“Uh huh, they’re playing it smart.” Christine’s fingernail moved across the screen to the western end of the vast island
chain. “Not so over here in Aceh Province on Sumatra where an ugly Muslim radicalist
insurgency has just gotten uglier.”
“What’s happened?” Amanda took a bite of her sandwich, her brows knitting together.
“A faction leader called Mohammed Sinar, a loser that both we and the Indonesian
security services had discarded as no longer being a factor in the area, has
suddenly jumped back into the game. Apparently he’s received a massive infusion of funding and weaponry and he’s launching a pay-back campaign against both the provincial government and the
other radicalists who’ve been slapping him around. We’re seeing convoy ambushes, kidnappings, tribal leadership assassinations and
general blood, guts and feathers raining down all over the landscape.”
“Is this Sinar a capable leader?”
Christine looked pained. “The man is a tail-wagging idiot who shouldn’t be trusted with a burned-out match. But that fits perfectly with Harconan’s Chaos Theory strategy. Armed force is essentially a tool. Put a tool in the
hands of a skilled carpenter and he can build something with it. Put it in the
hands of a dweeb and your front porch falls off.”
Amanda set the half-finished sandwich down on the plate, her appetite gone. Damn you, Makara. “What else is going on out there?”
Christine’s fingertip skipped from flashpoint to flashpoint. “More outbreaks of tribal violence against the transmigrasi colonies in Borneo. The Dyaks are apparently starting to take heads again. Over
here in Brunei, the Sultanate is trying to hire another battalion of Gurkha
mercenaries to counter an increasing number of bandit incursions from
Indonesian Territory. In the Ambon group, the Christian Ambonese are starting
to talk loudly about the good old days under the Dutch. And last, but certainly not least,
there is a growing wave of vandalism against Hindu religious shrines in Bali,
purportedly by Muslim extremists.”
Christine looked up from the laptop screen. “This latter is a very bad idea on somebody’s part. The Muslims constitute less than six percent of the island population
and the Balinese are getting royally pissed off.”
Amanda nodded in grim agreement. “I recognize the potential. Back in 1965, when the Balinese exorcised the
Communist ‘demons’ from their island, there were over fifty thousand religious executions within a
matter of days.”
She gestured at the laptop screen. “You can see Harconan’s strategy developing. He’s feeding the insurgencies around the perimeter of the archipelago, drawing the
Indonesian forces out of the core islands, making them disperse to these fringe
areas where they can be isolated and cut off. What about the Bugi pirate clans?
What are they up to?”
“Something very indicative, Boss Ma’am,” Christine replied. “Attacks against foreign flag vessels have dropped off to almost nothing. But
they’re steadily increasing against domestic shipping within the archipelago, focused
almost entirely against the PELNI national shipping line and Javanese
inter-island coaster and ferry traffic. And get this, the pirates are not just
boarding and looting cargo as has been SOP in the past. Now they’re sinking the ships.”
Amanda nodded. “He’s begun the sea control mission. He’s started to isolate the islands from each other.”
“Uh huh.” Christine sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. “He’s right on the beam and there’s still nothing much we can do about it.”
“Show me where the bastard is and I’ll show you what can be done,” Amanda found herself saying, with more vehemence than she had meant.
“I can tell you a lot about where he probably is, Boss Ma’am,” Christine went on after a moment. “He won’t be in any major military base or installation, like he was in New Guinea. Such
sites are too easy to locate now that we know what to look for. He’ll be using a Bin Laden defense. He’ll be at some pre-existing location, a village or something where the inclusion
of a small command staff and security force won’t be apparent to aerial reconnaissance. It will also be a pre-selected site,
with a hand-picked population sworn to the cause of the raja sumadra, probably through clan or cultural ties. Bugi or those Nung Chinese mercenaries
Harconan likes to use.”
Christine was drifting into her intelligence officer’s muse, looking up at the cable clustered overhead with her arms crossed. From long experience, Amanda knew with a 99% certainty that the little blonde would be dead right in every word she was saying.
“There will be sideband radio receivers and a camouflaged satellite mini-dish to access CNN, but no sat phones or Internet access. His field commanders can radio in – but not a single loose electron goes out. All of his feedback to his people will be via courier through off-site communications nodes located some distance away from his hide. Slow, but given his game plan, not critical.
“Other than Harconan’s personal security force, there will be no heavy defenses, just a lot of
lookouts. At the first hint of a strange ship on the horizon or the sound of a
helicopter rotor – or even a stranger poking around in the district – foop! He’ll do a fast fade down a prepared escape route.”
“Fine!” Amanda found herself fighting frustration. “Points all taken and agreed to, Chris, but where is he?”
“In any one of ten thousand such places, Boss Ma’am, and there’s absolutely no way anyone pick any one over another.”
Amanda lost the battle. She pushed back from the table and started to pace, her
sketchy meal forgotten. Under tension, she had to move. “That’s not good enough, Chris! Not nearly good enough.”
Christine shrugged. “You’ve said it yourself more times than I can count, Boss Ma’am. ‘Patience is the hunter.’ All we can do is wait him out. Harconan is only human. Sooner or later, he’s got to make a mistake.”
“We don’t have the luxury to be that reactive, Chris. By the time Makara makes that
mistake, he might already have won the damn war!”
“Then our only option is to force him to make a mistake.”
Amanda paused in her pacing. “That’s not going to be easy. He doesn’t do stupid.”
“That’s not exactly true, Amanda.” Christine softened her voice so it couldn’t be heard in the pantry adjoining the wardroom. Christine’s rare use of her given name also caught Amanda’s attention.
“What do you mean, Chris?”
“We know that Makara Harconan does stupid around you.”
*
Upon leaving the wardroom, Amanda had a precious uncommitted hour before having to depart for the Force flagship and a plan to productively put it to use. She’d learned over the years to be careful about her personal maintenance, not out of any kind of self-indulgence but out of the sure and certain knowledge that an over-tired or over-stressed officer was prone to make errors of judgment.
Giving a nod to the young Marine sentry on station outside of the door to her cabin, she entered and crossed to her desk, reported herself in quarters to the Duty Officer in the Carlson’s Combat Information Center.
As the Senior Tactical Officer of the Sea Fighters, she had first call on the LSD’s Flag officers’ quarters. There was a small office, large enough for a desk, a steel tube and leather couch and a single recliner chair. There was also a connected sleeping cabin with a single bunk and a head and shower combination. Beyond the navy blue carpet, the artificial pine paneling and a painting or two on the bulkheads, there was little that could be called luxury. Yet this was home, all she’d had for close to a year, and she was eminently content with it.
She sighed and snapped the rubber band binding her hair back. Chris was right; she must grit her teeth and wait for luck to break her way. There was no other option.
Stripping off her salt and sweat encrusted utilities, she took advantage of flag officer’s privileges, taking a long and leisurely Hollywood shower and shampoo. After toweling off vigorously, Amanda donned a fresh bra and briefs and popped the soundtrack from ‘Kismet’ into her disk player. Stretching out on her bunk, she closed her eyes.
She’d give herself fifteen minutes of unwinding and then she’d rally and rise again.
The world refused to cooperate.
Amanda was just drowsing through ‘Night of My Nights’ when the phone deck on her desk shrilled, demanding attention. She slapped her hand down on the player’s pause button and swore her way out to her desk. “Garrett here!” she snapped, keying the speakerphone.
“Captain, this is communications,” a voice replied apologetically, the watch sparks recognizing a POed commanding
officer when he heard one. “We have an incoming Milstar link with CINCNAVSPECFORCE. Full encryption.
Security Max. TACBOSS access only.”
Amanda sank into her desk chair, pique forgotten. “Put me through.”
Admiral MacIntyre at long damn last. Maybe with her steaming orders. She waited impatiently for the security prompt and spoke her voice pattern identification key. “This is Captain Amanda Lee Garrett … Sweetwater … Tango … zero … three … eight …”
