Don Brown: The Malacca Conspiracy

“Stand up, you cowards!” Perkasa screamed. “Have I but one brave officer on my staff?” He eyed Hassan as the others slowly returned to their feet. “Taplus, you are promoted on the spot to colonel!”

The rush flooded Colonel Hassan Taplus. But this was not the time to gloat. Now was the time to take control away from the fool Croon. Pounce now, Hassan. “I am honored, General, but now is the time for swift and decisive action.”

“Yes, of course,” Perkasa said.

“General, I must first inform you of more negative news.”

“What is it?”

“There has been a raid on Istana Bogor. US forces, likely Navy SEALs, have captured Vice President Magadia and evacuated him by helicopter.”

Perkasa slumped back into his chair, now almost in a daze. “How?” He looked around. “How did this happen?”

Now. “Perhaps we should ask Colonel Croon,” Hassan said. “He was in charge of overseeing security at the palace.”

Perkasa’s eyes locked onto the colonel, who by now was standing just to the side of the general’s desk. “What about that, Colonel Croon? Colonel Taplus is right. You were in charge of arranging security for Istana Bogor, were you not?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“And you realize how important it is to our cause that Magadia not become a political opponent?”

“Yes, but…”

“The Americans could prop him up like a puppet and finance an opposition to us.”

“But…”

“What do you have to say for yourself, Croon?” Perkasa was yelling again.

“Perhaps it is all a mistake…”

“A mistake?” Perkasa’s face reddened. “Tell me, Colonel. Did you have antiaircraft guns atop Istana Bogor?”

“Our guards had rifles.”

“Rifles? Against the Americans’ missiles and machine guns?”

“We have armed guards in the palace. We were relying on the secrecy of the vice president’s location to keep him secure from this sort of thing.”

“Secrecy?” Perkasa slapped his fist on his desk. “Let me tell you about secrecy, Colonel!” He whipped his pistol out of its holder and pointed it straight at Croon’s head. “Tell me a little secret, Colonel. How many more rounds does my pistol have?”

“Please…General…Please!”

The White House

4:35 p.m.

He had done what he had to do. Still, the thought of the minivan was already haunting him. The child. Perhaps his mother. Perhaps a brother or sister.

Why did they have to be next to the U-Haul? Why? Where was God’s sense of justice?

The president needed a break. He had walked from the Situation Room to the Oval Office just to get some air, if nothing else. If they needed him, they knew where to find him.

Though the United States was in the midst of the most serious international crisis in its history, the president had to be alone. If only for a moment. But to an American president, alone was never really alone. Alone, even in the Oval Office, meant alone plus two Secret Service agents.

Mack turned his back on his security detail and stood behind his desk. He looked over the receding shadows of the South Lawn, toward the traffic jams along Constitution Avenue. The National Guard was overseeing the evacuation of Washington. Soldiers could be seen on the street directing traffic. By evacuating Washington and shutting down the roadway entrances, he was inviting them to attack by air. That would likely be by small, low-flying aircraft, difficult to detect by radar.

On September 12, 1994, a drunken pilot crashed a Cessna 150 onto the South Lawn of the White House. That plane had been picked up by radar technicians at Reagan National Airport, but it was too late. The plane could have easily struck the Executive Mansion, but crashed on the South Lawn instead.

Seven years before that, in 1987, a German pilot had flown his Cessna over four hundred miles through Soviet airspace, again undetected by radar, and landed it at Red Square!

Yet Mack had more confidence in the air force to find a small aircraft than the local police to find a U-Haul truck, assuming that the U-Haul had not already entered the city.

Mack’s mind wandered from the defense of Washington to the boy.

“Jesus, let that boy be alive. His family too. Please. Somehow. Don’t make me live with this.” He exhaled. I’ve got to shake this off. There’s a nuclear bomb out there. Somewhere.

The intercom buzzer sounded. “Mr. President,” Gayle Staff said. “Admiral Jones and Secretary Mauney.”

“Send them in.” He turned around. A Secret Service agent opened the door. The admiral and the secretary rushed in with excited looks on their faces.

“Another break, Mr. President,” Admiral Jones said.

“We found the other U-Haul?”

“Afraid not,” Jones said. “Not yet anyway. But this is significant.”

“Talk to me.”

“We have a triangulation on Perkasa’s last broadcast. Two EC-2 Hawkeyes off the Reagan have been working this. We think we may have located where it came from,” Lopez said.

“We know where Perkasa is?”

“We think we know where he was as of that last broadcast,” Lopez said.

“In Jakarta?”

“Yes, sir,” Admiral Jones said.

“And you want me to authorize hitting that location with a missile.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Jones said. “And sooner rather than later.”

“And if he isn’t there, we risk killing innocent Indonesia citizens. Just like when Bush went after bin Laden. The guy kept moving from location to location.”

“We might get lucky, Mr. President,” Admiral Jones said. “As of now, we have no choice.” As Mack let that thought set in, the admiral spoke again. “Sir, remember that President Clinton had a chance to take out bin Laden and passed on it. A lot of American lives could have been spared if the president had acted in that situation.”

Mack turned around again, his gaze fixed on the Washington Monument towering into the late afternoon sky. “Order the navy to make the strike,” he said. “By means of your discretion, Admiral Jones.”

“Aye, Mr. President.”

Residence of General Perkasa

Jakarta, Indonesia

3:38 a.m.

Croon was on his knees beside Perkasa’s desk. His voice shook, and his crossed eyes stared into the gun barrel that was no more than two inches from his head.

Even Hassan felt a bit sorry for the bumbling fool. But the general was red hot, and Croon’s elimination from power was necessary for the good of Indonesia, and hand-in-hand with that, for Hassan’s own advancement.

“You haven’t guessed, you fool!” Perkasa shouted, extending his arm straight out with the gun aimed at the middle of Croon’s forehead. “Does my pistol have any more bullets in the chamber? Or did I shoot them all into the ceiling? Hmm?”

“General…General…”

“Answer, fool!”

“General, I don’t know…”

“Don’t know, do you? Well, then, let’s find out!”

“General, please…I have a wife and two boys!”

“Perhaps you should have thought of them before you implemented your yellow-bellied plan for protecting Istana Bogor!”

Blam! Blam!

Croon’s head exploded like a cracked watermelon. He slumped to the floor in an oozing puddle of blood.

“Get him out!” Perkasa ordered. “And clean up this mess! Throw his body to the sharks!”

“Yes, General.” A couple of enlisted men quickly dragged the body out feet first, while a third began scrubbing blood with a white towel.

“Now then, what were we discussing, Colonel Taplus?”

“General, unfortunately, it is obvious to me that the Americans have somehow cracked into our code. We have to change course.”

“And how did our plan get compromised? Who was in charge of security over our plans?”