Sword of Allah

by David Rollins

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, lowering the pistol and then letting it clatter to the floor.

  ‘We want to find one of your customers,’ said Monroe. ‘You can help us.’

  ‘I have seen the news. I know who you want.’ The general sat heavily. ‘Make it stop.’

  ‘I need my radio, in the backpack,’ Wilkes said.

  The general raised his hand and the pack was returned. Wilkes removed the TACBE, a short-range transceiver, and turned it on, thumbing the send button with a prearranged signal to the helo.

  ‘We also want any prisoners, any drug enforcement people you might have detained, released immediately,’ said Tadzic.

  Monroe and Wilkes both turned to look at the police officer. What the hell was this all about? The helo was now on the way and they had one foot out of this place. They had what they came for. Monroe shot Wilkes an angry glance. Wilkes gave an imperceptible shrug that said, ‘Go with it’. They had no choice now, anyway.

  ‘I don’t have any prisoners,’ said the general a little too quickly.

  ‘Well, that’s unfortunate,’ said Monroe, playing along with Tadzic’s surprise demand even though he wasn’t really sure where it was going, ‘because we have plenty more missiles.’

  Twelve minutes later, three very sick people were delivered on stretchers and laid on the manicured lawn in front of the villa: one woman and two men. All three looked closer to the dead than to the living, covered in filth with fat green flies circling lazily around them. ‘That fucking bastard,’ said Tadzic as she knelt beside the stretcher and wiped the woman’s face. Her eyelids cracked open. The pupils were dilated, with no response behind them.

  ‘They all your people?’ asked Wilkes.

  ‘The woman is AFP, a researcher. She’s mine. One of these men – I’m not sure which – is her boyfriend. The other, I think, is an American, a DEA agent who’s been missing six months,’ said Tadzic, rage building within her.

  ‘They’re lucky to be alive,’ Monroe said, a little bewildered. He’d intended to give Tadzic both barrels, but her brazen demand had yielded results.

  ‘Your researcher is even luckier to have you for a boss,’ said Wilkes, and he meant it. The federal agent was tough and resourceful. She’d done what she had to do. He’d have preferred it if Tadzic had brought him into her confidence over the hostages, but he understood why she didn’t. Perhaps she thought he wouldn’t allow the mission’s focus to be split. Tadzic had never worked with him before and therefore didn’t know what to expect. Maybe next time, if there were a next time, she’d know better.

  The thump of helicopter blades rose above the erratic explosions of burning ammunition still cooking. Wilkes called up the helo on the TACBE and redirected it to land on the villa’s forecourt.

  ‘You know,’ said Tadzic as she watched soldiers rushing about in an uncoordinated panic, ‘we’ve got unconfirmed rumours that the general here buys young girls – some as young as six years old – from the local villages. Then, when he’s finished soiling their little bodies as they reach puberty, he puts them to work in the drug factories. Only, most of the girls don’t last long. By then, they’re heavy users and full of shame. They overdose or find some other way to kick off.’

  As if on cue, three very young girls, children, ran from the house screaming.

  ‘Nice,’ said Monroe. ‘Maybe we should fix his little red wagon while we’re here.’

  ‘I feel the same way, Atticus, but –’

  ‘Come on, Tom. Jesus, look at the people on the ground here,’ he said, waving a hand at the stretchered hostages. ‘If ever someone deserved to chew on a bullet it’s this guy. He –’

  A sudden loud bang beside Atticus’s head made him duck and spin. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘My thought exactly, Atticus,’ said Tadzic, a curl of grey smoke rising from the muzzle of the gun in her outstretched hand. It was the general’s H&K. She dropped it on the ground and kicked it away.

  Wilkes saw the general fall. He caught the bullet with his throat and began to die slowly, his blood bubbling away, surprise and fear in his eyes. A man caught him as he fell, a man with a very bald, shiny head, who laid him on the grass as purple blood gurgled from his lips and the wounds on either side of his neck. When the bald man realised the general was dying, he began to pat him down. He then shot the general point blank in the head with a revolver and took his polished riding boots.

  ‘Obviously much loved by his people,’ observed Wilkes.

  ‘Federal Agent,’ said Monroe, rubbing his ear, ‘if it’s not a personal question, are you married?’

  There was the slightest of smiles on Tadzic’s lips.

  Capping the drug lord annoyed Wilkes, but the milk was spilt. If Canberra or Langley superiors wanted more information from Trip in the future – well, too bad, because it had now gone with him to the grave.

  The helo sideslipped towards them through a column of black smoke and flared into a hover half a metre above the grass, the co-pilot now wearing body armour and sitting up behind the Browning removed from its hiding place.

  ‘Shit,’ said Tadzic, shaking her head as they carefully lifted the inert bodies into the helo.

  ‘What’s up?’ Wilkes asked.

  ‘We didn’t get Trip to tell us how the terrorists were smuggling the heroin into Australia.’

  ‘Would he have known? He was the wholesaler,’ Wilkes said.

  ‘Yes, he was, but you can bet an arsehole like General Trip would’ve made it his business to find out,’ said Tadzic, grunting as she helped Wilkes lift the last stretcher into the Eurocopter. ‘It might even have been a network he personally set up and controlled.’ A bullet passed close to her head, the air crackling, and buried itself in the helo’s airframe. Three more rounds fizzed by too close for comfort. Time to leave – the party was definitely over.

  Tadzic took the co-pilot’s offered hand and he pulled her in. Monroe and Wilkes jumped onto the aircraft’s skids as the helo left the ground. The Eurocopter accelerated and climbed with a steep nose-down attitude. Several groups of soldiers began firing up at them. A couple of rounds pinged off the skids where Monroe and Wilkes had been standing. The Browning issued a reply, the co-pilot swinging the heavy machine gun in an arc towards the ground, showering Tadzic and Wilkes with hot brass casings.

  The helo climbed over the ridge then slipped behind it, putting the hill between them and the anger of the general’s encampment. Wilkes pulled the scrap of paper from his top pocket, the lat and long coords scribbled on it in the general’s own hand. He passed the paper to the co-pilot. ‘Better get these off,’ he said, yelling over the noise of the twin jet engines and the whirling blades above.

  Federal Agent Tadzic looked down at the three people at her feet and examined her feelings. She was angry and elated at the same time; angry with herself for giving in to the desire for revenge, but she had to admit that removing Trip from the gene pool was the most satisfying moment of her fifteen-year career as a federal agent.

  Flores, Indonesia

  Duat rolled out of bed and vomited into the bucket on the floor. He hadn’t been able to keep anything down, but then neither had anyone else in the encampment. His eyes were hot and dry, and his joints ached as if they’d been pinned together with rusty screws. Sleep brought terrors he had never thought possible, full of his own blood and dismemberment and decay.

  ‘Duat, we have been poisoned.’

  Duat looked up from the bucket. Hendra leaned against the door, the skin on his face a pale green colour, his eyes red coals deep within black sockets.

  ‘Come,’ he said, breathing hard, his reserves of energy severely taxed by the thirty-metre walk from his own hut.

  Duat climbed to his feet, swaying, fighting the feeling that he would black out at any moment. He followed Hendra to his quarters, stopping once to vomit a mixture of bile and blood onto the well-worn dirt path. Duat again steadied himself on a post that supported a wide veranda the carpenters had built for Hendra u
nder which to house the group’s extensive communications suite, and plan the development and flight of the Sword of Allah. Cooling fans hummed incessantly within a wide array of high-powered PCs, printers and decoders. Daily meteorological forecasts hung limp in the moist tropical air charting the progress of weather systems across the Indian Ocean, and Timor and Arafura seas. Several television monitors permanently tuned to various news services, their volume controls set to mute, featured presenters mouthing silently on screen. ‘Look,’ said Hendra, pointing to a computer screen. Duat found it difficult to focus on the small writing, translating the English in his head into more intelligible Bahasa, the language of Indonesia. He realised after digesting several lines that his own condition was being described. He scrolled the page to the top of the screen and read aloud, ‘Symptoms of VX poisoning. How?’

  ‘I don’t know how it has happened. We must search Rahim’s house,’ Hendra said. ‘There is an antidote.’

  Duat and Hendra supported each other on the walk to Rahim’s abode. It had been set furthest away for safety reasons. The distance was only a hundred metres but Duat wondered whether he would have the strength to make it.

  Rahim and his assistant had been amongst the first to die, at a time when there were still enough people to see to their cremation. Hendra staggered to Rahim’s workbench. The implements of addiction lay here and there and, for a brief moment, Duat envied him his painless death. Hendra pulled the drawers out one by one, looking for something. He then went to the fridge. Its motor thrummed softly – it still worked – but a padlock secured the door closed.

  Hendra went back to the benchtop and took the pistol lying there. He checked that it was loaded and off safety and, turning his head away, fired at the lock. The deafening sound of it discharging in the confined space had a physical quality that nearly made Duat pass out. Hendra swung the door open and found what he was looking for, a clear plastic bag containing two hypodermic syringes. Clearly written in red lettering on each was the word ‘Atropine’.

  Hendra had no idea where the hypodermic should be administered. The Internet sites he’d trawled had not provided that level of detail. He passed one of the hypodermics to Duat and then drove the needle through the fabric of his pants, deep into his thigh muscle, then pressed down on the plunger. Duat followed his example. Both men collapsed on the floor, exhausted by their exertions.

  Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

  Getting a seat on a plane to Darwin was relatively easy. There weren’t a lot of tourists heading that way. Qantas was being used to ferry support troops north and the television network pulled in favours. Leaving might prove difficult, however, if the scenes at Darwin airport were anything to go by. Half a dozen soldiers dressed in full combat gear, toting submachine guns and assault rifles, escorted Annabelle Gilbert and her crew through arrivals. The reason for the security was obvious, because the airport was crammed with thousands of people shouting and screaming and pushing each other, on the knife edge of a riot that could turn nasty at any moment.

  Gilbert and company were rushed to a bus outside the building inside a tortoise of armed soldiers with bayonets fixed. Three light armoured vehicles guarded the bus itself, soldiers behind their machine guns.

  ‘You must be the television people,’ said a man with major’s pips embroidered in black on his epaulettes at the top of the bus’s steps. He knew the answer to the question, because he didn’t wait for confirmation. ‘Step forward into the bus.’ No ‘please’. All business.

  A female soldier in a camouflage chemical warfare suit, the hood and mask flapping around between her shoulderblades, held out a green package and motioned to Annabelle to accept it. On top of the package was a pair of heavy rubberised gloves and boots.

  ‘One size fits all. Your condition of entry into Darwin is predicated on each of you wearing this suit at all times.’

  ‘Even in bed?’ asked the producer, Barry Weaver.

  ‘At all times, sir.’

  ‘Think of it as a big condom, Baz,’ said the cameraman as he received his suit.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject of sleeping arrangements, I’m not sure what you’ve planned, but I will tell you what’s happening.’ The major was in the habit of giving the orders, and of having them obeyed.

  ‘Five/7 Battalion is in control of the city. We have set up a forward command centre at the Novotel on the Esplanade.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Weaver in an aside. ‘It’s five stars.’

  ‘Put your suits on now,’ said the major.

  Outside, the sky was black and low, and raindrops began to hammer on the roof of the bus as if they’d been shot from a gun. Annabelle stepped into the NBC suit and pulled the hood over her head. ‘That’s not going to do much for your hair and make-up,’ said Weaver. ‘But hey, I’m a lights-off guy anyway.’

  ‘You know, Barry, somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’ Any assertions Saunders had made about this assignment being good for her career had dissolved when Annabelle found out Weaver would be her producer, as ANTV was utilising NQTV resources. Rumour had it that he was given the most dangerous assignments not so much because he was good, but because everyone disliked him and hoped he might meet with an accident.

  The confines in the bus were close. The floor was slick with water as soldiers squeezed in and around them, the air thick, sludgy with moisture. Annabelle wanted to be a long way away from Darwin and this assignment. The NBC suit made her sweat and soon she was as drenched as if she was standing outside in the rain. She thought about Tom, wondered where he was and hoped he was all right. Before leaving Sydney, Annabelle had used all her contacts at the squadron to try to find out where he was. As expected, she’d met with the army’s silence. All they’d been prepared to say was that he was ‘on the job’. Her intuition told her that Tom was involved somehow in the current situation with the terrorist VX threat. That frightened her but also gave her a feeling of reassurance. If anyone could ruin the bastards’ party, it was Tom. Annabelle wondered whether she was starting to see things from a different perspective – Tom’s. The world had changed forever and no one was truly safe anymore. Being a civilian was no guarantee of security. Indeed, it probably placed you more squarely in the crosshairs of those prepared to make their point at any cost. This, after all, was war, twenty-first century style.

  The only difference between her and Tom was that Tom faced these people down. Didn’t that increase his safety rather than lessen it? Not turning his back on the beast? Knowing the direction the bullet would come from? Hang on a second, do I want to be married to someone who wears a target? Annabelle Gilbert wondered whether her unresolved feelings about Tom were making her hormonal. The mood swings were playing havoc with her usual equilibrium. The fact was, she’d given Tom an ultimatum: to stay in the army or be with her. She realised that if the positions had been reversed and he’d said as much to her, she’d have told him to stuff off.

  The major handed around sealed plastic bags and instructed Annabelle and the crew on their contents and the use thereof.

  ‘The pack I’ve given you contains a hypodermic syringe containing an antidote to VX contamination.’ He opened a bag and pulled out a large hypodermic. ‘Depending on the level of contact, you will have enough time to administer it. Inject it into the muscle on your arm, thigh or buttock.’ He placed the tip of the protected needle on the relevant parts of his own body to reinforce the demonstration.

  ‘The wipes in the bag should be used if you come in direct contact with VX. Just wipe it off, seal the used towels in the bag, then administer the antidote and get to the nearest decontamination centre.’ He put the bag down.

  ‘Now, you cannot pass freely around the city. It’s dangerous. You need an escort. The army is providing you with a driver and liaison officer – me – plus an armed escort. My presence will make things as easy as possible for you. My name is Major Short.’

  ‘As in sentence structure,’ said Weaver smiling conspiratorially
at Annabelle, who rolled her eyes.

  ‘Why do we need an armed escort?’ asked Annabelle.

  ‘For protection.’

  Annabelle thought his answer seemed somewhat evasive but let it rest for the moment, in the spirit of cooperation.

  ‘Can we go back a bit?’ asked the cameraman.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why can’t we just use the antidote now?’

  ‘Everyone asks that,’ said Short, cracking the barest of smiles. ‘Because it’s a poison, not a vaccine, is why. It neutralises the VX and the VX neutralises it. Administer it now and it could kill you.’

  ‘Sorta like a yin and yang thang,’ Weaver suggested, not taking all this terribly seriously. ‘

  ‘How will we know if there’s VX in the air?’ asked Annabelle, giving Weaver the ‘please behave’ look.

  ‘Believe me, you’ll hear the sirens. Also, if you have a mobile phone, you’ll get a message sent to your screen.’

  ‘Are there any updates on the situation?’

  ‘Nothing official, Ms Gilbert. I’m told we’re pretty safe as long as the monsoon’s active.’

  Annabelle had the impression Short was the type who always played it by the book. The khaki-blooded type.

  Weaver took out a notepad and pencil. ‘Any places that are off limits, where we can’t shoot?’

  ‘Plenty, sir, starting with the airport here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. The airport is a restricted area – no pictures.’

  ‘What? We can’t show people the scene here at the airport? Why the hell not?’ Annabelle didn’t like being told she couldn’t do something, especially when there didn’t appear to be a good reason.

  ‘Orders.’

  ‘But it’s just the airport,’ said Annabelle.

  The major shrugged.

  ‘Obviously, Canberra doesn’t want the rest of the country to see the panic up here,’ said Weaver. ‘Is that true?’ Annabelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing.