Aboard the assault boat, every crewman and — woman wore a polished sidearm holster and Brasso’ed ammunition belts gleamed in the gun mounts.
Amanda Garrett had not merely come to a party. She was landing a military expeditionary force.
Harconan had his own security elements discreetly deployed around the reception area. But nothing to match this potential concentration of firepower.
What had Ambassador Goodyard called this woman? “A cowgirl… prone to precipitous and unilateral actions…”
What in all hell was going on here?
Amanda Garrett wore the same slight, damnably knowing smile as Tran. It was as if he could feel her reading his every thought, every emotion.
Damn it, how long had it been since anyone had made him so apprehensive?
“I’m looking forward to talking with you, Mr. Harconan. I’m sure we have many things to discuss.”
Then she turned away. Accepting Maclntyre’s arm, she ascended the ramp to the top of the pier and the waiting reception line.
Java Sea, Northeast of the Laut Kecil Island Group
2205 Hours, Zone Time: August 15, 2008
Three hundred miles to the north, another carefully choreographed military evolution was under way.
To many, a visualization of the Indonesian archipelago would bring to mind tightly clustered green islands under a tropic sun, their azure waters busy with a multitude of small craft going about their affairs.
And so it was, in places.
Elsewhere, there are ’tween island straits broad enough to warrant the name of sea. No hint of land save for a cloudbank on a far horizon, no shipping, no movement save for the waves and the wheeling of a weary seabird in transit.
In the center of one such emptiness, the Sea Fighters came to rest. Coming off the pad, the PGACs powered down and settled to the surface of the sea, drifting silently beneath the ten million and one stars of the tropic night.
Steamer Lane slid open the cockpit side window, admitting a puff of sea-fresh air and the sound of waves lapping against the hull.
“Position check,” he called.
Ensign Terrence Wilder, the Queen of the West’s junior officer, thumbed a display call-up on the navigator’s console. “Sir, Navicom indicates we are on station for rendezvous,” he reported crisply. “I show matching coordinates on both Global Positioning Systems.”
Lane slipped his helmet off and balanced it on the bow of the instrument panel. “That’s good, Terr, we have arrived. Time check, Scrounge?”
“On the line, Skipper,” Caitlin replied. “Fifteen minutes to rendezvous if the Air ‘Farce’ is up to it.”
“Super good.” Lane donned the earphones of the Digital Walkman he had clipped to the sun visor. “Terry, you have the con. Position the Queen and Reb for the drop reception… quietly. I’m going to catch a fast forty. Gimme a yell when we have the replenishment bird in sight.”
Startled, Wilder looked forward from the Nav station. “Aye, aye, sir.”
A twangy whisper of California surf rock drifted across the cockpit as Lane reclined against the back of his seat. With a developed warrior’s knack, he was asleep in seconds, snatching the opportunity for brief refreshment.
Wilder hesitated, wrestling with his pride. But, as he was in fact an intelligent and capable young officer, he twisted his seat around to face the copilot’s station.
“Hey, Chief,” he whispered. “Could you help walk me through this? I’ve never handled a drop replenishment at sea before.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Wilder,” Scrounger Caitlin replied cheerfully, pulling a ring-bound procedures manual from the rack by her knee. “Nobody else has either.”
Fifty miles to the south, Lieutenant Colonel Edwina Mirkle, United States Air Force, looked forward, first through the night-vision visor of her flight helmet, then through the nite-brite-attuned Heads Up display, and finally out through the windscreen of her MC-130J. Her knuckles clinched white on the control yoke, and her eyes burned dryly from her fixed stare.
She was not tense in the conventional sense of the term. This was simply how one flew a Combat Talon when one was so low the six bladed Allison turboprops kicked rooster-tails off the wave tops and spume rattled against the nose. One stayed focused. Very, very focused.
After departing Curtin Field, the Air Commando transport had flown north conventionally from Australia until its sensitive IDECM (Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures) arrays had sensed the Indonesian air defense net. The Talon had “gone tactical” then, staging incrementally lower and lower to stay under the radar net until they were literally skimming the surface of the sea.
The island of Flores had risen like a wall before them, and the MC-130 had climbed just enough to snake through one of the narrow passes in the central volcanic range, an unidentifiable black shadow blasting low over the isolated mountain villages.
The tension had risen incrementally when the Global Hawk drone, riding shotgun high overhead, had down-linked the warning of an interceptor scramble from an Indonesian air force base near Jakarta. However, the bewildered Anghkatan Udara Eurofighters soon turned back, the fragmentary radar track that had launched them having disappeared amid the lava crags.
Reaching water once more, the Talon returned to the deck, racing out over the Flores Sea, its stealthed radar cross section blurring into the surface return.
That had been two hundred over-ocean miles ago. The altimeters had read zero continuously ever since. For the Air Commandos of the U.S. Air Force’s First Special Operations Wing, the mission stank of the routine.
“Course correction,” Colonel Mirkle’s navigator murmured. “Come right five degrees to zero… one… two.”
Mirkle eased down on her right foot pedal, nudging the big plane into a slow skidding turn on the rudder alone, keeping the wings fixed dead level by the artificial horizon. A conventional bank would put a prop arc into the water, cartwheeling the Talon across the sea in a spectacular crash.
“Steering zero… one… two,” she read back.
“On the beam, ma’am. Ten minutes out. Global Hawk link verifies our customers are on station and waiting for us.”
“Thanks, Johnny. Ed, tell the chief to rig for payload extraction.”
As her copilot relayed the command to the loadmaster, Mirkle eased back minutely on the control yoke. The chief was going to be walking around back in the cargo bay, and the aircraft might bobble with the weight shift. Best to take her up a little.
Within the First Spec Ops Wing, Mirkle had a reputation as a cautious veteran pilot. Neither a hot dog nor a cowgirl, she recognized her own limitations and preferred leaving a margin for error.
The Talon climbed to a solid twenty-five feet and leveled off once more.
Maneuvering on their electric propulsors, the Queen of the West and the Manassas positioned a quarter of a mile apart, nose on to the wind and sea. Mast-Mounted Sighting Systems panned along the horizon, low-light television intently scanning for intruders, while ECM monitors suspiciously sniffed the ether.
Inboard, the auxiliary fuel blivets in the central bays of the hovercraft were flat and flaccid. The kerosene they had carried had either been consumed or transferred into the Sea Fighter’s integral tankage. With an assist from the Marines, the gunboat crews rolled and lashed the empty bladders into compact bundles for storage, making room for their replacements.
In the Queen’s cockpit, Ensign Wilder reached forward and touched Steamer Lane on the shoulder. “Sir, we have established a datalink with the replenishment aircraft. They’re on approach. Five minutes out. We are positioned for drop reception.”