With hot adrenaline rushing down his neck, Zack gritted his teeth and gripped the Uzi like it was the only present his mama ever gave him.
He was going to kill someone.
He knew it.
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport
Jakarta, Indonesia
7:22 p.m.
The sound of buzzing hornets swarmed into the headset again. The controller cursed, then ripped the headsets off and tossed them down as the radar screens went blank.
“Chief, we’ve lost all contacts on radar again!”
Other air traffic controllers in the room stood and waved their hands in the air. “Mine’s down too!” shouted one. “Radar’s blank!” another yelled.
“What the…” The chief air traffic controller stormed across the room, unleashing a string of profanity. “Notify all inbound traffic. Radar failure! Get these planes turned around. Now!”
SH-60B Seahawk (“Tomahawk 2”)
Over Jakarta, Indonesia
7:30 p.m.
The Seahawk’s cargo door was wide open, and six US Navy SEALs sat on the chopper floor at the ledge, their legs dangling down over the white city lights of Jakarta just below them.
Zack grasped the gun and carefully crouched on the deck just behind them, about four feet from the edge. Not even the supercharged adrenaline flowing through his veins was sufficient to fully erase his fear of heights that had been with him since the first time his granddaddy had sent him up to the top of a tobacco barn when he was just a boy.
Zack looked out, not down.
Out to the right, Tomahawk 1 was flying slightly ahead of Zack’s chopper, and Tomahawk 3 was flying to the left.
“Stand by, men,” Captain Noble said. “We’re going once we turn out the lights. Stand by. Three, two, one…”
Pwfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
A blazing rocket streaked from Tomahawk 1 to the left wing of the palace. BOOM!
Pwfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.
BOOM! Another rocket, this from Tomahawk 3, rocked the right side of the palace.
The palace went dark.
“Let’s go, baby!” Captain Noble said.
“’Twas the night that the lights went out in Jakarta!” someone yelled.
“Woooooooooo!” Someone imitated WWF Heavyweight Ric Flair.
Tomahawk 2 dipped its nose and feathered down on the center roof of the building.
“Go! Go! Go!” Captain Noble shouted. The first wave of SEALs leapt out of the chopper. “Let’s go, Zack!”
Zack’s feet hit the asphalt roof. He sprinted-following the SEALs in a straight line at a forty-five-degree angle from the chopper.
Chit-a-chit-a-chit-a-chit-a-chit-chit. “Hit the deck!”
Gunfire ricocheted off the roof and the steel guardrails at the edge of it.
Zack dived, hitting the deck right beside Captain Noble.
Chit-a-chit-a-chit-a-chit. The SEALs returned the fire.
Just over to the left beside the guard shack that led down into the building, two male silhouettes staggered, then fell.
“Let’s rock!”
The SEALs rose, rushing the guard shack.
“Door’s locked, Skipper,” one of the SEALs said, as Choppers One and Three feathered down on the roof.
“Concussion grenade! Now!”
“Aye, Skipper.” A SEAL tossed a hand grenade at the locked door.
BOOM!
The door blew open.
“Let’s go!” Captain Noble shouted.
Zack got up and moved forward with the SEALs.
Another silhouette appeared quickly from behind the guard shack, his gun drawn on Captain Noble.
Zack raised his Uzi and squeezed the trigger. Chit-a-chit-a-chit-a. The silhouette slumped over.
Tonight, I’m going to kill somebody. His instincts were right.
“Jones. Rogers. Check the back of that shack and make sure the roof is clear.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
Zack followed a group of SEALs into the shack, then quickly down the steps. From overhead, more bursts of machine-gun fire, then the roar of American fighter jets.
They reached a first landing and jogged down another twelve steps or so to a second landing. They stopped, gently pushed open a door, and stepped into a large, dark hallway. The sound of voices could be heard throughout. A flashlight beam shot down the hall, then disappeared.
Captain Noble motioned his squad of six men into the hallway, which was visible through the night goggles. They moved swiftly about fifty feet down the hallway, which led to another open corridor, where crisscrossing flashlight beams cut across the floor.
The SEALs stopped at the entrance of the corridor, tucking themselves into the dark crevices away from the direct path of the flashlight beams. This was the corridor where the medical clinic was located. Zack’s heart pounded. Perhaps Diane was only a few feet away.
Captain Noble motioned again. Crouching, the SEALs turned carefully into the hallway, hugging up against the wall as they moved forward in an effort to avoid the flashlight beams. Zack was in the middle of the moving column, with three SEALs in front of him and three behind.
They had moved about fifteen feet down the corridor when the first flashlight beam caught the front of the column.
Machine-gun fire from the lead SEAL.
Now a flashlight beam from the rear.
More machine-gun fire.
The flashlight beams vanished from both directions. Four Indonesian guards, two at each end of the corridor, lay slumped on the floor.
Another thirty feet down the hallway where two of the dead Indonesians lay bleeding on the floor, they approached two swinging doors.
The entrance to the medical clinic!
Captain Noble pushed open the doors and led the SEALs into a reception area. Two women in nurse uniforms were on the floor, cowering.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. One of the SEALs motioned with his finger to his lips.
“Rodriguez. Jones. Post here. Nobody comes in. Nobody goes out,” Noble said.
“Aye, Skipper.”
“Anderson. Jenkins. Round up all medical personnel in the clinic and hold ’em in here.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Okay, let’s check the examination rooms in the back,” Captain Noble said. “Move, move!”
Residence of General Perkasa
Jakarta, Indonesia
7:37 p.m.
General, we have an urgent situation developing!” Suparman Perkasa, the new leader of the Islamic Republic of Indonesia, looked up and saw Colonel Erman Croon rushing into his office, past the array of television cameras. Croon had a frantic look on his face and was waving a paper in his hand.
“What is it, Colonel?”
“I’ve gotten a call from Merdeka Square. It appears that Merdeka Palace is under attack!”
“Under attack? By whom?”
“We have reports of helicopters landing on the building. Radar is out all over the city. At first controllers attributed it to an internal malfunction. But now we think perhaps external jamming.”
“Jamming?”
“Yes, sir. There are reports of fighter jets circling over the palace. They are not ours.”
Perkasa pounded his fist on the desk. “Americans.” He stood and folded his arms. “I expected them to try something. But not this soon.”
“Agreed, General,” Colonel Croon said. “They probably think you are at the palace, sir. My guess is that they are trying to take us out, sir, before tomorrow’s deadline.”
The colonel was right, Suparman knew. He had to think quickly. “We must strike now, Erman,” he said, referring to Croon by his first name. “This attack changes the dynamics.”
“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.”