“Aye aye, ma’am.”
The islands that walled the channel could only be seen as traces on the navigational radar, could only be sensed as a differing quality in the darkness of the night. Off to port, the running lights of a small ship snapped on, blurred in the mist. The rebel fleet had been running blacked out – but, as they were sharing the tight channel with a “neutral” merchantmen, they were illuminating themselves for safety’s sake. Amanda thought it very obliging of them.
The lights began to pass astern. They were past the first picket line, inside the initial layer of rebel defense.
Amanda’s eyes flicked to the tactical display on the laptop clipped to the chart table. The positioning was looking favorable. For the last hour, she had been carefully gauging her approach to the enemy shipping column. Tracking them via the drone net, she had been varying her speed and approach angle to place each of the rebel convoy elements in exactly the correct position in relation to her deployed forces.
“Lee helm, make turns for twenty-two knots. War Power.”
“Aye aye, ma’am. All engines answering at War Power. Making turns for twenty-four knots.”
“CIC, this is the Captain. Advise all attack elements. Stand by to engage.”
“CIC acknowledging.” Elliot MacIntyre himself made the reply. “All attack elements standing by.”
“Electronic countermeasures, this is the Captain. Arm RBOC launchers. Commence
range jamming. All emitters.”
*
Below the ridgeline on Sebangka Island, a long line of helicopters hovered in ground effect like a row of prancing cavalry chargers, the thunder of their rotors merging with the thunder in the skies. Taking advantage of the terrain, they were preparing a pop-up attack on the enemy convoy in the same way a flight of Army gunships might ambush a hostile armored column.
Cautiously, Vince Arkady increased power and hovered up to peer over the hill crest, careful to keep his radar return merged into the ground clutter. For several minutes he stayed there. The enemy combat force had steamed past his position. Cranking up his sighting systems to full gain, he could now make out the clustered silhouettes of the rebel group approaching the ambush point.
*
On the south side of the channel, Stone Quillain held a penlight in his teeth.
It was his turn to feverishly thumb though the rain-slick waterproof pages of
the pocket Jane’s. “Okay. That lead boy in the near column. That’s the dagger boat. He’s got the missiles. We want to kill him first.”
The rebel transport force had its outriders. The lighter, shallow-draft missile and gunboats were out on the column flanks, warily ready to absorb the first of any blow aimed at the convoy. Critical only in that they could complicate the attack on the primary targets, they had to be dealt with decisively.
“The fucker’s dead,” the ranger replied. He rested the camera-like laser rangefinder on a tree limb
and squinted through the integral thermal sight, speaking into his lip mike. “Battery, stand by. Mission to fire.”
*
High in the Shenandoah’s upperworks, an antenna array lifted out of the cluster of exhaust pipes in the funnel structure. Unfolding flowerlike, the ECM dish aimed to cover the forward arc of the ship. Deep within the hold section, a skilled electronic warfare technician armed with several million dollars’ worth of sophisticated systemry inflicted an illusion upon the oncoming Indonesian warships.
As the Indonesian surface search radars painted the Shenandoah, each sweep was recorded, its frequency and wave characteristics analyzed, perfectly mimicked and then beamed back at its point of origin, delayed by a few milliseconds.
As the sweeps continued and their intervals were assessed, the ECM system began to predict the scans and project false returns a few milliseconds before the arrival of the actual radar beam.
Aboard the warships of the Indonesian combat formation, radar operators frowned and bent closer to their scopes. They were still detecting the large surface contact off their bows and they could get a bearing on it, but the range was blurring. It looked like a malfunction of some nature and the radar operators began to run systems diagnostics.
What they didn’t realize was that the radars aboard all three frigates were suffering from the same “malfunction” simultaneously.
*
“Captain, this is countermeasures. Range scrambling is up! We have no scan
variance or frequency jump. They’re falling for it!”
“Very good, countermeasures. Keep it coming.” Amanda looked at the figures silhouetted in the instrument glow of the helm
station. “Lee helm, all engines ahead full! War Power!”
“Aye aye, ma’am. All engines answering full. War power!”
“Helm, we’ll take the lead frigate. Special attack! Steer parallel approach heading. Hold
target ten degrees off the starboard bow until attack commit. You have the
ship!”
“Targeting lead frigate. Parallel approach heading. Steering ten off the bow and
tracking!”
The deck beneath Amanda’s feet began to tremble under the augmented thrust of the propellers as the commando carrier gathered herself for her charge.
Ahead, Amanda could dimly make out the aligned running lights of the frigate group. She flicked her eyes to the tactical display before her. Range was now five miles and closing. Maybe six minutes to contact, given their combined closing speeds.
Another squall! she thought feverishly. Please give me just one more good rain squall!
“Bridge, we have a problem!” It was MacIntyre from the Combat Information Center.
“What is it, Elliot?”
“Harconan is gone! His guard just recovered consciousness in his cabin.”
“Damn!” Amanda spat. “I do not need this! All of our onboard security teams are tied down at weapons
stations. Have Mr. Beltrain arm some of the damage control parties …”
A hand dropped on her shoulder. “Please don’t discommode yourself or your crew, Amanda. I’m right here.”
Amanda nearly sprang out of her skin. “Makara!”
“Of course,” the pirate replied amiably. “As I told our friend MacIntyre, this may be my only opportunity to witness a
world class sea battle. My apologies to your Marine, but I simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity.”
He circled the chart table and stepped closer to the windscreen, enthralled with
what he saw stretching out before him. “Amanda, she’s magnificent. Absolutely magnificent! A modern-day Q-ship! Why didn’t I ever think of something like this?”
“Amanda, what’s going on up there?” MacIntyre demanded over the intercom.
