Sword of Allah

by David Rollins

  ‘What are you getting at, Atticus?’ Wilkes asked. ‘I think you know where you’re going here, but you’re losing me.’

  ‘I was at the embassy in Jakarta just after the bombing,’ said Monroe.

  ‘Yeah, I remember, but what’s that got to do wi–’

  ‘They weren’t after people in that attack. The explosives used were specifically formulated to take out the structure. The terrorists – these same people – wanted to make a statement,’ he said, emphasising the word. ‘They were hitting out at a symbol.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Wilkes. ‘I’m with you so far.’

  ‘So apply the same logic to Darwin and ask yourself what their point is. Where’s the symbolism, the statement?’ said Monroe, smoothing the map down on the bench, ironing it flat with his hands. ‘You want another example, look at 9/11. Bin Laden struck at a symbol of American power. Killing a bunch of people wasn’t the main game. From their point of view, they struck at the very heart of the monster, and made it reel. The civilian deaths were just a bonus. So let’s take another look at this map from that perspective and find the statement.’

  Wilkes and Monroe stared at the weather map and saw nothing but what was on the METFOR – outlines of countries, fronts and weather systems.

  ‘The effective deployment of something like VX depends on the weather,’ said Wilkes.

  Monroe gave Wilkes a strange look as if to say, ‘Yeah, Einstein, which is why we’re looking at this thing.’

  ‘The experts on this stuff say the conditions in Darwin right now are ideal.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Monroe.

  ‘Then the answer is in the isobars, these lines here. Isobars join areas of equal pressure.’

  Monroe nodded.

  ‘So as long as they remain equidistant from each other, those ideal weather conditions in Darwin exist wherever the lines go.’

  ‘Shit, Tom, you’re right,’ said Monroe, suddenly paying more attention to the lines that curved gently into the Timor Sea. ‘Then what’s under this area here?’

  ‘Oil and gas,’ said Wilkes, a fierce glare in his eyes. ‘You said it yourself, Atticus. Why does it have to be a population centre?’

  Australian Defence Force HQ, Russell Offices, Canberra, Australia

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Niven, when the Internet connection closed and the frame on the screen turned black. ‘What do you blokes think?’

  ‘I think Monroe and Wilkes have got it dead right,’ said Felix Mortimer, eating his favourite sandwich of white bread, chips and butter liberally soused with tomato sauce.

  Griffin looked at the unconscious doodle on the notepad on his knee. The word ‘shit’ was written, and it was surrounded by stars and exclamation marks. Wilkes and Monroe had followed a path of logic no one else had pursued. Darwin and Jakarta just seemed the natural targets, and the truth was, no one had looked much further than that. Except for Mortimer. He’d also thought Darwin wasn’t the target, but was too polite to say, ‘I told you so.’ As for Wilkes, he was obviously no ordinary grunt, and the CIA spoke highly of their man, Atticus Monroe. Just because they weren’t defence experts or strategists didn’t mean they had to be wrong, did it?

  ‘Let’s assume these boys are on to something – and I think we have to,’ Niven said. ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘Around twenty trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, for one thing. Oil, too. We did a paper on it six months ago,’ said Mortimer, his face sweating. A vague pain in his chest had suddenly intensified as if an invisible hand had pushed a hot knife through his breast. Is this normal? Am I okay? ‘There are thirty or forty rigs up there. The VX front could be tens of kilometres wide. If it rolls over three or four of them and maybe a research ship, we could be looking at up to a thousand deaths.’

  ‘Jesus…’ Niven was at a loss. What could be done to stop the drone in the time left? If Wilkes and Monroe were right, the assets were deployed in all the wrong places.

  ‘And once the VX settles, it’ll get into every crack,’ said Mortimer, unconsciously rubbing his chest, a dull pain in his left arm. ‘The rigs will be unusable for a very long time afterwards.’

  Griffin looked at Mortimer and saw that the man was in some kind of distress. ‘You okay, Felix?’

  Mortimer nodded. ‘Forget the casualties for a minute. That’s not what these terrorists are about. If the hit on the Timor Gap succeeds, it could start an oil crisis like the one back in the seventies. It could mean that terrorists are getting smart, targeting the West where it really hurts. Oil prices will skyrocket, especially if this and other groups follow up with a statement about this being the first of many strikes on oil installations, pipelines and refineries, tankers and such.’ Mortimer glanced around the room, looking for some water, wanting more than anything to splash some on his face.

  ‘Okay, so what have we got in the area?’ Griffin asked, certain the news wouldn’t be good.

  A quick review of the vast whiteboard covering one entire wall confirmed the worst. ‘One frigate, two F/A-18s and thirty-six thousand square kilometres of goddam ocean,’ Niven said, grinding his jaws.

  ‘Striking at an oil field, throwing the West into a panic…that would make a lot of sense if you’re a terrorist group bent on igniting nationalistic and religious fervour,’ said Mortimer with the strange sensation that he was talking, but that no sound was passing his lips. The impression was strengthened when he saw that neither Griffin nor Niven appeared to be listening to him, but he continued the thought anyway. ‘Those fields were Indonesia’s before East Timor’s independence and now they’re pretty much being developed by the West – us, mainly, with money from Shell and a few others. If a fundamentalist group like Babu Islam were to hit those fields with VX nerve agent, poisoning the infrastructure and killing a bunch of westerners into the bargain, what sort of fire –’

  ‘Jesus, Felix, are you okay?’ said Niven. Mortimer’s face was shaking and his skin had turned purple. The man’s eyes were bulging, fixed and staring.

  The hot knife in Mortimer’s chest had suddenly turned into a hand grenade with the locating pin removed. He fell to the floor, spilling his notes and his sandwich onto the carpet. The defence analyst clutched at his heart as the pain exploded within. And in that instant, the answer to the question of the number series suddenly became blindingly apparent to him. 1511472723. Something Niven said in an earlier meeting clicked. We’re banking on them being not significant. Suddenly, he knew exactly what the series meant. He tried to get the words out but they wouldn’t come and instead his mouth opened and closed several times soundlessly.

  Niven rolled Mortimer onto his back and began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Griffin was on the phone, calling for an ambulance. Niven knew it was pointless but he continued the heart massage, alternating with mouth to mouth. After several minutes of getting nowhere, he stopped.

  ‘Poor bugger,’ said Griffin.

  ‘Yeah.’ Niven’s own heart was racing and he took a few deep breaths to calm it. His mouth tasted of Mortimer’s sandwich and he spat out fragments of salt and vinegar crisps.

  ‘Hey, what’s this?’ Griffin was studying something on the floor.

  Niven stood, knees cracking, and went over to have a look. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  Griffin shook his head. He had no idea. Scratched into tomato sauce smeared across Mortimer’s notes was the word ‘swift’.

  Sirius 3, Bayu-Unadan field, Timor Gap, Timor Sea

  The rig manager’s throat was dry and swallowing didn’t help.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the drilling contactor, blinking. ‘How long is it going to take us to shut the platform down and get everyone off?’ He was new to the job, having spent most of his time on dry land in head office.

  ‘We’ve got two shifts, one of them asleep. Ninety people in all. We can pinch the drill string…twenty minutes.’

  ‘We’ve got ten.’

  Both men were vaguely paralysed by the news that the terrorist weapon was not t
argeted at Darwin, but at them. Or rather, the entire oil field. The news had just been conveyed via satellite link from Canberra by no less than the head of Australia’s defence forces himself, Air Marshal Ted Niven. Understandably, everyone on the rig with friends and family in the north of Australia had been preoccupied with the evacuation of the city ever since the prime minister’s shock address. And all the while they’d been the ones in the target zone. Right now, the platform had to be cleared, but the reasons for it would have to wait until they were bobbing in the Timor Sea. That was the air marshal’s advice – get into the lifeboats and motor upwind of their platform as fast as they could. Australian warships and merchant vessels were heading there now to pick them up.

  The rig manager hit the large red knob hard with the flat of his hand and the air around them suddenly filled with an ear-splitting wail. The rig was sitting on a trillion tons of explosive gas and everyone was well versed on the emergency evacuation procedures. All over the rig, the manager knew, the men and women would have one thing on their mind – to get the fuck off the platform now, now, now.

  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?’

  Indian Ocean, 25 000 feet

  ‘Boys, you are now the only show in town. Find it. Kill it.’

  ‘Roger, sir,’ said Corbet. Jesus, it was the defence forces commander himself, personally amending their orders. A Royal Australian Navy vessel had apparently reported a suspected sighting of the UAV. A few seconds of static in his ’phones told him the exchange with Canberra was done. ‘Shogun two. You get that?’

  ‘Loud and clear, sir,’ said the flying officer.

  Corbet waited while Burns finished topping up his tanks and backed away from the KC-130. Someone would no doubt vector the tanker to their rendezvous with the navy ship. They peeled away from the flying bowser.

  The power of the F/A-18’s General Electric F404-GE-400 turbofans pushed Flight Lieutenant Corbet back into his seat as the aircraft accelerated to .9 mach. Thirty miles out from the Arunta, they throttled back and began their descent. Within minutes, the frigate appeared suddenly out of the tropical mist like a ghost ship. They shot past it at five hundred feet then banked hard over to the north in a high g turn, condensation streaming from the wing roots, the massive drag bleeding off their speed.

  Drummond and Briggs had been tracking the inbound fighters on the screen. ‘Jesus,’ said Drummond, screwing up his face as the howl from their shrieking turbofans suddenly penetrated the bridge and concentrated in a vibration behind his eyes. He stepped out onto the waist briefly and watched the aircraft turn and bank sharply, decelerating at a rapid rate. ‘Okay, operations, you can patch me through,’ he said, walking back onto the bridge and closing the steel door behind him to minimise the aircraft noise feeding back into his microphone.

  ‘Arunta, Shogun one,’ said Corbet through the bridge’s PA system.

  ‘Shogun one, Arunta. Go ahead,’ Drummond replied.

  ‘I understand you’ve had a suspected sighting of the UAV.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘Request a snap vector to the sighting.’

  Drummond checked the monitor screen on the bench. It had been exactly twenty minutes since the UAV had possibly flown in and then out of his vision. ‘Fly heading one two
zero. Estimate position nose twenty-three miles.’

  Corbet repeated the instructions to ensure there was no confusion. The fighters flew directly overhead and the roar set up a buzz in one of the bridge’s thick glass panes overlooking the foredeck.

  ‘Good luck, Shogun one,’ said Drummond.

  ‘Thanks, Arunta, we’ll need it.’

  Commander Drummond exhaled and leaned forward over the display screen on the desk. The F/A-18s were now outbound heading east south-east. He picked up the binoculars from the steel bench and stepped towards the waist.

  ‘Sir,’ said Briggs, failing to contain his excitement, catching the commander before he walked into the wind. ‘Take a look at this.’ He led the commander over to a monitor. ‘We had some of the deck cameras on lookout. Seems your eyes weren’t deceiving you.’ Briggs rewound the tape and played it. The camera was trained on a patch of sea and the water rolled up and down with the swell. And then the UAV flew into the top third of the frame, banked right and disappeared.

  ‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ Drummond said under his breath. ‘Work out its track and let’s get it to those RAAF boys.’

  Corbet glanced over his left shoulder at the aircraft off his wing. This was Flying Officer Robert Burns’ first posting following advanced training and conversion to high performance jets. He was twenty-three years old and a good pilot. No, he was better than good. Frankly, you had to be God’s gift to aviation just to make it through the training and get to an operational fighter squadron. The kid was cocky, without being cocksure. And anyway, a bit of additood was SOP for a fighter jock. So far, the kid was handling himself well, but things were about to get tricky. The word ‘suicidal’ popped into his brain. This kind of flying in an F/A-18 was something no one trained for and, while Corbet would have been far more comfortable with an experienced pilot off his wing, Burns did have something that partway made up for his lack of experience. He had the best eyes in the squadron, cool grey orbs behind sleepy eyelids that possessed phenomenal acuity. One of the questions in Corbet’s mind was how to best use those eyes.