Double back am-3

by Mark Abernethy

  Didge led them out, and as he did, he looked over the escarpment. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘That looks like the kid.’

  Looking over, Mac saw the 49ers T-shirt floating with the other logs in the river eddy. It looked like a body and, with any luck, the people looking for their money might think that the boys had been whacked.

  CHAPTER 43

  Pillars of smoke rose into the sky as Robbo stopped them on the outskirts of Maliana.

  They had camped in a hide overnight and travelled carefully but slowly through the well-populated countryside during the day, avoiding contact with the locals or military. It was now Saturday afternoon and they’d have about ten hours of darkness in which to infiltrate Lombok and then snatch Blackbird, before heading back across the island to the Sunday RV with the Royal Australian Navy. On Monday the ballot would open and by then Mac and the 63 Recon Troop were supposed to be out of harm’s way.

  ‘Shit,’ said Robbo, before passing the field-glasses to Mac. ‘How many more houses can they burn?’

  Making his own sweep with the binos, Mac saw thick smoke erupting from one of Maliana’s satellite hamlets about eight kilometres in the distance.

  ‘Got a pain-free route to Saturn?’ asked Mac, referring to Lombok by its operational code name. ‘Lot of open ground out there.’

  ‘If we go to the west of this village, we can tab down that river valley to the target,’ said Robbo, pointing.

  The sound of distant assault-rifle fire drifted to their position and Mac felt nervous reflux threatening. He wanted to say something about Rodrigo, who’d been sulking since they’d picked him up and had then descended into hysterical tears once he’d seen the smoke around Maliana. But the time wasn’t right.

  ‘Can you give me eyes on this valley over here, boys?’ Robbo asked Mitch and Toolie. ‘We’ll RV in thirty minutes at the head of the valley. Can do?’

  ‘Can do, Sarge,’ said Toolie, before the two of them moved off in a crouch.

  Back with the main group, Mac drank from a water bottle and saw Didge sitting and talking with Rodrigo. The kid wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his bottom lip puffy. For Mac, the two kids were still an unwanted complication, impairing the troop’s ability to saddle up and move quickly and silently through the countryside. The militias and soldiers around Maliana had scared him shitless the first time around. Mac just wanted to do his job without ending up on his knees in the changing sheds of the Ginasio.

  As Robbo signalled for the group to get moving, there was a familiar sound.

  Searching for the source, Mac’s eyes settled on Didge, who was puffing into his cupped hands, fingers fanning over the top, making an improvised didgeridoo. The music quacked out of Didge’s hands, making the two boys smile and laugh.

  ‘Here come the brolga,’ said Didge quickly, creating a squeaking sound above the hum of the didgeridoo.

  ‘And then along come goanna,’ he smiled, adding a hiss to the orchestra of sounds as the boys started clapping with joy.

  Mac slugged at his water and decided to relax and enjoy Didge’s performance. Robbo took a seat beside him as Didge added the croc to his story.

  ‘We were in Bougainville for BEL-ISI last year and Didge starts up with this stuff in the bar,’ said Robbo, shaking his head. ‘Ten minutes later the whole boozer’s crying like a bunch of girls.’

  ‘Homesick?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Something bad,’ said Robbo.

  ‘When I was growing up in Rockie, they didn’t let the blackfellas play their didge in town,’ said Mac. ‘But it still sounds like home.’

  ‘I’m from out Narrabri,’ said Robbo, ‘and I’ll tell ya, mate, no blackfella would have dared come into my dad’s pub and do the didge. Would have got bashed for that.’

  ‘Kids seem to like it,’ said Mac, lost in the sounds of Cape York.

  ‘Yeah, and Didge isn’t just an entertainer,’ said Robbo. ‘When the shit starts, he’s the bloke you want beside you.’

  It was late afternoon when Robbo signalled for them to establish base in the uplands surrounding the Lombok facility. After they’d set up, Robbo called Didge, Johnno and Mac to have a recce. From a stand of trees overlooking the Lombok AgriCorp car park, they saw about a hundred people milling in the same place where Amir Sudarto had apprehended Mac a few days earlier. The incinerator stack was not operating but the six ventilator outlets were visible in their stands of shrubs, line abreast down the middle of the otherwise empty paddock.

  ‘Four sentries at the gate house,’ mumbled Robbo as he looked through the field-glasses.

  Army trucks were idling, waiting to leave the facility, their drivers handing over clipboards which were checked by the sentries. The people in the car park were lining up, suitcases in hand, and were being escorted into the back of army trucks. It wasn’t what Mac had been expecting.

  Mac took the field-glasses from Robbo. Looking through them, he saw a bunch of women close up: hair pulled back in tight buns, glasses, middle-class blouses and expensive rings. They were laughing as their suitcases were loaded by soldiers. If Mac had to guess, he’d say the technical staff at the facility had finished their contracts and were heading home.

  Sweeping the glasses around towards the other end of the compound, Mac concentrated on the pillbox guard tower in the middle of the far fence line, where DIA suspected there was an underground facility. There were no soldiers in the tower and Mac decided that if the ventilator outlets weren’t too tricky to open, they could be the best way into the hidden part of Lombok.

  ‘Well?’ asked Robbo.

  ‘Can you see any unfriendlies in that far sentry box?’ asked Mac, handing the field-glasses back to Robbo. ‘I think they might be shutting down the facility, and reducing the security – that might give us our way in.’

  ‘We talking about those ventilators?’ asked Robbo, adjusting the focus ring.

  ‘I reckon we stealth to them and break in,’ said Mac. ‘I can’t see anything easier.’

  ‘Roger that,’ said Robbo, ‘but check the K-9, your eleven.’

  Mac turned slightly and clocked them immediately: two MPs, one of them with a German shepherd straining on a chain leash. ‘Fuck!’ muttered Mac.

  As the sun set Mac knelt and pushed caps of Xanax out of the foil while Didge created slits in the chunks of cuscus flesh and pushed the capsules into the meat.

  Beside them, Robbo averted his eyes and his nose.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Nah, boss,’ said Didge, chuckling as he pushed another Xanax capsule into a chunk of cuscus. ‘Good eating, him,’ he said, playing up the Cape York talk. ‘Feed a whole mob on him, there.’

  ‘Your mob from down Barmaga, down there?’ aped Mac.

  ‘Watch it, bra,’ growled Didge, reverting to Strine. ‘Don’t get cheeky.’

  They waited for the guards to start another loop, then Mac followed Didge down to an area by the fence where they were partially unsighted to the main entry guard house.

  ‘You’re clear, boys,’ crackled Robbo’s voice over the radio headsets.

  Mac followed Didge to the fence, grabbed four chunks of cuscus meat and threw them onto the grass on the other side.

  Moving back to Robbo, they waited for the guards to do their tour. Darkness was settling as the guards walked the near fence, smoking. The German shepherd tried to lurch at one of the chunks of meat as the guards passed it, but he couldn’t reach and was wrenched back into line.

  ‘Dammit,’ snarled Didge.

  The guards kept to their route and Mac prayed the dog would notice the baits that Didge threw. But then the guards stopped, lighting cigarettes, while the talkative one remonstrated.

  ‘Are these people going to talk all night?’ whispered Robbo. ‘It’s like a bloody sewing circle down there.’

  The guards moved on and, as they settled back into their rhythm, the shepherd suddenly lurched to his right, snapped at a bait with flashing teeth, and was back in line before the h
andler could tug at him.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ said Robbo.

  Robbo talked them through the final instructions: Mitch and Beast were covering the fence lines with supporting fire should the need arise, while Johnno was going to access the main switchboard for the facility and see if he could disable the security camera systems. Didge was going into the facility with Mac, while Toolie played babysitter.

  Going through final prep for the gig, Mac listened to Robbo give the various contingencies and warnings. There was a chance that the radios wouldn’t operate underground, so they agreed on a sixty-minute shutdown for the gig. If Didge and Mac weren’t out of there in under an hour, the rest of 63 Recon would do the Harold.

  As Didge checked and rechecked his B amp;E gear, Robbo’s tone of voice changed.

  ‘What the fuck’s that?’ he hissed.

  Mac followed Robbo’s gaze through his field-glasses to the main block of the compound.

  ‘ Shit!’ muttered Mac when he saw what Robbo was looking at. Three people were standing in front of the main loading bay, illuminated by floodlights and all dressed in white NIOSH-10 clothing – better known as biohazard suits.

  ‘What the fuck is this, McQueen?’ snarled Robbo, still looking through the glasses. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘You know, vaccines and -’

  ‘Vaccines?’ rasped Robbo.

  ‘Look,’ said Mac, voice soothing. ‘It may be nothing, we’re just checking -’

  ‘What is this fucking place?’ demanded Robbo, slow and threatening.

  Though he realised it didn’t look good, Mac tried to hold firm. ‘It’s classified, Robbo.’

  Robbo planted his hands on his hips, his face furious.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, trying to lighten it. ‘It’s officially vaccine research, but there’s an undeclared area underground, okay? It’s probably a drug lab.’

  ‘Vaccines? Are you fucking kidding me?!’

  ‘Look -’

  ‘It’s just a place where they grow diseases, McQueen!’ said Robbo.

  ‘Yeah, I know, mate,’ said Mac. ‘It’s the underground facility we’re interested in.’

  ‘Oh, now I feel better,’ said Robbo sarcastically. ‘When were you going to tell me? Huh?’ said Robbo, tapping Mac in the chest. ‘You don’t think I have the right to warn my own men about walking into a place like this?’

  ‘I’ve got two masks, gloves for Didge -’

  Robbo looked Mac in the eye. ‘You were going to tell Didge when? When you got the top off the fucking ventilator?’

  That was precisely what Mac had intended, though he decided not to say so.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Mac. ‘That’s the gig.’

  ‘That’s the gig?’ demanded Robbo. ‘You mean, if the dumb soldiers knew where they were taking you, we might find a way not to get there?’

  Mac just shrugged.

  Sighing, Robbo gave Didge a look and then turned back to Mac. ‘Why is it, McQueen, that all of you spooks are just total fuckers?’

  CHAPTER 44

  The army trucks continued transporting people out of the facility as Mac cased the campus from behind the middle ventilator. After the flare-up about vaccines and diseases, Mac was leaving the topic alone with Didge. Mac harboured his own fears about scientists playing with diseases, but his objective was to infiltrate the underground section of Lombok – the fact that it could be a drug lab was only very small comfort.

  The paddock area had been dog-free for twenty minutes thanks to the Xanax baits and the five floodlights around the paddock were weak enough to create darkness around the ventilators.

  After a concerted effort, Didge loosened the final screw on the circular vent cover and he and Mac lifted it off in silence, placing it quietly on the grass beside the vent.

  ‘Cap off, Blue Leader. How we doing on the circuit boards?’ asked Mac over the headset.

  ‘Standing by, Albion,’ said Robbo, cool but professional. ‘We’re in – gonna use a bio-suit to infiltrate.’

  Heart thumping, Mac listened for any out-of-place sounds as the crickets started up and the birds died down. Bats flapped and monkeys chattered as the last line of orange-red glow evaporated on the horizon. And then night came like a black velvet cloak had been thrown over the day.

  Checking their handguns and controlling their breathing, they concentrated on saving their energy for the real work. Johnno was supposed to be a good operator, but Mac always got nervous when someone was going into enemy territory.

  ‘Stand by, Albion,’ came Robbo over the headset.

  ‘Standing by, Blue Leader.’

  Looking at each other, Mac and Didge got the okay forty seconds later.

  ‘Green for go, Albion. Repeat – green for go.’

  ‘Roger that Blue Leader. Albion out.’

  Tapping Didge on the shoulder, Mac held out one of the biohazard masks. When they both had the helmets in place, he handed Didge a pair of gloves.

  Looking over, Didge peered down the open shaft and then brought a flashlight up and into the shaft, turning it on and cupping a gloved hand over the lens to stop it shining too brightly below.

  The light reflected on a circular shaft that dropped for fifteen metres, ending in a sealed fan unit which blocked the shaft.

  ‘Shit,’ hissed Mac, his voice bouncing within the confines of the biohazard mask.

  ‘You okay, Albion?’ asked Robbo over the headset.

  ‘Affirmative, Blue Leader,’ said Mac, watching as Didge looped his rope, strained at the knot and then put a slip-knot at the base of a tree next to the vent. ‘Fan unit blocking entry. It’s sealed, but working on it. Out.’

  Didge picked up a new set of wrenches and screwdrivers from his B amp;E kit, clambered over the edge of the vent shaft and rappelled into it, disappearing quickly.

  From above, Mac shone the flashlight at the sides of the shiny steel, letting the light bounce around long enough for Didge to release the screws. Standing on the far corners of the fan unit, Didge undid his rappel harness and attached it to the metre-wide fan.

  Climbing out of the shaft, Didge jumped down, then turned and tried to pull the fan out with the rope. Mac joined him, the two of them straining until a groaning sound came from the shaft, followed by the fan unit coming loose as Mac and Didge fell back on the grass.

  Shining the flashlight down the shaft again, Mac saw that it ended in a right-angle intersection with a box-section air shaft that ran parallel to the ground. Pulling a small cloth bag from his breast pocket, Didge put his fingers in and sprinkled a substance that looked like talc. As it drifted downwards through the light, Mac guessed he was looking for motion-sensing beams. Mac had already told him that there was no wiring for such a system, but he liked that Didge was thorough.

  Packing his B amp;E kit, Didge dropped down first. Touching on the parallel shaft, he pulled himself into it head-first and started crawling forwards. Mac stood on the bottom of the shaft, removed his rucksack, and pushed it ahead of him behind Didge as he followed into the dark hole.

  Lying behind Didge’s boots, with all lights killed, Mac listened to himself breathing in the biohazard mask and tried not to think about the enclosed space and his fear of being trapped. It was hot in the shaft and even hotter in his mask.

  A faint clink sounded and Didge moved forward. Up ahead, Mac could make out the talc floating, then the rope they’d dragged through went taut beside Mac’s head as Didge disappeared through a new hole in the shaft.

  The radio headset crackled and Didge gave a sit-rep. Mac crawled forwards, pushed head-first into the hole and looked around. Didge stood on the floor of a large laboratory, machine and equipment hidden by vinyl covers, beakers, pipettes and test tubes standing upside down on racks, cleaned and sterilised.

  After sliding down the rope, Mac stood beside Didge, squinting at the room. Red engineer’s lights were placed at intervals in the walls and the surveillance cameras looked to be down.

  ‘Clear,’ came Didge
’s voice, muffled through his mask’s breathers.

  ‘Let’s make this fast, mate,’ said Mac, pulling the Nikon from his rucksack and setting off.

  The underground component of Lombok was huge, about three times the size of the official facility. As he took pictures of the labs – largely decommissioned or mothballed by the looks of it – the camera’s flash lit the area in eerie glimpses of the rooms, the strangeness intensified by the sounds of Didge and Mac breathing through the biohazard masks.

  The labs led through double air-lock doors into a sterilisation area, complete with autoclave pressure cookers. Whatever they did in here, they were thorough. Walking into another long room, Mac photographed eight fermentation vats which could be used for many purposes, from making beer and MDMA, to making vaccines and bioweapons.

  Pushing a stepladder up to the line of vats, Mac took wipes from three of them, before sealing the samples and moving on. Sweat rolled down his temples as he kept the Nikon’s shutter going. The air-conditioning had been switched off and the combination of the stuffiness and the glow of the engineer’s lights was making him queasy.

  They’d just passed through another double air-lock doorway when the radio crackled to life and then crackled out again. Didge knocked at the receiver on his belt and then pressed through the helmet’s material to shake the headset. Nothing. The radio crackled and then it died, possibly something to do with the negative pressure lock most of these facilities had, thought Mac, fear rising.

  The next room got Mac’s heart pumping. Along both walls were large cabinets made of grey painted steel and glass which Mac identified as spray driers and freeze driers – machines that could take agent from the fermentation vats, dry it, then reduce it to particles of less than ten microns. It could also reduce heroin and cocaine to desirable grains.

  His hands swimming in the gloves, Mac tried to manhandle the wipes and the sample vials. Tapping on Mac’s shoulder, Didge pointed to a door on their left with a large skull-and-crossbones in the middle, something written in Bahasa below. The word Bahaya rang a bell. Pushing through the double doors, the thick rubber seal-flaps in the middle made a grinding sound that gave both of them a start. After passing through the next air-lock door, they surveyed the scene that confronted them. There were fourteen glass panels on fourteen grey steel doors. Walking up and peering through one, Mac opened the door to a room which was the size of a small prison cell. There were four cages on each wall, their bars rising to the ceiling. Mac took a photo, knowing that DIA would want to see this. These were animal rooms – or ‘inhalation chambers’ – in which monkeys, dogs and cats were sealed and forced to inhale various agents to see how they reacted.