Joe examined her for a moment.
‘What?’ she asked, feeling uncomfortable.
There was nothing much Joe could say. Their situation looked pretty grim and their chances of getting out alive were slender and shrinking with every passing hour. This was hardly the setting for a budding romance. So he said nothing and just put his arm around her. ‘Come on,’ he said after a minute of silence.
Joe helped her across the rocks as they began the climb out. For the first time, it was help she accepted readily. He looked up and took in their surroundings. The massive volcano towered skywards, the upper reaches of its cone disappearing in cloud. A sheer escarpment rose vertically between them and the base of the volcano. The rock pool he’d fallen into lay at the bottom of a valley, carved by the lava flow from the brooding giant beyond. Small plumes of sulphurous steam puffed from fissures in the rock here and there and gave an unpleasant tang to the air.
It was a forbidding place, yet their relationship had changed fundamentally and the terrain no longer seemed to Joe quite so threatening.
Jakarta, 0230 Zulu, Friday, 1 May
Suluang had risen early from a fitful sleep, the demons of failure destroying any chance of genuine rest. So he’d been awake for hours, his mind parrying and counter thrusting through the range of options and issues that threatened to overwhelm the scheme. An empty bed was not a particularly inviting place to be when action was required. Only, what was the right action? The unknowns were building and soon, Suluang knew, they would burst forth into the public domain. And for that reason alone he regretted the act of shooting down the aircraft. The moral issues didn’t trouble him. In retrospect and with a favourable spin, it would be seen in the right context: that of the rebirth of a nation rather than a desperate attempt to maintain secrecy. Suluang’s mobile phone rang. He glanced at the number on screen before deciding whether to answer it. ‘Lanti.’
‘General,’ said Lanti Rajsa. ‘We cannot forestall the meeting any longer. The plane. Our partners are asking questions.’
‘We need more time, Lanti. Even half a day.’ Suluang had not had an update from the men in the field.
‘We don’t have half a day, General.’
Diesel and grease fumes hung heavily in the vast workshop. The garage was clear of men, unusual given that it was ten-thirty in the morning, but being able to command privacy was one of the privileges of being a general. APCs stood stiffly in rows, massive slab-sided guardians, muscles fashioned in drab green steel.
Suluang felt comfortable here. He wore simple battle fatigues with the weight of his rank plainly embroidered in black on the wings of his shirt collar. This was his real home, his regimental barracks, and here he was king. He ruled his kingdom with strength and his subjects loved him. They were prepared to die for him and, one day, they would probably have to. This was how the world should be, thought the general. Here, life was simple and straightforward. You followed orders. If you followed orders well, you would ultimately be given the responsibility of giving orders for others to follow. It was only outside the regiment that life became complicated.
The officers, his partners in the enterprise, sat nervously at the table. In the centre was a large pitcher of water and an equally large bucket of rapidly melting ice. There was also an impressive, oversized bottle of Remy Martin XO brandy, the sort usually reserved for display purposes in duty-free stores. Each man had a glass. Some sort of toast or celebration was on the agenda. The men wondered what the occasion could possibly be. Morning was not the best time to drink brandy, notwithstanding the fact that they had all been summoned well before sunrise and had therefore been up for hours. Unusually for a gathering of senior officers, there were no adjutants hovering about, and no pads of paper were supplied on which the men could scribble notes. There was tension in the air.
The general watched a droplet of oil slowly grow on the bottom edge of an enormous engine hanging from a greasy chain. The black pearl grew until its weight overcame its viscosity and it dropped with a gentle ‘boing’ into a large tray, filled almost to the brim with the motor’s inky blood.
General Suluang had just finished debriefing the officers on the 747, and for most the news was a bombshell. A stunned silence charged the air with electricity. And he was yet to inform them that there were survivors of the crash, potential witnesses, who were running around on Indonesian soil.
Lanti Rajasa watched the men carefully to gauge their individual reactions. The future of the enterprise depended on the next few minutes.
‘I don’t know where to begin, General. I think shooting down the 747 was regrettable,’ said General Kukuh ‘Mao’ Masri, resisting the desire to say ‘stupid’, and trying hard not to reveal on his face the doubt seeping into every cell of his being. ‘Whether you had a choice in the matter or not is debatable, but what is done is done. Insha’ Allah. Have you heard from your Kopassus?’
‘Yes, Mao. Twice,’ replied Suluang. ‘There were two survivors from the crash. The sergeant commanding the section says there will be no survivors by . . .’ he glanced up at a clock on the wall and lied, ‘. . . around now in fact.’
There it was, the other bombshell, delivered in a most casual way. Both Lanti Rajasa and Suluang braced themselves for the reaction.
‘Have these survivors been pursued by our men?’ Colonel Javid Jayakatong enquired in a remarkably even tone.
That was promising, thought Rajasa, relaxing slightly. Jayakatong had said ‘our men’, which could mean that he was unconsciously taking some ownership of the situation.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Suluang. ‘But they have evaded our men since the morning of the crash.’ That was not something he knew as a fact, but had deduced. Somehow the survivors had managed to slip away from the ill-fated 747, but they would surely not be able to avoid a reckoning with the Kopassus for long.
Jayakatong frowned while he massaged his cheeks.
‘There is a report in the newspaper this morning about a logging camp that appears to have been swallowed by the jungle. The owners, which include the Indonesian government, have not been able to communicate with the camp for twenty-four hours. Could this have some connection with your men in Sulawesi?’ asked Admiral Sampurno Siwalette, the newcomer surprising everyone with his bluntness.
‘I have no information on that, Admiral,’ said General Suluang truthfully.
‘You put a lot of trust in your Kopassus leader. And you say he is what, a sergeant?’ interjected Colonel Jayakatong.
The general surveyed the gathering. Support was sounding increasingly . . . questioning. ‘He is one of my best and most loyal men, of any rank.’
General Kukuh Masri listened intently while he considered his options. He was in a mild state of panic. It was astonishing that none of the other men seemed even remotely concerned that a civilian 747 had been blasted out of the sky by one of their own fighters. This was not something he felt comfortable with at all. ‘You have been quiet, Colonel Ajirake. Did you know about the shooting down of the Qantas jet?’
‘It could not have been done otherwise, General,’ said the air force man casually, leaning back in his seat, hands clasped arrogantly behind his head.
‘Can you trust the man who pulled the trigger?’ asked Masri, feeling all at once that he needed to put some distance between himself and these men but knowing, at the same time, that he had helped create the situation he now suddenly wanted no part of.
‘A fighter pilot’s life is dangerous. Unfortunately, he was killed in a tragic accident.’
Masri noted the barest shadow of a sneer on the officer’s fleshy lips. A recent addition to their group, the colonel had obviously embraced its plan wholeheartedly. It was always going to come to this, thought Masri. Men would be killed to make their new Indonesia. So why was he squeamish about it all of a sudden? Perhaps he wasn’t upset at all but just afraid. No, it was more than just fear. He had agreed to join originally because he was fed up using the army, his men, against the citizens of
his country. But shooting down a civilian plane? That was brutal – mass murder – and the fact that it was another country’s airliner didn’t lessen the barbarity any. He still believed in their original goals, but the way they were being achieved did not sit at all well with him. Events had hijacked all honour, he realised, and he was now a prisoner of them. He wanted nothing more to do with the scheme, but the question uppermost in his mind was what it would take to guarantee his own safety. How could he back out and still live to reach old age? He had tanks, APCs, artillery and several thousand soldiers at his disposal, but hardware would not be enough.
General Suluang realised that something subtle but irrevocable had shifted within the delicate balance of the enormous military and intelligence resources he had brought together, not because of what had been said by these men in response to recent events, but by what had not been reaffirmed. ‘This is not the way forward I would have chosen for our course of action,’ he said. ‘Fate has intervened. But whether we like the way it has begun or not, it most certainly has begun.
‘Between us we command a sizable portion of our country’s military might. We just need the will and the determination to wield it. As for the current situation in Sulawesi, Rajasa and I have discussed it at length. There will be no survivors of the crash. Within a few days, Australia will be invited to inspect the wreckage, as part of an international team, after our own experts have muddied the water a little on the reasons for the crash. In the meantime, our government will continue to say all the right things, offering the olive branch, smoothing the waters diplomatically until we are ready to go. But go we must, and soon.’
The men at the table were silent.
Suluang continued: ‘There have been no real setbacks here, merely an operational replan which, as military men, you all know can happen and are trained for.
‘Your men are ready and your equipment has been stockpiled. We will launch ten days from now.’
A yawning pit of fear opened in Masri’s gut. Ten days? That was sheer madness. It was not possible to push the button on many aspects of their strategy in such a short time. The amphibious assault alone required a good month of careful recruitment and fastidious attention to detail. Without it, many people would be killed. Indonesian blood would stain the sea red. He saw clearly all of a sudden that the coup would fail. He considered saying as much outright, but decided against it. Suluang and Rajasa had the mien of fanatics about them now. Obviously they were committed no matter what the cost. Masri wondered whether any of the others sitting at the table could see that to continue with the plan would be suicide. Not just for them individually, but for Indonesia.
‘We will meet here again in two days time, at 0030, to go over the details. Our time is nearly here. There is only one way for us to go, and that is forward,’ said Suluang.
No, there is another way, thought Masri.
General Suluang stood, ceremoniously removed the top from the large bottle of XO, and poured each man a generous tot. ‘Gentlemen. Success.’
All six men stood and raised their glasses in a silent toast. Masri’s eyes were frozen in their sockets. He walked out of the humid, grease-heavy atmosphere of the garage and stepped quickly into the air-conditioned comfort of his chauffeur-driven Benz. ‘Home,’ he snapped at the attractive female, a lieutenant, behind the wheel. They drove in silence to the general’s residence. The forty-six year old man looked nervously over his shoulder at the following traffic several times, which, the lieutenant noted, was something he had never done before.
The lieutenant could sense the general’s nervousness. After their six-month affair, she was attuned to his many moods. She had been hoping that they would go to a hotel in the evening as usual and play their special games. Her favourite was a role reversal in which she was the general and he the junior officer. In this game she gave orders commanding him to do silly, sensual things. From the man’s anxiety, she knew there weren’t going to be any such games that night.
They arrived at the general’s home and he asked her to wait, leaving the motor running. Again, unusual. He dashed out of the car while it was still rolling to a stop and tripped up the stairs to the front door.
The lieutenant received a call on her cell phone. The staccato instructions she received instantly sobered her. She knew, now, why the general was tense. He had good reason to be.
Ten minutes later, the general’s wife, with a bag under one arm and a small boy under the other, burst through the front door and ran down the steps to the car. The woman dumped the crying child in the rear seat and raced back up the steps and into the old residence that dated from Dutch colonial times. Seconds later, both the woman and the general came out carrying medium-sized suitcases. The general didn’t give the lieutenant a destination. He just told her to drive, and fast. The anxiety and stress exuded by his parents, coupled with the violent motion of the car, made the young boy cry louder.
Masri told the lieutenant to take a left and then a right. He kept looking behind them, craning his neck, examining the following headlights. The lieutenant drove as fast as the traffic allowed. A motorcycle accelerated out of a side street. It darted through a gap in the traffic and pulled up behind the limousine. The pillion passenger pulled a machine pistol from his jacket and hosed the rear of the car.
Bullets ricocheted off the bitumen in a ballet of dancing sparks. The general’s wife had time to scream once before she died as a slug drilled through the top of her shoulder and spun a channel through her lungs and heart, bursting its chambers. The driver reacted as anyone might in such a situation, despite the fact that she knew the attack was coming. She turned the car away from danger. The rear of the vehicle flicked out with the weight transference and removed the front wheel from under the motorcycle. The bike instantly slid on its side, spilling its rider and passenger under the wheels of a truck trundling heavily in the opposite direction.
The general screamed at the lieutenant to take another left. She complied. He then screamed again for her to stop. The lieutenant ignored the second command and instead pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor. She could not stop at this pace.
Masri jammed a pistol into the back of her head with such force that her forehead hit the horn. The general flicked the gun to the left and fired a warning shot. He meant business. The blast of the round erupting from the muzzle perforated her eardrum and blood spurted from her ear hole. She dazedly saw the road passing under the car, through the fissure drilled by the round in the floor beside her feet. She got the message and stood on the brakes.
The car skidded up and over a kerb, crashing heavily into a solid brick and cast iron fence. The firearm discharged a second time, accidentally, the bullet removing a large portion of the back of the lieutenant’s head and spraying it on the footpath.
Unlike the child’s, the general’s seatbelt had not been fastened. The impact catapulted him over the front passenger seat and smashed him through the front windscreen. He came to rest, bloody and unconscious, on the ground. A restrained brass plaque on top of a cracked pillar read ‘Australian Embassy’.
The Indonesian embassy guards raced from their checkpoint to the scene of the crash after a few seconds transfixed by disbelief. They hesitated again, vaguely fearful when they saw that the vehicle was a government one and there was much blood. Moments later the four Australian soldiers on extended guard duty following the previous day’s ruckus arrived and took charge of the scene. ‘This one’s alive,’ said a lance corporal, examining the man spread-eagled across the broken brickwork.
Sydney, 0420 Zulu, Friday, 1 May
ABC radio report: ‘The streets of Jakarta turned into a battlefield a short while ago when tanks and troops loyal to General Suluang, Indonesia’s top military man, attacked the barracks occupied by units loyal to General Kukuh Masri.
‘Observers here are surprised because Masri was regarded as one of General Suluang’s most ardent supporters. After Suluang positioned tanks at the gates of Masri’s compound
, the besieged troops briefly responded with small-arms fire. Soon after, a negotiator from General Suluang’s forces convinced Masri’s troops to holster their weapons.
‘The skirmish comes as a real surprise to authorities in Jakarta. Indeed, security is tightening all over the city with helicopters patrolling the skies overhead. General Masri himself has not, so far, made an appearance and unconfirmed sources report that the officer has deserted his command. General Suluang is unavailable for comment.’
Parliament House, Canberra, 0425 Zulu, Friday, 1 May
Niven hurried to the Prime Minister’s office. It was raining in Canberra and unseasonably cold. He was coming down with the flu. Perhaps it was just the stress. Flying over Baghdad at night in a non-stealthy aircraft with tracer fanning up from the blackness below searching for his arse was nothing compared to this Commander-in-Chief gig. Niven tried to shake the germs out of his head but only succeeded in having a subsequent desperate need for a tissue to stem the outpouring from his nose. A cold had finally caught up with him.
He barged through the security station at Parliament House. It was barely five minutes since he’d received a call from Blight telling him to get to his office, pronto. Niven had nearly caused a pile-up when he’d braked in the middle of the expressway, mounting the kerb and snaking across a wet grass median strip to join the traffic heading back into the city centre.
He waved quickly to Shirley as he strode through her anteroom. ‘You’re expected, Spike. Get you anything?’
‘Thanks, Shirley. How about something for a headache? Besides a shot of single malt?’
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