“Confirm missile status,” Hiro responded. At general quarters, his station was the captain’s chair positioned just to the left of fire control. He was getting more accustomed to it now, but the high-backed swiveling seat with its control-studded arms still inspired thoughts of the starship Enterprise.
“ATACMS bomblet fusing is set to mission parameters. ATACMS targeting coordinates set to mission parameters. ATACMS flight ready to launch in all aspects,” the TACCO replied.
“Very well. Commence firing on the time hack.”
“Acknowledged, firing on the hack! Seven… six… five…”
Around the CIC, anyone who could spare the seconds for a look fixed their gaze on one of the foredeck television monitors. To date, they had only fired this new weapon in simulations. That had been impressive enough.
“… three… two… one…. Fire one!”
The ordnance-warning air horns blared, a suggestion to anyone still topside that they throw themselves face down on deck now!
A geyser of orange flame spewed from the Cunningham’s forward Vertical Launch System, jetting to the full height of the main mast array. The projectile used by the Army Tactical Missile System was too large to be popped out of its cell in a cold launch. The raving exhaust gases of the missile booster had to be vented upward and out of the silo, the missile climbing into the sky through them.
The cruiser’s frame rattled, and a hint of the screaming shout of power generated by the rocket engine leaked down through the sound insulation. A stumpy yet sleek bulletlike form lifted through the flame on the monitors, guidance fins unfolding at its base. Climbing away swiftly it sucked its inferno up after it.
“… three… two… one…. Fire two!”
A second launch geyser erupted… a third… six in all. Six rounds on the way in thirty seconds. Steering in by a ring laser inertial guidance system, they pitched over toward their target.
Five miles distant, in the USS Carlson’s Combat Information Center, an overlapping string of blue missile-position hacks started to crawl between Buccaneer Station and Crab’s Claw Cape, tracked by the Cunningham’s Aegis radar.
“The Duke confirms six good launches. ATACMS running hot, straight. and normal. Time to target, two minutes twenty-five seconds.”
Christine Rendino was not a conventionally religious individual, but now she prayed to her visualization of the universe spirit. Let her be underground. Please, please, let her be underground!
Fantail of the MV Harconan Flores
0804 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008
From beyond the western horizon, a thin straight contrail, like a white pencil line against the tropic azure sky, began a climb toward the zenith.
“It’s an attack!” Harconan yelled the one instinctive exclamation in English, then he began shifting between Dutch and Bahasa Indonesia, rapid firing shouted commands into his Handie-Talkie. Somewhere a warning Klaxon began to bleat, its hoarse echoes wavering and distorted within the tunnels.
Amanda’s guard began to herd her and Professor Sonoo forward down the starboard deck passageway. Sonoo tried to stammer something to Harconan, extending a beseeching hand, but the guard batted his arm aside with the muzzle of his machine pistol. He followed up with a sharp jab of the muzzle to the lndian’s corpulent belly. Makara Harconan had no time for either Sonoo or Amanda.
In the guard’s haste to move them off the ship, he failed to note that Amanda still carried her set of binoculars. Cradling them close, she crossed her arms over her stomach, concealing them.
Bridge of the Frigate Sutanto
0805 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008
The inlet mouth grew closer, the basaltic jaws on either side of its blue-water gullet gaping wider.
MacIntyre checked his watch against the bombardment time count. “Incoming, ladies and gentlemen. Ninety seconds to impact.”
“Yes, sir,” Labelle Nichols answered from the helm station. Moistening her lips, she couldn’t keep herself from glancing upward. “A short round would be kind of unfortunate, wouldn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t be good,” Stone Quillain agreed, shooting his own look toward the overhead. “What worries me most is that we got those damn things from the Army.”
The Army Tactical Missiles engines burned out after a few seconds of furious acceleration, leaving the flight of projectiles to coast up their steep ballistic trajectory. Peaking at more than a hundred thousand feet above the earth’s surface, the missiles began their dive to their target, dispersing in a smooth fan pattern down the length of the peninsula far below.
As the missiles plunged back into denser atmosphere, their guidance fins angled, spinning them like rifle bullets as they fell. A laser range finder in each missile’s nose bounced a light beam off the earth’s surface, and at the moment when the rotation speed reached its peak, a bursting charge fired, peeling back the projectile’s outer skin.
Hurled by centrifugal force, M-74 cluster bomblets spewed outward in an expanding cone pattern, nine hundred fifty of them per missile, each with the explosive power of a hand grenade.
Other than the wail of the attack siren, the first warning the Morning Star surface garrison had was the sequential crashes of the empty missile frames slamming into the forest. Then came a soft metallic pattering, like metal rain. Hundreds upon hundreds of small gray cylinders were tumbling out of the sky, filtering down through the tree canopy, bouncing off limbs, thumping into the soft earth, saturating Crab’s Claw Cape.
The Morning Star veterans had frequently faced the grenade launchers and mortars of the Indonesian Army. They’d even tasted field artillery more than once, but this was nothing they recognized as a weapon. Some dove for cover, many hesitated, a few even picked up the seemingly inert little cylinders out of curiosity.
Thousands upon thousands of microchip fuse timers all reached zero simultaneously.
Aboard the Sutanto they saw something like chain lightning flicker and blaze blue-white beneath the trees on the cape. A billowing gray-brown cloud burst outward from the forest cover in all directions, first lifting, then settling heavily, as if the jungle were somehow reabsorbing it.
The sound came next, like God ripping a continent-size canvas tarp in two.
Stone Quillain nodded approvingly. “That had to hurt. Not bad, Army.”
“Indeed,” MacIntyre agreed. “Now let’s see what Commander Richardson can do.”
Inside the cavern, the guard hustled Amanda and Sonoo down the steeply angled gangway from the main deck of the Flores to the right-hand cavern pier. Sonoo stumbled in the dim lighting. Wheezing, he clutched at the cable railing of the gangway, begging to be allowed to go slowly.
Amanda found herself sandwiched between her guard and the Indian. For the first time the guard was neglecting to keep his distance.
Impatiently the Bugis snapped something in Indonesian over Amanda’s shoulder at Sonoo. Not a reply but a command. The status of the technical representative had apparently dropped suddenly. Amanda could guess why, and was already incorporating the factor into her own plan of action.
The honking Harconan Flores’s air horns joined in the clamor of the ship pen Klaxons. Deckhands were hastening topside, dragging the canvas covers off the 37mm mounts, while within the hull, air starters hissed, kicking over the LSM’s engines.
Up forward, the work boss of the stevedore gang bawled curses and encouragement to his men as they winched the encapsulated INDASAT up the bow ramp.