The Malacca Conspiracy (33 page)

“Yes, General.”

“What’s our security situation in the palace?”

“Standard security, sir. Sufficient to deal with civilian threats from the outside. Insufficient against an outside military threat. Especially an American SEAL team or US Marines, if that’s who has hit us. Plus, we’ve lost power…or rather the power has been disabled.”

“Very well,” the general said. “Get four platoons over there. Now!”

“Yes, General.”

“And get some of our planes up and over the palace.”

“But, General.” The colonel ran his hand through his thinning hair. “If those unidentified jets are US Navy F–18s, our fighters would be at a severe disadvantage.”

The colonel was right. Suparman knew it in his gut. Indonesian fighters against American jets—if that’s what they were—would be a suicide mission.

This had to be an American operation. Radar down over the city. Helicopters and troops hitting the palace. Unidentified fighter jets roaring overhead. Classic American military tactics.

This was his first crisis as leader. He had to act quickly and decisively. But he had to be smart.

“Okay, get our planes up for observation, but stay out of the area. Get mobile antiaircraft batteries around the palace to challenge any unidentified aircraft approaching or leaving the palace.”

“That will take at least thirty minutes, sir.”

“Get on it!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Colonel?”

“Yes, General.”

“One other thing.”

“Yes, General?”

“Order execution of phase one of Operation Decapitate. Now. We
must strike even before the deadline. America will pay for what it has done.”

“Yes, sir!”

Merdeka Palace

7:39 p.m.

Z
ack, follow me,” Captain Noble said. They stepped into a hallway behind the reception area of the medical clinic. The first door to the right was an examination room. “Cover,” Captain Noble ordered. Two SEALs brought their Uzis into firing position.

The captain pushed the door open. A flat examination table was in the middle of the room. On it a sheet covered the form of what appeared to be a body.

Time froze. Zack’s stomach rushed to his throat.
Jesus, don’t let it be her.

The captain grabbed the top of the sheet. Zack looked away as the captain pulled the sheet back.

Captain Noble said, “It’s President Santos.”

Zack exhaled and looked up. The president’s black eyes were frozen open. His mouth cavity was so wide you could put an apple in it. This was a body whose last emotion had been one of great fear.

Thank God it wasn’t Diane.

Captain Noble whipped out a camera and snapped several shots, lighting the room with the brilliant flash, and burning an image of the president’s stony, dead face into Zack’s head. “Let’s move,” Noble said.

They quick-stepped into the hallway, turned right, and then stopped at the next examination room.

Same drill. “Cover,” Noble said. Uzis drawn in firing position. Noble kicked the door open.

Two female nurses, crying, shaking, stood at the head and foot of another examination table, their hands up in the air. A patient was on the examination table. Plastic tubing, IV lines, were running to his arms.

“It’s the ambassador!” the captain said. “He’s conscious. Rodriguez. Jones. In here! Bring a stretcher! You all right, sir?”

The ambassador rolled his eyes toward Zack, managing an unintelligible grunt.

Rodriguez and Jones burst through the door, carrying one of the two portable, lightweight stretchers that each team had brought from the chopper.

“Get him up top. Take him to Tomahawk 1. Take Branson and Paulus up with you. On the double!”

“Aye, sir!”

“Whatever the IVs are, keep them in his arm.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

Zack lifted the IV bag off the chrome tree, as Rodriguez and Jones quickly lifted the ambassador under his shoulders and by his feet, setting him down on the stretcher on the floor. Zack placed the two IV bags on the stretcher just under the ambassador’s arm.

“Got it,” Rodriguez said.

“All right, guys, move!”

They lifted the stretcher with the ambassador off the floor, and moved him out of the room.

“We gotta hurry,” the captain said. “They’ll have reinforcements storming this place.”

They stepped into the hallway again and turned right. They approached a third room. “Cover!” With Uzis drawn, Noble pushed the door open.

Zack felt his heart drop to the floor.

“Nothing.”

Antiaircraft Battery Four
Bogor, Indonesia (thirty miles south of Jakarta)

7:40 p.m.

T
he duty officer was just tasting his first bite of cendol, the popular Indonesian dessert consisting of shaved ice, coconut milk, palm sugar, and green food coloring, when the phone rang.

The officer cursed, then barked an answer as he picked up the receiver. “Lieutenant Ortiz.”

He swallowed the cold dessert and sat up straight at the news coming over the telephone.

“What? Unidentified enemy helicopters? Merdeka Palace?”

Hearing those words, several other officers in the barracks put down their playing cards and leaned in toward Ortiz.

“Yes, sir…I understand…You want a battery of handheld stinger antiaircraft missiles deployed immediately…yes, sir…Shoot down any choppers flying from the direction of Jakarta…Yes, sir.” He nodded at the other officers, whose eyes were glued on him. “We’re moving out now.”

Merdeka Palace

7:41 p.m.

O
kay, keep moving,” Captain Noble snapped. The armed SEAL team moved down toward the end of the hallway. Only two more examination rooms.

Zack’s mind raced. If they didn’t find Diane here, they probably wouldn’t find her.

“Cover!” The SEALs again drew their machine guns to firing position. Captain Noble kicked open another door. “Nothing! Check the last one!” The armed team moved further down the hallway.

If she’s not here, I’m not leaving. They can leave me. I’m staying ’til I find her.

“Cover!” Drawn submachine guns. A swift boot on another door. “We got something!”

Two Indonesian guards were standing with their hands over their heads. “Get their guns.” Two SEALs rushed to the guards, taking their pistols.

Zack’s eyes fell to the corner of the room. The sight would forever be burned into his mind. The stretcher was pushed against the wall, and on it, Diane lay on her side, forced almost into the shape of a human “S.” A white rag tightly gagged her mouth, and her legs were bound by a thick rope by her ankles. Her white uniform skirt was riding just a bit above the knee, and her hands were tied behind her back. At that moment, a visceral instinct overtook Zack. He wanted to kill!

“Cut her loose, Zack!”

Zack whipped the stainless-steel combat knife from his belt.

“Hang on, Diane. We’re getting you out of here.” He slipped the blade through the cloth that was gagging her mouth.

“Zack? Is that you?” She exhaled and coughed.

“Think I’d leave you in here?” he said. “Never. Now give me your wrists.”

Very carefully to avoid slicing her wrists, Zack slid the knife through the ropes that bound her.

“Hold still.” He bent over to the floor, sliced through the rope and freed her legs. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. A little bruised.”

“Can you walk, Commander?” Captain Noble asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Just having a little trouble seeing in the dark.”

“We had to cut the lights. Zack, here’s an extra set of night goggles. Help her out?”

“Aye, Captain.” Zack slipped the night goggles over Diane’s eyes.

“You look great in black, Zack.”

“Okay, let’s get to the choppers!”

They moved swiftly out of the clinic area, and back into the dark hallway. There were six of them now. The remaining squad from the SEAL team, plus Diane.

They jogged down the hallway back toward the stairway leading to the roof. The crisscrossing flashlight beams were gone. As they reached the stairwell leading to the roof, the roaring sound of helicopter engines thundered down the stairwell and into the hallway. They turned right in a single-file column and ascended the stairway.

They reached the roof. Chopper 1 had already lifted off with the ambassador.

SEALs were stationed around the other two choppers in a perimeter, their guns positioned outward.

“Perimeter is secure, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Garcia shouted. “Choppers ready for takeoff!”

“What about Perkasa?” the captain shouted back at the XO over the roar of the choppers. “Did you find him?”

“Negative, sir!” The wind from the rotors was flapping their uniforms and blowing Diane’s hair. “We searched everywhere. Nothing. Took out five Indonesian guards.”

Captain Noble glanced at his watch. “We’re out of time!” Noble said. “Everybody in the choppers! Now! Zack, take Diane first.”

Zack took Diane’s hand, ducked to avoid the rotor blades, and sprinted across the roof toward Tomahawk 2. One of the SEALs already inside reached down and pulled Diane into the aircraft. Zack hopped in behind her, and three other SEALs piled in behind him.

Captain Noble was the last to board Tomahawk 2. Zack looked out and saw Lieutenant Commander Garcia and his squad piling into Tomahawk 3.

“Okay, take her up!”

The props revved, and Tomahawk 2 lifted into the sky, ascending straight up to perhaps five hundred feet over the roof. Then, dipping its nose, it started its trek through the black night, above the lights of Jakarta, to the south, out toward the sea.

Chapter 16

Antiaircraft Battery Four
Bogor, Indonesia

7:48 p.m.

U
nder the star-covered canopy, eight jeeps from the Indonesian Antiaircraft Battery Four broke into two hastily organized caravans. They sped quickly into the night.

Four of the jeeps raced to the northeast along Jagorawi Highway, one of the two main routes that connected the city of Bogor to Jakarta, thirty miles to the north.

The other four, under the command of Lieutenant Juan Ortiz, moved southeast along JI. Raya Pajajaran, the road running to the gorgeous Puncak Pass, twenty miles to the southeast, and from there, the city of Bandung, another sixty-two miles to the southeast.

All eight jeeps had been dispatched from the Atanag Senjaya Air Base, the main air base south of Jakarta.

The strategic mission of the air base was to guard the capital city against sea and land attacks from the south, most likely from the Indian Ocean between Java’s southern coast and the northern coast of Australia. Tonight, with radar disrupted, the air base could not safely get its F–16s into the sky to protect from an inbound invasion.

It appeared now, at least based upon sketchy information flowing from headquarters, that some sort of airborne invasion had occurred, apparently by helicopter, and under the protective cover of a very effective radar jam against the western sector of Java.

Now, the military was scrambling to shoot down the choppers by rushing handheld Stinger antiaircraft missile batteries in a wide, umbrella-shaped perimeter at various points in a hundred-mile ring all around the capital.

JI. Raya Pajajaran, the highway to the Puncak Pass, ran through a mountainous region along the underbelly of the city, and between the city and the southern coast of Java. The idea was to spread out on the road, establishing posts along a ten-mile perimeter, with each jeep bearing two missile launchers stationed at intervals of two-and-a-half miles.

Lieutenant Ortiz was in the lead jeep, about five miles away from the base, when his secure cell phone rang.

Headquarters.

“Lieutenant Ortiz.”

“Lieutenant. Jakarta Command.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Eyewitnesses report three helicopters lifting off Merdeka Palace five minutes ago. Flying in a south-to-southeasterly direction. Radar is still jammed. They’re flying your way. Be alert.”

Ortiz waved the driver to pull over to the shoulder. “How do I tell if they are theirs or ours?”

“The Indonesian military has no choppers in the sky in that area. If it’s a civilian chopper, we have no control over that. Use your discretion.”

“Yes, sir.”

The call ended.

The road turned eerily quiet, save the chirping of crickets in the mountains. Ortiz felt a twisting in his stomach. “Sergeant, load the Stinger.”

“Yes, sir.”

Oritz flipped on a high-powered flashlight as the sergeant loaded the missile. Then, in the distance, the faint sound of rotors cut through the pristine twinkling of stars.

“Sir, do you hear that?”

“Yes, I hear it.”

“It sounds like it’s off to the southeast, sir,” said the driver, a corporal in the Indonesian Air Force. He was pointing toward the horizon in the direction of the faint sound, where nothing was visible except the stars permeating the night. And the sound was growing fainter.

“Hurry, Sergeant!”

“Almost loaded, sir.”

“Get a move on, or they will be out of range.”

Ortiz knew that to have a realistic shot at bringing the chopper down, he had to point in the right direction, hope that the infrared device would home in on the chopper’s exhaust, and that the chopper was within three miles of his position. Otherwise, it was all a waste of ammunition, with the danger of killing innocent Indonesian civilians, perhaps women and children, on the ground.

“Finished, sir. Ready to fire!”

“Give it here!”

Ortiz positioned the launcher over his shoulder, pointed it skyward in the direction of the fading sound, and pulled the trigger.

Pffffffffffffffffffffff.
A bright light streaked through the night. The warhead roared skyward, leaving a white trail of smoke in its path.

Now Ortiz could only wait. And pray.