Now the debate began. The object’s passive hydrophone system scanned the surrounding maritime environment, comparing the sound signatures of passing watercraft with one specific signature pre-loaded into its computer memory. Previously captured by an air-dropped sensor buoy, it was the sound pattern produced by the motor ferry Bukit Barasan, as distinctive and unique as a human fingerprint.
An outboard powered water taxi buzzed past. That’s not it! A fishing lugger chugged out into the Straits. That’s not it! The beat of a heavier screw drew closer. The object’s idiot savant brain minutely assessed the sound pattern, matching the chirp of the nicked propeller blade with the vibration of a coolant pump and the rumble-swish of the water flow around a blunt-bowed hull.
That’s it!
One of the two great questions had been answered. Safety interlocks disengaged and secondary sensor systems came on-line.
The Bukut Barasan slowed and eased in toward the dock. The tide was out and the hundred-and-eighty-foot-long ferry was heavily burdened with some score of armored fighting vehicles on her car deck and a hundred odd troops in her passenger spaces. Her keel passed a bare ten feet over the object on the harbor floor. The object’s pressure sensors and magnetometers reacted to the displacement and steel of the ferry’s hull and the object answered its second and last great question.
Now!
Firing impulses flashed to the detonators buried within half a ton of PBXN high
explosive and the smart mine fulfilled its destiny.
Bengkulu Air Field, New Guinea
0901 Hours; Zone Time, November 12, 2008
The Lockheed C-130 transport had been dubbed the “Hercules” – but perhaps the aircraft would have been better named the “Storm Crow” or the “Stormy Petrel” for, after fifty years of continuous production and service in the world’s air forces, she was the omen of war and disaster.
For fully half a century she had been the world’s premier tactical military airlifter; absolutely necessary and apparently immune to obsolescence. Like the KA-BAR knife, the model 1911A Colt .45 and the “Ma Deuce” .50 caliber machine gun, the only thing that can replace a C-130 is another C-130.
The field at Bengkulu was lined with them, bearing different camo-patterned paint and different national insignia: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, the United States. Ground crews swarmed around them and a steady stream of vehicles and equipment flowed up their tail ramps to vanish within their commodious bellies. Every few minutes, a Hercules would lift into the sky with a moan of racing turboprops, only to be replaced a few minutes later by a sister plane, an empty “bucket” returning on the air bridge to Java.
Aboard the departing aircraft, Indonesian soldiers lay across cargo pallets or squatted in odd corners of the cargo bay, their eyes closed, not seeking to speak over the deafening song of the propellers. They were leaving the “Land of Lapping Death” behind.
This was no escape from conflict – they were flying from war to war – but at least, if they fell, they would die on home ground.
On the hills overlooking the airfield, black-skinned men looked up at the sky and watched the airplanes bearing the brown-skinned men away. Soon, this land, their land, would belong only to them once more, for better or worse, to make of it what they could.
They looked on with an ageless patience. They had waited a long time for this
moment. They could wait a little longer.
Pangkalpinang Airfield
Banka island
0716 Hours; Zone Time, November 14, 2008
It was a cool and showery morning but Captain Raya Sukawate, former Garuda airlines pilot – and now rebel Air Force officer – was sweating as he argued on the edge of the parking apron.
“Damn it! The airplane doesn’t know about your bloody orders!”
Sukawate’s de Havilland Dash-8 300 turboprop airliner had been converted into a military transport by the fast and dirty gutting of its interior. Now it was being loaded for another shuttle run to Java. Loaded and overloaded. The oleo legs of the Dash-8’s undercarriage sank as case after case of artillery ammunition was shoehorned through the passenger hatch to be sketchily lashed down within the stripped aircraft.
“We’re already over our maximum safe payload weight! We could lose the aircraft if
we try a take-off like this.”
“We are at war,” the stone-faced logistics officer replied. “Risks must be taken for the victory. These munitions must be delivered to our
forces in Java. We must increase the tonnage we airlift!”
“Destroying your aircraft and killing your pilots won’t get it done!”
The Army man’s expression didn’t change, but his hand drifted toward the holster at his belt and Sukawate
yielded. There were a growing number of reports of men being shot for “defeatism.”
The pilot turned back toward the airliner, recomputing his fuel load once more. If he dumped another hundred gallons, he might be able to scrape into Jakarta on fumes.
*
The logy turboprop lumbered out to the very end of the main runway, Sukawate wanting every last inch of the tarmac working in his favor. He and his copilot rushed through the preflight checklist and engine run-up, balancing the need to make sure of the power plants with the consumption of precious kerosene.
Finally, there was nothing for it but to take a deep breath and firewall the throttles. Sukawate held her back on the brakes as the twin Pratt & Whitney 123 Turboprops screamed up to full, shuddering power. Then, when the tires finally started to walk, he let her go.
The de Havilland gained speed far too slowly. When she thundered through the Point of Decision, she still rested firmly on her landing gear. With the thought of that Army logistics officer and his pistol lingering in his mind, Sukawate gritted his teeth and continued the take-off.
As the end of the runway rushed toward them, Sukawate eased back on the yoke and coaxed every last ounce of lift out of the wings. The De Havilland danced on her toes for a long breathless moment and edged into the air.
“Gear up!”
The air speed needle crawled upward and they barely cleared the tree line beyond the airport. Beyond was the beach and the beautiful, flat waters of the bay, a lone schooner cutting across them.
The Dash-8 began to climb with more authority and Sukawate let his breath out. They were going to make it.
*
Out on the bay, the captain of the pirate pinisi tracked the airliner with his binoculars. He and his ship had been loitering under the airport’s offshore traffic pattern for an hour, waiting for a decent prize and this low-flying twin-engined transport looked promising.
“Gunners load and stand ready … ready … shoot!”
The firing teams dashed out of the deck shelter to the bow and stern. The gunners lifted Stinger MANPAD surface-to-air launchers to their shoulders and acquired the target. An instant later, a two-round missile salvo screamed away.
The explosion that followed almost laid the Bugi raider over on its beam ends.
