So it had come.
Lo arose and switched on the small bedside lamp. The main generator had been shut down for the night, but the auxiliary batteries were adequate for several hours. He dressed with swiftness and precision, completely down to his necktie, listening and assessing as he did so.
The volume of fire had grown rapidly and now issued from multiple points around the perimeter. Occasionally, a random bullet would strike the plantation house with an angry thwack, splintering wood or shattering glass. They were close. The discharges of the heavier Indonesian rifles also decisively outnumbered those of the defenders. They were many.
There were tasks that must be completed and there would be little time for them.
There was a quiet knock at his bedroom door. Lo slipped a tiny Seecamp’s .32 caliber automatic, a weapon that had served him well in times before, into the pocket of his suit coat and answered it.
The commander of the base security detail stood in the doorway. “We are under large-scale assault, sir,” he reported. “The compound is surrounded. We cannot hold.”
“Prospects for an evacuation?” Lo kept his own words pared down to a minimum.
“Not possible. The attackers have already seized the pier and boathouse. We are
cut off.”
“I see. I will require a few minutes.”
“You will have them.” The Chinese mercenary drew his sidearm and strode down the hall to the front of the house. There would be no surrender. He was Nung as his men were Nung. They fought for money, but they died for personal honor.
Lo closed the bedroom door and twisted the key in the lock. Then he turned to the bank of laptop computers, radio receivers and satellite phones that ran the length of one wall. This was all that remained of the once formidable Harconan business empire and Lan Lo had insisted on overseeing it personally.
The transmitters and satellite phones had been used only sparingly for security’s sake, but that was irrelevant now. Lo selected the crisis phone, the one only to be used in situations such as this. No matter what might be said over this phone, its activation alone would tell Harconan that all had been lost here.
Lo punched through the call code and lifted the satphone handset. He frowned as the call was not picked up. He knew that this was off the regular contact schedule and that Mr. Harconan might be unavailable. That was a pity; it would have been best to inform him of the situation personally.
Leaving the sat phone active, Lo began his final duties.
A large open-ended steel drum sat incongruously in one corner of the bedroom, its bottom filled with a thick layer of crumpled celluloid film.
The single rack of CD storage media and the single small stack of unshredded and unburned hardcopy that Lo had allowed to accumulate went into the drum. One unit after another, the laptops, the small printer with its integral memory and the radio transceivers with their digital frequency modules, followed them.
The equipment had been carefully organized to make the task quickly and easily done. In less than a minute, it had been accomplished.
The gunfire outside had grown to a crescendo and a rifle slug drilled through one thin wall. Lo took up a last object from the equipment desk, a small metallic cylinder with a pull ring at its top.
There was a roar and a concussion from the front of the plantation house that shattered the last of the glass and shook the structure to its foundations. Shrapnel whined hungrily out in the hall and the defending guns went silent. Hand grenades in all probability. Lo drew the pin from his own, smaller grenade and dropped it into the incineration drum. Harsh blue-white light glared from the mouth of the barrel, a geyser of smoke and flame following. Around him, the air filled with the choking bite of burning plastic.
Satisfactory.
All sources of information useful to Mr. Harconan’s enemies had been eliminated, save for one. Lo slipped a hand into his pocket, then noted the answer light glowing on the crisis phone. Lo caught up the handset and keyed the reception button.
There were heavy footfalls and voices somewhere outside. Only seconds remained.
“Lo, this is Harconan! What’s happening back there?”
“Mr. Harconan, your headquarters have been located and are lost to you. I believe
it is the new enemy. I regret …”
The bedroom door splintered under a boot kick and there was no time left for
regrets, only for the very last duty. Lo pressed the muzzle of the Seecamps to
his temple and pulled the trigger.
Benoa Port
The Island of Bali
0941 Hours; Zone Time, October 31, 2008
The elegance of the modern Naval Expeditionary Group was that it was far more than a mere accumulation of ships. It was an entire self-supporting miniature military that could be positioned anywhere on the Earth’s surface where there was adequate water to float in.
Ground troops did not have to be lifted in. A Marine battalion reinforced with attached armor, artillery and reconnaissance assets was an integral part of the package. Airfields didn’t have to be constructed or repaired. The flight decks of the amphibious ships served as the home base for dozens of helicopter gunships, VTOL transports and jet strike fighters.
Supplies didn’t have to be accumulated, for the amphibs could carry enough beans and bullets to keep their landing force and air group operational for up to two weeks. Defenses didn’t have to be established, for the escorting Aegis cruisers could deal with any manner of threat, ranging from submarines to theater ballistic missiles.
There was only one major drawback to the Naval Expeditionary Group: there were inevitably too few of them.
*
The world was ordered around the USS Pelelieu. The massive queen bee of NAVEX 7.2 lay at anchor in the center of Benoa Harbor, surrounded by her swarm of bustling workers. Landing barges and LCAC hovercraft shuttled between her docking bays and the shore and a steady stream of Ospreys and helicopters lifted from and returned to her decks, servicing the ground force outposts on the Badung Penninsula.
The great artificial island that held the primary port facilities had been secured and was operational under the control of a mixed force of US Navy Seabees and Coast Guard. Royal Australian Navy stores ships and high-speed catamaran transports were docking and landing reinforcements and support assets.
All was well here – but Benoa Port and the Badung Peninsula were only a small part of the island of Bali, and Bali was but one island among thousands.
Aboard the Pelelieu, the tension in the Task Force Commander’s office was palpable. Two men confronted each other across the TACBOSS’s desk. They were alike in many ways: both were career military officers, dedicated to their service and their nation, both were combat veterans; both were skilled, capable and admirable in their own right.
But one man was a line officer and the other Special Operations. Despite all of the emphasis on “jointness” within the services, walls remained.
There was one other difference. One man wore a single star on the collar of his crisp tropic whites. The other had three on his travel-wilted khakis.
“We’re happy to provide NAVSPECFORCE the aircraft you need,” Admiral Sorenson said stiffly. “But there is some difficulty with this scheduling. Your mission isn’t scheduled to fly until tonight, but half of my Osprey group has already been taken off-line. We have missions for those aircraft now.”
