Double Back (24 page)

The photographs were transmitted inside of three minutes. Mac had heard about the joys of digital imaging but he had no idea it would be so easy. All he’d done was plug the camera into the sat phone, dial the number Jim had preprogrammed into the phone, and the contents were downloading into DIA’s computers.

‘So, you want to have a look into this VIP?’ asked Robbo, nodding at the helos in front of the airfield’s admin building.

‘Ideally, yes,’ said Mac, annoyed with himself for having already spent so much time at this airfield. ‘But we’ve got the Lombok recon and then we have to be out of Dodge, with the girl, by Sunday – I think we’ll push on.’

Mac didn’t want to become sidetracked by the sighting of Haryono. If Operasi Boa was a part of a deportation program, then it wasn’t being hatched from this airfield. He had no doubt that Haryono was a potential drug lord and that he used this airfield for taking money and distributing his product – but that was a matter for the police.

‘You said those boys with their packs come here?’ said Mac. ‘And based on the pattern, we’re expecting the full mule line to be here tomorrow?’ asked Mac.

‘Sure are,’ said Robbo.

‘Let’s keep that in mind,’ said Mac. ‘If we cross paths it’d be good to have a nosey-poke.’

As he shifted to leave, Robbo put a hand out. ‘Actually, Macca, we have a situation.’

‘Yeah?’ asked Mac.

‘We’ve detained a local,’ Robbo said, embarrassed. ‘Well, two actually.’

‘Shit, Robbo!’ barked Mac, too many pressures to juggle already.

‘Yeah – Didge was taking a pee and someone walked into him.’

‘Jesus wept!’ said Mac, adrenaline rising. ‘Where? Where’s Didge?’

‘Back there.’ Robbo gestured with his thumb.

Thirty metres into the jungle, Mac and Robbo came into a copse where the 63 Recon Troop stood around two boys in their early teens. Mac and Robbo edged into the circle and listened to Johnno talking Bahasa Indonesia with them.

‘Johnno?’ said Robbo, and indicated for him to let Mac closer to the kids.

‘Found this,’ said Toolie, handing Robbo one of the boy’s packs.

Robbo looked inside, pulled out a plastic bag, and threw it to Mac, who knew what it was before he even caught it. The clear plastic was filled with US greenbacks and the Cambodian stamp would translate as ‘Vacation Palace’.

Mac didn’t ask too many questions before the boy wearing the San Francisco 49ers T-shirt started crying.

‘Rodrigo says he never wanted to do it. He says his brother talked him into carrying these packs for the Koreans,’ said Johnno. ‘Apparently the Koreans give the packs to the mules, then they are paid at the airfield base, one dollar US per run.’

Ruffling Rodrigo’s hair, Mac switched his attention to Yohannnes, who looked cockier than his friend.

‘How’s your English, Yohannes?’ asked Mac.

‘Okay, mister,’ said the boy, scared but showing more front than his companion.

‘Where you come from today?’ asked Mac.

‘Atambua, last night,’ said the boy.

‘Who gave you the bag?’ asked Mac, bending down for his rucksack.

‘Korea,’ said Yohannes. ‘Always Korea.’

‘What does Korea say?’ said Mac, opening his rucksack and putting his hand inside.

‘He say, Take this to there,’ said Yohannes, eyes lighting up as Mac pulled the pack of Hershey bars out of his rucksack.

‘And what else?’ asked Mac, pointing at the radio handset that sat the bottom of Yohannes’s pack.

‘Call him, if problem in jungle,’ said the boy, eyes like saucers as Mac handed him a chocolate bar before giving one to Rodrigo, who cheered up with the gift.

‘What problem?’ asked Mac.

‘Soldier, thief, militia,’ said Yohannes, getting the Hershey wrapper off in record time. ‘If anyone try to take pack, if soldier around, we must call Korea.’

‘And then?’ asked Mac.

‘Then, walk back and then a lot of carrier come along then,’ nodded Yohannes. ‘’Cos safe now.’

‘Who do you take the packs to?’ asked Mac.

Pointing, Yohannes indicated the airfield.

‘You take it down there?’

‘Yes, mister,’ said Yohannes.

‘You know his name?’

‘No, mister.’

‘No?’

‘No, mister – a secret.’

‘I bet it is,’ muttered Mac, and handed another chocolate bar to each kid.

Looking down on the airfield from the OP, Mac slugged at water and tried to get his mind clear. He hated complications, disliked civilians involving themselves in the action.

‘What do you want to do with them?’ came Robbo’s voice from behind him.

‘Can’t let them go down to the base,’ said Mac, eyes on the admin block. ‘We’d be made and we still have two locations to cover.’

‘So?’ asked Robbo.

‘So I don’t want them with us either,’ admitted Mac. ‘We don’t have enough food, and we don’t have the numbers to run a security detail while doing the op.’

‘It’s better than the alternative,’ said Robbo after a pause.

‘The choice is between bad and worse,’ said Mac. ‘Bad might be one thing; worse might be six troopers and a spook getting torn to pieces by a door-gunner doing some target practice. We’re sitting ducks out here once we’re made.’

‘Well, the obvious is out of the question, Macca,’ said Robbo, uneasy, his foot kicking into the dust.

Jaw muscles clenching, Mac tried to stay calm. ‘The fact that we both know the obvious sort of resolves the question, doesn’t it?’

‘My boys wouldn’t let us do it, McQueen. And I’d side with them, so no – it doesn’t resolve the question.’

Mac nodded and looked down at the ground, tried to think of a way forward. ‘Okay, Robbo. The lesser evil is taking them along but we need a stop-loss.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Robbo. Mac knew he’d been a handy bullrider as a teenager and Robbo sometimes took his leave in Canada and the United States, taking eight-second rides for cash. There was a coiled quality to the man that wasn’t always relaxing to be around.

‘If they directly endanger our lives, then we vote on it,’ said Robbo. ‘There’s seven of us, so stop-loss is four votes in favour.’

‘And the proposer gets the gig,’ said Mac.

‘Of course,’ said Robbo.

It was 12.34 when they arrived at the escarpment overlooking the river gorge. The local boys walked in the middle of the troop, rope nooses around their throats which were connected by a rope leash to Toolie’s hand. The idea was that if they tried to run, a decent tug on the leash would tighten the rope around their necks.

‘This your footpad?’ Mac asked Yohannes.

‘Yes, mister,’ said the boy.

‘Got an idea,’ said Mac.

They stopped and Johnno and Didge jogged up a rise to assess the ground ahead.

Pulling the money bags from the boys’ packs, Mac smashed the radio on a tree and threw it in pieces on the ground.

‘Never liked that radio much anyhow,’ mumbled Beast.

After asking Beast for his knife, Mac cut a slice into the inside of his forearm and held the wound over the first empty pack, letting the blood run over it.

‘Robbo, can we get some more blood?’ asked Mac.

Nodding at Beast, the big redhead took his knife back and gave Mac a questioning look.

‘The other one,’ said Mac, ‘and some on the radio if you want.’

When there was enough blood to make it look good, Mac asked for Rodrigo’s shirt, took it and wrapped it around a small log, making sure the 49ers emblem was visible. Then he tied it up by the sleeves on the reverse side, hoping it would look like a boy floating in the river at the foot of the gorge.

After swinging the log back and forth until he had some momentum, Robbo let go of it and they watched as it arced through the air and plunged into the river twenty metres below. Within seconds, the T-shirt-covered log had submerged and disappeared, ruining the desired effect of a body floating in the river.

They watched and waited, but the log didn’t resurface.

‘Fucked that up good and proper,’ mumbled Robbo.

‘Have to think of something else,’ said Mac. ‘Just don’t want the Indonesian Army chasing us for their money.’

As they took turns on the water bottles, Robbo and Mac looked at the map and decided on the safest way into the Lombok facility.

Panting, Didge and Johnno came down from the peak.

‘More helos heading for that airfield,’ said Didge. ‘Four of them.’

‘No interest in us?’ asked Robbo. ‘Shooters hanging out the doors?’

‘Couldn’t see,’ said Didge. ‘Too far away and they were gone before we got the binos on them.’

‘Okay,’ said Robbo, nodding. ‘Let’s move.’

Mac pulled the rucksack over his shoulders onto his wet back, letting out the straps slightly. He was now carrying what he estimated was two hundred thousand US dollars through the Timor bush.

Didge led them out, and as he did, he looked over the escarpment. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘That looks like the kid.’

Looking over, Mac saw the 49ers T-shirt floating with the other logs in the river eddy. It looked like a body and, with any luck, the people looking for their money might think that the boys had been whacked.

Pillars of smoke rose into the sky as Robbo stopped them on the outskirts of Maliana.

They had camped in a hide overnight and travelled carefully but slowly through the well-populated countryside during the day, avoiding contact with the locals or military. It was now Saturday afternoon and they’d have about ten hours of darkness in which to infiltrate Lombok and then snatch Blackbird, before heading back across the island to the Sunday RV with the Royal Australian Navy. On Monday the ballot would open and by then Mac and the 63 Recon Troop were supposed to be out of harm’s way.

‘Shit,’ said Robbo, before passing the field-glasses to Mac. ‘How many more houses can they burn?’

Making his own sweep with the binos, Mac saw thick smoke erupting from one of Maliana’s satellite hamlets about eight kilometres in the distance.

‘Got a pain-free route to Saturn?’ asked Mac, referring to Lombok by its operational code name. ‘Lot of open ground out there.’

‘If we go to the west of this village, we can tab down that river valley to the target,’ said Robbo, pointing.

The sound of distant assault-rifle fire drifted to their position and Mac felt nervous reflux threatening. He wanted to say something about Rodrigo, who’d been sulking since they’d picked him up and had then descended into hysterical tears once he’d seen the smoke around Maliana. But the time wasn’t right.

‘Can you give me eyes on this valley over here, boys?’ Robbo asked Mitch and Toolie. ‘We’ll RV in thirty minutes at the head of the valley. Can do?’

‘Can do, Sarge,’ said Toolie, before the two of them moved off in a crouch.

Back with the main group, Mac drank from a water bottle and saw Didge sitting and talking with Rodrigo. The kid wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his bottom lip puffy. For Mac, the two kids were still an unwanted complication, impairing the troop’s ability to saddle up and move quickly and silently through the countryside. The militias and soldiers around Maliana had scared him shitless the first time around. Mac just wanted to do his job without ending up on his knees in the changing sheds of the Ginasio.

As Robbo signalled for the group to get moving, there was a familiar sound.

Searching for the source, Mac’s eyes settled on Didge, who was puffing into his cupped hands, fingers fanning over the top, making an improvised didgeridoo. The music quacked out of Didge’s hands, making the two boys smile and laugh.

‘Here come the brolga,’ said Didge quickly, creating a squeaking sound above the hum of the didgeridoo.

‘And then along come goanna,’ he smiled, adding a hiss to the orchestra of sounds as the boys started clapping with joy.

Mac slugged at his water and decided to relax and enjoy Didge’s performance. Robbo took a seat beside him as Didge added the croc to his story.

‘We were in Bougainville for BEL-ISI last year and Didge starts up with this stuff in the bar,’ said Robbo, shaking his head. ‘Ten minutes later the whole boozer’s crying like a bunch of girls.’

‘Homesick?’ asked Mac.

‘Something bad,’ said Robbo.

‘When I was growing up in Rockie, they didn’t let the blackfellas play their didge in town,’ said Mac. ‘But it still sounds like home.’

‘I’m from out Narrabri,’ said Robbo, ‘and I’ll tell ya, mate, no blackfella would have dared come into my dad’s pub and do the didge. Would have got bashed for that.’

‘Kids seem to like it,’ said Mac, lost in the sounds of Cape York.

‘Yeah, and Didge isn’t just an entertainer,’ said Robbo. ‘When the shit starts, he’s the bloke you want beside you.’

It was late afternoon when Robbo signalled for them to establish base in the uplands surrounding the Lombok facility. After they’d set up, Robbo called Didge, Johnno and Mac to have a recce. From a stand of trees overlooking the Lombok AgriCorp car park, they saw about a hundred people milling in the same place where Amir Sudarto had apprehended Mac a few days earlier. The incinerator stack was not operating but the six ventilator outlets were visible in their stands of shrubs, line abreast down the middle of the otherwise empty paddock.

‘Four sentries at the gate house,’ mumbled Robbo as he looked through the field-glasses.

Army trucks were idling, waiting to leave the facility, their drivers handing over clipboards which were checked by the sentries. The people in the car park were lining up, suitcases in hand, and were being escorted into the back of army trucks. It wasn’t what Mac had been expecting.

Mac took the field-glasses from Robbo. Looking through them, he saw a bunch of women close up: hair pulled back in tight buns, glasses, middle-class blouses and expensive rings. They were laughing as their suitcases were loaded by soldiers. If Mac had to guess, he’d say the technical staff at the facility had finished their contracts and were heading home.

Sweeping the glasses around towards the other end of the compound, Mac concentrated on the pillbox guard tower in the middle of the far fence line, where DIA suspected there was an underground facility. There were no soldiers in the tower and Mac decided that if the ventilator outlets weren’t too tricky to open, they could be the best way into the hidden part of Lombok.

‘Well?’ asked Robbo.

‘Can you see any unfriendlies in that far sentry box?’ asked Mac, handing the field-glasses back to Robbo. ‘I think they might be shutting down the facility, and reducing the security – that might give us our way in.’

‘We talking about those ventilators?’ asked Robbo, adjusting the focus ring.

‘I reckon we stealth to them and break in,’ said Mac. ‘I can’t see anything easier.’

‘Roger that,’ said Robbo, ‘but check the K-9, your eleven.’

Mac turned slightly and clocked them immediately: two MPs, one of them with a German shepherd straining on a chain leash. ‘Fuck!’ muttered Mac.

As the sun set Mac knelt and pushed caps of Xanax out of the foil while Didge created slits in the chunks of cuscus flesh and pushed the capsules into the meat.

Beside them, Robbo averted his eyes and his nose.

‘That’s disgusting,’ he mumbled.

‘Nah, boss,’ said Didge, chuckling as he pushed another Xanax capsule into a chunk of cuscus. ‘Good eating, him,’ he said, playing up the Cape York talk. ‘Feed a whole mob on him, there.’

‘Your mob from down Barmaga, down there?’ aped Mac.

‘Watch it, bra,’ growled Didge, reverting to Strine. ‘Don’t get cheeky.’

They waited for the guards to start another loop, then Mac followed Didge down to an area by the fence where they were partially unsighted to the main entry guard house.

‘You’re clear, boys,’ crackled Robbo’s voice over the radio headsets.

Mac followed Didge to the fence, grabbed four chunks of cuscus meat and threw them onto the grass on the other side.

Moving back to Robbo, they waited for the guards to do their tour. Darkness was settling as the guards walked the near fence, smoking. The German shepherd tried to lurch at one of the chunks of meat as the guards passed it, but he couldn’t reach and was wrenched back into line.

‘Dammit,’ snarled Didge.

The guards kept to their route and Mac prayed the dog would notice the baits that Didge threw. But then the guards stopped, lighting cigarettes, while the talkative one remonstrated.

‘Are these people going to talk all night?’ whispered Robbo. ‘It’s like a bloody sewing circle down there.’

The guards moved on and, as they settled back into their rhythm, the shepherd suddenly lurched to his right, snapped at a bait with flashing teeth, and was back in line before the handler could tug at him.

‘Sleep tight,’ said Robbo.

Robbo talked them through the final instructions: Mitch and Beast were covering the fence lines with supporting fire should the need arise, while Johnno was going to access the main switchboard for the facility and see if he could disable the security camera systems. Didge was going into the facility with Mac, while Toolie played babysitter.

Going through final prep for the gig, Mac listened to Robbo give the various contingencies and warnings. There was a chance that the radios wouldn’t operate underground, so they agreed on a sixty-minute shutdown for the gig. If Didge and Mac weren’t out of there in under an hour, the rest of 63 Recon would do the Harold.

As Didge checked and rechecked his B &E gear, Robbo’s tone of voice changed.

‘What the fuck’s that?’ he hissed.

Mac followed Robbo’s gaze through his field-glasses to the main block of the compound.

‘Shit!’ muttered Mac when he saw what Robbo was looking at. Three people were standing in front of the main loading bay, illuminated by floodlights and all dressed in white NIOSH-10 clothing – better known as biohazard suits.

‘What the fuck is this, McQueen?’ snarled Robbo, still looking through the glasses. ‘What is this place?’

‘You know, vaccines and -’

‘Vaccines?’ rasped Robbo.

‘Look,’ said Mac, voice soothing. ‘It may be nothing, we’re just checking -’

‘What is this fucking place?’ demanded Robbo, slow and threatening.

Though he realised it didn’t look good, Mac tried to hold firm. ‘It’s classified, Robbo.’

Robbo planted his hands on his hips, his face furious.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, trying to lighten it. ‘It’s officially vaccine research, but there’s an undeclared area underground, okay? It’s probably a drug lab.’

‘Vaccines? Are you fucking kidding me?!’

‘Look -’

‘It’s just a place where they grow diseases, McQueen!’ said Robbo.

‘Yeah, I know, mate,’ said Mac. ‘It’s the underground facility we’re interested in.’

‘Oh, now I feel better,’ said Robbo sarcastically. ‘When were you going to tell me? Huh?’ said Robbo, tapping Mac in the chest. ‘You don’t think I have the right to warn my own men about walking into a place like this?’

‘I’ve got two masks, gloves for Didge -’

Robbo looked Mac in the eye. ‘You were going to tell Didge when? When you got the top off the fucking ventilator?’

That was precisely what Mac had intended, though he decided not to say so.

‘Sorry, mate,’ said Mac. ‘That’s the gig.’

‘That’s the gig?’ demanded Robbo. ‘You mean, if the dumb soldiers knew where they were taking you, we might find a way not to get there?’

Mac just shrugged.

Sighing, Robbo gave Didge a look and then turned back to Mac. ‘Why is it, McQueen, that all of you spooks are just total fuckers?’