South China Sea, 40 nm/73.2 km Northwest of Natuna Island, September 17th, 2008
The pride of the Malaysian Navy, Sri Inderapura had been launched at San Diego, California, in 1971 as the U.S. Navy's Tank Landing Ship Spartanburg County (LST-1192). Decommissioned in 1994 due to changing doctrine and force reductions, the five-thousand-ton vessel had been snapped up enthusiastically by Malaysia as an ideal platform for transporting heavy equipment from the Peninsula to remote North Borneo. Today it was carrying a battalion of Scorpion light tanks and truck-loads of fuel and ammunition to reinforce the garrison in Brunei. The modern frigate Lekiu was providing escort, her Lynx helicopter probing a few miles ahead on anti-submarine patrol. The Americans had declared an "Exclusion Zone" around Brunei, but an ancient rule of international law decreed that a blockade was only legal if it was enforced. The five hundred soldiers and sailors aboard Sri Inderapura were the test case. The riotous abundance of marine life in these tropical waters created a cracking, hissing, cloud of confusion for Lekiu's sonar operators. They knew that Chinese, Australian, American, and Indonesian submarines were lurking about, but it was almost impossible for them to pick out any definite contacts from the biological background. It would be a political disaster to attack a neutral or "friendly" sub. They could only strain to read the flickering screens, and wait.
For the sonar operators on board USS Jefferson City (SSN-759) 33 nm/60.4 km away, the throbbing diesels and whining turbines of the Malaysian ships rang out across the thermal layers and convergence zones like fire bells in the night. Eight weeks ago, Jefferson City had left Pearl Harbor on another routine peacetime patrol. A few days ago, the boat had been vectored into these shallow, treacherous waters to enforce the Brunei Exclusion Zone. And for the last six hours, the sonarmen had been tracking the enemy ships, refining the fire-control solution to enough decimal places to gladden the obsessive-compulsive heart of a nuclear submarine officer. The Weapons Control Officer spoke one last time to the Skipper. The captain replied, with a crisp, well-rehearsed and unmistakably clear order to fire.
Within a few seconds, a salvo of four RGM-84 Harpoon missiles spurted from the torpedo tubes, bored their way to the surface and emerged from their launch canisters. Even at this distance Lekiu must have heard the launch transient, but it was too late for the Captain of the Sri Inderapura to do anything except sound General Quarters and deploy damage-control teams. All he could do now was pray that the stream of 20mm slugs from the Phalanx weapon system atop his bridge would intersect the flight path of at least one Harpoon in the last fraction of a second before impact. It did. Another Harpoon fell to a Seawolf missile fired at the last minute by Lekiu. The other two Harpoons struck the LST. One penetrated into the engine room before exploding, leaving the ship dead in the water. The second struck the vehicle stowage deck, starting uncontrollable fuel and ammunition fires among the combat-loaded light tanks.
Lekiu stood by to recover survivors. By all accounts, they did a first-rate, professional job of seamanship, worthy of the traditions they had inherited from Britain's Royal Navy and their own pirate ancestors. As Sri Inderapura rolled over and settled into the muddy sediment of the seafloor, the overcrowded frigate turned back toward her home port. At almost the same time, the Australian submarine Farncomb was pumping three torpedoes into a Malaysian Ro-Ro ship, carrying vehicles and equipment for an entire brigade assigned to the defense of BSB. Malaysia would not risk any more ships to challenge the Exclusion Zone.
BSB International Airport, September 17th, 2008
Defense of an airfield against airborne assault was a typical Staff College tactical problem, and Major Dato Yasin, commanding the Malaysian Army's 9th Infantry Battalion, had graduated near the top of his class. First, block the runways to prevent surprise landings. It would inconvenience local commuters, but most of the transit buses from BSB were now parked in neat rows across every runway and taxiway of the huge airport complex. The major had wanted to block the runways with dumpsters and cargo containers filled with cement, but it might be necessary to clear the airfield rapidly to bring in supplies and reinforcements if the damned politicians could get the American blockade lifted for even a few days. Therefore, a captain in the transport section of the major's battalion now held the buses' ignition keys.
Second, establish interlocking fields of fire across the runways to decimate parachutists in the critical few minutes after they hit the ground. The major had laid out a pattern of carefully camouflaged fighting positions for fire teams and heavy machine guns, with plenty of less carefully camouflaged dummy positions. The major had served with American troops in several UN peacekeeping missions, and while he had never seen "primary" high-resolution satellite imagery, the unclassified "secondary" imagery the Americans had shared with their UN allies was impressive enough. Three times a day (the times were carefully noted on the Major's desk calendar, thanks to a nice piece of work by Malaysian Military Intelligence) American reconnaissance satellites passed overhead, noting the smallest details of his preparations.
The third principle of defense was to maintain perimeter security, and to block any move to seize the airfield from outside. Unfortunately, the perimeter of the airport was many kilometers long, and the Major had only a reinforced battalion of a thousand men. Designed and built as a conspicuous prestige display, this vast airport was really too big for the country. Still he had managed to site his heavy weapons covering anti-tank and anti-personnel minefields along the most likely approach routes.
Fourth principle: Dispose your air-defense assets for 360deg coverage and relocate them frequently. This was easy enough. The battalion's air-defense section consisted of a few man-portable Blowpipe missiles. The divisional air defense battery had emplaced a Rapier SAM launch unit and several dummy launchers on nearby hilltops, but he knew that it had little chance of surviving the first attack.
Finally, pray real hard. This was not part of the Staff College tactical solution, but as he faced west toward Mecca and knelt for the first of the five daily prayers, the major reflected that it was the most important step. He was a patriotic Malay and a good Muslim, and he had just noticed that the readout of his personal GPS receiver, programmed to indicate the exact bearing of the Holy City, was displaying gibberish. The Americans had begun "selective availability," the random garbling of the signals of the Global Positioning System. It did not matter. He knew where he was. If the Americans wanted this airfield badly enough, they would take it. Major Yasin had no illusions about his personal chances of survival. But that was in God's hands. Inshallah.
Aboard USS Springfield (SSN-761) in the Andaman Sea, September 17th, 2008
Naval tradition required waking the Captain whenever there was a significant event affecting the ship. The order over the Very Low Frequency broadcast was a simple code group of a few letters, but it meant "Come to periscope depth to receive a downlink of targeting data." That counted as a significant event, all right. Nobody in the communications section had ever seen that one, even in an exercise. It was a new capability to provide targeting data for the dozen BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles that slumbered in vertical launch tubes just behind the boat's bow section. Now, it only required a dish antenna smaller than a dinner plate poking above the waves for a few minutes, precisely aimed at a spot in the sky. From there, information could be downloaded from the Theater Mission Planning System, which provided near-real-time targeting information.