Target Lock

by James H. Cobb

  Lowering his voice: “It’s only that some of us within the diplomatic community consider Captain Garrett and the current Naval Special Forces commander, Admiral Elliot MacIntyre, to be somewhat … destabilizing, if you understand my meaning. Mind you, they’re both very capable officers, but Garrett is prone to precipitous and unilateral actions beyond the genuine level of her authority, and MacIntyre gives her carte blanche to get away with it. Some of us feel too many corners have been cut on more than one occasion.”

  The ambassador paused to finish the last of his excellent champagne cocktail, and he failed to note the minute flick of Harconan’s head that summoned a waiter with a tray of replacements.

  “The Foreign Ministry in Jakarta is acting as if they have a rebellion under every bush,” Goodyard continued, a replenished glass in hand. “Nothing your government can’t deal with, I’m sure. But given the current delicacy of the situation in this region, we don’t need any cowboys—or cowgirls—in the area just now.”

  Harconan smiled behind the studied sobriety of his expression. “I understand that the task force’s visit to Singapore and Indonesia is primarily intended as a goodwill mission. Might there be anything more to it than that?” The taipan laughed lightly. “If you can say, of course. I’ve heard there’s been a degree of concern over the satellite that was lost over in the Arafura.”

  Goodyard grimaced. “Oh, that damn thing. No, that turned out to be something of a tempest in a teapot. It was all we heard about from Washington for a while, but the subject seems to be petering out. I think the secretary of state became a little embarrassed over the fuss the special interests made over the matter. I’ve been instructed to do a little fence mending with your people over that.”

  Harconan nodded and sipped from his tulip glass of mineral water. Interesting. But then, intelligence sources such as Goodyard were always a two-edged dagger. On the one edge, the ambassador was telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. On the other, the ambassador might be telling him exactly what the ambassador wanted him to hear. One could never truly judge how good a liar a man could be until the point was proven. The more capable of sophistry the individual was, the more credible they would appear.

  Goodyard seemed to be the innocent, but still …

  Harconan glanced to seaward. “So we can expect no grand Garrett adventures in the near future? A pity, I was rather hoping to see the lady in action.”

  “Knock on wood.” Goodyard grinned. “Not unless something breaks out while she’s in the neighborhood. Then you might see the house blown up to put out the fire. I’m sorry to disappoint you, ah, Makara, but I don’t need a visit from Rambo on my watch. Things look brittle enough as is.”

  Harconan nodded and smiled at the diplomatic understatement. The concept of Bhinneka tunggal ika, “Many are one,” was the proclaimed ideal of the Indonesian government. The reality was that, for decades, Jakarta had engaged in a frantic juggling match with Indonesia’s myriad of political and religious factions, balancing one against the other in the hope that, eventually, a true Indonesian identity would take hold within its population. To date, only an erratic and jingoistic nationalism had emerged within certain groups, such as the military.

  Sooner or later, the juggler would miss a ball, or have it knocked aside. Once that occurred, it would be time for something new. Harconan’s smile deepened at the thought.

  “It appears you have some new guests arriving.”

  The ambassador’s comment drew Harconan back to the here and now. Looking northward along the coast, he noted a double set of running lights inbound toward the Makara Limited pier.

  “So it would seem, Ambassador. Excuse me, please: I have a host’s duties to attend to.”

  Lengthening his stride, Harconan proceeded to the pier deck that extended outward from the beach walk.

  The curving end of the pier with its integral surf break created a patch of sheltered water within its inner curve. A small-craft float lay within this shelter, linked by sliding ramp to the pier deck. A pair of line handlers, rather incongruously clad in white dinner jackets, were already standing by on the float. Reception guests from Bali’s diplomatic and business communities were drifting out along the pier, looking on with interest. The word had spread that the launches from the American task force, the guests of honor, were arriving.

  Powerful marine diesels rumbled out of the night, and the first Navy craft moved into the zone of light cast by the pier arcs.

  It was no mere launch from the task force: It was a unit of the task force itself. A rakish miniature gunboat swept out of the darkness. Its mottled gray-tone camouflage paint had been touched up flawlessly. The few small hints of brass and chrome had been burnished bright, and the workaday nylon strap safety rails around its gunwales had been replaced by dazzling white nylon cord, hauled taut and tied with elaborate seamen’s knots.

  Water boiled as hydrojet propulsors backed with a hiss. With absolute precision the assault boat curved into the float, the last of its wake dissipating just as its flank touched the side of the dock, the Raider’s crew merely handing the mooring lines across to the pier-side handlers.

  The uniforms of the SB hands were frost-white as well, white with the distinctive black beret of the Sea Fighter Task Force tugged low over one eye. Gunners stood at parade rest at the 25mm OCSW grenade launcher at the bow and at the pintle-mounted Barrett .50-caliber anti-material rifles amidships, riding with the motion of their small, deadly craft with the practiced ease of the Special Boat crewman.

  A short aluminum gangway had been mounted upright on the gun wale of the craft. Now, with a single yank of a release pin, its outboard end dropped to the float’s decking.

  “Honor Guard …” a powerful baritone voice roared, “disembark!”

  Half a dozen American Marines clattered down the short gangway, spacing out in a double row between its foot and the base of the float access ramp. Snapping to a stiff-spine parade rest, each stood with an obsolete M-14 rifle at his side, its white enameled wooden stock buffed to a satiny sheen.

  A seventh Marine, an officer, taller, more powerful, more resplendent, paced slowly down between the short double row of his fellows. Pausing at the head of the guard, his dark hawkish eyes swept across Harconan and the other reception guests now looking on silently from the pier.

  The Marine’s lips pursed as if he saw nothing that impressed him. He pivoted machine like into line with the honor guard.

  The gangway swung back aboard, and mooring lines were snatched back from the pier handlers. The Raider blasted away back into the night on its water jet, curving back toward the distant Navy moorage for its next load of passengers.

  “Honor Guard …” the Marine officer’s voice rang again. “Fix bayonets!”

  Polished black blades rasped from belt sheaths and clicked into place on underbarrel mounting lugs.

  “Honor Guard … attention!”

  Heels crashed on the pier decking.

  A second Navy RIB came in out of the night, docking with the same deftness as the first. A second gangway dropped.

  “Present arms!”

  Rifles clattered and lifted, white-gloved hands slapping on polished stocks.

  The Marine officer’s sword screamed out of its sheath, the glittering silver blade whipping to the vertical before his face.

  “Commandant … United States Naval Special Forces … arriving!”

  An officer strode down the short gangway and between the double row of the honor guard. An older man, graying, weathered but not aged. Not as tall as Harconan, but as broad-shouldered, with an almost defiant air of solidity, as if an earthquake might level all around him and yet he would stand.

  Harconan descended the pier ramp, extending his hand. He had been briefed about this man. “Admiral MacIntyre, welcome to Bali.”

  “Mr. Harconan.” The handshake was strong, the voice noncommittal. So the admiral had been briefed on him as well.

  The Marine officer roared again. “
Commander … Sea Fighter Task Force … arriving!”

  She appeared at the head of the gangway. Blood royal rather than a military officer, yet totally at ease amid the hard-edged backdrop of combat technology. Slightly lifting her long skirt with her hands in an archaic, elegantly feminine gesture, she descended to the float.

  Amanda Garrett was not truly tall—at best she was of average height without heels—yet, she radiated the impression of tallness, her head lifted in instinctive pride, her bearing regal by nature.

  Makara Harconan had known and savored many women in his life, some of whom had been considered among the most beautiful in the world, but he had never before encountered any female so totally arresting. He could not say why. There had been models more perfectly featured, actresses more lushly endowed, but no one so inherently dynamic.

  She paced past the honor guard and flowed to a halt at Admiral MacIntyre’s side. A pair of large golden eyes glowed at Harconan and she extended her hand … palm down.

  I have come for you, O King of the Sea, those eyes spoke silently. Bow to me.

  Harconan vowed he would possess this woman. Closing his fingers around hers, he inclined over her hand, but only slightly.

  “Captain Garrett.”

  She inclined her head. “Mr. Harconan. On behalf of the Sea Fighter Task Force, I thank you for this warm welcome to your home waters. May I introduce one of my officers and her escort. Lieutenant Commander Christine Rendino and Inspector Nguyen Tran of the Singapore National Police.”

  Harconan was jerked back to reality, turning to the couple who had disembarked while he had been fixated on Amanda Garrett.

  Tran? Could this be the same Singapore gadfly he’d been forced to quash last year with a series of exorbitant payoffs? What was he doing here with the Americans? Damn you, Harconan, forget the woman and look to business!

  Tran nodded to him, with the faintest of smiles on his angular features. “A pleasure, Mr. Harconan. We have never before had the opportunity to meet … in person.”

  The little blonde on Tran’s arm said sweetly, “But the inspector has been able to tell us so much about you.”

  What was happening here? As Harconan mouthed the appropriate platitudes, his eyes swept the boarding stage. What sort of threat could this group pose?

  He caught the slight bulge of a sidearm under Tran’s evening jacket, a factor that might be expected with a police officer. But then, there were matching bulges under the uniform coats of both MacIntyre and the Marine captain overseeing the honor guard, the same with every naval officer disembarking from the Raider craft.

  The Marines of the honor guard still held a rigid attention, but their eyes were moving and alert.

  And the rifles they were carrying. Harconan knew that the M-14 was long obsolete in American service, relegated to ceremonial usage. But these specific weapons were not mere ceremonial accouterments with welded actions. Harconan’s second look revealed that they were still fully functional and fully loaded, a twenty-round magazine of 7.62 NATO protruding from each magazine well. Each honor guard also had a white leather pouch at his belt that was not issue to the U.S. Marine dress uniform, but which was just the right size for a pair of reloads.

  And the bayonets: Each black steel blade had a thin, silvery band along its point and cutting edge, the sheen of a razor sharpening.

  Aboard the assault boat, every crewman and -woman wore a polished sidearm holster and Brasso’ed ammunition belts gleamed in the gun mounts.

  Amanda Garrett had not merely come to a party. She was landing a military expeditionary force.

  Harconan had his own security elements discreetly deployed around the reception area. But nothing to match this potential concentration of firepower.

  What had Ambassador Goodyard called this woman? “A cowgirl … prone to precipitous and unilateral actions …”

  What in all hell was going on here?

  Amanda Garrett wore the same slight, damnably knowing smile as Tran. It was as if he could feel her reading his every thought, every emotion.

  Damn it, how long had it been since anyone had made him so apprehensive?

  “I’m looking forward to talking with you, Mr. Harconan. I’m sure we have many things to discuss.”

  Then she turned away. Accepting Maclntyre’s arm, she ascended the ramp to the top of the pier and the waiting reception line.

  Java Sea, Northeast of the Laut Kecil Island Group

  2205 Hours, Zone Time: August 15, 2008

  Three hundred miles to the north, another carefully choreographed military evolution was under way.

  To many, a visualization of the Indonesian archipelago would bring to mind tightly clustered green islands under a tropic sun, their azure waters busy with a multitude of small craft going about their affairs.

  And so it was, in places.

  Elsewhere, there are ’tween island straits broad enough to warrant the name of sea. No hint of land save for a cloudbank on a far horizon, no shipping, no movement save for the waves and the wheeling of a weary seabird in transit.

  In the center of one such emptiness, the Sea Fighters came to rest. Coming off the pad, the PGACs powered down and settled to the surface of the sea, drifting silently beneath the ten million and one stars of the tropic night.

  Steamer Lane slid open the cockpit side window, admitting a puff of sea-fresh air and the sound of waves lapping against the hull.

  “Position check,” he called.

  Ensign Terrence Wilder, the Queen of the West’s junior officer, thumbed a display call-up on the navigator’s console. “Sir, Navicom indicates we are on station for rendezvous,” he reported crisply. “I show matching coordinates on both Global Positioning Systems.”

  Lane slipped his helmet off and balanced it on the bow of the instrument panel. “That’s good, Terr, we have arrived. Time check, Scrounge?”

  “On the line, Skipper,” Caitlin replied. “Fifteen minutes to rendezvous if the Air ‘Farce’ is up to it.”

  “Super good.” Lane donned the earphones of the Digital Walkman he had clipped to the sun visor. “Terry, you have the con. Position the Queen and Reb for the drop reception … quietly. I’m going to catch a fast forty. Gimme a yell when we have the replenishment bird in sight.”

  Startled, Wilder looked forward from the Nav station. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  A twangy whisper of California surf rock drifted across the cockpit as Lane reclined against the back of his seat. With a developed warrior’s knack, he was asleep in seconds, snatching the opportunity for brief refreshment.

  Wilder hesitated, wrestling with his pride. But, as he was in fact an intelligent and capable young officer, he twisted his seat around to face the copilot’s station.

  “Hey, Chief,” he whispered. “Could you help walk me through this? I’ve never handled a drop replenishment at sea before.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Wilder,” Scrounger Caitlin replied cheerfully, pulling a ring-bound procedures manual from the rack by her knee. “Nobody else has either.”

  Fifty miles to the south, Lieutenant Colonel Edwina Mirkle, United States Air Force, looked forward, first through the night-vision visor of her flight helmet, then through the nite-brite-attuned Heads Up display, and finally out through the windscreen of her MC-130J. Her knuckles clinched white on the control yoke, and her eyes burned dryly from her fixed stare.

  She was not tense in the conventional sense of the term. This was simply how one flew a Combat Talon when one was so low the six bladed Allison turboprops kicked rooster-tails off the wave tops and spume rattled against the nose. One stayed focused. Very, very focused.

  After departing Curtin Field, the Air Commando transport had flown north conventionally from Australia until its sensitive IDECM (Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures) arrays had sensed the Indonesian air defense net. The Talon had “gone tactical” then, staging incrementally lower and lower to stay under the radar net until they were literally skimming the surface of the sea.r />
  The island of Flores had risen like a wall before them, and the MC-130 had climbed just enough to snake through one of the narrow passes in the central volcanic range, an unidentifiable black shadow blasting low over the isolated mountain villages.

  The tension had risen incrementally when the Global Hawk drone, riding shotgun high overhead, had down-linked the warning of an interceptor scramble from an Indonesian air force base near Jakarta. However, the bewildered Anghkatan Udara Eurofighters soon turned back, the fragmentary radar track that had launched them having disappeared amid the lava crags.

  Reaching water once more, the Talon returned to the deck, racing out over the Flores Sea, its stealthed radar cross section blurring into the surface return.

  That had been two hundred over-ocean miles ago. The altimeters had read zero continuously ever since. For the Air Commandos of the U.S. Air Force’s First Special Operations Wing, the mission stank of the routine.

  “Course correction,” Colonel Mirkle’s navigator murmured. “Come right five degrees to zero … one … two.”

  Mirkle eased down on her right foot pedal, nudging the big plane into a slow skidding turn on the rudder alone, keeping the wings fixed dead level by the artificial horizon. A conventional bank would put a prop arc into the water, cartwheeling the Talon across the sea in a spectacular crash.

  “Steering zero … one … two,” she read back.

  “On the beam, ma’am. Ten minutes out. Global Hawk link verifies our customers are on station and waiting for us.”

  “Thanks, Johnny. Ed, tell the chief to rig for payload extraction.”

  As her copilot relayed the command to the loadmaster, Mirkle eased back minutely on the control yoke. The chief was going to be walking around back in the cargo bay, and the aircraft might bobble with the weight shift. Best to take her up a little.

  Within the First Spec Ops Wing, Mirkle had a reputation as a cautious veteran pilot. Neither a hot dog nor a cowgirl, she recognized her own limitations and preferred leaving a margin for error.