The Sea Fighter Task Force arrived with the growing heat of the day, standing in through the mouth of Benoa Harbor, past Serangan (Turtle) Island and the tip of Cape Benoa.
The expected reception committee awaited them at the Port: an Indonesian army band and honor guard from the local garrison force and a small cluster of civil and military officials to say the appropriate words of welcome and to put the brightest possible spin on this visitation from the United States.
Others awaited the Sea Fighters’ arrival as well.
Cape Benoa
2019 Hours, Zone Time: August 15, 2008
Makara Harconan wheeled the Bentley Challenger convertible into the harbor overlook, parking at the far end, well away from the guided tour van and the clusters of rented motor scooters.
The sunset was flaming magnificently to the west beyond the Bukit Badung Peninsula with a flight of elaborate Balinese kites dancing against it, the excited voices of their young pilots shrill and happy in the growing dusk.
At another time, Harconan would have enjoyed watching the sky borne dance. Tonight, though, he had other affairs to tend. Thoughtfully he studied the vast cluster of glowing work lights that seemed to float in the center of the bay.
Supporting the island’s capital of Denpasar, Benoa Harbor has historically been the most important port in southern Bali.
Yet the great crescent-shaped indentation in the island’s southern peninsula had also been chronically cursed with shallows and building sandbars. The Dutch colonial government, confronted with the problem, elected to make lemonade.
Setting aside their role as a colonial taskmaster, the old Hollanders were master engineers with a vast amount of experience at wrestling land out of a resistant sea. Taking advantage of the shallows, they built a two kilometer-long causeway out onto the center of the harbor from its swamp-rimmed northern edge. At the end of this causeway they built a kilometer-square artificial island to serve as their port facility.
Here, as well as the required water depth, were the tank farms and warehouses, the container cranes and loading docks, needed to service the shipping of the world. One of his cargo liners, the Harconan Sumatra, was over there now, discharging.
The ships of his foes were present as well.
Reaching over to the Bentley’s glove box, he removed a pair of folding sports binoculars. Snapping them open, he aimed them across at the port complex.
In the fading light he could just make out the two great gray shapes, stern on and bow on between the eastern port piers, the American stealth cruiser, long and low and ominous, and the big slab-sided amphibious warfare ship with who knew how many deadly secrets hidden inside its belly.
Harconan could feel the gods looking over his shoulder and smiling.
They come for you, O King of the Sea. What shall you do now? Give us divertissement.
The car’s cellular phone purred softly, and Harconan lifted it to his ear. Bapak Lo spoke quietly. “Our guests will be arriving shortly, Mr. Harconan.”
“I know, Lo. In fact, I’m paying my respects to some of them now.”
White-gloved and with the red glare of the deck lights glinting off the gold of his saber hilt, Captain Stone Quillain worked down the line of the Sea Dragon’s honor squad, a gimlet eye scanning for the slightest imperfection in uniform or demeanor. The twelve Marines held rigidly at attention, eyes level, statues in dress blues.
Stone could find no real fault; yet, here and there he tugged a white enameled bayonet sheath even straighter or ran a finger along a rifle barrel seeking for a nonexistent smear of excess gun oil. These boys were just fine, just as he knew they’d be, but it wouldn’t pay to let ’em think the old man was getting sloppy.
“They’ll do, Sergeant,” Stone grunted to the squad leader. “At ease till we’re ready to embark.”
“Very good, sir! Squad! Stand at ease!”
There was the faintest scuffle of shoes on the antiskid decking, any relaxation on the part of the honor squad being purely nominal.
A few feet farther forward on the Carlson’s flight deck, the Special Boat Squadron commander, Lieutenant Labelle Nichols, was putting her white-uniformed RIB crews through the same kind of meticulous formal inspection in preparation for the night’s events. Farther forward, the detachment’s two eleven-meter Rigid Inflatable raider craft, polished, primped, and gleaming, rested in the LPD’s midships boat cradles, ready to launch.
Stone gave his own sword belt an unneeded settling tug. Even though Stone did enjoy doing a little saber fencing now and again, the Wilkinson Marine officer’s sword at his waist was essentially ceremonial. The same could not be said of the Randall combat knife strapped to his left forearm under his blouse sleeve, nor of the SIG Sauer P226 automatic in his concealed “Superman carry” shoulder holster.
The skipper had been emphatic about it: “Until further notice, ladies and gentlemen, this command is fangs out. Even in polite society.”
Stone wouldn’t think of arguing the point. That was why he looked up so sharply as a computer-synthesized voice thundered in the night, powerful loudspeakers barking out a sharp-edged phrase first in Bahasa Indonesia and then Bahasa Bali.
A local motor prahu had meandered too close to the Carlson’s stern, triggering the automatic-proximity warning.
Long before the Port Aden tragedy, the Navy had been aware that its ships were never more vulnerable than when they were resting at anchor in port. Since the Aden attack, even more attention and technology had been focused on the problem.
The task force now had a number of advantages over the ill-fated Cole.
The Voice Proximity Alarm was the first line of defense. Programmable with the primary local languages, it vastly reduced the risk of killing an innocent Third World national who couldn’t understand the meaning of “Get the hell away from here.”
Nonlethal ordnance constituted the second line.
Forward, at each corner of the Carlson’s superstructure, the dish antenna of the LPD’s SMADS — Ship-Mounted Area Denial System — had deployed flowerlike from their box mounts. Euphemistically called “anti riot directed energy projectors,” the SMADS units were, in truth, microwave cannon carefully tuned to generate extreme discomfort but little physical injury.
Given a short-term exposure, at any rate.
Stone shuddered as he recalled the light brush he’d taken from a vehicle-mounted VMADS beam during the system orientation training. It was safe to say that anyone who stood on in the face of that brand of concentrated agony had to be either very desperate or very dedicated. Such focused individuals could be safely met with more decisive measures.
The Carlson’s four point-defense turrets were still retracted inboard, but gunners were at station in the 30mm chain gun mounts, scanning both the harbor and the dockside through their powerful night optics. Those were further augmented by the joint Marine and ship security deck patrols, the Marine half of each team carrying a loaded SABR, the Navy hand backing a squad automatic weapon with a full fifty-round magazine.
Like defenses were in place aboard the Cunningham.
Stone would have also liked OCSW grenade launchers mounted and manned at bow and stern and on the bridge wings, but Admiral MacIntyre had pointed out that at least some diplomatic niceties had to be maintained.
Other precautions had been taken, however. Both the Carlson and the Cunningham had “Mediterranean moored.” Instead of lying alongside the quay, the Duke had tied up with her stern to the seawall, held in place by a broad V of spring lines. The LPD had done the reverse: moored bow on so her stern ramp faced open water, leaving her free to conduct launching and recovery operations.