He decided to delay. It was a weakness, he knew—and so did Adil—but there was no helping it. He must have Adil, for the moment at least, on his side.
“You should think for a time,” he said, cursing the man, and hating it that he needed him. “Think about your daughter. A pretty thing. Look at her.” He gestured at the photograph as he rose from his chair. “We’ll return later.”
Adil picked up the photograph and tore it slowly into small pieces. The pieces fluttered to the floor like moths.
Bungei and Cancio were out of the door before he had finished destroying it. The general’s face was rigid with fury.
The United States Embassy
Merdeka Square
Jakarta, Indonesia
2247 28 December 2005
The Marine guards at the embassy were not happy. Earlier that evening, Indonesian Army troops had fired at rioters. Some of the shots had “strayed” and hit a corporal and a private. Both had been wearing flak vests, which worked out well for the corporal, but the private’s right wrist was shattered. The Marines had been ordered not to shoot back unless directly threatened, and this incident was officially an “accident” (though they suspected, rightly, that it was intentional), but that didn’t prevent the Marines from being pissed. They were not in a friendly mood toward Indonesians.
When the Indonesian approached the Marine first lieutenant (his name was Kelleher), Lieutenant Kelleher tried to shoo him away. He did this automatically, and he wasn’t particularly gracious about it. At least not after two “You’ll have to come back tomorrow when the embassy is open” tries had failed to send the man away. He was just an ordinary-looking Indonesian, batik shirt, pitji cap, polite, patient.
“Back off, motherfucker,” Kelleher commanded, making a “get lost” gesture with the butt of his M16.
“My name is Widodo Suratman,” the man persisted. “May I ask you again to tell Colonel Anthony Meyer that I’d like to see him? Please tell him it is urgent.”
Yeah, Kelleher was thinking, like you want visas for your family.
On the other hand, a contrary thought was beginning to intrude into his thinking: He began to see that this man was intelligent, and he had an air of authority. And if he really did have reason to see Colonel Meyer, then my ass is grass if I don’t tell the colonel about him.
A few minutes later Suratman and Colonel Meyer were seated in the colonel’s office.
“So what gives, Widodo?” he asked, glad to see the man ... glad to see that he was alive. He hadn’t put his chances as very high the last time they parted.
“I must tell you this ... officially: The shootdown of your C-130 earlier today was the responsibility of the outlaws who call themselves the CRR. It was an Army operation. They inserted a SAM team to embarrass you. I hope they did not succeed.”
“We had already figured that out,” Meyer answered. “But thanks for your concern. It will be noted.
“We had a Pave Low,” he explained further, “on scene when they shot down the C-130. It took out three of them and managed to capture a fourth. He talked. What he said connected the attack with the CRR. It gives us justification to reply with force.”
“Which you don’t need,” Suratman said softly.
“No, not really, but it will firm up the nervous Nellies among the coalition partners.”
Suratman nodded understanding, and then continued. “Now for the real purpose of my visit,” he said. “I told you before that the Air Force and the Navy would not back the CRR. That is true. I can also tell you that there will be no Air Force or Navy hindrance to SEAC movements. Or to military actions ... say, in the Bandung area, if that is contemplated.” He stared at the other with masterful impassivity.
“Meanwhile, the CRR remain technically in control of the capital, but, in fact, the city is currently hardly a degree or two away from anarchy, and no one believes they can hold it. Bands of young people have been killing soldiers in less than platoon strength. And the Air Force has been interdicting Army reinforcements trying to move into Jakarta. The Army is increasingly isolated. The only strong backing they have is certain Army units ... but that will melt away in time.
“They’ve made terrible miscalculations,” he added. “And they have misread the people of this country. After the initial shock, few believed their lies. No one who took the time to think about it believed their claim that the Christians stole the bomb. It was one big lie too many. No one believed in their legitimacy. The CRR is another big lie.
“We will die unless we have the democracy, the freedom, the merdeka that is our right. Anything less is not a start-up.”
“You mean a nonstarter?” Meyer corrected, with a smile.
“A nonstarter? All right.”
“So how desperate are they?” Meyer asked, his tone suddenly sharp.
“You mean, I take it, ‘Are they desperate enough to use their nuclear weapons?’ The answer: ‘I don’t know.’ One can hope they will see reason. But with them reason has been in short supply.” He caught Meyer’s eye. “I hope immediate action will be taken by someone to neutralize those weapons.”
Meyer did not reply to this.
“One final word,” Suratman added. “I have received definite confirmation that Radu Adil is being held at the former aircraft factory near the airport at Bandung.”
“I’m glad that he is alive.”
“I must leave,” Suratman said.
“Will you be safe? If you’d like, I’ll find a place for you here ... and your family,” he added, “if necessary.”
“Thank you. No. I’ll be okay. And my family are safe now on Bali. I can be more useful outside.”
“Well, then, good luck, Suratman. Selamat jalan.”
“Selamat tinggal,115 my friend.”
During the time Widodo Suratman and Anthony Meyer were having their conversation, four vehicles left the embassy’s underground garage, at intervals of between five and fifteen minutes. The first was a Range Rover. The second was a sixteen seat minibus (a sign on its side read COUNTRY WALKERS in Indonesian and English). The third was an identical minibus. And the fourth was an old Mitsubishi Montero SUV.
Half an hour later, the Range Rover was on the toll road to Bandung, a distance of about 120 kilometers.
Bandung, Indonesia
0530 29 December 2005
The city of Bandung is set in a large valley surrounded by 2000+-meter-high mountains. The airport is on the northwest side of the city, just off the toll road to Jakarta. The lower slopes of the volcano Tangkuban Prahu rise a couple of kilometers north of the airport. Its summit is thirty kilometers north of the city. (It has not erupted seriously since 1969, but it fumes and rumbles.)
If, like the two ODAs now enroute to Bandung, one wanted to view the airport unobserved, one could do worse than find a relatively inaccessible spot on the volcano’s lower slopes. There were disadvantages, of course (you were hoping for easy?). For example, the distances were on the long side: You might find yourself with a five kilometer sightline. On the other hand, five-kilometers is no more of a problem than five hundred meters for modern optics and thermal-imaging equipment. Consideration had been given to placing a series of TV minicams near the one-time aircraft plant (it was on the north side of the field), but that idea was rejected. The risk of their discovery, though small, was too great. No one in the plant must suspect that they would soon be the target for a number of nasty surprises.
The SUVs and minibuses, driven conservatively, had started arriving in the Bandung area by 0130. An hour and a half later, they had deposited their passengers and equipment by the side of one of the roads up the mountain. An hour after that, the two ODAs (each of them a couple of men understrength, as it happened) had split into two teams of five men each and set about digging hide sites. They placed these at the comers of a rough-sided box, about 200 meters on a side.
The idea was to get a clear and exhaustive two-day view of the workings of the airport and the bomb storage depot. One
team would keep track of air traffic. A second would watch ground traffic at the terminal and its facilities. A third would watch the goings and comings at the former aircraft factory—entrances, exits, loading docks, security arrangements around the building and on the roof, and the like. And the fourth would put together a “thermal map” of the facility. Human beings, for instance, shine brightly in infrared, even at a distance of five kilometers. Getting a thermal picture of the inside of the plant was more problematic. Still, sleeping spaces, dining areas, work areas, command-and-control and communications areas—one could make a pretty fair guess about the locations of such places by examining closely the thermal signatures coming out of the building.
But far more important: Nuclear weapons need to be kept cool. Heat is a normal byproduct of highly radioactive materials. A five-pound lump of plutonium is warm to the touch.
A number of critical parts within a nuclear device must be able to move in very precise ways if the device is going to work as designed. If you heat up these parts too much, they expand and don’t move the way they should. Ergo, you want to keep the bomb chilled.
Keeping bombs chilled is not hard to do. Refrigeration technology has been around a long time. It works by heat exchange. That is, cool air comes out of one end of, say, an air-conditioner, and warm air comes out of the other.
But, of course, a good thermal imager can tell you a lot about what is going on in such a system. Even better, in an emerging Third World country, where you don’t always have absolute confidence in the power grid, you will probably want to set up a separate generating system to power the refrigeration system that keeps your nuclear weapons cool. And for solid practical reasons, you’ll probably place this generator not far from the vault where you are keeping your weapons. Generators generate a lot of heat. That means—all other things being equal—if you can find the generators, you’re pretty damned close to the bombs.
Palau Ambon
2200 29 December 2005
It had not taken the Indonesian captain long to reveal the location of the SAM cache. He was not eager to suffer for the Committee for the Restoration of the Republic.
Earlier that day (during the morning of the 29th), another four-man SA-16 team had tried to take out a Chinook carrying a NEST team to the blast site. The Chinook drivers (unlike the C-130 pilots the day before) proved to be ready for the twin corkscrews of smoke that headed their way, launched from about three kilometers to their port rear. Flares were dropped and the Chinook took violent evasive action. The NEST people got shook up (one dislocated a shoulder), but the missiles missed.
Unfortunately, this time there were no MH-53Js or OH-58Ds around to follow up, and the bad guys successfully slipped away into the rain forest.
Later, a Pave Low, operating at 2,000 meters, made a pass near the spot the Indonesian captain had identified as the SAM cache location. The Pave Low’s FLIRs indicated that he had been telling the truth.
At 2200, a Chinook carrying ODA 142 was hovering behind a hill near the cache site. They were accompanied by an OH-58D and a Pave Low. Meanwhile, an AC- 130U Spectre was at 2,500 meters, circling the cache site, setting up to fire its 105mm short-barreled howitzer. This is, quite simply, one hell of a weapon to fire from an airplane. It’s like placing a howitzer on the best possible high ground ... high ground you can move where you need it most.
At 2202, the Spectre started firing its 105mm. It stopped firing at 2208 to allow the smaller birds to go in for a closer look. There wasn’t much to see except flames and smoke, punctuated by the occasional fiery burst of a cooking SA-16 warhead. But just to be on the safe side—and because they also wanted to get in a few licks of their own—the guys in the OH-58D launched a series of rockets from their pod at the peripheries of the jungle camp, while the Pave Low hosed it down with their Gatlings.
At 2210, having located a decently clear landing spot half a kilometer from the cache, the Chinook set down so ODA 142 could clean up what was left.
They found nothing undamaged, and no one alive. There were fifteen shredded corpses and thousands of shards of weapons and gear. Body parts were everywhere. It was as though somebody had put everything in the camp through a big snow blower (with a missing blade).
It was, of course, possible that one or two of them had managed to escape into the jungle when the pounding from the Spectre started, but they were toothless and clawless. They wouldn’t cause any more harm.
Meanwhile, there was intelligence to be gathered, and Valdez and his ODA did that for the rest of the night. Much as he and his guys hated what these people had done to Americans, and were prepared to continue doing, it was still a ghastly duty that the ODA would have preferred not to do.
Just after dawn, they trudged back to the Chinook carrying bags of “evidence” that the analysts would do their thing with.
In the Chinook, Valdez was sick at heart. He was also a realist and a warrior, who understood the consequences of war. Those guys had been enemies. They deserved to be treated with extreme violence.
Yet the killing and the destruction of war never failed to yank hard at his insides. Those guys had wives, girlfriends, children. Somebody would be weeping for them the way Karen might be weeping for him if the situation was reversed. It was insane, but that was the way it was.
And besides—these moments aside—he loved the job.
Husein Sastranegara Airport
Bandung, Indonesia
0100 31 December 2005
Nuclear weapons do funny things to people. Or at least that was the message Captain Chuck Verbalis, the ODA 163 commander, had gotten during a briefing at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta by Dr. Ben Sobel, one of the NEST team from Nevada. (There would be a NEST component during the final grab of the weapons.) “When people have nukes as close neighbors, they go nuts” was the way Sobel had put it. “That’s going to be particularly the case when people come into possession of nukes who aren’t used to the damned things ... not that anyone will ever get used to them.
“What you can expect to see is some really strange things. The villains are going to get overprotective. They’re going to look real paranoid. It’s like the ring in Tol kein’s books. The longer you have it, the more power it has over you. If they could wear the fuckers around their necks, they would.
“You’d think having nukes would make you feel mega-macho,” he went on. “It doesn’t work that way. You look for enemies everywhere. It’s like showing a million-dollar diamond necklace on the New York subway. You don’t know who is going to snatch first.” From his accent, it was clear Dr. Ben Sobel had done a lot of time on New York City subways. “So the nuke guys will go for overkill where protection is concerned.”
After two days at airport, Verbalis had concluded that Sobel had been right. He and the others on the teams surveilling the airport had expected the CRR generals to present a low profile ... They’d expected them to let the civil airport run normally, and to keep their security measures more or less invisible. “Why call undue attention to yourself?”
But things didn’t work out that way. As Sobel had predicted, the generals got increasingly paranoid (Verbalis called that the “Sobel Factor”). They closed down the airport to civilian traffic and brought in a battalion from Kostrad, Indonesia’s 15,000 man, well-trained and well-equipped strategic reserve. The Kostrad battalion secured the perimeters of the airport, set up AAA and SAM batteries, and fortified the former aircraft plant.
Two days of observations had yielded the following information, which had been relayed by SATCOM to the mission controllers at the FOB in Darwin (the mission itself was now called Operation Merdeka):
Guarding the airport against air attack, there were: • Five batteries of Swedish-made Bofors 40mm/L70 pompoms, with four guns per battery. (These were a direct descendant of and very similar to the Bofors-made pompoms everyone has seen firing from ships in World War II movies. They are still very much in use all over the world ... because they still do the job very well.) The Bofo
rs fire time, impact, and proximity fused ammunition, and are useful against both air and ground targets. Two batteries were placed near each end of the main runway, and the fifth was placed closer to the Merdeka factory.
• At each end of the main runway was also placed a British-made Rapier SAM battery. Rapiers are purpose-designed for airport defense. They’re day and night capable, all-weather, and effective against aircraft flying at low to medium altitudes. Each battery has three or four launcher units, with each launcher holding four ready missiles (which are eight feet long). These require a direct hit to kill a target (there is no proximity fuse), but they are very accurate.
On the ground:• One battalion (three companies plus a headquarters—approximately 600 men) from the elite Kostrad division. Two of these companies, on twelve-hour shifts, guarded the plant perimeter in platoon-sized units (a platoon was on the roof) from fortified (usually sandbagged) positions. The Kostrad troops were billeted in a tent camp set up about two hundred meters north of the former Merdeka factory.
• At strategic and fortified positions around the airfield had been placed .50-caliber machine gun positions, as well as lighter machine guns. It was clear to the ODAs that these light machine guns could fire at aircraft as well as ground targets.
• The Kostrad garrison was also augmented with six French-built AMX-13 light tanks (armed with a 105mm cannon and light machine guns), positioned just outside the plant perimeters.
• A number of quickly improvised obstacles had been placed within the perimeter fences of the plant—primarily twelve medium (5-ton) trucks loaded with concrete blocks and scrap iron to limit access to the loading docks and main plant entrances.
• There were sniper positions on the terminal buildings and control tower across the runway, and on hangars and other buildings on the plant (north) side of the field.