Target Lock

by James H. Cobb

  The Talon climbed to a solid twenty-five feet and leveled off once more.

  Maneuvering on their electric propulsors, the Queen of the West and the Manassas positioned a quarter of a mile apart, nose on to the wind and sea. Mast-Mounted Sighting Systems panned along the horizon, low-light television intently scanning for intruders, while ECM monitors suspiciously sniffed the ether.

  Inboard, the auxiliary fuel blivets in the central bays of the hovercraft were flat and flaccid. The kerosene they had carried had either been consumed or transferred into the Sea Fighter’s integral tankage. With an assist from the Marines, the gunboat crews rolled and lashed the empty bladders into compact bundles for storage, making room for their replacements.

  In the Queen’s cockpit, Ensign Wilder reached forward and touched Steamer Lane on the shoulder. “Sir, we have established a datalink with the replenishment aircraft. They’re on approach. Five minutes out. We are positioned for drop reception.”

  Steamer came awake and functional as swiftly as he had dozed off. “Good work Terr,” he said snapping off the Walkman and returning his seat to an upright state. “What’s the environment, Scrounge?”

  “Sterile water and clean threat boards,” Caitlin reported. “Wind direction and sea states are steady.”

  Steamer glanced at his tactical display, verifying the setup. “Lookin’ good. Link to the transport we’re standing by and are go for drop. Beacons are going active. Then buzz the Rebel and tell ’em to light it up.”

  Reaching up to the overhead control panel, Steamer adjusted the multimode navigational strobe atop the Queen’s stub mast to its infrared setting and switched it on.

  Aboard the Combat Talon, the opening of the tail ramp fully admitted the thunder of the turboprops and the roar of the slipstream. Voices could no longer be heard without the medium of the intercom system.

  Colonel Mirkle’s copilot called out the sighting. “Surface strobes off the bow. We have acquired the drop site. Bearing looks good. Approach looks good. Little Pig Lead reports ready to accept delivery.”

  “Acknowledged.” She skid-turned the aircraft again, aiming precisely for the centerline between the two flashing points of light that had appeared in her night-vision visor. The IR strobes pulsing on the Navy gun boats would give her the base and depth line she would need for the coming LAPES extraction.

  “ECM Officer, threat status.”

  “Green boards, ma’am. Tactical environment reads secure.”

  “Cargomaster, load status?”

  “Chocks clear.” A wind-battered voice came back from the cargo bay. “Ramp clear. Drop station manned. Ready for extraction.”

  “Very well.” Mirkle’s thumb depressed the drop light switch on her control yoke. “Red Ready light is on. Loadmaster, stand by for cargo release on green…. Copilot, configure for LAPES. Coming back on power…. Flaps down fifteen….”

  The avalanche of noise issuing from the engines softened comparatively as Mirkle came back on the Talon’s throttles. Easing the nose up, she faded the massive aircraft back toward its minimal sustainable speed in level flight. Mirkle’s eyes danced in a last data acquisition sweep: engine readout, flight instrumentation, the seaborne beacon lights rushing toward them. She felt the first uneasy tremor in the control yoke hinting at the approaching stall limits.

  “Stand by …” she murmured. Once more, her thumb lifted over the drop light switch.

  Through their night-vision systems, the observers aboard the Queen of the West saw a massive chunk of shadow tear loose from the sky near the horizon. The shadow configured into a massive, high-winged transport aircraft that skimmed the wave crests. Nose high and with its quadruple propellers turning so slowly the blades could almost be counted, it seemed to float more than fly as it ghosted down upon them.

  This was what they had been expecting. This was what they were here for. And yet, the Combat Talon’s abrupt materialization in the night proved startling.

  Just as the airspeed indicator wound down to a dangerously low level, the MC-130 swept over the centerline between the two strobes on the ocean’s surface.

  The marker strobes edged out of the vision field of her nite-brite visor, and Colonel Mirkle’s thumb came down on the drop-light switch, snapping the drop lights from red to green.

  “Drop now! Drop now! Drop now!”

  A ribbon chute streamed out behind the Combat Talon. Blossoming in the roaring night, it dragged the first full fuel blivet down the load tracks and out of the Talon’s tailgate.

  This was LAPES, the Low-Altitude Precision Extraction System, the most expedient method conceivable of delivering cargo from an aircraft to the earth’s surface: Simply fly very low and kick it out the door. Stabilized and slowed by its drogue parachute, the hoped-for shock-resistant payload would then touch down and skid to a halt across the selected landing ground.

  More specifically, this was LAPES-MD the Low-Altitude Precision Extraction System-Maritime Derivation. Instead of the collapsible cargo pallet used in a standard land-bound LAPES drop, the payload rode a Fiberglas hydrosled that would absorb the initial contact shock and prevent the payload from digging into the water and diving under.

  In theory at least.

  As the sled-mounted fuel blivet touched down, the sea exploded in a towering fan of glittering spray, lifting higher than the tail of the drop aircraft. The load sled burst through the spray wall a stalled heartbeat later, its multi-ton mass skipping across the wavecrests like a stone thrown by a titan, until the combined drag of the water and the parachute decelerated the mass.

  With a final buck and wallow like a fighting bass, the blivet came to a halt, afloat and intact.

  Cries of victory were screamed, and shoulders were pounded in the Queen’s cockpit.

  The second loaded hydrosled followed the first out of the transport’s tail ramp, and then the Combat Talon was away, the shadow merging back with the night in a growing roar of departing power.

  “Cargo away!” the load master cried. “We got clean drops!”

  Colonel Mirkle disregarded the woman’s jubilant call. She came forward hard on her throttles, regaining her airspeed. Once the payload was out of her aircraft, it was somebody else’s concern. With a warrior pilot’s inbred dislike for flying too long in a straight line, she conducted another random skid turn.

  “Flaps full up! Countermeasures, how are we looking?”

  “We’re good, Colonel. No radar paint above return levels. Boards are clean.”

  Mirkle didn’t exactly sigh with relief, but she did acknowledge the fading of a tension level. The load was on the ground … or in this case water. Now there was nothing to worry about except for getting themselves home.

  The chest-vibrating rumble of the engines muted as the tail ramp closed and they settled back at cruise power. From the drop zone, they’d slip through the Makassar Strait between Borneo and Sulawesi and exit into the Celebes Sea. In less than an hour, they could go non-tac and pull up to conventional altitudes. From there it would be a simple transit hop to their turnaround base in the Philippines and then back to Australia. They’d be eating lunch at Curtin tomorrow noon.

  “Want me to take it for a while, ma’am?” her copilot inquired.

  “Sure, Ed. You have the aircraft.”

  Colonel Mirkle unclipped her chin strap and lifted the flight helmet off her graying blonde hair. Lounging back in the instrument-lit darkness of the cockpit, she watched the wavetops shimmer past below the Talon’s nose. A good night’s work, but hopefully next time out they’d be given something more interesting to do than a milk run for the squiddies.

  The fuel blivets wallowed in the low waves, supported by the inherent buoyancy of the kerosene they carried, a double row of infrared lumesticks marking their position.

  The Queen of the West and the Manassas converged on them. Dropping their tail ramps, the PGAC backed into recovery position. Shotgun armed antishark guards appeared on the upper decks of the hovercraft while skivvy-clad
crewhands dove into the warm waters to jettison the load sleds and parachute harnesses and to connect the recovery cables.

  Winch motors moaned and the fuel blivets, like gigantic marine cephalopods, crawled out of the sea and into the bellies of the Sea Fighters, sliding up the Teflon-slicked tarpaulins that had been unrolled down the ramps to receive them. Checks were made for kerosene leakage, tie-down straps were secured, and glad-hand connectors linked, accessing the new fuel reserve.

  With refueling complete, lift and drive turbines lit off with a rising whine.

  “We’re only eight minutes long, sir,” Caitlin reported as the Queen came up on her inflating skirt.

  “Well, damn. We can tell the Lady another of her screwball ideas wasn’t so screwball after all. Terry, you get the replenishment confirmation off to the task force?”

  “Aye, aye, sir. I just got the microburst off. We’re getting a data dump from the Carlson. It looks like a mission update.”

  “They got tomorrow’s hide for us?” Lane inquired, coming forward on the airscrew throttles.

  “That’s an affirmative, sir. It looks like a mangrove swamp on the Kelantan coast of Borneo. Coordinates coming up on your Navicom display now. We’re instructed not to attempt the transit of Makassar Strait until tomorrow night.”

  “Gotcha. Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir.” Wilder’s voice lifted in excitement. “We’re getting targeting data! Intel has an objective for us, sir. A village called Adat Tanjung on the western Sulawesi peninsula. We’re receiving a bunch of stuff on the place.”

  “Right.” Steamer checked the iron log, watching their surface speed climb toward good cruise. “Put it on hard copy, then let’s call our pet leatherneck up here and start making medicine.”

  Makara Limited Corporate Headquarters, Bali

  0012 Hours, Zone Time: August 16, 2008

  Amanda Garrett loved to dance. Thus she established her command post on the tiled dance floor set up in the center of the Makara Limited forecourt. The position gave her a mobile overview of the entire reception area as well as an excellent cover for discreet conversation with members of the shore party.

  Or at least the masculine ones.

  As she fell in step with Elliot MacIntyre and felt his strong hand curve to her waist, she mused at the wisdom of combining pleasure with business.

  “How are you finding the reception, Admiral?”

  “Very illuminating,” he replied, guiding her slowly to the updated strains of an old Bobby Troop lounge piece. “Did you notice a certain chill when you spoke with our Indonesian Ambassador Goodyard?”

  She shot a glance toward the ambassador’s table. “Unusual for the tropics, wasn’t it?”

  “The word is that Goodyard has been seen glad-handing with our host.”

  Amanda lifted an eyebrow. “In the pocket?”

  “Not yet, but watch this space,” the admiral replied, steering them to the emptier corner of the floor. “Remember handshaking with Brigadier General Bradley Inger, our Indonesian defense attache? I attended the General Staff War College with him. I got Brad over to one side and we swapped scuttlebutt over a couple of drinks.

  “According to him, Goodyard is your typical political appointee. He doesn’t have a clue about international affairs, and he’s scared to death he might actually have to do something out here.”

  “And the Harconan connection?” A distracted corner of Amanda’s mind wondered at the delicacy of Maclntyre’s embrace. Damn it, it wasn’t as if she were going to break.

  “Harconan has volunteered himself to serve as Goodyard’s sea daddy and font of local information. Harconan’s already had him out to Palau Piri a couple of times.”

  Amanda frowned. “Interesting. Could the ambassador be in Harconan’s pocket already?”

  “Brad doesn’t think so. Not in the monetary sense, anyway. Goodyard’s not an overt sellout. He’s just green and a sucker for a good line. It’s not going to be easy to convince him that Harconan’s the root of all evil.”

  Amanda considered, moving automatically to the music and to MacIntyre’s guidance. “Hmm, it’s always good to know about potential broken reeds before you might have to lean on them. Do you think you could have the secretary of state whisper in Goodyard’s ear over this matter?”

  The admiral shook his head, his chin lightly brushing her bangs. “I’d have to be able to give Harry something solid on Harconan first. This man is a major player down here. Telling tales on this gentleman without the absolute proof to back it up will not endear us to either the State Department or the Indonesian government.”

  “I see. Catch-22 rides again. Was your friend able to give us anything else under the table?”

  “Just that Makara Harconan seems to work very hard at being scrupulously honest, or at least in giving that appearance. He won’t even touch the routine business high jinks expected of your average Asian trader. Enough to make Brad suspicious of a ‘hole in the water’ scenario.”

  “A smart bird doesn’t make a mess in his own nest. Do you have any other friends here, sir?”

  “One other. Theoretically he’s an Australian trade attache attached to their consulate here in Bali. However, when I knew the gentleman up in the Gulf, he was commanding a squadron of their Special Air Service Regiment and talking about a career change to intelligence work. We shall see.”

  The quintet completed the piece and the music trailed away, followed by a polite scattering of applause from the other dancers.

  “Thank you for the dance.” He looked down at her, that surprising trace of boyishness showing again in his smile.

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  MacIntyre escorted her to the edge of the floor. There was a moment’s hesitation before he released her hand, then he was moving off toward a caucusing cluster of foreign-office types. Amanda followed him with her eyes. The embrace on the dance floor had not been … what it could have, but that last clasp of her hand had been firm and warm.

  Smiling, she set that aside and looked to another of the surrounding tables, the one shared by Cobra Richardson and Stone Quillain and a growing accumulation of Bintang lager bottles.

  Given the flailing hands of the aviator and the maps being fingertip sketched on the tablecloth by the Marine, a major assault landing was well under way.

  She crossed to the developing battle. Both officers broke off the engagement and stood at the approach of a lady.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, nodding in greeting. “Stone, I find myself lacking a partner and we haven’t danced yet tonight.”

  Good Lord, was it possible for a Marine to blush?

  “Uh, no, ma’am, we haven’t. But then, I’m not much of a hand for slow dancing.”

  Amanda extended her hand. “The proper response, Captain, is ‘I’m not acquainted with the evolution, ma’am, but I am prepared to learn.’ ”

  If Eddie Mac had treated her like a spun-glass statue, her landing force commander taught her how to dance like a live land mine. “Begging the Captain’s pardon,” Quillain growled under his breath as he gingerly steered her across the floor, “but if she gets a busted foot out of this, it’s her own damn fault.”

  “Understood, Stone. However, it is permissible to move that hand at least somewhat lower than my shoulder blade. Good grief, didn’t you even dance with your girl at your senior prom?”

  “Why, sure. We did some fine line dancing in between the fistfights. It’s just I never danced with my CO before. Feels funny.”

  “Let me guess. You wore your best Stetson with your rented tux?”

  “Doesn’t ever’body?”

  Amanda chuckled. “If they switch to country-western later in the evening, I know where to come. In the meantime you’re doing fine. Have you picked up anything interesting so far?”

  “Words with the lieutenant commanding the embassy Marine security detail. He’s got a suspicion some of their Indonesian staffers might be taking home two paychecks. He’s not s
ure who’s signing the other one, though. It doesn’t seem to be one of the usual suspect governments, so our guys figure it may be a private party. That’d play with what we’re working on, wouldn’t it?”

  “It certainly would. What about Chris and Tran?”

  “They’re keepin’ it fluid,” the Marine replied. “They’ll buzz us on the pager net when they jump off. I’ve already got the exterior security mapped. Nothin’ we didn’t expect.”

  Amanda glanced toward the headquarters building. “We can’t say the same about the inside yet. Are the emergency extraction protocols in place?”

  “Oh, yeah. We got a real nice little terrorist bomb all set to go off if we need it. Out in the trees on the north end of the court. Just cover your face with that special hanky I issued you and head for the boat dock. I’ll see Miss Rendino and Mr. Tran get clear okay.”

  “Uh, Stone,” Amanda asked cautiously, “you didn’t get too enthusiastic with the bomb, did you?”

  She felt the rumble of laughter in Stone’s broad chest. “Oh, hell, no. Just a little old radio detonated flashbang in a Baggie full of CS teargas powder. Everybody likes a good cry now and again.”

  “But not if we can avoid it.”

  “That part’s out of our hands, ma’am.”

  The dance came to its end, and Stone released her and stepped back with a degree of visible relief.

  “Was it really that bad?” Amanda inquired archly.

  “Purely the circumstances, ma’am.” He grinned down on her. “You come back to Georgia sometime. We’ll get us some decent music and this ol’ boy will show you some dancin’ that is dancin’!”

  Amanda returned the grin. “Consider it a date, Captain.”

  Letting the Marine return to face the amiable ridicule of his table mates, Amanda drifted along the edge of the dance floor, acquiring and pretending to sip from a glass of champagne. Unobtrusively she scanned for the golden sheen of Christine Rendino’s dress and hair. So far their counterforce operation against Harconan had worked quite well. Shortly, her intel would be executing the most audacious facet of the night’s game plan. The most risky as well.