“Seagull 2, move to two thousand feet,” he commanded. “Maintain present orbit.”
The robot plane began moving downward slowly. Turk cranked the magnification to its highest level.
“Hey, Ground, what are we seeing?” asked Cowboy.
“I’m working on it,” answered Turk.
“We cleared or what?”
“Relax a minute.”
“I’m way relaxed, dude. Do we have a confirmed target or what?”
“Stand by.”
The Seagull cruised over the hillside. Its light body color was practically invisible against the clouds, but veering across a patch of blue it stood out. While the wings were shaped like a bird’s, anyone who studied it carefully would realize from its movements that it was an aircraft.
Suddenly, three pops echoed against the hills.
“Gunfire!” said Captain Deris.
Turk studied the guns being raised. They were bull pups — Chinese weapons.
“Basher One, confirmed hostiles at target area,” said Turk, involuntarily flinching as a muzzle flashed in his viewer.
There was more gunfire, closer — the rebels had spotted the Malaysians on the ridge.
“Roger that, Ground,” said Cowboy. His voice dropped an octave, and there was no hint of humor. “I have three vehicles; roughly a dozen armed men.”
“Confirmed,” said Turk. “All are hostile.”
“We have your position noted,” added the Marine.
“Cleared hot. Go get ’em.”
“Inbound. Advise you take cover.”
In the few moments that had passed since the first gunfire, Monday and Captain Deris had begun firing back. The rest of the rebels had opened up, training their weapons on the hill. Bullets began ripping through the nearby trees.
“Basher is inbound,” Turk yelled to the Malaysians. “The fighters are on the way.”
He no sooner had given the warning when something whistled in the distance. The ground shook as eight GBU-53 small diameter bombs, all steered by radar seeker to the precise location of the trucks, ignited in quick succession. The explosions destroyed the vehicles and killed or wounded two-thirds of the rebels who’d been nearby.
Monday bolted to his feet, ready to charge down the hill toward the depleted enemy.
“Stay down! Stay down!” yelled Turk. “The planes are still attacking!”
His voice was drowned out by a second round of explosions, these closer to the hill, as the second Marine F-35 mopped up the knot of rebels who’d initially opened fire.
Squatting near a tree, Turk looked at the feed from Seagull 2. All of the rebels were on the ground.
“Basher, stand off. We’re going down.”
“You got it, dude,” said Cowboy, his voice jocular once more. The difference was so striking that Turk would have thought he was talking to another pilot.
Turk followed Captain Deris to the mine. The scent of dirt and explosive mixed with the thick, moist smell of the jungle. Nothing was moving. The F-35s had done the job.
Aboard Basher One, Cowboy unsnapped his oxygen mask and popped a stick of gum into his mouth.
Greenstreet’s voice boomed in his helmet. “Basher One, give me a sitrep.”
“Three vehicles, fifteen tangos down,” replied Cowboy. “We’re standing by for the ground team.”
“What’s your fuel state?”
“Oh, yeah, we’re good.”
“Cut the bull, Lieutenant.”
Used to Greenstreet’s prickly ways, Cowboy smiled to himself and read off the exact data, confirming that both F-35s had enough fuel for several hours’ worth of flying, with plenty left in reserve.
“Basher One, did you ID the target before dropping your weapons?” asked Greenstreet.
“Friendlies were under fire from the targets,” said Cowboy. “We were cleared in via Captain Mako.”
“You’re sure.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Good.”
Lord, don’t let me grow up to be a squadron commander, Cowboy thought.
He was just about to tell Greenstreet that he had won the squadron pool on who was going to see action first when the aircraft’s warning system blared. The F-35’s AN/APG-81 radar had picked up a fast-moving object flying in his direction.
“Stand by,” he told Greenstreet. “I have a contact.”
He wasn’t picking up an active radar. To Cowboy, that meant it had to be an aircraft, rather than a missile fired blindly in his direction.
Which in turn meant it must be the UAV they were looking for.
“Kick ass,” he muttered, turning the F-35 in its direction.
The bogie was roughly forty miles away and closing fast. Under other circumstances Cowboy could have launched an AMRAAM with a high probability of a kill. But not only was he prevented from doing that by the ROEs — he hadn’t been threatened, nor had the bogie apparently turned on its weapons radar — his job was to gather as much information about it as possible. And that meant getting up close and personal.
“Two, you seeing this?” he asked his wingman, Lieutenant John “Jolly” Rogers.
“Roger One.”
“Like we talked about,” said Cowboy. “You’re high.”
The two planes increased their separation, Cowboy moving eastward as his wing mate angled to the west. Cowboy wanted the UAV to come after him; Basher Two would cover him from above and take it down if necessary.
“No radar, no profile like anything we’ve seen out east,” said Jolly. “Not Malaysian. Not standard Chinese either.”
“Roger.” Cowboy dipped his nose, pushing the jet for a little more speed.
The UAV was coming at him almost straight-on. Cowboy plotted a simple roll and turn to line up for a Sidewinder shot as it passed. That would give his sensors the maximum amount of time to pull data before he downed the aircraft — assuming it did something to allow him to do so.
“Basher One, what’s your situation?” said Greenstreet from the ground.
“We have the UAV on our screens. At least we think it’s him,” added Cowboy. “Preparing to engage.”
“Observe it first. Visually confirm it’s hostile before firing.”
“Yup. Acknowledged.”
Cowboy calculated the intercept — a minute and thirty seconds. The UAV still wasn’t using a radar against him.
“Come on,” he whispered to himself. “Light me up so I can take you down.”
The bogie was flying about 5,000 feet above him. Cowboy got ready to turn. It would be in visual range in a moment.
A minute twenty.
Suddenly, the UAV disappeared from his radar screen.
“What the hell?” muttered Jolly over the squadron frequency.
As soon as he heard the Marines chattering about the UAV, Turk switched his communications to the Cube, where Tom Frost was coordinating the data gathering.
“You getting all this?” he asked Frost.
“I have the F-35 data,” said Frost. “Global Hawk elint aircraft isn’t picking up anything.”
“Nothing?”
“I’m resetting the frequency scan. The aircraft is a little too far east. We were worried about the Chinese detecting it earlier.”
A few seconds later Frost told Turk that the computers were synthesizing a possible profile for the UAV. It didn’t appear armed.
“Also looks like it might be different than the earlier ones,” said Frost. “Check out the model.”
Turk put his glasses into 3-D mode and spun his hand around, examining the enemy aircraft. It had small stubby wings that reminded him of the Cold War era F-104 Starfighter, a high-speed aircraft. At the rear, the UAV was a very different beast, with a much thicker, wedge-shaped body, a Y-tail, and some sort of directional-vector thrust system — it suddenly cut a nearly ninety-degree turn in the sky.