Target Lock

Banda Sea, Below the Bomberai Peninsula 0717 Hours, Zone Time: August 23, 2008

A kiss and a cupped hand over her right breast brought Amanda awake the next morning.

The bunk in the schooner’s master cabin was wider and equipped with a better mattress. Amanda had enjoyed both amenities without shame, just as for long hours she had savored the fiery lovemaking of Makara Harconan.

She had allowed herself to be carried here the night before, surrendering after another round of perfunctory protests.

She returned the kiss and intimate caress, opening her eyes to Harconan’s soft chuckle. “Good morning,” he whispered, leaning in over her. “Is being a captive all that bad?”

“I’ll let you know after I see what breakfast is like.”

He laughed again and drew back from the bunk. Harconan had apparently been up and about for some time. He’d shaved and was clad in light khaki trousers and a short-sleeved military-cut shirt. Crossing to a wall locker, he removed a similar set of clothing.

“Here,” he said, tossing the garments across to Amanda. “We’re not going to have to be quite so security-conscious presently. I think you’ll find these a bit more comfortable than a sarung, although you did look most charming yesterday.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied, sitting up to catch the clothing. “Uh, excuse me, but how about underwear?”

“Women are never satisfied. You could be grateful that I was able to find pants and shirt aboard in your size. I might have decided to leave you in that sarung or, better yet, in just a pair of these.” He flipped her sandals onto the deck beside the bunk.

Amanda softened her voice and looked away as she slipped the shirt on. “Excuse me, I forgot my place as your prisoner.”

Harconan hesitated, then crossed to the bunk. Sitting on its edge, he slipped his arm around her. “I rather wish you would, Amanda. I wish that, for the next few days, you might consider yourself a guest of the Bugis people rather than a prisoner.”

“I believe Saddam Hussein once used the same line.” Keeping her eyes averted, Amanda could only hope she was not overplaying her role in either direction. With her strategy set, she must not seem to give ground too readily; yet on the other, she must appear to be vulnerable to a seduction over to Harconan’s side.

She felt Harconan squeeze her shoulders. “Amanda, please, there are events taking place here that go far beyond piracy and the loss of your satellite. Things are going to change in this part of the world. For the sake of your nation and mine, I ask you only for an open mind.”

Amanda counted to three and hesitantly looked back into Harconan’s face. “Well, it never hurts to listen.”

“It doesn’t. Now, finish getting dressed, and hurry; there is something you’ll want to see. This morning you’ll breakfast in the stronghold of the sea king.”

With a final smile and a kiss on her forehead, be departed.

A bolt was still thrown on the other side of the cabin door, and Amanda sensed the presence of a guard in the passageway.

So far, Amanda mused as she pulled on her slacks, her act was holding her audience. Or at least to the extent that Harconan was willing to maintain his own facade.

Or could it be more than a facade?

As in her old cabin, a small salt-clouded mirror was bolted to one bulk head. Amanda looked into it, still mildly startled at the dark-haired visage that looked back. She studied the high-cheekboned face with its start of horizon crows’-feet at the corner of the eyes. She acknowledged being reasonably good-looking and she’d been exceptionally fortunate in having some very attractive and dynamic men in her life, but she couldn’t see how this visage could ever be a valid justification for the launching of a thousand ships. She couldn’t see it, but then, there was no accounting for taste.

This was a duty quite different from any other she’d ever been called on to perform before. She had an instinctive dislike for both lying and for using a personal relationship in this way, even with a foe like Harconan. Stark feminine and military practicality pushed that aside, however.

Harconan had chosen the tune, but she would interpret the dance in her own way. If it required that she lie in his arms and accept his frankly delicious passion, so be it. If, for the moment, all she could do was to serve as a distraction, drawing Harconan’s time and focus away from his confrontation with the task force, so be it. She would fight with whatever was in the shot locker.

One factor that helped keep the taste of betrayal out of her mouth was Makara’s apparent assumption that she, Captain Amanda Lee Garrett, USN, could be seduced away from her life’s worth of duty to her nation and the Navy.

She arched an eyebrow in the mirror. Sorry, darling, it’s very nice. But every man I’ve ever met has one.

She found a rubber band suitable for binding her hair back. She did appreciate this offering of western-style clothing, though. But did he mean that deck security was no longer so critical?

She slipped her feet into the sandals and knocked on the louvered cabin door. Her old friend with the Sterling machine pistol pulled the bolt and fell back.

It was a dazzlingly bright morning, with the rising sun streaking across the oil-smooth surface of the sea. The bow wave boiled under the upswept stem of the pinisi, the spray kicking wide. The coaster was driving hard, its powerful diesel hammering at what must be close to full power. As Amanda came on deck, she couldn’t help but look aft for any sign of possible pursuit. There was none, the sea and sky being devoid of any other traffic.

The pinisi was standing in toward a low green coast that extended out to the horizon mists to the eastward. Well inland, a cloud-capped mountain range, massive even by Indonesian standards, reared into the sky, and Amanda caught a hint of earth, corruption, and growing things on the wind.

New Guinea. It had to be.

Shading her eyes with her hand, Amanda could make out no sign of human habitation along the shore. There was, however, a narrow cape extruding from the bulk of the coastline. The coaster seemed to be steering for the tip of this headland.

Patiently her guard stood back on the deck, the Sterling casually aimed at the small of her back. Amanda continued up the exterior ladder to the schooner’s wheelhouse.

Harconan was present, along with the Bugis skipper manning the wheel. Some of the other bronze-skinned crewmen were working on deck, rolling the tarpaulins off the deck cargo and preparing to clear the forward deck hatches.

“A beautiful morning,” Harconan commented.

“It’s going to be a hot one, though.”

“They all are here. You’ll get acclimated.”

Amanda casually made her way to the port side of the wheelhouse. Looking forward, she checked to see if last night’s deliberate oil stain stood out against the accidental deck scarring.

And that was another problem. From the look of things, they were getting ready to work cargo. Would they pass off one empty oil drum as a routine shipping loss, or might somebody figure it to be something else?

She shot a glance at Harconan. Makara was not stupid, but then, what she had tried with the oil was so totally off the wall that it should never occur to him.

Unfortunately, it might not occur to anyone in the task force either.

“We seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere,” she commented, probing.

“Quite so. We have an appointment to not keep with one of your ocean surveillance satellites.”

Amanda’s brow knit. “You have an orbital traffic schedule for our recon sats?”

Harconan lifted his hands and gave a boyish grin. “What can I say: I have friends in high places. One of your Keyhole spy satellites will be coming over our horizon in perhaps another forty-five minutes. Best we’re out of sight by then.”

“That’ll be a trick.”

“One of many I possess. Watch and be amazed, my beautiful Amanda. I’m proud of this.”

The tip of the cape grew steadily closer. Amanda could make out towering black lava cliffs with the distinctive columnar pattern of water cooled basalt and obsidian, the facings at least three times the height of the schooner’s masts. Another mast height of verdant jungle growth topped the cliffs, while waves broke to white foam at their feet.

As the range continued to close, Amanda could make out the moss streaks on the stone and the giant ferns overhanging the cliff edge. She frowned as she also made out the swirl of the sea around jagged lava outcroppings at the cliff base. They were working in fast and close, and this pinisi didn’t seem to run to accessories such as a fathometer.

“Pardon me for asking you your business, Makara, but how much water do we have under us?”

He chuckled. “Enough for a supertanker. There’s an almost sheer dropoff around the cape to a five-hundred-foot bottom.”

She shook her head, her mariner’s instincts kicking in. “It would be hell to be caught off of this thing in a bad easterly. No holding ground for anchors. If you didn’t have the power to haul off shore, you’d be finished.”

“Not if you know the secret, Amanda. Watch.”

The pinisi skipper was paying off, cutting across the tip of the head land. As he did so, the stone cliffs seemed to move, to gape silently open. It was a startling effect until one realized it was an optical illusion.

The tip of the cape was actually bifurcated into two smaller peninsulas, a narrow inlet curving in between them. The cliffs on either side of the inlet were of uniform height and coloration: Given a little distance and heat shimmer, the passage between them was all but invisible from sea level.

The Bugis vessel was slowing and nosing into the inlet now, its skipper lifting one hand from the wheel to sound the air-horn in a sharp long-short-long.

“There’s plenty of water here as well. We’re in a dredged channel.”

“A dredged channel. Who dredged it, and why?”

Harconan only smiled.

The passage might be four hundred feet wide, the channel itself extending perhaps a quarter mile into the heart of the peninsula before coming to a dead end at yet another cliff. The muttering idle of the schooner’s engines reverberated between the inlet’s walls, and the muggy heat was magnified with the loss of the sea breeze. Lost also was the smell of the sea, replaced totally by the musty organics of the landside jungle.

Amanda looked up from the open wheelhouse windows and studied the looming cliffs. She started as a human figure seemed to materialize on cliff edge, dispassionately looking down at the passing ship.

He wasn’t Bugis. Amanda could tell that even from here. He was tall and slender and almost as dark as the lava rock of the cliffs, a Melanesian, one of the true New Guinea natives. He appeared naked save for a bandolier and an automatic rifle.

So, Harconan and his pirates had land-based allies.

As her perception adapted to the terrain, she began to make out other irregularities along the cliff edge: stacked lava-rock fortifications, deeply concealed in the vegetation, and the telltale straightness of gun barrels under camouflage netting.

“Look ahead.” It was a two-word command from Harconan.

Amanda obeyed, glancing forward. And the hair on the back of her neck stood up as again the rock began to move.

Once more it was an optical illusion. This time a man-made one. Beneath a rocky overhang at the head of the inlet, the “cliffside” was parting like a theater curtain.

It was a curtain — a huge, masterfully painted camouflage tarpaulin retracting on a set of powered overhead tracks. Its parting revealed a rectangle of shadow marked with sparks of artificial light.

As the schooner drew closer, Amanda began to make out shapes within the shadow.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she murmured. “That’s a ship in there!”

“Very much of a ship.” Harconan agreed.

No mere pinisi, either, but at least three hundred feet of modern oceangoing transport. Amanda could make out a massive slab-sided stern house, the stern drive-through gate of an LST- or LSM-type amphib, and a distinctive flat-topped bow structure.

“The MV Harconan Flores, I presume,” Amanda said with rueful respect. “No wonder we couldn’t find her anywhere.”

Harconan rested his hand on her shoulder. “You didn’t know the right rocks to turn over.”

The radar mast had been folded flat to permit the ship’s entry into the cavern. Amanda noted another alteration as well — a restoration, actually. The ex-East German amphib’s gun turrets had been remounted on their hardpoints. Twin 37mm autocannon stood bore-sighted down the inlet approaches.

The pinisi slid into the shadow of the cavern. Looking overhead, Amanda could make out a network of rusted cross girders helping to support the lava-rock ceiling. The cavern was apparently a combination of man-made and natural work, a sea cave almost as large as the Sea Lion Caves of the Oregon coast.

Wooden docking piers ran down either side of the cavern. The pilings were dark and ancient, but the deck planking showed the golden sheen of new wood. The Harconan Flores was moored on the right-hand dock, leaving a gap adequate for the pinisi to fit between its steel hull and the lefthand pier.

A second schooner already lay alongside that dock, leaving space astern for Amanda and Harconan’s vessel. In a masterful display of ship handling, the Bugis skipper worked his craft into the remaining cramped slot. With a final burst of reversing power, he rang her down and brought her to a halt with her bowsprit overhanging the stern castle of the craft ahead and the flank of his ship just brushing the pier fenders. Mooring lines were passed off between the pinisi’s deckhands and the pier-side stevedores.

There were several dozen people visible within the cavern confines. Bugis, darker Melanesians, and even a few paler-skinned Caucasians. Cargo was being unloaded from the other docked schooner, deck work and maintenance was under way aboard the Flores, and a number of heavily armed guards prowled in the shadows. A sandbagged emplacement also stood at the head of the left-side pier. Amanda recognized the quad .50- caliber barrels of an old American-made M-55 antiaircraft mount supplementing the Flores’s guns in the defense of the stronghold.

The coaster’s diesels clattered to a stop. Replacing the sound was the grinding whine of electric motors drawing the camouflage curtain closed, walling out the daylight. A chill touched Amanda as the cavern basalt leached the warmth out of the puff of tropic air that had entered with the pinisi.

“I am impressed, Makara,” she said softly. “This is incredible. An old Japanese installation, isn’t it?”

He nodded in the half-illumination of the cave’s scattered work lights. “It was intended as a submarine pen but it was never used as such. The cape was cut off and isolated during the Allied counterinvasion. It was forgotten by the Japanese and never discovered by your forces. Come, let me show you around. The story is more incredible than you could even imagine.”

They descended from the wheelhouse to the schooner’s deck, Amanda’s guard still trailing them wordlessly. A portable power crane had already moved into position at dockside and the first slingload of fuel drums was being lifted off the pinisi’s deck.

Harconan swept his hand toward the landing ship moored at the opposing dockside. “I’ll have us moved into the master’s cabin of the Flores tonight. Electric lights, a shower, and all the hot water you wish — and a real bed. Captain Onderdank won’t be pleased, but after all, I am the owner.”

“It sounds very nice, Makara.” Amanda hooked her thumb back over her shoulder at her guard. “Will he be standing behind me in the shower too?”

Harconan grimaced and spoke a quick phrase to the guard. The seaman uncocked and slung his machine pistol and withdrew.

“I gave you my parole, Makara.” Amanda didn’t push to the point of trying to sound hurt, but she did soften her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“No, you are not. You are literally at the end of the world here, Amanda. Above and beyond my garrison here, you have better than a hundred kilometers of lethally inhospitable jungle between you and the nearest civilization. You wouldn’t last a day.”

Gauging carefully, she hardened her response. “I said I gave you my parole.”

He sighed. “You have my apologies. But please recall your own rather formidable reputation.”

“Well, I suppose you have a point there. But I assure you, I’m not Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.” With ground won and with a hint more freedom of action gained, she disengaged blades with a smile. “Now, what’s the story about this place?”

“Ah, as I said. the Japanese engineering unit constructing this facility was apparently cut off in 1943. Yet, they continued to work, constructing the tunnel complex and enlarging the main cavern, awaiting the day when they would reestablish contact with other Imperial Japanese forces.”

Genuinely interested, Amanda listened as they descended the gangway to the cave-side pier.

“As far as I have been able to tell,” Harconan continued, “they never learned the war ended. They just kept building and waiting.”

“You mean they refused to give up even after the Japanese surrender, like the holdouts on Guam and in the Philippines?” She let her eyes play across the stack of cases on the pier that had been unloaded from the other schooner. Rifle cases maybe. And the labeling on them was either French or Belgian. And that was a stack of mortar base plates.

“Apparently they never even heard of the surrender,” Harconan continued, “or they refused to believe it. There were a hundred and fifty men in the garrison, and they stayed on under Imperial military discipline, their ranks thinning out slowly under starvation and disease. A few desertions took place, but none apparently ever made it out.”

“How long?” she inquired, looking up at the shadowed cavern roof with new respect for its builders.

“I found the commanding officer’s log in a footlocker in what must have been his quarters in one of the lateral tunnels. The date of the last entry translated as March 17, 1979. He and four others were left and he was dying. His last words were an apology to the Emperor for his weakness.”

“That was a soldier.”

“He was,” Harconan agreed. “I’ve preserved that log. One day, when it is possible, I will see that it is returned to his family. Such devotion deserves honor.”

Amanda found that she could honestly give Harconan’s hand a squeeze after that. There was so very much they stood at odds over, but he was right: There were also things that they could agree on as well.

The pier ended at a broad shelf cut out of the living rock that extended across the full width of the cavern head. The bow boarding ramp of the Harconan Flores had been lowered and rested on this shelf. Beyond the LSM’s ramp, a large tentlike affair had been deployed. It glowed green, bright internal lighting burning through the thin fabric of its structure.

“Come,” Harconan said. “It’s time you had a look at what brought you here.”

Air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and air-filtration units rumbled softly as they approached the structure, and Amanda realized that she was looking at an ad hoc “clean room,” a contained and sterile artificial environment keeping at bay the hostile natural elements of the cavern.

Harconan opened the zippered door of a small side compartment.

Within was a bulging wall of transparent plastic and INDASAT 06.

Amanda could see now that it wasn’t a “tent” in a classic sense but rather a positive-pressure inflatable structure. The pirated spacecraft lay cradled on a white painted lowboy trailer within this protective cocoon. A score or more of the service and access panels gaped open in its reentry scoured outer shell, revealing gleaming systems and experiment bays. Half a dozen men clad in green surgical scrubs and white gauze masks worked around the massive lozenge-shaped hull, like coroners conducting an autopsy on a beached whale.

Even with their faces covered, Amanda had little difficulty matching the men to their names and photos she’d seen in the NAVSPECFORCE database. The two Asians would be Rei and Wa, the representatives from the Korean combine; the two Arabs must be Kalil and Hammik from the Gulf states. And the single East Indian and Slav would be Sonoo and Valdechesfsky for the Indian outfit.

It was Sonoo who noticed the presence of the two observers. He heaved his portly bulk up from behind the laptop he’d been addressing on a field desk and crossed to the plastic containment window. He gave a quick, nervous nod and spoke in a precise but accented English. “Mr. Harconan, it is good to see you again. Good. Have you received word yet from my superiors?”

“Yes, I have, Doctor,” Harconan replied. “I have good news for all of you. Your superiors are impressed with your initial findings and are agreeable to the next phase of the operation. Once certain financial exchanges are dealt with, we’ll be ready to proceed.”

“Very good, excellent.” The technologist gave another quick, birdlike bob of his head, the gesture out of place from a man of his dimension. “We have done very good work here. I have much to transmit. But we need improved facilities now, elsewhere from this place. This is understood?”

There was a questioning, almost a pleading, to the man’s voice, matched by the expression in the dark eyes peering over the mask. Amanda sensed the East Indian was not enthralled with his current working environment.

“Don’t worry, my friend,” Harconan said jovially. “Things are proceeding and we’ll have you and your associates under way for civilization shortly.”

Sonoo glanced questioningly in Amanda’s direction.

“Oh, excuse my manners,” Harconan continued. “I should make a formal introduction at this time; however, I feel that under the circumstances we can all understand the wisdom of a degree of anonymity”

Amanda decided she had been playing passive long enough; it was time to put a shot into somebody’s waterline. “Oh, I’m quite well acquainted with the work of both Dr. Sonoo and with Dr. Valdechesfsky, his associate at Marutt-Goa.” She locked eyes with the startled East Indian. “Taking part in an industrial hijacking is not going to look good on a resume, Doctor.”

Sonoo blanched. “Who is she, Harconan? Who is she?”

Harconan’s jaw tightened in anger and his hand closed painfully about Amanda’s upper arm. “No one you have to concern yourself with, Doctor. Continue with your work. I’ll discuss departure preparations with the teams later.”

Harconan dragged her out of the observation tent. Half a dozen rough shoves took her to the rock wall at the rear of the cavern. A steel hard hand locked around her throat, pinning her back against the slime damp stone. The pirate chief loomed over her, outlined in the glow of the work lights. Amanda glared back her own defiance.

“You gave me your word, Amanda,” Harconan said, his voice dangerously soft. “You promised no trouble.”

“That was before I realized that I was being lied to as well,” she shot back, “by you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Remember who you’re talking to, Makara. I’m not a fool! You told me you were holding me hostage, presumably to get Admiral MacIntyre and NAVSPECFORCE to back off and let you complete delivery of the INDASAT to your buyers. But then we came to this place, your prime base, you started giving me the grand tour. This cavern, your ship, the satellite, and the industrial technicians you have working on it. You’ve let me see way too much, Makara, from the moment I woke up. It was stupid of me not to see it before. You don’t any intention of releasing me, do you, Makara? I’m never getting out of here alive, am I?”

For the duration of ten rapid heartbeats, Amanda thought that maybe she had overplayed her hand. Either that, or inadvertently she had blurted out the truth.

Harconan’s hand slipped from her throat to her shoulder. “No, Amanda, you’re wrong.” The softness in his voice didn’t have the steel behind it this time. “I have sworn to you that you will not be harmed unless you force me into it. You’re correct, you aren’t going to be released, at least not immediately. There are things I am trying to bring about. Things I am trying to do for the sake of all the peoples of Indonesia. I’ve brought you here to learn about them.”

The taipan lifted his hand from her shoulder, holding it out to her beseechingly. “I want to explain my dreams, Amanda. So that someday, not too far in the future, you can go out and explain them to the world. You will be free again, Amanda, I promise. Free to go. Free to come back”—Harconan’s voice sank to a whisper—“free to stay. Just give me time to explain!”

“It’s going to take a lot of explaining, Makara, to the world and to me. Kidnapping, terrorism, piracy, the theft of other people’s dreams…” She nodded toward the inflated containment module holding the INDASAT.

Harconan glanced over his shoulder. “That? That’s just business, Amanda, just business. I steal it from your industrialists and sell it to their industrialists. They’ll work on it for a while and make a few improvements, and then your industrialists will come along and steal it back again. In the long run everyone gains.”

“What about the crew of the INDASAT Starcatcher, Makara?” she asked, verbally clawing at him with deliberation. “What did they gain?”

She heard the breath hiss between his teeth. His hand went past her head and he braced himself against the wall.

“How did you find out about Sonoo and the others?” he demanded, changing the subject.

“I can’t tell you, Makara. You know that.”

“How much more do you and your admiral know?”

“I can’t tell you that, either. If you want me to understand you, Makara, you have to understand me.” She was careful to invoke his first name again, careful to choose her words. “I will not betray my people, not even for you.”

She trailed off that final hinted possibility.

Frustration edged Harconan’s voice. “This isn’t a game, Amanda! I have my people to think about as well.”

“I’m aware of that.”

His hand went back to her throat, thumb and middle finger digging in beneath her jaw. “Damn you, you could be made to talk! Everyone talks eventually.”

“I’m aware of that, too, Makara,” she replied calmly. She was leaning over the edge now. Deliberately testing. “But if you’ve studied me as much as you say you have, you’ll know I’m a ‘Mustang’ graduate. You’ll know what that means. I can hold out a long, long time before I break. After your people are finished, what’s left won’t be worth taking to bed.”

“Damn it, Amanda! There are other ways… drugs…”

“I know about them too,” She let a hint of sadness tinge her voice. “I know how to fight them as well. If you want to be sure of the answers you’ll get, you’re going to have to put me under so deep I probably won’t come back. No is the only answer I can give, my love, so you decide and let’s just get on with it.”

She’d called him her love. Would that be her ticket back from the edge?

The pressure under her jaw eased and his hand dropped. He looked away, then lifted his voice, calling over a couple of the cavern security guards. Curtly he issued them a command.

“These men will take you to the cabin on the Flores. You’ll be held there for now.”

Amanda didn’t reply.

As promised, the captain’s cabin aboard the freighter had been modernized and given a comfortable civilian conversion, complete with mock teak-paneled bulkheads, a queen-size bed instead of bunks, air conditioning, and an attached head.

The dogging nuts on the two exterior portholes were also torqued down to the point where they were immobile without a wrench, and the steel fire door had a newly added exterior bolt that was thrown after the door had closed behind her.

Amanda crossed to the cabin’s built-in couch and sank down upon it, her arms crossed over her stomach in a self-embrace. For the first time in days she was cool, but that wasn’t why she was shivering.

She’d pushed it close by scaring Sonoo that way, very close indeed. No doubt anonymity had been promised to both the technicians and the firms they’d represented. That their names were known on the outside was probably a very unpleasant surprise that would have those tech reps sweating and Harconan doing some tall explaining.

She’d had to do it, though. Harconan could read her too well. He was expecting some kind of fight from her. If she let herself be too submissive, too pliant — if she yielded on too many points too rapidly — he’d scent the falsehood.

On the other hand, dicing with kings could be a dangerous sport. Henry VIII had probably been quite fond of Anne Boleyn right up until she’d gotten mouthy that one time too often.

Amanda stood up abruptly. Crossing to the head, she checked the shower to see if she was within water hours. She was. Stripping off her single layer of clothing, she stepped under the water, turning it up as hot as she could stand.

When she emerged, sleek and steaming, a few minutes later, she was redheaded again, the dye having washed out. Somehow that made her feel better.

What did he really want from her? Why was he holding back? Why was he risking his kingdom? Could she actually be that attractive in Harconan’s eyes? She couldn’t be that good of a lay.

Was it truly something more?

“Damn, damn, damn,” she murmured to the empty room. “I guess he’s as big an idiot as I am.”