by Tom Clancy
• Along the main runway was a string of six medium trucks, also loaded with concrete blocks. If needed, they could be driven onto the runways to act as obstacles to landing aircraft, and quickly disabled ... The Indonesians actually used a belt-and-suspenders approach: They could remove the ignition rotors (easily reinstalled if the trucks had to be moved again). But if more permanent obstacles had to be created, they had attached 20-kilogram demolition charges (TNT with a burning—not electrical—fuse) to the truck beds beneath the concrete and scrap.
Inside the plant:• Thermal-imaging systems are not X-ray vision, yet they provide an approximation of that. That is to say, the ODAs’ thermal imagers could not provide “guaranteed” exact locations for the nuclear weapons storage vault or for Vice-President Adil, but analysts armed with the ODA-provided thermal imaging information and the building plans provided by Widodo Suratman could make reasonably accurate estimates, based on generator and air-conditioning signatures and other heat concentrations. These estimates were downlinked to the Australian SAS TAG.
Meanwhile, a pair of B-2s had taken off from CONUS, armed with JSOWs (AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons—1000-pound glide bombs with INS/GPS guidance) and JDAMs (Joint Direct Attack Munitions—2000-pound GPS-guided high-explosive bombs). The JSOWs—standoff munitions—can be released from a safe distance, glide over their target, and spew out cluster munitions—a mix of explosives, incendiaries, and shrapnel. JSOWs are very useful against antiaircraft positions and other more or less soft sites. JDAMs, on the other hand, can be used against more hardened targets, bridges, and buildings. Both are carried on a rotary launcher within the B-2’s bomb bay.
During the previous two days, ODAs 163 and 168 had carefully mapped antiaircraft positions at the airfield with PAQ-10 Ground Laser Target Designators, which had been linked to the GPS system. These coordinates had been uplinked to FOB Darwin, and eventually downlinked to the B-2s. The bombs on the B-2s were then programmed with this information. It made them accurate within three or four meters.
The coordinates of several other strategic positions on the airfield were also noted and uplinked.
The “grab and snatch” that was the essence of Operation Merdeka presupposed an essential sequence of actions (which were downlinked back to ODAs 163 and 168):• The antiaircraft positions at Husein Sastranegara had to be neutralized.
• The runways had to be cleared.
• Defensive ground positions had to neutralized and obstacles cleared.
• And, in general, the defenders had to be placed in a condition of confusion, havoc, and panic. The closer to total paralysis the better. Thus, an early goal was to create shock and mayhem ... That was about to happen.
During the attack, the ODAs would provide fire control and instant BDA (Bomb Damage Assessment).
By 0100 on the 31st, the two ODAs had packed their nonessential gear and cleaned up their positions (you’d have to look hard after they left to tell that they had been there). The vehicles that had driven them up from Jakarta two days earlier were now waiting for them a short distance away on one of the mountain roads.
They could not leave yet, though. They had loose ends to tie.
Just after 0100, Chuck Verbalis and his companions went silent, listening intently. Seconds later, they heard what they were listening for—the faint but distinctive whooshing sound of JSOWs, almost instantly followed by the bright flashes of cluster munitions at the ends of the Husein Sastranegara runway. (Firecracker pops, traveling at the speed of sound, arrived later.)
RUBICON, INC, BY LAURA DENINNO
“Scratch two Rapier sites,” Verbalis said to himself. Moments later, the Bofors gun sites met the same fate. And moments after that, he observed more flashes over the Kostrad camp to the north of the Merdeka plant. Verbalis counted on perhaps two to three hundred troops to be sleeping there. They would sleep a very long time. (Later 266 Kostrad dead were counted.) When the firecracker pops ceased, discreetly murmured cheers came from the guys in the ODAs.
As all this was happening, Verbalis’s comms sergeant was passing a running report to the B-2s, to the second wave of Spectre gunships and Pave Lows waiting nearby, and back to FOB Darwin by SATCOM.
After the JSOWs came the JDAMs. It was not a long wait. There were flashes, followed seconds later by low crackling rumbles, and the airport control tower was a pile of shards and rubble, the terminal building was a smoking ruin, and hangar and administrative buildings on both sides of the field were “no longer functional.” That meant that most Kostrad sniper positions were likewise “no longer functional.”
That success was communicated to the various players and controllers.
With their primary job done, the B-2s were released from their primary role. They would now destroy local communications facilities and approaches to the airport—by taking out a selection of bridges and overpasses (this would hinder potential reinforcements).
Once the B-2s had moved out, a pair of AC-130U Spectre Gunships (at 3000 meters) and three MH-53J Pave Low helicopters (closer to the ground) began taking out targets selected by the two ODAs with their PAQ-10 GLTDs.
Verbalis watched as the Spectres’ 105mm howitzers and 20mm Gatlings demolished machine gun positions and AMX-13 tanks. Soon the tanks were immobilized and burning, while machine gun positions ceased to be operational. Once these were neutralized, the Spectre howitzers focused on the trucks poised to obstruct the runway. Meanwhile, the Pave Lows hosed the roof of the former aircraft plant, its perimeter defenses, and anything else that caught their gunners’ interest.
At 0110, the Spectres and the Pave Lows checked fire, and the Pave Lows pulled back to the airfield perimeters. This was in order to deconflict the airfield airspace. It was also the ODAs’ signal to go passive. From that moment on, they no longer had an active fire control function, though they would continue to report BDAs.
At 0114, Verbalis turned his attention to the former Merdeka Plant. Over it hovered three Pave Lows, from which the Aussie SAS TAG (a 36-man company split into three 12-man teams) were fast roping down to the factory roof, each of them carrying a noise- and flash-suppressed H&K 9mm submachine gun.
Though Pave Low Gatlings had earlier eliminated rooftop security, a handful of Kostrad troops had rushed up to the roof after the initial ruckus ended and were getting off shots at descending SAS troops (hitting one man, Verbalis learned later). But this proved to be only a brief inconvenience for the SAS guys. TAG H&Ks quickly cut the bad guys down. (The SAS man’s wound was not life threatening, but it proved to be serious enough to take him out of action. He was helicoptered back to the CVBG, which was now in position south of Java.)
Once they were on the roof, the TAGs split up. One team remained on the roof, for security and to give the Ranger company fire support; the other two raced down an airshaft stairs for the cellar.
From then on, Chuck Verbalis had to wait. He consoled himself with the thought that if they made a major slip up, his end would probably come instantly and painlessly.
The wait was by no means without incident: Even as the TAGs were roping down from their Pave Lows, three companies of Rangers, augmented by armored HMMWVs equipped with .50-caliber machine guns, 40mm machine guns, and TOW missiles, were parachuting onto the airfield. Two of the companies, and all of the HMMWVs, fanned out to establish security and prepare the runway to receive air traffic (their biggest problem was clearing used parachutes—these could create a big problem for C-130 props). The third Ranger company launched an assault on what was left of the opposition around the Merdeka plant. The side of the plant closest to the airport’s main runway consisted of a huge, high-ceilinged hangar-type shed, where finished aircraft had once been assembled. The Rangers attacked toward the shed’s big sliding doors.
Verbalis watched a brief skirmish with the remnants of the Kostrad resistance. Then charges were placed on sliding doors. There was a flash, followed a few moments later by a dull whump. And the Rangers were inside.
By 01
35, it was essentially over. One or two bull-headed snipers remained to be suppressed, but aside from these, the Kostrad forces had either surrendered or were dead.
At 0145, a NEST C-130 arrived, and the NEST team, accompanied by a Technical Escort Unit (TEU) from the Defense Non-Proliferation Agency at Fort Belvoir, Maryland, who handled security, were escorted into the plant by Rangers. Half an hour later, a HMMVW emerged through the shed doors and drove out to the NEST C-130. Verbalis examined it closely. There was a pallet on its truck bed. The pallet contained a gray, lethal-looking lozenge, about a meter in length.
Verbalis was a Catholic who did not pray often. He prayed then.
After three other warheads were safely transported onto the C-130, Verbalis gave the order for his guys to move out. A half hour later, ODAs 163 and 168 were headed north toward the coast, and then west on the coast highway to Jakarta. Ever the “quiet professionals,” they had slipped in and out of their hide sites as stealthily as B-2s.
Later, Verbalis learned that the TAG had found Radu Adil in a cell (converted from an office) not far from the large room used by the CRR leaders as a temporary command and control center. This was an “action central” that was both close to the nuclear weapons (another example of the “Sobel Factor”) and safely out of the chaos that Jakarta had become.
Though the guards posted outside Adil’s cell had been prepared to kill him—and had expected to do that—the execution order never came. The TAG put 9mm shots into them before they even realized that the men in black who suddenly appeared in the corridor were not friends.
Adil himself was visibly uninjured, but spiritually much shaken. His wife and daughters had each been shot in his presence the day before the American and Australian assault (their unmarked graves were discovered by Rangers later that morning).
The choice he had made had been the right one, but its consequence had been the murder of his family. The pain of that would remain with him for the rest of his life.
In due course, Generals Bungei, Nusaution, and the other conspirators were rounded up. Within weeks, all of the conspirators had been tried and executed.
Colonel Cancio (whose job it had been to order Adil’s execution ... Adil never learned whether this lapse was deliberate) was never found.
Adil privately believed that he had survived.
At 0230, the NEST C-130, containing the nuclear weapons, lifted off for Darwin. The next day the weapons were placed in a C-17 bound for the USA ... and an inspection by expert scientists.
Kota Ambon
1100 25 December 2006
Carlos Valdez was a man of strong emotions, usually held under professional control. But it was hard for him to do that this Christmas morning. He and several hundred others—the President of the United States, President Adil of Indonesia, the commanding general of SOCOM, the commander of Special Forces Command, various other participants, American, Australian, and Indonesian (including his friend, now Brigadier General Kumar), and (far from insignificantly) Karen and his two boys—were waiting in Taman Victoria, a park in downtown Victoria, for the ceremony to begin.
The big shots, including Kumar, were on a platform beside a draped statue. Speeches were made, which Valdez ignored. The two presidents then together un-draped the statue: It was bronze and showed several figures—suffering Indonesian children and an Indonesian mother being helped by an American Special Forces and an Indonesian JISF soldier. Valdez had seen the statue, of course, before the dedication (he had come to Ambon three days before—three days of partying with Indonesian friends), but it never failed to move him. And he was choked up now.
He was even more choked up when the President of the United States called him up to the platform. The Indonesians evidently wanted to give him some kind of decoration. Karen gave his hand a squeeze as he set off through the very unwelcome applause.
Shit! he thought. Why the hell do they want to do that?
Glossary
AAR After Action Review—group assessment and evaluation of a just-completed mission. Ideally an occasion for honest criticism and self-criticism, without regard to ego-tripping, pulling rank, or careerism.
AC-130 Nicknamed “Spectre,” Lockheed C-130 4-engine “gunship” equipped with night targeting sensors and a mix of heavy weapons, typically including a short 105mm howitzer, 40 mm Bofors automatic cannon, and 20 mm 6-barrel “Gatling” machine gun. Flown by Air Force Special Operations Squadrons. Devastating against ground targets.
ACRI African Crisis Response Initiative—U.S. diplomatic attempt to promote development of a trained and effective multinational African peacekeeping force. Initial participants in 1996 included Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Uganda, and Benin.
AFSOC Air Force Special Operations Command—based at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Consists mainly of specialized helicopter and transport aircraft units and supporting personnel.
ALICE All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment—obsolescent U.S. Army pack and frame system.
ANG U.S. Army National Guard.
AOR Area of Responsibility—Geographic region that a Unified CINC or other senior commander is responsible for.
ATV All-Terrain Vehicle—one-man 4×4 off-road vehicle based on commercial motorcycle technology.
BDU Battle Dress Uniform—standard U.S. military field uniform, made of cotton or cotton-polyester blend. Produced in several different camouflage patterns. Very comfortable and practical, but often criticized for baggy appearance.
Blue Light Code name for a small Army counterterrorist unit formed in Europe in the 1970s.
C4 Military plastic explosive used for sabotage or demolition of obstacles.
CA Civil Affairs—SOF missions designed to promote cooperation (or minimize interference) by local populations with friendly military operations.
CBT Combating Terrorism—SOF mission aimed at preventing or neutralizing the actions of hostile terrorist groups, often in close cooperation with law enforcement and diplomatic agencies. (Also abbreviated CT.)
CD Counter-Drug Operations—SOF missions designed to assist host nation in preventing the production, processing or distribution of illegal narcotics.
CENTCOM U.S. Central Command—unified command responsible for the Middle East. CENTCOM exercised combatant command over the forces that fought the 1991 Gulf War. Its area of responsibility was extended to Central Asia in 1999.
CINCSOC Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Special Operations Command—usually an Army general with extensive combat experience in Airborne, Ranger, and Special Forces units.
COA Course of Action—a briefing or paper that systematically and logically presents the alternatives that a commander can follow to achieve a mission objective. One of the key things a good staff officer does for a commander is to simplify decision making with clear COAs—ideally not more than three choices at one time.
Combat Talon Lockheed MC-130 transport aircraft equipped for special operations transport missions. Operated by Air Force Special Operations Command.
CONOPS Concept of Operations—a brief statement describing how a mission is to be accomplished. Reflects a military commander’s plans, intentions, and understanding of how a particular operation will unfold.
CONUS “Continental United States”—military jargon for the forty-eight contiguous states. The opposite of overseas, or “downrange.”
CP Counter-Proliferation—a critical SOF mission, aimed at preventing the acquisition or development of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological) by potential adversaries.
CRD Chemical Reconnaissance Detachments—small Army teams with protective equipment and detectors trained to rapidly assess possible areas of toxic contamination. A national asset, subordinate to Special Forces Command.
CS Coalition Support—SOF missions that assist friendly states typically by combined training, exercises, or “military diplomacy.”
CSAR Combat Search and Rescue—SOF mission to locate and retrieve military personn
el or downed aircrew behind enemy lines.
CSEL PRQ-7 Combat Survivor Evader Locator—miniaturized encoded radio “beacon” carried by aircrew, allowing search-and-rescue teams with a special receiver to safely locate and confirm identity of lost or downed personnel. Finally scheduled to enter service around 2001 after a shamefully long development delay.
CST Close Support Team—Special Forces team equipped and trained as ground observers to locate targets and direct strike aircraft.
CTF Commander, Task Force (sometimes slurred into “Commander’s Task Force”)—a component of a Joint Task Force, under a designated commander. CTFs are usually temporary, can be of any size, are tailored for a specific mission, and are numbered with decimals according to Navy convention, such as CTF 958.1.2.
DA Direct Action—SOF mission involving short, intense raid to seize, capture, recover, or destroy specific hostile personnel, equipment, or facilities.
Delta Force Secretive U.S. Army counterterrorist unit based on the training and tactics of the U.K. Special Air Service. Delta participated in the abortive 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission.
Downrange Army slang for “overseas on hazardous field mission”—originally applied to live ammunition firing ranges; adopted by explosive ordnance disposal teams and other specialists in dangerous activity.
DZ Drop Zone—a clear terrain area where parachute troops or supplies can be delivered safely (hopefully). Should be as close as possible to the objective.
E&E Escape and Evasion—tactics, techniques and procedures (some very simple, some highly classified) for avoiding capture behind enemy lines and returning safely.
ECWCS Extended Cold Weather Clothing System—worn over BDU in severe winter or arctic climates. Produced in two weights, both using Gore-Tex (a breathable, synthetic waterproof insulation material).