Corbet breathed deeply into the oxygen mask and felt some of the stress ebb away. Funny, but a part of him was relieved that the nightmare was real at last, and not an exercise. They’d been told that intelligence sources had a UAV loaded with nerve agent possibly headed to Darwin. And now it had been confirmed. It was fact. ‘Shogun two. Did you get that?’ he asked Burns.
‘Roger, Shogun one. Now what?’
The question was rhetorical and Corbet knew it. He didn’t have a clue. Practically every serviceable aircraft the RAAF had was in the air — C-130s, Caribou, submarinehunting PC3 Orions, Hawk trainers and Hornets — searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack and all of these aircraft, with the possible exception of the slower flying C-130s, Orions and Caribous, were unsuited to the task.
It was apparent at the hurried mission briefing that the RAAF had a fair bit of intelligence on the target UAV itself, but that hardly helped. The Prowler cruised — or rather crawled — at around seventy knots. It was small, too, with a length just shy of three-point-three metres and a wingspan of just under five and a half metres. More than likely it would be hugging the wave tops and, to make matters still worse, its lines employed stealth technology augmented with radar absorbing material — RAM. On top of that, the RAM was tinted a pale blue, so not only was it almost invisible to radar, the naked eye would also be hard pressed to pick the UAV out against the sky or sea.
The F/A-18’s radar was the new, sexy APG-73 Raytheon unit that provided air-to-air and air-to-ground capability. It was truly an amazing piece of high-tech wizardry that gave the F/A-18 the reconnaissance capability equal to that of a U-2 spy plane. Or so the blurb from Raytheon promised. But it wouldn’t help them find a low-tech bug smasher a third the size of the Hornet flying low enough and slow enough to troll for fish. Even if they managed to be nose on to the UAV, the radar worked on the Doppler theory that measured and detected closing speeds. It wouldn’t ‘see’ the Prowler for the simple reason that the thing wasn’t travelling fast enough.
The other variable, just to make the task seem truly impossible, was that the UAV’s flight plan was unknown and, most probably, unpredictable. Okay, so it was heading for Darwin, but what were the chances that it would take the most direct route there? Unlikely. If he were a terrorist, Corbet reasoned, he’d get the UAV over Australian soil and have it approach the city from the south, apparently the route least expected for some reason that escaped him. So there was a chance the thing was already over the Australian coastline, coming up on Darwin from the blind side. If that were the case, with the RAAF’s assets all deployed over the sea, then it would deliver its deadly cargo unchallenged.
All Corbet and Burns could do was fly their designated patch of sky, low and slow, keeping their eyes on their fries. It didn’t escape either pilot that what they needed to help them find this thing was a miracle, pure and simple.
Flores, Indonesia
Seeing Annabelle on the television — in Darwin — had stopped Wilkes cold, but Atticus had since talked some sense into him. ‘It’s not a nuke headed her way, Tom. It’s a cloud of poison gas,’ he’d said. ‘You saw her, man. The girl is suited up and ready for action. Chill!’ What Monroe said was right, of course, but he still didn’t like the thought of Annabelle being in the line of fire. And when that thought struck him, he knew he’d had an insight into Annabelle’s fears about him whenever he left on a sortie.
Wilkes checked his watch. If it wasn’t intercepted, the drone would strike within around four hours.
‘All that stuff about Uncle Sam deserting you guys, though. That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it?’ said Monroe.
‘Forget it, Atticus. Bad news rates better.’
The two expected Indonesian navy destroyers had dropped anchor a mile offshore and sent across armed sailors to help secure the camp. None of the terrorists who were still alive, however, had any fight in them. Almost thirty percent of the encampment’s population were dead. Many more people were close to it.
Somewhere beyond the horizon the USS Constellation was steaming towards them because suddenly, as if underlining the fact, a flight of US Navy Super Hornets creased the air overhead, the noise from their engines threatening to rupture Wilkes’s eardrums. In their wake, a US Navy Sea King helicopter pulled around the headland west of the landing strip, about five hundred feet above the water. It slowed to a hover over the strip and then settled onto the packed earth with a bump, the trees on the edge of the cleared jungle thrashing wildly in the downdraft. Half a dozen soldiers dressed in JSLIST suits hopped onto the earth and hauled a couple of crates out of the helo, which then immediately took off and climbed on a heading out to sea.
Mahisa and Wilkes went to meet them. The Americans saluted, Mahisa and Wilkes returned it crisply. ‘Colonel Hank Watson, US Army Chemical Corps,’ said the officer in front, yelling through his suit to be heard.
‘Colonel,’ said Mahisa. ‘We’ve been expecting you. Captain Mahisa of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia. I am CO here. We met before in Canberra. I have been instructed by Jakarta to give you every assistance. And this is Warrant Officer Wilkes, Australian Special Air Service.’
‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I believe you have found WMD.’
‘Come this way,’ said Mahisa, gesturing at the Americans to follow.
Wilkes felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned. It was Atticus. ‘Tom, I’ve been thinking…You know, I don’t think Darwin is the target.’
‘And why not?’ said Wilkes.
‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘we don’t have much time.’
S10°30′10″ E126°15′02″, Timor Sea
HMAS Arunta was rigged for battle. Commander Steve Drummond stood on the fly bridge, legs taking the rolling motion of the frigate as it rode the swell. Leading Seaman Sean Matheson stood beside him, behind the Browning, watching the dolphins racing along and giving the ship a good run for its money. Both men wore their JSLIST suits but the hoods and gasmasks were hanging down their backs. Drummond inched the binoculars along the horizon off the boat’s port bow. Strategic Command in Canberra had hoped to add the Arunta to the protective screen around Darwin but the ship was too far to the north. Intelligence sources expected the drone would be nowhere near their current position, but Drummond put the crew on high alert anyway. ‘Anything on screen, X?’ asked the captain into the microphone.
‘Negative, sir,’ said Lieutenant Commander Angus Briggs. There was plenty of unusual traffic at the radar’s extreme range, much of it airborne and RAAF in nature. A couple of F/A-18s and a KC-130 tanker were approaching but they were still a long way off to the south-west. In short, there was nothing unidentified or unusual. Briggs again checked the display on the monitor generated by the Saab Vectronics radar, its massive dish rotating atop the ship’s communications tower interrogating the sea and air around it with a powerful spray of microwave energy. The radar showed the landmass of East Timor lying off their starboard beam and their track was south-west, roughly parallel with the coastline.
HMAS Arunta had completed its six-month tour. By all accounts, the mission had been a successful one, although one man — Johnny Teo — had lost his life aboard a cargo vessel being inspected, falling into its bilge and drowning. Finally, after months of the stress of battle, no sleep and the constant threat of attack, they were headed home, on a course for Darwin. And then the change of orders came through at the same time as the story broke on the news: the UAV, the nerve gas, the resulting fear and violence in both Darwin and Jakarta. The crew had watched the report, stunned. Hadn’t this been why the war was being fought? Had the sacrifices all been for nothing? A feeling of pointlessness had settled on the ship that was hard to shake.