Off the Northern Coast of Lompoc Island
0025 Hours; Zone Time, October 30, 2008
The drag of the diver’s bag bobbing behind him on the tether slowed Harconan’s swimming slightly, but not enough to matter. His powerful crawl carried him across the course line of the Pinisi flotilla and through the interlocking wakes that streamed behind them.
Pausing to let himself float upright, he looked around to orient himself in the night, seeking for his objective. After a moment, he spotted the tall, scimitar curved bow looming against the stars, its passage foretold by the rumble of its engines, and underlined by its luminescent bow wave.
Once more, Harconan struck out, a few powerful strokes placing him directly into the path of the oncoming coaster. He lifted his head, intently gauging his distance as the cutwater hissed down on him. The bow wave burst across his face and the curve of the hull rushed past, the little converted schooner suddenly growing huge.
Harconan’s fingertips brushed down the ship’s wooden flank and found the knot-studded rope that trailed from the deck. Lunging, he grasped out and found himself being hauled through the sea and battered against the coaster’s side.
The Nantucket sleigh ride lasted for only a few moments. Silhouetted heads peered down from the railing and waiting, willing hands draw him up and out of the water.
The decks and cabin of the vessel were crowded with refugees, but a space along the railing had been cleared for Harconan. A cluster of Bugi seamen, the majority of the pinisi’s crew, drew respectfully around him on the deck as he caught his breath. “I ask leave to come aboard your ship, captain,” Harconan said to their leader.
“Your presence honors my ship, my chief.”
Harconan clapped the shipmaster on the shoulder. “The honor is mine. You and your men did well this day. Many will live who would
have perished. Now, there is no time to lose. I need a radio.”
The shipmaster passed him a Chinese-made Citizens Band walkie talkie. Harconan lifted it to his face and spoke a few words into it. It was a brief, totally innocuous phrase, but every other captain in the evacuation flotilla was guarding this channel, waiting for it.
With the passage of the word, helms were swung hard over. Wakes curved as the evacuation flotilla suddenly scattered in a bomb burst maneuver, each of the nine craft swinging onto a new and widely divergent heading.
Harconan grinned to himself. Amanda had kindly come to his aid in Singaraja this afternoon, but now he must thwart her. He had no doubt as to what her real mission and intents were. It would be only a matter of time before she struck at his flagship.
He could imagine her red-haired fury at finding that he had slipped away. Her boarding parties would find nothing but an innocent Bugi schooner carrying a cargo of hapless Balinese Muslim refugees. The schooner’s armament had followed him over the side. He was not certain of the capabilities of her exotic new command yet, but he could make a few educated guesses. He doubted that she would have the assets to board all of the scattering ships of the flotilla simultaneously.
And if, by chance, she did, he’d worry about it then. Either way, contesting with her again was stimulating. Freighter captain indeed!
“You may have my cabin, sir, if you would wish to rest,” the coaster’s shipmaster murmured.
Harconan shook his head. “That isn’t necessary, Captain. Until we reach the next rendezvous, all I need is a patch
of deck like any other sailor.”
“If you please, my chief. It is a matter of my ship’s honor and my own.”
“As you wish then, Captain. You command here.”
The captain’s cabin was a mere dog’s box behind the wheelhouse, but it came with privacy and a moderately clean towel. Harconan dried himself and exchanged his sodden swim trunks for the dry clothing from the diver’s bag. Then he stretched out on the narrow bunk and once more considered his options.
Today was a start, an act of defiance against the individual or individuals who were corrupting his plan. But he must begin to think beyond mere gestures. He must find his new enemy, close with him and get his hands around his throat.
It was going to be a matter of adaptation motivated by necessity, like balancing a stock portfolio to react to radically changing economic conditions, or changing a ship’s course in the face of inclement weather. Harconan was a man who recognized that clinging to obsolescent goals was act of abject foolishness. He must open a whole new page in the ledger.
Amanda, the Regional Intervention Force, even the Jakarta government – he must begin anew with them as well. He must begin to look upon them as potential assets to be turned against a greater enemy.
Especially Amanda.
She must be here with some American special operations battle force, and that bulk carrier she commanded must be more than it appeared to be. Given the decisive and timely way she had intervened this afternoon, she also must be operating with a very large degree of independence. She must also be recognizing that Bali was not of his doing and that a greater threat existed.
If he could only talk with her for ten minutes, just ten, as equals and allies
and not as prey and predator …
It was something to consider. But first he had to establish the identity of their mutual foe. That would give him a coin to bargain with.
As a step in that direction, he knew he had to reestablish communications with Lo and update himself with the latest developments. Possibly his Intelligence groups had already procured him his answer.
He rose from the bunk and again reached for the diver’s bag, removing the lunchbox sized waterproof case of the sat phone. After deploying the saucer-sized dish antenna on the cabin’s crude table, he switched the system on, allowing the phone to seek for an active and in range communications satellite. It acquired one almost instantly and the oncoming call light snapped on. Lo was trying to reach him.
Then Harconan’s spine abruptly stiffened. The digital readout on the phone display glowed with
the crisis call number.
Somewhere in the Moluku Island Group
0010 Hours; Zone Time, October 30, 2008
The C-130 Hercules was one of the few long-range transports available in the Indonesian Air Force inventory, just as the platoon of KOSSUS commandos it carried were the Army’s last uncommitted special operations force. That was why Admiral Ketalaman had held both carefully in reserve for a moment such as this.
The C-130 stayed at twelve thousand feet as it made its approach. It would never transit closer to the island, or even come within five miles of its shoreline, but it didn’t need to pass overhead to deliver its payload.
To any observer on its island objective, it would remain a distant twinkle of navigational strobes and a faint moan of aero engines, a harmless traveler passing in the night, en route to some other destination.
The jump light flashed green within its cargo bay and black-clad men tumbled out of the open tailgate into the darkness. Camouflage-patterned nylon streamed and batlike rectangular parafoil parachutes cracked open. The commandos swirled for a few moments like a flock of night hunting swallows, then lined out in a long silent glide for the island, each squad rallying and guiding on the dim, colored glowtube taped to the back of its squad leader’s helmet.
The platoon hissed in over the reefs, flaring out expertly against the trade wind to whump down on the narrow strip of beach or to splash into a landing in the hip-deep shallows. Parafoil chutes collapsed and were hastily wadded up, while code words were whispered into microphones.
The heavily-armed body of men broke into two groups and double timed down the beach in opposite directions. Their objective was located on the far side of the little island and they intended to engulf it from both sides, ensuring that there would be no escape.
*
Lan Lo awoke instantly to a long burst of automatic weapons fire. He recognized the light, angry crackle of a Steyr assault rifle, the preferred arm of the Nung security detail. He lay still for a moment, waiting. Then the burst was answered by an angry volley from a heavier caliber weapon. An FN FAL, Indonesian Army standard issue.
