Rogue Element

Each job had had its own unique brace of problems. With this one, the big question was how they were going to penetrate Indonesian airspace and get to their RV, a ridge behind the two contacts Wilkes had assumed were the friendlies on the infrared photos, without stirring up a hornet’s nest of trouble — and in time. Perhaps the Americans would have the answer. They had some pretty specialised gear for this sort of thing.

The Sea King helo from the USS Kitty Hawk appeared out of the haze at the appointed time. Lieutenant Harvey followed standard procedure for approaching a US Navy Battle Group and did not transmit his call sign or intentions to the American helo. The Black Hawk was expected. Harvey merely lined up behind the Sea King and followed abeam of its slipstream. The Sea King banked to starboard and altered its heading forty-five degrees. A large guided missile destroyer drifted by beneath them while the enormous grey-blue bulk of the carrier loomed out of the haze-obscured horizon.

The Kitty Hawk grew as they approached the fantail and Harvey saw the deck as an F-14 Tomcat pilot on short finals would. Although it was four and a half acres of black non-skid steel, it appeared as small as a domino, a minute target to hit with a fighter jet weighing four tons screaming earthwards in a controlled crash at 280 kilometres an hour.

Fighter ops on the carrier were in full swing. The deck bristled with F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18E Super Hornets. One of the Super Hornets was waiting on the catapult for launch. The Sea King held its station, hovering three hundred metres abeam the port side of the carrier. Harvey did the same astern of the US navy helo. The F/A-18E squatted down briefly on its undercarriage as it started to move. A river of steam exhausted from the side of the ship as the cat shot the jet down the absurdly short runway. The catapult flicked the fighter off the end of the threshold and the jet lurched away to port staggering, struggling for height, twin turbofans grinding out 40 000 pounds of thrust in full afterburner.

A paddle-wielding ‘yellow shirt’ on the deck of the carrier waved the Black Hawk and its escort towards the forward deck. Fighter operations were suspended briefly while the two choppers manoeuvred for landing, rotors whirring, over American sovereign territory suspended in the milky Arafura Sea.

The smell of AV-TUR, rubber and hot grease filled Wilkes’s nostrils and cleared his sinuses. It was a heady brew, the smell of hard, high-powered military muscle. Perfume. He breathed it in deep as he loosened his floor safety strap. He grabbed his pack and shuffled to the door on his arse. Once outside, he glanced back through the Plexiglass side window and got a thumb’s-up salute from Harvey. The Black Hawk had kept its revs up. This was to be a quick letdown. Once his troops were offloaded, the helo rose from the deck. No fuel stop. Wilkes made a quick mental calculation and concluded that the Black Hawk would probably get its tanks filled mid-air on the flight back to Dili.

The Sea King’s rotors drooped with their own weight as they spun down. When stationary, the rotors would be folded back. A small vehicle had already tethered to the front of the helo in preparation for the short haul to one of the massive elevators that would take it below decks.

‘Captain Chuck McBride, US Marine Recon. You must be Sergeant Wilkes,’ shouted the tall black man over jet noise as he walked briskly up to the Australians.

The marine towered over him. Wilkes saluted and the officer returned it crisply, strong white teeth showing in a smile of genuine warmth. He wondered how the officer knew which one of the ten foreign soldiers that spilled from the American Black Hawk was Sergeant Wilkes, given that none of the SAS wore any badges of rank. He forgot about it and continued to gawk about like a dazed schoolkid at the activity on the carrier deck.

‘Follow me, Sarge, and I’ll get you out of harm’s way.’ The captain and two other marines in lightweight aviation overalls herded the Australians towards the looming shadow of the carrier’s control island. Wilkes was happy to follow. He was aware that the deck of an aircraft carrier was the most dangerous workplace in the world, with any number of objects that could kill a man — from jet blasts to thick, grease-covered arrestor cables that slithered across the surface.

A shriek with a completely different tone filled the air as two US Marine AV-8B Harrier 11s, Jump Jets, rocketed down the dead side of the carrier’s traffic pattern and lined up two nautical miles abeam of the fantail for landing. Gary Ellis caught Wilkes’s eye as they watched the spectacle and gave a soft whistle. This was impressive shit they were watching, a well-oiled machine.