For a time friction between Christians and Muslims was minimal. In fact, during the Suharto years (think of him as an Indonesian Tito), the two sides could actually be called friendly. Muslims would help Christians build churches, and Christians would help Muslims build mosques.
But with him gone, chaos ... much of it inspired by Army agitators. Backward-looking officers seemed to think a grateful nation would welcome them as saviors: “You have to love us for snatching you out of the fire that we lit!”
Wahid died in 2002. After his death, the new administration had a weak president, Gajah Mada, and a popular vice-president, an Air Force general named Ratu Adil. Adil was popular with the nonarmy military and with a substantial portion of the ordinary people.
By 2004, the American-educated Adil (a B.S. from UCLA, and graduate work at the National Defense University in Washington) had managed to bypass his mostly ineffective presidential superior, and set in motion a small (but carefully thought out) number of positive initiatives. Among these was the JISF, a “Joint (i.e., multiservice) Indonesian Special Forces” group. This small, but highly trained (by U.S. Special Forces) organization was immediately put to good use in the Moluccas, where a JISF team, aided by U.S. Special Forces, succeeded in separating the warring factions, enforcing an uneasy peace, and making a strong start at rebuilding the islands’ devastated infrastructure.
December 2005
This tenuously emerging peace in the Moluccas did not please everyone, and it especially displeased the Sons of the Jihad (the SJs), a violently fanatical Muslim sect based in Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, and its economic and agricultural center. In retaliation for what they saw as a betrayal of their coreligionists in the Moluccas (and secretly urged on by the Army), thousands of SJs embarked on a holy jihad by boat flotilla to set things right. On 10 December, ten thousand Muslims sailed toward Ambon.
They could not be allowed to land there.
They were intercepted by the Indonesian Navy and diverted to an anchorage near Suli, a town on the east side of Baguala Bay, and about ten kilometers east of Kota Ambon.
Though they were prevented by Navy and JISF units from completing their “crusade,” the situation was tense.
ODA 142 Team House
Pattimura Airport
Ambon, Indonesia
0526 25 December 2005
“Shit!” said Captain Carlos Valdez, Commander ODA 142, as the intense early dawn flash yanked him awake. The glare came from the direction of the rising sun, but it was incredibly brighter. Valdez, almost without thinking, rolled out of bed and put the cot—admittedly not much protection—over him. He had a pretty good idea what caused the flash. And it was just about the last thing he imagined he’d run into in Ambon. He covered his head with his arms and counted seconds. “One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four ...”
The sound of the blast came. Noisy, but he’d been in thunderstorms as bad. Seconds later, the wind whipped through, fierce to be sure; yet again, not as bad as it could have been. Bad would have been 200 meters from ground zero (because you are instantly dead). Worse would have been three kilometers from ground zero (because you might live for a little while). If his rough and ready second counting was anything close to accurate, he estimated the nuke had been set off something like 20- 30 kilometers away ... 15-20 miles. “Good, the farther the better.”
Valdez stood up, went over to his window, and threw open the shutters. Several kilometers away to the east, dark against the gray dawnlight, a lightning-splashed mushroom cloud was roiling up.
“Jesus!” he shouted at the top of his voice, without realizing it.
He had not yet begun to form serious questions. But on the outer edges of his consciousness a few were starting to take shape: The nuke hadn’t hit the city, which was ten kilometers across Ambon Bay. It was to the east of that. Where? Somewhere near Baguala Bay, probably. But mostly, Why?
“Jesus!”
He thought of Karen and the boys. Was this a worldwide thing? he wondered. The Big Madness? Or just a local insanity? Something in him told him they were okay ... that he was in the middle of some local insanity. But I got problems!
Another thought hit him: Shit, Merry Christmas!
Somebody was standing in his doorway (there was no door). “Sir, you okay?” It was Valdez’s warrant, Max Buser (called Bruiser by his friends), looking just about as dazed as Valdez felt. Like Valdez, he was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
“Yeah,” Valdez answered. “You, Bruiser?”
“Ticking.”
“Okay. Then let’s get moving,” Valdez said, realizing that they had a lot to do. Somebody had set off a nuke. And he knew he and the rest of his ODA had been instantly elected to do what they could to help survivors and start the cleanup.
Luckily, his guys were not alone. They would be aided by a few good friends.
The team was not actually located on the airport proper, but a stone’s throw away in the village of Laha, on Ambon Bay. They had boats there, which gave them an edge in mobility. The ODB commanding them (ODB 140) was located at the airport itself, housed in a loaned Indonesian Air Force facility. Another ODA (146) was in Kota Ambon, and a third (144) at Passo, a town on the narrow isthmus that separated the two peninsulas that made up Palau Ambon.
It hit Valdez just then that Passo, which was east of the capital, would have been awfully damned close to ground zero. “Shit,” he muttered to himself, “we’re going to have to get help to them, and pretty damned fast.”
He turned his mind again to available forces:
They would have Indonesian help. Especially useful would be Lieutenant Colonel Kumar’s two companies of JISF guys. The JISF had replaced the army in the peacekeeping role in the Moluccas, which was the prime reason the islands had achieved something like peace and stability. Kumar was a good guy; he and Valdez had grown close over the months they’d been working together. (He remembered just then that JISF units were at Siri, on Baguala Bay, forming a firewall against the madmen of the Sons of the Jihad. Shit, he thought. That can’t have been far from ground zero.)
There was also the local police—newly created and far less effective and reliable than the JISF, but sure to do more good than harm.
Valdez and Bruiser were by then at the team’s comms center, a few doors down from Valdez’s room. And moments after that they learned that their comms were actually (as designed) hardened against EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) effects from nuclear weapons. That meant the SF guys could communicate with each other, and with their 1st SFG superiors in Okinawa and the U.S. It also meant that they were probably the only people on the island who could communicate with anybody (with the possible exception of the JISF, but there was no word from Kumar yet). The EMP had surely fried transistors in phones, cell phones, radio, TV, and computers ... and probably all the navigation and safety systems at the airport.
Meanwhile, ODA 142 got its marching orders from Major Ron Carver, the ODB commander. The team was to be split. Valdez would take half over to the Kota Ambon side of the island and get himself up to the top of Gunung Sirimau, the 950-meter high hill that would provide the best visibility of Baguala Bay. It was Carver’s estimate (like Valdez’s) that the nuke had probably been set off somewhere on or near the bay. Carver also had a pretty good idea what the nuke had been set off to destroy—the Sons of the Jihad flotilla anchored off of Siri. Though who had done it, and why, remained a very open question.
Valdez’s job was to gather information about damage, and get some idea about survivors.
The other half of the team would race over to Passo (there was a decent road along the coast), and do what they could for the team there. The ODA in Kota Ambon would link up with Kumar’s people. Carver estimated it might be two days before serious relief help arrived. Until then, it was going to be largely up to them and the JISF to organize the medical and relief efforts.
The White House
Washington, D.C.
1713 24 December 2005
“So what gives?” the president asked, visibly out of joint, as he entered the Situation Room. The furthest thing from his mind was a call from Admiral Len Croce, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urgent enough to pull him out of the Christmas Eve party his wife had set up for the rest of their very large and usually very spread-out-across-the-country family—sons, daughters, and their husbands, wives, and children. He enjoyed his family; he did not like to be dragged away from them on the most joyous holiday of the year.
The president, a tall, lanky, loose-limbed man, was wearing a pastel-colored cardigan, and he was accompanied by a Corgi dog. He had the almost too-relaxed manner of a Mister Rogers, and this had charmed the electorate into believing he would be another presidential grandfather like Eisenhower or Reagan. The manner was deceiving; he was not as easygoing as he looked (any more than Eisenhower and Reagan had been). He had served with distinction in the Gulf War, successfully run for Congress, and then was elected governor of a populous western state (which he had governed well). He was tough, decisive, and short-tempered.
And the dog was obedient. The president murmured a command and it lay down quietly next to the chair the president usually occupied. Then the president looked around, expecting to see more than the two top advisors now present ... until it hit him that it was Christmas Eve. They were accompanied by a pair of high level gofers whose names escaped the president.
The expression on Croce’s face was grim. Next to him stood Richard Callenbach, the president’s National Security Advisor, also grim.
“Mr. President,” Croce announced, “word came to NMCC from Colorado Springs a few minutes ago that our DSP Pacific bird has picked up a double-flash in Indonesia.” He paused for a second to let that sink in; and in case it didn‘t, he added, “Somebody has set off a nuke.”
The National Military Command Center at the Pentagon is the clearinghouse for military significant events. Defense Support Program satellites, in geosyncronous orbits, sense bursts of high-intensity thermal and other radiation. They see, in other words, events like rocket launches and nuclear detonations. The double-flash the DSP satellite observed in Indonesia was a sure signature of a nuclear explosion. The DSP bird then relayed the news to the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Shriever AFB near Colorado Springs, who fed the data to the NORAD warning center at Cheyenne Moun tain, who then relayed it to the NMCC and the president. If a clear and present danger to the nation had been perceived along that path (such as missile launches whose warhead trajectories ended in the United States or near U.S. facilities overseas), the president would have been informed in a few score seconds. In the current situation, where the risk to the U.S. was seen as more remote, it took half an hour. During that time the CJCS and other high-level national security types availed themselves of that interval to inform themselves of current American military and relief capabilities in and around Southeast Asia. They wanted to be able to give the president some options.
RUBICON, INC. BY LAURA DENINNO
“Where exactly?” the president asked.
“Early estimates put it in the Moluccas, on the Island of Ambon,” Croce answered. He had come prepared with an open map, marked with the spot. Then he added, with a puzzled look, “There is nothing militarily significant there, or strategically or economically significant either, for that matter.”
“You’re saying it’s an accident?”
“No ... though it could be. I’m saying we have no idea why—barring an accident—anyone would want to set off one of those things there. Indonesia has no real enemies. None of the nearby nuclear powers—China, India, Pakistan—has any reason to be angry. The Indonesians themselves have never lusted after nuclear weapons. They don’t even have any nuclear power plants. Local oil covers all their energy needs.”
“So it could have been an accident,” the president mused. “Or they could have done it to themselves ... assuming they got nukes. Which we know nothing about.” This last was a subtle rebuke. U.S. Intelligence should know who has nuclear weapons.
“It’s possible,” Admiral Croce allowed.
“What I’m thinking is that there’s been a lot of shit hitting the fan in that part of the world. Muslims fighting Christians and vice versa and crap like that. Not a lot of folks wear haloes.”
“Possible,” Croce repeated.
“But why would anybody nuke themselves,” the president continued to muse. “I heard of shooting yourself in the foot ... done it myself more than once.” He smiled at his own wit. “But this goes a little far.” He glanced over at his National Security Advisor. “So what do you think, Dick?”
“What you say, Mr. President, makes sense.” He shrugged. “But Indonesia is an Asian country—a muddle wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in misdirection—and I wouldn’t venture to try to explain events there until I had a lot more facts than we do.”
“So let’s get some facts. What do we have over there? Anything? Anybody? ... And where are the carriers?” he added.
“There we may be in luck, sir,” Croce responded. “We’ve got the better part of a Special Forces company actually on Ambon, working with an Indonesian special forces unit and the local police, doing peacekeeping, communications and police training, and civil affairs infrastructure things. I’ve got people trying to get in touch with them as we speak. You have to understand, sir, that communications will be initially dicey. The EMP.”
“I understand.”
“I also talked to CINCPAC on my way over here. He’ll be giving me a list of units he can swing into Indonesia fast ... And we may be in luck here, as well. There’s a CVGB on a port visit in Perth, Australia, along with its Marine MEU (SOC) and ARG. We should be able to get them up near Ambon four days after you give the word.”
“Tell CINCPAC to start them moving. If we have to stop them later, we can do that.”
“They probably have already received the warning order. I’ll flash the go-ahead to CINCPAC.” He gave a nod to his aide, who moved to the side of the room and picked up a phone.
“And what else?”
“I have anticipated that we’ll need to go to DEFCON 4. And I recommend DEFCON 3 for those units in the region, or bordering it.”
“Go ahead, do that,” the president ordered.
DEFCON numbers represent states of military alertness. There are five of them. Peace is DEFCON 5 (peace in the sense that we have nothing serious to worry about right now). At DEFCON 4, command authorities are beginning to get a little nervous. At DEFCON 3, forces go on increased alert. At DEFCON 2, the threat looks imminent. DEFCON 1 is war. At DEFCON 1, pray for the survival of the human species.
“And tell me what you hear from those Special Forces guys. I want to know what’s going on out there. And I want to know now.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” the CJCS and the National Security Advisor said as one.
“Meanwhile,” the president said, finishing up, “we are going to very soon get inundated with questions and alarms from the media. I don’t want to deal with them until we have some kind of handle on this thing. But have a statement for them from me drafted by morning. And have my speechwriters rewrite my Christmas address.”
“It will be done.”
“Oh yeah, unless there’s an overriding need, I don’t think you’ll need to call in other advisors tonight. You two will be enough ... and it is Christmas Eve.”
The White House
Washington, D.C.
0245 25 December 2005
“Captain Valdez, how are you?” The president spoke into the phone receiver. The line had been patched through to Valdez via SATCOM to Pattimura Airport, from where there was a good line of sight to the top of Gunung Sirimau, where Valdez and his team had set up for observation. “Can you hear me okay?”
“Just fine, sir,” Valdez answered.
“So tell me what you see.”
“Yes, sir,” Valdez answered. “We’re situated at the top of a small mountain, si
r, about three thousand feet high. It gives us a good view of Baguala Bay. Ground zero was maybe five kilometers—three miles—from our position.
“There was a flotilla of small boats across the bay anchored next to Siri, a little town there, sir. They called themselves the Sons of the Jihad.”
“I know about that,” the president interrupted.
“Okay, sir,” Valdez said. “It looks to us like the bomb was set off in the water, close to shore, or maybe on shore a little ways. Whoever did it didn’t like the Jihad. The flotilla’s vaporized, sir. And so is the town.
“We’ve also got heavy blast damage all around the bay. And it raised up a pretty big wave. There were six or seven towns around the bay. Not much of them is left ... wiped clean, sir. We had an ODA—an A-Team, sir—at one of them, Passo. I don’t think they made it.” The president could hear the other man choking up on that.
“I’m sorry,” the president said, knowing how lame that must sound. “They will be in our prayers.”
“Thank you, sir.” Then he continued, not wishing to linger on the loss of friends. “The JISF—Indonesian Special Forces we’ve been working with, sir—also lost some guys over at Siri. They have already sent some other guys in along the bay on Land Rovers. I don’t know yet if they have found survivors.
“The mountain we’re on, sir,” Valdez continued, “has given the city, Ambon, good protection. Shadow effect. I doubt if there is much damage there ... maybe a few broken windows. And the airport is on the other side of another bay—Ambon Bay—from the city. The airport’s okay, too. That means the airport can handle relief aircraft ... and Ambon Bay can handle ships.”
“Good. So the damage was pretty much limited to the other bay area?”
“It appears so, sir. It could have been a lot worse.”
“Do you have any idea, Captain, who did this thing? Or why?”
“Not really, sir. Somebody didn’t like the Jihad.”