It suddenly struck Arkady that this was the first time he’d been aft since he had been aboard. The transition from the tightly-packed militarism of the camouflaged hold section to the airy civilian elbow room of the stern house was striking.
He’d been totally involved in getting the air group fully operational to range far from Air One and the hangar deck, but he hadn’t been invited aft. There could be a lot of reasons for that; both he and Amanda had been given a lot to think about lately.
As he climbed the ’tween deck ladders, he could feel the stern lifting and trembling under the thrust of the propellers. The commando carrier had come about immediately after recovering Delta Strike and was now steaming hard to the east, obviously going somewhere in a hurry.
He knocked on the door of the Captain’s cabin, hearing multiple voices beyond it.
“Enter.” Amanda Garrett was as he had seen her so often aboard the Cunningham, on her feet and pacing, running on willpower and nervous energy, her eyes
shadowed and yet bright from sleeplessness. She glanced toward him and fired of
a brief, welcoming smile. “Come in, Arkady. Join the family circle.”
She was alone, physically at least. The other voices had issued from the brace of laptop computers parked on the cabin’s broad, cluttered desktop. Arkady had no difficulty in recognizing the faces that filled the two screens.
“Good morning, Admiral. How you doing, Chris?”
Christine Rendino was seated in a rather elegant bedroom suite while MacIntyre hunched in the cramped communications bay of an Orion C and C aircraft, the faint background moan of turboprops testifying that he was airborne.
“Good morning, Commander,” MacIntyre’s filtered voice replied. “Congratulations on a successful mission.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The same from me, Arkady,” Christine interjected, “plus a big kiss on the cheek – or wherever! You were fabulous, as usual.”
“I know it, sis, but taking down a few radio stations wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“You’ve done considerably more than that,” Amanda said, crossing her arms. “You’ve provided us with solid evidence of an impending military coup against the
Kediri government.”
Arkady set his flight helmet on the edge of the desk. “The provocation angle worked then?”
“It did. Chris, bring Arkady up to speed with what you’ve been telling us.”
“My pleasure,” the Intel replied. “Here’s the deal, flyboy. It hasn’t been what we’ve been seeing over the past few hours; it’s what we haven’t been seeing. According to the commo traffic we’ve been monitoring in and out of the Ministry of Defense and the Palace complex, President Kediri and his people are appalled by the Balinese situation. They can recognize a government-killer scenario just as well as we can and they can also recognize the potential for a bloodbath that could set the Muslim and Hindu communities of the archipelago at each other’s throats for the next century.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot they can do about it. Their military and security
elements are so widely dispersed and heavily committed that it will be days
before they can mass an effective reaction force.”
“And it’s beginning to look like somebody planned it just that way,” MacIntyre added from his screen.
“Exactly, Admiral sir,” Christine nodded. “We saw the mechanism in effect tonight. When those radio stations went rogue and
started blasting hate propaganda over the main islands, the Presidential Palace
ordered those broadcasts stopped at all costs. But again, the security forces
were either out of position or they reacted sluggishly. That’s how we ended up having to do the job for them.”
“How are the Indies reacting to our intervention?” Arkady inquired.
“Nobody seems to know exactly who or what you were or where you came from, but
the Indonesians can recognize a HARM when they see one. Shortly after the Alpha
and Bravo Strike went in, the Ministry of Defense passed an event assessment to
the Palace that indicated a US intervention was underway.”
“What did the Palace answer back?” Arkady asked.
“To go with it! The Indonesian Defense Forces were not, repeat emphatically not,
to interfere with the HARM missions taking out those radio stations.”
“Wait a minute,” Arkady said slowly. “If that order was issued after Bravo Strike went in …”
“Exactly,” Amanda interjected. “The interceptor launch against you out of Medan was not authorized by Jakarta.
The Ministry of Defense hasn’t even been informed of the attempt.”
“Shit!” Arkady braced his hands on his flight-suited hips and considered the
permutations. “The only way that could work is if the whole damn base was in somebody’s pocket!”
“If not the entirety of the Sumatran military command,” MacIntyre added. “Commander, over the past twelve hours, these ladies have managed to convince me
of a couple of things. One is that a faction within the Indonesian military is
taking over the Harconan revolution for their own purposes. And two, that they
are an exceptionally bloody-minded crew.”
“And three,” Christine interjected, “that this outfit is probably ready to make its move to seize power, possibly
within a matter of hours.”
“Ah, hell!” Arkady exploded. “In other words – a stinking situation has just gone totally impossible.”
“Not necessarily.” Arkady was the only member of the conference to hear that whisper. “Not necessarily.”
He looked around to see Amanda standing at her cabin window, looking out into
the night. Her reflection in the glass was intent, as if she were studying
something out in the blackness that no one else could see.
Lake Toba, North Sumatra Province
The Island of Sumatra
0634 Hours. Zone Time, October 26, 2008
“So far, the death toll is believed to be over two thousand, Admiral.”
“Believed to be, Captain?” There was mild reproof in Admiral Ketalaman’s voice. He disliked inexactitude. Perhaps that was one of the reasons he found such comfort in this command center sunk into the lava cave behind his villa; the gray-black basalt solidity of the low cavern ceiling, the cold, blue illumination from the workstation screens, the low disciplined murmur of the systems operators at their designated tasks, the very coolness flowing up from the bowels of the mountains. The order of it was soothing.
“Exact casualty counts are difficult to obtain, sir,” his Chief of Staff replied carefully. “Conditions on Bali, especially in the northern provinces, are increasingly
chaotic. This, in itself, is a clear indicator of the success of the operation.
Also, the assassination of Colonel Penyu, the Polici brigade commandant for Bali, has been accomplished with a car bombing of police
headquarters in Denpasar. Our agent, Major Malioburo, is now in command and he
is initiating his designated strategy of provocation and withdrawal.”
Ketalaman nodded. “That is satisfactory. And the overall picture?”
“All indications are that the Hindus have indeed initiated a total religious
purge of the Balinese Muslim population. Even if the Jakarta government could
find reinforcements to send, the situation is already quite beyond their
control.”
The Admiral noted the flicker of concern or possibly conscience in the eyes of his CoS and he smiled. “Don’t worry commander, the Hindus will pay in due course. The story of this atrocity will serve us well when we retake the island, a justification for stern measures. Now what of the Australians and Americans?”
