Target Utopia

by Dale Brown

  Operating in a remote section of the jungle a few miles from the Indonesian border, the patrols were designated as “presence and contact” missions by the Malaysian command: the unit swept through different areas, showing that they were there and hoping to come in contact with enemy guerrillas. The settlements here were isolated and tiny, generally with less than a hundred people. Most of the time was spent simply walking along trails. In the three days they’d been out, they had yet to see the enemy.

  Today they had a target to check out—an abandoned mine about three miles from the highway. The Malaysians had been given intelligence claiming the rebels were using it to store weapons. A flyover by the Marine F-35s the day before had failed to find anything. The Seagull circling the area showed no activity now. But the terrain around the target area was the most complicated they’d worked through yet, and there was always a possibility that something was hidden in the foliage.

  Turk followed as Monday continued up the trail, weaving toward a small rise that would let them see the approach to the mine. Suddenly, Sergeant Intan waved him to the ground; Turk dropped, then turned to signal to the others. Moments later he heard the sound of a truck straining up the hill nearby.

  Turk crawled toward Monday and the sergeant; Captain Deris followed.

  “Bandits,” the captain told Turk. That was the English word they used to describe the rebels, whom they regarded as criminals. “They must be driving to the mine. We will move back and parallel the road.”

  He gestured with his fingers to make sure Turk understood.

  “OK,” said Turk. He clicked the back of his glasses, opening the window on Seagull 2’s feed. The truck was an older pickup. The bed had been pulled off and replaced with a wooden platform surrounded by wide stakes. It was moving through a pass that led to the mine.

  Turk dialed the Marines into his radio circuit.

  “Basher One, this is Ground,” he said. “Do you copy?”

  “Loud and strong, little guy,” said Cowboy. The Marines worked in two-ship units, with two planes always on alert as the Malaysians patrolled. The length of the patrols and the lack of refueling assets made it impractical for them to stay airborne when there was no contact with the enemy, but the base was close enough to the patrol area that they could be in firing range in under ten minutes.

  “We think we have activity out here,” said Turk. “Request you get onboard.”

  “Roger that. We’ll be airborne in zero-two. Check in when you have a definitive word.”

  “We’re moving toward the target now. Check the feed on Seagull 2.”

  “Looking at it, Ground. I see the truck.”

  “Roger that.”

  After a few minutes of walking, the patrol left the trail and moved into the jungle, intending to sweep around from the east in case anyone had been posted near the road. As they were about to start back toward the hill overlooking the mine, the Seagull spotted another pair of trucks heading in the same direction as the other one. A total of a dozen men sat in the back of the pickups.

  It was a sizable force for the guerrillas. Captain Deris was pleased.

  “A good catch. The airplanes will help,” he said confidently. “Bomb them at the mine.”

  “We need to ID them first,” said Turk, citing the rules of engagement.

  “Why? It’s an enemy site.”

  “We need to confirm that they’re enemy, and not Malaysian army,” said Turk. “Or civilians.”

  “No civilians are here. We’re the only army.”

  “I didn’t make the rules,” said Turk. “You know them as well as I do. Visual IDs, or we’re under fire. Otherwise the Marines can’t do anything.”

  The captain frowned but didn’t argue. After talking with the NCO for a few moments, he broke the squad into two units. Deris led the first, with Monday, Turk, and another man in a semicircle toward the hill where they could see the mine. The other half of the squad was assigned to hold the ground between them and the road, in case of an attack or reinforcements.

  It took roughly ten minutes for them to reach the position, but it felt like hours. With each step, Turk felt his heart beat a little faster. He checked his M-4 several times as he walked, making sure he was locked and loaded; he kept his finger against the side of the trigger guard, tapping occasionally to reassure himself that he was prepared to fire if he had to.

  Inevitably, he thought of Iran. The memories were confused, more about the emotion he’d felt than what had actually happened. He remembered the exhaustion and anger rather than the men he’d killed. His adrenaline kicked in; he was excited in the same way he’d be excited if he were in the air.

  But it was different. In the air, Turk felt like a king—he knew his aircraft and his own abilities so well that he was never afraid, never less than completely confident. On the ground, his weapons felt cruder and less dependable, even though he’d been shooting rifles since he was a boy.

  The mine was an open pit a little over a hundred yards in diameter, pitched on the side of what had been a low hill. Abandoned several years before, its sides were devoid of vegetation, thanks to whatever poisons, manmade and natural, were left from the operation. A misshapen green pool of water sat at the center.

  The three trucks were parked in a semicircle at the entrance ramp to the flat land surrounding the pit. Three men were standing near one of the trucks, consulting a map. The rest of the men had gotten out of the trucks and were milling around the area. Turk counted a dozen.

  “Attack now,” said Captain Deris.

  “We still don’t know if they’re rebels,” said Turk. “They could be miners, just checking the site.”

  Deris frowned. “You see they have guns.”

  “Your government wrote the rules, not mine,” said Turk. “I’m as frustrated as you.”

  “What’s ‘frustrated’?”

  “It means—just hold on.” Turk examined the feed from Seagull 2. There was a list of items that indicated rebels—a flag was the most obvious, but he couldn’t see one. Nor could he identify the black armbands the 30 May Movement regularly wore on operations.

  Guns were permitted—as long as they were from a list that included American rifles and the ubiquitous AK-47, all popular out in the bush. But if Turk could identify them as modern Chinese assault rifles, it could be assumed the group were rebels.

  The normal Dreamland systems would have ID’ed the gun automatically. Turk had to work harder with the Seagull.

  “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.

  The turn caused the aircraft to disappear temporarily from the F-35s’ radars, a variation on the old trick of beaming a Doppler radar. The American system was too smart to stay blind for very long; the F-35s’ redundant systems were able to find it again quickly. But the second or two of confusion, along with the course change, gave the little SUV just enough of an advantage to duck into the ground clutter near the coast, camouflaging itself in the irregular radar returns caused by the ground. It was a command performance, and the fact that Turk had dealt with exactly that sort of maneuver from attacking Flighthawks in simulated combat didn’t make it any less impressive.

  “Basher, your bandit is two sixty off your nose,” said Turk, telling the Marine pilot that the UAV had tucked down to his left. “Ten miles. He’s going to try popping up behind you.”

  “Uh—”

  “Trust me. Put your plane on your right wing and look for the bogie to cross your nose in twenty seconds. It’s going to be low—he’s in the weeds and trying to get behind you. Break now!”

  WITH HIS F-35 bleeding off speed, Cowboy knew he was a sitting duck for any aircraft that came up behind him. But what Turk was suggesting was very counterintuitive. It seemed almost impossible that the drone could spin around quickly enough to get behind him, let alone get underneath him.

  Instinctually, it seemed a dumb move, and not least of all because it would leave him vulnerable to a plunging attack from above, the direction he expected the drone to come from.

  Did he trust the Air Force pilot?

  Cowboy leaned on his stick, driving the F-35B hard and sharp, exactly as Turk had suggested. The g’s hit him hard, pushing him back into the fighter
’s seat.

  A black bar appeared at the right side of his windscreen. The targeting radar was going wild.

  Mother!

  “Can I fire?” asked the Marine, pushing to stay with the UAV. But before anyone answered, the black aircraft turned its nose abruptly in his direction and sliced downward, moving and turning at a speed Cowboy didn’t think possible. He made his own abrupt turn, losing so much altitude that the Bitchin’ Betty warning system blared that he was too low. He scanned his radar and then the sky, but the slippery little UAV and its tiny radar cross section had once more disappeared in the weeds.

  Damn.

  TURK REALIZED WHAT was happening as soon as Cowboy got the altitude warning. There was no way the Marine was going to catch the other plane now.

  Still, they needed as much data as they could get. And they were going to get it by going home.

  “Your bandit’s heading west,” he told the Marine.

  “Yeah, we’re following.”

  “You have it on radar?”

  “Negative.”

  “Did he turn on weapons radar?” Turk asked.

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  “We’re going to search this area. Once he’s over the water he should be easy to find.”

  “Easier, maybe.”

  “Yeah. You see where he launched from?”

  “I didn’t. I’ll check back with my people,” added Turk, though he could already guess that the answer would be no: they would be giving the F-35s a vector to the site if they had.

  Turk signed off with Cowboy and continued down the slope to the mining area. His boots sank into the soft ground. The place smelled like dirt, and death.

  While considered “small,” two-hundred-pound GBU-53s still made an absolute mess of anything they hit; the three guerrillas who’d been holding this part of the perimeter had been obliterated. Twenty yards away, half of one of the trucks lay on its side, blown over by an explosion.

  A severed leg lay on the ground. Turk stared at it for a moment, frowned, then kept walking.

  Three months ago, that would have turned my stomach, he thought. Now it’s just one more ugly part of the landscape.