Rogue Element

Robson walked soundlessly to the brew, turned off the stove and packed it into his rucksack. Pouring a little cold water into the pot to cool the contents, he quickly tossed back the coffee, grounds and all. It was bitter. Burned. Oh well, better than instant. He heard aircraft approaching. It was time to leave.

Central Sulawesi, 1010 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

The clearing filled with noise and wind as the V22 descended slowly through the darkening sky, carefully, through the hole in the canopy, rotors clearing the thrashing foliage by less than a metre. The rear door was down. McBride and the LM, both lifelined to the fuselage, waved at them to hurry aboard. Above, an AV-8 blocked the sun as it screamed overhead.

Ferris and Robson helped Suryei and Joe aboard the instant the aircraft’s wheels settled tentatively on the spongy ground. The shriek of the turbines tore at Suryei’s eardrums.

Ferris and Robson then immediately turned back, jumping off the ramp to cover the MAG’s retreat. Wilkes and Littlemore carried Curry aboard between them, while Morgan half-carried the hobbling Coombs. Beck leapt on and then Ferris and Robson climbed on last. Where the fuck was Ellis? Wilkes had seen him running through the jungle earlier. Where had he gone? Wilkes was starting to feel a tightening in his stomach.

And then he saw Ellis running awkwardly across the clearing from the far end, something large and green over his shoulder. It was Gibbo’s body. Ellis arrived at the rear door just as an enormous explosion threw a mushroom cloud into the air. ‘The rest of our shit!’ yelled Ellis over the engine noise. He’d blown up their cache, denying Indonesia the opportunity of parading any gear in front of the media. The LM helped Ellis and Wilkes inside with the body. He said something into his boom mike and the aircraft lifted off immediately, the rear door closing on the jungle as the V22 rose tentatively through the opening in the canopy.

McBride shouted into Wilkes’s ear above the noise, ‘Joe Light, alive! Amazing!’

Sergeant Wilkes nodded and pushed past, concerned about his men.

Curry’s wound was bad. The bullet had shattered the clavicle and was still lodged in his shoulder. He was losing a fair bit of blood and his skin was grey-white. Beck did what he could with field dressings, but there was nothing they could do without an operating theatre and an orthopaedic surgeon. He immobilised the shoulder and gave Curry a shot of morphine. The LM had the wounded soldier carried to a stretcher fastened to a bulkhead, and strapped him in. Gibbo’s body was also secured in the same way. He gestured to the soldiers to take their seats, belt up and put their headphones on.

Suryei watched the men load the bodies on stretchers and realised again how much had been sacrificed by these men to keep Joe and her alive.

* * *

‘Ferret Handler. Six bandits. Six bandits. West. Eighty miles. Angels Twelve. Heading zero-niner-zero.’

‘Ferret Leader. Roger that. Request bandit type and weapons intel.’

‘Bandits inbound F-16. BVR capabilities negative.’

‘Ferret Leader.’

Let’s get ready to rumble, Captain Pete ‘Toad’ Sanders said to himself. The call came from an Airborne Warning and Control System, an aircraft with enormously powerful radar, orbiting well outside Indonesian airspace and out of enemy missile range. Its job was to provide the flight over Indonesian territory with Airborne Control Interception — letting the good guys know what the bad guys were up to without the fighters having to turn on their own radars.

The ACI provided by the AWACs had just painted a picture that made Toad’s scrotum tighten with fear. And, if he’d been asked, a whole lot of excitement. Uncle Sam had spent millions training him to dogfight, and he was finally getting a chance to put that training to good use.

Six enemy aircraft, F-16s, were inbound from the west. They were at angels twelve or 12 000 feet, on a course that was taking them due east. West to east. Toad was tracking north. He checked his own display to verify the call. There they were, closing at roughly twenty miles a minute off his port wing, at a range of eighty nautical miles. Six against two. Not terribly good odds on paper. In reality, however, they were heavily stacked in the AV-8s’ favour.

Out in front of the AV-8s was the replacement EA-6B Prowler. The Americans turned towards the Indonesians. Almost immediately, the pods on the Prowler’s wings would begin blasting them with so much energy they’d be stumbling around like Ray Charles. Totally blind.