Target Lock

by James H. Cobb

  Seven hundred and fifty miles away, the Queen of the West’s sensors responded to the command.

  The village of Adat Tanjung lay before them, its fleet of oceangoing pinisi riding at anchor offshore, its smaller craft beached or moored alongside an accumulation of spindle-legged piers that extended into the estuary. Bare masts swayed with the wave action, and an occasional light glowed in a cabin or on a deck.

  Extending to the northwest and southeast along the inlet beach was a further spidery entanglement of fish and crab farming pens, while beyond the piers were the streets of the village itself. Rows of traditional thatch roofed Bugis dwellings, set high on stilt foundations, extended back into the verdant palm groves. Interspersed among them were a few low Western-style buildings, their corrugated-metal roofs catching and reflecting the starlight.

  Many homes were fully illuminated, and lanterns and even torches burned in the streets.

  “There’s a lot of activity over there tonight.” Amanda could hear the scowl in Maclntyre’s voice.

  “No,” Tran replied from behind her other shoulder. “This was to be expected. It works in our favor.”

  “How so? What’s happening?” Amanda asked over her shoulder.

  “Ships have returned from a raid with lost crewmen,” Tran answered softly. “The clan mourns. As with their neighboring people, the Toraja of the Sulawesi highlands, their feasts for the dead are quite elaborate and will last for several days and nights. All will attend, including the crews of the raiders. The ships should be unmanned.”

  For a moment Amanda considered the Bugis pirates still secured below-decks aboard the Carlson. How would it be to return home to find yourself declared dead?

  Christine Rendino had taken over the workstation on the far side of Stone Quillain. Now she conjured a targeting box around two of the schooners lying rafted together well off the beach. “See these guys? These are our two friends from the Piskov.”

  A second targeting box blinked up around a second rafted pair of ships. “These fellows also belong here: They base out of Adat Tanjung as well. These dudes”—a third set of schooners were designated—“came from a little farther up the coast. They came in and anchored here yesterday. See how all six of these schooners are larger than the other pinisi in the moorage? How they’ve tied up together, and how they’re set off a little to one side from the other craft? That suggests an organization pattern.”

  “Teamed fighting units,” MacIntyre replied.

  “Uh-huh,” Christine agreed. “All day today we’ve been seeing a lot of activity around these six ships, refueling and replenishment. There’s something else kinda special as well.”

  “Which is?” Amanda inquired.

  “According to our prisoner interrogations, standard operating procedure for the Bugis raiders is to download all armament at a weapons hide before returning to home base. Now we’ve been sitting right on top of the Piskov pair ever since we picked them up and they’ve come straight home. They haven’t diverted anywhere or downloaded anything. They still have their guns aboard.

  “The Piskov raiders must have received instructions en route to stay armed,” Amanda murmured.

  “Uh-huh. Betcha a pretty we’re going to find these other guys have picked up their heat and are running heeled too.”

  “Somebody’s assembling a strike force.”

  “You got it, Boss Ma’am. And I bet this tune is being replayed at just about every Bugis colony up and down the archipelago. These guys are gearing up for a fight.”

  Stone Quillain snorted. “You think these little pissants might be figuring on coming out after us? That’d be crazy.”

  “I don’t know, Stone,” Amanda replied in the darkness. “Remember our old General Belewa? That outboard motor navy of his gave us quite a fight off West Africa. As we don’t know what Harconan is planning, we’ll take this threat seriously.”

  She considered the prospects with the unique personal insight she had gained from her day with Makara Harconan. She strongly suspected there was nothing this man might not dare. And the motto of Great Britain’s Special Air Service pointed out a great truth: “He who dares, wins.”

  The video link with the Queen of the West reactivated, filling with a different face, leaner, harder, more angular than Ensign Wilder’s, yet in its own way as painfully young. The Marine’s features were densely smeared with dark camou cream, and he wore a Kevlar K-Pot battle helmet with a camouflage cover. An AI-2 night-vision visor had been lifted onto the front helmet facing. Clipped to the right side of the K-Pot was his squad tactical radio; on the left was another cigarette-package-sized module, this one with a low-light television lens aiming forward.

  “Possum One, this is Lieutenant Ives, Recon Able. We have the boats in the water, ready to move out on the line. Any further instructions?”

  Stone keyed his mike. “Hi, Linc, this is Stone. Do it like you planned it, boy. You and your top go active on your helmet cams when you reach objective. We’ll just ride along in your shirt pocket and enjoy the view.”

  The recon Marine’s lips tightened in a brief, tense smile. “I hope it’ll be a good ride, sir.”

  “All that counts is doing the job and getting yourself home again, Marine. Move out.”

  Stone went off circuit. “He’s a good boy,” he said almost to himself, “a real good boy. He just has to season some.”

  “That’s so often the case,” Amanda replied.

  The communications carriers from the microforce hissed softly through the overhead speakers, an occasional curt low-voiced comment or command sketching out the departure. A pair of new blue “friendly” surface hacks appeared on the tactical display, drifting slowly inward toward the Bugis moorage. On the MMS monitor, two small, heavily laden inflatables could be seen pulling away from the hovercraft, driven by silent electric outboards. Growing steadily less distinct, their humped out lines could be made out for a long time against the photo-multiplied glare of the village lights, then they were gone.

  MacIntyre paced and Christine found a seat. Tran stood erect and silent by her side, sipping smoke from a Player’s cigarette.

  “Drone Control,” Amanda lifted her voice, “let’s take another look at the target ships.”

  Sixty thousand feet above Adat Tanjung, a camera turret swiveled and zoomed in. Yet another monitor lit off, showing the empty decks of a pair of rafted schooners, the image changing angle slowly and shimmering a little from atmospheric distortion.

  “No situational change. No electronic or thermal emissions detected.”

  The image jumped from schooner set to schooner set.

  “No situational changes. No electronic or thermal emissions.” The SO murmured repetitively.

  “All right. Let’s have a look at the village itself.”

  The camera panned across the bay refocusing on the streets of Adat Tanjung.

  Fires burned in the forecourts of many of the houses, people clustering about them. Around some, men stood, hands linked, swaying to an unheard song, women sitting in a wider circle beyond, moving to a different rhythm.

  “What’s happening here, Nguyen?” Christine inquired.

  “A lament is being sung in the memory of the dead, and the story of their lives is being retold for their friends and family. The Bugis are primarily Muslim, but many of the old ways and the old ceremonies live on.” Tran took a light draw on his cigarette. “The village has taken a hard hit with this raid. Nearly every family must have taken a loss.”

  “How will they explain the losses to the authorities?” Amanda inquired.

  “They won’t. This is of the tribe and the Bugis. The authorities will be Javanese. This will not be considered their affair. The Bugis are a proud people, fast to anger at intrusions. The island administrators generally recognize this and leave them to themselves. They remember Kandahar Muzakkar too well.”

  Stone Quillain glanced around. “Kahar who?”

  “A Bugis teacher and soldier who led a guerrilla-w
arfare campaign for Sulawesi independence. He and his followers battled with the Jakarta government for a decade and a half, from 1950 until his death in 1965. Sulawesi venerates his memory. The government fears it.”

  On the tactical display, symbols for the two CRRCs separated, one moving toward each of the outermost pairs of rafted schooners.

  “Nah, that’s not how you should be doing it, Linc,” Quillain murmured aloud. “You ought to get that inshore pair first.” The Marine started to reach for the Transmit key on the communications pad. Then he hesitated and reluctantly lowered his hand.

  MacIntyre chuckled without mirth but not without sympathy. “Welcome to the upper echelons, Stone. All of this fabulous new C3I gear they keep coming up with lets us sit right on top of our people out in the field. One of the most important and toughest things we have to learn is how to sit back, shut up, and let ’em do the job their way.”

  “Yeah, guess so.” Quillain drew his hand across his chin, the day’s whiskers rasping. “Does it get any better as you get up there a little more?”

  The slim shadow seated beside Quillain answered the question. “No,” Amanda said, “just worse.”

  A communications specialist spoke up from the console row ahead. “We’re getting helmet cam streams from Lieutenant Ives and his platoon sergeant.”

  “Put ’em on Monitor Two. Split-screen it.”

  Flickering low-light images filled the designated screen, the sterns of the two rafted sets of Bugis schooners looming out of the night. They were seeing what the two Marine boarding-team leaders were observing as it happened.

  “This is just too goddamn weird,” Stone whispered.

  More images. The side of a schooner … the rungs of a boarding ladder flowing past … shadowy shapes moving across a silver-gray deck, a whispered commentary flowing from the overhead speakers.

  “This is section A, we’re aboard schooners One and Two…. Corby, Franklin, set the lookout …. You guys start working the other ship…. Section B boarding … all okay so far on Three and Four, Lieutenant … Nobody aboard …. That’s good. We’re good too. Start scanning, let’s go ….”

  Through their headsets, Christine and Tran fed their own careful prompts back over the communications loop. “Lieutenant Ives, this is Commander Rendino. Don’t forget to get the serial numbers off the engine block …. Gentlemen, on some pinisi the captain’s quarters will he nothing more than a patch of deck. Check any personal belongings you may see lying about….”

  The feedback began.

  “Mr. Tran this is Sergeant Patterson with B Section. We’re just over the keel of the Number Three schooner and our mine detector is reading right off the scale. Do these guys use scrap metal for ballast?”

  “Negative, Sergeant,” he replied. “They use stone. Metal is too valuable. Start looking for signs of concealed fasteners or a hidden door of some kind in the decking.”

  Wood scraped. Breath hissed, men swore silently. Then: “Yeah, yeah, we got it! We got guns! Man, this orange crate has some kind of teeth!”

  Video images of heavy automatic weapons and recoilless rifles were recorded. Serial numbers were taken. The minutes marched past. Eyes flicked to the time hacks in the corners of the displays more and more often.

  Finally: “Carlson, Carlson. This is Ives. We got the first four schooners pretty much covered. We confirm they all are armed. We’ve turned some documents, pretty standard stuff, bills of lading and so forth. There is no sign of a Global Positioning Unit on any of these ships. No navigational material at all except for regular ship’s charts.”

  “Shit,” Christine hissed. “The captains probably took their GPUs ashore with them. Ives, make sure you get some high-definition photography of those charts. There might be some markings that will be useful.”

  “Wilco,” the reply hissed back.

  “There’s still those last two schooners left,” Stone commented.

  “Very true.” MacIntyre scowled in the screenglow. “But they’ve been out there a long time.”

  On distant Sulawesi, Ives read their minds. “Captain Quillain, request instructions. Should we extract at this time or move on to the next pair of ships?”

  Amanda looked back to Tran. “What about it, Inspector? How much longer will those ceremonies ashore continue?”

  “An excellent question, Captain, for which I wish I had an answer. They could end in the next three minutes or go on all night.”

  No one else had anything to add.

  Quillain keyed his mike. “Linc, this is Stone. You’re the man out there, son. Make the call and we’ll go with whatever you decide.”

  The circuit was silent for a minute. Then: “We’re going for it, sir. We’ll secure things here, then I’m taking both parties across to Five and Six. Stand by.”

  Moving with quiet haste, the Marines erased all traces of their boarding the schooners. In the LFOC there was brief consideration of the weapons in the concealed gun lockers. They could be aimed at U.S. sailors in the near future, and the temptation to attempt a little sabotage was strong. It was agreed that the risk of discovery was too great.

  Taking departure from the first two sets of gunships, the Marine Force Recon platoon converged on the third. This time the boarders had gained experience with their environment: Disembarking from their rafts, they knew what they were looking for this time. They moved faster and with more confidence. Amanda began to hope that they might pull it off.

  The helmet cam of Lieutenant Ives panned around the interior of a small cabin. They watched his gloved hands open lockers and dip into drawers, probing under carelessly folded clothing, shoving aside a hodgepodge of cheap personal effects.

  “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!” Christine Rendino squealed into her lip mike. “You got one!”

  In the center of the monitor, the Marine held up a brick-size and shaped plastic unit with a small CRT screen, a retractable antenna, and a keypad.

  Christine clawed through a hard-copy file. “Ives, listen to me. I can see that’s a Fuji model Globemaster III. Read me off the serial number.”

  “You got it, ma’am.” The unit was turned in the Marine’s hand. “One … six … six … seven … oh … nine … oh … Foxtrot … Golf”

  “Okay, good.” Christine spoke in an aside to the others in the operations center. “Score! That’s one of eighty units lifted off a Harconan freighter. Okay, Ives, turn it on. The disk switch is on the right side…. Now hit Memory.”

  The little screen of the GPU lit up, the numerals and letters displaying ghost-white on the low-light monitor. Ives scrolled the memory and a long string of latitudes and longitudes flowed past. Places the pinisi had visited or was bound for. Amanda noted that a few of the coordinate sets had a star symbol marking them.

  “Jeez, are we going to have fun with that,” Christine whispered.

  “All elements, all elements,” Steamer Lane’s voice barked from the overhead speaker. “Be advised we have movement in the moorage area.

  All eyes snapped over the tactical display. A small-craft symbol was moving among the other anchored vessels of the village.

  “Steamer, where did he come from?” Amanda demanded.

  “He took off from one of the other moored schooners. It looks like a small motor dinghy. I don’t think it’s big enough for more than two or three guys. It’s heading out toward the gunships!”

  “We see it,” Amanda snapped. “Steamer, stand by to start engines! Ives, get those schooners cleaned up and get out of there.”

  “We’re on it, ma’am. What about this GPU?”

  “Shit!” Christine yipped. “We can’t take it! It’ll blow the whole deal!”

  “We can’t leave it, either,” Amanda said grimly. “We need those position fixes. Lieutenant Ives, hold the screen of that GPU up to your helmet camera. Scroll through the memory slowly, several times. Somebody, make sure this is being recorded!”

  A babble of softly shouted orders sounded over the Marine tactical channel as
the recon men scrambled to evacuate, the number and letter clusters jerking past on Ives’ helmet cam feed. The platoon sergeant was on deck, his camera view sweeping the moorage area. The temperature seemed to skyrocket in the LFOC.

  “Carlson, I confirm that dinghy is headed for the gunship moorage. You got about two minutes.”

  “This is going bad,” Quillain said lowly. “They aren’t going to make it. We can’t get ’em clear in time to not be spotted.”

  “Options,” MacIntyre demanded.

  “Take ’em prisoner if they board Five and Six. Burn ’em if they hit for the other schooners. Our guys got silenced weapons.”

  “Those could simply be innocent fishermen, Captain,” Tran pointed out.

  “We got nothin’ else, Mr. Tran. A couple of fishermen spotting us aboard one of those ships will blow this soft probe sky-high.”

  “So will a couple of shot-up corpses or vanished villagers.” Christine shook her head, her blond bangs glinting silver in the blue battle lights. “We are so screwed.”

  Amanda stayed silent. Mentally she visualized the possible shattering of her plan, rearranging the fragments that might survive it, seeing how to make a new successful pattern of them. The concept that she might “lose” in this situation did not occur to her; there was only the hunt for a different way to win.

  Onscreen, Ives deactivated the pirate GPU. Throwing it back in the drawer, he slammed the drawer shut and raced topside.

  It was too late. In his sergeant’s helmet cam, the dinghy could be made out, a black blotch on a gray sea, the chugging of its single-cylinder outboard caught by the earphone pickups. Silhouetted in the background village glare, three figures could be made out huddled in the rowboat. It was apparent now that the Bugis were headed for one of the other pairs of rafted gunships and that they would cross the bow of the vessels occupied by the Marines by about a dozen yards.

  Ives whispered orders to his men. Marines carrying MP-5 submachine guns with the bloated cylinders of silencers screwed to their barrels moved forward.

  Amanda’s fingertip touched her Transmit key. “Lieutenant Ives, this is the TACBOSS. Lay low and hold your fire. Ultra-hush. They might not notice your boats tied up alongside in the shadows and they might … just … go … on past….”