Balance of Power: A Novel (41 page)

“Wilco. Do you have the second?”

“Judy,”
Messer said, annoyed.

“Tally-ho!” Caskey called as he saw the missile ahead, still below them.

“Good target aspect.” Messer studied the intercept on his radar. “Good solution.” He waited. “Port five degrees,” he asked. The Tomcat streaked toward the smoking island at five hundred knots and two thousand feet.

“Any signs of those SAM radars again, Messer?”

“No,” he replied. “Stand by…” Messer pressed the launch button and the second AMRAAM came off the Tomcat and screamed toward the Silkworm. Caskey and Messer strained to watch as it guided directly to the Vampire and hit it squarely in the face. It was only four miles from their Tomcat when it exploded in a huge fireball and fell toward the warm ocean.

“Splash one Vampire,”
Messer called, then lifted his head and looked around for other bogies or missiles. “Come around south, MC. Let’s get out of their SAM envelope.”

As they headed south again and climbed back up to a
more comfortable altitude, Messer asked, “Who are these guys? They have fancy speedboats, SAMs, good tactics, and now surface-to-surface missiles? What the
hell
is going on here?”

“These aren’t your average terrorists,” MC answered. “They may not be very smart, but one thing is clear—they are well financed. I just hope that first Silkworm doesn’t get through to the
Wasp.”

The first one was trying to do just that. There were no other air defenses between it and the
Wasp
. The Silkworm had unwittingly flown right down the corridor of least resistance.

The
Wasp
had been trying to clear the helicopters out of the area since being warned of the incoming cruise missile. Their best—and last—defense was the Phalanx, the point defense system—a Gatling gun with a radar mounted on the side of the ship to shoot down cruise missiles with good old-fashioned bullets. A lot of them. It was the same gun that the F-14 and F-18 had, but with a different radar. This radar was hungry for metal: it would find anything metal and shoot it. No discretion, no thinking. If it’s metal, shoot it. Which required that those in charge of the system clear all friendly metal out of the way before shooting. And that’s exactly what they had been trying to do.

The last helicopter cleared the deck of the amphibious carrier to the south as the
Wasp
went to automatic on its missile defense system. Robo-gun. It looked like a white R2D2 on the side of the ship. Its radar had a good return from the Silkworm and turned the six barrels of the Gatling gun toward the cruise missile as it closed on the
Wasp
. It jerked a couple of times, raised the barrels, and began firing. A steady stream of 20mm bullets ripped through the air toward the incoming missile. When the Silkworm was a mile away, small pieces of the tail began to fall away. Seconds passed as the bullets drew closer to the missile and finally caught up with it. The bullets tore
the missile apart. It blew up and fell into the sea in thousands of pieces well short of the
Wasp
.

On the island, in the three minutes since the Silkworm launch, the Marines had advanced cautiously. They approached what they thought was the clearing Tucker had been heading for. They entered the perimeter carefully. Some knelt on the ground while others continued walking. Two smoking bunkers with thick concrete roofs stood on the left side of the opening, bigger than expected.

It looked like a small village, with dozens of huts. It was eerily quiet. There were several bodies, but no visible opposition. Yet there had been only minutes before.

“They must be in the huts,” Tucker said to the Marine to his left. “I don’t like this at all.” He glanced around with the skeptical look he had developed watching rash men die. “Check every hut. One by one. Watch for booby traps!” he said.

The Marines advanced toward the village with their rifles swinging left and right, while Dillon stood on the perimeter trying not to look as scared as he felt.

T
UCKER STUDIED HIS CHART
. H
E WAS CONFUSED
, and he didn’t like it. There was no place for the terrorists to have gone, but they had vanished. One minute there was furious automatic weapons fire from this village, and the next, it was empty. The Marines had the entire perimeter surrounded; the terrorists couldn’t have gone through the Marines undetected. And the company that had been dropped by the helos on the other side of the clearing had arrived and reported no activity in their direction at all.

Tucker looked up suddenly. His staff surrounded him, waiting for instructions and wisdom. He breathed a little harder, trying to understand his sense of danger. Something was wrong. He knew in the back of his mind the answer was obvious; he just couldn’t figure it out. Then he remembered the stories he had heard from Marines who had been in Vietnam. “A tunnel!” he yelled, starting to move quickly. “Check the floors of the huts!” he bellowed as he headed for the largest hut himself. Dillon trotted behind him.

The Marines approached the hut carefully with their rifles pointed at the door. Tucker gave the officer the sign to go in
right now
. They proceeded more quickly, but still with caution. One finally threw open the bamboo door and pulled back, waiting for some response. He was met with more silence.

Tucker wasn’t waiting any longer. He strode through
the door with his 9mm handgun, ready for any movement. He noticed a bamboo floor mat over a large section of the dirt floor. The rest of the squad was in the hut, waiting anxiously for something to happen. Dillon instinctively pulled back as Tucker tugged gently on the bamboo mat to feel for any resistance: any wires, lines, or booby-trap triggers. He didn’t feel anything as he slid it slowly to one side. Tucker grimaced at what was underneath. He peered down the dark mud stairway and examined the wood supporting the sides. He noticed several wires in the darkness across the wide mouth of the tunnel. Nearly every step was booby-trapped.

“This isn’t even worth trying to clear,” he said to those in the room, who were relieved. Tucker stooped down to examine something on the third step. It was a strange device. It was sitting on a steel plate. Very odd, Tucker thought. He had never seen anything like it. Round, no markings on it, and about five inches high. It looked like a UFO.

A faint bell of recognition sounded in the deep recesses of his memory. He had read something about a device like this in the op report of the attack on the
Pacific Flyer
. “Everybody out!” he screamed. “Out!”

The Marines, hearing his tone more than his words, were out of the hut before he was. They ran for the trees. Others, standing in the clearing, sensed the problem and began running themselves. Dillon was slower to react. He made it out just in front of Tucker and Luther. The hut erupted behind them in an enormous explosion that splintered the bamboo walls. Dirt and debris were thrown a hundred feet into the air as the concussion threw the Marines still in the clearing to the ground. Dillon, Luther, and Colonel Tucker were slammed down onto their faces and lay still as rubble and splintered bamboo covered them.

“Commander Louwsma…” Admiral Billings said in that tone that made people cringe. He stopped as the video image on the screen erupted and the hut from which Tucker had just run exploded. “What the hell…?” Billings said, sitting forward. The Army officer in the corner turned a dial to back the video image from the Predator away from the burning hut so more of the island could be seen. The screen showed a large number of Marines looking at their colonel and several other Marines who were lying on the ground in the clearing. Those on the ship watched in horror as the situation became clear. The terrorists had disappeared, the main hut had been booby-trapped, and the central Marine force was either dead or wounded. Billings growled to Captain Black, “Get the colonel on the radio. I sure hope Dillon wasn’t in there. That’s all we need.”

Beth Louwsma stared at the screen in amazement. What had seemed like a walk-through was becoming a disaster. Her throat was dry. She stared at the small images of the Marines lying on the ground.

Colonel Tucker stirred and staggered to his feet. He knelt down to examine Corporal Luther, who got up as well. Next to them was a body with white tape on his helmet. The tape was slightly singed and blackened, but “Jimmy” was clear enough. “Oh, hell,” Tucker said as he dropped to his knees. “Corpsman!” he yelled. He put his face next to Dillon’s. “You okay? Dillon!” he yelled as the hut burned behind them.

Dillon’s eyes opened and looked around wildly. He turned his face and saw Tucker. As he swung his left arm up to defend himself from some unknown threat, Tucker grabbed it. “Dillon! You’re okay. Can you hear me all right?”

“Yeah, I hear you fine.”

“Can you get up?”

“Yeah, I think so. What happened?”

“The place blew up. We got out just in time.”

Tucker and Luther hauled him effortlessly to his feet. Dillon’s knees bowed involuntarily, but he recovered his balance quickly. He took a deep breath and tried to rub the dust off his face, but his sweaty palms smeared it, giving him a muddy look.

Tucker put his 9mm back in his holster. “This looks clear,” he said to no one in particular. “They’ve gone somewhere else. Now we’ve got to find them. It’s a small island.” He began to walk toward his radioman and stopped to look at Dillon’s face. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Dillon scanned his body to look for any signs of injury.

Tucker smiled slightly. “Well, now you look like a real Marine. We don’t like pretty boys running around with clean uniforms.

“Come on, Corporal Luther. Bring Mr. Dillon and let’s get on with this.” The radioman walked up and Tucker grabbed the receiver.

“Beth,” Billings continued, “can you explain to me how these terrorists had Silkworm missiles and we didn’t know about it? And they actually
launched
two of them and almost got one of my ships? Can you explain that to…”

“Colonel Tucker on the radio, sir.” Captain Black handed him a telephone receiver.

“Brandon, what’s going on there?”

“Admiral, things are under control. We’ve captured the entire area, and the SAM launch sight and the Silkworm sights. Everything is disabled.”

“Good. So where are the terrorists?”

“Several killed,”
came the reply,
“but the rest apparently escaped through a tunnel. We can’t tell which way it leads—it was booby-trapped, as you can see.”
He looked over his shoulder at the smoldering remains of the
hut.
“But we’ll find them. It’s a small island.”

Louwsma stared at the video image, which covered nearly a third of the island. She thought she saw some movement in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, but wasn’t sure. She leaned forward and looked harder. Something was definitely moving. She looked around the room. No one was looking at the screen except to watch Tucker talk to the admiral on the radio—they were treating it like a video telephone.

She got the attention of the Army officer and motioned for him to skew the image so they could look left and up. He watched as the image pivoted slightly until Tucker was in the lower right-hand corner and the area of movement was closer to the center. He zoomed the image in slightly, and the movement became a line of men hurrying down a trail at the bottom of a hill. “We’ve got them!” Beth blurted out. “Sir.”

Everyone grew suddenly quiet.

“In the middle left,” she said, pointing.

“Brandon, they’re coming out of a tunnel northwest of you. About half a mile away,”
Billings said quickly.

Beth whispered to the Army officer. The image moved left until the men emerging from the hill were in the right-hand corner. There were more in front of them, walking rapidly in single file toward the coast. Two smaller figures in lighter clothes were with the lead group.

Why head toward the ocean? Beth wondered. They’re just backing themselves into a corner. She looked past the moving figures to the waterfront. Taking an unconscious step closer to the screen, she could make out more detail. She focused on a triangular shape, a shape that doesn’t occur in nature. It seemed to be protruding from a treelined inlet set deep into a hillside.

“The
Sumatran Star!”
she exclaimed. “Admiral, they’re heading for their ship. It’s backed into an inlet and virtually invisible. There!”

Billings looked at the image, then signaled to the Marine
intelligence officer. He immediately got on the radio with Tucker.

In less than a minute four Cobra helicopter gunships appeared out and flew down the line of figures. The nose gun of the lead helicopter fired steadily from five hundred feet above. The other three followed. The men on the ground returned fire and ran to find cover.

Above the helicopters came the scream of a Harrier as it rolled in on the position of the
Sumatran Star
. It dropped its two five-hundred-pound bombs and pulled up in a high G maneuver, its wings leaving thick vapor trails. The bombs missed the ship and slammed into the ground beyond it. Another Harrier rolled in behind the first and released its two bombs even lower. These found their target, hitting the ship in the bow.

A CH-53E rose over the horizon from behind the hill and settled onto the beach south of the damaged ship. It unloaded its Marines, cutting off the line of advancing men. The helicopter lifted off as a company of Marines on foot came up behind the line of men, who were now in disarray. The two groups exchanged fire. The enemy leader realized they were outmanned and surrounded and yelled to his men over the din. They stopped firing.

Colonel Tucker came over the hill at a run with Dillon and Corporal Luther in tow. “Hold your fire!” Tucker yelled as he came down the incline. He turned to his radioman. “Pass the word to hold fire.”

“Stay here!” Tucker said to Dillon. He looked at him hard, as if pinning him in place, and hurried to the front of the Marines.

Breathing hard, Dillon glanced around to get his bearings. Luther was holding his M-16 in a businesslike manner and scanning the jungle for any sign of danger. They were on the west side of the base of the hill, near the path that wound toward Tucker. Behind them was an indentation that implied water or a promising brook. Corporal Gordon strode up next to them with his M-16.

“Everything okay?” Gordon asked.

“We’re all set here,” Luther replied. He motioned with his head to Colonel Tucker at the front. “Look’s like this thing is wrapping up. I think we’ve got them cut off.”

“I sure as hell hope so.” Gordon adjusted the chin strap of his too-tight helmet.

Luther looked at Dillon. “You okay, Mr. Dillon? You about got your ass blown up back there.”

“I’m okay,” Dillon said. “I was just surprised.”

“Surprised?” Luther tried not to laugh. “You were
unconscious.”

“No, I really wasn’t.” Dillon was denying it more to himself than to the others. “I was just stunned.”

Luther smiled mischievously. “I think we’ll just stay right here, Mr. Dillon. I don’t see any bad guys, and if the shooting starts again, we’ll be better off here.”