“Roger that! Executing engine start now. We’ll be there in a super short.”
“Amanda, what in the hell are you thinking?” MacIntyre demanded. “We’ve got the only military hovercraft around here. If you take those Sea Fighters in there like that, you’ll be telegraphing Harconan that we’re on to him.”
Amanda twisted around in her chair to face the admiral, speaking hastily. “That’s irrelevant, sir. Any kind of unusual activity at any of his bases will be attributed to us. Harconan will assume we have penetrated his security and will act accordingly, changing his ops plan. Accordingly, we change our plans first. We turn this soft recon probe into an attack mission. We use this opportunity to take out the strike force he’s assembled here.”
On the monitor, the Marines were piling into their raider craft in preparation for casting off. An enterprising drone controller had moved the Queen’s prowling Cipher into position to cover the village waterfront. On his displays, the dinghy could be seen grounding on the beach, its passengers running toward the lights of Adat Tanjung.
“Damn it, Amanda,” MacIntyre exploded, “a recon probe is one thing; so is intervening in an active pirate attack. Calling in an overt anti-shipping strike on a group of Indonesian vessels is another, even if we can prove they were illegally armed. This will pull the Indonesian government down on us!”
Amanda shook her head decisively. “No, sir, it will not. Harconan will cover it up for us.”
On the tactical display, the position hacks of the microforce hover craft began to sweep toward the moorage. At Adat Tanjung the sound of their lift fans and turbines would be rolling in over the village, the drumming and laments trailing off at the strange, frightening sound coming from the darkened sea.
In the LFOC, the lower rank kept silent as the TACBOSS and the CINCNAVSPECFORCE butted heads.
“Dammit, Elliot, think! Harconan doesn’t own the entire Indonesian government or military. Having questions asked and official inquiries launched about a U.S. Navy attack on a Bugis village is just exactly what he doesn’t want either! Like Tran was saying, the island administration doesn’t like messing with the Bugis. These are Harconan’s people, and what he says, goes.”
Neither Amanda nor MacIntyre noted her use of his first name. It wouldn’t register on either of them for some time. “We have a chance to salvage a major material and psychological victory here,” she went on forcing her point. “We can cost Harconan ships and weapons without causing Indonesian casualties, we can make him lose enormous face with his own people, and we can make him do the cleanup work for us. This can work! I’ll take full responsibility for this.”
MacIntyre gritted his teeth. Trying to run a hand through his hair, he snagged his headset. Impatiently he tore it off. He’d been here before with this woman, off the China coast and in northwestern Africa. The Pentagon flag officer he’d been for the past few years was instinctively appalled at kicking the book over the side this way. But the Special Boat driver he’d been in the times before said, Yes, she’s right, roll the dice!
“You’re the TACBOSS, Captain. Carry on.”
She slapped her palm on the console. “Yes! Thank you, sir!” She spun back to face her workstation and the bulkhead displays, her features blade keen and beautiful in her fierce exultation.
MacIntyre looked at Amanda’s back and the fall of silken shoulder length hair and felt suddenly old. There had been a time he wouldn’t have had to fight himself to make that call.
On the helmet cams the Queen of the West and the Manassas materialized, braking hard with their forward puff ports. Spinning about, still on their air cushions, they presented their opening stern gates to the Marine raider craft. A wave of spray broke over the camera lenses blurring them out, but the voices still could be heard over the tactical loop yelling over the roaring howl of the lift fans.
“Put her on the ramp…. Put her on the ramp, come on…. Where is the goddamn shackle! Over the bow!.. Move it! Ferkin’… ah, shit!.. Go! Go! Go!.. Yeah! We’re in! We’re in! Ramp coming up!”
The command circuit overrode the overhead speakers. “TACBOSS, this is Royalty! Fourteen out, fourteen back! Full recovery verified. All reconners aboard. Requesting instructions.”
“Well done, Steamer,” Amanda replied. “Here’s your reward. Take out the pirate ships. I say again, take out the pirate ships.”
“Eeeeeeeyyyyyyyaaaahooooo!” The scream overloaded the loudspeaker.
“I believe he approves,” Tran commented.
Anchorage off Adat Tanjung
0117 Hours, Zone Time: August 17, 2008
The real-time download from the Cipher showed the villagers streaming down to the beaches and wharves. There was nothing they could do, save to rage helplessly. Their heavy weapons were aboard the flotilla of anchored gunships, and even the boldest pirate was disinclined to put out in a small boat to challenge the screaming sea monsters that had invaded their harbor.
Steamer Lane danced the Queen around until she was between the rafted ships and the shore, ensuring that his misses would scream out over the open ocean and not inland toward the village.
“Manassas, you got Five and Six,” he directed. I’ll take Three and Four.”
“Rog’ that,” Tony Marlin replied in his earphones. “I am in position, ready to fire. Bet mine are on the bottom first.”
“Steak dinner. Taken. Gunners, cannon, fire!”
The Queen of the West hovered bow to bow with her targets, fifty yards separating them: point-blank range for the twin sets of 30mm autocannon she carried in her shoulder-mount weapons pedestals. These were the same Hughes M-230 series chain guns carried in the chin turret of the Apache attack helicopter. Weapons designed to kill armored fighting vehicles, not wooden-hulled schooners.
The cannon jackhammered, spewing their multiple shell streams. The rounds alternated between armor-piercing and high-explosive incendiary. The HE/I rounds ripped away timbers and planking, spraying white phosphorus fragments among the splinters that remained. The AP rounds simply tore through the entire length of the hundred-foot-plus-long hulls of the schooners. In the parlance of the old broadside Navy, this was called “raking fire,” and it was considered the most devastating. What was true then was still true now, especially as the concealed arms lockers and engine room fuel tanks of the pirate pinisi became involved.
The rakish vessels began to settle rapidly by the bow, flames hailing out of their deck hatches and climbing their rigging. After half a dozen long bursts, the 30-millimeters checked fire, barrel overheat warnings sounding at the gunners’ stations.
Scrounger Caitlin looked judgmentally between the two sets of sinking hulks. “I’d call it a draw,” she said.
“Looks like,” Lane agreed. “Tony and I’ll buy you the steak instead. Rebel, Rebel, let’s move it out of here. Set departure heading and form up on me. All ahead… good cruise. Door gunners, finish off the leftovers.”
The hovercraft surged past the burning ships, gaining speed, their OCSW 25mm crews in the side hatches pumping a final few dozen “make sure” grenades into the wrecks.
“Royalty, this is the Reb. What about the last two?” Marlin inquired.
“Missile drill. Hellfires. One off each pedestal. Our guys don’t get a chance to do enough live-fire with those. Let’s not miss the opportunity.”
“Roger that. Hellfires on the rails.”
The Sea Fighters’ weapons pedestals snapped vertical, loading arms slicing down into the gun tubs to acquire and lift the stumpy sleek shapes of Hellfire laser-guided missiles onto the launching rails that ran above the autocannon barrels. The Hellfire was yet another antitank weapon successfully converted to a naval application. It, too, was intended to kill steel and not wood.