Rogue Element

by David Rollins

  The soldier turned to face Jim and Margaret and fired his weapon into them. One long and lazy automatic burst. Joe didn’t hear the weapon discharge but the recoil was unmistakable. Jim slid slowly sideways. Margaret convulsed briefly. The soldier changed magazines then pointed his rifle in Joe’s direction. He took in the scene open-mouthed, unable to accept it as reality. What the hell was going on? Puffs of smoke chugged soundlessly from the small black hole sighted directly at him. Two bullets passed close enough for him to feel their pressure wave against his skin, leaving a pair of neat holes in a fleshy green frond beside his neck. Joe dropped the binoculars then froze, every muscle locked in a spasm of fear.

  The helos rose from the ground on their swirling columns of rubbish and flew away, leaving behind the soldiers and their guns.

  Denpasar, Bali, 0600 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  Working at the control tower at Denpasar Airport, Bali, was no different from working in the control tower of practically any airport in the world. It wasn’t as busy as LAX, Narita, Schiphol or Heathrow, and it certainly wasn’t as good on your resumé as any of those other world-class facilities. But Denpasar had other advantages, especially when Japan was in the grip of winter, Abe Niko reminded himself.

  Niko enjoyed sending tropical island paradise-style postcards home to Tokyo, just to annoy his friends grinding it out in the freezing rat race there. They all thought he was so fortunate to be living in such a place. And they were right. There’d been the bombings, of course, and that had changed things for a while, but life had returned to normal, especially with the European and Asian tourist trade. People had such short memories.

  Through the week he didn’t get to see much of the Bali he had fallen in love with as a tourist years before, but he knew it was there, spread out below his tower, and that made all the difference. Of course, Denpasar itself was hardly a paradise. It had to be one of the noisiest, dustiest, hottest and, he had to admit it, ugliest cities he’d ever seen. And that’s why he lived far away from it, in the centre of Bali, where the grit gave way to the green of lush jungle, and a thousand feet of altitude took the edge off the heat and humidity.

  Niko threaded his Honda Accord through a thicket of two-stroke motor scooters that meandered across the road, blowing blue smoke, ignoring the painted lanes. When he’d first arrived in Bali, he’d thought the traffic a living example of chaos theory. Very few road rules appeared to be obeyed, which offended his sense of order. Once a traffic controller, always a traffic controller, he had joked to himself.

  But then, as he became used to it, he realised the rules of the road were sensed, as if by some form of telepathy. Riders on motor scooters seemed to know when a vehicle was approaching around a blind turn and would pull back onto the correct side of the road at the last moment. To survive, one just had to be in tune with it. Until one could do that confidently, driving in Bali was a dice with death.

  Abe Niko made his way to the outskirts of the city, through the prawn farms and furniture factories, and only started to unwind when he turned his car off the main road and began the climb. The people up in the hills were more relaxed than the city dwellers. They had a calmness, a serenity about them, that was lacking in the population in Denpasar. They were more in touch with Balinese traditions and culture, embracing their animist beliefs. And it wasn’t just a show put on for tourists either.

  Niko was a romantic about Bali and its people, but when it came to his job, he was rigorous, rational and pragmatic. He sat in front of a screen and directed international air traffic, handing aircraft from his chunk of sky to the next controller’s chunk of sky. That was his job. It was routine work in a sector that was rarely busy, and not exactly taxing if one had a systematic mind. And Abe Niko had such a mind. It was because of this that he was troubled. He really had no idea what was going on. Niko had immediately reviewed the disks from his control board after he had called the authorities. The seven-four was at Flight Level 350 (35 000 feet), and then it was gone. Blink, then nothing. QF-1 had vanished from his screen without warning, no radio calls – complete silence – in a way that suggested the worst.

  Immediately, however, the police had confiscated his disks, the ones that recorded the information collected by the traffic control system displayed on his screen. That was bad. But what had really got under his skin was a news report that made him sound like he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. In his view QF-1 had probably been blown out of the sky. Terror. Yet what the authorities were saying – and quoting him, apparently – was that QF1 had suffered some kind of cataclysmic system failure and that it had probably come down outside Indonesian airspace. That was stupid. The Qantas plane would turn up pasted against a mountain in Sulawesi like a bug against a car radiator grille and everyone would look like amateurs. Especially him. Why would they say such rubbish? And who were ‘they’ anyhow? The more he thought about it, the more worked up he became. What possible motive would anyone have for trying to conceal a plane crash? Or delaying the discovery of the wreckage?

  He turned off the main road and started to descend through the palms, tamarind and mango trees along the track that led to his home. Niko was tired. He wanted to get home, have a shower and go to bed. He’d sleep first and then call a friend of his who worked in the newsroom of a major TV station in Jakarta. The nameless authorities had gotten it totally wrong. Worse, they’d gotten it wrong in his name! Just thinking about it made him angry. And edgy. Maybe I shouldn’t wait, he thought, and decided he’d phone his TV friend as soon as he arrived home, to set the record straight. Sometimes these second-world countries did and said the dumbest things, but what on earth was the motive for this stupidity? The question kept repeating itself in his head. And then, suddenly, he knew. The answer was obvious. The plane had been shot down. He wouldn’t wait to get home, he’d make that call now.

  Niko fumbled with his mobile phone, turning it on as he rounded a corner. An army truck blocked the road. He saw it too late, swerved and braked hard, locking up the wheels on the slick mud surface. The car slid and spun, almost in slow motion, but nothing Niko could do prevented it from slipping off the road’s soft edges and down the steep gully. The Honda gathered speed slowly at first, then accelerated as it fell through the trees. A front wheel hit a large stone, caving in the front suspension. The car rolled, then flipped. The front doors were flung open, the mounting centrifugal forces ripping them off their hinges.

  Niko was still conscious when the car came to rest upside down in the creek that ran rapidly through the gully at the base of the hill. He’d had the wind crushed out of him but his air-bag had saved his life. It started to deflate and he felt less restricted, but his leg was jammed somewhere under the dashboard. He tried to free it, but couldn’t. Upside down, the blood rushed to his head and the pressure built. His eyes felt like they were being squeezed out of their sockets. He saw his phone. It was sitting on a bit of plastic under the passenger glove box. He tried to reach it, but it was just beyond his fingertips.

  Water filled the upturned roof space below his head. He heard it first, then felt the cold wetness on his scalp. He tried to lift his head up towards the dashboard trapping his knees, but his stomach muscles gave out. He yelled for help, screamed for it, as the water gurgled relentlessly into his mouth, making him cough and hack. Silence. The water was nearly up to his eyes, which were bulging with panic.

  Somewhere there was the hiss of steam as water ran over hot engine parts. He managed to get his mouth out of the water for one last desperate plea for help. Exhausted, the water invaded his nostrils. He gagged, spluttered. Niko registered that the hissing sound had changed pitch now that his ears were under the surface. The water was malevolent, a force with an almost conscious determination to kill. He struggled again, hopelessly, to free his legs.

  Abe Niko’s head was under water for a good two minutes before he stopped thrashing, his brain forcing him to inhale. The water was cooling as it flowed into his seared lungs and the air tra
ffic controller felt happily light-headed. He wondered why he hadn’t sensed the truck’s presence around the corner. He slipped into a black blanket of unconsciousness, all fight removed by a calming euphoria. Within another minute, he was dead.

  A starter motor for a large diesel whirred and the engine caught. The army truck ground its gears and slowly moved off.

  Sydney, 0600 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  Excerpt from phone interview with Indonesian Ambassador Parno Batuta on ABC Radio 702:

  ABC: What sort of terrain has the Qantas plane crashed in?

  Batuta: We do not know where the plane has come down.

  ABC: But you’re searching the island of Sulawesi?

  Batuta: Yes, we are concentrating our search there. It’s a rugged place. Much jungle and volcanoes. And the plane could feasibly be anywhere within a very wide area.

  ABC: There’s a report coming out of Jakarta, attributed to the air traffic controller who raised the alarm, that the plane could have crashed outside Indonesian territory.

  Batuta: We are operating on the advice of our air force and that is something being considered.

  ABC: When will you broaden the search?

  Batuta: I believe our air force is already doing that.

  ABC: If you are also considering other possible areas, then the search must be vast. That being the case, what resources have been allocated?

  Batuta: Every available aircraft has been committed.

  ABC: Have you invited Australian aircraft to help search?

  Batuta: No. Our air force is more than capable.

  ABC: What will you do when you find the aircraft?

  Batuta: We will allow experts to examine the crash site and try to find the causes, naturally.

  ABC: Are there any suggestions yet of terrorism?

  Batuta: I would ask you, please, not to ask such a question. We don’t know anything about terrorism. A plane has come down and that is all anyone can say for certain at this moment. And certainly, all I will say. Thank you.

  Sydney Airport, 0600 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  The void into which QF-1 had flown left a vacuum that needed to be filled. Everyone, but especially people close to the passengers, needed answers. Not the ones asked by the politicians and the media, but simpler, more real questions. What has happened to my son? Is my daughter alive? Is my husband dead? The questions were underpinned by a consistent belief that the plane had to be in the air somewhere, still flying, because Qantas planes simply didn’t crash. The government couldn’t tell them anything new, and neither could Qantas. They were left to work it out for themselves.

  The first of these bewildered people began to arrive at the departure lounge of Sydney Airport. They came in ones and twos, besieging the Qantas flight check-in desks with questions. By noon the crowd had swelled to over a hundred and the section had become unworkable. And as their numbers had grown, so had their mood changed. Sydney Airport management had called security and had the irate throng moved as calmly as possible out of the way, into a large section of vacant seating. Qantas staff drifted amongst them with tea, coffee and sandwiches but offered nothing more sustaining, namely, answers.

  Central Sulawesi, 0635 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  A sonic boomlet cracked as a bullet going supersonic creased the air over Joe’s head. His mind was grappling with his situation, and nothing about it figured.

  Now they were coming for him! The last thing he remembered seeing, before throwing himself onto the ground, was the image of two soldiers racing across the crash site towards him. Bullets continued to slap through the bush beside and behind him. They wanted him to keep his head down. He complied.

  Eventually, one of those bullets would get lucky. While Joe was sure they couldn’t see him, his position on top of the hill was exposed. He had to leave. His problem was that he didn’t have a clue where he should run to, only that he should move, and fast. His world had utterly collapsed. He hurriedly stuffed bottles of water and the axe into the rucksack and slipped into the bush on his belly, dragging the rucksack behind him.

  At the crash site Sergeant Marturak surveyed the wreckage. It was an unpleasant scene with an equally unpleasant smell, and while he was pleased that he hadn’t been one of the passengers, the devastation left him unaffected. Marturak and his Kopassus troops were no strangers to death and destruction. He was surprised that there had been survivors at all, given the obvious violence of the aircraft’s impact, but survivors were easily turned into victims with an FNC80, the Indonesian army’s standard issue carbine.

  He moved cautiously to where the nose section of the aircraft had come to rest. A shot punctuated the quiet as a soldier made sure of another passenger. The noise did not distract the sergeant, who was comfortable around the sound of firearms. Marturak first inspected what was left of the cockpit. The force of the impact had concertinaed the section to around half its original size. There was nothing recognisable left of the flight crew. Something crunched under his boot – a small plastic model of an F/A-18.

  Remarkably, some of the seats and lockers were still in place. The sergeant levered himself up inside the giant tube and, using the jagged ends of aluminium ribbing jutting from the severed end of the fuselage as footholds, climbed easily into the first-class section. Careful not to lose his footing on the slippery human remains, he made his way towards the seat he had been briefed to specifically search. He hoped to find the occupant still strapped in, and alive, so that he could learn the passenger’s identity before killing him, but the seat was gone.

  However, a computer and other electronic equipment had become entangled in the seat beside the one he was searching for. He freed it. The casing was cracked. He pressed the on button to see what would happen. Unbelievably, it booted, albeit noisily. The screen named the owner but required a password to continue. Sergeant Marturak checked the drives. There was a disk in the slot. He smashed the computer with the butt of his rifle, recovering the disk, then tossed the remnants into a nearby smouldering fire giving off the smell of rancid barbeque pork.

  He placed the disk in his webbing and made his way to the open end of the fuselage. A knot of soldiers were standing around laughing, smoking pungent clove cigarettes as a defence against the stench of death that hung over the place. Marturak barked an order. The men jumped, making their way to the sergeant. The young men effortlessly swung up through the wreckage and into the nose section. Marturak issued another staccato command. The soldiers checked the corpses littering the area, looking through pockets for identification.

  The sergeant climbed down to a point where he could jump to the ground. He then trotted up to a higher vantage point and squinted through his Persols at the hill being searched for the survivor. The jungle was thick but the hill didn’t seem too far away. It wouldn’t be long till his men reported from its crest that the last surviving passenger had been killed, and he would then be able to make his radio report that the crash site was secured.

  Once the jungle had obscured his retreat, Joe got to his feet and charged into the bush that hemmed him in on three sides. There was nowhere to go but downhill towards the killers! He stopped several times to listen to the jungle through his own heavy panting. He sucked in the warm, damp air to settle his racing heartbeat, and then held his breath, reaching out with his senses.

  The jungle was not a quiet place. There was a bird – he thought it was a bird but he couldn’t be sure – making a sound like fingernails dragging across a blackboard. The sound filled the jungle, combining with the press of the foliage to give him a profound sense of claustrophobia. It made his head swim. He was close to panic. A few hours ago he was a first-class passenger. Now he was being hunted, part of the food chain.

  He touched his cheek and felt the swollen, angry skin. The side of his face had puffed up like a soufflé. What had caused the itchy swelling? Then he saw the large spiky green caterpillar hanging from a thick thread centimetres from his face. He pinched off the grub’s bungee and a
ngrily swung it away into the leaf litter on the jungle floor.

  He had to get moving again. But which way? Joe was disoriented. The hill’s fall-line was his only signpost. He traversed across it as much as the jungle allowed, taking a bottle from his rucksack and throwing back the contents as he half ran, but mostly crawled, sweat pouring down his face and stinging his eyes. He broke a stick from a tree and held it in front of his face, guarding against further assaults from the wildlife.

  Joe managed to find a rhythm as he moved through the clawing bush. A machete would have been helpful. Then he remembered his makeshift axe. He dropped the stick and removed the axe from his rucksack. He thought he was beginning to tell the difference between bush he could charge through and vegetation he had to go around. And then he ran through a clump of leaves and into the solid trunk of a tree. The force of the collision nearly knocked him out. He bounced off the tree and found himself on the ground. His nose hurt badly enough to make his eyes water but he knew it wasn’t broken. He’d had plenty of bloody noses from boxing and the pain was reassuring, like meeting up with an old friend.

  He pushed on through a mat of vines sheathed in fine needles that made his skin itch. A section gave way and he fell into water. He’d reached the creek at the base of the hill that separated it from the crash site. It smelled of kerosene, even stronger here. Then he heard something. He froze and listened, trying to isolate the sound of moving water from the alien snap of a stick. The jungle was just as noisy as it had been, except that his fall had disturbed ground-dwelling animals that scurried off like startled smugglers, back into their hidden caves. He thought that finding some thick scrub to hide in would probably be a good idea for himself too.

  Joe crawled out of the creek. He was careful not to make any sound that might alert the soldiers. He’d badly bruised his shins in the fall into the creek and he grimaced when he put his weight on his feet. He slowly pulled himself up the bank and into the jungle’s embrace. He forced his way through on all fours and found himself in the tunnel he had noted earlier. He peered into it in the diminished light. The tunnel carved through the jungle, remaining roughly parallel with the creek bank for a while before twisting back at right angles and heading (probably, he thought) back around the base of the hillock. Joe turned and backed into it, deciding that if he was shot at, he didn’t want to take a bullet in the arse, or have his nuts blasted off.