Rogue Element (3 page)

Ruth Styles was a clerk but, as she often told herself, not just any clerk. She was an important cog in the machine of the United States’ most powerful and secret intelligence arm, the National Security Agency. Indeed, the NSA registered her important contribution to the nation’s defence with the grandiose title Intelligence Assimilation Executive. At fifty-four, Ruth was one of the most senior IAEs in the agency. Her stern, bloodshot eyes even made some of the section heads, beings ostensibly far above her on the public service treadmill, tremble.

Ruth had an imposing barrel chest and legs like tree trunks to support it. She had a penchant for severe suits
and heavy powder that accentuated the pores on her face. She had joined the NSA as a secretary. Thirty years later, she was still hooked on the thrill her work gave her, because that was her life.

The contained underground complex Ruth Styles had joined as a young woman in 1970 had its entrance in the middle of a pineapple plantation. But it had grown like a living thing over time, adding appendages as the world became ever more complicated. There were now several towering wings above ground but, iceberg-like, that was nothing compared to the sprawling mass hidden below. It was certainly different from the old days. Now the pineapple plantation was gone, replaced by the ubiquitous car park.

The once ultra top-secret NSA had well and truly come in from the cold. It now even had its own website. The extent of the agency, the reach and impact of its power, astonishing even in the old days, was truly mind-blowing now.

Ruth’s job in this world, while essential, was relatively simple. Despite the considerable advances in technology, the agency still relied on people to process the enormous volume of information that flooded in every minute of every day. This information was then passed to people – hopefully the correct ones – located at appropriate NSA nodes around the world, to analyse and act on.

Ruth had the eye or the nose, or whatever one chose to call it, for the job. She seemed to
know
, even when there were no apparent clues, when a signal was imperative and when it wasn’t. Even some of the most innocuous signals could have far-reaching impact. Without people like Ruth, the NSA’s multi-billion dollar infrastructure would be
worthless. She knew it and, more importantly, so did everyone else.

Self-congratulation was far from her mind, though, when the B2-classified field opened automatically on her Hewlet Packard screen. A Watchdog installed in computer system CS982/Ind. was alerting the system. An intruder had been found.

Watchdogs were highly secret weapons in the war against computer hackers. It was a benign virus that followed intruders over the Internet, leaving snips of code at every switch the call passed through; in effect, just like a dog marking territory. The code snips thus became a trail that led to the hacker’s point of origin. A hacker’s computer could be plugged into a phone line in a country on the other side of the world. Alternatively, the break-in could originate in a house down the street and the call routed through half a dozen different countries. This subterfuge was useless when a Watchdog was on the trail.

Ruth had no idea where system CS982/Ind. resided, nor did she care. What she did care about was passing the information on quickly to the appropriate echelon, which in this instance, the B2 code told her, were both the owners of the system cracked and COMPSTOMP, the new super-secret group within the NSA established to counter computer terrorism. They could probably catch the computer terrorist in the act, Ruth observed, because this intrusion was happening now, in real time.

Ruth efficiently tapped the forwarding codes in the box provided and keyed enter. The slip disappeared from her screen, on its way to the appropriate analysts. There, she smiled. Another blow to the forces of darkness.

Captain Radit ‘Raptor’ Jatawaman was scrambled from Hasanuddin Air Force Base outside Mkassar, Sulawesi, one of the Indonesian air force’s largest installations. Despite the early start, he was out of bed and into his flying suit before he realised it, his brain lagging behind his body. He was summoned to the briefing room and given the details of the mission he was about to fly by a high-ranking officer who was a stranger to him. The objective shocked him but he somehow managed to keep the surprise out of his face. Timing was tight. He grabbed his helmet from flight stores and ran to his Lockheed Martin F-16A, parked on the apron.

Ground engineers surrounded the aircraft. Ordnance officers checked that the AIM-9L sidewinder missiles, one on each wingtip rail, were correctly attached. The fuel cart drove off.

The F-16A was the premier front-line fighter of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Udara, or TNIAU, the Indonesian air force. Raptor was relatively new to the squadron, and he was proud to be one of the elite drivers. The aircraft had been pre-flighted and was ready to go. He hopped in, fastened his harness with the help of a ground crewman, jacked in his phones and began spooling up the Pratt & Whitney.

Once airborne, Captain Jatawaman received his interception coordinates. The F-16 climbed through 18 000 feet before Raptor turned sharply right. He levelled the aircraft out less than a minute later at 39 000 feet in clear, moonlit air. It wasn’t long before he saw the 747 sitting in the sky
four kilometres away in his three o’clock-low position, just where it should be. The seven-four appeared motionless, bobbing on an ocean of Indian ink, lit as if for a party.

The captain went to full military power and accelerated high over the 747. When he was fully twenty kilometres in front of the passenger jet, he dived back towards it on a bearing that would take the F-16 shooting down the 747’s port side. It was a totally unnecessary manoeuvre but Raptor felt like playing. The game was cat and mouse.

Captain Jatawaman began the three-g pull-up on his F16 the instant his aircraft rocketed past the giant kangaroo on the 747’s tail.

Luke Granger yawned and lifted his eyes to the front windows as a ghostly dart blew past. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed, his head spinning around in an attempt to keep it in view. The captain and second officer almost seemed to jump, even though they were both strapped in.

‘What?’ asked Flemming, craning his neck, eyes scanning the instruments in a reflex action.

‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I think something fast just went past us. Pretty close.’

‘I didn’t see anything. Are you sure?’ asked Rivers, looking out the window, craning her neck to see down the 747’s flank.

‘No, but . . .’ Granger wasn’t sure. He’d been daydreaming, mind not really on the job. Was it possible that some kind of military fighter had just buzzed them?

He’d practised the manoeuvre himself hundreds of times. It was almost basic training for dogfighting: two aircraft flew head-on at each other, passing no more than fifty feet apart. Both aircraft would then pull up into inside climbing turns – known as high yo-yos – rolling
out at the top to gain as much height as possible. The two aircraft would then continue turning in at each other in a succession of high and low yo-yos until one managed to turn inside the other and bring its guns/cannon/missiles to bear, or one of the aircraft ran out of sky and ploughed into the ground.

Have we just been challenged to a dogfight? No way, he decided. The outcome of such a thing overloaded his common sense. It could also have been
. . .
what? A bit of cloud?

Rivers relinquished the left-hand seat to her captain, climbing out of it as if it were quicksand. ‘I have the aircraft,’ said Flemming, once he’d strapped in.

‘You have the aircraft,’ Granger said, trying to recall exactly what it was he’d seen.

The jumbo, although a lumbering barge compared to Raptor’s F-16, was cruising close to the speed of sound at .82 mach. If he was careless, the barge would slip outside his envelope of opportunity. Fuel reserves for this interception weren’t unlimited.

Raptor rolled out of the yo-yo 1000 feet above the 747. He was positioned perfectly, high and behind the flying kangaroo. He hung there briefly, like a wasp poised for the kill. Raptor opened the throttle to close the distance. It was too easy.

Raptor’s squadron had been flying almost constantly this last six months. It was a welcome relief after the years of only part-time flying. The financial crisis of ’97 had hit his squadron hard. There was not enough money for spares. Not enough money for missiles. Not even enough money for fuel. The lowest point for his squadron was the realisation that only three F-16s were serviceable.

The country was falling apart. Morale was nonexistent. And then suddenly, virtually overnight, the money started pouring in. Spares and fuel became available, and he logged more hours in the next six months than over the previous three years. Flying, dogfighting, was why he joined the air force. Now he felt invincible. Let me go head-to-head with one of those Australian F/A-18s, he often wished. Shooting down a Qantas 747 was hardly the contest he’d hoped for. He reminded himself of the briefing officer’s assertion that there were sound tactical reasons for the action.

The Indonesian pilot swooped behind the 747. He hung above his quarry’s tail, keeping the distance between the two aircraft constant, and depressed the radio transmission button on the throttle a half dozen times, broadcasting clicks in a pre-agreed sequence that announced he was in position to make the shot. Raptor allowed his F-16 to fall back behind the 747; the AIM-9L sidewinder needed more air to get a lock on the Boeing’s giant Rolls-Royce turbo fans.

He activated the missile’s targeting system and watched the glowing red diamond float across the Head Up Display searching for prey. A tone sounded through his helmet phones. The missile’s fire control system had locked on to the 747’s right-hand, outboard engine. Raptor expected that. The AIM-9 was a heater. It was attracted to an object’s infrared signature, its heat output, and an outboard engine had a greater heat differential between itself and the surrounding freezing high-altitude air than an inboard turbine snuggled against the warm fuselage.

Seconds later, he received the clicks from Hasanuddin AFB, confirmation that gave him permission, or rather the order, to fire the missile. A moment of doubt punctured
Raptor’s conscience. But the uncertainty lasted for the briefest instant in a part of his brain that had long been subdued by hundreds of hours of training.

His finger depressed the fire button on his side stick controller. It was a subconscious reaction to the command, like the way a leg twitched when the knee was tapped with a hammer. The missile slid from its rail. He watched it snake until its guidance system stabilised the missile and delivered the warhead unerringly to the target. It flew up the tail pipe of the Rolls-Royce engine where the fragmentation warhead, packed with 3.6 kilos of HE, detonated. Red-hot metal spikes ripped through the engine and annihilated its delicate balance. The massive turbine, now with smashed bearings and spinning at 3 500 rpm, leapt out of its housings, blasting the shattered titanium fan blades into the thin air.

Raptor watched the destruction from his dress-circle position. The 747’s outboard engine was utterly destroyed. The monster staggered, smoke trailing from the wound like a long piece of gauze dressing.

‘Jesus, what the hell . . .’ said Joe as the plane bucked and kicked unexpectedly, bouncing the Apple off his table and into his lap. The sleeping passengers woke, bewildered. The cabin was rapidly filling with engine noise and the smell of burning grease. Joe looked around to see what was happening. There was confusion on the faces of the passengers he could see. Their mouths were slightly open and they were looking around, like him, trying to establish what was going on.

Joe was immune to the usual aircraft noises and jolts he considered normal. He believed himself a comfortable flyer because he had done so much of it. The whirrs, pops
and bangs that usually alarmed less seasoned travellers he took in his stride. But now that the plane was behaving in a manner outside his experience, Joe realised how genuinely afraid of flying he was. There was obviously something very wrong, only his conscious mind was refusing to accept the full and terrifying implications. Namely, that the aircraft was somehow poised on a knife’s edge of destruction and that, as a consequence, so was he.

The groan of metal tearing and breaking underscored the vibration increasing in intensity. Joe realised then that the plane was ripping itself apart.

The last of the sleeping passengers woke. The quiet, vaguely uncomfortable environment they’d dozed off in was now filled with ear-splitting noise and a shaking that was jarring them out of their seats. Their reaction to this frightening new dawn was unanimous. They panicked.

The routine work of the flight deck suddenly became anything but. The sudden jolt followed by a high frequency vibration told them that there was a serious problem somewhere. Alarms began to sound. Both pilots scoured the sea of lights and dials to discover exactly what that problem was.

‘Disengaging autopilot,’ said Flemming.

‘Autopilot disengaged,’ confirmed Granger after the appropriate switch had been flicked. Flemming instantly felt an unusual weight on his control column.

The digital temperature readout for number four engine was unbelievably high, and climbing. While he watched it with a morbid interest, the Engine Overheat light illuminated, followed an instant later by the warning bell. The Fire Warning switch also glowed with an array of other lights that had, only moments before, been dim.

‘Jesus Christ,’ exclaimed Granger. ‘Engine fire!’ What the hell caused that? He hit the Bell Cutout switch on the glare shield, silencing the alarm that filled the cockpit and his ’phones.

‘Identify fire,’ said Flemming.

‘Engine fire number four,’ Granger replied.

Luke stared at the electronic dials on the panel between them. Temps in the right-hand outboard engine had climbed way into the danger zone. All the instruments for fuel flow, even temperatures, had been absolutely normal not five minutes ago. Whatever it was, it was catastrophic. From the vicious shaking of the aircraft, it was probably a severe engine failure caused by . . . ? What? Jet engines, while delicately balanced, were also extremely robust.

What they had here was not a phantom problem, neither was it a drill. A fire on an aircraft, no matter how big or small the plane, was a major concern. The temperatures produced inside a jet turbine were easily hot enough to melt aluminium, and that’s exactly what the wing above the engine was made of.

‘Number four thrust lever,’ called Flemming.

‘Confirmed,’ said Granger, seeing his captain’s hand on the correct lever.

Flemming responded by snapping closed the throttle lever for number four engine. ‘Closed,’ he said.

‘Number four cut-off switch,’ said Flemming. When he saw that Granger’s hand was on the correct switch he commanded, ‘Cut off!’

Granger shifted the switch to the appropriate position. ‘Cut off,’ he confirmed.

‘Number four fire warning switch,’ Flemming said. Granger had fallen behind the sequence. Granger quickly
placed his hand on the glowing switch. He glanced at Flemming.

‘Pull!’ commanded the captain.

Granger tugged the switch. ‘Pulled!’

Instantly, shut-off valves for the hydraulic, engine bleed air and fuel were activated, starving the fire of combustible mixtures.

Flemming and Granger both stared at the Fire Warning light. It remained illuminated.

‘Fire the bottle,’ said Flemming.

Granger rotated the switch that discharged a canister containing fire-suppressing foam in the engine nacelle. ‘Bottle fired!’ A light came on announcing that the bottle had indeed been discharged.

Luke found himself leaning forward in his seat, willing the array of illuminated fire warning lights in front of him to go out. They did not. The engine was shut down, starved of fuel, oil and air, covered in fire retardant foam but, according to the instrument lights, a fire still burned out there under the wing. Jesus!

‘Fire the second bottle,’ Flemming said.

Granger rotated the switch the opposite way. ‘Bottle fired!’

Surely the fire would now be extinguished. The pilots focused on the warning light, willing it to wink off. It didn’t.

Shockwaves pulsed through the 747. They shook the plane so hard that Granger’s teeth clattered.

‘We’re going to have to land asap,’ said Captain Flemming, busily setting the aircraft up for an orderly descent to an altitude where the 747 could fly slower in thicker air. ‘What’s the nearest airport?’

Granger knew every strip along his route sector, but
there was only one within range long enough to take a 747. ‘Hasanuddin Air Force Base. Force landed there once before with the squadron. Doubles as a civilian airport. But we’ll have to turn around. It’s a twenty-minute backtrack.’

‘Okay.’ Flemming paused and added, ‘I hate to think what’s going on behind us.’

Luke nodded.

‘Better let the poor buggers know what’s going on,’ Flemming said. ‘Once we level off, Luke, go back and have a look out the window. You probably won’t see much, but you never know.’

The intense heat of the fire burned through the bolts that fixed the engine under the wing and it dropped away like a bomb.

Joe had stopped panicking. He had retreated into shock, along with most of his fellow passengers. The plane felt like it was falling, sliding sideways and downwards. People around him were screaming, but Joe didn’t hear them. Something caught his attention. There was a yellow glow coming from somewhere outside the cabin. He wondered if it was an angel come to their rescue. He looked out the small window, squashing his face against the cold Perspex to get a better view. Whatever it was, it was somewhere out on the end of the wing. He couldn’t quite work out exactly what it was, but it wasn’t an angel. Joe realised it was a fireball, just as it fell away from sight into the blackness below. Was that an engine? he wondered, before discounting the possibility.