Phantom force the uss cu.., p.44
Phantom Force (The USS Cunningham Quintet Book 5), page 44
“Yeah, Roger that, Vince.” Pinkerton’s SPEED Cobra faded back and dropped into its wing slot. “Nice moves, skipper.”
“Roger D. Even after all these years, they’re still a sucker for that old Thatch Weave. Let’s go home, my man.”
*
The Shenandoah had found a tropical squall to conceal her air operations and she was loitering deep within a solid front of gray, misting rain. Going into helo mode, the two SPEED Cobras nosed slowly through the wall of blood temperature precipitation, riding the ground effect a mere ten feet above the low wave crests.
Peering ahead through their water-streaked canopies, the two aviators watched for the trail that would lead them home. After a few minutes of nuzzling into the wind, they picked it up, orange sparks of light glowing and flickering in the haze, a string of small float flares bobbing on the surface of the sea. The two compound helos swung parallel to this flare train and began to follow it through the haze.
The flares were being dropped off the stern of the Shenandoah. It was a simple and reliable approach and landing technique pioneered by the Royal Navy’s Harrier and helicopter squadrons in the fog-haunted North Sea.
Easing alongside their mothership, the SPEED Cobras matched course and speed. Lifting above deck level, they popped their landing gear and sidled over the helipads waiting for them. A few moments later, they were aboard and down with the MacGregor hatches shutting out the rain.
*
“Well done, Arkady, and congratulations.”
“Congratulations? For what?” Arkady dropped into a chair across the table from Amanda. For the moment, they were alone in the main saloon with the rattle of the gusting rain on the windows contesting with the rumble of the engines.
“For making history. Karen, a drink for Mr. Arkady, please.”
A smiling stewardess emerged from the saloon pantry, bearing a tray with a pair of tall, frosted glasses and a pair of opened bottles of Tsingtao beer.
“Congratulations, Commander,” she echoed softly, deftly filling each glass.
“Thank you,” Arkady replied, bemused as the stewardess vanished back through the pantry door. “But I say again, for what?”
“For becoming the first navy ace since Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll and the first helicopter ace in history.”
“Son of a bitch!” The realization caught up with him with a jolt. “Two kills today and the three over Drake’s Passage … Five down and glory! Son of a bitch!”
Amanda nodded. “You missed the opportunity to claim the first kill on a nuclear sub by giving the credit to your teammate that day off Shanghai. This will be your page in the book.”
“Just a footnote in your chapter, babe.”
She smiled and shrugged, lifting her glass. Arkady followed suit and the glasses sang as their rims touched.
“That goes down very easily,” Arkady sighed, setting his half-emptied glass down again. “You know, serving aboard this beast does have certain amenities above and beyond what you get aboard a conventional navy bird.”
“Indeed,” Amanda agreed. “If I’d known that merchant skippers had it this good, I’d have crossed over long ago.”
The aviator only lifted an eyebrow. “Tell me another one, Admiral.”
“I’m not an Admiral yet, Arkady.” She mused over the thought for a moment. “In fact, at the moment, I’m not exactly sure what I am. I’m not a naval officer commanding a ship that isn’t a naval vessel – but I am captaining one of the most powerful men-of-war in existence. What does that make me?”
“Indispensable?”
Amanda chuckled and took a sip of her own beer. “Thank you, good sir, but indispensability is a myth. Seriously though, I wonder just where I do stand in the convoluted rules of warfare.”
“Last time I looked, the only actual honest to God rule of warfare was ‘win’ – and you’re good at that, so who cares?”
“Thank you again. But it’s still an interesting question.”
Arkady pondered, scowling at empty air for a moment. “How does ‘privateer’ sit?”
“Privateer,” Amanda mused, rolling the word over in her mind. “I haven’t heard that one for a while. A pirate with a license to commit piracy on behalf of a government.”
“Nowadays they’d call you a private naval warfare contractor.”
Amanda laughed out loud. “Privateer it is then. I like it.”
She realized that she felt good with the relaxed comfort of an old friendship. She and Arkady had shared moments like this many times before, beyond their times of passion. It was interesting to learn that the one didn’t depend on the other.
Arkady cut a quirky sideways glance at her. ‘Hey, babe, you ever think about the old days?”
“Of course,” she nodded. “They make good thinking.”
“That they do. Do you ever think …”
“What do you think?” she asked back levelly.
He paused for a long moment, maybe giving a long-considered thought one last examination. “I dunno,” he said finally, “I guess it might be kind of a step backwards at that.”
She lifted her beer once more. “Here’s to steps forward, my very dear and special friend.”
Again the glass rims touched and sang.
The Joint Intelligence Center, USS Shenandoah
0939 Hours; Zone Time, November 19, 2008
“What’s the world like on the outside?”
Startled, Amanda looked up from the central chart table. She had been alone in the briefing room, involved in a private pondering session. Now Makara Harconan loitered in the doorway. “Are they still doing sunlight, rain, stars, that sort of thing?”
“So I gather,” she replied ruefully.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen many examples recently.” He ambled into the workspace, clad in borrowed Levi’s and a white T-shirt. To Amanda’s eye he displayed no overt indication of his semi-incarceration in the hold section. The pirate king looked as tanned and fit as ever.
His marine escort shouldered through the doorway behind him and Harconan grimaced mildly. “I’m beginning to know what a tugboat feels like, however.”
Amanda hesitated for a moment, then spoke to the guard. “It’s all right, corporal. Take a break for five. I’ve got the watch.”
It occurred to Amanda that, over the past couple of weeks since Harconan’s coming aboard, she’d never been alone with the man. Whether by sheer happenstance or unconscious instinct, she wasn’t sure. If it was the latter, it was a hoodoo she intended to break.
“As you wish, ma’am,” the Marine replied formally, eyeing Harconan for one last suspicious moment before taking his leave, the closing click of the soundproofed door isolating them from the soft duty clamor of the CinC block.
“I wish I was actually as formidable as that gentleman seems to think I am,” Harconan commented.
“You are, that’s the problem,” Amanda said, returning her attention to the hardcopy charts she was studying.
“Compliments graciously accepted,” Harconan replied, crossing to the chart table. “You still use something as archaic as paper on this technological marvel you call the Shenandoah Galaxy?”
“Oh, is that where we are?”
“Have it your way,” he sighed. “But really, why do you bother with these old-fashioned things when you can pull a chart up on one of these wall screens with a push of a button?”
“Because these wall screens can break down,” Amanda replied patiently. “And because I simply like to use them. They help me think.”
“Ah! I’ve always known you were more anachronistic than you let on. If you had your true choice, it would be back to cutlasses and carronades – and you’d lust for the command of a ship of the line.”
Amanda suppressed her smile. “A good sloop of war actually, but that’s the difference between us, isn’t it? I know I live in the twenty-first century. I don’t try and live out my fantasies or force my fantasies on other people.”
Harconan lifted an eyebrow. “Touché. First blood, well drawn.”
Amanda sighed and stopped working with the chart. “That wasn’t really necessary, I guess. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. As it turns out, you’re right. ‘Here and now’ cannot be denied, much to my regret.” He studied her quizzically. “What about you, Amanda? What do you regret?”
“Many things,” she replied quietly. “Among other things, that you ever started this.”
“Again we are in agreement on a point. But you already knew that. You also know that’s not what I mean.”
Amanda started to pick up a pencil but hesitated. “Well, what do you mean?”
“I mean this is the first time we’ve been alone together since I’ve come aboard your extraordinary vessel, whatever it’s called. A status quo I suspect you’ve been working very hard to maintain. But, since you’ve elected to come out of hiding for the moment …”
“I haven’t been hiding!” But with the exclamation came the realization and acknowledgement that she had been doing just that, avoiding this particular confrontation.
“Be that as it may,” he continued blandly, “since I now have the chance, I’d like to assuage both my curiosity and my masculine ego with a question. Do you regret what we, albeit briefly, had?”
Amanda stacked ice into her voice. “We never had anything, Makara. At least nothing that ever mattered.”
Harconan crossed his arms and leaned back against the edge of the chart table, rolling his eyes elaborately toward the overhead. “Amanda, you’re one of the most honorable and trustworthy people I’ve ever known, save in one critical area. In anything to do with yourself, you are a flagrant liar.”
Amanda slammed the pencil down. “And you are one arrogant asshole!”
He nodded. “Quite so, my dear,” he said, keeping his voce low. “But at least I’m willing to confess to it. You, on the other hand, don’t have the guts to admit you’re a liar. Not even to yourself.”
His words jolted through her like a taser shot, striking harder than mere words should. She heard an angry yip of denial and realized she was making it, her arm whipping back and then up, not in a slap but in an infuriated damaging blow, her knuckles aimed at Harconan’s vulnerable throat.
He’d been waiting for it. His hard sailor’s hand closed around her wrist, braking the punch before it could land. “The fact is that Captain Amanda Garrett thoroughly enjoyed losing control of herself. That, just for a little while, back on Pulau Piri and at Crab’s Claw, this officer and lady had a marvelous time being a pirate’s slave girl.”
The cry of denial was torn out of her just as she tore her hand out of his grip.
“That is what you really regret, isn’t it Amanda?” Harconan continued with a remorseless smile. “That and the fact that you can’t hide it from me. It’s a piece of you that I possess and that you can never get back, not even when President Kediri stands me up in front of his firing squad.”
Something broke inside her and, to her shame, it manifested in a hot silent gush of tears. “All right, all right! I’m a liar! Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes, I am.” The Raja Samudra reached into the back pocket of his dungarees and removed a clean white folded handkerchief. Very gently, he patted her tears away. “My dearest Amanda, the lies we tell ourselves are frequently the most corrosive. If you can own up to yourself, I will truly become an irrelevancy and you will be able to go on with your life – and with your big protective bull of an admiral.”
She finished wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. How in hell could Makara have known about the decision she’d already made about Elliot? “What about that piece of me you’re taking away?”
He smiled down at her. “Since you’ll be bearing off a large, bleeding chunk of my soul as well, I consider it fair exchange. Please, my queen, we both recognize that what has been is all that will ever be. Accept those memories as a momentary, pleasant insanity. Don’t muck them up with guilt.”
Oddly enough, Amanda felt the presences of Arkady and Elliot in the room with them, along with that of another who had passed through her life long before. She took a deliberate breath, releasing it slowly – and something that had slightly warped snapped back into perspective. She was wondering what words she should say next when there came a quiet rap on the briefing room door. The handle turned and Christine Rendino peered cautiously into the briefing room. “Uh, may I come in?”
“Of course, Chris,” Amanda replied, her voice perfectly level. “We were just discussing recent events and what may happen next.” Which, on consideration, was only the perfect truth.
“Oh.” The Intel looked relieved. “What have you come up with?” she asked, joining them at the chart table.
“You may expect desperation,” Harconan replied, turning to the deployed charts, his own voice not hinting at anything beyond professionalism. “I have had a degree of exposure to Merpati Ketalaman. I can tell you that he gives the impression of being a man very much in control of himself. In reality, however, I suspect he is a man who is merely afraid of not being in control.” He glanced in Amanda’s direction and one eye flicked in the briefest of winks. “But this makes him brittle. When the load grows too great on such an individual, they break. The aftermath is usually impetuous.”
“So we can expect a Hail Mary play out of Ketalaman?” Amanda said, a slight edge to her voice.
“Exactly.” Harconan’s hand swept across the chart of the archipelago. “If your intelligence is correct, the interdiction campaign is working. Kediri’s forces are gaining the initiative on Java and Ketalaman’s are losing it. It will not be in Ketalaman to fight out a war of attrition while awaiting developments. He’ll put it all in one last throw. Block that and you’ve won your war.”
“You think so?” Christine asked, dubiously. “Fa’sure, Ketalaman has shown a heck of a lot of patience and deliberation so far.”
“Quite so, my good commander,” Harconan replied. “But a man is like a ship’s mast in a typhoon. They always stand, right up until they break.”
Banda Aceh Fleet Base
0939 Hours; Zone Time, November 19, 2008
After the weeks spent in his cavern command post, the piercing brightness of the morning sun stabbed painfully at Admiral Ketalaman’s eyes.
On the long drive down the coast from his headquarters at Lake Toba, he tried to keep his focus on the trials ahead. He could see the trend developing. Kediri’s escape from Jakarta had opened the door to disaster and the outside interference of the regional intervention powers was steadily tilting the odds against the coup. Mistakes Ketalaman had counted on were not being made. Allegiances that should have been shifting were remaining fast within the Kediri government. Men he had trusted were beginning to look upon him with distrust. Defeat could be tasted in the air.
The reinforcement convoy to Java was the last realistic chance he had to regain the initiative. Ketalaman could not risk leaving its command to an unsteady subordinate. He must demonstrate his resolve. He must show that he still commanded.
Seated in the rear of his staff car, he once more closed his eyes against the brightness and tried to project coming events. It was useless. The past kept intruding. Parents long dead. Siblings distanced. Old comrades recalled. An approximation of a love affair. Memories of simpler times and simpler desires.
The supernatural still exists close to the heart of even the most modernist and pragmatic of Indonesians. These inescapable thoughts of the past seemed to be portents, dark omens against his future.
Even if there were any validity to these fears, they were irrelevant. Merpati Ketalaman had committed himself to a long, last reach for his destiny.
At Banda Aceh Fleet base, the Java convoy was loading and arming. Transports were boarding troops and supplies, the warships drawing on the dwindling munitions reserves, all vessels emptying the modest tank farm of bunker fuel.
The ten thousand men being embarked might have been called an infantry division if the loosest possible connotation of the term were to be employed. Only a single brigade, the Indonesian 4th Infantry was a fully trained and equipped combat unit. The remainder consisted of a hodgepodge of the more fanatic Islamic militia units, equipped only with small arms.
There was no commonality of force structure or of ordnance. The ad hoc chain of command was wracked by the politicking and jealousies of the various Imams. There had been no chance for the units to work up or train together. There were major insufficiencies in artillery, motor transport, command-and-control and logistics.
Still, if it could be delivered intact to the Javanese battle zone and launched as the blow of a single fist, it might be enough to shatter Kediri’s own tenuous force and win the day. Or so Ketalaman deigned to believe.
The operative words in the equation were “delivered intact”. To perform the delivery, the anti-government forces had accumulated a task group of four transports. Two were big inter-island car and passenger ferries commandeered for the cause from the PELNI State shipping line. One was a small elderly Frosch class LSM acquired by Indonesia during the mass sell-off of the East German navy after the fall of the Berlin wall.
The last was Teluk Surabaya.
She was the largest ship in the Indonesian Fleet, the flagship of the Indonesian navy, and a freak of nature. Purchased from the imploding Russian navy following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she too was an amphibious warfare vessel. For all intents and purposes, the Teluk Surabaya was an LST – but, with a displacement of fourteen thousand tons and a length of five hundred sixteen feet, she was a behemoth of the breed, over three times the size of any other beaching class amphib ever to sail. She and her sisters of the Ivan Rogov class had been built under the old school Soviet philosophy of “if it’s bigger, then it must be better.”
