No Man's Land

by Roland Fishman

  Margaret River with its cranking waves and remote location was looking as good as anywhere.

  A movement to his right on the highway that ran alongside the property caught his attention. He pointed his binoculars toward it. A large white freight truck, with the words Rapid Transfer painted on the side in red, slowed. It passed the entrance, stopped and then started reversing into the dirt track leading to the property.

  “Thomas,” Carter said.

  There was no answer. The line had dropped out. He pressed 1 on the keypad.

  14

  Thomas answered on the first ring and said, “What can you see?”

  “There’s a freight truck backing into the property. It could be just turning around, but I doubt it.”

  “Maintain your position and monitor the situation for one minute. Then report.”

  “Will do.”

  Carter scanned the track again all the way back to the homestead.

  Nothing.

  He looked back at the truck. It’d reversed most of the way in and stopped. The front half of the cabin jutted out onto the highway. A man stepped out of the cabin’s passenger seat, followed closely by the driver, who walked around the front of the cabin and joined him.

  Carter focused on them. They were Caucasian and both wore T-shirts, dark blue jeans, baseball caps and wraparound sunglasses. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the intricate tattoos leaking from under their sleeves and the handguns they shoved down the back of their pants.

  The driver put a phone to his ear and began talking.

  Carter was about to give Thomas an update when he heard a loud clap followed by a whooshing sound coming from the bush near the homestead.

  Half a second later the unmistakable crash of breaking glass from the house caused his gut to tighten.

  The sound almost certainly came from a high-tech grenade launcher firing a gas canister through a window. If he was right, the gas would knock them out within seconds.

  “Thomas, Wayan. If you can hear me, get the fuck out of there.”

  There was no answer over the phone.

  “Thomas, can you hear me?”

  No reply came. Instead, he heard the faint whir of an engine starting and switched his attention back to where the track met the lawn.

  A glint of metal flashed through the overhanging trees and a khaki-colored Humvee with a bull bar at the front glided out of the bushes.

  The three-ton metal monster headed straight for the homestead at around five or six miles an hour, barely making a sound as it moved across the grass. The vehicle had bulletproof tires, was powered by an electric engine and didn’t appear to be in a hurry.

  He put the binoculars down and, in a reflex action, fitted the Glock to its stock and jammed it against his right shoulder, lining up the Humvee in his sights and brushing the trigger with his finger.

  A slow breath helped calm his mind. The last thing he needed was to act impulsively and make a bad situation worse.

  He eased his finger off the trigger, laid the weapon on the ground and stared through the binoculars.

  The Humvee disappeared from Carter’s line of sight, presumably pulling up close to the front of the house.

  The sound of the vehicle’s doors opening and closing cut through the quiet of the bush. After a brief silence the front door of the house slammed shut.

  Carter was about to move further down the ridge when a solidly built Indonesian dressed in dark brown overalls, probably a clan member, ran around the corner of the house, carrying an automatic assault weapon in two hands. He looked through the windows of Thomas’s four-wheel drive and then underneath it before heading to the back of the house, swinging his gun in an arc, scanning the ridge where Carter lay hidden as if expecting to find someone, probably him.

  Carter didn’t move a muscle. An eerie silence descended over the property. Every cell in his body wanted to charge down the hill and attack the intruders. He reminded himself that any rash action on his part would only put Thomas and Wayan’s lives in even greater danger.

  An excruciating thirty seconds ticked by. Even the birds had gone quiet, as if sensing trouble brewing.

  He heard the front door opening, followed by three Humvee doors opening and closing, one after the other. He saw the vehicle appear again as it slowly backed away from the house, veering to the right before coming to a stop.

  The guard at the back abandoned his post and ran toward the front of the house. The vehicle’s passenger window slid down and a man shouted, “Kamu melihatnja?” You see him?

  The guard shook his head.

  The man in the Humvee said something Carter couldn’t quite hear and the guard turned and walked back toward Thomas’s four-wheel drive.

  Carter raised the Glock’s stock to his shoulder and tried to line up the guy’s head in the gun sight. But he knew a hundred yards was way too far to even consider taking a shot. To do so would’ve been pointless.

  He put the gun down.

  The guard moved around the four-wheel drive and shot out each tire. The vehicle sunk to the rims. He then ran to the Humvee, opened the back door and climbed in. The vehicle turned and headed across the open lawn at a steady pace before disappearing under the canopy of trees.

  Carter grabbed the binoculars and trained them on the stationary truck out on the highway. The back door was now open and a ramp led up to it.

  The Humvee emerged from the cover of foliage and drove up into the truck’s bowels. The two Caucasians loaded the ramp and shut the back door before climbing into the cabin. Carter heard the engine growl to life and watched smoke billow from the exhaust. The truck turned right and accelerated down the highway away from the coast.

  Carter watched it swing around a bend and disappear from sight. Several seconds later he was unable to hear the engine. It would be just another anonymous truck rumbling down the road.

  The well-executed attack had taken exactly three minutes from start to finish.

  15

  Carter waited and watched for eight minutes without moving, even though it felt like his whole world had been turned upside down.

  He crawled down the hill and crouched behind a burned eucalypt stump, thirty yards from the back door of the homestead, and waited some more, looking for any movement or sign of activity inside.

  Thomas and Wayan were either dead or at best unconscious and miles away in the back of the speeding truck.

  He had to make sure, one way or the other, before making any decisions. Plus, if possible, he needed to get his hands on the laptop and the documents Thomas had wanted to give him.

  He resisted the urge to rush in.

  It seemed likely the clan members knew he was in the area and were looking for him. There was a good chance one of them had remained behind, armed and waiting inside the house.

  He needed to exercise patience and give events time to unfold. On several occasions waiting that extra five minutes had saved his life.

  The seconds crawled by without incident. The house was still and silent.

  He rechecked the Glock, counted to three and then sprinted at full pace toward the house, keeping his body at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.

  It took six seconds to reach the back wall near the kitchen and press his back flush against it.

  He listened.

  Nothing.

  He crept along the side of the house, pausing every five yards.

  Again, nothing out of the ordinary grabbed his attention.

  He reached the front verandah and scanned the grounds and nearby bushes, checking for any sign of life. The only movement came from the leaves quivering in the light nor’-easter.

  It was time to move.

  He climbed the verandah stairs without making a sound, crouched low beside the front door and put his ear against it.

  Not a sound.

  He noticed a strong smell, though – the pungent odor of a noxious gas.

  When it was first released into the air, it would have take
n only a tiny amount to knock a person out, but by now the gas would’ve dispersed and lost much of its toxicity.

  He turned his head and breathed in a lungful of fresh air. Then he dropped his shoulder into the wooden door, pushed it open and plunged inside, holding the Glock two-handed in front of him.

  He made his way carefully through the deserted living room, along the hallway and into the kitchen.

  There was no sign of Thomas or Wayan. The laptop and the pile of documents were gone.

  He checked all six rooms, looking for any useful source of information, like a backup hard drive, a memory stick or notebooks. All he found was the satphone charger alongside its packaging in one of the spare bedrooms. Apart from that, nothing.

  They’d done a clean, professional job. Any further search was a waste of time.

  His lungs were crying out for oxygen. Carter grabbed the charger and ran back through the house. Out on the verandah he sucked in three huge breaths of fresh air. He shoved the Glock into the daypack and ran along the track away from the homestead, heading for Lennox Head.

  BOOK TWO

  1

  Bruxner Highway, New South Wales–Queensland border, 1.30 p.m., Christmas Day

  Four and a half hours later Carter was gunning his white Ford Falcon ute down the straight black line of the two-lane highway heading for Boggabilla, population six hundred and fifty-seven.

  He’d managed to hitch a ride back to his place at Lennox, where he grabbed the daypack he kept hidden at the back of his bedroom closet and combined its contents with the one Wayan had given him. It now sat on the seat beside him, containing a Glock 18, binoculars, a noise suppressor, a blowpipe, poison darts, throwing knives, a balaclava, lock picks, three gas canisters, twelve hundred dollars, an iPad and his passport. He’d brought his cell phone, too, even though the battery was low. If he was lucky, there’d be a chance to charge it soon. You couldn’t always rely on a satphone.

  The blazing sun beat down overhead and the hot, dry breath of the outback blew through the open cabin windows. Outside, the temperature must’ve been pushing forty degrees Celsius.

  He’d been driving nonstop for over three hours, well above the seventy-mile speed limit. He was working on the presumption that the clan had taken Thomas and Wayan to the cattle property near Boggabilla.

  The first thirty-six hours following any abduction were critical. After that the odds of rescue diminished dramatically.

  His plan was to track Erina down and go from there, but her old cell-phone number was no longer working, which came as no surprise. Members of the order often switched their numbers and used prepaids when out in the field.

  To get Erina’s current number, he’d been trying to reach the order’s operations and logistics man in Bali, Jacko MacDonald, but his phone kept going straight to voicemail.

  Jacko was the closest thing Carter had to a true friend and brother. They’d covered each other’s backs on dozens of assignments throughout South-East Asia. No job was too big, too small or too hard for Jacko. He always came through.

  Carter reached for the bottle nestled between his thighs, took a long pull of tepid water and reminded himself he needed to stay in the moment. Take it one step at a time.

  The wilder and more out of control the world was around you, the calmer and stiller you needed to become inside.

  He looked out at the monotonous flat brown plains stretching out to the horizon on either side of the road.

  Boggabilla was a local Aboriginal word meaning “full of creeks” – he was sure he’d read that somewhere. Ironic, because the district was famous for getting either not enough rain or too much. Drought and the occasional flood were a way of life for the locals – a harsh reality that hung over everything they did, making them as parched and stubborn as the arid land they worked.

  He tried Jacko again without success and checked the phone’s battery. It was getting close to red.

  Jacko had grown up in surroundings as flat and unyielding as the country rushing by Carter’s windows now. He had sometimes talked about his home in Central Queensland, and his love for the place was clear, though it sounded tough, and its climate unrelenting.

  The MacDonalds had worked their cattle property for three generations until crippling debt forced them off it for good, compelling Jacko to join the army when he was twenty. He’d eventually become a warrant officer in the SAS before entering the order.

  A huge semitrailer loomed ahead on the other side of the road. The driver tooted, gave a friendly wave and sped past. The wind generated by its slipstream buffeted Carter’s ute, causing him to tighten his hold on the wheel.

  He stretched his jaw, relaxed his grip on the wheel and pressed Jacko’s number on redial for the sixteenth time.

  2

  The phone answered on the fourth ring.

  “Jacko. It’s Carter.”

  “Carter, you old bastard.” There was a pause. “I’ll call you right back on a secure line.”

  Thirty seconds later the cell phone started vibrating in Carter’s lap. He switched on the speaker and answered after the second ring.

  “Mate, great to hear from you,” Jacko said. He sounded exhausted.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a serious shit storm going down.”

  His blokey tone, usually full of laconic Aussie humor, had a brittle edge to it.

  “What’s up?” Carter asked again.

  “Some fuckin’ wack job drove a car bomb into our rural joint near Ubud at five-thirty this morning. It has to be the Sungkar clan.”

  Carter did the time-difference calculation in his head. It was almost the exact same time as when Thomas’s property had been hit, which explained why Carter hadn’t been able to contact him.

  “Shit,” Carter said. “Everyone whole?”

  “Six people are in the local hospital.”

  “Are they going to be okay?”

  “Mate, it’s pretty ugly. Multiple fractures, third-degree burns, that sort of thing. Josh is the biggest worry. There’s some internal bleeding on the brain. But he’s one tough bugger.”

  Silence hung over the line.

  “Where are the others?” Carter finally asked.

  “Jean, Teck and Hiroshi are doing a job along the Thai–Burmese border. Patah and Lui are in East Timor. Can’t get hold of anyone else. Thomas and Erina are on the north coast of New South Wales with Wayan, but I can’t raise any of them. Thomas’s satellite phone’s not answering and the other two are reporting directly to him, so I don’t have numbers for them. I wish to fuck they’d remember to tell me when they get new prepaids – it would make my job a hell of a lot easier. Right now I’m the only one manning the fort, bung leg and all.”

  Jacko had been shot in the left knee two years ago and the injury made it impossible for him to work in the field. That meant Carter and Erina were now the only active operatives on deck.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news,” Carter said.

  “Shit … Hit me with it.”

  Carter filled him in on what had happened to Thomas and Wayan, including a brief summary of the events leading up to the abduction.

  “Bloody hell,” Jacko said. “You reckon they’re still alive?”

  “Hard to say, but I suspect if they’d killed them, they’d have left their bodies behind.”

  “That sounds right. Where do you reckon they’re taking them?”

  “My best guess is the cattle property in Boggabilla.”

  “Makes sense. Did Thomas tell you they’re shooting a movie there or some such bullshit?”

  “A movie?”

  “Yeah, some Indonesian martial-arts feature film. Apparently half-a-dozen Sungkar clan members are working on the shoot. And that dysfunctional dipshit Alex Botha has been spotted a couple of times in the area. Did Thomas tell you about him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Having him running around on the loose with those fanatics is a real worry. He’s a bloody good operator an
d he knows our systems inside out.”

  Out of nowhere two kangaroos hopped across the road in tandem. Carter hit the brakes and the car slowed, letting them pass.

  Alex’s involvement with the clan took the threat they posed to another level and explained how they’d managed to break through the order’s defenses so easily, both at the country property near Lennox and in Ubud. Carter would have to deal with Alex at some point. But for now he needed to get as much information as possible from Jacko before his phone cut out.

  He accelerated and asked, “So what’s the story with Trident? Any idea who might’ve turned?”

  “Earl Callaghan, the CEO, strikes me as being one dodgy unit. Been divorced a couple of times and his finances are in a right mess. Plus there’s been talk his only kid has gone AWOL in Bali. She’s seventeen and a bit of a wildcat. Last seen outside a nightclub in Kuta.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Could be.”

  Kidnapping was one of the clan’s specialties.

  “Tell me what you know about Samudra’s sister,” Carter said.

  There was a brief pause, then he heard the click of a cigarette lighter.

  “Kemala Sungkar has an MBA from Stanford – she’s one smart cookie. Over the last year she’s become pretty tight with Thomas. First woman I’ve seen get under his skin.”

  “Under different circumstances that’d be big news.”

  “Huge. She’s worried about where her lunatic brother is taking the clan. Thomas was going to hook up with her in Jakarta tomorrow, but he’s been unable to make contact.”

  “Maybe her brother nabbed her as well.”

  “Quite possible. She’s got a local working for her undercover on Batak Island where Samudra’s set up his training compound. I’ll try and contact the guy directly.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Name’s Djoran. He grew up on the island and knows it like the back of his hand. You’d like him. He’s smart as a whippet with a ton of guts. He’s a Sufi, too, which is how he met Kemala, at some conference in Jakarta six years ago.”