“Did he leave voluntarily?”
“If you mean by that, ‘Is he one of the conspirators?’ Hardly. They evidently feel they can use him. He is respected in and out of the military. He would make a useful figurehead.”
“Is he weak enough to stand for that?”
“I think he would choose to stay alive until the alternatives look worse.”
Suratman moved on: “The coup now underway may well fail. I’d put the odds in its favor as no better than even. The conspirators have miscalculated their support among the people ... and among the military. The Navy and the Air Force will not back them. Nor will all the Army outside Java. But they are very strong in Java.
“The conspirators call themselves the Committee for the Restoration of the Republic—the CRR,” he explained. Meyer nodded; he had heard the name earlier. “Their leader is General Tono Bungei, the Army commander of Java.”
“Not Nusaution?”
“He is a spokesman only, though the others have led him to believe he is more than that ... that he is, in fact, number two; but the real leaders use him only as a ... how do you say? A stalking horse?”
“Close enough.”
“We have prepared a list of the top people in the CRR, and other relevant information—military units likely to back them, units likely to oppose them, and units likely to stay neutral.” He passed over a Zip disc. The American slipped it in a shirt pocket.
“The one monkey in the works ...”
“Monkey wrench,” Meyer corrected, with a friendly smile. “My Brit friends call them spanners.”
“Monkey wrench then,” Suratman corrected himself. “... is the nuclear weapons.”
Meyer looked at the other closely, his eyes steely.
“I must speak very plainly,” he said. “It has never been the intention of my government to acquire nuclear weapons. Never. The weapon that exploded this morning was never in the possession of my government. It was one of five acquired by Tono Bungei and his Army rogues, for their own use.”
Meyer took that in for a time, then asked, “Who’d they get them from?”
“We don’t know, but my guess would be Pakistan. The generals there, like ours, are Muslim; to them there is a mystique about a Muslim bomb ... It is only right to share this gift of Allah with Muslim friends ... And besides, the Pakistanis need money. They grow more impoverished by the second.”
“And why did you wait to tell us this?”
“It is still our country. We have our pride.
“I want you to know also,” he continued, “that the story the rogues have given out about this morning’s tragedy is a lie. The rogues themselves are completely—totally—responsible.
“They thought to kill four birds with one stone. First, to really hurt the Christians by putting the blame on them. Second, to set off chaos elsewhere, especially in Java. (In that they have succeeded.) Third, to encourage the others. As in: ‘Don’t forget, people of Indonesia, that we have nuclear weapons, and we will use them if we must.’ And fourth, to give the conspirators justification for a government takeover (to restore order and stability—the usual disguise for a power grab).”
“It’s not a bad plan ... if you have the morals of Hitler. Who would use WMDs on their own people? ... Who outside of Saddam Hussein?”
“Exactly. It is a plan from Seten”—from Satan.
“Vice-President Adil would like these instruments of Seten to be removed from our country.”
“And he’d like us to do it?”
The other did not answer him.
“The rogues are keeping the nuclear weapons at an army facility near Bandung ... adjacent to Bandung’s Husein Sastranegara Airport.” This was once a multimillion-dollar showpiece aircraft plant, Merdeka Aircraft (promoted by Habibie when he was Suharto’s Minister of Research and Development; it was one of Habibie’s dream children). After its inevitable failure, it was transformed into a clandestine Army facility.
“We have obtained schematics and blueprints of this facility, as well as maps, photos, and other relevant data. You’ll find them on the disc I gave you.”
Meyer looked at the other with greatly increased respect.
“It is likely, I will add, that they have taken Vice-President Adil there. I hope you will use this information carefully and wisely. All of this is a momentary irritation for a great power such as the United States. It is a historical turning point for my country.”
“Count on it.”
The White House
Washington, D.C.
1525 27 December 2005
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff greeted the president as he entered the Oval Office. In his hand was a folder containing what he thought of as very exciting show-and-tell. He was about to brief his boss on the Indonesia situation.
Len Croce himself showed signs of wear and tear. He hadn’t gotten a great deal of sleep over the past forty-eight hours. The president, by contrast, was well rested. He had returned only minutes before from a Christmas swing through his home state. Adoring crowds energized him. The president was wearing a bright red cardigan, partly in honor of the season and partly in honor of his mood, which was the emotional equivalent of Manifest Destiny.
“So, Len, where do we stand?” the president asked the chairman brightly. He expected good news.
“We’ve made real progress, Mr. President,” Croce answered. He passed the folder to the president, who dropped it on his desk, unopened. “Briefing material, charts, and such like,” he added, by way of explanation. “You’ll find it helpful.”
“I’ll look it over,” the president answered distractedly. He was famously uninterested in military briefing materials.
“The first thing we have,” Croce began, “is an early analysis of the atmospheric particles the U-2 picked up.” The president gave him a go-ahead nod. “It was a Pakistani-made weapon, based on a Chinese design, probably built about four years ago (it was an early Paki model), and it had a yield of between 50 and 60 kilotons. A nasty piece of work, but not big—as weapons go; a nuke, not a thermonuke.”
“I’ll have State get on that,” the president mused. “We can turn some pretty big screws on the Pakis and the Chinese. They both could use knocking down a peg or two,” he added with less than perfectly battened-down delight. Sticking it to the Chinese always played politically. “This will give us nice leverage.”
“Yes, sir,” Admiral Croce agreed, and quickly moved on. “As for post-detonation effects ...”
“Fallout?”
“Right. The weapon was not a clean design to begin with, and the blast—a ground burst—lifted up a lot of local materials. Timor, which is south of Ambon, got a heavy dose yesterday. There’ll be casualties.”
“Deaths?”
“Very likely.”
“What will it take to get help to them?”
“There is still a UN presence in East Timor, and it is very heavily Australian. The Aussies have agreed to augment that with medical personnel. West Timor—the Indonesian side—will also accept Australian help.”
“Then it is not our problem?”
“Not all problems are ours.”
“Yeah!” the president agreed with some force.
“The Aussies, of course, are having problems of their own with the fallout. It’s beginning to register in Darwin.”
“Bad?”
“Not so far ... and we don’t expect it to be nearly as serious as Timor. The bad stuff has had several more hundred miles to dissipate.
“Of course,” he added, “there could be local hot spots. These things never take their course with a nice, predictable smoothness.”
“And the Aussies ... ?”
“... Are pissed,” Croce finished. “As we knew they would be. The diplomatic traffic between Canberra and Jakarta has been even more blistering than the PM’s public statements—and they have been very tough.”
“Good,” the president said, unsurprised. This confirmed his own estimates of
the Australian reaction.
“Needless to say, the Aussies have taken a strong position in the Southeast Asia Coalition.” The hastily formed coalition to deal with the problem had quickly come to be called SEAC. “They’re totally onboard—both in the relief end and the military end. They would have gone with us anyway, but when they started getting a dose of rads ... and then heard what Adil had to tell us ...” He let that thought go uncompleted.
“Terrific,” the president said, very pleased indeed. “And how about the rest of SEAC?”
“We’re not telling all of them everything. But State has been feeling them out about military actions. We think they’ll all approve in the end. Nobody wants to see nukes going off, especially in their own neighborhood. And everybody would like to see Indonesia stable and peaceful. But they’re nervous about us intervening. The idea is to frame it all carefully, so everything we need to do appears absolutely unavoidable and necessary. State is working on that.”
“That’s fine.”
“And I’d like to go on to relief efforts, Mr. President.”
“Go ahead.”
“They’ve started to reach the site,” Croce said. “But it will take another couple of days for the whole thing to get there. Essentially, we’ll have the 82nd Airborne in there for blast site relief, and the 82nd Airborne commander will also double as JTF commander. We’ll have the CVBG from Perth in the area within another couple of days. And we’ll be beefing up the Special Forces units already on scene (who have carried the whole weight of this thing so far—they and their Indonesian counterparts; they are doing an outstanding job). There’ll also be air and logistical support.
“The Time and Phase Deployment Schedule that’s in the folder will give you some idea of the way that will work.”
The president opened the folder and gave those pages a glance. “Right,” he said.
The president closed the folder, then asked, “And the Indonesian authorities?”
“Too busy with their own problems to do more than make gloomy noises. There have been statements attributed to Adil, who is the nominal head of state, condemning SEAC on general principles. But they can hardly complain very much about our relief efforts. What are they doing to help, after all?
“More to the point. The new government has not been able to take control of Java, much less the rest of the archipelago. In other words, they don’t carry any real weight. They don’t like us moving into their country, but all their complaints are just pissing in the wind.”
“Can they win?”
“Will their takeover succeed, you mean? It’s very doubtful, Mr. President. But the longer they hold the reins—even if it’s a phantom horse—the more trouble they can cause. Civil war is a real possibility. That would be a terrible catastrophe, with decades of very bad long-term consequences.”
“We have to prevent that,” the president said, and then added, “and they have nukes.”
“They have nukes. And they have demonstrated no qualms about using them against their own people. These are very bad guys, Mr. President.”
“So then ... ?” the president asked, with a come on gesture.
“The materials from Adil are priceless, Mr. President.”
“And it’s certain that the bad guys are using him ... that he hasn’t gone over to them.”
“As certain as we can be. They want a respectable figurehead. He fits the profile.”
“He’s a great patriot,” the president said. “And far more courageous than I am. I hope he survives. I’d like to meet him.”
“With those materials, sir, we have a damned good shot at getting those nukes. And we’ll do our best to make sure he survives.
“The operation itself is relatively simple,” he continued, “not unlike some things we did in Panama a few years ago. We have a Ranger regiment now transiting to Darwin. They’re the class act when it comes to taking airports. They can secure just about any airport in the world in twenty minutes. They’ll take the airport at Bandung. And the Aussies’ SAS has a Tactical Assault Group who are ideal for taking the nuclear storage depot.”
“Good idea, using the Aussies.”
“Yeah, and they’re totally right for the job.”
“We will also probably want to use a pair of B-2s to soften up opposition,” the admiral added.
“When will this all go down?”
“The night of the 31st.”
“Thanks, Len. And by the way, get some sleep.”
“I’ll try, Mr. President.”
Jakarta, Java
0430 28 December 2005
Two large, long-range CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, from USS Bataan, set down in Merdeka Square near the U.S. Embassy, after a lengthy flight (assisted by inflight refueling) from the ARG/CVBG steaming north from Perth.
The previous day, the embassy had informed the Indonesian Foreign Office that a detachment of Marines from 13th MEU (SOC) would arrive by helicopter to beef up embassy security. The Foreign Office saw this as a reasonable request (most embassies in Jakarta, including America‘s, were by then being emptied of all except essential personnel), and it was duly acknowledged and approved. A no-brainer: The rioting had continued to grow in intensity, and ever increasing Army counterviolence had done little to calm the anarchy in the streets.
The Marines would arrive on detached diplomatic duty, and they would, of course, have diplomatic immunity.
As it happened, the U.S. Embassy had suffered very little at the hands of the mobs—a few tossed stones and eggs. With the expectation that this low-threat situation would continue, the Marines had come primarily armed with nonlethal weapons. But to be on the safe side, they also had a variety of lethal antipersonnel weapons.
The Marines, as it also happened, were not all Marines. Joining them on one of the CH-53Es were a pair of ODAs (163 and 168) and a six man ODB (161) from Company F, 2nd/1st SFG, based on Okinawa (all of them in Marine drag). The ODB set up in the embassy, while their comms went on the roof, among the embassy antenna arrays. All electromagnetic emissions became one to those who might have liked to listen in.
Meanwhile, the ODAs turned in for a good day’s sleep. They would need it. Starting that evening they would be very busy boys indeed.
Pattimura Airport
Palau Ambon
28 December 2005
Three days after the nuclear explosion, Pattimura had taken on the look of Tem pelhof in the days of the Berlin Airlift. New and (as it happened) much improved air traffic control equipment, flown in by the earliest flights from Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa, had replaced the EMP-fried Indonesian electronics. Streams of aircraft—an air bridge—were now taking off and landing. Containers and shipping pallets had been piled in every available open space. To carry off all that stuff to where it was needed, local transport had been taken over by JISF. At any given moment, most of this could be found either at Pattimura or moving to or from it, while commandeered buses connected the refugee camps with the capital, and doubled as ambulances.
Field hospitals had been set up in the camps, with triage stations closer to the blast site; specialized units to deal with severe thermal or radiation burns and other serious traumas had been set up in Kota Ambon.
By this time, the most immediately pressing actions had been accomplished: Survivors had been coaxed, carried, or driven out of the danger zone near the blast and herded into camps; most of those who required medical attention had received some kind of care; and everyone on the island with any sense was taking potassium iodide tablets.
The refugee camps were crowded, and shelter was scarce and far from comfortable, but overall conditions were far from appalling ... and they were improving daily.
Meanwhile, the major portion of the 82nd Airborne had arrived and set up adjacent to the airport, along with various headquarters facilities: the 505th PIR HQ (under a brigadier general); the JTF HQ (under a major general, the 82nd Airborne commander); and an enlarged Special Forces HQ (FOB 11, 1st/1st SFG, u
nder a lieutenant colonel) to supplement ODB 140.
Airport security was tight. There was much to protect—arriving American servicemen and servicewomen (thousands of them), medical and technical people and equipment (including teams from NGOs like Doctors Without Borders), and billions of dollars worth of hardware. A single C-17A transport, for example, weighed in at around $220,000,000. That’s a lot of school lunches.
Happily, Ambon Island was far from being “denied” territory. The JISF troops were friendly, cooperative, and effective; the majority of the Ambonese people had also proved to be friendly and grateful (the better than yearlong U.S. Special Forces presence had ensured that); and even previously warring religious factions were keeping the peace. And yet, unhappily, there was no scarcity of unfriendlies in Indonesia.
Some of these made their presence felt on 28 December.
The MH-53J Pave Low helicopter is big, fast, and a kludge—not so much purposefully designed for Air Force Special Forces operations112 as cobbled together out of available systems (inside it looks like Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory in one of its comic manifestations). It is built around a basic CH-53D Sea Stallion air frame, it is heavily armed, heavily protected, heavily equipped with electronic equipment (FLIR, terrain-following radar, the works), it carries a five-man crew, and it leaks fluids113 like rain. But kludge or no, don’t mess with one. It does the job.
Air Force Major Al Tatum commanded the Pave Low detachment flown in from Kadena. As soon as his four birds were checked out as flyable, he asked ODA 142 commander Carlos Valdez to accompany him on an orientation flight. He wanted to get a good look at the island, the blast site, the camps, and anything else he needed to be aware of—or that might pose a potential threat. They took off on that flight at 0830 on the morning of the 28th.
At 1020, they were hanging around over the Bay of Ambon, waiting for clearance to land at Pattimura. Tatum was then in the right-hand commander’s seat, chatting with Valdez, who was in a jump seat behind him. The copilot, Bob Thornton, was at the controls.
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