Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

Crown Prince Omar Bolkiah, twenty-six years old, was on the tennis court with an instructor when the elderly, respectful, and impeccably discreet palace chamberlain arrived with the news of his father's death. Omar was unsure which of his innumerable half-brothers had engineered the assassination, though he had a reasonable suspicion which foreign power had provided the hit team, and he knew that his own life would not be worth a ringgit if he were found anywhere within the fifty-acre Palace compound. Twenty minutes later, veiled and shrouded in women's garb and surrounded by a gaggle of his favorite sister's servants, he slipped out of a little-used riverfront exit and boarded a small boat. Within an hour, dressed in the plain white uniform of a junior naval ensign, he was embarked on the rusty but trusty missile patrol boat Pejuang, listening to the throb of the twin diesels as she slipped out of Muara harbor, bound for the treacherous shoals of Louisa Reef.

The young Prince ('No, now I have to start thinking of myself as the Sultan,' he thought) had many worries, but pursuit was not one of them. There were men he could trust in the Navy. As the sun went down over the South China Sea in another magnificent tropical blaze of glory, every other patrol boat in the Royal Brunei Navy swung gently at her moorings, polished and scrubbed to the best Portsmouth standards, and thoroughly sabotaged. Within days, some very junior mechanic's mates would pay with their lives for their loyalty to their Prince.

British Embassy, Washington, D.C., September 5th, 2008

The package had arrived on a trans-Pacific red-eye flight into Dulles from Singapore under the diplomatic seal of Her Majesty's Foreign Service. It was picked up by a car from the British Embassy and escorted by two Secret Service Chevrolet Blazers. That was unusual, but at that hour, there was no one around to take any particular notice. The men gathered to examine the package came from a variety of military, diplomatic, and intelligence services. The Americans had better teeth. The British wore better-fitting suits. They had all been through this drill before. A fine linen tablecloth was flung over the exquisitely inlaid conference table; then the work began. Some of the tropical hardwood trees from which the table was made had been logged over a hundred years before, not far from the crash site. The package was opened without ceremony, and the charred and blackened shards of metal were passed from hand to hand for examination and judgment.

'Our Special Air Service lads picked these bits up the night after the crash. Rather a lot of confusion on the scene, as you can imagine. They had the devil of a job getting in and out without being spotted.'

'No question,' one of the Americans finally said. 'This is a Chinese copy of the Stinger.'

The missiles that had downed the Sultan's helicopter were, therefore, untraceable. You could pick one up in any Third World arms bazaar for a few thousand deutschmarks. The next question, asked by the President's National Security Advisor, was aimed at the British ambassador.

'Mister Ambassador, what is the position of the British Government on this matter?'

'My Prime Minister is, as you know, in a very difficult position. British Shell and Lloyds are the primary guarantors of more than a trillion British pounds of investment in both Malaysia and Brunei. Potential revenues from those two countries represent many times that amount. As might be imagined, British industry is putting huge pressure on our government to do absolutely nothing and accept this new arrangement as a fait acompli. The reality is that what we have here is nothing more than the rape of a small country by a larger and more powerful neighbor, just like Kuwait in 1990. Thus, while we will not be seen taking active measures, rest assured that we will support any initiative by your Government to restore the status quo.' The ambassador then extended his hand to seal the latest of many such back-channel deals between the United Kingdom and her former American colony. Once again, the 'special relationship' had been reaffirmed.

Off Louisa Reef, South China Sea, 0400 Hours, September 6th, 2008

Commander Chu Hsiang-kuo raised Hai Lung's periscope and slewed it around the horizon with a practiced flick of the wrist. There was the Bruneian patrol boat, a few hundred yards/meters to the south, just where he had been told to expect it. 'Helm, come to course one hundred eighty degrees, slow to five knots and prepare to surface.' Chu clicked the stopwatch button on his Rolex watch, a gift from an uncle who owned a major Taiwanese electronics firm. He planned to spend no more than three minutes on the surface, and had drilled his crew for days to shave every possible second off the tricky rendezvous and pickup. There were too many Mainland Chinese patrol planes about to allow him the luxury of loitering on the surface. Two minutes and forty nine seconds later the hatch clanged shut and His Royal Highness, the Sultan of Brunei, was a guest aboard the Republic of China's best submarine. The traditional formalities of piping a head of state on board were dispensed with; Omar simply gave Commander Chu a bear hug. The Prince was finally safe, though the patrol boat crew would have to hot-bunk in the Taiwanese sub's cramped accommodations for a while. As Hai Lung (Sea Dragon) dove, the patrol boat Pejuang wallowed deeper on the glassy sea and slowly capsized. Scuttling charges might have attracted unwanted attention. The Mainland Chinese had wired these waters for sound, and this last act of Brunei's Navy was played out quietly.

The Palace, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, September 6th, 2008

Surrounded by thuggish bodyguards, twenty-one-year-old Prince Abdelrahman, brother of the missing Crown Prince, looked distinctly uncomfortable in the uniform of a field marshal. It would be his first press conference. Although his handlers had thoroughly drilled and briefed him in the four days since the assassination, the 'live' satellite feed, in English with simultaneous translation into Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and several regional dialects, had a seven-second delay; and a senior Malaysian intelligence officer, covered as an audio technician, was standing by the 'kill' switch, just in case Abdelrahman said anything particularly stupid.

He coughed and stuttered out, 'In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate, I, Prince Abdelrahman Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, have the sad duty to inform my people and the world of the events that have shattered the peace and tranquillity of our country during the past week. We have uncovered proof that our late father, the Sultan, was treacherously murdered in a plot by our half-brother, the former Crown Prince Omar, who has fled the country. We will pursue this criminal by every possible means and bring him to justice. Our government will regard it as a most serious breach of international law if any foreign power gives sanctuary to this criminal.

'Even as We exert every effort to avenge our father's murder, we must take thought for the future of our people. For over a hundred years, this Sultanate has been a vestige of colonialism and a geopolitical anomaly.' He paused for a sip of water. The English phrases would be a mouthful for the poor translators. 'We have consulted with representatives of our people and our faith.' He nodded toward the hard-line Islamic fundamentalist imams who had taken control of the local ulema, the collective interpreters of Muslim religious law.

'We have therefore determined that Brunei will formally request admission to the Federation of Malaysia. We have received assurances from His Excellency, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, that the traditional prerogatives of the Sultanate and the customs, culture, and traditions of our people will be fully respected. Also, in the forthcoming international conference on territorial waters in the South China Sea, Brunei's historic claims will be represented with the full power of the Malaysian Federation. Our military forces will be merged into the Malaysian armed forces, and the Brunei dollar will be withdrawn from circulation and exchanged for the Malaysian ringgit at a very favorable rate. Foreign embassies will be given every assistance in relocating their facilities and staff to Kuala Lumpur, and we invite all the nations with which we have enjoyed friendly diplomatic relations to maintain an appropriate consulate here in Bandar Seri Begawan.' He finished with the words 'Peace be upon you.' There were no questions. Everyone agreed that, for his first press conference, the kid had followed the script pretty well.