“Can you see them?” Danny asked Fern.
“Negative.”
“We need to get closer and get their attention,” he said. “Drop when you see them.”
The UAV dipped down so low as it came to the shoreline that Turk thought for sure it was diving in. But it continued forward, accelerating to near Mach speed while still managing to fly bare inches over the top of the waves.
Turk could go either as low or as fast as the UAV. But not both. He stayed high, but even so, his passive infrared sensor lost the aircraft.
“Two, you still have him?” asked Cowboy.
“Stand by.” The long range scan caught the aircraft as it turned. “He’s got four miles on me, angling north. I’m losing ground.”
“Fast little devil.”
Little was the operable word, as far as the radar was concerned; depending on its angle to the sensors, the aircraft’s profile ranged from the size of a swallow to that of a bumblebee. The faceted silhouette had been designed to make it difficult to track from several common angles, rear included.
“I’m going to juice the afterburner and angle north,” Turk told Cowboy. “I can come on at a different angle and have a better chance of seeing him.”
“You better check your fuel, Air Force. We don’t have tankers waiting to gas us up.”
“Yeah. I think I can make it,” hedged Turk. He made a mental calculation — unless the UAV landed in ten minutes, he’d be into his reserves heading back. “You stay on the heading you’re at. I’ll do the tracking.”
“Roger that. Don’t run dry. It’s a long swim home.”
“Two,” said Turk, acknowledging with his call sign.
Danny saw flashes in the brush to his left a second before Fern dropped to his knees. A dozen shadows were moving about twenty yards ahead, focused on the base perimeter.
“There,” whispered Monk, coming up behind him.
“Yeah,” answered Danny.
Fern had his hand up, watching. Gunfire erupted from the base perimeter, which was roughly two hundred yards away on their left; the rebel vanguard was at the edge of the wood line in front of them, with more rebels behind, just to Danny’s right.
“Fire!” yelled Danny, pointing his rifle at the nearest shadows.
The enemy didn’t react at first, oblivious in their charge. But Danny’s gunfire found its mark, and before a full minute had passed the shadows stopped coming. They were on their bellies in the brush, either cut down or taking cover.
“Grenade!” yelled Fern, tossing one.
“Fire in the hole,” answered Monk, throwing one of his own.
Danny saw shapes moving on his right and fired, emptying his magazine. Fern threw another grenade, then a third, as the rebels turned to answer their fire.
Bullets pinged around them, the rebels changing their targets. Danny slid to the ground. Another mag was taped to the one he’d emptied; he loaded it and began returning fire, aiming at the flashes.
The grenades cut down a sizable portion of the rebel force. Confused and no longer confident, they began to fall back. The machine gun at the perimeter began to fire, and suddenly the main body of rebels was retreating. A mortar shell landed in the middle of their path, and the retreat turned into a rout. The assault had been broken.
“Fall back!” yelled Danny, concerned that they might be shot by their own forces if they pursued the fleeing rebels. “Let’s go.”
They moved back slowly, in proper order — the closest man to the enemy trotted back, tapping his companion as he passed, then taking up a position to lay down covering fire as the others repeated the process. In a few moments they reached the creek where they had started. Danny heard the drone of Ospreys in the distance — the reinforcements had arrived.
“Back to the perimeter,” he told his companions. “Good job.”
Turk found the little UAV on his left, six miles ahead of him. It was well over the water now, heading toward the collection of reefs and tiny islands off the coast.
The UAV had dropped its speed to five hundred knots. Turk lost his radar contact but found that he could make it reappear by tucking his nose down, subtly altering the angle of the radar waves without actually changing course. At 8,000 feet above sea level, he had just enough altitude to play with to keep the target aircraft on his screen.
He tried hailing the Whiplash operator back at the Marine base to see if he was picking up anything else from the Global Hawk, but got no answer.
The reefs and rocks below had long been a collection of hazards for mariners. Most of the rocks dotting the area were either submerged or too small to be inhabited, but there were larger islands in the Ebeling Reefs and the neighboring Sembuni Reefs to the north big enough for the aircraft to land on. Ships passing up from the Java Sea mostly steered through a channel to the west to avoid the hazards. The outer islands and reefs had lately become a haven for pirates, who, though not as accomplished as the pirates off Somalia, practiced the same sort of extortion.
Finally the UAV disappeared from his screen, and Turk couldn’t find it. He tucked down, rose, tucked down, moved a bit left then angled east. A brief flicker hit the radar, then nothing.
“I think he’s turning east,” he told Cowboy.
“My scope is clear.”
“Yeah.”
“Whiplash Base to Basher Two,” said Rubeo, radioing from the Cube over the squadron frequency. “Captain Mako, are you reading me?”
“Two. Go ahead.”
“What’s your situation?”
“I just lost contact.”
“The base has released the Global Hawk and we’re flying it back in your direction. It should be in range in five minutes.”
Five minutes would be an eternity, but there was nothing to be done about that.
“Some of the people here think it may have doubled back to the island of Brunei,” added Rubeo. “Do you have an opinion on that, Captain? Is it feasible?”
“Negative on that,” said Turk. “He would have come past us. No way he did that.”
“Not even at low altitude?”
“Negative.”
“What is your theory?”
“He’s got to be heading toward one of those reef islands.”
“Thank you,” said Rubeo. “Continue your pursuit as you feel fit. Do not endanger yourself further.”
“Roger that,” said Turk, surprised that the normally coldhearted scientist was actually concerned about his well-being.
Contrast that with Breanna, he thought.
“Where do you think he is?” asked Cowboy, who’d heard the conversation.
“Just like I said, heading for a landing somewhere ahead.”
“Might be flying to Vietnam or western Indonesia,” said Cowboy.
“He doesn’t have the fuel,” said Turk. “The airframe is too small. He’s gotta land soon. On one of these islands.”
“These aren’t islands,” said Cowboy. “They’re spits of dirt.”
“He won’t need much to land.”
Turk started cutting different angles in the sky, altering the direction of his forward and side radars. He got a few blips in the general direction the UAV had been taking but then nothing. It would have at least a ten mile lead on them now; the chase was essentially over.
As good as the sensors aboard the Lightning II were — and they were the best in the “conventional” fighter fleet, and by extension the world — the size and stealth characteristics of the UAV were better, at least at this range. Turk decided that his only option was to hit the gas — he selected his afterburner again, juicing Basher Two over the sound barrier. He held his speed for only a few moments, knowing that every millisecond of acceleration was costing him fuel, and in turn lessening his time in the air.