He started to saunter slowly forward. “It would be easier to simply end it here. Let me haunt these caverns with the ghosts of the Japanese.”
“Don’t be a fool, Makara.”
He shook his head. “I’m not. It’s either leave here or die. And I do not intend to die, because I have too many things left to do. I want you to help me do them, Amanda.”
“Stop!”
He hesitated, as she stood with the Sterling still aimed at his chest. “I’ll say it, Amanda: I want you as my ratu samudra, my queen of the sea, with the golden islands at your feet and a thousand ships at your command.”
“That’s insane,” she whispered.
“No, it isn’t!” He held out his arms. “We can do it, you know we can. The two of us, and, with my Bugis, we’d be unstoppable. Five years from now, we’ll be sending our ambassadors to the United Nations. All you have to do is let free all the fire and boldness within you. No one can stop us!”
“I will, Makara; I’ll stop you.”
She wondered if he’d heard, so faint was the rasping whisper she managed.
He was moving forward again, into the gun barrel. Somewhere out toward the main cavern, machine guns were firing again.
“Come with me, Amanda. We’ll go to that island I had prepared for you. For a week we’ll swim and lay in the sun and talk about everything in the world except war and nations and politics. Then you decide. One week.”
He was almost within touching range, danger range. She drew up on the Sterling’s trigger, feeling the sear ready to drop.
“Stop!” she pleaded.
He smiled gently at her foolishness. “Amanda, I know you can’t do it to me, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it to you.”
The Mark 138 satchel charge is as elementary as a weapon can get. Forty pounds of high explosives in a canvas bag and primed with a nonelectric blasting cap on a length of timed fuse, it is usually delivered by a strong throwing arm.
Simple or not, it’s still the weapon of choice for serious bunker busting.
Thick chemical smoke billowed out of both tunnel entrances, the trapped garrison within firing wildly through it.
“Five seconds, sir,” the demolition man said. “You ready?”
Quillain himself had elected to place the charge. “Just about. We’ll go on a three count. Hey, Donaldson, you set?”
“Ready, sir,” the reply snapped back over the tac radio link.
“Then let’s get it done. On my mark, three … two … one … Mark!”
Stone’s demo man yanked and released the ring of an M-60 fuse igniter, the pop of the shotgun primer and the needle jet of smoke announcing a successful fuse light.
“Fire in the hole!” Quilbin roared. Swinging the satchel charge by its strap, he hurled it into the maw of the tunnel. Then all hands fell back fast to evade the results.
In the right-hand tunnel, Stone’s placement was perfect, the thrown charge skidding along the tunnel floor to bump against the foot of the barricade fifty feet in, its defenders not even noting its arrival between the smoke and the sound of their own gunfire.
The placement in the left-hand tunnel was almost as good, only the charge came to rest against a crate bearing a certain Cyrillic inscription.
The right-hand charge functioned perfectly as well. Its detonation blew an almost perfect cylinder of white smoke out of the tunnel mouth, the force of the blast being absorbed in the disintegration of the barricade and the fighting men immediately behind it.
In the left hand passage, however …
The entrance spewed flame and wreckage like a vomiting dragon, the roar of the blast dwarfing the solid thud of the first charge’s detonation, the stone underfoot leaping, taking the assault teams off their feet.
And following the explosion, there came the terrifying grate and rumble of shifting stone.
The world inside the tunnels went black as the power failed. A shock wave hurled Amanda back against the end of the passage. The deeper blackness of unconsciousness almost overtook her. She beat it back, fighting to stay on her feet, screaming at her hands to keep their grip on the machine pistol.
She couldn’t see! She couldn’t hear! She couldn’t breathe! The air was thick with dust and lung-burning fumes.
Then she felt the powerful arms closing around her, hemming her in against the wall. She wanted to scream a denial but she couldn’t force the filthy gases out of her lungs. She fought him. She fought madly to maintain possession of the gun, the stumpy weapon caught vertically between their bodies. She felt herself start to lose.
“Makara!” It was a despairing wail inside her mind, but the faintest rusty whimper without. She locked both hands about the Sterling’s hand grip, yanking back with the last of her failing strength. She felt the muzzle slip under his chin, and she closed her finger on the trigger.
To her disrupted hearing, the hammer of the automatic weapon was the patter of a summer rain on a roof. Hot fluid and matter sprayed in her face.
She fell beside him on the stone floor. The Sterling was gone. It didn’t matter. She forced herself up onto her hands and knees but could go no farther. She’d lost all orientation. Even if she had had the strength to move, she didn’t know where to go. She begged the tunnel atmosphere for oxygen and was spurned.
Harconan whispered his farewell to her: “Amanda …”
“Amanda!” Not a whisper … a shout.
Another voice. Another name. Here?
Hands closed on her, lifting her. Her mind, sputtering along on her last deliberate actions, made her try to writhe free.
“Skipper, hey, Skipper!” Another muffled but recognizable voice exclaimed, “It’s okay! It’s us! We gotcha!”
Stone?
“Amanda, are you all right?”
Urgent, almost frantic. Elliot?
Someone was forcing a gas mask over her face. She drew in a lungfull of filtered air, thin and far from fresh, but infinitely better than what she had been trying to breath. A battle lantern blazed on, and through the murk she saw Stone Quillain and Elliot … Admiral MacIntyre. Both had AI2 vision visors flipped up on their foreheads, but only the Marine wore a gas mask. MacIntyre had pressed his over her face as he supported her in the curve of his arm.
With a flare of strength, she brushed the mask aside. “The corporate representatives, in the room—get them out!”
“We’ll handle it, ma’am.”
“Harconan.”
“We’ll handle him too. Admiral, get her the hell out of here! This whole shebang’s coming down in about two seconds!”
Maclntyre nodded, holding his breath against the smoke. Amanda found herself being lifted and carried, a pair of strong arms tight and protective about her. They felt good. It was all right now. She could stand down. Consciousness was no longer a thing to cling to.
Crabs Claw Base
0910 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008
It was amazing how a premoistened cleansing towelette could be a gift from the gods. Amanda ran its antiseptic coolness over her face, savoring the feel as it lifted the first layers of blood and grime. It wasn’t a shower or, dream of dreams, a protracted, steaming soak in a bathtub, but it was a start.
Around her in the ship pen, postassault cleanup operations were in full swing. The Sea Fighters and the LCAC shuttled between the cavern, and the task group holding offshore. The wounded, hostile and friendly alike, were being evacuated to the Carlson’s commodious and well-equipped sick bay. The dead, hostile and friendly alike, were being laid out in a row of body bags at the rear of the cave. The task force could take grim comfort that the former greatly outnumbered the latter.
Intelligence personnel were hard at the task of documentation and data collection; damage-control and amphibious-operations hands were at work aboard the Harconan Flores, keeping her afloat and puzzling how to coax the INDASAT and its trailer out of her stern gate for extraction.
Amanda tore open another towelette packet and started work on he
r arms. “Are you sure you don’t want to be evacuated out to the ship?” Elliot MacIntyre inquired, kneeling down beside the blanket on which she sat.
“Oh, no. A corpsman patched me up.” She held her arm out, displaying a field dressing. “I’m pretty much all right. I was just short of air for a while.”
“The secondary explosions in the far-side tunnel touched off the diesel tanks in the generator room. The fires damn near burned all of the oxygen out of the whole place. It wasn’t so good in there even with a gas mask.”
“Tell me about it, sir.” She wiped down one of her arms. “To tell you the truth, I was pretty sure I’d had it there for a minute. Then you and Stone were picking me up and putting that mask on me.” She paused and looked at Eddie Mac quizzically. “Begging your pardon, sir, but just what were you doing in there?”
“God, I don’t know.” Wincing, he sat down on the stone flooring be side her, putting his back to a convenient oil drum. “Being a damn fool, I guess—at least, that’s what every muscle is telling me just now.” He let his eyes close, lest he be tempted to look into that bruised, soot-smeared, and infinitely lovely face beside him. “Someone … under my command was in trouble. I didn’t like it and I wanted to see her out of it. And just for a change, I didn’t want to sit back and delegate and do it by the book. Christ, I am a damned old fool.”
“Neither one. Thank you.”
MacIntyre felt a cool alcohol bite against his skin as Amanda gently swabbed away the accumulated perspiration from his brow and cheeks. It wasn’t a kiss, but for the moment it would do.
The moment broke as a group of Marines in full MOPP anticontamination gear supplemented by damage-control airpacks emerged from the tunnel mouth bearing a tarpaulin-covered stretcher.
Amanda and MacIntyre both stood and crossed to where Stone Quillain was shedding his gear.
“Man, it’s really a mess in there,” the Marine stated, pulling the MOPP hood from over his head. “We got cooked ordnance scattered all over the place. I’d advise we keep the intels out till things cool down some more.”
“There’s no rush now,” Amanda agreed. She glanced over at the covered body. “He’s the last, then.”
Stone nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Ain’t no one else in there, livin’ or dead. We checked all the spaces that weren’t caved in altogether.”
The deep breath she took wasn’t quite steady. “Well, I’d better get it over with.” She turned toward the stretcher.
“Uh, Skipper … ma’am,” Quillain called after her in awkwardness. “He’s pretty bad messed up. Head hits, a lot of ’em.”
“I know. But we have to be sure of the identification. I knew him better than anyone else here.”
The three crossed to the stretcher and Amanda knelt down beside it, taking another deliberate breath. It was insane to want to weep for an enemy, one you had slain yourself. But there was and always would be one afternoon spent on a perfect beach.
And then she noted the flaccid hand and the khaki shirtsleeve that had slipped from beneath the tarp.
Harconan had been wearing a denim shirt.
She tore the tarp back, shock nullifying the nausea. Springing to her feet, she spun around, looking to where the captured corporate representatives were receiving first-aid treatment.
The five corporate representatives.
“This isn’t Harconan! It’s Valdechesfsky! The tech rep who was giving me trouble!”
“Are you sure, Amanda?” MacIntyre demanded.
“I’m positive! Stone, were there any other bodies at the end of that corridor?”
“Ma’am, there weren’t any other bodies anywhere,” the Marine replied emphatically.
Palau Piri Island
Off the Northwestern Tip of Bali
0915 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008
Mr. Lan Lo stared at the single line of decoded encryption on the computer terminal and the accompanying unquestionable authenticator. He was Chinese: His features maintained their disciplined stoicism and dignity even in the face of this statement of disaster.
He sat at the primary workstation of the communications center at House Harconan, the white-walled and windowless little room only he, Makara Harconan, and Lo’s two meticulously selected administrative assistants had access to. This was, or had been, the heart of Harconan’s “Special Consideration” operations.
It must end now.
Lo erased the message on the terminal screen with a tap of a key. Swiveling the silent office chair to face the room’s other two workstations, he spoke quietly. “There has been a problem. Execute the Vishnu Program, Variant B, immediately, please.”
His assistants, the young Cambridge-educated Hong Kong expatriate and the female Japanese business executive who had grown tired of battling the sexism within her own nation, lacked Lo’s depth of emotional control. An array of trace emotions played across their features: surprise, bewilderment, and a hint of fear. Yet, with the efficiency Lo required of them, they turned back to their terminals. Calling up their Vishnu crisis checklists, they began the liquidation of the Harconan empire.
Lo had other matters to attend to. Dialing up the security chief’s desk, he again spoke briefly. “This is Lo. Evacuate the island. Vishnu protocols. This is not an exercise.”
A second phone call went through to the seaplane hangar. “Launch immediately. Proceed to Halmahera Island base. Further orders will await you there.”
Rising from his workstation, Lo left the communications center for the outer business office. As the steel security door closed behind him, Lo paused for a moment and addressed the lock keypad inset in the door frame, inputting a code that sealed the door for entrance and exit both.
The four-person outer office staff was hastily making ready for their departure. The air became redolent of burnt plastic and ozone, and thin streams of smoke curled out of computer towers as “drive-killer” security modules incinerated their memory systems.
CDs and data-storage cards went into the degausser unit to the left of the door, hard copy into the shredder on the right. As each office person cleared his desk, a Nung Chinese security guard conducted a swift pat down, then handed over a sealed manila envelope containing an altered passport and identity papers, transport tickets, and a sizable block of cash, severance pay and getaway money both. Barring the guards who would be rejoining their special force unit, each of the island staff down to the masseuse would be receiving such an envelope.
Except for two.
Lo coded and opened the office safe and transferred the island’s liquid assets, some two and a quarter million dollars in various stable currencies and gem-grade diamonds, into a pair of aluminum-sided security brief cases. The imprint of his thumb on the electronic locking plates sealed the briefcases shut, and they were passed to the guard to be placed aboard the waiting helicopter.
Lo had no hesitation in turning this fortune over to the guard. He was Nung.
Lo removed an even greater treasure from the safe, a single CD storage disk in an aluminum security case, tucking it away in his inside coat pocket. This was the sole backup copy of the complete Harconan business files in existence. Even in death it would not leave Lo’s body, not if he had the strength to reach the case’s integral self-destruct mechanism.
A key from around Lo’s neck unlocked a second, smaller door set into the back of the safe. Yet another code was entered here, with a T-minus-twenty time designation.
The only thing remaining in the safe was a tiny Seecamps .32-caliber automatic pistol. Lo checked its clip, then slipped it in the side pocket of his coat.
He moved back through the now desolate and abandoned office to the door of the communications center.
Within he found that his assistants had done well in the limited time they’d had. Hundreds of prerecorded E-mail warning notifications had been flashed around the world to key Harconan personnel, instructing them to secure their positions against outside inquiry and to conduct other specific designated duties. B
ank accounts had emptied, the funds starting through an automatic series of laundering transfers and cutouts that would render their tracking all but impossible. Brokerages had been instructed to execute an immediate mass sell-off of stocks, bonds, and futures at undercut prices, the liquidated assets also to vanish into numbered offshore accounts.
When the inevitable move was made to seize Mr. Harconan’s monetary assets, there would be none left identifiable to seize.
Lo stood beside the door, waiting as the last few crisis programs were initiated and the last points on the checklists were cleared. When they were, Lo’s assistants looked up, awaiting his further orders.
He had none to give. “Thank you,” he said simply. “Your performance has been admirable. I regret the current circumstances.” Then he drew the automatic from his pocket and killed them both. The man fell facedown on his terminal keyboard, a single bullet through the side of his head; the woman had the time to rise from her chair and scream before Lo walked a three-round burst across her chest, the blood spraying on her white blouse.
Lo returned the pistol to his pocket. Indeed regrettable. This last phase of the evacuation plan was Lo’s concept, undertaken on his personal authority. Mr. Harconan would likely disapprove of the act when he learned of it. He was a man of sentiment where his servitors and employees were involved. Unlike the other members of the island’s staff, these two individuals had known far too much about Mr. Harconan’s plans to permit them a departure. The risk of their falling into the hands of the authorities was too great. Such unpleasant details were Lo’s responsibility within House Harconan.
Lo made a last circuit around the communications center, tripping the drive killers and verifying that all removable memory media had been eliminated. In all probability this was a redundancy, but Lo was meticulous.
He even closed and locked the security door behind him as he made his departure.
Outside, the moan of aircraft engines broke the island’s peace. Out in the strait, the Canadair amphibian was lifting off. Turning to the east as it climbed, it sped away toward its distant rendezvous.
Target Lock Page 50
