Don Brown - The Malacca Conspiracy

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.

Antiaircraft Battery Four

Bogor, Indonesia

7:48 p.m.

Under 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.

SH-60B Seahawk (“Tomahawk 2”)

Over Bogor, Indonesia

7:49 p.m.

The two US Navy Seahawks were flying at full speed, two hundred yards abreast of each other, in a southeasterly direction. Each of the Seahawks was being operated by three US Navy members, including the pilot, the copilot, and an enlisted aviation systems warfare operator.

Just a few more minutes, Navy Lieutenant Bill Cameron, lead pilot of Tomahawk 2 was thinking, and we reach the coastline.

Once they were over the Indian Ocean, Cameron reasoned, they would be out of the danger of fire from the ground, and under the full umbrella of protection from the Super Hornet fighter jets flying off USS Ronald Reagan.

The choppers were maintaining radio silence, but each was visible from the other’s cockpit because of the blinking red-and-green running lights on the bottom of the fuselage and on the tails of the aircraft.

Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…

“Skipper! Inbound SAM!” the enlisted crewmember shouted. The surface-to-air missile was streaking toward the Tomahawk. “Closing fast! Impact twenty seconds!”