
“Affirmative.”
“They’ve come down parallel to the ridge and the stream that runs northwest—look at it on the map screen. There is enough water vapor from the stream to degrade the small sensors in the Marine UAV. This is a consequence of the IR-cut filter technology. It’s inexpensive, but as you see—”
Danny cut him off. “Doc, no offense, but I’m needing a solution here, not a dissertation on the way the different sensors work.”
“We’re going to divert the Global Hawk to the area and fly it at five thousand feet,” said Rubeo. “We’ll supply you parameters to readjust the radar in a moment.”
“If I do that, we can’t track the UAVs,” said Danny.
“What are the F-35Bs for?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Colonel, your aircraft can’t be in two places at one time, and at the moment your survival is paramount,” said Rubeo, his tone even more withering than usual.
“Right.”
The Marines had begun firing back at the mortars, but without noticeable effect. A new source joined in, this one targeting the mortar radar. Before the Marines could return fire, the radar was damaged and put out of commission.
