Target Lock

Java Sea, Approaching the Rass Island Group 0119 Hours, Zone Time: August 15, 2008

The golden horn of the moon dipped into shimmering sea. As it sank steadily lower, the thin scattering of clouds in the tropic night darkened, losing its reflected light.

And then it was gone.

“Right. That’s it.” Amanda turned to the cluster of officers sharing the Carlson’s portside bridge wing. “Commander Carberry, your ship’s status?”

“Ready to proceed, Captain,” the little man replied crisply. “Crew at air and sea launch stations. Ready to initiate countermeasures and hangar bay blackout.”

“And the latest from Commander Hiro?”

“He is paralleling us to the north at an eight-mile range at full stealth and limited EMCON. He reports he is ready to commence a high-speed convergence upon your command.”

“Very good, Captain. Cobra, how about you?”

The aviator was even more succinct. “I’m good. Ready to launch.”

“Remember your tasking parameters. Go in fast. Get out fast. You’re a pest, not a provocation.”

“I got the picture, ma’am. Aye, aye.”

“Steamer?”

The Sea Fighter commander settled his baseball cap lower over his eyes. “Queen of the West and Manassas are ready to start engines. Fuel blivits embarked. Recon party going aboard. We’re good to go.”

“Christine find you your initial hide?”

“Yeah, a good little nowhere up in the Laut Kecils. Nobody around for miles, crappy access, and good cover. We can get to it and get buried well before oh-light-hundred.”

“Very well. We’ll have an underway replenishment set up with Curtin by tomorrow night. You shouldn’t really need it with your blivits aboard, but I want you to go in with a maneuvering reserve, just in case.” Amanda smiled and extended a hand. “An independent command, Steamer. You won’t have a rusty old four-bar hanging over your shoulder. Good luck.”

“I don’t know, ma’am. You’re kind’ of handy to have around some times,” he replied, exchanging a brief, strong grip with her. “We’ll see you in a few days.”

“Maybe sooner than that, if we don’t pull this off. Gentlemen, let’s proceed.”

Two miles astern of the USS Carlson, Lieutenant Commander Hasan Basry, captain of the Indonesian navy frigate Sutanto, swore into his pillow as the interphone at the head of his bunk buzzed… again.

He clawed the offending instrument from its cradle. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, Captain,” the watch officer said apologetically, “but it’s the Americans. They are doing something… odd, sir.”

“They have been doing odd things ever since they left Singapore, Lieutenant. What is it now?”

“They have launched a helicopter, sir.”

“Ships that carry helicopters frequently do,” Basry snapped. “What is so unusual about this particular exercise?”

“Immediately after launching their aircraft, the Americans cut off their running lights. The amphibious ship is now running fully blacked out.”

Basry hesitated for several heartbeats. He wasn’t certain why he and his ship had been ordered to abort a portside refit to keep the Americans under surveillance. Admiral Lukisan had merely said “for reasons of national security,” a statement that covered a great deal of territory.

Just what were the Yankees up to in Indonesia’s home waters? And what about the second American vessel, the major surface combatant that supposedly was to have escorted the LPD? First it had failed to appear at Singapore, then this morning it had materialized in the middle of the Java Sea, much to the consternation of Basry’s superiors.

This evening it had vanished again, this time off of the radar screens of the naval surveillance Nomad attempting to keep it under observation. Could it be moving in?

“All right,” he said into the interphone. “I’m coming up.”

On the Carlson’s bridge, Amanda bent over the tactical display, studying the glowing graphics chart and the various position hacks like a chess master studying a game board. As per the ops plan, the Carlson was in the lead, with her shadower, the Indonesian frigate, trailing two miles astern. The Cunningham was steaming parallel to the LPD, but off to port at effective stealth range, invisible to the Indonesian’s search radar.

A single bat-shaped aircraft hack circled in a close holding pattern over the Carlson, the recently launched Wolf One.

The task group was rapidly closing with the tail end of the Rass island group, an uninhabited and nameless patch of coral and sand that would be passing to starboard at a distance of five miles.

Amanda made a final check for merchant vessels shipping. Clear within a twenty-mile range.

All was ready. She touched the mike key of her command headset. “All task group elements, this is the TACBOSS. We are at Point Item. All elements prepare for breakaway. Wolf One, you are cleared to initiate audial and visual screening.”

The Wolf One air hack fell back and occulted the symbol of the pursuing Indonesian frigate.

A hurricane blast of wind ripped across the decks of the Sutanto, and a dazzling blue white glare illuminated every inch of the frigate’s weather deck. Clutching the bridge wing rail, Commander Basry squinted into both, and was able to make out the silhouette of a Huey helicopter hovering broadside on, just off the bow of his ship.

Sidling ahead of the Indonesian vessel, the helicopter had a battery of what appeared to be aircraft landing lights aimed out of its side hatch, trained full into the eyes and night-vision systems of the bridge watch.

“What are the Americans doing, sir?” the watch officer yelled over the rotor thunder.

“Something they obviously don’t wish us to see,” Basry yelled back.

The hangar bay ventilator fans raced at full power, pumping a flood of outside air into the space, air that was greedily devoured by the gas turbines of the hovering Sea Fighters.

“Prelaunch checklists complete,” Chief Petty Officer Sandra “Scrounger” Caitlin reported from the Queen of the West’s copilot’s seat. Glancing down from the cockpit windows, she noted the bay apes dragging the last tie-down strap clear. The same was being done for the Manassas, at her spot forward of the Queen, leaving both hovercraft bobbing on their inflated plenum skirts.

“Moorings clear,” she continued. “We are free to maneuver.”

“Roger, that,” Steamer Lane replied. “Going to active station keeping.”

With one hand on the puff port controller, he held the PGAC in place against the pitch and roll of her mother ship. “Internal station status?”

“Boards green. All stations report secure and ready for sea,” Caitlin replied “Power rooms indicate they are drawing on the blivit. We got good fuel flow.”

Below, in the main hull, the other seven members of the hovercraft crew stood to at the weapons-control stations and in the power rooms. The seven Force Recon Marines and the pharmacist’s mate that made up the Queen’s share of the land recon party were strapped into the fold down benches along the bulkheads of the main bay. They shared this confined space with what resembled a gigantic gray slug.

The small Rigid Inflatable raider boat and the harpoon missile cells that usually occupied the Sea Fighters’ central bay had been unshipped and replaced with a fuel blivet, a flexible Fiberglas-and-plastic fuel bladder that effectively doubled the hovercraft’s 750-mile operational radius.

The hover commander thumbed the mike button on the air rudder control yoke. “BAYBOSS, this is Royalty. Tie-downs clear and ready to take departure.”

“BAYB0SS, this is Rebel,” Lieutenant Tony Marlin’s intent voice joined in from the Manassas. “Make that two to go.”

“BAYBOSS to hovers, acknowledged.”

Through the open cockpit side windows, the MC-1 speakers bellowed over the turbine shriek and fan moan. “Attention in the hangar bay. Stand by to launch hovercraft. All hands proceed forward of the deck safety lines. Set hangar blackout protocols. Extinguish all portable light sources. All hands go to night vision or stand fast in secure positions. Ten count to blackout… ten… nine… eight… ”

At the count of one, the hangar bay plunged into total darkness. Steamer and Scrounge flipped down the nite-brite visors of their helmets.

“Stern ramp opening.”

In the Queen’s sideview mirrors, they watched the wall of steel behind them crack open to admit the night.

“Sea Fighters ready to launch, Captain,” Carberry murmured at Amanda’s side.

“Very well,” she replied absently, intent on the developing picture on the tactical display. The angles were looking good. Very soon Steamer would have an optimum departure heading. But even though the Sea Fighters were very stealthy vehicles, they weren’t totally radar-invisible at close range. Nor was the Cunningham, should it need to be.

“Let’s take out their radars, Commander. The RBOCs now, please. Curtain pattern astern. Bring up your jammers, full spectrum.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am. Jammers coming up. Firing a pattern.”

At the aft corners of the Carlson’s deckhouse, the mortar tubes of the Rapid Blooming Overhead Chaff systems coughed hollowly. In a maneuver similar to a Fourth of July fireworks display, the charges they hurled arced high over the sea aft of the LPD. However, upon bursting, instead of a shower of multicolored stars, these charges dispersed clouds of metal foil strips.

On the bridge of the Indonesian frigate, the watch officer yelled over the aggravating hammer of Wolf One’s rotors. “Captain, look at the tactical display. The Americans are launching chaff.”

Captain Basry swore fervently and raced to the console screen.

Truly enough, a curtain of radar-jamming foil was being drawn across his ship’s line of advance, the American flagship fading from detection beyond it. Intermixed with the chaff wall came the jittering blobs and strobing effect of active radar jamming.

This was intolerable! First the Americans blind his eyes, and now his radar!

“All engines ahead flank!” Basry roared. “Close the range!”

“Chaff deployed, ma’am.”

“Very good, Commander. We have it on tactical. Good disbursement. I don’t think we’ll need another dose for the moment.”

On the Carlson’s bridge, the chaff curtain existed only as an oblong graphics box on the tactical display, showing its area of effect on the Indonesian systems. For the United States vessel, the countermeasures cloud was as transparent as glass.

Chaff’s effectiveness was dependent upon matching the length of the scattered foil strips to the wavelength of the radar being jammed. These loads had been carefully cut to leave a frequency “window” open that could be used by the U.S. systems, a window beyond the operational spectrum of the earlier-gen Indonesian radars. Much the same kind of peephole existed in the barrage of electronic noise being thrown up by the active jammers.

The Carlson was very close to the breakaway point now. But the range numbers that glowed beside the Indonesian frigate’s position hack began to flick downward. They were increasing speed, overtaking the LPD.

“Captain Carberry, all engines ahead full, and give us a second chaff launch, please.”

“Very well, ma’am. Lee helm, all engines ahead full. Make turns for twenty-five knots. CIC, countermeasures, launch RBOC pattern two.”

Time to put her knight into play. Again, Amanda keyed her headset mike. “Talk between ships, please. Commander Hiro aboard the Cunningham.”

Hiro’s voice came back a moment later. “Right here, Captain.”

“Ken, our Indonesian friend is being difficult. He’s closing with us and I don’t need him underfoot at the moment. Give him the shoulder, please. As we discussed.”

“Understood. Executing.”

On the bridge of the Cunningham, Hiro moved to stand behind the helm control stations. “Helm, come right to one nine zero, convergent course with the Indonesian. Lee Helm, all power rooms to full output. All engines ahead flank. Make turns for thirty-five knots.”

As the Cunningham’s bow started to come around, a red warning tile flashed on the helm console’s Navicom board and a computer-synthesized voice chanted from a speaker grill. “Collision bearing! Collision bearing! Collision bearing!”

Hiro leaned forward and hit the override, squelching the audile warning. “Yeah,” he murmured under his breath, “it certainly is!”

Minutes passed, and the Sutanto plowed ahead through a glittering metallic snowstorm.

“Lieutenant, have you worked through this damn crap and corruption they’re laying down yet?”

“Not yet, Captain.” The sweating radar officer looked up from where he crouched beside his senior systems operator. “The Americans continue to deploy chaff, and their active jammers keep jumping with our radar frequency shifts.”

“Keep working it. I must know what’s going on out there. Quarter master, switch to GPU navigation and watch your fathometer. We’ve got some shoals out there to port.” Basry squinted into the glare pouring in through the bridge windscreen. “Communications! Warn that damn helicopter off immediately!”

“We’ve been trying, sir,” a second junior officer called back from the radio shack aft of the wheelhouse. “We are calling on all standard channels…”

The radio officer’s voice cut off with the blaze of the floodlights. Going dark, Wolf One broke out of its holding pattern beyond the frigate’s bow. Climbing, the Super Huey started to circle overhead, the beating of its rotors still drowning out all sounds less than a shout. But just getting the night back was a relief.

Basry strove to blink the pinkish dazzle blobs from his vision. “That’s something, at any rate. Maybe now… Allah’s prophet! Hard right rudder! All engines back emergency!”

A second bank of floodlights blasted out of the darkness, these set closer to the water than those mounted on the helicopter. The running lights of a ship snapped on as well, a very large ship, very close off the Sutanto’s starboard bow. Basry caught the impression of a huge razor-edged prow looming out of the night, seeming to aim at his vessel’s vulnerable flank. Dual-toned air horns blared an imperious warning.

Without orders, the Sutanto’s quartermaster wrenched down on the horn cord and the frigate screamed in terror. Frantically the helmsman spun his brass-mounted wheel until it locked against its stops. The deck tilted as the frigate skidded into a minimum-radius turn away from the impending collision.

As the Duke pulled alongside the Indonesian man-of-war, Ken Hiro peered down from the starboard bridge wing, expertly gauging the narrow strip of water that boiled between the rails of the two warships. “Okay, helm, steady… steady… slack her off… slack her off… slack her off. .! Okay, steady as she goes….”

A mile ahead, on the bridge of the Carlson, the moment came.

“Sea Fighters, this is the TACBOSS. Launch and execute breakaway!”

Steamer Lane came back hard on the puff port controller. The Queen of the West’s forward thrusters roared, shoving the Sea Fighter backward. Her rearward motion accelerated as she slid down the Carlson’s stern ramp, traversing from the darkness of the hangar bay to the darkness of the night. With an explosion of spray, she hit the water, bucking through the turbulence of the LPD’s wake.

Steamer shifted his grip from the controller to the steering yoke. “Power!”

Scrounger Caitlin knew that her captain wanted it all. She shoved first the propeller controls, then the drive throttles, hard ahead to their stops. The airscrews, which had been feathered at idling power, angled their blades and blurred into shimmering disks within their duct shrouds. The wave crests flattened behind her under the surge of thrust, and the Queen lunged ahead, gathering speed.

Steamer sidestepped the stern of the LPD, racing the hovercraft gun boat up the left flank of the larger vessel. The Manassas followed them down the ramp a few moments later. Chasing her squadron leader, the second PGAC dropped into a line behind the Queen.

Clear of the Carlson’s bow, Steamer paid off in a wide turn, aiming the Sea Fighter column dead on toward the nameless island to port.

“Go… go… go!” Lane chanted.

Scrounger’s eyes raked across the engine readouts on her instrumentation displays. Playing the power levers the way a master pianist might play a vintage Steinway, she kept the temperature bars well up in the yellow, not quite letting them touch red.

A turbine tech by training, Scrounger had come up from the Queen’s power rooms. She’d earned her nickname primping and petting those big Lycomings, using her deft skill at “midnight requisitioning” to acquire the best of the best for them, just for moments like this.

The wave patterns flickered past in Steamer Lane’s nite-brite visor, vanishing under the Sea Fighter’s blunt nose. The Queen was running balls to the wall, gobbling the range to her island target.

“Terry, gimme the MMS.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Ensign Terrence Wilder, the Queen’s executive officer, barked from the navigator’s station. “Activating mast-mounted sighting system… low-light television is imaging on your primary screen now, sir.”

Both Lane and Caitlin grinned to themselves, even under the tension of the moment. Terry Wilder was new, both to the fleet and to the Queen. They’d both been bringing him along with how things were done in the gunboat Navy, but Wilder still suffered from Annapolis flashbacks in times of stress.

Flipping up his nite-brite visor, Lane swapped the fuzzy green luminosity of the AI2 system for the sharply defined gray tones of the more powerful low-light television pod atop the Queen’s snub mast.

The nameless landfall lay a few thousand yards ahead now, a low, dark mass rising only a few feet above the sea. More important, however, was the wavering white line even closer, the surf breaking over the reefs that circled the islet.

As a true hovercraft, the Queen of the West drew no water at all. But coming in as she was, like a bat out of hell, snagging a plenum-chamber skirt on a protruding coral head could prove catastrophic. Lane rocked his control yoke, fishtailing the Sea Fighter and swinging his camera arc, watching for the dark line in the pale surf that would denote a “shoulder” of a reef break, a tongue of deeper, smoother water showing the way through the jagged teeth of the coral.

He relied not on any training provided by the Navy but on the wave honed instincts gained in an adolescence spent surf-bumming up and down the California coast. Those instincts had served him well before; they did again now.

“Yeah, I got it! We got a hole! Rebel, Rebel, this is Royalty! Hey, Tony, maintain line astern! Follow me in!”

The Queen screamed through the gap in the reef at almost seventy knots, the Manassas hot on her tail. Sand loomed ahead.

“Snowy! All back! Reverse props!”

Scrounger Caitlin slammed the propeller controls to reverse, inverting the blade angles on the airscrews, changing them from a driving “push” to a braking “pull.” Lane shifted his right hand to the T-grip puff port controller in the center of the console, shoving it full forward. The bow puff ports, vents in the front edge of the plenum chamber, snapped open, the released jets of high-pressure air serving as retro-rockets to help slow the hurtling Sea Fighter.

The backing propellers and ports wouldn’t quite be enough, however.

Lane mashed down the interphone button on the control yoke. “Hang on!” he bellowed to all hands.

The decelerating Sea Fighter hit the beach in an explosion of spray and a tornado of sand. A low dune at the head of the beach launched the huge war machine into the air for a breathless, weightless second before they crashed into an inland brush patch. The Manassas plowed to a halt alongside the Queen a moment later.

Without requiring the order, Scrounger hit the kill switches, letting the Sea Fighter settle off cushion.

“Yeah, well, we’re here,” Lane commented.

On the tactical display, Amanda looked on as the microforce reached the islet, the faint skin tracks of the Sea Fighters disappearing with the land return.

“Combat Information Center, we have breakaway. How did that look to you?” she inquired.

“Looked good, ma’am. No RCM reflection on the Indonesian radar frequencies, and except for a degree of screaming about being run down by the crazy Americans, we have no radio traffic out of the frigate. No indication they spotted the launch. Our guys are outa here.”

“Very good, CIC. All task group element, breakaway achieved. Secure chaff and jamming. Wolf One, you may recover at your discretion. All ships return to standard cruise protocols and proceed on course. Well done.”

On the bridge of the Cunningham, Ken Hiro watched the Sutanto stagger away into the darkness. Like a cow pony with a recalcitrant calf, the Duke had herded the smaller Indonesian vessel through a full 180- degree turn.

Hiro took a deep, deliberate breath. The Lady still could make things interesting, even when she wasn’t in the captain’s chair. “Quartermaster, secure the searchlights. Helm, commence station keeping on the Carlson. Lee helm, all engines ahead standard.”

“This is intolerable!” Basry raged, stalking the Sutanto’s bridge. “Intolerable. Radio room, get me the American commander immediately! I will demand an apology for this outrage!”

“Captain…”

“Immediately!”

“But Captain,” the communications officer pleaded, “we already have a message from the American task group commander, designated for you personally.”

Basry paused in his stalking. “What? What does he say?”

“Uh, ‘To the commanding officer Indonesian warship Sutanto. We regret that you elected to close the range with our formation at an inopportune moment. We were conducting an antimissile exercise with which you accidentally became involved. Please accept our strongest possible apologies for your dis-accommodation.’”

The communications officer looked up from the message flimsy. “Signature Captain Amanda Lee Garrett, USN, Commander, Sea Fighter Task Force.”

Captain Basry opened his mouth, then shut it again as he realized he had nothing to say. A woman. On top of everything else, it had been done to him by a woman.

Basry had no idea of just what all had happened here, or why, or what he had not seen. There was only the deepening suspicion he had been made a fool of.

Powered down and silent, the Queen and the Manassas lay huddled on the nameless islet. Peering seaward over the low dunes, their MMS systems tracked the departure of the trio of larger ships. Presently, when the task force and its shadower were out of sight beyond the horizon, they would light off their turbines again and take their own departure. From here they would make their way to another hide on yet another nameless islet, dashing and crouching their way across the Indonesian archipelago like a pair of infantrymen sprinting from cover to cover.

This was what they had been made for.

For the moment, though, their crews and passengers could take a breather and a cold can of Coke be sipped. All hatches and cockpit windows gaped wide to admit the errant, cooling puffs of the night breeze and the sound of the breaking waves.

“Real interesting departure, Snowy,” Steamer Lane said softly.

Scrounger Caitlin’s attention quirked at the murmur. The Skipper did that every now and then. Just like he’d back-slip and use Miss Banks’s name every now and again when things got hot.

Ensign Sandra “Snowy” Banks had been the Queen’s first exec, and she’d ridden right seat for Mr. Lane for a lot of sea miles. That had been back when, before West Africa. Before they’d had to send Miss Banks back to her warrior’s rest in that quiet St. Louis cemetery. The skipper still remembered, though. Chief Caitlin did too.

Sometimes she wasn’t sure if it was just a slip of the tongue or if maybe Mr. Lane really was talking to the Queen’s old exec. Scrounger didn’t mind particularly either way. In fact, it would be kind of nice if Miss Banks could drop by every now and again, just so she could see that everything was being kept shipshape on the old Queen.

Scrounger smiled into the dark. “We’re taking care of business, ma’am,” she whispered.

“That was a most interesting evolution, Captain,” Commander Carberry commented with grave formality. With the old school’s dread of commenting on a superior officer’s performance, it was as close as he could come to a compliment.

Amanda gave an acknowledging tilt of her head in the screenglow. “The task force performed quite well. I’m pleased. When should we be in at Benoa Harbor? Around ten hundred?”

The chunky amphib commander didn’t even glance up at the navigation display. “We will be tying up at ten hundred hours exactly, ma’am.”

Amanda suppressed a smile. She would be willing to wager that the lines would be going over the side within one minute of that call. “Very well, then, I’ll stand down for a while. Keep me notified of any new developments.”

“Understood, Captain. Will do.”

Carberry faced forward, intent on the night beyond the bow of his ship. Amanda took a final look around the quiet, red-lit orderliness of the bridge and started aft.

A shadow detached from the bulkhead near the entryway. “Lucas couldn’t say it, but I can. A slickly executed double-shuffle, Amanda. I bet that poor bastard of a Parchim skipper is still wondering what hit him.”

“Hmm, that will just make him that harder to fool next time, Admiral.” Amanda replied. “Remember, sooner or later we’re going have to sneak Steamer and his gang back aboard again.”

“Sufficient is the evil unto the day, Captain. We’ll worry about that later. In the meantime, would you care to join me for midrats in the ward room before you turn in?”

“I’d love to, sir. Being sneaky gives me an appetite.”

“Midrats,” or midnight rations, is the fourth meal of the day for the United States Navy, either a final settling bite before turning in, or a starting jolt to the blood sugar, depending upon which end of the watch bill one is posted at.

With the Carlson standing down from action stations, a dozen other task force officers were present in the wardroom, making their selections from the trays of sandwiches, fruit, and fresh baked goods set out along the serving board.

A small napkin-covered plate had been placed behind the larger sandwich tray with a neatly lettered RESERVED FOR THE TACBOSS card set atop it. Amanda flipped the napkin back with appreciative anticipation. Welch’s grape jelly and Jif extra crunchy peanut butter on French bread. With the telepathy required of a truly first-class member of his rating, the Carlson’s senior mess steward had one of her favorites waiting.

“Coffee, milk, or bug juice?” MacIntyre inquired from the beverage dispenser.

“Milk, please. A tall cold one,” Amanda replied. “Anything else would be like serving red wine with fish. Hasn’t your daughter ever taught you the proper aesthetics of peanut butter and jelly?”

“She’s never had the chance, I suppose,” MacIntyre replied, filling a glass for Amanda. “You know how it is with the trade.”

“Very much so,” she replied, accepting the beverage. “How are things going with Judy?”

“Fine.” A hint of enthusiasm crept into Maclntyre’s voice. Amanda had learned he enjoyed speaking about his “Daddy’s girl.”

“She’s getting on well at school, her grades are good, and she’s growing into quite the young lady. She’s going to be as beautiful as her mother.”

MacIntyre tossed a roast beef on whole wheat onto his own plate and hesitated. “That’s the one regret I’ve ever had with the Navy. I’ve missed so much with my kids, with Judy and with her brothers. Sometimes I worry about their forgiving me for being gone so often.”

He glanced at her. “You were a Navy brat, Amanda. How did you take it with Wils?”

Amanda tilted her head in consideration. “Not too bad, really,” she said after a moment. “But then, one of the first lessons my parents taught me was that you have to be willing to share. I also learned early on that I had just about the bravest, most loving, most wonderful dad in the whole world. When you’re that lucky, you should be willing to be generous with it.”

They moved to the nearest of the tables and took seats across from each other.

Amanda smiled at MacIntyre. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Judy is a sensible young woman and she didn’t seem to be the stingy type to me.”

“No, she isn’t. Not a bit of it. But still…” MacIntyre hesitated for a second. “Amanda, could I ask you a big favor?”

“Of course. What is it, sir?”

She was intrigued to find her solid and craggy CO looking faintly embarrassed. “Maybe when we get back from this cruise, you could take Judy somewhere and talk to her about me being gone so much. And maybe some other things, too, the kind of topics a sixteen-year-old girl might want to talk about to another woman instead of her father. I’d appreciate it,” the admiral finished gruffly, “and I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather ask to do it.”

“I’ll be happy to talk with Judy anytime, Admiral. I’m flattered you’d ask me.” And Amanda genuinely was. “I will admit I haven’t had much hands-on experience with that kind of thing, but I’ll do my best. Tell me more about her.”

Their conversation progressed little further that night, however. Christine Rendino literally staggered into the compartment, her appearance bringing Amanda and MacIntyre both to their feet.

“Chris, my God, are you all right?”

“Oh, sure, Boss Ma’am. I’m fine.” Her face wan and her voice hoarse, Christine collapsed in the chair across from them. “I just need to toke a few tanna leaves and I’ll be good to go again.”

Reaching over, Chris procured and drained Amanda’s glass of milk, then let her head thump down on her crossed arms. “It took us eleven straight hours, but Tran and I finally did it. We busted the prizemaster,” she murmured.

Midrats were forgotten. Amanda, MacIntyre, and Christine withdrew at once to the security of Amanda’s flag quarters.

“You’ve got him talking?” Amanda demanded as the soundproof door closed behind them.

“At the moment, we can’t get him to shut up.” Christine dropped onto the couch, rubbing her eyes. “The poor schmo didn’t have a clue about effective anti-interrogation techniques. He tried to play the strong and silent type, and those guys are a cinch to break down. You just have to stay on ’em long enough.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Commander,” MacIntyre said, leaning back against Amanda’s desk edge, “but if this interrogation’s put you in this kind of shape, what’s left of him? We are dealing with a foreign national here. One that we’re going to have to give back sooner or later.”

Christine grinned feebly. “We never laid a glove on him, sir. The last thing you want in a situation like this is to reenforce an anger-defiance scenario or to give your subject a solid pain point to focus on.

“While we had him on the Duke, we hit this guy with an isolation and temporal disorientation program to soften him up. Then, when we got him here aboard the Carlson, we hammered him with a repetitive, sequential-point interrogation with positive feedback anytime we gained ground.”

“Hmm,” MacIntyre grunted. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Amanda looked at her friend with concern. “Are you going to have to go through this with all of the prisoners?”

“Oh, no, not even close, Boss Ma’am. We can pick keywords like place and personal names out of the prizemaster’s interrogation — his is Hayam Mangkurat by the way — and use them against the other prisoners. Once we can show that somebody else has already blabbed, the others should follow along pretty easily. Getting the first one to talk is the toughie.”

“Will he recover?” Amanda asked.

“Oh, sure,” Christine stretched. “We’ll give him his day-and-night cycle back and he’ll sleep it all off in a couple of days. He’ll be fine.”

“At least until his boss and the rest of his clan figure out that he spilled,” MacIntyre commented grimly.

Christine waved the thought away. “No problem. I’m keeping the other prisoners isolated and under temporal disorientation until after the first round of interrogations. The way I’m going to double-shuffle the questioning, nobody’s ever going to know who talked first. Not even old Mangkurat himself. Piece of cake.”

“This time I’ll take your word for it.” Amanda crossed to the couch and tilted her friend’s head back, studying the shadows under her eyes. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just hit him with a dose of scopolamine?”

“Babble juice does just that, makes ’em babble. When you break ’em down the old-fashioned way, you get to the straight skinny faster.” Christine collapsed back on the couch, a faint smile on her face. “One thing’s for sure: That Inspector Tran really knows his stuff. It’s a real frickin’ joy interrogating someone with him.”

Amanda and MacIntyre exchanged glances. They both had come to rely on and implicitly trust Christine Rendino. Each, in their own way, had become very fond of the little blonde. But they both held to the old line officer’s adage that intels were always just a little bit strange.

“What have you got out of him so far?” MacIntyre inquired.

“That whoever is running this show, be it Harconan or whoever, has this place organized, ” Christine said emphatically. “Hayam Mangkurat’s ship is one of half a dozen raider schooners that stage out of a Bugis colony on the western peninsula of Sulawesi. It’s a village north of Parepare on Mandar Bay called Adat Tanjung. Apparently it’s a major pirate port and operating base, but if we went storming in there tomorrow, we wouldn’t find a single trace of a stolen cargo, an out-of-place weapon, or even a single rupiah that couldn’t be accounted for.”

Amanda sank down on the couch beside Christine. “How are they pulling it off, Chris?”

“They take advantage of the fact that there are about ten gajillion little islands, bays, and inlets out there, many of which have never been accurately charted. Apparently nothing incriminating is ever brought into the village area itself The raider pinisi are decontaminated before they return to base. All weapons are secured in cache sites, and the hijacked cargoes are delivered to prearranged dropoff points. The pirates themselves never see who recovers the loot.

“A reverse procedure occurs when they need to re-outfit. They’re given a pickup point along the coast or on a nearby island, and the gear they need — weapons, ammo, engine parts, whatever — is sitting there under camouflage, waiting for them. They never see who delivers it.”

“How’s this all coordinated?” MacIntyre demanded. “How do they set the pickup and delivery points?”

“It’s so ingenious it hurts, Admiral, sir,” Christine replied. “Every raider skipper is given two things: a garden-variety digital wristwatch with a month’s memory, and a hand-held Global Positioning Unit — two items that wouldn’t arouse any suspicion at all on an interisland trader. Each skipper is also given a place around his home village area where he leaves his wristwatch and GPU unit at a specific time once a month. When he picks them up again, the watch has been programmed with a set of pickup and delivery times and the GPU with drop and recovery point coordinates. There’s also a block of raiding intelligence on ships and high value cargoes passing within a given range of the clan villages. The raider captains themselves divvy up the pie according to what’s within their capabilities. The only decrees from the sea king are fair shares for all and no poaching in another clan’s territory. Break the rules and the support stops coming.”

Christine smothered a yawn with her palm. “The raider captains and the village elders all know that one of their number is the chosen agent of the raja samudra, but nobody knows who. It’s a classic cell security system. You can’t leak what you don’t know. There’s no overt chain of command to follow to the higher echelons of the organization.”

“How do the pirates get their payback?” Amanda asked.

“Any number of different ways; through material, for one: The pirate skipper leaves a wish list at his monthly drop, and the gear he needs is at his next pickup point.

“As far as cash goes, Indonesia isn’t all that primitive anymore. It’s the most natural thing in the world for the skipper of a pinisi to have a bank account on one of the interisland chain banks. Intermittently money is deposited in that account under his name, random amounts at erratic intervals. Money that can be explained away as a good haul of fish or a rich charter.”

“And what about those Bugis aid programs Harconan sponsors?” MacIntyre added. “What do you want to bet that the clans that most support the sea king get the plumpest support packages?”

“No bets taken,“Amanda replied. “And remember those so-called pirate raids on Harconan’s shipping line? That will be another mode of pay off and resupply he can use while maintaining the front of being just another harassed shipowner.”

She crossed to the porthole and stared out into the night. “He’s careful, Admiral, and so cunning it hurts. He’s subtly herding the Bugis clans under his control, building an association between the raja samudra and wealth, comfort, empowerment, and dignity. And so far he’s asked for little in return. Someday, though, he will. He’ll lead, and they’ll follow. The question is, where?”

MacIntyre gave an ironic chuckle. “It’s grown a bit from a satellite recovery mission, hasn’t it.”

“Too true, sir. Sometimes you have to tip the rock over before you can see what-all’s hiding underneath. I think the secretary of state and the National Command Authority will agree that this is a very definite and growing freedom-of-the-seas concern.”

“Tomorrow I’ll get on the horn to Foggy Bottom and brief the secretary of state on the new permutations we’re kicking up out here. I think he’ll agree this is very much a case of ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.’ Until we at least develop a clearer image of how far this plan of Harconan’s has progressed. After that, we’ll see who gets to throw the monkey wrench into the works, us or the Indonesians.”

“Let’s hope they’ll believe us when the time comes.” Amanda turned from the port and came to lean back against the desk beside MacIntyre. “At any rate, we have a better idea of what to look for now, and we know where to aim Steamer and the microforce. Maybe they can find us the next step up the ladder.”

A soft snore came from the direction of the office couch. Collapsed in an inelegant but comfortable posture, Christine Rendino sprawled, asleep.

Amanda and the admiral swapped grins. “That reminds me”— Amanda lowered her voice to a whisper—“we’d all better get our beauty rest. We’ve got a party to go to tomorrow night.”