“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
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 the 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.
“These bastards are getting some help,” said Lieutenant Juno. “Can we get air support back here?”
Turk heard the call from the forward operating base that they were under fire, but without target data for the mortars, there was little they could do at the moment. In the meantime he and Cowboy had their hands full dealing with the two UAVs, which had juiced their engines and were maneuvering to engage the American F-35Bs.
“Trying to climb above us, right?” said Cowboy.
“Yeah,” answered Turk. Deciphering what they would do next wasn’t that hard; it was figuring out three moves from now that was difficult.
Turk was struck by the fact that the planes were acting differently than they had the day before — rather than trying to remain undetected, they were going out of their way to make their presence known, changing their headings to make their profiles as wide as possible for the F-35 radars to pick up.
Why?
If these had been Sabres or even Flighthawks, it would be because they’d learned something from the earlier encounters. And they were trying to use that to some advantage.
So what had he learned from the earlier encounter? And what would they have expected him to learn, and then do?