Rogue Element Read online

  The officers chuckled, the tension relieved. Suluang’s confidence was contagious. Of course the Americans would fall into line. And there was still so much occupying them in the Middle East. They’d be difficult at first, but they’d come around.

  The young waitress again distracted Suluang. She was across the room folding napkins. A light from the kitchen behind her revealed long slender legs beneath the cotton sundress. Women: taking as many of them as possible to his bed was one of the advantages of power. Very few refused him. He caught his reflection in a mirror. He was a man of power and, at only forty-five, in the prime of life. He smiled to himself before calling her over on the pretence of ordering a drink.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he enquired after placing an order.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ she said.

  Elizabeth caught him staring at her breasts between the buttons as she leaned forward to remove some plates from the table. She moved to improve his view.

  Indonesian air space, 35 000 feet, 1840 Zulu, Tuesday, 28 April

  Joe Light was wired. His video screen was tuned to the news while his fingers worked the keyboard of his laptop. The title track from Blood Soaked Earth crashed through the earphones plugged into a DVD player by his side. He was nervous. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone had been watching. Satisfied, he closed the Internet connection and reopened the game minimised on the toolbar.

  Within a few moments he was back in the world he was more comfortable with these days. His right hand gripped a vibrating joystick. On the computer’s screen, millions of colours coalesced to form a grotesque being. Joe smiled as it ripped the head off another warrior. The freakish thing on screen looked familiar. Joe had patched the game with a parasite that allowed him to attach his features to the computer character. He tapped the keys and the monster flexed, swelling its exaggerated pecs, chest and arms to ridiculous proportions.

  In the flesh Joe was strong, but he wasn’t muscle-bound. An ex-girlfriend once described him as vaguely handsome in a wiry kind of way, adding that she thought he had a modem for a dick. Joe’s other passion besides technology was boxing. Not the boxercise aerobics favoured by secretaries and marketing execs, but the real thing in real gyms where there wasn’t any piped music or mirrors, and where the air smelled like a sour leather glove.

  The game was a new one Joe was reviewing for Dumb Thumb magazine, an on-line/off-line rag that specialised in high-end computer entertainment and technology. Once he had worked his way through it, Joe would crack the cheat codes and post them on his own Internet site. Two sources of income for the one job. Cool. A sweet little earner. There were many streams to Joe’s income, which was why, at twenty-seven, he could afford a holiday to England, flying first-class. Life was good. Yeah.

  His fingers flicked over the keys. A hideous mutant flung gobs of its own dung at the warrior-Joe on screen. Instead of dissolving armour, fatigues and skin as it was supposed to, the lethal excretions passed straight through the computer character and melted the wall behind it. Joe noted the keystrokes on his palm pilot and went in search of more cheat codes.

  ‘Can I get you something to drink, sir?’ asked a flight attendant, leaning forward towards him to catch his answer. Joe had completely forgotten where he was. That often happened when he was on the computer. It was as if his mind became mated with the CPU when his fingers moved over the keys.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said, slightly annoyed by the distraction, and went back to the screen.

  The rest of the 747 was quiet when Joe woke from a short, fitful sleep, the overhead lights dimmed low. In economy, uncomfortable bundles in grey blankets filled the seats. Occasional arms and heads spilled into the aisles. Here and there passengers drowsily watched video screens. Sleep hung heavily in the warm cabin.

  The flight deck was also dark, but nonetheless alert. Captain Andy Flemming, one of Qantas’s most senior captains, wasn’t on the flight deck. He was having a break, retired to the Crew Rest Facilities for a mandatory kip. First Officer Luke Granger, a young-looking bloke with wiry red hair and a round face spattered with freckles, was in command. Second Officer Jenny Rivers was beside him, in the captain’s seat, checking over the radio work that would be needed in the following Flight Information Region when they tracked out of Indonesian, and into Malaysian, airspace.

  The door behind them opened. A flight attendant had come to see if they wanted refreshments. Luke turned. ‘How’s it going back there? Under control?’

  ‘Yeah, since I drugged the coffee,’ said the flight attendant. ‘Get you guys anything?’

  ‘I’ll have one of those Korean massages where they walk on your back. Or a coffee, whatever’s easiest,’ grinned Luke, glancing over his shoulder.

  Flemming pushed through the door behind the flight attendant. Rivers began to lever herself out of the seat. ‘It’s okay, Jenny. I’ll just watch for a while. That weather delay in Sydney has really mucked up my sleep pattern,’ he said, yawning.

  The second officer eased back into the captain’s chair. She liked the left-hand seat. She believed it would be hers one day.

  ‘Tea for me please, Becky,’ said the captain, noting the name on the flight attendant’s lapel badge. ‘And one of those cakes I saw you handing out at dinner to the first-class passengers, if you’ve got one left.’ He reached up and adjusted the temperature on the flight deck down a couple of degrees.

  ‘And a Coke, thanks,’ mumbled Rivers into her paperwork. The flight attendant made a mental note of the order and left the crew silhouetted against a galaxy of cockpit instruments and switch lights.

  Luke allowed himself the luxury of letting his mind wander and compared piloting the 747 to flying an F/A-18 in his alma mater, the Royal Australian Air Force. He had Blu-tacked a small plastic model of the fighter to the windscreen by his shoulder. He peeled it off and examined it – a beautiful, deadly shape. In reality, the commercial stuff was dull. Computers did everything. They flew the plane. They managed the engines. They monitored the frequencies. They maintained the life support system that pressurised the cabin and kept everyone alive. They found the airports the aircraft flew to. They kept a lookout for weather. And if that wasn’t enough, hell, the 747-438 even had auto-landing capabilities. The plane could put itself on mother earth – and did so if the weather was exceptionally bad – touching down on the runway centreline when the computers considered the task beyond human ability.

  Of course, the F/A-18 was a pretty smart plane too, but its intelligence was concentrated on finding and killing the enemy. He ‘flew’ the plastic model through the air before parking it back on the windscreen.

  The 747 was no F/A-18 but flying one was still better than just about any other job he could think of in civvy street. Luke checked the altimeter. He was not surprised to see that it was reading exactly 35 000 feet. All engine gauges were synchronised and reading normal. It occurred to him that the 747 was like a big factory, and that the factory’s product was lift. He was merely a foreman who monitored gauges and ensured that enough of that product was rolling off the production line to keep the factory in the black: flying.

  They were tracking down the FIR loaded before takeoff into the Flight Management Computer. The aircraft’s track was checked automatically and constantly by three Inertial Reference Systems, backed up by two Global Positioning Systems. And if some slight error arose, the IRS would update itself against any and all ground-based radio navigation aids.

  The concatenating technological wizardry meant that wandering off track was impossible. Getting from one place to another by the shortest possible route was what commercial flying was all about: minimising the burn of precious fuel. It was flying by the balance sheet. There was no need to double-check their heading but he did so anyway. Spot on. What do you expect? Granger asked himself.

  He contemplated the moon just risen above the horizon. It was a dirty yellow dinner plate against a black curtain. The moon’s light had dimmed the surrounding stars but it was a beautiful cle
ar sky. Being up here was something he never tired of, even though there was really nothing to do on these long-haul flights except to concentrate on staying awake. You took in the view, kept checking the instruments you checked fifteen minutes ago, and counted the dollars accumulating in your bank account.

  Money, or lack of it. That was the reason he’d left the RAAF. He wasn’t sure it had been such a good decision. He’d been poor in uniform – enough money for beers with the boys and little else – but, shit, he was flying. Really flying. Punching military jets through the blue in vertical climbs that took him from sea level to the blurry edge of space in a couple of minutes. Being paid to dogfight in a multi-million dollar aircraft? Christ, he’d have done it for free.

  His wife used to say that he did do it for free. That was her problem. There was never enough money for her. Five years he’d been out of the RAAF now, divorced for three of them. His wife ran off with a stockbroker who earned over a quarter of a million dollars a year, not including bonuses. Karma had burst her little bubble, though. The Internet and the rise of on-line investing had put hundreds of brokers on the street, and his wife’s second husband with them.

  He’d heard they’d recently had to sell the Beemer. Luke was not a vengeful person, but he had to admit he was pleased. He’d loved the RAAF, and the fighter with his name stencilled on the fuselage. The woman deserved everything fate dealt her. His eyes unconsciously swept the panel for troublesome numbers but failed to find any.

  NSA Pacific HQ, Helemanu, Oahu, Hawaii, 1843 Zulu, Tuesday, 28 April

  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.

  Sulawesi, 2015 Zulu, Tuesday, 28 April

  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.