Joseph Bonaparte Bay
The North Coast of Australia
0631 Hours; Zone Time, September 18, 2008
Some fifteen hundred miles to the southwest, another solitary figure emerged onto another beach, beneath the same flaming sunrise.
She had indulged herself in this moment of solitude, not bothering with the aggravating constrictions of a swimsuit. Nor did she have anything to be ashamed of in her unselfconscious nudity. She had the firmly compact yet gracefully curved body of a trained dancer and there was a disciplined grace in the flow of her movements, an instinctive, natural pride in her bearing. Of only average height for a woman, she was inevitably remembered as being tall.
Her fine-planed features were not classically pretty but they held a striking attractiveness, the beauty of a drawn saber’s blade, dominated by a pair of large golden hazel eyes, usually intent on the world around her but for the moment, introspective.
The thick fall of hair bound back at the nape of her neck shone wetly in the dawn light, an unusual combination of brown, red and sun-bleached blonde. There was also the first thin frosting of gray as well. Crow’s-feet wrinkles, earned by much horizon scanning, marked the corners of her eyes.
Still, the hand of maturity rested lightly on her shoulder. She was a decidedly desirable woman and likely would remain so for many years to come. The other predominant aspect of her being – her decisiveness, the radiating sense of presence, the air of regal, natural command – would be hers for the rest of her life.
She walked slowly up the beach to a worn blanket spread on the coral sand and her little pile of possessions. She ignored the clothing for the moment, still savoring the cool free brush of the morning’s sea breeze against her bare skin, but soon she lifted a hand towel and began to dry her hair, turning to study the vista far across the bay.
The warships of three nations lay at anchor there, readying for battle. Pale wakes streaked the gunmetal surface of the anchorage, trailing behind landing barges, hovercraft and patrol boats. Aircraft strobes flickered in the sky, helicopters and Osprey VTOLs shuttling in supplies from Darwin and lifting troops out to the training grounds. The whine of turbines and the mutter of rotors drifted faintly across the still waters.
The woman paused for a moment, tinged with pride in the knowledge that some of those ships and warriors were hers. But also with a degree of sadness, for she sensed that the conflict they were preparing for might already be lost.
Impatiently she shook her head, casting aside the damp towel. Hopeless or not, she would try to turn the coming tide with all of the skill, focus and fierce cunning she had accrued in her lifetime as a warfighter.
To herself, she acknowledged that she, above all others, might have the best chance. For victory could rest on the defeat of one man, a man, who, for a brief moment, had also been her lover.
She would not have been surprised to learn that Makara Harconan was thinking of her at that same precise instant. She recognized the hot spark that had jumped between the Indonesian “King of the Sea” and herself and the bond that had trailed after it. Like had sought out like. She would be counting on that link in the hunt to come. If the predator could think like her prey, it might give her an advantage in the stalking and the kill.
In addition to her clothing and a webbing belt with its holstered pistol and a sheathed knife, a small active radio transceiver sat propped on the blanket at her feet, voices whispering from its speaker. Now, amid babble on the Task Force command channel, she picked out one specific call sign, her own. She grimaced, then smiled wryly. Sinking down onto the blanket, she unclipped the radio’s hand mike.
“This is The Lady. I copy you, Carlson. Over.”
“Sorry to bust into your downtime, ma’am,” the filtered voice came back from her flag ship, “but we just got the word from Strike Group Command. Admiral Sorenson has called
for an operations group meeting aboard the Peleliu at 0900 Hours.”
“Very good, Carlson. Have my gig pick me up.”
Captain Amanda Lee Garrett USN reached for her uniform and began her day.
Lake Toba, North Sumatra Province,
The Island of Sumatra, Indonesia
0631 Hours; Zone Time; September 18, 2008
Lake Toba, the largest and deepest lake in South East Asia was born out of fire and thunder. Some seventy-five thousand years ago, the most titanic volcanic explosion in known geologic history blasted a seventeen hundred square mile crater in the mountainous spine of prehistoric Sumatra, the rain of ash darkening the skies of the world and triggering its last Ice Age.
The passing eons had healed the vast wound in the planet’s skin, and the water-filled caldera had become a place of cool, verdant peace with steep, pine covered mountain slopes rising above its placid waters.
Centered in the great lake was Samosir island, home of the Batak tribal clans, the legendary “headhunters of Sumatra”, who had blended a high native civilization and written language with ritual cannibalism well into the nineteenth century. But Protestant Christianity and a milder form of native animism had claimed the Batak, and now Samosir knew peace. Even so, on the island, moss-sheathed monolithic ruins and cemeteries studded with stone urns and statuary still marked the mystic places where the ancient rajas and gurus had cast their enchantments and debated issues of life and death.
At the western end of the island, a private estate encompassed several hundred acres of forested land between the lake’s edge and the central mountain spine. That an entire village had been displaced in its establishment was of no consequence. That this theoretically private estate’s perimeters were also guarded by an elite platoon of Indonesian marines was also of no consequence. Its owner was a man of unquestioned and unquestionable power.
The estate’s mansion house had been built at the foot of a black basalt cliff, its cantilevered roof inspired by the traditional saddleback design of the Batak clan houses. Done in polished natural wood and glass, it was a most impressive structure.
If one knew of the facilities built into the lava cave concealed behind it, it would be more impressive yet.
The mansion’s owner paused for a moment in his morning stroll through one of the side gardens to breathe deeply and to gaze out across the lake and craggy crater rim beyond.
Tall and spare for an Indonesian, with angular, almost aesthetic features emphasized by a finely trimmed beard, he was of Batak ancestry, a man who loved the highlands and mountains. This was one of the contradictions inherent to the man, for he was deeply involved in the affairs of the sea.
Indonesia was an island nation, dependent upon the sea. If one wished to control Indonesia, the sea must also be controlled. Thus, he had made himself an Admiral, a master of the sea, albeit one who had strode few decks in his naval career.
The man looked around at the approaching hesitant footsteps of his aid.
“Mullah Amar and his party have arisen and are making ready for the Morning
Prayer, sir. He wonders if the Admiral might wish to join them?”
Admiral Merpati Ketalaman, Western Fleet Commander of the Indonesian Navy, tilted his head and smiled a smile that had no meaning behind it. “Please tell the Mullah that I would be honored,” he replied softly.
Presently he would join the radical Islamic leader who was his guest, and he
would kneel on the prayer rug and bow to distant Mecca and murmur the
appropriate words. Ketalaman had been born and raised as a Christian but he had
converted to Islam perhaps ten years previously, when he had commenced the
preparation of his destiny. Not that religion was of any particular concern to
him – but God, like the ocean, was a useful means to an end.
Headquarters, United States Naval Special Forces
Pearl Harbor Fleet Base, Oahu Hawaii
1931 Hours; Zone Time; September 19, 2008
Three time zones to the east and northward beyond the equator, another Admiral sat at his desk and considered the phone call he knew he was about to receive.
A sea-tanned Caucasian with light brown hair streaked by both the blonde of the sun and the gray of maturity, he was square-set, solid and slightly too tall to be considered stocky. His regular, weathered features were marred by adhesive bandages covering recent healing wounds.
