Target Utopia (17 page)

Offshore an island in the Sembuni Reefs

L
LOYD
B
RAXTON BROUGHT
the beer bottle to his lips and took a small sip. Brewed in Oregon by a small craft brewer, the vanilla porter had a slightly bitter taste; Braxton couldn't work out whether it was intentional or a by-product of its long trip to the South Pacific. He also couldn't decide if he liked it or not—the bitterness seemed to fit his
mood, even if it gave the beer more bite than he would normally prefer.

The robot submersible had taken hold of the Vector UAV, so at least they had lost only one craft. The problem were the damn rebels—they were incompetent boobs who couldn't launch a simple attack on a lightly guarded outpost without getting their butts kicked. They'd fired only one of the guided rockets they'd been given, rather than massing them, as instructed. God only knew what other things they'd flubbed.

Hitting the Dreamland people with anything less than a knockout blow was a huge mistake. He'd seen that himself years before.

He still had hope. Whatever else, they'd been bloodied. They'd send a major team now. That would give him his chance.

He looked toward the shore, then glanced at his watch.

Thirty seconds.

Braxton took another sip of his beer, letting the bitterness eat the sides of his mouth. He liked it, he decided; he would order more. Assuming that was ever possible.

A sharp slap echoed over the water. Braxton raised his head and stared at the island, but there wasn't enough light to see what was happening there. He had to settle for the sound of the settling dust and the birds that were fleeing the explosion. The underground compound, his home for the past six months, had just been blown up. Dirt and rocks covered what had once been one of the most advanced private computer setups in the world.

He had others. Braxton turned to the wheelhouse.

“Take us below,” he told the captain. “We're running behind schedule.”

Malaysia

B
Y THE TIME
Turk turned back toward the submarine, it was underwater. His finger practically itched as he ran over the empty surface of the water, the cannon begging to be used, though it would be pointless.

He had a more pressing problem now—he was tighter on fuel than he'd planned.

It got worse as they headed back. At first he thought he'd simply gone dyslexic and got two numbers mixed up. Then he realized that he was leaking. It was a slow dribble, but with his stores so low, it was enough to turn him into a glider well short of the runway.

“I think one of those laser shots got the fuel tank,” he told Cowboy. “I'm going to have to think about putting down somewhere.”

“Can you make it back to land?”

Turk studied the numbers. Home was out of the question, but he could make it back to the island.

Probably.

“There's a little airport at Kampung,” said
Cowboy, naming one of the emergency alternatives the squadron had briefed. “It's near the coast. You might make that.”

Turk had to look it up on the map. It was a small airport near the coast. It was reachable—but only if he went straight there. Which presented a problem.

“I can get there if I go over Indonesia,” he told Cowboy.

“Better to do that than crash.”

“Yeah.”

Indonesia snaked around Malaysia on the western coast. Turk picked a spot that would take less than three minutes to cross.

He tuned to the printed radio frequency of the tower at Kampung but couldn't get a response to his hail; neither could Cowboy.

“Place may not be big enough to have a tower,” said Cowboy.

“It has a published frequency,” said Turk.

“Remember where we are, Air Force. This ain't America.”

“Roger that.”

The Indonesians had apparently been monitoring the flight, for he got a warning as he approached their territorial waters. He didn't respond to the initial hail, holding his course; by the time the controller radioed again, he was approaching land.

“I have a fuel emergency,” he answered, deciding honesty was the best policy.

“Unknown flight, you are ordered to exit Indonesia airspace.” The controller had a British accent.

“I intend to. I have a fuel emergency,” he repeated. “I am heading for an emergency landing.”

Turk wasn't exactly sure what the controller would say; anything from a threat to shoot him down to a gracious offer of assistance was possible. Instead, the controller simply said nothing, which was just fine with him. The Indonesians weren't about to scramble any of their aircraft after him in any event; all of the repercussion would happen after he landed.

Assuming he landed. Then again, if he didn't, he wouldn't care what the Indonesians did at all.

He was over their land long enough to picture himself in an Indonesian jail eating spiders and ants for dinner. It wasn't a pleasant vision, but he soon passed into Malaysian territory, where more mundane worries took over: how far could the F-35B glide without fuel?

The airport was fifteen miles away.

“Walsh, how are we coming with that tower?” Turk asked the Whiplash techie.

“Airport is closed. Has been for months,” responded Walsh. “I'm looking at the field—pockmarked pretty bad. Rebels attacked it two or three times before they finally shut it down.”

Turk was about to say that it would have to do when Bitchin' Betty interrupted.

“Warning,”
said the automated voice.
“Fuel emergency. Fuel emergency.”

“No shit, you told me that already,” he said.

“Turk, can you make it?” asked Cowboy.

“I can make it,” said Turk, tightening his grip on the stick. The runway was five miles away,
somewhere in the shadows of the land ahead, unlit and unready for him to land.

D
ANNY
F
REAH STARED
out the Osprey's side window at the ocean. There was still a full hour before dawn, but he could see the ripples on the surface without night vision.

“The submarine is no more than ten miles from us, if that,” he told the pilot. “Can we get into a search pattern?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Osprey moved into a gentle arc toward the point Turk had given Danny. No matter how advanced it was, the submarine that grabbed the UAV had to be somewhere nearby, but the Osprey lacked gear to track it. The task force with the Marine MEU off the northern shore of Malaysia had antisubmarine assets, but the nearest vessel in the task force was over six hundred miles away.

“You sure it didn't just crash into the water?” asked the pilot. “I mean—submarine picking it up? Pretty far-fetched. For rebels, I mean.”

“Not really,” said Danny. “Drug smugglers use them off the coast of Florida and the Southeast all the time.”

“Drug dealers?”

“These are small subs.”

“A lot of money in drug dealing. Can't see it out here.”

Danny didn't answer. The pilot didn't entirely understand what they were dealing with, but who could blame him? Small submersibles cost less
than a large pleasure boat, but still—why would anyone spend so much money on such high tech to help a band of ragtag rebels?

Ragtag rebels who'd nearly overrun a Marine base, granted.

They'd do it if they were testing their gear. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn he was up against Dreamland itself.

But then that was why he'd been tasked out here to begin with.

“Colonel, I have no contacts anywhere within ten miles,” said the pilot. “What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Take another few circuits,” said Danny reluctantly. “If we don't see anything, let's go home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“C
AN YOU GO
vertical?” Cowboy asked. He'd zipped ahead to check the runway.

“No way,” said Turk. “Even if I knew what I was doing. Not enough fuel.”

“How much?”

“It's reading zero.”

“South end of the field is beaten to shit. I'm thinking you have less than fifteen hundred feet of good cement to land on.”

“Yeah.”

“Tight but doable.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“Come on, Air Force. You're Superman.”

“Thanks,” said Turk, who was feeling anything but super.

“Come ten degrees north and you'll line up.”

Turk made the adjustment. The Bitchin' Betty circuit was having a stroke, warning about fuel, speed, altitude, and the fact that he hadn't brushed his teeth in a week. None of this would be a problem, he told himself, if he could just see the damn runway. It was ahead
somewhere,
but even the vaunted low-light abilities of the F-35's helmet couldn't pick it out.

As he pushed over a cultivated field, Turk thought of using it, but by then it was too late.

“You see the runway?” asked Cowboy.

“Negative, negative.”

“Push your rudder, dude. You're off three degrees.”

“Which way?” demanded Turk.

“Right.”

Turk eased his foot on the pedal.

In daylight, this would have been a breeze. Why the hell couldn't he see it?

His landing lights caught a blank expanse in front of him, then a seam in the ground—the edge of the runway just to the right, as Cowboy had said. Turk started to exhale, then realized he was flying in utter silence: the engine had just run out of fuel.

Bitchin' Betty was not pleased.

“Yeah, yeah,” he told the machine. “Watch this.”

He held the airplane in a glide just long enough to clear the worst of the holes the rebels had dug with their mortar shells. The F-35B's undercarriage groaned as he bounced across the ripped surface. It jerked to the right as he got the nose
wheel down, but held enough concrete to brake just before hitting the turf at the far end of the runway.

Down! And in one piece!

Turk popped the canopy open and climbed up out of the seat. He suddenly felt cold and wet—he'd been sweating so much his suit was soaked through.

Cowboy passed overhead, wagging his wings.

There was a light in the sky a few miles off, coming from the south—it was the Marine Osprey from the base, heading toward him with fuel and a team of mechanics to patch up the plane.

I hope they got beer, thought Turk. And a lot of it.

The Cube

R
AY
R
UBEO STARED
at the large screen at the front of the conference room and its map of the area where the UAV and submarine had disappeared. A yellow circle showing the area the submarine could be in slowly expanded.

“Ray?” Breanna leaned across the table toward him. “Are you with us?”

“Yes. You said it's the Vector program,” he recounted, still staring. “Submarine launched UAVs. I agree.”

“The Vector program was a study for the
Navy that Dreamland participated in,” Breanna told Reid. “It used the AI from Gen 4 in a sub-launched variant. The airfoils are different. Jennifer Gleason worked on both.”

“And this Braxton fellow?” asked Reid.

“He would have been involved as well.”

“The aircraft was recovered by a small submarine, roughly the size of a pleasure boat,” said Breanna. “There are a lot of similar craft in Australia and on our coast—rich people's toys. They don't go very deep or very fast, but they're hard to detect by surface ships or planes that aren't looking for them. And the Navy doesn't keep track of something so small.”

“Yes,” said Rubeo. He got up from his seat and walked toward the wall, staring at the map.

“Wouldn't it have to be pretty substantial to launch a plane?” asked Reid. “Even a small one.”

“They didn't launch from the sea,” said Rubeo.

“How do you know?” asked Reid.

“You said it yourself, the submarine is too small. The most difficult problem to solve has to do with wings. The wingspan here is too large for the submersible we saw. The submarines are used for recovery only. And it may have been a backup in any event. Remember, it was being pursued, and its mate had been shot down.”

“I still see an Iranian or Chinese connection,” said Reid. “For me, the submarine clinches it. It could be working with a larger ship.”

“Braxton hates governments, all governments.” Rubeo pictured the young man: bright red hair, skin so white it seemed almost opaque. Quiet, as a
general rule, but when he did talk, passion glared behind his bright green eyes. He was a pure libertarian, a young man who thought Locke was practically a fascist, and had in fact told Rubeo so one late night. Science had to be pure and divorced from the corruption of governments and anything that stole individual freedom.

So governments are a necessary evil?
Rubeo had asked.

Governments are evil, period
, Braxton answered.

“Politics and war make for strange bedfellows,” said Reid. “He may very well have decided that to accomplish his Kallapsis or whatever his nirvana is called, he needs to take temporary steps with temporary alliances.”

Reid went back to his spot at the conference table. Waving his hand over the surface, he brought up a virtual keyboard and commanded a small window to appear in the main screen. Typing furiously, he tapped into the joint intelligence network, then over to the Navy tracking site where the latest fleet data was kept. The program showed the last known positions of all fleet vessels, American and foreign. He zeroed in on the South China Sea, then filtered for submarines. The nearest submarines—both American vessels—were several hundred miles away; one was with the Marine task force and another was shadowing a Chinese carrier.

“I would expect that if they were working with the Chinese, we would see a Chinese vessel,” said Rubeo. “I realize it's not definitive, but we have checked. I've checked.”

“I've requested antisubmarine assets be moved into the area,” added Breanna. “The problem is, the Navy doesn't have a lot of them, and they're stretched thin as they are.”

A patrol aircraft was being detailed from Japan and would be on station within twenty-four hours. But the Navy was scrambling to find not only a secure base closer to the area that it could use, but a relief plane to extend the search times. Antisubmarine air patrol was not glamorous, and with the demise of the Cold War, had never received the funding it deserved.

“At the moment, our elint drones are the best bet,” Breanna said. “We can go back and look at all transmissions in the area, and try correlating that with places that might be used as bases, both offshore and in Indonesia and Brunei.”

“It must be offshore,” said Reid. “If it were in Brunei or Indonesia we'd have picked it up.”

“In a way, it's certainly simpler for us if it's offshore. But the modeling of the possible airport hasn't found any matches.”

“The modeling must be wrong,” said Reid.

“Obviously. Ray?”

He looked at her.

“If we can get close to one of these, can we take it over?” Breanna asked. “Since it uses our coding?”

“We're looking for vulnerabilities,” he said. “There aren't many.”

“Isn't there a way to convince it that it belongs to us?” Reid asked.

“Only if Jennifer Gleason told it to,” said Rubeo. “And she doesn't appear to have done that.”