Double Back (14 page)

They gave him five minutes’ rest in a small copse overlooking Maliana. Retching until he thought his jaw was going to seize, Mac allowed Bongo and a guerrilla named Joao to wash his eyes with bottles of water from the creek.

‘Don’t rub, Mr Richard,’ said Joao, a straight-haired mestizo local who was built like a middleweight. ‘Just let water do the work, okay?’

As they got the petroleum soot out of his eyes, Mac saw that Bongo had re-dyed his hair to black. His eyes slowly stopped running with tears and he became aware of three other men crouched around him, dressed in various combinations of jungle fatigues and armed with automatic rifles.

‘Ready, brother?’ asked Bongo, looking at his watch.

‘Well, I can see. Does that count?’ said Mac, throat like sandpaper.

They stood to go and Bongo did the introductions, at which point Joao took over, saying, ‘We travel all night, okay, Mr Richard?’

It was one of those South-East Asian statements made as a question in order that everyone save face.

‘That would be fine, Joao,’ said Mac, still croaky. ‘Thank you. Obrigado.’

‘And, not the offence to you, sir, but please – no question about where we going?’

‘That’s fine, mate,’ smiled Mac as he tested his knees again. ‘Anywhere out of Bobonaro is good with me.’

Joao packed water bottles into a small rucksack and they got into formation, one of the guerrillas at point with Joao in behind, and Mac sandwiched between Joao and Bongo. Turning to Bongo, Mac remembered something: ‘Mate, we need to get back to the Camry -’

Bongo smiled and held out Mac’s Beretta and Rahmid Ali’s papers. ‘Thought you might want these, brother.’

‘Better watch it, Morales,’ said Mac, jamming the papers in his chinos pocket. ‘Someone might think you’re a professional. What happened to you guys, by the way?’

‘We lost you after we dealt with the rapists, then we picked up with these guys.’ He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘That’s what the gunfight was about – these guys and the Lintar militia. They weren’t after us, we just got caught in it.’

Taking a deep breath, and preparing for the worst, Mac got a question off his chest. ‘Mate, the kids – did they make it?’

‘They made it,’ said Bongo.

‘Are you sure?’ said Mac, wanting to be absolved. ‘I mean -’

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ said Bongo, laughing. ‘That girlfriend of yours made sure of that – she’s a real tigress, that one.’

‘So where’s Jessica?’ asked Mac as they started walking under a half-moon.

‘She’s safe,’ said Bongo, who had his own rifle – a Heckler & Koch G3 by the look of it. It was old now but still a good weapon, and the best you could buy in the 1970s.

‘Where?’ asked Mac, checking his Beretta for load and safety.

There was a loud throat-clearing sound and the guerrilla leader was suddenly in Mac’s face. ‘Simple rule when you travel with Falintil,’ said Joao, ‘don’t ask where you going, don’t say where you been. Okay?’

True to his word, Joao made them walk through the night. Mac had it as westward, which worried him. He’d hoped to be tabbing east, away from the paranoia and malevolence of Bobonaro.

They spent two hours climbing into the mountains, Joao handing Mac a heavy drill shirt as it got cold and damp. Then they were descending, into a landscape that was punctuated with greenery but with rolling alpine grasslands and outcrops of rock between the stands of bush.

Finding a river bed in the lowlands, they drank and rested under a stand of trees for fifteen minutes, speaking in low tones.

‘Probably wondering why we going west, right?’ asked Joao, opening a parcel of waxed paper and sharing out a carcass of cold chicken.

‘Sure,’ said Mac, chomping on the spicey wing but tasting only gasoline soot. ‘Thought you guys liked to travel through jungle?’

‘Got something to do first,’ said Joao. ‘Mr Manny asked if we could get you on our way, okay?’

Mac nodded then checked the vial in the laces loop of his boat shoe. It was still there. ‘So, Joao, what’s your story?’

‘Just doing my part,’ said Joao, his eyes not leaving Mac’s.

‘You military?’

Smiling, Joao turned to the other guerrillas and rattled off something in Tetum, and they all laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Mac.

‘He’s a teacher,’ said Bongo quietly, ‘but trained in the seminary. Joao’s ordained, okay, brother?’

They reached their destination and lay behind a bushy spur while Joao and Bongo moved to the ridge and took turns with the binos. Mac’s G-Shock said 4.41 am. He yawned and shivered, a little unsettled at being out of the loop.

Returning to the main group, Joao did not look happy.

‘It looks abandoned,’ said Joao. ‘Gates hanging open, and, um…’ he cleared his throat and looked away.

Mac got a look from Bongo and decided to stay quiet.

‘What Joao’s saying is there seems to be bodies in there,’ said Bongo softly.

‘Bodies?’ asked Mac.

‘Yes!’ said Joao, chest heaving. ‘Lots of them.’

The camp was deserted but the barracks and the offices had been left, with all of the furniture and beds removed. The ablutions block – built for at least thirty men – was cleared of everything, including the taps and shower heads.

‘Left nothing but the bill,’ muttered Mac as they followed Joao’s torch outside.

‘The Java way,’ snorted Bongo, lighting a cigarette. ‘Why give when you can take? My mum told me that, and she should know.’

The six of them stood on the veranda of the main office and looked over the camp’s outdoor area. There was a large open-sided shelter to the right – iron roofing held aloft on telegraph poles – and a cyclone fence around an open grassed area of about six hectares. To the left, the cyclone gates hung open, a dirt approach road shimmering in the gloom of pre-dawn.

As they walked down the slight slope, bush rats fled across the ground like a dark carpet. The first bodies were two women and three children – all naked. Mac crouched, inspected the younger of the two adult corpses, looking for a cause of death. On the other side of the group of corpses, Bongo was doing the same thing.

‘No bullets,’ said Bongo. ‘No strangulation. No struggle, no violence. No obvious lesions or punctures.’

Waving for Joao’s torch, Bongo had a closer look at the female corpse’s face. The lips were swollen.

‘Poison?’ asked Mac.

‘Probably, but let’s look, okay?’ said Bongo, moving off.

‘Guess you’re not a salesman either, right, Mr Richard?’ asked Joao, but not challenging.

‘Like the wise man says,’ said Mac, moving behind Bongo, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’

As the light increased, the scale of the deaths became apparent. As many as a hundred and thirty naked bodies lay across the grassed area.

‘It’s like Jonestown,’ said Mac, panting slightly as they got to where the bodies were most numerous, under the shelter.

‘All Maubere,’ said Joao, meaning they were Melanesian Timorese locals, as opposed to the Portuguese and Indonesians.

Two shoes lay on the ground just outside the shelter, worn and mismatched. Looking around at all the barefoot bodies, Bongo spat. ‘Java thieves – even took their shoes.’

They stood staring, overwhelmed by the combination of evil and pettiness.

‘What is this place?’ asked Mac finally. ‘Concentration camp?’

But Joao didn’t respond because he was on his knees, vomiting.

They sat around the communal water pipe, drinking water and eating the last of Joao’s chicken from the waxed paper lying on the dirt. From the east, Mac saw the line of pale blue and red pushing at the horizon.

‘This wasn’t what you expected?’ Mac asked Joao, trying to work it out.

‘No. We’d been hearing about this refugee camp since early this year,’ he answered in a faraway voice. ‘The militias and soldiers have been clearing the villages and moving displaced people up here for months, but no one ever came back – it was all rumour.’

‘Refugees? From where?’ asked Mac.

‘From the south coast, Mr Richard,’ said Joao, slightly sarcastically. ‘You know, Cassa, Betano, Same, Suai? Anywhere they burn the house, steal the animals, kill our people.’

Mac nodded. ‘So the rumours? What were they?’

‘Our people in FPDK,’ said Joao, referring to the pro-integration movement that opposed independence, ‘they tell us that the military is up to something in Bobonaro, something that they not telling.’

‘Jakarta’s keeping it secret from the local pro-integrationists?’ asked Mac, surprised that FPDK wasn’t more involved with plans to keep East Timor in Indonesia.

‘Yeah, and maybe a secret inside of military too,’ said Joao. ‘We have people inside army and they didn’t know. Then we get some defections, right? From the 1635 Regiment.’

Mac nodded; the Indonesian Army’s biggest locally raised regiment in East Timor was the 1635.

‘This defector – Antonio – he really upset when he gets to us, tells about the camp south of Memo where he drove a truck,’ said Joao.

‘That where we are? Memo?’ asked Bongo.

‘Yep, about twelve kilometres south.’

‘What did this defector see?’ Bongo continued, lighting a cigarette.

‘Antonio said they always delivering people, but the population never seemed to rise,’ said Joao. ‘That’s how the rumours started of the death camp in Memo. This place.’

A diesel engine revved somewhere over the horizon, and they all stood, following Joao in a jog towards the gates. Turning left, they climbed to higher ground and Mac crouched in the scrub as the diesel revved through a gear change.

Short of the scrub, Bongo stopped. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded, pointing at the shelter in the camp yard.

Ducking back behind the scrub, Mac couldn’t see anything except bodies in the dim light of pre-dawn.

‘What?’ asked Joao, going to Bongo’s shoulder.

‘There! There!’ said Bongo, bringing his rifle across his body.

But Mac didn’t look where Bongo was pointing, because five hundred metres to their south a black LandCruiser was cresting the rise, followed by an army transport truck with a D6 bulldozer on its trailer.

‘Guys,’ hissed Mac from his hide, still feeling vulnerable after the beating at the Ginasio. ‘We’ve got company!’

Ignoring Mac and the two vehicles, Bongo and Joao stood in the open looking over the camp yard.

‘Guys!’ said Mac, desperate to stay concealed. ‘Get down – the Indonesians are here!’

Joao handed the binos to Bongo and, putting his hand on the Filipino’s big back, pointed. Bongo’s head went up and down twice and Mac heard him mutter, ‘Yep, yep.’

Mac groaned inwardly, realising his day was about to fall apart: he wanted to get to a phone, and to Blackbird – and he wanted to get to the bottom of Operasi Boa. And then he wanted to get as far away from Bobonaro regency as he possibly could. A tall order, but one he could keep juggling and resolving if he could just keep his momentum and stay away from whatever Bongo and Joao were dreaming up.

Bongo slid in beside Mac in the hide, checking the mag on his rifle.

‘There’s a girl down there in the camp, still alive,’ he said, excitement in his dark eyes.

‘Pity about the timing,’ said Mac, wanting Bongo to drop the whole thing.

‘Timing’s perfect,’ smiled Bongo, slapping the mag into the G3.

‘For what?’ screeched Mac.

‘Save her,’ said Bongo as Joao crouched behind him. ‘We’ll just make it if we move now.’

‘We?’ asked Mac, but Bongo and Joao had already gone, leaving the three guerrillas to cover the camp yard.

Every fibre in his body wanted to turn the other way, run back into the hills and get back to the gig. But when Mac started running, it was in a crouch, behind Joao.

Landing almost on top of Joao on the other side of the fence, Mac tried to get a grip on the situation.

‘So, we got a plan?’ he asked.

‘Save the girl,’ said Bongo. ‘How’s your Beretta?’

‘Full load,’ Mac replied, looking at Joao. ‘You really want to pick a fight with the Indonesian Army? In the middle of Bobonaro?’

Slamming a new mag into his G3 and then letting the mag fall out of his Browning into his hand, Joao shrugged. ‘Did it last night to help an Aussie out of the Ginasio – now we do it to save a girl.’

‘I’m not saying it like that,’ said Mac, blushing, aware that Australians could easily sound racist to Asians.

‘No?’ asked Joao.

‘No, mate, it’s just that it would be nice to report this place to the UN or the Australians without tipping off the Indonesians, right?’

Bongo and Joao exchanged words in Bahasa Indonesia.

‘What’s up?’ asked Mac.

‘Just saying, Yeah, first we tell UN, then we tell our teacher,’ said Joao, then set off.

As he readied himself to follow, Mac caught Bongo’s eye.

‘Don’t say it again, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Don’t even start.’

‘Wasn’t gonna,’ said Bongo, close behind Mac as they followed Joao to the corner of the building they were hiding behind.

‘Besides,’ said Mac, feeling guilty about his reluctance. ‘That phrase? That thing you said before we shot those rapists? We used to say that in the marines too, but it referred to the whole troop – not to every damsel who needs saving.’

‘Must have got it wrong then,’ whispered Bongo.

‘She’s crawling,’ said Joao, pointing at the shelter. ‘Cover me.’

Moving out from behind the camp building, still in the remainder of pre-dawn darkness, they crouched as they watched the LandCruiser and dozer transport about three hundred metres away and in no hurry.

Crouching in the kneeling-marksman position, Bongo and Mac beaded up on the approaching vehicles as Joao crawled through the bodies, his rifle across his shoulder blades. Mac could now see the girl, about eight years old, dark shoulder-length hair, in a white cotton dress, obviously dazed and trying to crawl away from the bodies. He watched as Joao got to the girl and gently levered her down, stopped her moving around.

‘I don’t know about this,’ snapped Mac, a bad feeling about the whole venture. ‘How many spooks in the LandCruiser?’

‘We’ll be fine – and Benni’s mine, if he’s here. Okay?’ said Bongo.

‘That what this is?’ hissed Mac, not believing what he was hearing. ‘This is still payback on Sudarto?!’

‘That’s our deal, remember, McQueen?’ said Bongo, squinting down the G3’s barrel.

Shaking his head, Mac focused on the approaching vehicles, two hundred metres away. ‘Don’t be disappointed if you can only find Amir – you were right about Benni, he’s not coming into the open.’

Glancing back towards the girl, Mac saw her nodding at Joao, then both were crawling back, staying low. Joao and the girl were now no more than ten metres away and making good time. They might make it, thought Mac. If they worked it properly, they could stealth back behind the camp building, get the girl over the wall and just hope the spooks didn’t want to have a look around.

Suddenly, the girl looked up, saw Mac and Bongo, and shook her head. As Joao reached up to pull her back down, she whipped her arm away and started running out into the camp yard.

‘No!’ yelled Bongo, before running after the girl.

As Mac rose from his crouch, Joao dashed after Bongo and the LandCruiser slid to a halt in the dirt as the transporter slid past it on the far side, crushing corpses as it went.

Everything unfolded like a nightmare as Mac stood transfixed: the spook who he’d headbutted the day before leapt from the driver’s door of the Cruiser with his SIG Sauer and, unsure who to shoot first, shot at the girl as she ran through the spill of the 4×4’s headlights. Missing with the first shot, he lined up for another but his head disintegrated as Bongo’s G3 shuddered and spat a casing.

As the spook with the fat lip fell to the dirt, Joao opened up on full auto into the open door of the Cruiser, knocking the passenger out the other side of the vehicle, shattering the glass and tearing up the interior.

Jogging into the open, Mac saw Bongo drop the G3 and draw the SIG from under his trop shirt. Then Bongo took three running strides past the girl and leapt up onto the running board of the Mercedes-Benz transporter cab, where he tore the door open and looked in. All Mac saw was four puffs of powder and the spent casings glinting in the pre-dawn as they tumbled to the dirt.

Swinging the Beretta in panicked arcs, Mac got to the middle of the yard and saw that Joao had secured the girl. Running around the other side of the LandCruiser, he closed on the spook who’d been in the passenger seat, the same one who’d assisted Amir Sudarto in Mac’s interrogation. Mac threw himself to his right and rolled across the dirt as the injured spook got off a shot. Coming up in a cup-and-saucer stance, Mac squeezed the trigger and hit the bloke in the right shoulder, knocking him onto his back and throwing the gun five metres.

Standing, Mac advanced as the spook held on to his shoulder wound. Shutting down the Benz transporter, Bongo jumped from the cab and came to Mac as Joao picked up the girl, put her on his hip and walked her to the shelter.

Standing over the injured spook, Mac gestured with his Beretta. ‘Phone?’

The bloke nodded.

Waving his gun, Mac said, ‘Just show me, don’t touch it – you know the drill.’

Grimacing with pain, the spook pointed with his left hand.

‘In the Cruiser?’ asked Mac.

The spook nodded before passing out.

‘Fuck!’ muttered Mac, moving to the 4×4.

‘What’s up?’ asked Bongo.

‘I wanted a chat,’ said Mac, looking into the interior of the LandCruiser, which was now plastered with blood and hair. ‘But a bloke in shock might not be very talkative.’

Reaching over to the centre console, Mac pulled out half a Motorola phone.

‘Won’t be getting much out of that, brother,’ said Bongo, kicking the spook’s face.

Climbing into the cab, Mac took a closer look in the console and glove box, but there was nothing of interest. The dozer made it obvious why they were up here but there were no written orders to confirm it.

The other three Falintil guerrillas jogged through the gates, wide-eyed and breathless. Seeing Mac and Bongo, they peeled away to Joao and the girl under the shelter.

Gulping down the adrenaline and the stress, Mac’s face pulsed where he’d been hit by Amir Sudarto. His left jaw still ached. Checking his Beretta, he spoke softly to Bongo.

‘I was cool to go along with this, but now I have to get back to Denpasar, okay, mate?’

Nodding, Bongo looked around forlornly as the sun strengthened behind the horizon. ‘Guess cross-country with Falintil is going to be too slow, right?’

‘Yeah, and after this,’ said Mac, gesturing around him with the gun, ‘it may be too dangerous.’

‘What about the UN?’ asked Bongo. ‘They got a helo in Maliana.’

‘I’m not going back to Maliana, and I’m not trusting my life to the UN,’ said Mac.

‘Okay,’ nodded Bongo. ‘So, the Cruiser or the truck?’

‘The Cruiser’s an intel vehicle – draw too much attention,’ said Mac. ‘Have to be the truck.’

‘Okay, McQueen,’ smiled Bongo. ‘I got an idea, but we gotta move fast, okay?’

Joao and his guerrillas had surrounded the spook and were lashing out at the man with kicks as Bongo and Mac moved for the truck.

‘Don’t interrupt,’ whispered Bongo, as Mac slowed.

‘I need to ask him something,’ whispered Mac as they got to the cab of the truck and Bongo unbuttoned his shirt.

‘We need to get going before the sun comes up,’ said Bongo.

‘Can we take him with us?’ asked Mac.

‘No, brother – this is Falintil’s kill, not ours.’

Mac decided not to argue. The spook might know every last secret about Blackbird, but he wouldn’t tell Mac in a hurry.

‘So what are they saying?’ asked Mac, unnerved by the ferocity of Joao’s anger.

‘He’s saying, Who are you to betray your fellow human?’ said Bongo, a little reticent as he pulled off his slacks and folded them. Mac noticed a Conquistador crucifix tattooed on his left shoulder blade, the legend INRI inscribed inside the cross piece.

Spittle flew off Joao’s lips as he reached down, picked up one of the stolen shoes and threw it at the spook’s face.

‘What’s he saying now?’ asked Mac.

‘Now he’s saying, You kill hundreds of my people, and then you steal their shoes? What kind of man are you?’ said Bongo, pulling on the truck driver’s fatigue pants and buttoning the army shirt.

Walking over to the Falintil leader, Mac offered his hand.

‘Thanks, Joao,’ said Mac. ‘If you can get any intel on what was happening here, please let me know?’ He handed over his Arafura business card with his mobile phone number on it.

‘When I know, you’ll know, okay?’ said Joao, tears welling in his eyes. ‘Your friend has my phone number.’

‘I won’t forget what you guys did for me, okay?’ said Mac.

‘You better not,’ said Joao, ‘because you gotta tell Australia what you saw up here.’

Striding in, Bongo gave the lot of them hugs, then turned for the truck and pushed at Mac’s shoulder.

‘Time to get you out of here, McQueen,’ he said, lighting a smoke and reaching for the cab door.

Climbing in the other side, Mac looked back at the spook with the Falintil guerrillas.

‘What happens now?’ asked Mac, as the truck went into first and Bongo released the handbrake.

‘That intel guy – he gonna die the local way.’

‘The local way?’ asked Mac, confused.

‘See those machetes?’

Mac nodded. Most rural Timorese carried machetes that they sharpened fastidiously.

‘They gonna take his skin off and hang it on the fence, brother, and his scalp gonna hang above it, like a halo,’ said Bongo, continuing the truck’s long arc around the Falintil group and then reaching for third gear as they accelerated through the camp gates.

‘Pretty heavy punishment for a guy just doing his job,’ said Mac, finding a full bottle of water in the console.

Snorting, Bongo reached forward to the radio dial.

‘What!’ demanded Mac.

‘Well, I left out something that Joao was saying.’

‘Like?’ asked Mac.

‘Like, he’s saying to the intel guy, How were you going to make us vote against independence, by having sex with our children?’

‘I see,’ said Mac, feeling sick.

‘Not like Australia, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘This the local way.’