Why was he justifying himself to his junior officers? This was his decision to make! His command to issue.
And had he just admitted that he was afraid of the Americans?
“Carry out your orders,” Ketalaman finished curtly. “Get us underway.”
He turned abruptly and left the operations center, keeping his hand in his
pocket. His palm was filled with the hot sticky wetness of blood, the stone
shard having pierced his flesh.
The Joint Intelligence Center, USS Shenandoah
2340 Hours; Zone Time, November 19, 2008
“Okay, kiddies, here comes the big one.” Christine Rendino shoved her glasses up onto the top of her head and moistened her throat with a sip from a bottle of flattening Pepsi. She and the others in the center focused all attention on the overhead view playing out on the master display.
The image was downlinking from the cameras of an Oceanstar Naval reconnaissance satellite arcing high over the western Pacific Rim in its orbit over the poles. The satellite was cruising at better than five miles per second, a hundred and twenty miles above the night side of Earth – yet its black and white imaging might have come from five thousand feet on a bright sunlit day. At that, the reconsat wasn’t really trying. If Christine had desired it, the Oceanstar could have read the ratings badges of the Indonesian bridge lookouts.
The Intel was far more interested in the larger view, however, and in the answer to a single question. Port or Starboard. East or West.
The two Kondor class mine hunters came first, probably conducting a sketchy sweep of the main channel with their low frequency sonars. As they cleared the channel mouth, and got the water depth, they turned to starboard.
Eastward.
The angle of the imaging changed as the satellite continued along its trajectory. The fighting team, the distant escort of the three Fatahillah class frigates, was next. Running in line, astern with the squadron’s flagship, the Nala was in the number two slot. She was easy to make out because of her distinctive helipad and hangar.
And the Fatahillah’s turned to the right, following the minehunters.
“Two down,” Christine murmured.
The Oceanstar was edging lower in the sky, but they still had a valid oblique angle as the transport group cleared the mouth of Banda Aceh. The simplistic angularity of the elderly Van Speijk frigate sailed point, then the transport line with the smaller LSM leading, followed by the curved bow and massive, blockish upperworks of the Teluk Surabaya. Last of all came the two more streamlined silhouettes of the PELNI ferries. The smaller missile and gunboats were out on the convoy flanks and the Parchim corvette trailing behind the formation covered the six slot.
Slowly, the outline of the ex-Dutch frigate in the point slot began to shorten. She was turning to the east – through the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Sumatra and on to the Java Sea.
By way of the Thousand Islands.
Christine chuckled and took another sip of Pepsi. “Git along you little dogies,” she murmured.
The MV Galaxy Shenandoah
Northwest of the Karimunja Island Group
00014 Hours; Zone Time, November 20, 2008
Amanda’s desk phone buzzed over the Prince and Princess movement of Rimski-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Barefoot and still clad in a rumpled white uniform shirt and
shorts, she rolled off the bed and was across the cabin in a moment. Switching
on the desk lamp, she lifted the receiver. “Captain here.”
“This is Chris down in Joint Intel. We’ve bluffed Ketalaman, Boss Ma’am. The reinforcement convoy is turning east for the Straits of Malacca. We got
the bastards!”
“We’ve possibly got a shot at them, Chris,” Amanda corrected. “Stay on them and keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
She was just hanging up the phone when a soft knock sounded on the connecting door to the owner’s cabin. MacIntyre must have received essentially the same call. The Admiral had turned in at the same time as she had, and for the same reason, to try and snatch a couple of hours of sleep before the next round of decision making.
Given the uninterrupted bar of light from under his door, he hadn’t been having any more luck at it than she had.
“Come in, Elliot,” she said, lifting her voice.
Macintyre pushed through the unlocked door. He was in crumpled khakis and had a
good start of a new beard. “I heard your phone ring. No doubt you’ve been passed the word?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “That was Christine.”
“It looks like Harconan is getting his wish. They’re heading down the Straits of Malacca and through his Thousand Islands.”
“Give the man credit, Elliot. He’s right. The Bugi pirates have been targeting ships in the Riau and Lingga
groups for centuries. It does make an excellent killing ground. I’ve been lying in here thinking about it.”
“So have I.” Macintyre ran a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it into some kind of
order. “The problem keeps breaking down into a three-sided equation: the need to destroy
Ketalaman; the need to minimize our casualties; and the need to preserve the
anonymity of Phantom Force. The best I’ve been able to manage is two out of three and that’s not good enough.”
“I know,” Amanda replied. “My thoughts have been running in the same circles. As I see it, the key is to
hit Ketalaman hard enough and fast enough to take his entire force down in a
single strike. The problem is that neither the Shenandoah, nor the air group, can deliver an adequate volume of fire to do the job alone.
It’s going to have to be some kind of composite air and sea engagement. The ship
and the air group are going to have to hit the target at the same time.”
“Composite strikes are tricky to coordinate, Amanda.”
“I know. And what’s going to make it really interesting is that, while the air group has reach,
the Shenandoah doesn’t. It’s going to have to be a close action. Very close.”
MacIntyre leaned back against the desk beside her. “How close are we talking about?”
“I think the bow might be our leveler in this scenario.”
He whistled lowly. “Possibly. But Good God, you really are talking about a knife fight in a phone
booth.”
“I know – and Harconan was right again. It’s all going to be about position.” She straightened and started to turn on her laptop. Then, with a grimace, she flipped the screen lid closed and went to the chart rack on the bulkhead, taking down the admiralty number for the western Java Sea. “Here are the Lingga and Riau island groups,” she said, her face underlit by the desk lamp as she spread the hardcopy chart across her desk. “There are three deep-water channels Ketalaman’s force could take to transit the Thousand Islands: the northern channel between the Riau and Lingga groups; the central channel through the Lingga group between Sebangka and Lingga islands, Sebangka Strait; and then there’s the wider southern channel, Berhala Strait between Singkep island and the Sumatran mainland.”
