Off the coast of Brunei
8 October 1997, (local) 0502
The stars had begun to fade from the sky, and the ocean swelled with the mottled shadows of the approaching morn. A solitary merchant ship cruised in the darkness, heading toward the capital of Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, which lay upriver from the Brunei Bay on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. The ship rode low on the waves with a load of motorbikes and electric goods, along with a variety of items ranging from Korean vegetables to American-style jeans.
Arriving on the bridge from his cabin, the captain of the ship noticed a shadow on the southwest horizon. He stared at it a moment, trying to make sense of it. The dark smudge moved with incredible swiftness, riding so low against the water that it could only be a wave or some sort of optical illusion; still, the captain went to the radar himself, confirming that there was no contact. His thirty years at sea had made him wary, and it was only when he looked back and saw nothing that he reached for his customary cup of coffee. He took a sip from his cup and listened as the officer of the watch described the expected weather. A storm had been forecast but was at least several hours away; they would be safely in the harbor by then.
“It is good that we are early then,” he told the others on the bridge in Spanish.
It was the last thing the captain said on this earth. For as he raised his cup of coffee to his lips, the missile that had been launched from the shadow in the distance exploded five feet behind him.
THE FRENCH-BUILT EXOCET MISSILE CARRIED A RELATIVELY small warhead at 364 pounds; while the explosion destroyed the bridge it would not by itself have been enough to sink the ship. The more damaging blow was landed by the second weapon, fired a bare second and a half after the first; this missile struck at the waterline just ahead of the exact middle of the ship. The warhead carried through the hull before exploding; the vessel shuddered with the impact and within moments began to settle. Nearly a third of the crew had been killed or trapped by the two blasts; the others were so stunned that it would be several minutes before most even got to their proper emergency stations. By then the ship would be lost.
Five miles away, the man who had given the order to launch the missiles stood over the small video screen, watching through a long-range infrared camera as the doomed merchant ship began to sink.
The attack had been an easy one; a bare demonstration of the Malaysian navy vessel’s capabilities. Named the Barracuda, the experimental high-speed craft was every bit the voracious predator, clothed in dark black skin made of metal and fiber-glass arranged in sharp facets to deflect radar waves. The craft used a technology known as “wing-in-surface-effect,” which allowed it to skim over the water at high speed; it could reach over four hundred knots, though to fire effectively it had to slow to below one hundred, and had to go even slower in choppy seas and bad weather. A one-of-a-kind vessel built in secret as part of a concerted effort to upgrade the Malaysian military, the Barracuda heralded a new age for the nation that spread out over more than a thousand miles of the southeastern Pacific.
A new age, and new opportunities, thought the vessel’s commander, Captain Dazhou Ti. He had great wishes for the future, and above all a lust for revenge against the family that had wronged his ancestors. The Barracuda would make it possible to achieve all of his goals.
Dazhou straightened, then looked around the red-lit command area of his vessel. The space was barely ten by twenty feet, and every inch was utilized. Eight men and the captain worked here; another two were assigned to the rear compartment as weapons handlers to watch over the automated equipment and, if the need arose, to work the thirty-millimeter cannon.
“A job well done,” he told his men.
The crew was well disciplined, and not one man looked up from his station or said the slightest word. This pleased Dazhou greatly.
“We will return,” he announced. “To your course, helm.”
The vessel began picking up speed instantly, slipping into the morning mist that hugged the coastline. Dazhou returned to his station at the center of the deck, mindful that he fired but the opening salvo in a long, long war.
II
“ W HAT I S G OING ON H ERE?”
Off the coast of Brunei
8 October 1997, (local) 0523
MACK SMITH BANKED HARD RIGHT, PUTTING THE A-37B Dragonfly at a right angle to the Megafortress’s radar. Had the radar been an older unit, he might have succeeded in confusing it. Pulse-Doppler radars had difficulty picking up returns from objects at a ninety-degree angle; many were the pilots who had managed to escape an enemy’s grip because of it. But the Megafortress unit wasn’t about to be fooled; the crewman aboard the EB-52 sang out loud and clear with his bearing and speed.
Hallelujah, thought Mack to himself.
It was probably the first time in his life that he actually wanted to be caught. Mack took a hard turn north and did a quick check of his instruments. The Cessna wasn’t a fancy beast, but it was sure and dependable, and the indicators showed she was in prime condition.
“Dragon One, this is Jersey,” said Breanna Stockard, who was aboard the EB-52. “Looks like we’re through with the low-altitude hunts. What’s your pleasure?”
Mack checked his watch and fuel. “Let’s move out to sea and practice some sea surveillance,” he answered. “That okay with Deci?”
Deci Gordon was a Dreamland radar specialist who was aboard the EB-52 helping train Mack’s men.
“Good for me,” answered Deci. “Your people did very well on the low-altitude stuff. A-pluses all around.”
He was being kind. The two pilots who had taken stints at the stick had flown decently. But the equipment operators tasked with finding Mack while he flew at low altitude around the nearby mountains had batted only about .300—great in baseball, fatal in war.
Mack knew that working the radar involved a heck of a lot more than hitting a few keys and jiggling some toggles, but his people had a long, long way to go before they would be competent enough to find a MiG hell-bent on nailing a real target.
Two weeks before, Mack would have vented his frustration at the poor score, or at least let the crew aboard the EB-52 know that they had to step it up. He was learning, however, to be more laid back, or at least more selective with his criticism.
He had to be. The two specialists aboard Jersey were the last two he had. The other two had quit.
As Mack adjusted his course and started to climb through five thousand feet, he saw something flare in the right side of his windscreen. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing a fire.
“Jersey, this is Brunei Dragon One. I think I see a ship on fire. Stand by.”
Mack gave the throttle a shove and turned in the direction of the flames. From this distance, the fire looked more like the sparkle of a gem, glittering red. The ship itself was a gray shadow around it.
“Mack, we see it,” said Breanna. “We’ll have GPS coordinates in a second”
“You got a Mayday or something?” Mack asked Breanna. “Nothing”
Mack alerted his ground controller, who staffed a combat center at the International Airport control tower back in the capital. (As in many other smaller countries around the world, the International Airport or IAP handled military as well as civilian flights.) Besides calling out the navy and local harbor patrol, Mack told the controller to contact the Malaysian air force at Labuan. The small air station there—the only other air base besides Brunei IAP on the northern side of Borneo—operated a squadron of French-built Aerospatiale SA 316B Alouette Ills for search and rescue.