Target Lock

by James H. Cobb

  Wooden docking piers ran down either side of the cavern. The pilings were dark and ancient, but the deck planking showed the golden sheen of new wood. The Harconan Flores was moored on the right-hand dock, leaving a gap adequate for the pinisi to fit between its steel hull and the lefthand pier.

  A second schooner already lay alongside that dock, leaving space astern for Amanda and Harconan’s vessel. In a masterful display of ship handling, the Bugis skipper worked his craft into the remaining cramped slot. With a final burst of reversing power, he rang her down and brought her to a halt with her bowsprit overhanging the stern castle of the craft ahead and the flank of his ship just brushing the pier fenders. Mooring lines were passed off between the pinisi’s deckhands and the pier-side stevedores.

  There were several dozen people visible within the cavern confines. Bugis, darker Melanesians, and even a few paler-skinned Caucasians. Cargo was being unloaded from the other docked schooner, deck work and maintenance was under way aboard the Flores, and a number of heavily armed guards prowled in the shadows. A sandbagged emplacement also stood at the head of the left-side pier. Amanda recognized the quad .50- caliber barrels of an old American-made M-55 antiaircraft mount supplementing the Flores’s guns in the defense of the stronghold.

  The coaster’s diesels clattered to a stop. Replacing the sound was the grinding whine of electric motors drawing the camouflage curtain closed, walling out the daylight. A chill touched Amanda as the cavern basalt leached the warmth out of the puff of tropic air that had entered with the pinisi.

  “I am impressed, Makara,” she said softly. “This is incredible. An old Japanese installation, isn’t it?”

  He nodded in the half-illumination of the cave’s scattered work lights. “It was intended as a submarine pen but it was never used as such. The cape was cut off and isolated during the Allied counterinvasion. It was forgotten by the Japanese and never discovered by your forces. Come, let me show you around. The story is more incredible than you could even imagine.”

  They descended from the wheelhouse to the schooner’s deck, Amanda’s guard still trailing them wordlessly. A portable power crane had already moved into position at dockside and the first slingload of fuel drums was being lifted off the pinisi’s deck.

  Harconan swept his hand toward the landing ship moored at the opposing dockside. “I’ll have us moved into the master’s cabin of the Flores tonight. Electric lights, a shower, and all the hot water you wish—and a real bed. Captain Onderdank won’t be pleased, but after all, I am the owner.”

  “It sounds very nice, Makara.” Amanda hooked her thumb back over her shoulder at her guard. “Will he be standing behind me in the shower too?”

  Harconan grimaced and spoke a quick phrase to the guard. The seaman uncocked and slung his machine pistol and withdrew.

  “I gave you my parole, Makara.” Amanda didn’t push to the point of trying to sound hurt, but she did soften her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “No, you are not. You are literally at the end of the world here, Amanda. Above and beyond my garrison here, you have better than a hundred kilometers of lethally inhospitable jungle between you and the nearest civilization. You wouldn’t last a day.”

  Gauging carefully, she hardened her response. “I said I gave you my parole.”

  He sighed. “You have my apologies. But please recall your own rather formidable reputation.”

  “Well, I suppose you have a point there. But I assure you, I’m not Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.” With ground won and with a hint more freedom of action gained, she disengaged blades with a smile. “Now, what’s the story about this place?”

  “Ah, as I said. the Japanese engineering unit constructing this facility was apparently cut off in 1943. Yet, they continued to work, constructing the tunnel complex and enlarging the main cavern, awaiting the day when they would reestablish contact with other Imperial Japanese forces.”

  Genuinely interested, Amanda listened as they descended the gangway to the cave-side pier.

  “As far as I have been able to tell,” Harconan continued, “they never learned the war ended. They just kept building and waiting.”

  “You mean they refused to give up even after the Japanese surrender, like the holdouts on Guam and in the Philippines?” She let her eyes play across the stack of cases on the pier that had been unloaded from the other schooner. Rifle cases maybe. And the labeling on them was either French or Belgian. And that was a stack of mortar base plates.

  “Apparently they never even heard of the surrender,” Harconan continued, “or they refused to believe it. There were a hundred and fifty men in the garrison, and they stayed on under Imperial military discipline, their ranks thinning out slowly under starvation and disease. A few desertions took place, but none apparently ever made it out.”

  “How long?” she inquired, looking up at the shadowed cavern roof with new respect for its builders.

  “I found the commanding officer’s log in a footlocker in what must have been his quarters in one of the lateral tunnels. The date of the last entry translated as March 17, 1979. He and four others were left and he was dying. His last words were an apology to the Emperor for his weakness.”

  “That was a soldier.”

  “He was,” Harconan agreed. “I’ve preserved that log. One day, when it is possible, I will see that it is returned to his family. Such devotion deserves honor.”

  Amanda found that she could honestly give Harconan’s hand a squeeze after that. There was so very much they stood at odds over, but he was right: There were also things that they could agree on as well.

  The pier ended at a broad shelf cut out of the living rock that extended across the full width of the cavern head. The bow boarding ramp of the Harconan Flores had been lowered and rested on this shelf. Beyond the LSM’s ramp, a large tentlike affair had been deployed. It glowed green, bright internal lighting burning through the thin fabric of its structure.

  “Come,” Harconan said. “It’s time you had a look at what brought you here.”

  Air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and air-filtration units rumbled softly as they approached the structure, and Amanda realized that she was looking at an ad hoc “clean room,” a contained and sterile artificial environment keeping at bay the hostile natural elements of the cavern.

  Harconan opened the zippered door of a small side compartment.

  Within was a bulging wall of transparent plastic and INDASAT 06.

  Amanda could see now that it wasn’t a “tent” in a classic sense but rather a positive-pressure inflatable structure. The pirated spacecraft lay cradled on a white painted lowboy trailer within this protective cocoon. A score or more of the service and access panels gaped open in its reentry scoured outer shell, revealing gleaming systems and experiment bays. Half a dozen men clad in green surgical scrubs and white gauze masks worked around the massive lozenge-shaped hull, like coroners conducting an autopsy on a beached whale.

  Even with their faces covered, Amanda had little difficulty matching the men to their names and photos she’d seen in the NAVSPECFORCE database. The two Asians would be Rei and Wa, the representatives from the Korean combine; the two Arabs must be Kalil and Hammik from the Gulf states. And the single East Indian and Slav would be Sonoo and Valdechesfsky for the Indian outfit.

  It was Sonoo who noticed the presence of the two observers. He heaved his portly bulk up from behind the laptop he’d been addressing on a field desk and crossed to the plastic containment window. He gave a quick, nervous nod and spoke in a precise but accented English. “Mr. Harconan, it is good to see you again. Good. Have you received word yet from my superiors?”

  “Yes, I have, Doctor,” Harconan replied. “I have good news for all of you. Your superiors are impressed with your initial findings and are agreeable to the next phase of the operation. Once certain financial exchanges are dealt with, we’ll be ready to proceed.”

  “Very good, excellent.” The technologist gave another quick,
birdlike bob of his head, the gesture out of place from a man of his dimension. “We have done very good work here. I have much to transmit. But we need improved facilities now, elsewhere from this place. This is understood?”

  There was a questioning, almost a pleading, to the man’s voice, matched by the expression in the dark eyes peering over the mask. Amanda sensed the East Indian was not enthralled with his current working environment.

  “Don’t worry, my friend,” Harconan said jovially. “Things are proceeding and we’ll have you and your associates under way for civilization shortly.”

  Sonoo glanced questioningly in Amanda’s direction.

  “Oh, excuse my manners,” Harconan continued. “I should make a formal introduction at this time; however, I feel that under the circumstances we can all understand the wisdom of a degree of anonymity”

  Amanda decided she had been playing passive long enough; it was time to put a shot into somebody’s waterline. “Oh, I’m quite well acquainted with the work of both Dr. Sonoo and with Dr. Valdechesfsky, his associate at Marutt-Goa.” She locked eyes with the startled East Indian. “Taking part in an industrial hijacking is not going to look good on a resume, Doctor.”

  Sonoo blanched. “Who is she, Harconan? Who is she?”

  Harconan’s jaw tightened in anger and his hand closed painfully about Amanda’s upper arm. “No one you have to concern yourself with, Doctor. Continue with your work. I’ll discuss departure preparations with the teams later.”

  Harconan dragged her out of the observation tent. Half a dozen rough shoves took her to the rock wall at the rear of the cavern. A steel hard hand locked around her throat, pinning her back against the slime damp stone. The pirate chief loomed over her, outlined in the glow of the work lights. Amanda glared back her own defiance.

  “You gave me your word, Amanda,” Harconan said, his voice dangerously soft. “You promised no trouble.”

  “That was before I realized that I was being lied to as well,” she shot back, “by you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember who you’re talking to, Makara. I’m not a fool! You told me you were holding me hostage, presumably to get Admiral MacIntyre and NAVSPECFORCE to back off and let you complete delivery of the INDASAT to your buyers. But then we came to this place, your prime base, you started giving me the grand tour. This cavern, your ship, the satellite, and the industrial technicians you have working on it. You’ve let me see way too much, Makara, from the moment I woke up. It was stupid of me not to see it before. You don’t any intention of releasing me, do you, Makara? I’m never getting out of here alive, am I?”

  For the duration of ten rapid heartbeats, Amanda thought that maybe she had overplayed her hand. Either that, or inadvertently she had blurted out the truth.

  Harconan’s hand slipped from her throat to her shoulder. “No, Amanda, you’re wrong.” The softness in his voice didn’t have the steel behind it this time. “I have sworn to you that you will not be harmed unless you force me into it. You’re correct, you aren’t going to be released, at least not immediately. There are things I am trying to bring about. Things I am trying to do for the sake of all the peoples of Indonesia. I’ve brought you here to learn about them.”

  The taipan lifted his hand from her shoulder, holding it out to her beseechingly. “I want to explain my dreams, Amanda. So that someday, not too far in the future, you can go out and explain them to the world. You will be free again, Amanda, I promise. Free to go. Free to come back”—Harconan’s voice sank to a whisper—“free to stay. Just give me time to explain!”

  “It’s going to take a lot of explaining, Makara, to the world and to me. Kidnapping, terrorism, piracy, the theft of other people’s dreams …” She nodded toward the inflated containment module holding the INDASAT.

  Harconan glanced over his shoulder. “That? That’s just business, Amanda, just business. I steal it from your industrialists and sell it to their industrialists. They’ll work on it for a while and make a few improvements, and then your industrialists will come along and steal it back again. In the long run everyone gains.”

  “What about the crew of the INDASAT Starcatcher, Makara?” she asked, verbally clawing at him with deliberation. “What did they gain?”

  She heard the breath hiss between his teeth. His hand went past her head and he braced himself against the wall.

  “How did you find out about Sonoo and the others?” he demanded, changing the subject.

  “I can’t tell you, Makara. You know that.”

  “How much more do you and your admiral know?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either. If you want me to understand you, Makara, you have to understand me.” She was careful to invoke his first name again, careful to choose her words. “I will not betray my people, not even for you.”

  She trailed off that final hinted possibility.

  Frustration edged Harconan’s voice. “This isn’t a game, Amanda! I have my people to think about as well.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  His hand went back to her throat, thumb and middle finger digging in beneath her jaw. “Damn you, you could be made to talk! Everyone talks eventually.”

  “I’m aware of that, too, Makara,” she replied calmly. She was leaning over the edge now. Deliberately testing. “But if you’ve studied me as much as you say you have, you’ll know I’m a ‘Mustang’ graduate. You’ll know what that means. I can hold out a long, long time before I break. After your people are finished, what’s left won’t be worth taking to bed.”

  “Damn it, Amanda! There are other ways … drugs …”

  “I know about them too,” She let a hint of sadness tinge her voice. “I know how to fight them as well. If you want to be sure of the answers you’ll get, you’re going to have to put me under so deep I probably won’t come back. No is the only answer I can give, my love, so you decide and let’s just get on with it.”

  She’d called him her love. Would that be her ticket back from the edge?

  The pressure under her jaw eased and his hand dropped. He looked away, then lifted his voice, calling over a couple of the cavern security guards. Curtly he issued them a command.

  “These men will take you to the cabin on the Flores. You’ll be held there for now.”

  Amanda didn’t reply.

  As promised, the captain’s cabin aboard the freighter had been modernized and given a comfortable civilian conversion, complete with mock teak-paneled bulkheads, a queen-size bed instead of bunks, air conditioning, and an attached head.

  The dogging nuts on the two exterior portholes were also torqued down to the point where they were immobile without a wrench, and the steel fire door had a newly added exterior bolt that was thrown after the door had closed behind her.

  Amanda crossed to the cabin’s built-in couch and sank down upon it, her arms crossed over her stomach in a self-embrace. For the first time in days she was cool, but that wasn’t why she was shivering.

  She’d pushed it close by scaring Sonoo that way, very close indeed. No doubt anonymity had been promised to both the technicians and the firms they’d represented. That their names were known on the outside was probably a very unpleasant surprise that would have those tech reps sweating and Harconan doing some tall explaining.

  She’d had to do it, though. Harconan could read her too well. He was expecting some kind of fight from her. If she let herself be too submissive, too pliant—if she yielded on too many points too rapidly—he’d scent the falsehood.

  On the other hand, dicing with kings could be a dangerous sport. Henry VIII had probably been quite fond of Anne Boleyn right up until she’d gotten mouthy that one time too often.

  Amanda stood up abruptly. Crossing to the head, she checked the shower to see if she was within water hours. She was. Stripping off her single layer of clothing, she stepped under the water, turning it up as hot as she could stand.

  When she emerged, sleek and steaming, a few minutes la
ter, she was redheaded again, the dye having washed out. Somehow that made her feel better.

  What did he really want from her? Why was he holding back? Why was he risking his kingdom? Could she actually be that attractive in Harconan’s eyes? She couldn’t be that good of a lay.

  Was it truly something more?

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she murmured to the empty room. “I guess he’s as big an idiot as I am.”

  Joint Intelligence Center, USS Carlson

  1040 Hours, Zone Time: August 23, 2008

  The word didn’t have to be passed when the priority data dump came in from NAVSPECFORCE HQ. In the face of the multiple layers of steel and sound insulation around the joint intelligence center, Christine Rendino’s piercing scream of joy and triumph echoed through the Carlson’s passageways.

  Five minutes later, Admiral MacIntyre was in JIC, studying an image on the central bulkhead flatscreen. To him it resembled a rather bizarre example of extremely esoteric modern art: a series of oblong blobs of a puckered yellow-orange curving across a light-green background.

  “All right, Chris. What am I looking at?”

  “Oil slicks, sir. Trace oil slicks in the Banda Sea as seen from low earth orbit. These were part of a multispectral reflectivity sweep of Indonesia taken this morning by an NIA Keyhole reconsat.”

  Obviously the image meant much more than that, because the little intel was on the verge of exploding. She was hugging herself, and tears glinted in the corners of her eyes. MacIntyre had never seen her grinning so before.

  “And?” MacIntyre asked cautiously.

  “And it’s a message, sir. A message addressed to us.”

  Dubious, MacIntyre stared at the computer-enhanced blobs once more. “A message?”

  “Yes, sir, a goddamn message! Jones, run the imaging correction program for wind and current drift.”