Double back am-3

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘I promised I wouldn’t do the Yank thing of bringing in the cavalry, right?’ said Jim.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac as the rear windscreen erupted in a shower of glass.

  ‘I lied,’ said Jim, raising a finger as he got his connection.

  A long volley of gunfire smashed into the Mitsubishi, rupturing the fuel tank, shredding three of the tyres and removing what was left of the auto glass. Looking over the sill of the door he was crouched behind, Mac watched the three shooters making their way down the cliff to the beach, and fired off a few rounds, hitting one in the leg.

  Feeling a knock on his arm, Mac looked where Jim was pointing and saw a large black power boat surging into sight. The size of a twelve-metre power cruiser, it was painted drab black and had a rotating radar dish mounted over the open cockpit. Mac could see it also had a gunner’s pit on the long bow decks holding a Mark 38 machine-gun system – a one-inch naval machine-gun.

  ‘That a Mark 38?’ asked Mac, feeling nauseous from the gasoline fumes spewing from the car’s shredded fuel tank.

  Jim didn’t hear, his attention divided between the sat phone and the shooters as the US Navy power boat leapt across the swell doing about fifty knots.

  ‘Got a bead?’ asked Jim into the phone. ‘Okay, yeah, we’re getting down,’ he replied as one of the snipers ducked from behind a rock with an RPG on his shoulder. He launched the grenade, a great trail of smoke gushing across the beach as it accelerated towards the power boat.

  An unearthly screaming, like a thousand hound-dogs crying, sounded across the water, rising to a shrieking crescendo that had Mac and Jim simultaneously putting their hands to their ears. Transfixed, they watched the Mark 38 bellow fire as it churned out its one-inch bullets at almost three rounds per second.

  The RPG disintegrated in a ball of fire, and a glorious silence followed as the Mark 38 was shut down while debris scattered on the beach.

  The snipers ran among the rocks, clambering back to the big boulder.

  As the snipers made their goal, the awesome firepower focused on the large rock and turned it to rubble as the rounds found their mark. The air shook, the sand vibrated and the sound was incredible – the concussion of such enormous fire-rate shaking Mac’s body.

  One of the shooters tried to run from behind the disappearing rock and got caught in the bullet hail, an arm sailing upwards and onto the road and the rest of him vanishing.

  The rock now completely obliterated, Mac could see bits of clothing and body parts exploding out of the coastal cliff with the dust and stones from where the rock used to be.

  Finally, there was silence again.

  ‘Guess that’s gunboat diplomacy?’ said Mac, his ears ringing.

  ‘Nice work, guys,’ said Jim into the sat phone. ‘Can we get a ride?’

  They made the north side of Alor in under an hour, the boat coasting along at sixty knots, its turbocharged Cummins diesels singing at a constant pitch.

  Sitting under a blanket in his soaked clothes, Mac accepted a coffee from a sailor who – like the officer in charge – was in civvies.

  ‘Thanks for the help,’ said Mac to the sailor.

  ‘Thank Mark,’ said the sailor with a smile, nodding at the gun in the bow.

  ‘That, mate,’ said Mac, ‘is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever! ’

  ‘Yeah, my brother,’ laughed the sailor. ‘And just so long as the bad guys are feeling that too – know what I’m sayin’?’

  ***

  An unmarked Black Hawk helo was waiting on the beach when they arrived. It flew them into Denpasar, dropping them at the military annexe of Ngurah Rai, where Jim’s sidekicks had a Voyager van waiting on the tarmac. As Mac was making to get in the van, a white Holden Commodore screeched to a stop beside the van.

  Hesitating beside the DIA van, Mac saw two hulking shapes emerge from the Commodore. As they paced towards him, Mac realised one was his old mate and colleague, Garvs. The other was Barry Bray, the leader of the Australian Commonwealth’s I-team, a crew of ex-cops and soldiers who retrieved wayward Commonwealth employees from foreign service.

  Garvs showing up with Bray made Mac feel vaguely insulted.

  ‘Hey, champ,’ said Garvs, big hands resting on his hips as he chewed gum. ‘Time for a chat, yeah?’

  Shaking hands with Garvs, Mac greeted Bray with a handshake too. ‘Barry – how’s it going?’

  ‘Not bad, Macca,’ he replied, grinning. ‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids.’

  The ride into town was silent, Mac reading the order that brought his Operation Totem secondment to an end. Handing it back to Garvs in the front seat, Mac looked at the outskirts of Denpasar flashing by, dusty and heat-bleached in the warmth of early afternoon.

  ‘So, secondment’s over – guess that means Davidson’s left town,’ said Mac.

  ‘Yep,’ said Garvs, turning to look at Mac. ‘Flew out for Auckland this morning.’

  ‘APEC?’ asked Mac, talking about the systems and agents that the firm liked to plant at the APEC summits before they began.

  ‘Yeah – should be fun this year. Got that Integration of Women project, so we might have some of those Mexican and Chilean feminists down there.’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Mac, missing the point.

  ‘You know, mate,’ said Garvs, excited. ‘Those Latin American feminists still like sex, mate. It’s a proven fact.’

  ‘But, with you?’ said Mac, laughing.

  ‘Well,’ said Garvs, embarrassed as Barry Bray started laughing too, ‘they could do worse.’

  ‘Could do better, too, mate,’ said Mac.

  Garvs turned back to the windscreen, sulking.

  Mac sat in the ASIS briefing room, his damp clothes gripping his legs. Marty Atkins sipped his coffee and leaned back, while Garvs sat at Mac’s ten o’clock playing with a pen.

  ‘So, looks like you’re back in the firm’s camp,’ said Atkins, smiling.

  ‘Tony leaves and you overturn his secondment, right, Marty?’

  ‘Wasn’t like that, Macca,’ said Atkins. ‘Just that we have some gigs to get on with.’

  ‘Like?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Like this Banda Sea situation. Dutch are testing for gas beds and we don’t like it.’

  Sighing, Mac could feel himself being drawn into a meaningless gig. ‘For the final time, Marty – those Dutchies are looking for another Tang Treasure, mate,’ he said, referring to the Arab shipwreck discovered in the Java Sea by a German crew. ‘It’s got nothing to do with gas beds. The Yanks and the Poms have been all over this area and it’s uneconomic.’

  ‘Well, sometimes we have to get the product for ourselves, right, Macca?’ said Atkins, going for an avuncular tone despite being barely a year older than Mac. ‘Besides, that Totem business was turning into a dead-end, eh?’

  ‘Totem isn’t a dead-end, Marty,’ said Mac, determined not to let it slip into the past tense.

  ‘Really, what did you get?’ asked Atkins, quite aware that a debriefing about Totem was DIA’s prerogative, not Mac’s. ‘Besides a whole bunch of US dollars that you haven’t declared yet?’

  Mac teetered on the edge of telling Marty Atkins to go fuck himself, but he kept it tight. ‘It’s worse than what I told you in this room a few days ago.’

  ‘Worse than what?’ asked Atkins, actually enjoying this.

  ‘Under cover of Operation Extermination, Kopassus could be trying to infect a large swathe of the East Timor population with a fatal disease.’

  ‘A disease?’ said Atkins, sitting up.

  ‘A powerful pneumonia, SARS.’

  ‘And I suppose you have some evidence?’ said Atkins, supercilious.

  ‘Actually, no, Marty – thanks to you.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Atkins, eyes narrowing.

  ‘Augusto Da Silva was told by Cedar Rail where the Boa file was hidden – when we got there ourselves, the Boa file was gone.’

  ‘Well, that’s quite a story, Macca,’ chuckled Atkins, encourag
ing Garvey to join him.

  ‘It’s the truth is what it is, Marty,’ said Mac, holding back on the burning of Boa in the hope that Atkins would slip and incriminate himself.

  ‘Oh really, Macca?’ smiled Atkins. ‘So let’s start with basics.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac.

  ‘I’m not Cedar Rail,’ said Atkins. ‘That would be Greg Tobin. I act as Cedar Rail to run assets in eastern Indonesia on Greg’s behalf. All messages are coded – anyone could be Cedar Rail.’

  ‘I -’ said Mac.

  ‘No, McQueen,’ snapped Atkins. ‘My turn. The second point is, why the surprise that Da Silva is looking for Boa, or that he found it? He’s been under instructions to find it for weeks now, since the Canadian went missing.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were Cedar Rail, Marty,’ snarled Mac. ‘I’m saying that an Australian who Augusto believed to be Cedar Rail called him this morning and sent him to retrieve Boa.’

  ‘And you believe Augusto Da Silva?’ sniggered Atkins. ‘That little worm?’

  ‘Little worm?’ said Mac. ‘He was our little worm, mate – can’t just write him off like that.’

  ‘Can’t I Macca?’ said Atkins in a quiet voice. ‘But you can just write Rahmid Ali out of the story? Pretend you never met him, that he never handed you a document?’

  ‘That wasn’t my call, Marty,’ snapped Mac, blushing with embarrassment.

  ‘Of course not, mate,’ said Atkins, smiling. ‘It was Davidson’s good judgment to save you the humiliation.’

  ‘Screw you, Marty,’ said Mac, seeing Garvs chuckling.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Atkins, having some fun. ‘So an Indonesian spy hands you secret papers from the general staff, which have been translated for your convenience, and now you’re on a personal assignment to save the president?’

  As Mac looked out the window over Denpasar, the laughter burned into him like a welding torch.

  CHAPTER 57

  Lying back, gazing at the ceiling of his bungalow, Mac listened to the television reports of East Timor being overrun my violent militias. Atkins had given him two days off before starting on the Banda Sea assignment, a rest he needed. What he hadn’t needed was being banned from entering East or West Timor.

  The meeting had gone well if keeping his job was the measure of success. Atkins had played him perfectly, even avoiding the issue of asking Da Silva to destroy the Boa document. Mac was certain that Atkins had made the call as Cedar Rail, and given the order to destroy the document – he and Greg Tobin were the only people who knew the call signs and coded sequences for running the ASIS assets in this part of the world.

  Mac wasn’t ready to let things go until he’d achieved some objectives. First, ask Davidson who he’d told about Mac’s hunch that the copy of Operasi Boa was in the old drop box in the Resende. Second, find a phone log that showed Atkins made that call to Da Silva. Most important, try to stop Operasi Boa before the weather was right and they started spraying that crap on civilians.

  Keying his replacement Nokia – the one in his pocket had died during the swim to the DIA boat – Mac tried Davidson. It was almost 2 am in Auckland, so Mac left a voicemail message.

  Then he tapped into Canberra’s secure lines and got Leena, the researcher, on the line again.

  ‘They got you on the night shift?’ asked Mac after she’d cleared his credentials.

  ‘I’ve lost track,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got a mission for you, Leena – I need you to tap our best contacts in TI, find the source of these calls between six and nine, this morning, to these numbers, okay?’ asked Mac, before reading Da Silva’s mobile phone and work lines, given to him by Jim. ‘Then I need you to check the Dili home number of Augusto Da Silva – big D – and give me every phone call made to that number during the same period, okay?’

  ‘Okay, Albion,’ said Leena. ‘You on this phone?’

  ‘Yes, hear from you soon.’

  Lying back on the bed, Mac tried to work it out. With Moerpati and Rahmid Ali dead, he’d lost his connection to the Indonesian President’s own intel operation. The assassins had basically smashed it, and almost taken Jim and Mac along for the ride. The assassination of Augusto Da Silva removed the person who had written Operasi Boa and Mac had no doubt that Blackbird was either dead or so scared for her life that she’d never resurface.

  He had ways of going forwards, but had no way to the Indonesian President’s operation.

  Or did he?

  Rolling off the bed, he went searching through the pockets of his chinos, coming up empty. Cursing his haphazard filing system, Mac tried to remember: he’d shown Davidson a list of the names, phone numbers and addresses associated with Rahmid Ali, and Davidson had said that none rang a bell. Then he’d pocketed the list, taken it back to the hotel…

  Rummaging though his main wheelie suitcase, which had been sitting at the Natour for a week, he pulled out the plastic pillow filled with US dollars and found his piece of paper from his first phone session with Leena. Flattening it on the writing desk, he took another look, through new eyes. The addresses he had for Andromeda IT and the entities associated with the phone calls made from Rahmid Ali’s phone were still there: he had an address in KL and one in Singapore. There was also the extension of the chief of staff’s number in the presidential building. Mac had dismissed it as being too high profile, but now he might have a look at it.

  But first, he took a quick shower and restored his hair colour, using an N10 blonding rinse.

  After drying off, he lay down and sleep came fast.

  The Nokia’s singsong ring tone woke him from a nightmare of Mickey Costa scratching at the glass door.

  ‘Yep,’ he rasped into the phone, trying to sit up but so bruised he was only able to roll onto his side.

  ‘McQueen!’ came the man’s voice, South-East Asian accent with a touch of American. ‘That you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ whispered Mac, still half asleep but fully dressed. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Bongo, brother,’ roared the big ape cheerfully. ‘Time for a beer?’

  ‘Shit, Bongo,’ laughed Mac, relieved and happy. ‘Thought you’d carked it.’

  ‘I’d what?’

  ‘Dead, mate.’

  A pause, then, ‘You being funny?’

  ‘No, mate,’ laughed Mac. ‘I’ll tell you about it.’

  Walking to the Bar Barong through the fragrant evening air of Denpasar, Mac felt elated. He didn’t make many friends in his profession, and most of them were embassy colony types – cops, customs and diplomats. The idea that Bongo was dead had affected him more deeply than he was comfortable with, and finding that he was alive was like a gift. And not just because he liked him – but because right now he needed someone on his side. Someone who knew how to look after himself.

  Standing at the end of the bar that Mac always held up, Bongo was nursing a beer and watching TV when Mac arrived.

  ‘Hey, bro,’ said the big Filipino as they gave each other an open-palm handshake. ‘Been fighting again?’ He nodded at Mac’s facial injuries.

  ‘Should see the other bloke.’

  ‘I’m telling Mum,’ said Bongo, ordering a Tiger for Mac. ‘So you thought I was dead?’

  ‘Saw a photo – Moerpati and a headless corpse with the Conquistador crucifix. Thought it was you, mate.’

  Laughing, Bongo slapped him on the back. ‘Lots of Catholics got the tattoo like that.’

  Bongo listened to Mac recount the events of the past two days.

  ‘That’s bad news about Moerpati,’ said Bongo. ‘Very bad.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Because Moerpati’s the Soeharto clique. He’s from the right family, made the right marriage, had the right connections – he’s New Order, head to toe.’

  ‘So, he gets killed?’

  ‘Yeah, it means there’s another power base in Jakarta thinks it’s strong enough to move on the New Order – and that kind of fight is no good for anyone.’

  �
��A bio-weapon’s no good for us, either,’ said Mac. ‘The scientists tell me it’s based on SARS – gives the victims a fatal pneumonia.’

  ‘Fucking Koreans,’ said Bongo, shaking his head. ‘They been chasing this shit for years. It’s like an obsession.’

  ‘What about the Indonesians?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Yeah, it’s the money behind it,’ said Bongo, collecting the new beers and handing one to Mac. ‘Money rules everything in Asia, and the Koreans know that. We were once looking into this immunisation program in Cambodia, in my NICA days,’ he said, referring to the Philippines intelligence agency. ‘But it weren’t no immunisation program, brother – least, not like we’d know it, right?’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was the Cambodian army testing a disease on these mountain peasants.’

  ‘So it’s the same as East Timor?’ asked Mac, casing the bar.

  ‘All the lines worked back to North Korea, to the cash from Poi Pet and accounts at the military’s banks – it’s sick, brother, what some people do for the money.’

  ‘The thing I can’t work out,’ said Mac, ‘is where it goes from here.’

  ‘Easy,’ said Bongo. ‘The Javas take the money but then they have all this bio-weapon, right?

  ‘Yeah – but what do they do with it? That Lombok plant was a big facility, they were set up to make tons of the stuff.’

  ‘Have a look at your Operation Extermination again,’ said Bongo. ‘Remember we were reading it in the car, on the way into the hills that morning?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac.

  ‘Extermination has already begun, brother, it’s on the TV every night. And it’s all about deporting Timorese to West Papua – what they call Irian Jaya, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘So, get the undesirables from Indonesia in one place, and then

  …’ Bongo made a throat-slitting gesture. ‘The bio-weapon developed in East Timor can now be used on the bigger problem – the Timors and Papuans, all in one place.’

  ‘That’s sick,’ said Mac, discounting Bongo’s opinions as exaggeration.