No Man's Land

by Roland Fishman

  Carter knew there was nothing he could say. Erina had echoed many of the thoughts and feelings he’d had when he’d left the order, the numbing soul sickness that came from being exposed to so much darkness and death.

  Djoran put his hands in the prayer position. “We cannot know what God has in store for any one of us, either in this life or beyond. When our faith deserts us, we must continue to ask for his guidance and act as if we believe in him. That is how we trust.”

  Erina was nodding again.

  “If we do this,” Djoran said, “I believe great things will come to pass. While Thomas and Wayan are still alive, there is hope, and we must do what we can. If any of us die in our efforts, we must accept this as God’s will. What is, is. Acceptance is true faith and will give us the strength and wisdom we need. There is more to life than what we can see and hear.”

  “I want to believe that,” Erina said.

  Djoran laid his hands on the table in front of him. “Let me tell you something. My wife, Anisha, was killed in the Sari Club on the night of the first Bali bombing. She was celebrating the end of a marketing conference with two Australian business associates.”

  A moment of profound silence followed, as if everyone was holding their breath.

  “She was four months pregnant with our first child.”

  A barely audible “Oh my God” escaped from Erina’s lips.

  Djoran gently took her hand and placed it over his heart.

  To Carter’s surprise, she let him do so.

  “Nothing takes away the pain of their loss,” Djoran said. “But they live with me. I can feel my wife and unborn son in here, reminding me of God’s omnipresence and compassion for all creatures. Their spirits tell me to keep going and that God loves us all.”

  Carter was surprised to see Erina’s eyes fill with tears. She never cried. They started to flow and she let them come.

  13

  A few minutes after midnight Carter and Erina entered the warm thigh-high water from a small beach at the bottom of a rock cliff not far from Djoran’s bunker.

  Carter hitched up his black board shorts, while Erina had stripped down to her black bra and bikini briefs. After their talk with Djoran and a few hours’ sleep, it was like a shadow had lifted from both of them and they were now acting as a unified team. The passionate moment they’d shared on the beach at Kuta had not been spoken of. This was neither the time nor the place to dwell on anything but the job at hand.

  They stood next to each other in the dark, thirty feet from shore, each steadying one of Djoran’s surfboards against the incoming swell, rolling past them before breaking gently onto the sand behind them. It’d be a totally different story once they paddled around the distant headland, where they’d be forced to navigate their way through huge breaking surf.

  First, though, they needed to paddle nearly two miles without being spotted, something they couldn’t take for granted.

  Carter checked his watch. The patrol boat had passed by three minutes earlier, about four hundred feet from shore. They’d start paddling in one minute.

  Despite the challenges that lay ahead, it felt good to get started. A full moon and a glowing blanket of stars lit up the vast expanse of ocean, ruffled by a light onshore breeze. He noticed a build-up of thick clouds on the horizon, suggesting a change in weather conditions wasn’t too far away. They would deal with that when the time came.

  After finalizing their plans, Djoran had headed back to the compound to resume his undercover role as one of Samudra’s mujaheddin. He needed to remain close to Samudra to discover the precise nature of his plans for jihad in Sydney. It was their best shot at finding out what he was up to and stopping it.

  Muklas, who had warmed to them after hearing of Jacko’s death and understanding they were all fighting a common enemy, had set off an hour earlier to “borrow” a fishing boat. He had promised not to act until 8 a.m. If they returned by then, he’d leave the island with them. Should they fail to show up, he had Carter’s blessing to head for Java and personally inform one of Detachment 88’s senior commanders of Samudra’s activities and organize an attack on the compound.

  What Muklas had said about the size of the waves around the headland had Carter slightly concerned. They might be facing conditions that even professional big-wave surfers wouldn’t attempt without a jet ski tow-in during broad daylight, let alone at night on a ten-foot malibu. There was no point worrying now, though. He’d know more when they assessed the conditions firsthand.

  Carter let go of his board and pulled his waterproof daypack tight against his body. He’d insisted Erina leave hers behind. She was a good surfer, but no match for Carter. He’d packed a T-shirt for each of them, Erina’s light cotton trousers and their shoes into his own pack, along with the satphone and her computer, containing Djoran’s security codes. The phone and computer were sealed in waterproof sleeves. Apart from that, he’d brought along only the essentials – one Glock, an underwater flashlight, throwing knives and the two breathing devices.

  They lay on their boards and started paddling out to open sea across the moonlit ocean.

  —

  Eight minutes later they were halfway toward the eastern headland, about six hundred feet from shore, when Carter detected a slight vibration in the water.

  He glided to a stop. Erina did the same and pushed herself upright on her board. They both turned toward the faint growl of an outboard motor.

  Just under a mile behind them an arc of bright light moved back and forth across the water, heading straight for them. Obviously one of the patrol boats had deviated from their regular pattern. The plan had bent out of shape even quicker than Carter had anticipated.

  He glanced at Erina, sitting on her longboard wearing nothing but her underwear, her eyes dancing between him and the oncoming spotlight.

  They sat in silence. There was no way they could outrun the boat. The growl of the engine grew louder.

  “You want me to be the decoy?” Erina asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, though he was reluctant to put her at risk. There was no other choice.

  “Great. Just make sure you hit the target with the first shot.”

  14

  Erina sat upright on her board, waiting for the advancing spotlight to fall on her.

  Both knew exactly what they had to do. She needed to distract the advancing clansmen so he had a clear shot to take them out. The plan’s success depended on making the enemy look one way before striking hard from the other direction.

  He paddled away from her, further out to sea, concentrating on each stroke, trying to still his mind for the critical moments that lay ahead.

  His board came to rest roughly twenty yards from where she sat. The gurgling engine of the patrol boat was about four hundred yards from Erina now, closing on her at a steady pace.

  Moving further away wasn’t an option for Carter. It’d make a difficult shot impossible. If he fired from more than fifty feet, he might as well throw the weapon at their pursuers, for all the good it would do.

  He sat upright on his board and kicked his legs to spin the nose around to face her.

  After removing the Glock from his daypack, he switched it to a single round. He needed to make one shot at a time and didn’t want any stray bullets spraying in Erina’s direction. He sealed his daypack, slung it over his shoulder and knelt on the deck of his board.

  The gusting wind roughed up the water. That, coupled with the roll of the incoming swell, caused his board to rise and fall at an irregular rate.

  He spread his knees to steady the roll as best he could. He’d be shooting from an unstable platform at a person or persons facing side-on and bobbing up and down.

  The fishing boat chugged forward, now two hundred yards from Erina. In less than ten seconds the spotlight’s thirty-foot circle of light would fall on her.

  He raised his arms in front of him and looked down the barrel, focusing on Erina’s silhouette.

  After rehearsing in his mi
nd what he needed to do, he closed his eyes and breathed in. His shoulder, stomach and chest muscles were tight. He needed to get his emotions under complete control, switch from thinking to being and fully inhabit the moment.

  When his eyes snapped open again, moments later, the boat’s bright spotlight was dancing over Erina.

  The moon had disappeared behind the gathering clouds and spots of rain spat on his back. Diesel fumes wafted through the night air.

  He adjusted the board once more so the nose pointed directly at her.

  She raised a hand to her eyes, defiant and vulnerable, playing the role to perfection.

  He knew who’d got the toughest assignment on this job and it wasn’t him. Being the bait in a high-stakes game like this required great emotional control and presence of mind.

  Thirty yards from her, the patrol boat’s helmsman cut back the throttle of the outboard engine to a rough idle.

  The clan members had seen Erina.

  The open aluminum vessel slowed, drifting to a halt about four yards from her, giving Carter a clear view of the two men on board.

  An Indonesian Laurel and Hardy.

  A tall skinny guy wearing a floppy white hat steered, working the dazzling spotlight from the stern. The other, short and fat, sat in the middle. An enormous cigar stuck out from the side of his mouth.

  But there was nothing comical about the lethal weapon lying across his lap. An AK-47, a compact and reliable automatic rifle.

  If the shooter used soft-nosed bullets, each shot would fragment on impact, causing serious tissue damage and resulting in certain death.

  Erina gave away nothing and showed no signs of fear. She just smiled and waved at the Indonesian duo like they were two heroes coming to her rescue on a dark and lonely night.

  He weighed up the odds and angles.

  The AK-47 presented a problem.

  The fat guy only had to squeeze the trigger once and over two dozen lethal rounds would fly through the night air.

  Carter needed to take him out of the equation with his first shot and then bring down the skinny guy before he could reach his friend’s weapon.

  The boat drifted to within two yards of Erina.

  The moment had come.

  He adjusted his knees on his surfboard so they were six inches apart and his weight spread evenly. He stretched both arms out in front of him again, locking his elbows this time and keeping the gun barrel parallel to the ocean.

  Raindrops glistened in the beam of the spotlight.

  Half an inch either way meant the fine line between success and disaster. Life and death.

  The fat clansman raised the AK-47 and pointed it between Erina’s breasts.

  Carter lined up his head.

  He held his arms relaxed and steady, imagining a force field of energy between him and his target.

  Exhaling slowly, he squeezed the trigger.

  Ever so gently.

  The Glock roared to life.

  15

  The moment he squeezed the trigger, Carter knew his shot had found its mark.

  The fat Indonesian grabbed his throat, dropped his rifle and collapsed forward with a thud.

  Carter aimed the Glock at the spotlight.

  Too late.

  The intense bright light swung toward him, locking on his face, blinding him.

  He heard movement on the boat. The second Indonesian was most likely scrambling for the fallen automatic weapon.

  The harsh spotlight stayed focused on him, making the moving target invisible. There was no time for his eyes to adjust or for him to analyze what needed to be done. To have any chance of taking out the other guy, he had to surrender to unseen forces and shoot blind, almost immediately.

  He inhaled to the count of three, closed his eyes and raised the weapon, trying to sense the Indonesian’s position.

  The master marksman has a target but never takes aim.

  Carter exhaled slowly and experienced a moment of complete stillness between breaths. He squeezed off three shots in quick succession, shooting in a three-foot-wide triangular pattern.

  An eerie silence filled the night.

  Carter kept his eyes closed.

  The sound of a body hitting the metal deck broke the spell.

  The spotlight crashed forward into the boat.

  Carter opened his eyes, stuck the gun in the side pocket of his daypack and started paddling toward Erina.

  She lay prone on her board, backlit by the soft glow of the fallen spotlight.

  “You all right?” he called as he drew near.

  She sat up, grabbed the bow of the boat and said, “I’m fine.”

  His board glided to a halt a few feet from her. “You did good.”

  “I make a terrific decoy. But you didn’t do so badly yourself. You hit the last guy shooting blind.”

  “That was the easy part.”

  Without waiting for a response, he stood on his board, put his weight on his back foot and stepped onto the aluminum boat.

  The deck was slippery with fresh blood and guts.

  “Just hang tight while I do some housekeeping,” he said.

  “You think I can’t handle a bit of blood?”

  “It’ll only take me a sec.”

  He pulled his surfboard up after him and jammed the nose under the front seat. Its tail jutted forward over the bow with the fin pointing upward.

  “Looks like a figurehead on an ancient warship heading into battle,” Erina said.

  “A surfboard has many uses.”

  He grabbed the fat guy under the armpits, dragged him to the stern, dumped him over the side and watched him float away from the boat, facedown.

  “I reckon these two were just local fishermen,” he said.

  “Yeah, armed with automatic rifles and happy to kill us.”

  “I think they would’ve been pressed into service, not hardcore mujaheddin.”

  “They made the wrong choice.”

  He lifted the skinny guy off the deck and tossed him into the water after his mate, then moved to where she held onto the gunnels.

  She took his outstretched hand and scrambled on board. He used a stray towel lying on the forward deck to wipe the blood and tissue off the middle seat.

  “You did make a mess,” she said.

  “Better them than us.”

  The rain started to get heavier and patter on the deck. He settled her onto the now clean seat, picked up a tarpaulin lying in the bow and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Don’t go all chivalrous on me,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

  “I know.”

  He understood what she was saying and why she’d said it. This was no time for softness or sentiment.

  The sooner they got moving, the better. He climbed past her, turned the spotlight off and stowed it at the bow.

  “What about my board?” she asked.

  “We’re leaving it. If we need to surf our way across the reef onto the island, we’ll ride tandem.”

  He then positioned himself next to the idling outboard engine and was about to put it into gear when a distant sound registered above the motor. They both turned in the direction they’d come from. He switched the outboard off.

  Along with the freshening wind came the unmistakable whump, whump, whump of a helicopter and the shimmer of a spotlight dancing three hundred feet over the ocean, heading straight for them.

  Without saying a word, he restarted the outboard motor, revved the engine and accelerated toward the dark headland looming in the distance.

  16

  They rounded the headland in the open boat and faced the full brunt of the onshore gale and the angry nor’-east swell Muklas had predicted.

  In just over five minutes the weather conditions had deteriorated, the rain having gone from a steady patter to a downpour. Sheets of water pelted down, creating an incessant drumbeat against the metal deck, and the wind whistled over them. Carter sensed, then saw, the huge shadow of an unbroken wave rolli
ng toward them.

  He steered straight for it, aiming to hit the oncoming wall of water at a ninety-degree angle. If the bow didn’t hit square on, the boat would broach the wave sideways, fill with water and sink.

  The bow thumped against the angry face, propelling them high in the air. He yanked the outboard engine toward him, turning the boat into the wave. The boat crashed through the lip and down the other side, before plunging them into the trough between the waves.

  He turned the throttle and they accelerated parallel to the waves. They needed to generate speed before turning and ploughing into the next one head on. If they lost forward momentum, they’d be thrown back and risk being swamped by the following wave.

  A quick glance behind told him the helicopter hadn’t yet reached the headland, but it wouldn’t be long.

  Up ahead and to their left an invisible wave boomed onto the unseen coral reef like a clap of heavy thunder, punctuating the background roar of smaller but still sizeable waves crashing into the shallow water.

  Erina turned toward him, shouting to be heard above the wind and rain. “Muklas was right. The surf’s definitely up.”

  A minute later they drew level with a point where the incoming swell smacked onto the coral reef a hundred and fifty feet to their left. They were still in deep, open water, and even though the waves were large and dangerous, they had nothing like the power and venom of those breaking in the shallow water over the reef, creating the mother of all no man’s lands.

  According to the map, which Carter could picture in his mind, they were about eight hundred feet from the underwater cave that led to Samudra’s compound. To get to it, they needed to cross the reef.

  Now that he’d had the opportunity to assess the conditions firsthand, he knew they’d never make it all the way through to the cave in the boat. The powerful waves would smash them to pieces on the sharp coral and drive what was left of them onto the rocky shore.

  They crashed through another wave and accelerated along the trough between peaks. By the time they’d turned into the next wave, a plan had begun to crystallize in his mind.