Harconan glanced at the bulkhead clock. “It must be getting dark topside. I would say it’s time to start the performance.”
MacIntyre nodded. “Likely you’re right. If he’s going to put scouts up, it’ll be soon.” MacIntyre keyed his headset. “This is MacIntyre to communications. Advise the Berhala Straits group to begin
the fake-out package.”
They were alone in the briefing room, Harconan’s guard on station outside of the door. Given the circumstances, Elliot
MacIntyre found it to be an odd and slightly uncomfortable feeling. He had no
idea that Amanda had felt much the same way in this same space only the day
before. “I hope this bluff works,” he said, more to end the silence than for any other reason. “There’s going to be hell to pay if it doesn’t.”
“I’d say the odds are in our favor,” Harconan replied. The taipan had a chair drawn up to the chart table. His arms
were crossed on its surface, an ashtray with a thin, smoldering cigarillo
resting at his elbow. “I think our friend Ketalaman might be very susceptible to a bluff at the moment.”
“Why so?” MacIntyre challenged.
Clinching the cigarillo between his teeth, Harconan rose and circled the chart table to the strategic display. On the great glowing wall chart, the position hack of Ketalaman’s convoy could be seen approaching the Lingga island groups. The turning point for the northern passage had been passed and the point of decision for the central or south passages was approaching.
The Indonesian government task group guarded the eastern entrance to Berhala Strait. The Shenandoah’s hack, her name blanked out, hovered off the eastern tip of Sebangka Island.
“Tell me, Admiral. Let’s say you were commanding Ketalaman’s task group and you saw the government fleet waiting to challenge you and our
people doing their little performance in the southern passage. What would you
do?”
MacIntyre frowned and joined him at the chart. “I’d make note of them certainly and I’d try and assess their actions, but I’d still stand on. Berhala Strait is still the best choice. I’d trust in my numeric superiority and in the extra sea room the southern passage
would give me in a fight. I wouldn’t be bluffed.”
“Ah, but that is where you would have the edge over Ketalaman. You would trust in
your ships and your crews and in yourself to see you through any eventuality.
Ketalaman will not. He has been beaten too often and he hungers for cheap, safe
victories.”
Harconan traced first the northern, then southern passages with a fingertip. “Trust me, Admiral. Ketalaman will sidestep. He will scout both of these passages
through the islands, and he will take the path of least apparent resistance.”
The pirate sipped a lungful of smoke from his cigarillo. “You may rest assured, my friend. Ketalaman will willingly run from the ghost and
into the jaws of the tiger.”
Berhala Strait
Between Cape Buku and Cape Jabunk
1930 Hours; Zone Time, November 20, 2008
The Special Boat officer consulted his hand-held Global Positioning Unit and
made a minute check on a chart line. “Have the captain maintain this heading for another twenty-five minutes.”
“Yes sir. Will do.” The translator turned to the man at the pinisi’s wheel, relaying the order in Bahasa Indonesia.
The elementary wheelhouse of the coaster smelled of fish and diesel fumes and the Bugi shipmaster was holding his course with a battered car compass. Still, the engine had not missed a beat and the wake streaming behind the little vessel, north to south, was as straight as a die.
Another glaring technological exception to the ship’s primitivism rested in the far corner of the wheelhouse, the open electronics case under the management of the electronic warfare specialist. Antenna wires had been strung to the peak of the coaster’s mast and the SO crouched on a crude stool in front of his equipment, occasionally shifting a channel dial or an output slide.
“Just what is it you’re putting out on that rig, Kenton?” the SB officer inquired.
“Pretty much junk, sir,” the airman replied, ejecting a tape cassette from the module and inserting a
fresh one. “Mostly random signal patterns on different frequencies, right up into the
microwave. They don’t really mean much of anything.”
“But they might sound like they do if you don’t know what’s going on?”
“That’s pretty much the idea, sir.”
A yell came from one of the deck lookouts. “Aircraft sighting, Lieutenant,” the translator reported.
The Special Boat officer leaned out of the wheelhouse window, scanning the
gathering twilight. Faintly, over the chug of the engine, he made out the thin
whine of high-altitude turboprops.
Sebangka Island.
1941 Hours, Zone Time, November 20, 2008
The Indonesian Navy Sea Lynx helicopter droned down the length of the ridge line, the observers aboard it dividing their attention between the terrain below and the Straits to the south, passing off the single pair of NiteBrite binoculars available aboard the little aircraft.
If the Sea Lynx had been better equipped for its mission – or if its crew had been better trained in the art of tactical land reconnaissance – they might have detected something unusual in the eleven roughly symmetrical mounds of dried grass and brush spaced out across an overgrown lumber cut.
Arkady carefully parted a gap in the camouflage netting and watched the shadowy outline of the helicopter draw away across the cloud heavy sky.
“What do you think, Vince?” Crouched under the camouflage nearby, Keith Pinkerton had instinctively lowered his voice to a near whisper.
“I dunno, Pink. He’s looking but I don’t think he’s finding.” Arkady worked his way back under the nets to the Jeannie II’s cockpit. Groping over the rail, he came up with a hand mike. “This is Strike Lead at Hide Prime, calling Star Child. Contact report …”
Flag Plot, INS Teluk Surabaya
2010 Hours; Zone Time, November 20, 2008
“Where are the government’s ships?”
“Still holding off the exit of south passage, sir. No essential change in
position.”
“Are you certain there’s nothing else out there?”
Ketalaman’s Chief of Staff hesitated. “We have a Nomad Searchwater aircraft sweeping the channel now, sir. Those are
the only major hostile combat units we have a fix on.”
“But there is something else?” the Admiral insisted.
“There is some unidentified activity in the Straits, sir.”
