If such was the case, she couldn’t blame him. In the course of their Indonesian piracy operation, she’d gotten herself taken prisoner by Harconan. The Admiral had been forced to bail her out of that mess personally, putting his career, the Sea Fighters and Indonesian-US relations at risk.
And, of all the people in the Navy, there were only two who knew of the fullest extent of Amanda’s past relationship with Harconan. One was her friend and Intelligence officer Christine Rendino. The other was MacIntyre.
He would be fully justified in his loss of trust in her judgment. But still, she had hoped for the chance to prove herself again. To erase the stain.
“You okay, skipper?” She felt a large roughened hand rest on her shoulder for a moment. Startled, Amanda came back into herself. A blunt object in so many ways, Stone Quillain could sometimes surprise you by being amazingly perceptive.
“No, Stone. I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”
The Francis Bay anchorage lay below them, along with the ships of the joint US/Australian Regional Intervention Force.
In maritime technology, it spanned generations.
The two ships of the Sea Fighter Task Force, the CLA (Cruiser Littoral Attack) USS Cunningham and the LSD (Landing Platform Dock) USS Evans F. Carlson were both twenty-first century designs. Built with the geometric, slope-flanked sleekness of stealth ship technology, their deck fittings and weapons systems fared and folded into envelopes of RAM (Radar Absorbent Material) and their radio and radar antenna merged into the “smart skin” of pylon masts and finlike free-standing mast arrays. Swept by a probing radar beam, the two vessels would produce the radar return of a couple of small fishing craft rather than the multi-thousand-ton men of war they were.
The other naval vessels of the Intervention Force – American, Australian and New Zealander – ranged in technology from merely state of the art to Cold War leftovers.
All were configured for the same mission, however: surface combatants and amphibious warfare vessels working together as a team to lift in and support Special Operations Forces at a littoral crisis point.
As they overflew the anchorage, Amanda found herself musing at the evolutionary process of naval warfare.
At the turn of the past century, the dreadnought had been the queen of the seas. It had been the core element of the navy, the “capital ship,” that all the other fleet elements were intended to support.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the cloak of the capital ship had passed from the battlewagon to the aircraft carrier. Then, with the development of the atomic submarine, the Bubbleheads and Airdales had squabbled over the title throughout the Cold War.
But then came 9/11 and things had changed again.
With the coming of the struggle against global terrorism, the amphibious warfare vessel with its capacity to project power into a disintegrating Third World state had become the new Ship of the Line, the ground troops it carried serving as its main battery.
Now, the missile-bristling surface combatant, the lordly flattop, the dark and deadly submarine, all served as handmaidens to the humble “gator freighter”.
The Super Huey planed down toward the Sea Fighter’s end of the anchorage. Circling the sleek shape of the Evans F. Carlson, they lined up on the rectangular helipad that took up the entire aft end of the main weather deck. A few moments more and the helo rasped down on the antiskid.
*
It was after the formal shipboard lunch hour and the Carlson’s big wardroom was almost empty. Only a single chair at one of the long central tables was occupied, a small intent figure leaning forward to study the screen of a laptop computer, a pair of glasses shoved up to rest atop her tousled blonde head.
“Morning, Boss Ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Christine Rendino said, without looking up.
“It’s the afternoon, Chris,” Amanda replied, tossing her salt-stained Cunningham baseball cap onto the hat rack beside the entry. The contrast between the air-conditioned coolness of the wardroom, and the humidity-sodden heat beyond was striking. The chill it put in her perspiration-soaked utilities produced a pleasant shiver.
“Details, details,” Amanda’s closest friend and senior Intelligence officer replied offhand. Without taking her blue-gray eyes from the screen, she reached for the half-consumed plate of nachos at her side.
Amanda moved to Christine’s shoulder. “What are you working on?”
“The latest dope from up north. I’m hoping that something useful will jump out at me. So far something hasn’t obliged.”
Amanda nodded, “I’ll be right with you.”
At the rear of the compartment, the mess steward leaned out of the pantry door. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Can I get you anything?”
“Definitely, Nick. I missed lunch. Can I get one of my specials?”
“Not a problem, ma’am. Chunky peanut butter and grape jelly on French on the way. You want chips
with that?”
“No thanks.” Amanda started for the beverage dispensers on the serving board but allowed herself to be diverted for a moment.
Every wardroom, as with every ship and crew, had its own unique personality. The Carlson’s wardroom, with its deep maroon carpet, dark oak furnishings and framed lithographs of classic naval vessels on the bulkheads radiated an air of cool, military dignity.
With one glaring exception.
The miniature palm tree that dominated one corner of the compartment. An expatriate decoration of the Pearl Harbor Officers club, it had materialized silently one night, complete with a hand lettered “Captain Garrett’s property” sign spiked into its redwood planter.
Anyone versed in the literature of the United States Navy would instantly recognize the “in-joke” and Amanda’s only dignified counter had been to adopt the tree and insist that it stay. Only to herself would she ever admit that she had actually come to enjoy tending the damn thing.
She checked the grow light mounted over the planter and gave the palm an affectionate squirt or two with a misting bottle before drawing a tall glass of milk for herself. She arrived back at the table at the same moment as her sandwich.
“Thank you, Nick,” she said distractedly, sinking down into the chair beside Christine. “Okay, what have we got?”
“Absolutely nothing surprising or out of place, damn it. That’s the problem. Our friend Harconan’s plan is purring along like clockwork.”
The screen on Christine’s laptop displayed a map of the Indonesian archipelago, marked with an ominous
number of red conflict zones. Christine tapped the largest of these, the
eastern end of New Guinea, with the tip of a fingernail. “Over here, the Morning Star Separatists have successfully made the conversion to
a second phase insurgency. The Indonesians aren’t just fighting scattered guerilla bands any more; they’re fighting an army, one that’s taking and holding ground, including a number of the island’s critical copper mining facilities. Ore production is practically at a
standstill.”
“What’s the status on the foreign workers at those facilities?”
“Apparently it’s open season on the Javanese transmigrasi. But the Morning Stars seem to be bending over backwards not to harm the
out-country workers. They’re either being repatriated or are being allowed to stay in their compounds
under the protection of the revolutionaries. The Morning Star leadership is
also talking with the mining corporations about protecting the facilities from
war damage and looting.”
“I’ll wager that’s not all they’re talking about,” Amanda mused. “I met with one of the senior Morning Star cadre when I was being held at Harconan’s base in New Guinea. He was a very canny old gentleman. His people know their copper mines will be a critical national asset if they can get their independent Papuan Republic going.”
