‘Mark,’ he said, finding it hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘You back in operations?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Wallage as he sat in his seat.
‘forty-five degrees off the starboard bow,’ said the captain. ‘What do you see?’
‘Intermittent contacts, sir. Hard to tell. Could be a couple of birds,’ said the radar op.
‘I saw one bird out there,’ said Drummond, ‘not two. Mark that spot!’ he commanded. ‘Anything else?’ Drummond was talking into his microphone out on the ship’s waist but the exchange was heard over the bridge’s PA. Briggs picked up a pair of binoculars and hurried to join the captain.
‘There,’ said Drummond pointing in the direction of the sighting, but not taking his eyes from the binoculars. ‘A slow mover, fifteen or maybe twenty metres above the water.’ As he said it, the sea and the sky swallowed the shape, and it disappeared like a fragment of morning fog.
‘Can’t see it, sir,’ said Briggs, wondering whether he was looking in the right place.
‘Jesus Christ, X. I’m not sure it was there either,’ said Drummond after a handful of long seconds, trying to will the UAV into view.
‘Sir,’ said Briggs, lowering the binoculars and turning to the captain, ‘can you be sure it wasn’t there?’
Indian Ocean, 25 000 feet
‘Boys, you are now the only show in town. Find it. Kill it.’
‘Roger, sir,’ said Corbet. Jesus, it was the defence forces commander himself, personally amending their orders. A Royal Australian Navy vessel had apparently reported a suspected sighting of the UAV. A few seconds of static in his ’phones told him the exchange with Canberra was done. ‘Shogun two. You get that?’
‘Loud and clear, sir,’ said the flying officer.
Corbet waited while Burns finished topping up his tanks and backed away from the KC-130. Someone would no doubt vector the tanker to their rendezvous with the navy ship. They peeled away from the flying bowser.
The power of the F/A-18’s General Electric F404-GE-400 turbofans pushed Flight Lieutenant Corbet back into his seat as the aircraft accelerated to.9 mach. Thirty miles out from the Arunta, they throttled back and began their descent. Within minutes, the frigate appeared suddenly out of the tropical mist like a ghost ship. They shot past it at five hundred feet then banked hard over to the north in a high g turn, condensation streaming from the wing roots, the massive drag bleeding off their speed.
Drummond and Briggs had been tracking the inbound fighters on the screen. ‘Jesus,’ said Drummond, screwing up his face as the howl from their shrieking turbofans suddenly penetrated the bridge and concentrated in a vibration behind his eyes. He stepped out onto the waist briefly and watched the aircraft turn and bank sharply, decelerating at a rapid rate. ‘Okay, operations, you can patch me through,’ he said, walking back onto the bridge and closing the steel door behind him to minimise the aircraft noise feeding back into his microphone.
‘Arunta, Shogun one,’ said Corbet through the bridge’s PA system.
‘Shogun one, Arunta. Go ahead,’ Drummond replied.
‘I understand you’ve had a suspected sighting of the UAV.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Request a snap vector to the sighting.’
Drummond checked the monitor screen on the bench. It had been exactly twenty minutes since the UAV had possibly flown in and then out of his vision. ‘Fly heading one two zero. Estimate position nose twenty-three miles.’
Corbet repeated the instructions to ensure there was no confusion. The fighters flew directly overhead and the roar set up a buzz in one of the bridge’s thick glass panes overlooking the foredeck.
‘Good luck, Shogun one,’ said Drummond.
‘Thanks, Arunta, we’ll need it.’
Commander Drummond exhaled and leaned forward over the display screen on the desk. The F/A-18s were now outbound heading east south-east. He picked up the binoculars from the steel bench and stepped towards the waist.
‘Sir,’ said Briggs, failing to contain his excitement, catching the commander before he walked into the wind. ‘Take a look at this.’ He led the commander over to a monitor. ‘We had some of the deck cameras on lookout. Seems your eyes weren’t deceiving you.’ Briggs rewound the tape and played it. The camera was trained on a patch of sea and the water rolled up and down with the swell. And then the UAV flew into the top third of the frame, banked right and disappeared.
‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ Drummond said under his breath. ‘Work out its track and let’s get it to those RAAF boys.’
Corbet glanced over his left shoulder at the aircraft off his wing. This was Flying Officer Robert Burns’ first posting following advanced training and conversion to high performance jets. He was twenty-three years old and a good pilot. No, he was better than good. Frankly, you had to be God’s gift to aviation just to make it through the training and get to an operational fighter squadron. The kid was cocky, without being cocksure. And anyway, a bit of additood was SOP for a fighter jock. So far, the kid was handling himself well, but things were about to get tricky. The word ‘suicidal’ popped into his brain. This kind of flying in an F/A-18 was something no one trained for and, while Corbet would have been far more comfortable with an experienced pilot off his wing, Burns did have something that partway made up for his lack of experience. He had the best eyes in the squadron, cool grey orbs behind sleepy eyelids that possessed phenomenal acuity. One of the questions in Corbet’s mind was how to best use those eyes.
Great vision or not, this type of flying was potentially lethal and required maximum concentration. It also required a delicate balancing of factors. They had to fly high enough not to hit the water, yet low enough and slow enough to see the UAV. And that’s when they came up against the F/A-18’s limitations for this mission. Sure, with no ordnance on the pods or centreline fuel tank the Hornet could fly at 100 knots standing on its tail with the angle of attack a massive thirty-five degrees, but that was a manoeuvre for air shows. The reality was that with less than 150 knots of air speed the Hornet felt like it was dragging its arse, especially with a full load of fuel, external tanks and heaters, AIM-9s, on the wingtip rails. Yet even flying at 150 knots was fast compared to the Prowler drone’s estimated speed of 70 knots, so they risked overshooting their quarry. But there was no alternative: 150 knots and 500 feet AMSL were the numbers. Not ideal for the job. The Hornet was a fighter designed to fight at 1.2 mach, not to crawl along at wave height sucking fish into the fans.
Corbet throttled back. Passing through 250 knots calculated air speed, the flight control computer automatically lowered the leading and trailing edge flaps. When the air speed reached 150KCAS, Corbet trimmed the aircraft so that it would fly ‘hands off’, maintaining 500 feet. He glanced out across the wing. Five hundred feet left plenty of air under the wings — the squadron regularly operated at 150 feet over water. Not, however, while searching, eyes outside the cockpit, Corbet reminded himself. This was going to be bloody dangerous. The separation between his aircraft and the wingman’s had increased. Flying in close formation was another manoeuvre for air shows. ‘Take it easy out there, Shogun two,’ said Corbet. ‘We won’t find the drone in Davey Jones’ locker.’
Corbet flicked back the sun visor on his helmet and tried to blink some focus into his eyes. His own advice was as much to himself as to Burns. Already he was starting to lose concentration. It was so goddam misty out here that it was easy to mistake the sea for the sky and vice versa. Shit, he said quietly to himself. It was a hell of a risky business. Lose the horizon for a few seconds at the wrong moment and his beautiful Hornet could become a submarine.