Target Utopia (14 page)

Malaysia

D
ANNY
F
REAH 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?”

T
URK 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?

Turk guessed they were trying to get the F-35s to use their radar missiles at long range. They must be confident of beating them.

“Let's take a sixty-degree turn east. That'll keep them on our nose as they climb.”

“Roger. I'm looking for a lock for the AMRAAMs,” added Cowboy.

“We want to hold on to the radar missiles as long as we can,” said Turk.

“Uh, that's not what we briefed.”

“Yeah, I know. But hold on to them anyway. It'll keep them from getting too close.”

“How's that going to work, kemosabi?”

“I'm thinking. They flew purposely in a way that we could see them; they didn't have to. So I'm figuring they want us to shoot sooner rather than later. It's a guess,” he added, as if that were necessary.

A sharp cut by the UAVs as Cowboy got a lock told Turk he was right. At ninety miles away they were in range of the AMRAAM 120D radar missiles the planes were equipped with, but the planes would be able to easily beam the F-35s and temporarily disappear from the radar too far for the missiles' own guidance systems to pick them up.

Turk called another break and brought them back on the scope.

“It's a cat and mouse game,” he said. “We have to get closer.”

“What are they going to do then?”

“I'm thinking.”

The trick was to use their tactics and expectations against them, Turk realized.

“I'll bait them,” he told Cowboy. “I'm going to fire the AMRAAMs, then try and get in their faces. They think they sucked me in. You keep your distance until they come after me. When
they're both on my tail and you have a lock, fire. The closer you are the better; we don't want them to outrun the missiles.”

“How close do you want them to get to you?”

“As close as it takes. I'll tell you when to fire.”

T
HE RADAR ABOARD
the Global Hawk was used by the Cube to synthesize a three-dimensional view of the jungle, painting the trees and terrain in gray-greens. There were two clumps of rebels in the shadow of the ridge; Danny gave both locations to the Marines as possible mortar locations. Meanwhile, the Marine's Shadow UAV found a large clump of men north of the camp, less than a mile away.

“They're going to attack once the mortaring stops,” Lieutenant Juno predicted, pointing at the screen.

“Can you target them with your mortars?” asked Danny.

“We will if we can. I just lost coms with the mortar team. I'm going to send someone—Mofitt!”

The corporal came over and listened as the spotter gave him the coordinates. Then he took off out of the bunker.

Danny turned his attention back to the displays. Though they were a mile away, the rebels were running toward the perimeter. It was the weakest of the four sides to begin with, and the mortaring had softened it up.

“They'll be at the defenses in five minutes,” said
Danny. “There are fifty of them at least. You'll have to shift your mortar attack or we'll be overrun.”

“My coms with the mortars are still out,” yelled Juno as the bunker shook with another strike. “I've lost two of my mortar men, and a third's injured.”

“What about Mofitt?”

“Can't raise him on the radio. I'm going to send someone else.”

“I'll go,” said Danny. He yelled to Ward, the Whiplash techie monitoring the UAVs, to keep an eye on the targets and feed him their coordinates every thirty seconds.

“Colonel, don't go,” warned the lieutenant.

Two rounds landed, one practically on top of the bunker.

“All right,” said Juno, giving in. “Get the mortars redirected. I'll organize a counterattack.”

T
URK CLOSED TO
within fifty miles of the two UAVs before getting solid locks for the AMRAAMs. He dished them off in quick succession, then buttoned up the fighter, though his stores on the wings still presented a juicy radar picture.

Just as he had thought, the UAVs made sharp turns and switched on their ECMs. Still, the AMRAAMs continued in their direction, and for a moment Turk thought he might have two kills. But the small planes could cut unbelievably tight turns in the air, and now managed to duck under the radar missiles. They were already coming for Turk when the AMRAAMs realized they were hopelessly lost and self-exploded in disgust.

Turk tucked his wing down, pushing his plane lower—and closer to the enemy's flight path. He got a warning that the targeting radar in the closest small aircraft was trying to lock on. He went steeper into the dive, striving for a balance between being an enticing target and a dead one. A warning blared—the small aircraft had locked on him from ten miles away.

Turk waited anxiously for a warning that the small aircraft had fired a radar missile, but none came. The Flighthawk 3s could carry small radar-guided missiles that were effective at twenty miles, but as the UAV closed the distance without firing, Turk knew these aircraft weren't carrying them.

It wasn't much of a possibility, but it was one less thing to have to worry about, he told himself.

Somehow, that hardly cheered him.

“Basher One, do you have a lock?”

“Working on it, Two.”

“Keep closing.”

“If you stop flitting around, I might have a chance.”

Turk rolled into an invert and then let the nose of the plane dive downward, in effect making a large loop in the sky. The maneuver changed the plane's direction 180 degrees; he was now facing toward the two UAVs. He was hoping they would now start turns and come around for a rear quarter attack; instead, the radar receiver warned that they had just locked on to his plane.

Too far for a shot, thought Turk. They were four miles away. He knew he had a few seconds.

A flash of light danced off the front fuselage.
The infrared detector buzzed—the aircraft were firing a laser at him.

Turk pushed straight down into a dive, twisting away from the enemy UAVs. They were on his back, swooping almost parallel to each other so that he couldn't escape by simply going to one side or the other.

“OK,” he said over the radio. “This is as close as I want them.”

Actually, closer, he thought.

“Fire, Fox One,” called Cowboy. “Fire, Fox One.”

Turk pushed the F-35B into a tight turn. Gravity punched him in the face and chest, then tried wrestling his hand from the stick. He got a temperature warning in the engine. The gauges began lighting with cautions, and now the aircraft's Bitchin' Betty system chimed in, saying he was going too low.

“Pull up!” said the automated voice, bizarrely calm yet very incessant. “Pull up!”

Turk yanked back on the stick, but he'd miscalculated his momentum; the plane continued to sink.

“Throttle, throttle, throttle,” he said, as if he were talking to the plane. He jammed the control to full military power and struggled to keep his nose positioned correctly. He was still losing altitude, unable to overcome the basic laws of physics. His stomach shot into his throat, then fell like a stone to his feet: he was climbing.

He hit his flares and the stores of chaff, desperate to confuse the UAVs any way possible. He could see
one of them flying about a mile away, just ahead, banking to come back after overshooting him.

The aircraft was roughly the size of Flighthawk 3s, but with a profile closer to an X-48. Stubby wings extended from a wing-in-body design just like the Gen 4 Flighthawk. But there were a pair of small turbojets at the rear, rather than the single engine of the Gen 4. A twin-boom tail sandwiched the engines, which, judging from the aircrafts' maneuvers, had directional thrust. Adjusting thrust from both engines also probably helped.

Suddenly the aircraft disappeared in a burst of smoke. Cowboy's AMRAAM had caught it.

But where was number two?

D
ANNY GRABBED THE
lieutenant's M-16 and ran out to find Mofitt. He'd gotten about halfway across the compound to the mortar station when he saw a body lying flat on the ground.

Mofitt, he thought. Damn.

He ran to the body and slid down next to him. The man's head raised as he did.

It was Mofitt. He turned his face toward Danny's, his white cheeks covered with dirt.

“Where are you hit?” Danny asked.

“I . . . I don't know.”

A mortar round whizzed overhead.

“Come on. Let's get you inside.”

“I'm—uh—”

Danny scooped him into a fireman's carry and carried him back to the bunker. About twenty yards from the entrance, Mofitt seemed to lift off
his shoulders. Danny became weightless, spinning around on the ground like a top that had just been pulled off the string. A hailstorm descended around him and he slammed into the ground, face-first.

A black and gray kaleidoscope danced around his head as he caught his breath. He knew what had happened—a mortar shell had hit nearby—but somehow he couldn't put that knowledge into any context, much less plan what to do next. His confusion seemed to last an eternity, and when it started to fade it was replaced by a heavy rolling sound, the kind a heavy steamroller would make if it were pushing his skull into the ground.