“So it would seem, Ambassador. Excuse me, please: I have a host’s duties to attend to.”
Lengthening his stride, Harconan proceeded to the pier deck that extended outward from the beach walk.
The curving end of the pier with its integral surf break created a patch of sheltered water within its inner curve. A small-craft float lay within this shelter, linked by sliding ramp to the pier deck. A pair of line handlers, rather incongruously clad in white dinner jackets, were already standing by on the float. Reception guests from Bali’s diplomatic and business communities were drifting out along the pier, looking on with interest. The word had spread that the launches from the American task force, the guests of honor, were arriving.
Powerful marine diesels rumbled out of the night, and the first Navy craft moved into the zone of light cast by the pier arcs.
It was no mere launch from the task force: It was a unit of the task force itself. A rakish miniature gunboat swept out of the darkness. Its mottled gray-tone camouflage paint had been touched up flawlessly. The few small hints of brass and chrome had been burnished bright, and the workaday nylon strap safety rails around its gunwales had been replaced by dazzling white nylon cord, hauled taut and tied with elaborate seamen’s knots.
Water boiled as hydrojet propulsors backed with a hiss. With absolute precision the assault boat curved into the float, the last of its wake dissipating just as its flank touched the side of the dock, the Raider’s crew merely handing the mooring lines across to the pier-side handlers.
The uniforms of the SB hands were frost-white as well, white with the distinctive black beret of the Sea Fighter Task Force tugged low over one eye. Gunners stood at parade rest at the 25mm OCSW grenade launcher at the bow and at the pintle-mounted Barrett .50-caliber anti-material rifles amidships, riding with the motion of their small, deadly craft with the practiced ease of the Special Boat crewman.
A short aluminum gangway had been mounted upright on the gun wale of the craft. Now, with a single yank of a release pin, its outboard end dropped to the float’s decking.
“Honor Guard…” a powerful baritone voice roared, “disembark!”
Half a dozen American Marines clattered down the short gangway, spacing out in a double row between its foot and the base of the float access ramp. Snapping to a stiff-spine parade rest, each stood with an obsolete M-14 rifle at his side, its white enameled wooden stock buffed to a satiny sheen.
A seventh Marine, an officer, taller, more powerful, more resplendent, paced slowly down between the short double row of his fellows. Pausing at the head of the guard, his dark hawkish eyes swept across Harconan and the other reception guests now looking on silently from the pier.
The Marine’s lips pursed as if he saw nothing that impressed him. He pivoted machine like into line with the honor guard.
The gangway swung back aboard, and mooring lines were snatched back from the pier handlers. The Raider blasted away back into the night on its water jet, curving back toward the distant Navy moorage for its next load of passengers.
“Honor Guard…” the Marine officer’s voice rang again. “Fix bayonets!”
Polished black blades rasped from belt sheaths and clicked into place on underbarrel mounting lugs.
“Honor Guard… attention!”
Heels crashed on the pier decking.
A second Navy RIB came in out of the night, docking with the same deftness as the first. A second gangway dropped.
“Present arms!”
Rifles clattered and lifted, white-gloved hands slapping on polished stocks.
The Marine officer’s sword screamed out of its sheath, the glittering silver blade whipping to the vertical before his face.
“Commandant… United States Naval Special Forces… arriving!”
An officer strode down the short gangway and between the double row of the honor guard. An older man, graying, weathered but not aged. Not as tall as Harconan, but as broad-shouldered, with an almost defiant air of solidity, as if an earthquake might level all around him and yet he would stand.
Harconan descended the pier ramp, extending his hand. He had been briefed about this man. “Admiral MacIntyre, welcome to Bali.”
“Mr. Harconan.” The handshake was strong, the voice noncommittal. So the admiral had been briefed on him as well.
The Marine officer roared again. “Commander… Sea Fighter Task Force… arriving!”
She appeared at the head of the gangway. Blood royal rather than a military officer, yet totally at ease amid the hard-edged backdrop of combat technology. Slightly lifting her long skirt with her hands in an archaic, elegantly feminine gesture, she descended to the float.
Amanda Garrett was not truly tall — at best she was of average height without heels — yet, she radiated the impression of tallness, her head lifted in instinctive pride, her bearing regal by nature.
Makara Harconan had known and savored many women in his life, some of whom had been considered among the most beautiful in the world, but he had never before encountered any female so totally arresting. He could not say why. There had been models more perfectly featured, actresses more lushly endowed, but no one so inherently dynamic.
She paced past the honor guard and flowed to a halt at Admiral MacIntyre’s side. A pair of large golden eyes glowed at Harconan and she extended her hand… palm down.
I have come for you, O King of the Sea, those eyes spoke silently. Bow to me.
Harconan vowed he would possess this woman. Closing his fingers around hers, he inclined over her hand, but only slightly.
“Captain Garrett.”
She inclined her head. “Mr. Harconan. On behalf of the Sea Fighter Task Force, I thank you for this warm welcome to your home waters. May I introduce one of my officers and her escort. Lieutenant Commander Christine Rendino and Inspector Nguyen Tran of the Singapore National Police.”
Harconan was jerked back to reality, turning to the couple who had disembarked while he had been fixated on Amanda Garrett.
Tran? Could this be the same Singapore gadfly he’d been forced to quash last year with a series of exorbitant payoffs? What was he doing here with the Americans? Damn you, Harconan, forget the woman and look to business!
Tran nodded to him, with the faintest of smiles on his angular features. “A pleasure, Mr. Harconan. We have never before had the opportunity to meet… in person.”
The little blonde on Tran’s arm said sweetly, “But the inspector has been able to tell us so much about you.”
What was happening here? As Harconan mouthed the appropriate platitudes, his eyes swept the boarding stage. What sort of threat could this group pose?
He caught the slight bulge of a sidearm under Tran’s evening jacket, a factor that might be expected with a police officer. But then, there were matching bulges under the uniform coats of both MacIntyre and the Marine captain overseeing the honor guard, the same with every naval officer disembarking from the Raider craft.
The Marines of the honor guard still held a rigid attention, but their eyes were moving and alert.
And the rifles they were carrying. Harconan knew that the M-14 was long obsolete in American service, relegated to ceremonial usage. But these specific weapons were not mere ceremonial accouterments with welded actions. Harconan’s second look revealed that they were still fully functional and fully loaded, a twenty-round magazine of 7.62 NATO protruding from each magazine well. Each honor guard also had a white leather pouch at his belt that was not issue to the U.S. Marine dress uniform, but which was just the right size for a pair of reloads.
And the bayonets: Each black steel blade had a thin, silvery band along its point and cutting edge, the sheen of a razor sharpening.