An OP had spotted a recce patrol from the Russian airborne within sight of a mobile vehicle workshop, and those same enemies must also have seen one of the main ammunition storage areas that lay close by.
Somehow the soviets had infiltrated unseen past the rear protection, but rather than call in fire, which some may survive, the route they’d taken had been identified and a patrol tasking was generated. Subsequently the orders had arrived at Pat Reed’s CP and CSM Probert now had the task of laying an ambush for the enemy when they returned to do harm to the NATO support units they had found.
Captain Hong frowned at the rain that sheeted across the bridge screen. The storms that had delayed the invasion force for several days were not yet done with them as they left the relatively safer waters north of the island of Java.
This was there second attempt at entering the Indian Ocean; the first had been through the Lombok Strait to the east. They had lost one of the converted container ships when a super typhoon struck in mid passage, so ferocious had been the winds that the large vessel had been driven onto rocks where she broke her back and went down with all hands.
Vice Admiral Putchev had endured the pressure being exerted from Beijing until the meteorological reports indicated an end was in sight, but had only then relented after making both governments agree to a change in the plan.
Instead of steaming a few hundred miles off the west coast of Australia, a plan he always had doubts about, the invasion fleet would hook around deep into the expanses of the Indian ocean before approaching the landing sites.
Having ridden out some of the most powerful storms on record
The Russian was not on the bridge at the moment, but touring the areas of the vessel a senior officer of the People’s Republic would not consider venturing to, and speaking to the hands working in small departments that were as vital to the running of the vessel as the more high profile and technical ones.
Hong had tried to explain to Putchev that the reason officers below his rank existed, was to perform such tasks. Putchev had replied by smiling at him as a teacher would a gifted student who hadn’t quite got the answer, but was nonetheless confident the student would find his own way to it eventually.
With some many vessels squeezing their way through the straits in distinctly increment weather the captain remained close to the bridge radar repeater.
Hong was still peering intently at it when the radar swept over the edge of a landmass in mid channel.
“That is Krakatoa, or at least part of what is left of it.”
So intent was he on the repeater that Captain Hong had not heard the Russian admiral enter the bridge. He looked up to see Putchev peering out through the starboard screen, although there was no possibility he could have been able to glimpse the island in the present poor visibility.
“Did you know it was once supposed to be a tropical paradise?” The Russian looked at him over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised as if expecting an answer, but none came so he continued on with the history lesson.
“It was once a single island, not the four uninhabited chunks you see on the charts… but by all accounts it was eighteen square miles of heaven on earth.” His voice sounded wistful as he spoke, and despite their current situation Hong’s curiosity was aroused. “So what happened to it?” The schools Hong attended had not included natural history on the syllabus, the teachings of the man whom this vessel was named after were thought to have far more influence on the planet than mother nature.
“One of the largest volcanic events in recorded history blew up two thirds of the island.” Putchev replied. “A tidal wave fifty feet high as a result, killed tens of thousands and the explosion could be heard three thousand miles away.”
Hong looked back at the repeater, trying to fathom the forces that could have accomplished such destruction.
“The Americans even made a movie about it.”
The last item of information quite obviously did not have much of an impact on the Chinese officer, and Hong just smiled back politely.
Putchev tried again.
“Maximilian Schell and Brian Keith were in it.” But Hongs smile remained the same.
The admiral shrugged, oh well. “Whoever wrote its title couldn’t read a map and compass though.”
Hong looked back at the Russian.
“Why?”
“It was called ‘ Krakatoa, East of Java.”
It took several hours for the fleet to slip through the channel to the west of the island of Java, past the four shattered fragments that remained of Krakatoa and then take up a heading of 225’.
The captain and crew of Her Majesties Australian submarine Hooper, could have been forgiven for thinking that the typhoon which had announced the season of storms had begun early, was still blowing up top if it had not been for the daily met reports. Six of the weather fronts had crossed their area of operations one after the other.
Whenever they had come up to snorkel or raise the communications mast they had felt the effects of the angry seas that had been absent at greater depth. It was not on the scale a surface vessel would have experienced, but the Hooper’s helmsmen earned their rations each time.
Returning now to three hundred feet her captain awaited a rating to bring to him the decoded signal they had just collected.
Clearing datum was the first piece of business they had to deal with, seeing as how they had stuck a hand up where an alert enemy could have seen it, albeit a very small arm in a very vast ocean.
“Sonar?”
There was a few moments delay before his query was answered. The retarded effectiveness of their sonar suite was not so much a chink in their effectiveness as a weapon, more of a gaping hole.
“Control room, sonar… only traffic we have is that same tanker out of Madagascar?” The vessel had been the only shipping they had heard in over a week. “It’s still ten miles northeast and heading for the Sunda.”
Now there’s a crew who will kiss the soil of Gods good earth when they make port, the captain thought. Doubtless they were being paid premium rates with a bonus at the end, for carrying a highly volatile cargo of gasoline and diesel fuel, but it was not a job he would have applied for.
Aside from the threat from aircraft and surface ships which could choose not to see its neutral Argentine flag and registry, any one of the storms it had endured could have, and most probably almost did, send it to the bottom. Certainly the ships radio and radar had been taken out, because they had never once picked any emissions on their ESM mast.
The captain did not have the watch and when the decoded traffic was handed to him he carried it to his cabin to read in private, but a knock changed that.
“G’day boss, they say how long before Borroloola relieves us on station?”
“Come in, Number One.” The captain heeled closed the draw he had been resting his feet on and sat upright on the edge of his bunk, before getting his legs out of the way so his First Lieutenant could squeeze past and comply.
“So when can we go home and get fixed?”
“Borroloola is still in port.” The captain told him. “She will not be leaving for another three days.”