Target Lock

Inside the Southern Approaches to the Sunda Strait 2320 Hours, Zone Time: August 10, 2008

With all topside lights blacked out and with her screws turning just fast enough to maintain steerage, the USS Cunningham circled beyond the established Straits shipping channel.

Atop the cruiser’s superstructure, Stone Quillain looked down from the weatherdeck rail, his night-adapted vision making out the faint flickers of light swirling in the ocean.

The minimal wake and bow wave glowed with a thin blue-green bioluminescence as uncountable billions of minute sea creatures protested the ship’s passage through their realm. Deeper beneath the oily surface, amorphous glowing things darted and pulsed. With the passing of the sun, the beasts of the wet dark were rising into the shallows to feed.

Above the surface, there were other illuminations. A golden half moon hovered in the sky, outlining the distant, rugged mountain spine of Sumatra. The running lights of numerous coasters and small craft twinkled within the Sunda Straits themselves, and distant shore lights could be made out on both the Sumatran and Javanese sides of the passage.

Intermittently, one of the smaller vessels would approach too closely and the Duke’s engines would awake, the darkened warship turning away, slipping deeper into the night.

There was also an odd skyglow that Stone had noted but couldn’t put a name to. A pulsing orange radiance against the clouds well back up in the Sumatran mountains. Different from fire, city lights, or lightning, the Marine found it somehow strangely disturbing.

“Hello, Stone. You can’t sleep either, I see.” The top strap of the nylon rail swayed as Amanda Garrett’s weight came against it.

“Nope,” he replied, glancing across to the shadow form beside him. “It’s pretty thick belowdecks, even with the air-conditioning up. It’s a little better up here, but I sure wish the Good Lord would hurry up and open the windows, so we can get a breath of decent breathin’ air.”

“Um-hum. I know what you mean.”

They leaned there in companionable silence, listening to the soft turbine whine and wake hiss. Then, for the sake of saying something, Stone indicated the mysterious patch of skyglow he’d been watching. “Say, Skipper, you wouldn’t happen to have any idea what that might be, would you? I’ve been studying on it for a while and I’d almost swear that’s artillery fire.”

“In a way, you aren’t all that far off, Stone,” Amanda mused. “I suspect that might be a volcanic crater in eruption. They’re pretty common around here.”

Stone cocked an eyebrow. “How common?”

“Very. Indonesia is the gemstone in the Pacific ring of fire. The archipelago has over seventy recognized active volcanoes. Fifteen over there on Sumatra alone.”

“Seventy volcanoes? Skipper, you’re puttin’ me on!”

Amanda shook her head and Stone thought he caught the gleam of a smile. “Not a bit of it. According to the geologists, the Australian and Asian continental plates crashed together along here about fifteen million years ago. The resulting collision buckled up the oceanic mountain range that became the Indonesian archipelago. You can imagine the kind of energies involved. Earthquakes and volcanos aren’t natural phenomena in Indonesia: They’re a way of life.”

“I’d guess. They ever have any really big bangs around here?”

“Only the largest in human history. When Mount Tambora on Sumbawa erupted in 1815, it ejected over fifty cubic miles of volcanic materials and killed over ninety thousand people. And then there was Krakatau.”

“Uh, you mean like Krakatoa? I saw a movie about that once. Was it really that bad, or was that just Hollywood?”

“Krakatoa is the anglicized version of the Indonesian name. And no scriptwriter or special-effects man in the world could do justice to what actually happened.”

“What’s the straight dope?”

Amanda crossed her arms on the top strap of the railing and paused for a moment, marshalling the odds and ends of information she’d picked up over the years.

“Krakatau was a comparatively small volcanic islet,” she began. “However, in 1883 it went into an exceptionally violent eruptive phase. The geologists theorize that the eruptions were so furious that the volcano partially emptied the magma chamber beneath it. Then the sides of the islet either blew out or collapsed inward, permitting the ocean to pour into the very heart of the open volcanic vent.

“The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated couldn’t come close to the force of the resulting steam explosion. The entire island was vaporized. All that remained was a blast crater almost a thousand feet deep in the sea floor.

“Two-hundred-foot tidal waves radiated outward from the explosion, devastating every coastline that faced the island. A hundred and sixty towns and villages were flattened, and oceangoing steamers were tossed inland like bits of driftwood. The death toll within the archipelago was incalculable. There were over thirty thousand known casualties on the island of Java alone.

“Debris from the explosion rained down on Madagascar, over on the other side of the Indian Ocean. The sound of the blast was heard as far away as Sydney, Australia, and the tidal waves were detected in the English Channel. The concussion circled the globe three times, and for three years afterwards the world’s sunsets were blood red from the volcanic dust blasted into the upper atmosphere.”

“Lord a’mighty!” Stone was appalled and fascinated at the same time. “What happened next?”

“Krakatau went dormant for a while after the big blast, then returned to activity once more. The volcanic island rebuilt itself via a series of lesser eruptions and Anak Krakatau, the ‘Son of Krakatoa,’ rose from the sea. Today, the child bears a very strong resemblance to the parent.”

“Jesus! You mean it could happen again?”

Amanda shrugged. “I gather there’s no reason it couldn’t.”

“Uh, Skipper,” Stone asked carefully, “just where is this Krakatau place anyhow?”

Amanda pointed off the Cunningham’s starboard bow. The reflection trail from the sinking moon silhouetted a gaunt basaltic cone rising from the center of Sunda Strait, multiple steam plumes trailing from its jagged crest.

“Right over there.”