Target Lock

Inside the Southern Approaches to the Sunda Strait 0100 Hours, Zone Time: August 11, 2008

Javanese dangdut pop music flowed from the speaker of the cheap tape player, the softly wailing vocal counterpointing the heavy drum rhythm. The only other sound in the night was the thump and creak of the rafted motor launches as they butted together in the low swells. Aboard the small craft, the members of the Bugis raider party each found his own way of working off his pre-assault tensions.

The younger men checked and rechecked their weapons, jacking actions open and shut, thumbing dip-spring tensions, and giving knife edges a final unneeded honing. The older men, the veterans, their arms long before made ready, sat in the darkness puffing clove kretek cigarettes. Some studied the distant city skyglow over Balembeng on the southern tip of Sumatra, remembering past raids and past glories. Others lay across the boat thwarts and gazed up at the mariner’s stars as their ancestors had done for a thousand years.

Hayam Mangkurat, the raid leader and prizemaster, sat in the stern of the lead boat and lifted a set of powerful Korean-made binoculars to his eyes and studied the running lights of the approaching freighter.

This one was nervous. It had veered sharply to the westward upon exiting from the Selat Sunda, leaving the standard shipping lanes. It was steaming hard now, hastening for the safety of the open ocean.

This captain had evaded interception twice before using these tactics, but now he had used them once too often. The eyes of the raja samudra were wide. Before Mangkurat’s clan had sailed on this raid, the sea king’s agents had whispered to them not only secrets of the freighter’s cargo but of the course it would sail and where best the strike could be made.

Carefully, Mangkurat set the binoculars aside. After a lifetime at sea and a quarter century of raiding, his night vision was still keen and his sailor’s judgment still solid. Still, it was easier to use the binoculars.

Much else was easier since the coming of the raja samudra. When he had sailed as a boy on his first raid, Mangkurat had carried nothing but a salt-rusted parang. Now there was a powerful new automatic pistol at his belt. There were new engines for the boats as well, and radios to link them together. There was food and medicine and other such luxuries for the village and money to buy peace from the polisi and military and respect from the Javanese politicians.

Most importantly, there was knowledge. Knowledge of which big ships have cargo worth claiming, and of where it could be sold for a decent profit. The sea king took his share, but the share was just for the return.

Mangkurat lifted the night glasses again. The target was holding its course and standing in closer steadily. He could make out the flash of white foam at the base of its cutwater now.

Could anything be gained by waiting further? No, it was time.

“Ayo!”

The play of the dangdut terminated abruptly. Mooring lines were cast off and the boats were shoved apart. Canvas covers were peeled back from the machine guns in the bows, and cartridge belts gleamed brassily. Electric starters whined and the primed and pre-warmed outboard engines snarled to life.