“Exactly.” Harconan’s hand swept across the chart of the archipelago. “If your intelligence is correct, the interdiction campaign is working. Kediri’s forces are gaining the initiative on Java and Ketalaman’s are losing it. It will not be in Ketalaman to fight out a war of attrition
while awaiting developments. He’ll put it all in one last throw. Block that and you’ve won your war.”
“You think so?” Christine asked, dubiously. “Fa’sure, Ketalaman has shown a heck of a lot of patience and deliberation so far.”
“Quite so, my good commander,” Harconan replied. “But a man is like a ship’s mast in a typhoon. They always stand, right up until they break.”
Banda Aceh Fleet Base
0939 Hours; Zone Time, November 19, 2008
After the weeks spent in his cavern command post, the piercing brightness of the morning sun stabbed painfully at Admiral Ketalaman’s eyes.
On the long drive down the coast from his headquarters at Lake Toba, he tried to keep his focus on the trials ahead. He could see the trend developing. Kediri’s escape from Jakarta had opened the door to disaster and the outside interference of the regional intervention powers was steadily tilting the odds against the coup. Mistakes Ketalaman had counted on were not being made. Allegiances that should have been shifting were remaining fast within the Kediri government. Men he had trusted were beginning to look upon him with distrust. Defeat could be tasted in the air.
The reinforcement convoy to Java was the last realistic chance he had to regain the initiative. Ketalaman could not risk leaving its command to an unsteady subordinate. He must demonstrate his resolve. He must show that he still commanded.
Seated in the rear of his staff car, he once more closed his eyes against the brightness and tried to project coming events. It was useless. The past kept intruding. Parents long dead. Siblings distanced. Old comrades recalled. An approximation of a love affair. Memories of simpler times and simpler desires.
The supernatural still exists close to the heart of even the most modernist and pragmatic of Indonesians. These inescapable thoughts of the past seemed to be portents, dark omens against his future.
Even if there were any validity to these fears, they were irrelevant. Merpati Ketalaman had committed himself to a long, last reach for his destiny.
At Banda Aceh Fleet base, the Java convoy was loading and arming. Transports were boarding troops and supplies, the warships drawing on the dwindling munitions reserves, all vessels emptying the modest tank farm of bunker fuel.
The ten thousand men being embarked might have been called an infantry division if the loosest possible connotation of the term were to be employed. Only a single brigade, the Indonesian 4th Infantry was a fully trained and equipped combat unit. The remainder consisted of a hodgepodge of the more fanatic Islamic militia units, equipped only with small arms.
There was no commonality of force structure or of ordnance. The ad hoc chain of command was wracked by the politicking and jealousies of the various Imams. There had been no chance for the units to work up or train together. There were major insufficiencies in artillery, motor transport, command-and-control and logistics.
Still, if it could be delivered intact to the Javanese battle zone and launched as the blow of a single fist, it might be enough to shatter Kediri’s own tenuous force and win the day. Or so Ketalaman deigned to believe.
The operative words in the equation were “delivered intact”. To perform the delivery, the anti-government forces had accumulated a task group of four transports. Two were big inter-island car and passenger ferries commandeered for the cause from the PELNI State shipping line. One was a small elderly Frosch class LSM acquired by Indonesia during the mass sell-off of the East German navy after the fall of the Berlin wall.
The last was Teluk Surabaya.
She was the largest ship in the Indonesian Fleet, the flagship of the Indonesian
navy, and a freak of nature. Purchased from the imploding Russian navy
following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she too was an amphibious warfare
vessel. For all intents and purposes, the Teluk Surabaya was an LST – but, with a displacement of fourteen thousand tons and a length of five hundred
sixteen feet, she was a behemoth of the breed, over three times the size of any
other beaching class amphib ever to sail. She and her sisters of the Ivan Rogov
class had been built under the old school Soviet philosophy of “if it’s bigger, then it must be better.”
Unfortunately for her, she had also been built at a time when military doctrine and technology were turning against the beaching ship. Even after the partial modernization and westernization of her systems, the Teluk Surabaya was hopelessly obsolete – but, with her towering castle-like deck house and her bristling gun and missile defense batteries, she was impressively obsolete.
She would be carrying the bulk of the 4th Brigade’s heavy equipment and combat support elements to Java. She would also be carrying Admiral Ketalaman and his staff to Jakarta. No matter what the outcome, Ketalaman intended to sit in the Presidential palace at least once.
The boatswains’ pipes trilled, and the crew of the Teluk Surabaya manned the rail, holding
their salutes as Admiral Ketalaman climbed the gangway with stately
deliberation. Few people noted how he had one hand slipped into the pocket of
his uniform jacket. None other knew of the fragment of mountain stone that he
clutched tightly in his fist.
The Joint Intelligence Center, the USS Shenandoah
1129 Hours; Zone Time, November 19, 2008
“Here’s the latest word from my people in Banda Aceh,” Harconan said, studying his handwritten notes. “You’ve got fifteen ships preparing to sortie. The transport group and a two-division
escort force. You’ll have five frigates in the heavy division: the three Fatahillahs, one Van
Speijk and a Parchim. With the light division, you’ll have two dagger missile boats, two Lurssen gunboats and two Kondor
minesweepers.”
Christine looked up from her laptop. “I can confirm on all points.”
“Thank you, my redoubtable Miss Rendino.” Harconan gave her a courtly nod. “Combat loading of the transports is well underway and large numbers of troops
are embarking. Waterfront rumor is that the convoy will sail tonight. Knowing
those harbor approaches and tonight’s tides, they’ll probably be clearing the harbor sometime between ten and eleven thirty.”
“I’d say that’s a good call,” MacIntyre said.
“And I’d agree,” Amanda replied. “Do your people have anything else for us, Makara?”
“Indeed they do.” Harconan tossed the notebook onto the chart table. “I’ve been saving the best for last. A large group of senior rebel officers has
been observed going aboard the fleet flag ship. Given the level of ruffles and
flourishes involved, Admiral Ketalaman may very well be among them.” Harconan hesitated before going on. “If you would desire this humble pirate’s opinion, my friends, then this is that last throw of the dice I have been
talking about. The fattest prize conceivable is about to drop into our laps.”
Harconan’s usage of the words “friends” and “our” no longer had the tinge of irony to it. Two weeks of jointly confronted adversity had bonded him firmly into the Shenandoah command cadre. Amanda wryly noted that the taipan also had his dynamic personality cranked up to its fullest degree. As she could testify, it was one of his most potent weapons.
“Possibly,” Amanda agreed. “But a great deal depends on the size of the lap available to catch it. Chris,
what does the Indonesian Government have in position to intercept with?”
The Intel called up the Indonesian deployment listings. “Currently, they’ve got a single small task group covering the Jakarta approaches,” she replied. “The fleet training frigate Ki Hajar Deweantara, a single Parchim class frigate
and a single Lurssen gunboat.”
Amanda shook her head. “Not enough. Not even close to enough. Elliot, maybe Ketalaman has come out of
his hole, or maybe he hasn’t. It doesn’t really matter. This has got to be the decisive event of this conflict. We can’t let this convoy through. This is going to require our going hands on.”
MacIntyre scowled and used the remote pad to call up the western Indonesia
theater chart on one of the wall displays. “I agree about the event status and about the necessity of intervention – but, whatever we do, it’s going to be dicey. Eleven escorts, Amanda, seven of them missile carriers
packing a mixed bag of both late mark Exocets and Harpoons. If they keep it
simple, stupid, and ram the entire force down our throats … Commander Arkady, what do you think?”
Flight suit clad, Arkady had been doing his lazy leopard slouch against the rear
bulkhead of the briefing room, listening. Snapping his spine straight, he
circled the chart table to join the group at the wall display. “The air group can do it. We can stop them for you, just not all at once. We’re limited with our naval attack ordnance. Penguins and Hellfires are the
heaviest anti-ship stuff we can deliver. The Penguins are kind of dumb and the
Hellfires have short legs. It’ll take a series of strikes. We’ll have to peel the escorts layer by layer to get at the core elements.”
Amanda glanced back at Christine Rendino. “Chris, what kind of anti-air can we expect?”
“Ferocious, Boss Ma’am. Just about any kind of radar and optronics guided gunfire you could want, 20s, 40s, 57s, everything up to and included 4.7 inchers. Also, all of the Reb ships will probably be carrying Mistral infra-red homing missiles in either the shoulder-fired format or in two, four or six round SADRAL cluster mounts.
“They’ve also got at least one area defense missile system. The big guy, the expat
Ivan Rogov, mounted an SA-N-4 when she was built. However, when the Indonesians
picked her up, they decided to go with their French motif in air defense and
they swapped out the Gecko launcher for an octuple-mount Naval Crotal: NATO
standard issue, eighteen klick range, line of sight command guidance with
supplemental infra-red targeting.” She looked up from the laptop to the aviator. “You can work wonders, flyboy, but if you take on this package with helicopters,
even with your cool cat compound birds, you’re going to take hits and you’re going to take casualties. Possibly a lot of them.”
“That’s why they call it war,” Arkady said, his voice flat.
“No,” Amanda said sharply. “My policy now is just as it was on the Duke, Arkady. There is no such thing as cannon fodder in Phantom Force! We’ve done this kind of thing before. We’ve just got to wait for our shot. Convoy killing is just a matter of opportunity.”
