One Hundred Miles Northeast of Jakarta
2315 Hours, Zone Time, October 31, 2008
There was no physical structure to Sky Base. It existed merely as a set of navigational coordinates around which a large and varied formation of aircraft circled in a wide racetrack pattern.
The heavy iron consisted of a pair of militarized Boeing 767s, one a US Air Force AWACS II airborne command-and-control aircraft and the second a Compass Call Bravo electronic warfare plane. A burly KC-10 Extender air-refueling tanker also held in the formation, intermittently topping off the Sky Base’s swarm of Little Friends.
The two four-plane flights of Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18 Hornets had staged out of East Timor and were armed for air to air. The flight of USMC F-35 Joint Strike Fighters had launched from the USS Pelelieu and were configured for surface strike.
Holding at a lower altitude and a tighter orbit another tanker, a Marine turboprop KC-130J circled, trailed by the Pelelieu’s gaggle of MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors. With their passenger bays empty, they would serve as the primary extraction aircraft.
Over the short term, sky base could provide a strike package with all of the support assets of a ground basing facility, barring rearmament and the opportunity for an aircrew to stretch their legs.
At the initiation order, the Compass Call bird went on the electronic offensive, its array of powerful cascade jammers blasting a deafening scream of white noise across the standard Indonesian military radio channels and data links.
Simultaneously, the four F-35s retracted their radio antenna and refueling probes within their stealth envelopes. Invisible now to radar, the Marine fighter-bombers peeled off and accelerated to transonic velocity, streaking toward their targets in and around Jakarta.
*
Five miles off the coast, the Shenandoah shuddered to a full stop under the thrust of her backing propellers. Down either flank of the commando carrier, hull panels, their edges camouflaged by false welding seams, swung open. Power davits howled and four ten-meter-long RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) raider craft swung outboard from their concealed boat bays. Each raider carried its Special Boat crew with a four-man SEAL detachment to ride shotgun. Each raider also carried a massive load-out of armaments and ammunition.
There was a degree of swearing and fumbling as the boats hit water and davit shackles were cast off. There had been little time or opportunity for live-drilling this particular evolution, but SB personnel manned both the RIBs and the launch bays and there was little or nothing they did not know about the handling of small craft.
Amidships, to port and starboard, another set of hatches swung upward and half a dozen blocky tanklike shapes lurched out of the transverse amphitrack bay. Lurching and wallowing like water buffalo, the Marine Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicles tilted out of their semi-flooded hangar, their diesel exhausts kicking up plumes of spray as they plunged into the sea. Bobbing back to the surface, the big machines furiously churned away from the flanks of the commando carrier, their spinning tracks doubling in brass as paddle wheels.
Clear of their mothership, a miraculous sequence of changes began, fully the equivalent of a warthog transforming into a gazelle.
The tread assemblies of the AAAVs – tracks, bogie wheels and all – retracted into their angular hulls. Streamlining doors closed over the track wells to create a smooth planing surface, and the armored forward hull plate hydraulically tilted outward at a steeper angle, becoming a hydro ski.
Inboard, safety interlocks disengaged in the amphitrack’s engine compartments, unleashing the full twenty-six hundred horsepower of their massive MTU/Detroit Diesel power plants. Hydrojet drives blasted astern of each assault vehicle, horizontal geysers boiling the sea. There was an abrupt forward and upward surge and the AAAVs half-lifted their hulls out of the water to skim the wave tops with the grace and ease of a ski boat.
At thirty knots, the AAAV platoon lined out for Jakarta harbor, the four RIB raider boats pulling into an escort diamond around it.
*
As the beach assault force had gone out of the Shenandoah’s side hatches, her weather decks had been had reconfiguring to air operations mode.
Every element of her air group was being committed and every machine had to be put into the sky as rapidly as possible. First on the decks were the tactical scout and attack RPVs, the Boeing Textron Eagle Eyes with their reconnaissance pods and the Hell Eye variants with their brace of Hellfire surface-to-air missiles, the remote-controlled eyes and fangs of the ship.
A dozen of these miniature cousins of the tilt-rotor Osprey VTOL were spotted on deck in a double row. With their mini-turbines screeching and their twin long-bladed air screws swiveled into lift rotor mode, the little fish-shaped machines stood poised to explode into the sky like a covey of quail.
*
In the heart of Jakarta, the sound of the torpedo hits registered as a hint of distant thunder. The Indonesian patrollers and sentries deployed around Merdeka Square looked up, mildly puzzled. Then, abruptly, they had more urgent concerns.
A closely-spaced series of piercing cracks and rolling booms echoed within the square.
The NCO leading a patrol past the abandoned Greek embassy had his head explode without warning. The sentry manning the lookout on the observation deck of the MONAS memorial spire toppled from his post and plummeted four hundred feet to the pavement. Two soldiers manning the gates at the Ministry of Defense crumpled simultaneously. An officer peering out of a window of the Aryaduta Hyatt was hurled backwards with a massive crater blasted in his chest. At multiple points within the arc of fire and sight around the US Embassy, men started to die.
The Marine Corps appreciated the sniper. Every Fleet Anti-terror Strike Team platoon had a pair of two-man sniper elements attached to it, their weapon of choice being the big .300 Magnum variant of the Remington M-40C bolt action rifle. In addition, at least one man in every FAST squad had gone through the Marine tactical snipers course to learn how to get the maximum out of the extended barrel variant of the M-8 assault rifle. And finally, within the Embassy’s security force, there was one Montana boy who had received no formal sniper’s indoctrination – but who had been given his first deer rifle on his twelfth birthday.
All through the afternoon, these men had been spotting the surrounding Indonesian sentry posts and patrol routes, building their targeting priority lists, and checking their ranges and engagement patterns. Now, with great precision, they were making the vicinity of the US Embassy a very unhealthy place to be.
*
“How are we doing?” Amanda demanded, pushing through the light-curtain into the shadowy blue dimness of the Landing Force Operations Center.
“The timelines have initiated,” MacIntyre replied, pacing the narrow aisle behind the double row of systems
operators’ stations. “The Embassy has started their area sterilization and the fire base force is
approaching the Beach. The Sky Base strike group should be at their drop line
within the next thirty seconds.”
“We’re on the track.” Amanda shed her helmet and flak vest and looked around in the dimness for some place to stack them. With nothing apparent, she heaped them on the deck in a back corner of the space, impatiently kicking them as far out of the way as possible.
The Landing Force Op’s Alpha Display had been locked onto a computer graphics situation map of the Jakarta area. Amanda came to stand beside MacIntyre, focusing totally on the wall screen. There was no sense in a questioning look at the combat watch hunching over their consoles; if this massive untested assembly of machinery and humanity were to fail, it would likely happen as this first massive load came onto it. There was no sense in wondering or worrying. Soon she would know.
The position hack of the fire base force crawled steadily toward its designated beach head at Jakarta’s Ancol amusement park.
She sidled a half step closer to MacIntyre. At this particular moment, it was good not to be quite so alone. “What’s the word from Air One?” she inquired softly.
“The RPV group is spotted and ready to launch,” Macintyre replied, his own voice low. “Drone control reports they have good control on all units. The Strike and Sky
Island elements are ready to go on the lifts as soon as the drones clear. All
we need is clean sky.”
Suddenly, four blue bat-shaped aircraft hacks flickered into existence on the Alpha display. For a few instants, they manifested themselves in a broad arc across the Jakarta engagement area from a point perhaps ten miles off the coast. Then, as rapidly as they had appeared, they vanished once more.
“And there’s Marine Air checking in,” MacIntyre murmured.
*
Inland, at the Jakarta Regional Air Defense Center at Halim Perdana Kusuma Air Force Base, the systems operators also caught a momentary flash of airborne targets offshore. But the contacts were so brief in duration that the Indonesian radarmen hesitated before reacting, puzzled over just what their phased arrays had detected. By the time they understood, it was too late.
The transitories had signaled the beginning of the end for the Indonesian air defenses. They had been caused by the cycling weapons bay doors of the approaching Marine F-35s, their opening causing a momentary gap in the fighter-bomber’s stealth sheathing.
