MacIntyre snorted. “Nonsense! You’re still a young woman, Amanda. There’s no reason you couldn’t start a family if you wanted one.”
She chuckled. “Thank you. But there is still one complication: I’m old fashioned in some ways. If I were to have a family, I’d want someone to have a family with. That hasn’t jelled, either.”
MacIntyre stopped walking. “I can’t understand that. For someone like you…” He fumbled with the words, suddenly feeling awkward. “There must have been opportunities.”
She gave an acknowledging tilt of her head. “Oh, yes, a couple of times, but never quite the right one at the right time. The luck of the draw.”
“Some kind of luck, anyway.” Elliot MacIntyre felt himself on the verge of doing something catastrophically wrong. His hand ached to reach up and brush aside the curtain of red brown hair from Amanda’s cheek, and he hungered for the first time in many years for the feel of a woman’s lips under his — this woman’s.
“Amanda.” It was another voice out of the night. A tall figure in a white evening jacket strode down the walk toward them. “Ah, and you as well, Admiral MacIntyre, good evening!”
“Good evening, Mr. Harconan.” MacIntyre was pleased with the way he kept the snarl out of his voice, even as he watched the way Amanda looked up at the approaching taipan.
“Good evening, Makara.” There was an odd timbre to Amanda’s reply, a hesitation yet an excitement as well. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
“And why should you think that? With your permission, Admiral, I’d like to invite Captain Garrett to sit with me this evening. I’d greatly appreciate the chance to share this performance with her.”
“That’s entirely her call, Mr. Harconan.”
“Amanda?”
“Well…” She paused a moment more before accepting the arm offered her. “If you don’t mind, sir?”
“Why should I, Captain? Enjoy yourself. I’ll see you and Mr. Harconan after the show.”
As he watched them start down the walk to the amphitheater entry, MacIntyre found that his hand still ached from the fist he had clenched.
Benoa Port, Bali
1859 Hours, Zone Time: August 20, 2008
It started with a breakdown on the causeway road. A heavily loaded tractor trailer truck swung across both traffic lanes and stalled, blocking all passage. The driver dismounted and tilted the truck cab forward, as if seeking for some mechanical fault.
“As if” because there was nothing wrong with the truck — at least, there hadn’t been until he had completed his tampering. Seeing headlights approaching from landward, the driver ran a short distance farther dawn the causeway. Vaulting over the roadside rail, he scrambled down over the slimy breakwater boulders to where a fast outboard launch awaited him.
The launch carried three Bugis seamen, automatic weapons, and a pair of crude but effective magnetic limpet mines built around fifty-pound charges of industrial dynamite.
Backing away from the causeway, the launch turned and started to move toward the harbor island, one of half a dozen such craft on the same mission.
On the artificial island itself, other men, men who had been trickling out to the island all day long in one, twos and threes, rendezvoused in the shadows of the warehouses and collected weapons from a previously positioned cargo container.
The roving polisi patrols that should have spotted the growing accumulation of armed men had been called elsewhere. Likewise the sole Indonesian warship in port, the frigate Sutanto, had been ordered to haul off and anchor in the harbor away from the port facility, well away.
Stealthily, by land and water, the net began to close around the Sea Fighter Task Force.
USS Carlson
1905 Hours, Zone Time: August 20, 2008
Commander Lucas Carberry had not minded catching the senior-officer-afloat duty for the evening. In fact, he appreciated the opportunity. It gave him a chance to pursue one of his own private passions.
Tonight’s project was of a favorite ship of his: the old protected cruiser USS Olympia, Dewey’s flagship at Manila Bay. The assembly wasn’t excessively difficult. Deftly filing and fitting the turrets and upper works was second nature. But as with all of the Edwardian age, pre-gray-camou naval vessels, the painting was the challenge, getting the white hull, buff upper works, and black masts and funnels just right, with no bleedover, and applying those faintest of hints of silver and gilt in just the precise places.
And all on a model two inches long.
His den back home in Philadelphia was lined with the dreadnought-age navies of the world, as well as with dozens of first-place and best-of-show awards for naval miniatures. Within the enthusiast’s snug world of naval war-gaming, owning a Carberry miniature had come to mean something. They were never sold, only given away as gifts to close friends or to individuals who had defeated Carberry in a combat scenario.
There were few who could make the latter claim. Carberry, like his miniatures, was something of a legend in war-gaming circles as well. A chubby, cold-eyed legend who could win the battle of Jutland with either side with equal ease, who had sunk the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen both with the HMS Hood, and who had turned the Battle of Tsushima Strait into a Japanese rout.
Tenderly he eased his latest creation down onto the droplet of glue in the center of its black plastic mounting plate, allowing his desk phone to buzz twice before freeing a hand to answer it.
“This is the captain.”
“This is the officer of the deck, sir.” The voice on the other end of the line was tense. “We have unusual activity quayside. Possible hostiles.”
Carberry’s own voice was precise and emotionless. “Have all security stations been alerted?”
“Yes, sir, we are at flash yellow both here and aboard the Cunningham.”
“Very well. I’ll be on the bridge momentarily.”
Carberry started forward, wiping a dab of paint from his fingers with a Kleenex.
The view through the LPD’s wide bridge windscreen presented no obvious call for alarm, only the broad concrete quay apron and the wall of gray and rust warehouses beyond it illuminated by a scattering of arc lights. Nothing moved, save for the foredeck security patrol and the gangway watch. However, the OOD and the Marine lieutenant serving as security officer of the watch both looked concerned as Carberry pushed past the light curtain.
“What do we have, gentlemen?”
“Sir, the task force moorage has been placed under observation, and we have detected the movement of a large unidentified body of men into the area. Their intent is unknown, but they appear to be deliberately staying under cover.”
“When was the activity first noted?”
The security officer fielded the question. “About five minutes ago, sir. A gunner in one of the 30mm mounts spotted a man on a warehouse roof watching us through a set of night glasses. We have a deck camera locked on his position.”
The Marine crossed to the console under the windscreen and called up an image on a brow monitor. On a magnified section of roof beside a ventilator box, gray-toned in the lowlight television, a man’s head could be made out peering over ridgeline binoculars set to its eyes. A second head bobbed up intermittently in the background.
“Our lookouts and the Duke’s have picked up on three other OPs like this one, covering the whole moorage area.”
Carberry nodded. “Interesting, and she’s the USS Cunningham, Lieutenant, let’s be precise. Now, what about the large bodies of men?”