Turning, Mac saw that Didge’s eyes were like saucers through the mask.
‘You okay?’ barked Mac through his breather cylinders.
‘Yep,’ came the rasped reply, unconvincing.
Mac wasn’t feeling too flash either.
Mac followed Didge’s gaze and saw they were standing on what looked like an internal road on the pale green lino, the car-width tyre tracks clearly marked in dull black on the pale background.
Pushing through the next doors – these ones twice as wide as the side entrance to the room – they followed the indoor ‘road’ down a long corridor with intermittent engineer’s lights. Turning his flashlight on again, Didge led the way for fifty metres before coming to an internal loading-bay area with a truck parked in the dark. The entire far wall was a steel door with a set of electric controls at the side as well as a chain-loop manual function.
‘Loading bay,’ rasped Mac, looking at the twenty-tonne Hino flatbed with the Lombok AgriCorp signage on the side.
The radio crackled again, and both of them heard a couple of snippets of what sounded like Robbo yelling. Then it was dead air again. Mac decided to hurry it along, but he wanted more from this facility.
Hurriedly stowing his SIG Sauer, Didge pulled the chain loop hand-over-hand and the door started to inch up slowly.
Switching off the flashlight, Mac ducked to the side of the door as it slowly rose. When the door had gone up twelve centimetres, Mac motioned for Didge to stop it and got his head into a position where he could peer through to the other side. There was a conveyor belt four metres wide, which led upwards at a thirty-degree angle to another door at the top of the belt, the same as the one they’d just opened.
As Mac tried to get the camera in line to take a shot, a beeping sounded and the door at the top of the conveyor belt chute started to rise.
‘Fuck,’ said Mac, ducking back instinctively. Slowly putting his head around the corner again, the opening door revealed another set of steel doors, these ones side-opening with manually operated levers. A person in a white biohazard suit walked past at the top of the conveyor belt, and as the door opened further, Mac realised the second door also had warning signage on it.
‘What’s that?’ asked Didge, kneeling behind him. ‘That fire?’
‘Sure is,’ whispered Mac.
A roaring noise was followed by a thump, and the area above them shook as the roaring built to a crescendo.
‘That a furnace?’ asked Didge, raising his voice.
Looking down at his G-Shock, visible through the rubber gloves, Mac saw it was 6.51 pm. ‘Getting ready for the evening burn,’ said Mac. ‘We’ve found the incinerator.’
CHAPTER 45
Suddenly the lights flickered and went on. Diving to the side of the conveyor-belt door, Mac scanned the tunnel and loading-bay area, both now flooded with light.
‘Let’s move,’ said Didge, as the conveyor-belt door started moving up.
Heart thumping, Mac jogged out of the loading bay and along the tunnel, sweat running down the backs of his legs as he struggled to keep up with the soldier. His breathing was becoming ragged and hot.
Didge slowed down and waited for Mac when he reached the air-lock door they’d come through two minutes ago. Stealthing through they stopped, turned back and cased the tunnel through a gap. Four figures in white biohazard suits walked through a door into the loading bay, one yelling something up the conveyor-belt chute before scrambling into the crew-cab truck with the other three. The truck took off and then it was heading towards Mac and Didge.
Pulling back into the room, Mac raced after Didge through the next set of doors and into the space filled with inhalation chambers. Didge crept towards the door leading back into the labs, but Mac stopped him. He wanted to see where the truck was going and to check if there was an easy way to get samples from the incinerator.
‘Gotta get outa here,’ crackled Didge through the breather cylinders as the double air-lock doors automatically opened, allowing the truck to drive through.
‘Back to the labs,’ said Mac, heading for the doors that would allow them to escape through the venting system.
The air-lock doors to the lab area did not contain glass panels, and Mac held back to observe where the truck was going and what the workers were doing. The point of a recon exercise was to see or hear what was going on.
‘Mate – no glass,’ said Mac, pointing at the door. ‘I need to take some snaps, okay?’
Reluctantly, Didge followed Mac across the internal lino road and they made for one of the inhalation chambers where the internal lights had not been activated. Pulling the grey steel door back on themselves, they stood in the shadows of the inhalation chamber, breathing hard. The throb of the truck’s diesel engine sounded outside the area, and then intensified as the doors were opened. Craning his neck, Mac saw another double air-lock door at the end of the chambers which was also being opened.
Struggling for air, Mac realised they’d stumbled into the heart of the operation. Whatever was burned in that incinerator at such high heats, on a daily basis, was probably waiting on the other side of those doors. What was it, he wondered. Bad vaccines? Killer heroin? Monkeys who didn’t like what they were inhaling?
‘We’ve got to get in there, okay?’ rasped Mac, pointing towards the truck as it slipped through the opened air-lock doors.
Didge nodded, though his face was grim and his breathing was laboured.
‘You okay, mate?’ asked Mac as the Hino moved on, bringing some quiet again to the inhalation chambers.
‘Yeah, bra,’ said Didge.
‘Let’s get our breathing right, okay?’ said Mac.
Working together, they brought each other down to long deep breathing and then Mac pushed back the door to the inhalation chamber and they snuck out. Didge went in front with his SIG Sauer and they crept along the wall of inhalation chambers until they got to the door the Hino had just disappeared through. Sticking his head around the corner of the opened door, Didge checked their situation, hesitating a split second.
‘Okay, mate?’ asked Mac, as Didge groaned and sagged against the wall.
‘Holy shit,’ he hissed, staring into the mid-distance.
Mac angled himself around Didge and peeked around the corner to see for himself.
Taking it in, Mac’s breathing seized. The Hino was fifty metres away at the end of a long room, with people in biohazard suits moving around like ants in a colony. Large, glass-sided inhalation chambers ran the length of the space, all of them filled with naked humans. Most looked dead, but some of them were still alive.
Pulling back, stunned, Mac thought fast – he needed to manage Didge out of the situation without both of them being made.
‘Okay, we’re gonna do the gig and get out, right, mate?’ said Mac, who used his body to block Didge from walking into the room of inhalation chambers.
‘But, there’s people -’ started Didge, his eyes far away.
‘Don’t worry about that, mate,’ said Mac, feeling quite nauseous himself. ‘Let’s just focus on the gig, okay?’
‘Robbo – let’s call Robbo,’ said Didge, sounding as if he might be in shock.
Things balanced on a knife’s edge as Mac tried to catch the soldier’s eye. Didge was bigger and stronger than him, and by the way the other 4RAR commandos treated the big Cape Yorker, Mac suspected he was their wet-work guy: the one who took out the sentries, who slit the throats and made stealth entries possible. If Didge decided on a certain course of action, it would be hard to stop him.
‘C’mon, Didge – there’s nothing we can really do here,’ said Mac, trying to get Didge beyond his immediate desire to walk into that hall of horrors and start killing bad guys.
‘Let ’em go,’ said Didge, pushing at Mac.
‘Go where?’ asked Mac, gripping Didge’s elbows. ‘Out into the open? If we raise the alarm with the soldiers, the poor bastards will be shot anyway.’
Now Didge’s head and body
were shaking and Mac suspected he was hyperventilating.
‘Or let ’em go so they can run around screaming and get us made?’ Mac continued. ‘We’ve still got a job to do in Maliana, mate.’
‘We gotta get them outa here,’ whispered Didge. ‘Can’t walk away, McQueen.’
‘Not walking away, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Trying to keep us alive and get the gig done. Maybe we save more lives with these photos and samples than by whacking a few soldiers, okay?’
Giving Didge another shake of the elbows, Mac tried to lock eyes with him, even as he lost his own cool about this place.
‘Okay, Didge?’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Didge, face stony.
Mac watched as the workers in biohazard suits threw body after body onto the back of the Hino. They seemed to be taking corpses from the right-hand inhalation chambers while the Timorese on the left were banging on the glass sides of their inhalation chambers.
Shouts rang out before the Hino beeped as it reversed. The next thing, the workers in the biohazard suits were walking back towards Mac and Didge.
Retreating back into their hide in the inhalation chamber, Mac and Didge waited in the dark as the truck drove past. After a few minutes the noise of the truck faded and then voices echoed from the loading bay as bodies were loaded onto the conveyor belt.
After a while the noises faded to silence and the entire area was plunged into darkness again as the lights were killed. Venturing out, Mac and Didge stealthed back to the large hall of inhalation chambers, pushed through the doors and entered the area where they’d just witnessed the horrifying scenes.
‘We’ll do this fast, okay, Didge?’ asked Mac as they walked quietly down the dim corridor between the chambers. A rustling noise started up, followed by voices and then thumping on the glass. It was overwhelming but Mac was determined to gather the intelligence that would see the operators of this place prosecuted.
Mac raised the Nikon and took a shot of the long chamber with the people in it. The bursting flash revealed the creepy sight of at least eighty people, staring out of the glass like living ghosts – naked, skinny and distressed. Realising that Mac and Didge were not the normal workers, the prisoners – or whatever they were – swarmed to the glass.
‘Fuck,’ muttered Didge, his voice shocked and disbelieving.
Turning, Mac gently took Didge’s arm and reminded him that they needed to keep going in order to save these folks’ lives. He took several shots of the empty chamber on the other side before walking to its sealed door. As he opened it, Mac heard the sigh of air pressure as he broke the seal. Didge joined him and they stepped into the chamber, which reeked of urine and faeces. Noticing a patch of wetness near the rear of the chamber, Mac knelt and took several wipes which he put in the sample jars.
Standing again, Mac saw Didge double over and then heave, his mask filling with vomit.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, grabbing at Didge as his own stomach turned.
‘Can’t take it off, mate,’ yelled Mac as Didge grabbed at the mask. ‘Don’t want to catch what these guys have got.’
Didge heaved again, then stood with his head down as he tried to pull himself together.
‘Mate, we’re out of here, okay?’ said Mac, helping Didge through the chamber door and into the clear space between the lines of inhalation chambers.
Stopping, Didge put both hands on the sides of his biohazard helmet and moved his head around inside, trying to find a better way to breathe with the vomit.
Sweat dripped into Mac’s shoes and, making a huge effort to block out the anguish around him, he aimed the Nikon at the chamber filled with people. Some of them still had the energy to slap their hands on the glass. Flashing off a final picture, he froze. Caught in his mind was an image that was too familiar, too recent. An image he couldn’t ignore by creating professional distance.
Taking a closer look at the inhalation chamber, Mac stared at a face that served him cold beer a week earlier.
‘Mickey, that you?’ shouted Mac.
The man slapped at the glass, his thin old body somehow dignified in the glow of the engineer’s light.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ snarled Mac, feeling the gig going pear-shaped. ‘Mickey Costa!’
CHAPTER 46
‘Mr Richard?’ mouthed Mickey through the thick glass, his face transforming from curiosity to amazement as he realised who was behind the biohazard mask.
Holding Mickey’s desperate stare, utter rage swept over Mac, even knowing that two minutes earlier he’d been telling Didge to hold the emotions, to just do the gig.
Feeling a hand on his bicep, Mac turned to see Didge up close.
‘Know this guy?’ said Didge.
Nodding, Mac walked to the chamber door and reached forward to open it, but realised the latch was secured by a long-shank padlock.
The radio crackled and both Mac and Didge instinctively reached for the side of their biohazard helmets, relieved to be on the net again.
‘Albion, this is Blue Leader,’ came Robbo’s voice, slightly breathless. ‘Repeat, Albion, this is Blue Leader – confirm.’
‘Blue Leader, this is Albion,’ said Mac, as he touched the huge shank.
‘Albion – the cameras are operational, Bad Guys massing topside, copy?’
‘Roger that Blue Leader,’ shouted Mac, heart racing, wondering how fast they could get back to the vent shaft. ‘We okay for exfil via the vent shaft?’
‘Negative,’ said Robbo, the signal still not strong. ‘Complications topside, Albion. Third-party involvement – stand by.’
‘Roger that Blue Leader,’ said Mac again, as the sound of automatic gunfire squawked into their headsets, followed by another break in the radio connection. Listening intently for the radio signal to come back, Mac heard the noise of gunfire echoing from somewhere distant. Swapping looks, Mac and Didge waited for more signals from the dead radio. Before anything came there was the distinct sound of boots slapping on concrete nearby. Holding still and focusing on the footfalls, they sourced the intrusion coming from behind the air-lock doors. They had company.
Checking his SIG Sauer, Didge moved back towards the air-lock doors, towards the source of the footfalls. Shoving his Nikon into the rucksack, Mac followed, fumbling with his Heckler to check load and safety.
Easing through the air-lock, Mac and Didge paused, listening to the shooting from topside and the slap of boots coming closer. In the confined space, with its low visibility, the cracks and staccato rumbles of assault rifles sounded as if they were on top of them. They could even hear men panting and whispered commands passing between them.
Swapping a glance, the two men realised they had to get back to the open vent shaft – it was their only escape route.
Veering back into the lab area, a shot cracked and Didge suddenly sagged in front of Mac, his gun arm swinging to a point in the darkness.
‘Shit!’ gasped the soldier, shifting to his good leg while keeping his gun hand level.
Mac dropped to a knee and fired two shots above where the flash had originated, then moved in behind Didge, who limped towards the open vent as he fired off five shots from the SIG.
Grabbing Didge under the shoulders, Mac rammed into the air-lock doors, crashing through them as soldiers’ voices yelled in Bahasa Indonesia behind them. Concrete exploded and splinters flew around their heads as what felt like three or four magazines of 5.56mm were unloaded at them on full-auto.
Helping Didge towards the labs as one of the doors behind them was blown off its hinges, Mac stopped around the corner, turned back and fired a shot into the darkness, ducking behind the doorjamb as the incoming ripped the other door apart. Grabbing a flash-bang from his rucksack, he pulled the pin and threw it around the corner before catching up with Didge.
The concussion from the grenade almost threw Mac off his feet as he reached Didge, got a grip under his armpits and headed through the lab containing the spray driers, fermentation vats and the sterilisation equipment. Ra
cing breathlessly into the room where the rappel rope hung from the open vent, Mac pulled his rucksack onto both shoulders, but did so too quickly. The motion threw the Nikon out of the bag and it bounced on the white linoleum floor. Retrieving it, Mac shoved it to the bottom of his rucksack and, trousering the Heckler, cupped two hands into a platform for Didge, who grabbed the rope with one hand and threw the other hand over the edge of the ventilator duct. Suddenly the lights arced up, filling the room with clinical whiteness as Didge groaned with exertion and disappeared into the duct.
Mac heaved for breath, barely able to contain his panic as he tied the rappel rope to the sealed fan section that had blocked the vent. Reaching down from the duct, Didge offered his forearm. Taking it, Mac clambered up into the duct, then turned to help Didge retrieve the fan and pull it back into place. Replacing the fan was not going to fool anyone looking for them, but in the confusion of gun battles, a ten-second advantage was better than no advantage at all.
With no time to fasten the screws, they moved back along the duct as fast as they could, the sound of gunfire growing stronger from above them. After a few seconds of crawling, Didge found the vertical venting shaft that would take them to the surface. As he pointed it out to Mac, a round of full-auto gunfire ripped through the horizontal vent shaft, punching along its steel sides just inches from Mac’s Altama boots. Men shouted in Bahasa Indonesia and a rifle tapped against the fan section they’d just replaced, before the voices indicated the men were moving to another lab.
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