Rogue Element

by David Rollins

  Next, he joined high and low yo-yos together, pulling five and six-g climbing and descending turns, creeping up on clouds then blasting holes through them exuberantly. He was congratulating himself on having the best job in the world when a small explosion rocked the Tiger and filled the cabin with smoke. The smell of an electrical fire found its way into his oxygen mask. The stick felt heavy and he deflected it slightly to the right to see how the aircraft would respond. Something was very wrong. The Tiger continued to roll to the right once the stick was centred. Indeed, the stick position had no effect on the aileron’s deflection. They had locked up solid. The fighter rolled once, twice, three times around its longitudinal axis before the nose started to dip, and the arc scribed by the nose became more elliptical.

  Raptor tried to reduce the roll rate by using a little left rudder and retarding the throttle. This worked to some degree, but the plane continued to roll. Too much rudder input would cause a cascade of other stability problems he could well do without, so Raptor kept his foot pressure to a minimum. He found that he did have some control over the aircraft’s pitch but not to a significant degree.

  A Mayday call was made in the calmest voice he could muster, giving his position and a brief account of his difficulties. ATC responded that it would immediately dispatch SAR to his position.

  Raptor wrestled the aircraft down to 3000 feet and still it rolled around its longitudinal axis. He kept his cool and his spatial orientation. Raptor was a good pilot, but this aircraft was determined to drill a hole in mother earth and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Raptor waited until the Tiger was at the top of its roll before pulling the yellow and black striped rubber ejector release handles between his legs. He tugged hard. Nothing. He tried again. A sudden explosion should have sent him and his seat skywards to safety, away from the metal coffin spinning to its doom. Raptor fought the Tiger all the way to his death. The aircraft hit the sea nose low and inverted. The impact tore the aircraft, and his body, into very small chunks.

  Air Force Colonel Ari Ajirake received the report of the death of one of his pilots at breakfast. The lieutenant, who phoned him with the news, thought his commanding officer took it well.

  NSA HQ, Fort Meade, Maryland, 2330 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  Bob Gioco stared at the computer screen as he ate dinner.

  A musical chord sounded on his computer announcing the arrival of another slip in his etray. He opened it and read the accompanying note. ‘Hello, Bob. Add this to your Sulawesi jigsaw and see if the picture starts ringing your alarm bells too. Ruth S.’

  It was not unheard of for an IAE to make a personal approach to an analyst, but it was not entirely regular either. Ruth Styles. That’s right, Gioco remembered her now. Formidable old duck, but she seemed to like him and that made it easier for him to like her. He apologised to the ether for thinking of her as a battleaxe. He scanned the information troubling the woman sitting in a bunker on the other side of the world. A company called Tropical Pulp and Paper had lost one of its forward survey teams in the jungles of Sulawesi. Apparently, the campsite had made its routine report that morning and everything was fine. An hour later, they were off the air. Totally. Nothing from the camp’s VHF or UH frequencies, the sat phones were dead as were all computer comms. Alright, so something was definitely rotten in Denmark. Or rather, Sulawesi.

  Bob stared at the slip. He pinned it on his virtual noticeboard and read through some of the others. There were around thirty or so that he’d highlighted with a red electronic exclamation mark, the ones he thought he should keep an eye on to see what, if anything, developed.

  There was something about a group of mercenaries training on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. An unusual virus had again jumped from the pig population to humans in a remote part of Malaysia. Unionists had sabotaged some stevedoring gear in a port in Western Australia (but there was a counterclaim by them that the damage was actually caused by company thugs). A number of schools had been torched in a systematic attack in Sydney. There was plenty of military traffic, some interesting, some routine, some plain odd. There were the reports from A-6, the Australian agent in Sulawesi. Sulawesi . . . He reread her first one about a squad of Kopassus troops heading north. He then read the second report, as it seemed an addendum to the first. He decided on a whim to dig a little deeper into this one.

  He checked the radio interceptions from the helos that transported the troops. They were buried amongst millions of small data files, which could nevertheless easily be found by the NSA’s Cray X1 supercomputers. He read through the slips. Two helos out of Hasanuddin AFB asked for taxi and airways clearance, so as to deconflict with private and commercial traffic. There was no further radio work from the aircraft at all except for an airways clearance when they re-entered controlled airspace approximately 180 minutes later. It must have been a special ops sortie or there would have been at least some en-route radio work. Gioco thought about it while he fished some egg from his dinner. Indonesian noodles, by coincidence: Mee Hoon. Okay, so a couple of helos landed somewhere, disgorged their troops and returned empty. He absently picked out a ring of calamari, and remembered his earlier assumption that perhaps the soldiers were off to search for that downed Qantas plane.

  Something clicked in Bob’s brain. The report on the Qantas plane. Jumbo jets did not just vanish. He checked the time of the aircraft’s disappearance: 2036 Zulu. The time rang a bell. He called up all relevant radio work from that time of the day and in that area of the world. The Crays crunched the numbers. It took less than a minute before the required information was on his desktop. He had an F-16 Falcon out of Hasanuddin at around 2015 Zulu on a sortie. It was airborne for around forty minutes before landing back at base. From takeoff to landing only minimal radio exchanges, all of them just radio clicks, which could have meant anything, including a faulty radio.

  2036Z – 4.36 am local time: the precise time the 747 went off the screen. The event was right in the middle of some of those unusual ‘clicks’. Was it possible? Things were starting to race in Gioco’s head. A picture was coming together and it was a particularly nasty one. Is this what Ruth’s driving at? Would Indonesia blow a civilian aircraft out of the sky? No. They wouldn’t, would they? He put the lid back on his dinner and pushed it to one side.

  He was sure the clue lay on his desktop somewhere. He reviewed all the slips for the last thirty-six hours, looking for anything to do with Indonesia, whether he’d flagged them with an exclamation mark or not. It took him a good two hours. There was the death of the air traffic controller, which, the way things were going, was looking a bit too coincidental to pass as an accident.

  Then a reminder for his early morning meeting popped up on his desktop. He’d forgotten to dismiss it as ‘done’. COMPSTOMP. He traced the unease that had started to gnaw away at him to the morning’s meeting. He reviewed his notes: Watchdog found intruder in CS982/Ind. server. Watchdog traced hacker, Cee Squared, and system notified server owners.

  He cross-referenced CS982/Ind. against the registry of Fido Security clients, COMPSTOMP’s venture into the free market, and discovered, just as he had feared, that computer system CS982/Ind. belonged to the Indonesian army. Then he noticed the time of the intrusion. Around 1830 Zulu or – he added the eight hours for the time zone in his head – 3.45 am local time. Could it be . . . ?

  Gioco got on the phone to Research. ‘Hello, Gioco, SEA Section. Can you get me the passenger manifest for a commercial aeroplane flight? . . . You can? Qantas QF-1 departed Sydney, April 28 . . . Yes, the plane that’s gone missing . . .’ There was a pause while Gioco caught the response. ‘Yeah, I know. Tragedy. Okay, great.’ The list of passengers would be posted to him on the internal mail system. It would take around ten minutes. In the meantime, he contacted COMPSTOMP. He wanted Cee Squared’s name; he wanted to know the name of the hacker responsible for setting off the Watchdog in the Indonesian army’s server. He was known to them, they had his ‘fingerprint’. That also
meant they’d have his real name, address and probably even his favourite breakfast cereal on record.

  Bob jotted the sequence of events down on a piece of paper. He hoped that something would be so totally out of place that his growing fear about the fate of QF-1 would dissolve. He wrote:

  • April 28, 1830Z, Watchdog picks up intruder in TNI server

  • April 28, 2015Z, Indonesian Air Force F-16 scrambled out of the base close to flight path of Qantas plane (odd radio work between F-16 and controller)

  • April 28, 2036Z, 747 vanishes from ATC screen at Bali Centre

  • April 29, 0440Z, Sulawesi – (following morning local time) Kopassus troops dispatched north

  • April 29, Sulawesi – logging camp radio silence

  • April 29, Bali, air traffic controller car accident – fatal

  • 747 still missing

  Gioco had to admit that the events listed could be circumstantial, especially the logging camp’s radio silence. He appeared to have quite a few incidents happening within a suspiciously short period of time. The glue was missing, an element (or elements) that would tie all these loose incidents together into something cohesive and incontrovertible. Still, there was enough there, on paper at least, to raise his interest.

  Gioco checked himself for an instant. Was it really possible that the Indonesians would splash a 747? He whistled quietly.

  The phone rang. ‘Thanks a lot,’ was all he said as the identity of Cee Squared came down the line. The icon for internal mail appeared on his screen at the same instant. It was the passenger manifest of QF-1. He scanned the 394 passenger names on it.

  Jesus H. Christ! He couldn’t believe it. There it was! The implications of what he’d just discovered hit him like a pile-driver. The flimsy string of events he’d lined up instantly hardened into something more concrete. He had his glue. Gioco sat in his chair for a good five minutes blinking at his computer screen, in a mild state of shock, again hoping that a glaring inconsistency in his logic would put the facts in a less ominous light. None presented itself. Was this the work of religious fanatics? Was Indonesia in the grip of some kind of fundamentalist boil-over? Perhaps this was just the beginning. Shit!

  What had Cee Squared found in the TNI server that the Indonesians were so desperate to keep quiet? He added the clincher, the hacker’s real-world name and allocated seat number, to his notes:

  • Cee Squared – Joseph Light

  • Seat 5A – Joe Light

  Was it possible that Joseph Light and Joe Light were different people? Yes, possible, but improbable. Gioco considered letting Ruth Styles in on his deductions. He never would have been able to piece it together without her. No, he realised, he couldn’t. She would have to remain in the twilight – aware that something was going on but uncertain of exactly what it was. Instead, Gioco picked up his handset, heart in his mouth, and dialled the Director of SIGINT.

  Central Sulawesi, 2330 Zulu, Thursday, 30 April

  Joe and Suryei ran through the jungle as quickly as they dared, making just enough disturbance to alert any wildlife in their path and give it time to move out of the way but, hopefully, not enough noise to telegraph their whereabouts to the murderers somewhere behind them.

  ‘Stop . . . stop,’ she said eventually, exhausted, collapsing on a rotten, moss-covered log.

  Joe fell beside her, shaking. He vomited onto the ground, panting as his stomach heaved uncontrollably. This was not his world. He didn’t belong here. ‘Shit,’ he said when the convulsions stopped, a string of yellow bile hanging from his lips. ‘What are we doing? What the fuck is going on?’ His mind replayed the severing of the soldier’s fingers and the back of his throat constricted, preparing itself for the arrival of more digestive juices.

  ‘Come on,’ said Suryei, dragging Joe to his feet. ‘We have to keep moving.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said, knowing that he didn’t feel okay at all.

  Suryei turned and stepped through a hole in a low bush and let out a scream. She disappeared down a steep mud-slide, plunging beneath the surface of a rivulet. She yelled in shock and took a mouthful of water, spluttering, choking. The water could be brackish, stagnant, and a serious danger to her health. As it slid down her throat, she realised that it was sweet. Relieved, she put her health concerns away and gulped mouthfuls.

  Joe appeared at the edge of the bank, anxious until he saw Suryei come to the surface. She waved at him to join her, but quietly. Joe ditched his rucksack and axe and eased himself into the water, careful not to splash. He sank into the cool depths, feeling the water sluice through his clothes. It soothed him, took away some of the tension. He drank deeply, not caring that the water invaded his nostrils. He shook his head beneath the water, running his fingers through his hair and rubbing his face, invigorated. He then quietly surfaced, again making as little noise as possible, aware that sound would travel far in the cooler, denser air above the water. He turned and caught a glimpse of Suryei climbing up the opposite bank. Her clothes clung to her skin like wet tissue paper. Her breasts were not large but they were firm and her shirt hung suspended from her nipples. Joe stopped himself from staring, but not before Suryei caught him at it.

  He climbed out of the water soundlessly and sat on the bank. Joe felt better, still numb, but at least he felt back in his body again rather than remote from it in shock.

  ‘You okay, Joe?’ Suryei asked.

  He nodded. ‘Thanks.’

  He took the empty water bottles from his rucksack. Filling one, Joe held it up to examine the contents. The water was clear and clean. He filled the other bottles, stuffed them back in his rucksack and reshouldered the load. Joe then picked his way carefully up the slippery mud, grabbing tufts of foliage to keep his balance as he went. He glanced up as Suryei looked around. He took another quick glimpse of the woman squeezing water out of her hair.

  He’d half expected that she would sprain her ankle or something, and that he’d then have to carry her through the jungle. That old cliché, the helpless female. But it hadn’t taken him long to realise that she was tough and that if anyone would be doing the carrying, it would probably be Suryei.

  The bush did not appear to be quite so dense here. It seemed cooler too. Enormous trees, giant columns, appeared to support the massive green roof overhead. At their base was a carpet of lime-green ferns. Families of monkeys chattered high overhead.

  And then something occurred to him. ‘Hang on, Suryei,’ he said quietly. He went back to the rivulet, crossed it, and found a broken branch. He scrubbed at his footprints and at the skid Suryei had made in the bank where she’d slipped into the water, until they ceased to look man-made. He then crossed the stream and did the same to their tracks on the other side.

  He considered whether they should have travelled down or upstream a distance before leaving the water, so as to throw off their pursuers. But, he reasoned, providing they were careful and left no entry or exit footprints along the bank, their pursuers wouldn’t have a clue whether they’d even been in the stream, let alone where they’d left it.

  Joe wondered where they would end up. Certainly he had not the slightest idea where they were going. Neither did Suryei. They were just trying to stay ahead of the killers. Maybe they’d just step out of the jungle and into a dirty great car park with a Pizza Hut. He wondered whether he was getting delirious.

  Their eyes and brains were growing accustomed to their environment now. The foliage wasn’t scratching and tearing at them quite as often. Indeed, it was much easier going in this forest of giants. That had a downside, he realised. The soldiers would also move more quickly through it, and there were significantly fewer places in which to hide. Their world had been a misery of crawling in and around thickets of greens and browns through air so dense and heavy with water that it almost seemed to physically impede their progress. And always behind them, or beside them, or in front of them, the ever-present threat of death.

  Then there was the rain. They heard it before they fel
t it, a hammering that battered the leaves in the treetops far overhead. Eventually, the weight of the water would make the leaves sag and it would then fall through the next layer of trees and bushes and so on, until it eventually hit the spongy ground as enormous bloated gobs. There was a lot of mud too, thick molasses mud that sucked at their shoes. Joe started walking on the smaller ferns to avoid it, which kept his legs wet and covered with fiery bites from caterpillars, insects and small spiders.

  The ground began to rise and with it, a new dimension of misery was brought to their efforts. The incline steepened quickly and became slick with water and their legs burned with the extra exertion. The higher ground, however, soon afforded them a view of the valley below and occasional patches of sky above, a welcome change from the dark canopy overhead.

  Joe could barely remember having another life before the one he was now forced to endure. He was losing track of time. How many days, weeks, years ago since the plane crash? Was it a week ago that the cobra had helped them escape from certain capture and death? How long ago had they run into the logging camp? Joe trudged on behind Suryei as she climbed slowly, one heavy step at a time.

  At first they didn’t know whether the sound was behind them or in front of them. But it was man-made, an engine, and it was getting close. Then Suryei saw it and risked giving away their location to the soldiers. ‘There,’ she yelled, pointing and looking down as it circled low and slow over the trees in the valley, banking into figure eights. It was bright purple with a yellow and red striped propeller. An ultralight. It was discovery, rescue, a hot bath. So many wonderful things flashed through Joe’s mind that he shouted for joy, like a fan at a grand final whose team has just scored the winning points.