Target Lock

by James H. Cobb

  “You didn’t make it. You were intercepted in the South China Sea by pirates. After shooting or knifing all of the men, including your father, and raping the women, including your mother, they stripped everything of value from the boat, including your older sister. Afterwards, they emptied an automatic rifle through the bottom and left a dozen women and children aboard a sinking wreck without food or water.

  “You clung to the semisubmerged hulk for four days before being rescued by the USS Sacramento. There were three of you left alive; your mother was not one of them.”

  Images wheeled behind Tran’s eyes as the American officer continued to speak in that soft, even voice. “You ended up in an orphanage here in Singapore. You proved to be an exceptional student and school athlete. After volunteering for a tour in the Naval Defense Forces, you went on to college, and then to the national police.

  “For all of this time, you had two driving motivations. One was an abiding hatred for piracy and all pirates everywhere. The other was the search to find your sister.”

  “You are indeed a skilled investigator,” Tran commented ruefully.

  Christine gave her head an acknowledging tilt. “I have my moments. Eventually, you did succeed in finding your sister, but not in the way you hoped. In the summer of 2002, you learned she’d died of a combination of AIDS and syphilis two years before in a Bangkok brothel.”

  How clear those storm-toned eyes were. How they held his own. “Oddly enough,” she went on, “the brothel owner who had purchased and managed your sister died shortly thereafter. He was found shot in his apartment, execution-style, with a single 9mm bullet behind the ear. The usual suspects were rounded up but the killer was never found. Not that anyone bothered to look all that hard.

  “Interestingly, there was a second unsolved murder a short time later, this one in a coastal village on the Malay Peninsula. A wealthy but rather notorious retired fishing-boat captain with a suspected history of South China Sea piracy was also found dead, execution-style, a single 9mm round behind the ear.”

  Christine Rendino set aside her cup and reached across the table. With a single fingertip, she lifted the side of Tran’s jacket, revealing the butt of the 9mm Glock automatic.

  “I prefer a SIG Sauer P226 myself,” she said, settling back into her chair. “No, Inspector. I believe that if there is any person in Southeast Asia we can trust in this matter, it’s you. Throw in with us, Tran. Help us take these guys down. There are a lot of other girls out there like your sister.”

  He realized that the glass in his hand was about to shatter, and he carefully set it on the rattan tabletop. “I have been working very hard of late, Commander Rendino. I think that a vacation would be beneficial.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Perhaps a long sea voyage.”

  “Yes!” Christine Rendino gave a happy squirm that instantly transmuted her from a military officer back into the tourist girl he had watched board the monorail. “Do you think you can give us a lead on who is behind the cartel? The real leadership.”

  “I can do better than that,” Tran replied decisively. “I can tell you his name and where you can find him. I can also list his assets, his allies, his goals, and a partial list of his contacts inside the business and international community. I can tell you a great deal. Unfortunately, I can prove almost none of it.”

  East Indies

  Early August 2008

  For a week, a sleek and deadly predator stalked the sea-lanes of the Indonesian archipelago. From Great Channel in the Andaman group, south along Kepulauan Mentawai and east past Christmas Island to the mouth of the Timor Sea, the huntress hunted in the night, using the merchant shipping of the world as her stalking goat.

  Electronically silent and stealthed against radar detection, she trailed the lumbering container ships into the Straits of Malacca and invisibly intercepted the break-bulks as they came through the Selat Sunda. She lurked to seaward of the interisland ferries as they shuttled between Bali and Sumatra, and the coaster skippers hauling sandalwood and vanilla into Jakarta and Telukbetung never knew they were being watched from darkness.

  With the coming of the dawn, she would withdraw into the open ocean, hiding from patrol aircraft and passing sea traffic in the misty lair of a squall line or thunderhead, drifting with the movements of sea and storm.

  But come the night, she would emerge to hunt again.

  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 tha
t 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.”

  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.

  Southern Approaches to the Sunda Strait

  0111 Hours, Zone Time: August 11, 2008

  They stood in her dreams as they often did when action was in the offing: Erikson, Chief Tehoa, Snowy Banks, Fry Guy, Danna, the Marines from the decks of the Bajara. Telling her that another reckoning loomed. Speaking no recrimination, but reminding her of the price to be paid. Always reminding her …

  Amanda’s eyes opened and she looked into the blue-lit dimness of the cramped two-berth cabin. There was a momentary disorientation. She was back aboard the Duke, but these weren’t her quarters.

  Full recall came swiftly. She was an outsider aboard the Cunningham now, and the captain’s suite belonged to Ken Hiro. After a long evening’s wait for action, she had gone below to the transients’ quarters assigned to her for a few hours of sleep.

  Yet, what had brought her awake? What was happening with the ship? Maybe the Duke was no longer her personal command, but she still knew the feel of the cruiser down to the last pump resonance and plate vibration. Reaching down from her bunk, Amanda pressed her hand flat against the deck.

  The power rooms were spooling up. The cruiser had gone to all ahead full and was coming hard about. Amanda could feel the lean of the hull. She was out of her berth and pulling on her slacks as the call to general quarters sounded.

  “Battle stations, Aviation! All hands, stand by to launch aircraft! All aircrews and aircraft handling details lay to, on the double! Marine boarding detail, stand by to embark! All stations expedite! This is not a drill! I say again, this is not a drill!”

  The cabin phone buzzed and Amanda snatched it from its cradle. “Go. Ken.” She didn’t have to ask who would be on the other end of the circuit.

  “We’ve got one, Captain. The Russian RO/RO Piskov is reporting she is under pirate attack and is being boarded at this time. She is requesting assistance.”

  “Whereaway?”

  “In the Sunda approaches, fifty-four miles southwest of our current position. The Piskov reports she is taking fire from four Boghammer-type gunboats. As per the plan of engagement, we have gone to flank speed and are closing the range. Gunships and boarding helos are prepping to launch. Do you have further orders at this time, ma’am?”

  “Very good, Captain Hiro.
” Amanda wedged the phone between her head and shoulder as she fumbled the buttons of her shirt closed. “Contact Global Hawk control and have them commence an expanding concentric search around the Piskov’s location. Those Bogs probably have a mother ship nearby. I want it spotted and tracked. Also, jam the Piskov’s distress call.”

  “Say again. ma’am?”

  “You heard me, Ken. Jam the Russians’ transmissions. Broad spectrum and full power. Take down all communications in this area. I don’t want anyone else showing up for the party.”

  “Very good, ma’am.”

  “And notify Commander Richardson he’ll be having a ride-along.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  She slammed the phone back into its cradle and reached for the equipment racked up beside the cabin door. First the pistol belt with its Navy Mark 4 survival knife, its clip pouches and the obsolete leather holster carrying the MEU Model .45 automatic. Then the Model 1-C combined flotation and flak vest, studded with survival gear. A touch at her throat made sure her dogtags were in place, and she was ready to face the night.

  Topside, a warm gale whipped across the Cunningham’s decks as she gained way, the sea roaring in her wake as it boiled under the thrust of her hard-driving propellers.

  On the helipad, aviation hands peeled the RAM shrouds back from the two pre-spotted Seawolf Hueys. Rotors deployed for flight and dim blue-green instrument lights snapped on as flight crews raced through preflight checklists.

  “Crank!” A voice yelled the single warning word through a cockpit window and the first turbine lit off.

  “Hey, Skipper!” Over the rising clamor on deck, Amanda heard the shout. Stone loomed at her side, his considerable size enhanced by body armor and a load of personal electronics and ammunition. “The boarding party’s loading down in the hangar now and the lift bird’ll go on the elevator the second you guys clear the pad. We’ll be five minutes behind ya!”