His ship was growing overburdened; he could feel it even tied alongside the dock. And yet the refugees continued to press their way aboard and the line of frightened, fleeing people still ran the full length of the pier and beyond.
He hesitated for a last moment, but then could hesitate no longer. May Allah forgive him – but this must be the end. His ship was far beyond its maximum capacity and he could squeeze no more aboard and hope to survive the passage to Java.
The ferry captain reached up and yanked on the cord of the air horn, sounding the signal he had prearranged with the tense crewmen waiting at the mooring lines. Then he threw the idling diesels into reverse and spun the helm hard over, springing his vessel away from the pier.
It was time to cut and run.
As the water boiled under the ferry’s stern, a great wailing cry arose from the pier. In an instant, the line of refugees on the pier collapsed into a frantic mob. This was the reaction the ferry captain had feared. Singaraja harbor had emptied of small craft and shipping. His was the last boat out. The last escape from the burgeoning madness.
Hands reached beseeching at the ferry’s railings. Members of sundered families screamed to those left behind. People tumbled off the edge of the pier into the widening gap of water, victims of the roiling crush of humanity. Some never surfaced again and went unmissed.
Sluggish under its living burden, the little ferry came about and lumbered
toward the harbor mouth and the distant safety of Java. It would not be back
again.
The USS Shenandoah
1215 Hours; Zone Time, October 29, 2008
“It’s like this, Skipper,” Stone Quillain said. “We got us a real mess comin’ together in Singaraja.”
“Why should they be any different than anywhere on Bali?” Dix Beltrain inquired from the chair next to Amanda’s.
“Volume, Dix. Sheer volume,” Vince Arkady interjected. The aviator was the last member of the abbreviated Operations Group. They were clustered around the chart table in the Command Block briefing room, its bulkhead displays dominated by the real time imaging steaming in from one of the Shenandoah’s reconnaissance drone outriders.
“What do we have, Arkady?” Amanda asked quietly.
“Singaraja has been a primary escape route for the Muslim population of Northern
Bali. It’s the largest north coast port. It’s had the strongest government and police presence and it’s been a fairly cosmopolitan environment where the wave of religious fanaticism
hasn’t hit as hard as in the highlands. That situation is changing.”
He stood and moved to the master flat screen, running his hand across the
imaging of the Singaraja port facilities. Abandoned automobiles and trucks
jammed the adjacent city streets and the piers and pier aprons swarmed with a
milling mass of people. “We’ve got a backlog of several thousand refugees piled up in the waterfront
district, looking for evacuation craft. The problem is, there aren’t any. The last government ferry has sailed and all of the private shipping has
hauled out.”
Amanda nodded in the screen glow. Oddly enough for an island people, the Balinese were not great mariners. Most of the coasters serving Bali were Muslim owned and manned, and Bali would be a most unattractive port of call at the moment. If there were still any Balinese seamen or ship owners to be found, it was unlikely they would challenge the judgment of their Gods to show the Muslim “demons” any consideration.
“What about the Indonesian navy?” she asked.
“We’ve been trying to inform them of the situation through Regional Intervention
Force Command. I don’t know how much good it’s going to do because the nearest Indonesian naval unit is over a day’s hard steaming away.”
Amanda felt her mouth tug down in a frown. “The Indonesian Navy hasn’t established a presence in Balinese waters?”
Beltrain shook his head. “Nothing appreciable, Ma’am. Their eastern fleet units are mostly operating off New Guinea, while their
western fleet seems to be massing around the Malacca Straits. We haven’t seen any major retasking since the start of the Balinese crisis.”
Amanda’s frown deepened. That seemed to track with the scenario of applied stupidity
they’d been seeing develop. She’d have to point this out to Chris just as soon as she could salvage a spare
second. “I gather there’s a more immediate crisis related with events in Singaraja?”
“It looks like it, Captain.”
The image on the screen was changing as the Mariner drone slowly circled above the port city. Another massive clot of people came into view, considerably larger than that along the waterfront, filling the streets around an open building complex.
“We’re seeing mobs assembling around the town’s Hindu temples – especially around this southern one, the one dedicated to Shiva. The cultural
Intelligence database indicates that this is bad, really bad. The Gods are
being consulted on matters of life and death. This behavior pattern has been
seen just before mass executions start.”
Arkady looked away from the screen toward Amanda. “Once these mobs start to move on the waterfront, we’re going to be seeing blood, guts and feathers raining down all over the
landscape.”
“What about the local security forces?”
“From what we can gather from radio intercepts, they’ve collapsed. The Balinese Hindu rank and file have deserted and are with the
mobs – and the Muslim upper echelons have either bugged out or have forted up in the
town police headquarters. They are no longer a factor.”
“What about a conventional military intervention? Ours or the Indonesians?”
Quillain shrugged. “Too many commitments, Skipper. Not enough assets. The RIF is fully involved down
south. The Indies say they’ve got nothing available and they couldn’t get it here if they did.”
Amanda gritted her teeth and wished she could set aside her captain’s imperturbability long enough to ask for a Tylenol. “What options do we have?”
Down the table, Quillain, Beltrain and Arkady exchanged glances. Quillain took
the lead in the reply. “We could deal with it,” the Marine said. “It would mean landin’ the full Sea Demon force, backed by an armed naval security detail to establish
and secure a defensive perimeter around the dock areas. After that, we start
lifting the refugees out with the SPEED Hawks.”
“The Peleliu can give us some help with their Ospreys and Sea Stallions,” Arkady said, taking over the thread of the dialog. “Even so, we’ll still have several thousand people to move with a small number of small
aircraft. It doesn’t matter if we lift them out to a reception site on Java or behind the RIF check
line on the southern end of the island, we’re going to have long flights and low cyclic times. We’re going to be pinned down for a couple of days doing this, and it’s going to take a huge bite out of our fuel stores and available flight hours
per airframe.”
Dix Beltrain kept his head down, minutely examining a pencil. “I think the big point will be the time and overt operations factor, Ma’am. This isn’t a raid or hit and run scenario. For the Shenandoah to intervene effectively in this situation, we will be required to function as a
conventional amphibious warfare force. We’ll have to hold close offshore. We’ll have to launch large numbers of aircraft around the clock and we’ll have to put boats and amphitracks over the side. Generally, we will have to
advertise that the United States has a large block of combatants somewhere that
we shouldn’t have any. We’ll blow our cover, Ma’am, sky high.”
All three men went quiet. It was obvious that they had reached their own consensus before summoning her into the loop for the blood call.
Amanda looked down at the cool gray tabletop and lightly rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. Elliot MacIntyre would be in Darwin by now, en route to join them. It would be easy enough to kick this upstairs to him or to fuss around with busywork considerations until the intervention window closed and the whole question became irrelevant. But she’d never worked that way and she wasn’t going to start now.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “to put it bluntly, shit happens. Today, it’s going to happen in Singarajah. Given the current parameters of the situation,
we cannot effectively intervene without destroying the present and future
utility of Phantom Force. Monitor and report, that’s all we can do.”
Her people agreed with their continued silence. There wasn’t much to be said when you had just condemned several thousand men, women and children to death.
Amanda was about to dismiss the O Group when the overhead speaker clicked. “Briefing Room, this is drone control. Be advised we are observing an anomalous
situation developing in the Singaraja approaches.”
Amanda lifted her head and keyed the mike of her command headset. “Drone Control, this is the Captain. Define the situation.”
“It looks like a large cluster of native coastal shipping, Ma’am. But it almost looks like a convoy. They seem to be running in formation.”
