Phantom force the uss cu.., p.34
Phantom Force (The USS Cunningham Quintet Book 5), page 34
Tailgates dropped and a mixed team of US Army Rangers and Force Recon Marines poured down the ramps. The majority of the troops fanned out to establish a wider defense perimeter beyond the arc of the vehicle line. The remainder began to hastily offload and deploy the base plates, tripods, and tubes of a pair of 120mm heavy mortars. Cases of shells followed, and ordnance men carefully began to lay a series of ugly black sausage shapes on the ground, each finned projectile having a glassy, quarter-sized lens inset in its nose.
*
“The landing force reports perimeter secured and mortars up!” a Marine force SO reported. “Ready to commence firing.”
“Very good,” Amanda replied. “Mortars may commence firing as they get designation. Drone control, start trolling. You are cleared to fire and designate at will.”
*
In the drone control center, twelve young men and women sat encased in a computer synthesized world. Each manipulated a pair of throttle and controller grips and each wore a blank-visored video helmet that turned and nodded as they scanned an environment ten miles distant.
They were of a generation that had teethed and grown up with videogames. Now, they were turning their skill with an amusement into a grim profession. They were the first generation of warbot warriors. Many others would follow.
Peering through the telepresence eyes of their robotic airborne alter-egos, they peeled off and dove recklessly into the streets canyons of Jakarta. As they descended, they flicked on the navigational strobe lights of their RPVs. They wanted to be seen. It was their mission to be shot at. It was their expectation to die, at least cybernetically.
Tracer streams shot up at them. Even with their brigade command-and-control networks knocked out, the individual rebel commanders at the company and battalion levels were convulsively reacting to the attack.
A Scorpion light tank sat parked on the bridge where the Samanhudi Boulevard crossed the Ganung Sahari canal. The vehicle commander elevated his anti-aircraft machine gun and blazed at one of the impudently blinking sets of lights in the sky.
The targeted RPV’s operator, a nineteen-year-old “geek goddess” from Cleveland, Ohio, responded as she had in a thousand games of “Unreal Tournament” and “Doom III”, bobbing, weaving, evading and countering with one of her drone’s brace of radar-guided Hellfire missiles.
The hundred-and-ten-pound Hellfire had been designed to deal with armored fighting vehicles much larger than the Scorpion. Consequently, the little British-built scout tank was flattened like a tin can.
Satisfied, the Geek Goddess from Cleveland went back on the hunt.
*
Farther east, an Eagle Eye operator stalked a previously spotted target, a pair of Rhinemetal 20mm anti-aircraft twin mounts emplaced in one of the open display areas of the Jakarta Fair Grounds. His recon RPV carried no weapons of its own, only something just as deadly: a laser designator pod.
Gingerly, the Eagle Eye operator “hovered up” over the roof of the Airport International Hotel and “started the music,” the invisible infra-red beam of his designator whipping out to paint the first of the anti-aircraft guns.
In the Landing Force Operations Center, a Marine fire control officer had been “piggybacking” the Eagle Eye operator, accessing the video feed from the RPV’s low-light television cameras. As the targeting crosshairs settled on the anti-aircraft gun and the active designation box snapped into existence on his telescreen, he spoke a command into his hot mike.
Ashore, inside the beachhead in Alcol Park, an Army Ranger let a 120mm round slide down the throat of his mortar, ducking back to avoid the muzzle blast as the shell struck the firing pin at the bottom of the tube.
The mortar had been pre-registered on the general area of the Fair Grounds. As the shell, a creation of the superb Swedish munitions firm of Bofors, pitched over the high point of its trajectory, the laser sensor in its nose went active. It sought for, and found, that one particular speck of modulated coherent light reflecting off the designated target. Its guidance fins trimmed as it adjusted its course.
Wham!
One round fired. One target eliminated. The ultimate in military efficiency.
The designator beam traversed and pointed accusingly at the second gun.
*
To the west, another Eagle Eye, its propeller/rotors tilted up into helicopter mode, stalked down the Jalang Torman Raya, keeping below the roof lines of the high-rise buildings along the boulevard. Focused on his precision flying, its operator was taken totally by surprise when a pickup truck load of Indonesian infantry darted out of a side street.
A light machine gun and half a dozen automatic rifles hammered up at the slow, low flying drone. Bullet streams ripped through the Eagle Eye’s structure and its systems operator swore as scarlet battle damage warnings flared around the perimeter of his vision field. As the fatally damaged drone began to plummet from the sky, its SO gave his controls one last savage wrench.
The cheer froze in the throats of the Indonesian infantrymen as the death plunge of the RPV they had downed changed into a flaming kamikaze dive straight into the bed of their truck.
Aboard the Shenandoah, the systems operator tore off his virtual reality helmet in disgust. Game over, for him and for others.
Back and forth over the city, the RPVs worked the target, provoking responses, building distraction, running risks manned aircraft couldn’t dare. And the robots paid for it, absorbing casualties from the growing volume of ground fire as they sterilized a corridor for men to follow.
*
In what had been the headquarters of the Jakarta Polici Harbor Patrol detachment, an officer hunched over the shoulder of the enlisted operator of a field radio, making said operator even more nervous.
“Damn it private! Can’t you get through that jamming? I need brigade now!”
“I’m sorry major, but this is something more than the jamming. I’m getting fragmentary traffic from the other tactical units, but brigade is completely off the air! There’s nothing on either the primary or the backup channels.”
It was not difficult to guess why. Beyond the walls of the harbor-side building, the continuing cackle of automatic weapons fire and the thud of explosions could clearly be heard.
An NCO pushed through the door from an adjoining office, illuminating his way with a flashlight beam. With the city power down, the detachment’s Honda emergency generator was barely adequate to maintain the radios.
“Were you able to get through to the Defense Ministry on the landlines?” the officer demanded.
“No, Major, but I was able to reach Lieutenant Sirhi at Gambir Station. There’s no Defense Ministry left. It’s been destroyed.”
“What?”
“Yes sir.” The Sergeant mopped at his sweat-slick brow with his sleeve. “American precision-guided bombs. The building has been leveled and the Merdeka Square command post destroyed.”
“Are they sure it’s the Americans?”
“It must be. Damned if we have anything like this.” The noncom waved out at the darkness. “They’re hitting us with a complete Baghdad package. That means Brigade must have been taken out. The Americans must be coming for their people at their embassy and they have already made a landing somewhere in the area.”
“Why do you say that?” the major demanded.
“Mortar fire, sir. You can hear it outside. They’re using heavy mortars on targets in the city.”
“The motor patrol in Dreamland Park is not reporting, sir,” the radio operator interjected. “We might not be hearing their calls over the jamming – but it could be something else.”
“In Muhammad’s name,” the Major groaned. “What next?”
He was answered with a spray of shattered glass as the picture windows looking out across Jakarta harbor imploded under multiple bullet impacts.
The officer, the sergeant and the private hit the floor as a fifty-caliber slug sent the field radio flying.
A pair of RIB Raiders lay a hundred yards off the harbor patrol headquarters, systematically riddling the building, its finger piers and the moored patrol boats, with machine gun and grenade launcher fire. The SEALs and Special Boat men were engaged in one of the first Naval Special Forces missions, “beach jumping,” the spreading of chaos and confusion from the sea amid the ranks of a land-bound enemy.
The raiders maintained their barrage until the fires blazed ashore with an adequate brightness. Then their crews kicked a few smoke and flare floats over the side and roared off in search of more trouble to make. Jakarta had a long stretch of waterfront and the possibilities were numerous.
*
The Sky Island flight went feet dry over the city, buzzing in above the shadow-filled streets. Trusting in the nylon webbing of his monkey harness, Stone Quillain leaned out of the open side of the Army AH-6, scanning ahead through his night vision visor.
The only ground illumination came from the occasional set of racing headlights and a few distant burning structures. Sporadic shell bursts flamed greenly in the night and tracer snakes crawled through the darkness.
None crawled in the direction of the Little Birds, however. The multitude of diversions was working, permitting the small helicopters to slip through unengaged. But they would have to build on that even further before they could risk bringing the Osprey lift ships in to the embassy.
That was what the Sky Island mission was all about. The legendary Chinese General Sun Tsu had once written in the first textbook on military strategy and tactics that, “You must take the high ground or you shall most certainly perish in the valley.”
That rule was as applicable in the heart of a great city as anywhere else. Ahead of the Little Birds, Jakarta’s high ground loomed. Four huge hi-rise resort hotels rose above Merdeka Square, overlooking the embassy compound and its approaches: the Sriwijaya to the north, the Transaera to the east, the Aryaduta Hyatte to the southeast and the Metropolitan to the southwest. Blacked out and abandoned, the travelers and tourists they had served were gone, but this night they would serve a different kind of sightseer.
Stone reached up one-handed and called up the air command channel on his Leprechaun transceiver. “Sea Demon Six to Strike Lead!” he yelled over the rotor roar. “All Sky Island elements positioned to insert!”
“Roger that, Sea Demon,” Vince Arkady’s relaxed reply came back through Stone’s headset. “Strike elements – Baker, Charley, Dog, Echo – stand by for sterilization passes on Sky Islands. Roll in … now!”
Stone’s helicopter bobbed for an instant as two larger, sleeker, chunks of darkness blasted past overhead. Looking up through the NiteBrite visor, Stone caught a belly view of a pair of SPEED Cobras, weapons pods studding their underwing hardpoints. Fangs out, they were diving on Stone’s future command post, the roof of the Hotel Sriwijaya.
It had to be assumed that the Indonesians read Sun Tzu as well.
Again, Stone leaned outboard to watch events develop. This was going to be interesting.
Someone hostile was in residence on the hotel roof. Clearly visible through the photomultipliers, small arms fire sparkled from the balustrade, aimed at the approaching gunships.
The lead Cobra replied with what looked like a glowing green death ray that swept along the edge of the hotel roof, wiping away the flyspecks of rifle fire. Stone could recognize the tracer stream of a 20mm “Vulcan Lite” Gatling gun when he saw one. He could also appreciate good shooting.
He had a little more trouble with what he observed next. The sterilizing SPEED Cobra pitched up steeply, bled speed and flared into a side skid. At first, Quillain thought that the compound helo had been hit, but then he realized that the Navy gunship was still under precise, deliberate control.
As the wingman climbed and circled, the flight leader jinked around the top of the hotel, in an odd, sidling dance, edging closer, side slipping a few feet to one side or another, climbing slightly or dipping its nose.
Then it hit Quillain. He’d seen this kind of thing before, back home on his father’s farm. Ol’ Rebel, their venerable gray barn cat, would lay moves like this on a mouse he was chasing. The helo pilot had missed someone on his first firing pass, and now he was hunting the fugitive through the maze of ventilator stacks and elevator heads on the hotel roof, trying to line up a finishing shot.
Blooded veteran or not, Quillain felt a cold shiver ripple through him. He lifted a hand to the Leprechaun keypad clipped to his chest harness and tapped into the designated Talk-Between-Pilots channel.
“You need a hand down there, Lieutenant?” the Cobra wingman inquired
“Negative, negative, this guy is just being a pain,” an annoyed feminine voice replied. “Where’d he go, dammit? Just a sec … Okay, got him cornered. Going to grenade. Gotcha!”
The rotor-winged mouser pounced. A single shell belched from an underwing gunpod, a fireball blossoming on the roof. Then the SPEED Cobra was wheeling clear and climbing away. “Sea Demon Six, this is Strike Flight Bravo. The LZ is clean and we’re out of here. Your sheets are turned down and the mint is on the pillow.”
“This is Sea Demon Six. ’Preciate ya, Bravo. We are in.”
With a droning whine, the AH-6 settled onto the roof of the hotel and its handful of passengers disembarked with an explosive rush.
The Sky Island force consisted of the three four-man diamonds of the Green Beret A-Team and the Sniper/Designator element of the Marine Force Recon Platoon. As a gesture of jointness, Stone had attached himself to one of the Army Special Forces sections – but, with the camouflage patterns of their uniforms washed out by his night vision system, it was impossible to tell the difference between Dogface and Leatherneck this night.
Once more, Stone slapped the key pad of his transceiver. “Star Child, Star Child, this is Sea Demon Six at Sky Island Alpha. We are down and operating.”
“Acknowledged, Island Alpha.”
Wordlessly, the four-man Special Forces unit broke down into two smaller segments, the sniper/observer team rushing for the cannon scarred balustrade that overlooked Merdeka Square, while the security team moved to secure the rooftop access doors.
Once again, the lethal mystique of the sniper came into play. A single, skilled marksman, dealing precision death from a distance could paralyze a far larger body of troops. Even a blooded combat veteran, inured to the possibility of random death on the battlefield, might freeze when confronted with the thought of having a single, specific bullet aimed at him with cold blooded determination.
The tactical snipers on the embassy walls had initiated this paralysis; now the Sky Island marksmen would set the final seal upon it. They were armed with the “Big Fifty”, the Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle
With an unhurried swiftness, the Green Beret Snipers deployed, extending the bipod of their massive primary weapon and finding a brace point and firing position. Uncapping the lenses of the thermographic rifle sight and observer’s scope, they set out a row of massive reload clips and their range tables. In less than a minute, gunner and spotter were behind their scopes and hunting targets.
Quillain flipped up his visor and lifted his own NiteBrite binoculars, then panned them across the city. Intermittent flashbulb bursts of mortar and missile fire flared, answered by occasional sputtering tracer streams from anti-aircraft guns. The defensive gunfire was thinning out rapidly, however. The concentrated flak suppression program being put down by the RPVs, SPEED Cobra’s and mortar crews was making the firing of an anti-aircraft gun a very dead-end proposition.
Off to the southwest of their position, across the broad open space of the square, the ruins of the Indonesian Defense Ministry sent up a dense plume of smoke. A steady popping of rifle fire came from the US Embassy compound in the southeastern corner, along with the occasional rip of a machine gun or thud of a grenade. Mostly it was outgoing from the compound walls; the FAST Marines were maintaining a furious fire, hosing down the local environment.
As yet, there was no sign of coordinated activity from the rebel forces surrounding the embassy. The shock paralysis of the attack was still in effect. They didn’t know just who the enemy was or what his intents were, nor from where the next blow might fall. The individual company-level commanders were waiting for orders to come down or for the situation to clarify before taking action.
Stone could recognize the logical but insidious trap the Indonesians were sliding into. When you were under attack, it was always better to do something, anything, constructive immediately rather than to stand around figuring out what would have been best after it was too late.
He swung his glasses back across the square and caught movement at the base of the MONAS monument. A squad of Indonesian infantry crouched behind the base of the towering obelisk, taking shelter from the fire from the embassy. Through his powerful NiteBrite glasses, Stone could see one of the soldiers had something lifted in front of his face: a radio. Apparently, the squad leader was trying to establish contact with his superiors, intent on asking just what in the hell he was supposed to do now.
Stone wasn’t the only one to spot the infantry squad.
C-R-A-A-A-C-K!
Even standing ten feet away from the weapon, the muzzle blast of the Barrett Big Fifty was a stinging physical slap.
The Barrett fired the Browning .50 caliber machine gun round, a venerable projectile designed shortly after the First World War that, by sheer accident, turned out to be the most accurate long-range cartridge ever created in the history of ballistics.
