In comparison to Merpati Ketalaman, Vice Admiral Elliot Edward MacIntyre was a decidedly different breed of naval warrior. The collection of naval prints and the model of the Arab dhow that decorated the sunlit office marked him as a true seaman, as did the way his eyes drifted toward the gray and black upperworks of the ships rising beyond the dockside warehouses. Likewise, his personal wants, needs and desires had long ago been rendered subservient to the dual concepts of duty and service.
The telephone deck on his desk rasped, and he scooped up the handset. “Yes, Miss Hansen?”
“General Wheeler for you, sir, on Shadowline One.”
MacIntyre reached up and punched a series of keys on the communications deck,
bringing up the encryption coding and the line and room bug sniffers. “Very well. I’ll take it. Hold all other calls and visitors until further notice.”
General Maxwell Wheeler, United States Army, was the first four-star snake-eater. He was authorized to wear both the tab of the Ranger battalions and the silver wings of Special Forces. In his thirty years in uniform he had also commanded the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and had served as the Army Chief of Staff to SOCOM.
His current posting was as C-in-C JSOC.
As with all American military professionals, MacIntyre spoke a fluent acronymese. Both SOCOM and JSOC had considerable meaning for him.
The Armed Forces of the United States were a complex, multi-leveled structure, especially in the area of “Special Operations”, the martial euphemism for counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and commando/raider activity.
The overt Special Operations community was gathered under the collective control of the United States Special Operations Command. Staging out of MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, SOCOM served as supreme headquarters for the majority of US Special Mission forces. These included the combined Naval and Marine elements of Naval Special Forces, the Army’s Green Berets and 75th Ranger Regiment, and the Air Force’s Special Tactics and Air Commando squadrons.
But beyond SOCOM, was JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command.
JSOC existed as a command inside of a command and a mystery inside of an enigma. It controlled America’s “National Assets,” the hyper-elite, hyper-secure elements of the defense community, such as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six, combat units that were known publicly to exist, but that were not officially acknowledged by the Department of Defense.
Other elements, drawn from the other armed services and from the “wet” direct action branches of the US Intelligence community, remained a matter of speculation and absolute secrecy. No one, or at least no one without both an extremely high security clearance and a “need to know”, had access its entire Table of Organization.
As the Commander and Chief of US Naval Special Forces, Elliot MacIntyre had such a clearance and such a need. His “second hat” was as JSOC’s Naval Chief of Staff.
“Hello, Eddie Mac.”
“Hello, Max, what can we help you with?”
As MacIntyre expected, Wheeler cut directly to the chase. “As you have been advised, JSOC has been given a tasking notification from the
National Command Authority. The President desires a positive outcome to the
current Indonesian crisis and he is requesting we provide him with one.”
MacIntyre took advantage of his security isolation to tilt his chair back and
brace a foot against the edge of his desk. “I gather that means a conventional military response has been ruled out in the
archipelago?”
“Yes and no,” the general replied. “It depends on what tasking you’re talking about. Are we prepared to provide support for the Australian Regional
Intervention Force? Yes we are. Are we prepared to extract foreign nationals
and embassy personnel from the conflict zone? Yes we are. If you’re talking about the maintenance of Freedom of the Seas? Yes, we are. But if you’re talking about a meaningful military intervention in support of the Jakarta
government and in an active defense of US economic interests in the area, no we
are not.”
“The Joint Chiefs are projecting it would take everything the Aussies have plus
at least a full Marine Expeditionary Force and the designation of a carrier
MODLOC in the area to make an appreciable difference. It would mean the
assumption of another major nation-building mission. That’s not going to happen. Neither Congress nor the President are interested. We’ve already got too many other fish to fry.”
“But they still want that successful resolution,” MacIntyre replied with a degree of irony.
“That’s correct, Eddie Mac,” Wheeler replied, matching ironies. “The State Department and the National Command Authority feel that, if Indonesia
comes apart, some of the islands are bound to come under the sway of Islamic
radicalism. That is not acceptable. Our orders are to ensure that the
Government of President Kediri stands and that an outcome favorable to US
interests is produced for the region.”
MacIntyre cocked an eyebrow at the empty room. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” the voice on the phone replied. “Foggy Bottom is projecting that, at best, we have two months before the Kediri
government totally disintegrates. Possibly three at the outside. It all depends
on the Indonesian military and how long they keep the faith. If some of the
officer cadre come down with coup fever, and they’re prone to it down there, it could all go to hell tomorrow.”
MacIntyre nodded his agreement. “My people in-theater are saying the same thing. Three months, if we’re lucky.”
“And what do your people have to say about what to do about it? Your Sea Fighters
were the ones who cracked Harconan’s piracy and arms smuggling operation. They have the recent hands-on experience.
Do you and your theater commanders have any suggestions on how we deal with
this mess?”
“Possibly, Max,” MacIntyre replied. “The way I see it, we’re fighting a swarm of bees in the archipelago. There isn’t any one insurgency or revolution to counter – there are dozens of them, the root causes all set in cultural, religious and political conflicts that are beyond our influence.
“At the moment, the one thing all these different factions have in common is that they’re all receiving various levels of aid from the Harconan organization in his drive to break up the Indonesian State. If we can take out Harconan and cut the supply lines feeding the insurgencies, maybe – and I emphasize, maybe – the situation, can be re-stabilized.
“The Jakarta government has always been good at juggling fractious minorities. If
we can just take some of the heat off of them, maybe they can pick up the balls
and get them into the air again.”
MacIntyre could hear the scowl in the JSOC Chief of Staff’s voice. “Again, State and the National Command Authority agree with you. We have been
given the authority to sanction Harconan on sight, but I’m not convinced his elimination will get the job done. It sounds like the same
trap we fell into with Bin Laden. One man isn’t an entire organization.”
“I don’t see the scenarios as being comparative, Max,” MacIntyre replied, swiveling his chair a few degrees. “Islamic radicalism bred Bin Laden. The Harconan organization is Harconan’s alone. He’s created it and he’s making it work. Knock it down and the whole thing may implode on itself.
Beyond that, he’s all we’ve got. He’s the only specifically targetable factor we can hit in the region that might
prove corrective in the existing scenario. All we can do is kill him and cross
our fingers.”
“All right, Eddie Mac. I still don’t like the concept – but since no one seems to have anything better to suggest, including me, I’ll have to say we go with it. How would you propose we set up the ops package?”
MacIntyre applied a final few seconds of mental polish to a problem that had been dominating his thoughts ever since his return from Indonesia. “We’re bucking two major problems down there, one being the archipelago is possibly the most totally hellish littoral conflict environment on the planet. There are over thirteen thousand islands down there and Harconan could be holed up on any one of them.
“For the other, I know something of the man. I’ve met Harconan and I’ve fought against him. He is brilliant, knowledgeable and intensely cunning. He
also possesses a superb intelligence gathering organization of his own – and he is fully cognizant of our special ops capacities and how to evade them.
You can be certain he’s taking extensive and effective countermeasures. Beyond sheer dumb luck, the
only way we’re ever going to get close to Harconan is to blindside him. We need to hit him
with something he doesn’t expect. With something he doesn’t know even exists.”
“Such as?” Wheeler grunted.
“I think we’ve only got one unit in the JSOC inventory that could be applicable in this
tactical situation and environment. I want to send Phantom Force in after
Harconan.”
There was a protracted silence on the far end of the circuit. “Wait a minute, Eddie Mac. According to the last Phantom Project update I’ve seen, most of the hardware is ready to go – but we’re at least six months away from initial effective deployability.”
“I know all about the Phantom timeline, Max. My people initially projected it.
But we don’t need her in six months. We need her now.”
Joseph Bonaparte Bay
The Australian North Coast
1551 Hours; Zone Time, September 21, 2008
