It was some time before the door to the safe swung back, revealing Tommy pointing a gun into the airless room.
‘The fuck?’ muttered the burly DIA analyst, before shoving the gun into his waistband and moving to aid Jim.
‘Day off?’ asked Mac, forearm shielding his eyes from the glare.
‘Dentist,’ said Tommy, helping Jim to his feet.
They recounted the events to Tommy as the US military doctor dressed Jim’s wound. The bullet had torn a hole but the slug hadn’t stayed in the flesh. Bongo’s wound was more like a nick, and while the doctor strapped bandages around his thick neck, Jim hit the phones.
‘You leading a charge?’ asked Mac.
‘This has gone on long enough,’ said Jim, rustling a key chain and opening a steel gun cabinet against the wall. ‘I like letting a target run as much as anyone, but DIA’s involvement in this thing has become plain embarrassing.’
Joining Jim at the gun cabinet, Mac made his case. ‘I want to be part of it, Jim,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve earned it.’
‘You think I’d leave you behind, McQueen?’ said Jim, passing a Kevlar vest. ‘We can’t do this with American soldiers, so you’re up.’
The unmarked Cessna Citation jet reduced throttle as it approached the island of Alor. Inside, Mac and Jim faced one another while Bongo and Tommy were belted into the facing seats on the other side of the small cabin.
‘Yes, sir, that’s affirmative,’ said Jim into his sat phone. ‘No direct actions, sir, you have my word.’
Hanging up, Jim grimaced. ‘Tommy and I are tasked for retrieval of Simon – nothing else. We can only carry firearms for self-defence.’
‘That’s about as useful as a bicycle pump in a hen-house,’ said Mac. ‘Any word on Simon?’
‘The guys at Halim say an army Huey took off from Denpasar just after 1500 hours, bound for East Timor. They picked up some radio chatter – an American male talking to an Indonesian. I’m assuming we’re following Simon to Neptune, although it’s hard to tell – he’s dumped his sat phone, which had a beacon in it.’
‘Might get there at the same time if he’s humping it in a Huey,’ said Tommy, looking up from the laptop he’d taken from the DIA office. Every Pentagon-issued computer backed up to a central hard drive and Tommy was reviewing Simon’s shadow computer via a satellite broadband link with the Department of Defense in Washington DC.
‘What have we got, buddy?’ asked Jim, growing more nervous the closer they got to East Timor.
‘I’m searching his sent emails for clues,’ said Tommy. ‘Any ideas for a word search? I’m betting if there’s any correspondence with Lombok or Wa Dae, he’s done it in a rush, done it from a DIA email server, but embedded it in a legitimate email. There’ll be a type of email that has an innocuous first paragraph, followed by the real message.’
‘What have you tried?’ asked Jim.
‘Mum, birthday, darling, golf, fishing, skiing, shares, mortgage – all the basics…’
‘What about you, McQueen?’ said Bongo, who’d filled his own canvas bag of weapons at the DIA offices. ‘You get those special forces of yours to pitch in?’
‘Probably not,’ said Mac, thinking of the political considerations that meant they had to rush the Blackbird snatch and then disappear from Bobonaro. ‘But I can try.’
Unbuckling and moving forward in the cabin, Mac powered up the Harris radio that was built into US military aircraft. Shielding the settings from his comrades, he found a frequency on the UHF band, picked up the chunky handset and keyed the mic.
‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, copy?’
Waiting, Mac could envisage Robbo’s crew trying to stealth up to a militia or a Kopassus troop, and getting his annoying message.
‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, are you copying, over?’
A faint sound of static hissed from the earpiece and Mac was about to contact the navy’s Shoal Bay comms centre in Darwin when a familiar Aussie voice crackled into Mac’s ear.
‘Albion, Albion this is 63 – please confirm ID, over.’
The cheeky bastard, thought Mac. ‘Six-Three – bullriders from Narrabri wear skirts, confirm, over.’
‘ID confirmed. And you’ll keep, Albion,’ growled Robbo. ‘You’ll fucking keep.’
‘Six-Three, we might need fire support at Neptune, can do?’
‘Negative, Albion – currently Mars-bound and covert, over.’
‘Understand, 63 – good luck, over.’
Sitting back in his seat, Mac buckled up as they swooped onto the tiny island that lay between Dili and Flores. As they depowered on the plantation runway, Mac looked out his window and saw an unmarked Black Hawk being refuelled beside a red Quonset building.
The Citation’s co-pilot unlatched the door and they all unbuckled.
‘What about MIT10?’ said Jim suddenly.
‘Shit, that’s right,’ said Tommy, fingers flashing on the keyboard. ‘He had that golf shirt with the logo -’
‘MIT10?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s an MIT alumni association.’
‘For people who can’t get over how smart they are,’ said Jim.
‘Eureka! Nice work, boss,’ said Tommy, turning the laptop and letting Jim see.
‘Fuck me,’ muttered Jim as the Citation’s foldout stairs hit the tarmac. ‘He was setting this up under our noses. Look at this one – sent four days ago.’
‘Probably after you briefed me,’ said Mac. ‘Anything we can use?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Jim, swapping a look with Tommy. ‘If I’m not mistaken, we have the bank numbers and the agreements here.’
Tapping through the MIT10 emails, Jim’s face lightened.
‘Simon is running a trust account containing forty million US dollars,’ said Jim, thoughtful. ‘From the wording of the emails, I’d say Haryono can see it but Simon controls it – Simon’s been holding it out there as bait, as a carrot to get the project finished.’
‘If we can access it, we could have some fun,’ said Mac.
‘We’d need somewhere to push it,’ said Tommy.
‘Here’s the sick part, guys,’ said Jim, pointing at the screen. ‘Haryono is getting a bonus of ten million to spray the SARS over the populated areas of Bobonaro, Oecussi, Ainaro and Cova Lima, and then he gets a bonus of thirty million if the UN declares at least ninety per cent of the Maubere population of those regencies dead within three days of the spraying.’
‘Shit,’ said Bongo, disgusted.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Mac, trying to stay calm. ‘We have to get Haryono and Kopassus to shut this down – we need the Indonesians to do this themselves, to turn on Simon and the Koreans.’
‘By using the money?’ asked Bongo, smiling.
‘You’re reading me, brother,’ said Mac.
‘Let’s hear it,’ said Jim.
‘Okay,’ said Mac, getting it straight in his own mind. ‘But first, Bongo has to call his mate Joao and hope he has his sat phone switched on.’
Lugging the gun bags across the tarmac, the four of them clambered into the Black Hawk as the humidity and fumes swirled around them.
‘Neptune’s hot,’ said Jim to Mac and Bongo, taking his seat and yelling over the engines. ‘But it’s where we’ll find Haryono – we’ll deplane in the adjacent valley, hike back over. Copy?’
Mac and Bongo nodded.
‘Last chance for anyone to get off,’ said Jim as the loadmaster slid home the side door and the revs came up. ‘All I can offer is a damaged career and a lifelong feud with Kopassus. But it might be fun.’
‘Never much liked Indonesia anyhow,’ said Bongo, staring out of his wraparound sunnies.
Smiling and giving thumbs-up, Mac resigned himself to a course of action that owed more to the heart than the mind. He crossed himself briefly, watched Bongo do the same, and then the Hawk was climbing into the clear skies above Alor and their hands were reaching into the gun bags.
The pillars of smoke were flattened over the pale-green hills of East Timor as they chugged into the valley south of Neptune airfield. It looked as though half the province was on fire. Taking turns with Jim’s field-glasses, they saw Indonesian Huey helicopters in the distance and small spotter planes, but no sign of the Singapore-registered Black Hawks carrying spray booms on their undercarriage.
‘Too much breeze?’ shouted Mac, handing the binos to Jim. ‘It’ll be sundown in a couple of hours – we may have a chance to stop this tonight.’
The sat phone rang and Jim held it to his ear, covering the other ear with his cupped hand.
‘Yep?’ said Jim, and then he shook a finger at Tommy, who pulled the laptop from his backpack and opened it.
‘Okay,’ yelled Jim into the phone. ‘I’ll put him on.’
Handing the sat phone to Tommy, who started typing as he hooked it under his chin, Jim smiled at Mac.
‘Thank Christ for the privacy-invading capacity of the US intelligence community,’ he said.
‘What have we got?’ yelled Mac.
‘NSA code-breakers have run the account numbers and name on Simon’s trust account at the Koryo Bank, and they’ve got us in. We now control the money.’
Bongo waited until Tommy had finished with the sat phone, then tried Joao again.
‘No luck,’ he said, shrugging at Mac.
‘Try again,’ said Mac, as the helo pushed on.
Mac wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to stop Operasi Boa. There were only four of them, they would be on foot, in an army base and surrounded by Kopassus special forces. They had to have something up the sleeve, and given that the entire Lombok-Korean-Simon consortium seemed to be about money, he wanted to lever the situation with the moolah.
‘We got company!’ said Jim, eyes now glued to the field-glasses. ‘F-16s, at our nine o’clock.’
Squinting out the window in the port-side door, Mac saw two blue-grey jet fighters streaking low across the sky, about fifteen kilometres north.
‘They interested?’ asked Mac.
Crouching forward, Jim leaned into the cockpit and had a shouted conversation with the pilot before pushing back to sit beside Mac.
‘We just got a “friend or foe” challenge,’ said Jim, bringing the glasses back to his face and peering out the window. ‘Might be time to touch down.’
The co-pilot’s visored face appeared and Jim gave thumbs-up.
‘Shit,’ said Jim, as the helo descended.
‘Better down there than up here,’ shouted Bongo, zipping his gun bag and checking his M4 for load and safety.
The Black Hawk dropped to the tree line as the F-16s banked and turned like a couple of blue sharks.
As the Hawk eased to a clearing in the jungle, the four of them leapt to the forest floor and ran for cover. As fast as it had descended the helo was back in the air, climbing and banking away.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jim, and Bongo moved to point, leading the group down to a small river.
A moment later the whooshing scream of two fighter jets roared over them, driving the birds and monkeys crazy.
Mac clung to a rock face, now sweating in the jungle humidity, and looked skywards as the roar faded.
‘The rules of travelling with me in the jungle,’ said Bongo, addressing the group but scanning the environment. ‘Don’t speak, don’t smoke, obey instructions, okay? It might be the difference between living and dying.’
Without waiting for the reply, Bongo hefted his gun bag’s hand-grips over both shoulders and swung the M4’s strap over his neck.
‘I’ll walk point, then comes Jim and then Tommy,’ said Bongo. ‘McQueen, you can sweep, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Jim, who Mac had noticed was limping. ‘But let’s get it straight, for when we get to Neptune.’
‘Sure,’ said Bongo, looking around.
‘The priority is Simon – we have to snatch him, and I’d rather have him alive.’
‘This is no time for Pentagon politics,’ said Bongo, chewing gum.
‘Not politics, buddy,’ said Jim, lowering his voice. ‘If we can root out Simon, debrief him somewhere, maybe we shut down an entire network.’
‘Mate, the priority has to be Boa,’ said Mac. ‘Let’s stop the spraying, then worry about the network – I agree with Bongo, this isn’t the time for damage control at the Pentagon.’
‘I have to insist,’ said Jim. ‘Sorry guys, but this operation is DIA.’
‘Actually,’ said Bongo, his voice a monotone, ‘when I take a bunch of white boys through the jungle, it’s a Bongo operation.’
‘Okay,’ said Jim. ‘But I -’
‘And by the way, I’m employed by McQueen. And this dude, Simon, he shot me, right? So he comes into the open, he’ll probably have to drop.’
‘Okay, Bongo,’ said Jim, carefully. ‘It’s just that Simon seems to be running Operasi Boa, and if we shoot him, and the money strategy doesn’t work, how do we call it off?’
‘Let’s hope the Simon dude doesn’t want to shoot it out,’ said Bongo, as he turned to go. ‘’Cos that won’t work for anyone, right?’
It was 7.12 pm, just after dusk, when they reached the ridge that looked over the airfield renamed Neptune. Floodlights illuminated the admin section at the east end of the dusty lime runway, and an armada of unmarked helos with large spray booms underneath were lined up in front of the hangars. Some of the soldiers moving towards a long wooden building wore the red beret of Kopassus – Indonesian special forces. But most did not.
‘Two men on the gate,’ said Bongo. ‘And there’s a regiment stationed here and judging by their flag…’ Taking Jim’s field-glasses, Bongo took another look at the dark flags on the parade-ground pole. ‘Two regiments in the barracks,’ said Bongo, a smile on his face. ‘Kopassus and the 1635.’
‘Does that work for us?’ asked Jim, wanting his binos back.
‘Well, from what McQueen tells me, Kopassus is running Operasi Boa, which is a bad thing.’
‘And the 1635?’ asked Jim.
‘That could be good,’ said Bongo, handing back the field-glasses. ‘They’re the local regiment.’
‘Where does Haryono stay?’ asked Jim.
‘See that main administration building?’ asked Mac. ‘The officers’ quarters sit right behind it, with their own guard. Simon will be there, and so will Amir Sudarto – maybe Benni too.’
The sat phone trilled and Jim picked up. ‘For you, Bongo,’ he said, handing it over.
‘Yep?’ said Bongo, and then clicked his fingers at Tommy, who opened the laptop and started typing as Bongo mumbled in his ear.
‘You thought there’d be some mercenaries?’ said Jim to Mac.
‘Those helos belong to a mob called Shareholder Services, Pik Berger’s crew,’ said Mac. ‘They’re very pro – Saffas and Aussies, mostly. But they’re also contractors, so with any luck they won’t fight.’
Mac and Jim swapped a look and then hammered out a plan: infiltrate the Neptune camp, hold Simon and Haryono, and coerce them to shut down the operation.
Signing off on the phone call, Bongo picked up the conversation. ‘We’ll need Haryono as a hostage. No offence, but an American won’t count for Kopassus.’
‘And once we have him, we need to make him angry with Simon,’ said Mac.
‘Understood,’ said Jim.
‘I think we should go now,’ said Bongo, rifling in his gun bag.
‘Why?’ asked Jim.
‘Smell that?’ said Bongo. ‘Chow time – we know exactly where they are for the next thirty minutes.’
‘Still only four of us,’ said Jim, unsure.
‘Sure,’ said Bongo, screwing a suppressor onto the Beretta 9mm. ‘Grab a snake by the head, and you control the snake.’
‘Grab the head wrong, and you die,’ said Tommy.
‘So let’s grab it right,’ said Bongo, slamming a magazine into the grip of the Beretta.
Mac gasped for breath as he dived into the long grass abutting the security fence behind the officers’ quarters and mess. Jim followed with a thump, his injured leg starting to weaken.
‘What was that shit about a snake?’ breathed Jim, as they looked through the grass at a glowing set of windows along the side of the quarters.
‘Just that if we grab Haryono then we control the Kopassus element,’ said Mac, seeing a guard at the foot of the main stairs to the officers’ building. ‘The Kopassus guys will stand off if their major-general is in our hands. Then we have a chance to turn Haryono against the treacherous Anglo.’
‘So what about this 1635 Regiment?’ said Jim, not convinced.
‘Bongo was probably thinking that a regiment comprised of young East Timorese men might rebel if they know what’s in those spray tanks.’
‘You agree?’ asked Jim.
‘They have a history of mutiny and desertion,’ said Mac, getting the wire-cutters onto the first ring of the fence and snipping. ‘East Timor and Java might as well be different planets… Time?’ he asked, as he peeled back the small door he’d made in the cyclone fencing.
‘Nineteen fifty,’ whispered Jim, tensing.
‘Let’s go,’ said Mac.
Slipping through the hole, Mac grabbed his suppressed Beretta and ran with Jim for the side of the officers’ building, both of them lying flat against it while the guard lit a cigarette.
‘How’s the leg?’ asked Mac.
‘I’ll live,’ said the American.
‘Through the wooden walls they heard the sound of chairs being scraped back too fast, and raised voices of panic – Bongo and Tommy were in the officers’ mess, via the side entrance. Running fast but silently along the side of the building, Mac came around the corner to the main entrance, his handgun in a cup-and-saucer grip.
The soldier reacted quickly and went for his rifle but Mac shot him in the temple, the slide-action of the Beretta making more noise than the small spitting sound of the bullet.
Joining Mac, Jim helped drag the young man’s body around the side of the building.
The chow time was dragging on, and although Mac could see the guards at the front gate through the buildings, the alarm had not gone up.
Pushing into the building’s entrance, they closed the doors silently behind them and moved down a dimly lit corridor. They looked for the portico and pushed through the mahogany swinging doors into a large and well-appointed mess. In front of them about fifteen men sat at dining tables, hands above their heads, looking at Bongo and Tommy.
Bongo stood beside Ishy Haryono, the suppressed Beretta against the major-general’s ear.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Haryono. ‘What you want, Morales? Money? Drug?’
‘Where’s the American?’ said Bongo.
Spreading out to cover the officers with Jim, Mac looked into Amir Sudarto’s face, a white strap of plaster across his broken nose. The big Indonesian made a throat-slitting gesture as Mac levelled his gun.
‘Just bring the American,’ said Bongo.
Shrugging, Haryono tried to stall, and Bongo aimed his gun past the major-general’s head, shooting the next officer in the shoulder. Groaning, the officer fell to the floor.
‘The American, Ishy,’ said Bongo, very calm. ‘Pretty young white boy – can’t miss him.’
‘He around,’ said Haryono, trying to look at Bongo without turning his head.
Looking at Mac, Bongo lifted his eyebrows. Darting out of the mess, Mac headed back down the corridor, found the stairwell he’d passed and ascended the worn steps as quietly as he could.
The wood creaked as he carefully came around the first landing, and he continued to the next floor.
There were three doors off the large landing and Mac moved for the first. As he did, he noticed light creeping from under the middle one.
Stealthing to the door, his heart banging in his temples, he slowly pushed it open, hoping the hinges were oiled. The door swung back as Mac brought up his Beretta, trying to stay behind the doorjamb as he did. There was a desk at the other end of the room and a white man sitting behind it, a phone to his ear.
The man looked up and Mac looked into Simon’s wide eyes as he tried to make the ground to the desk. Simon’s hand went for a handgun on the blotter, and as Mac brought the unwieldy suppressed handgun up, Simon shot at him twice. Diving to his right, Mac crashed into a chair and sent a hat rack flying. Aiming for the desk, Mac waited for Simon to emerge and finish him off but suddenly his assailant was running across the room and through a side door.
Picking himself up, Mac moved carefully to the side door, panting and scared but uninjured from the fire-fight.
‘Simon!’ said Mac at the doorway, from his hide around the corner. ‘Time to end this, okay?’
‘It ends when I say so, McQueen,’ screamed Simon, his superior accent in no way diminished by his anger. ‘Those choppers are taking off tomorrow morning and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’
‘I’m not going to let you do it, Simon,’ said Mac, trying to control his ragged breathing. He just wanted Simon sitting in front of Haryono.
‘What do you care?’ taunted the American. ‘I mean, really?!’
‘Care?’ asked Mac.
‘I mean, come on – a bunch of jungle-bunnies? Why would you care if a few thousand of them died from a bad pneumonia? Every year millions die in the Third World from malaria and yellow fever.’
‘Come out and I’ll explain it,’ said Mac, getting his breath back.
‘Oh, I’m coming out, my friend,’ came Simon’s voice, getting closer to the door. ‘But you can’t shoot, okay?’
‘I’m not going to shoot, Simon,’ said Mac, meaning it. ‘You were the only one shooting, mate.’
‘Okay, McQueen, I’m coming out, so go easy, okay?’
Pulse pounding in his temple, Mac stood back from the doorjamb and aimed his gun.
Simon moved out of the doorway, holding a woman by a choker chain.
‘Shit!’ said Mac, immediately lowering his gun.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Simon, as Jessica Yarrow tried to move her lips beneath the grey duct tape.