“Out of the compartment,” he told the others, fixing the timer on the plastic explosive. “Go!”
He set it for fifteen seconds, then scrambled back to the ladder. He reached the low bulkhead where the others were waiting just as the charge went off.
Though the explosive had been relatively small, the entire ship shook with it. The deck beneath Danny’s legs began to wobble; for a moment he thought it would give way.
“Let’s go,” said Grisif, jumping up. Eddie Guzman, who’d brought the explosives down, followed, leaving Danny temporarily behind.
He caught up to them on the ladder. Water oozed from a fresh crack in the deck ten feet from the landing; it looked as if a giant had tried to fold the ship and given up.
The hatchway had blown open. Wrist lights showing the way, Danny and the others waded over to it. The hatch opened to a space between the compartment bulkhead and the hull; a ladder leading downward sat directly below it.
“I’ll check it out,” said Guzman.
Danny stepped back to give him room, then reached to turn the radio back on. “Turk, what’s with the minesweeper?” he asked.
“Still coming toward you. The fishing boats are moving back,” added the pilot.
Not good, thought Danny. They’re getting out of the line of fire.
9
“I have a tentative fix on where the UAVs came from,” said Yanni Turnis, one of Rubeo’s top engineers. He was talking to him from New Mexico. “There’s an atoll in the Grainger Bank. A cargo container is docked near the lagoon. The satellites reported two flashes on the deck about thirty minutes ago.”
“I see.” Rubeo zoomed out the map on his display, then focused back on the area of a horseshoe-shaped island with a ship parked to the south. A pair of small boats were tied to a dock at the shore. The image had been taken by a satellite two days before.
“Was the flash analyzed?” Rubeo asked.
“Not considered significant by the Reconnaissance Office algorithms,” said the techie. “But look at the data. They have to be UAV launches, don’t you think? Check it against the simulation. It matches, perfectly.”
Rubeo’s technical expert was right. But the distance! It was some five hundred miles from the point where the Marines were operating. To have covered that distance in that short a time was beyond the capability of even the Sabres.
On the other hand, Rubeo hadn’t thought Braxton would be able to spoof the radars, even for a limited time, but clearly he had. It wasn’t so much the technical problems as the difficulty of manufacturing and packaging it reliably in something as small as the drones. Even the Sabres didn’t have that ability.
What other tricks did Braxton have in store?
“The performance specs look almost exactly like the Gen 4s,” added Turnis. “They may be a little faster, but turn a little wider. The simulation says they’ll bleed off speed pretty fast if you get them to pull over eight g’s in a turn — you might get them to go into a flat spin.”
The F-35 pilots would black out well before that happened, Rubeo realized. They were best off not engaging the enemy planes — which of course wasn’t an option, or probably even a thought.
“Are you talking to the Marine fighters?” he asked Turnis.
“We don’t have a direct hookup. They’re about to engage the fighters,” said Turnis. “I can relay tips to Frost in the Cube if you want.”
“Go ahead. I doubt they’ll be of much use,” added Rubeo bitterly.
10
Cowboy pulled the F-35 into a turn, aiming to get behind the UAVs as they passed. The two aircraft were doing over eight hundred knots, so fast that there was no way in the world they could slow down enough to maneuver and target him before blowing past.
Except they did.
A laser range finder locked on the tailpipe of the F-35. Cowboy got an IR warning; realizing he was in trouble, he threw the aircraft into a dive a second or two before the UAV’s energy weapon fired.
The weapon’s beam touched the side of his tail, but the shot was too brief to do serious damage. The UAVs continued past, moving too fast for him to try his own shot. He tightened his turn and aimed south, hoping to position himself better to ward off their next attack.
“Cowboy, they’re not running away,” said Turk. “They’re going to go south and then sweep around you to hit the Ospreys.”
“How do I stop them?”
“They’ll prioritize on the biggest threat,” said Turk over the radio. “At this point they’ll only pay attention to you if they think you’re going to attack them.”
“Turk, what are you saying?”
“Go right after them. Target them with your radar, open your bay and make them think you’re going to attack them. Fire a Sidewinder if you have to — you want them to think you’re a real threat. Otherwise, they’re going to just keep on after the Marine Ospreys.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they didn’t just shoot you down. They got you out of the way, then went on. They don’t think you’re important.”
“What do I do once I have their attention?”
“Tangle with them long enough for the Sabres to get there. They’ll take care of them. Go! If one of them gets close to the Ospreys, everybody aboard is dead.”
“Colonel, you hear that?”
“Copy.”
Cowboy slammed his throttle. He didn’t mind making himself a target; he just didn’t want to be an easy target. What he wanted was a solution to kill the damn things, not to let someone else kill them.
But one thing at a time. Charging after the UAVs, he switched his targeting radar on, even though he had no radar missiles aboard. If it had any effect on the UAVs, he couldn’t tell; they were still moving west.
Maybe, thought Cowboy, they’re going back to where they came from.
No such luck. The two aircraft began to bank back south, swinging in a wide arc. They were meaning to cut off the Ospreys, aiming at where the rotorcraft would be in a few minutes. Just as Turk had predicted.
“Tell the Ospreys to change course and come north,” said Turk, once more breaking in over the radio. “Tell them to go back to the reef.”
“They’re twelve minutes from the mainland,” said Greenstreet.
“They’ll never make it. If they turn back, the UAVs will think they have time to shoot you down and then go for them. They’re obviously programmed to stop the Ospreys from getting to Malaysia. I can tell by the course.”
“Cowboy and I can hold them up long enough for the Ospreys to get away,” said Greenstreet.
“Negative,” insisted Turk. “Not gonna happen. They’ll split and one will go after the Ospreys. I’ve flown against these things dozens of time, Colonel. Trust me.”
“Turk knows what he’s talking about, Colonel,” said Cowboy over the squadron frequency. “He’s been right so far on everything they’ve done.”
Greenstreet ordered the Ospreys to change direction. As they complied, the UAVs turned as well — and kept going, heading straight for Cowboy, whom they now considered an immediate threat.
Cowboy angled his fighter toward the enemy aircraft, heading for their noses. The UAVs had gradually slowed, and were now doing about four hundred knots. He slowed his own speed; the trick now was to get them to come north with him when he turned.
The UAVs held their course, undoubtedly expecting him to fire his missiles before closing. This would be the most logical move, giving his weapons their best chance of hitting the targets while still minimizing his exposure. Instead, Cowboy jammed hard to the right, falling into a twisting turn that left the UAVs on his back, closing from ten miles out.