Second Strike am-2

by Mark Abernethy

  They got to the airfi eld outside Reo in a shade under two hours. There was an Indonesian plainclothes aircrew waiting at a briefi ng table in the hangar and an old twin-engine Fokker Friendship waiting outside.

  Sosa drove into the World War II-era hangar, sprang from the van and barked an order. The BAIS guys dragged Akbar from the van and Mac noticed there was a gurney with an IV pole beside the table. Akbar was walking – disoriented but walking – and they led him to the Fokker, which sat in the thirty-six-degree heat.

  Sosa moved to a small offi ce area, unlocked the door, and retrieved Mac’s backpack. Then he waved towards the van. ‘Charles can take you where you want, or you can come with us, McQueen.’

  Mac took the pack, jerked his thumb at the van. ‘Might stick with Charles. No offence – just like his aftershave.’

  Sosa smirked, put out his hand. ‘Been a pleasure, maate.’

  Indonesians could never quite get the Aussie drawl going on mate, but Mac appreciated the effort. Returning the shake, he started towards the van, then stopped. ‘Know something, Sosey?’ he asked, trying to keep it casual.

  Sosa shrugged, sucked on his cigarette.

  ‘I can’t remember what happened to Samir. Abu Samir…’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, McQueen. I know who he is.’

  ‘He still in Malaysia?’ asked Mac.

  Sosa gave a big Javanese shrug. ‘Why, what you got?’

  Mac hadn’t wanted the conversation to go like this. ‘Nothing, mate. Just that we’re snatching Akbar and we’ve still got someone like Samir running around the shop, see what I mean?’

  ‘Samir’s the Malaysians’ problem – they’re all over him, what I know,’ said Sosa.

  Mac nodded slow, slugged the last of the Vittel, threw the empty bottle at a rubbish bin. It hit the lip, bounced on the old concrete fl oor. Mac looked for wood to touch.

  ‘Like I said, McQueen – what you got?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘Nothing, mate, just thought I overheard those sailors mentioning Samir.’

  Mac didn’t want BAIS boarding Penang Princess and turning it over looking for someone he might have been imagining. He guarded his missions jealously, and the key to actions like Operation Handmaiden was Moro outfi ts like Abu Sayyaf believing an al-Qaeda operative was ratting them out. A full-on raid by BAIS and the Indon Navy would scuttle that.

  ‘Just so long as he’s still in Malaysia,’ mumbled Sosa, looking over Mac’s shoulder at the Fokker. ‘Because if he’s moving around, we got trouble.’

  Mac stood at the kerb in his black baseball cap and sunnies, watching Charles drive away. He’d been dropped two blocks from his hotel in Labuan Bajo. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Charles, it was just that it was none of BAIS’s business where he was going. Mac moved south along the waterfront, savouring the late afternoon tropical breeze on his chest. Across the strait was the famous Komodo Islands where the giant monitor – the Komodo Dragon – created a cash fl ow for Indonesia’s tourism industry. Walking slowly like a tourist he looked for eyes, for pursed mouths and creased foreheads and non-leisure activities like reading a newspaper.

  After going round the block, passing all the non-offi cial tourism operators’ booths, nasi goreng stalls, restaurants setting up for the evening trade and T-shirt emporia, he came back around to the Bajo Hotel on Harbour Street. British backpackers milled in the lime-washed lobby, conspicuous in their lobster-red suntans and Bintang T-shirts. Moving through them to the front desk, Mac caught the eye of the young concierge, Davie.

  ‘Hello, Mr Richard, are you with us tonight?’ asked the smiling Indonesian.

  ‘Yep – same room,’ said Mac, forking over some rupiah as Davie got his board and pencil out.

  ‘And, mate, what’s the name of that bloke on the waterfront?

  Does the private boat charters?’ added Mac.

  Davie lit up. Indonesians loved being helpful to outsiders. ‘Rayah

  – he has the red cutter beside the Komodo Tours ship. Rayah my friend. You tell him and he give you good price.’

  Mac chuckled at that and fl icked Davie a handful of rupiah for his troubles, then he headed for the stairs that wound around the liftwell.

  Davie was now attending to a Scottish girl who wanted a doctor, so Mac passed the foot of the stairs and went straight through a side exit, down a corridor and out into a service lane. He doubled behind the Bajo Hotel and down to the port, found Rayah on the fi rst loop and cased him: watched for signs that he was expecting someone. Was he looking up and down the wharf? At his watch or mobile phone?

  Circling back to a payphone bolted against a chandler’s store, Mac put his TI card in the slot and phoned a mate of his called Philip who owned the beach cottages at Seraya Island – so close to Komodo yet so overlooked by European experience-seekers. He booked a cottage, circled back to a bar on the wharf and bought a case of Tiger. The price of the beers was exorbitant but not as bad as the prices charged on Seraya for Bintang. As the sun got close to the horizon, Mac walked up to Rayah and asked him how much to Seraya. Rayah threw out bunches of ten fi ngers several times, till Mac said, ‘Davie sent me.’ The bloke slumped and Mac handed him the beers, but kept his backpack.

  Mac lay on his back in the gentle swell off Seraya Beach as the orange of the Flores sunset slowly gave way to the diamond-studded velvet of the evening sky. He heard the generator start and the lights go on in the restaurant block. Letting his head dip under the water, Mac spouted sea water through his mouth; despite an evening meal of ginger chicken and beer, he could still taste the rubber of the rebreather mouthpiece.

  Relaxing his entire body he thought about the UN, thought about Ahmed Akbar. Thought about all the things he’d got slightly wrong on Penang Princess and how they might come back to haunt him. Images from that pantry fl ickered through his mind. Was it really the face of Abu Samir, the JI mastermind behind the Jakarta Stock Exchange bombing? He couldn’t be sure. He’d been so focused on getting Akbar out in one piece that the fl ash he’d had of a face in the dark could really have been anyone.

  Abu Samir did not have the same profi le on the FBI and CIA computers as Hambali or Mohammad Noordin Top – both of them JI operatives who hid out in Malaysia while Suharto went on a turkey shoot of Jihadists in the late 1990s. But if you asked any military intel or special forces person about the tangos they wanted to put away, Samir outranked everyone except Abu Sabaya. Samir was similar to Sabaya in that he didn’t think like some Baader-Meinhof dickhead trying to outrage Daddy. He thought like a guerrilla general: how to cause the utmost pain and injury to the enemy. How to demoralise.

  Mac emerged from the tepid water and walked up the beach, trying to breathe shallow to protect his aching chest, the white sand squeaking under his feet.

  What looked like Sri Lankan newlyweds wandered towards him hand-in-hand. They said hi, and Mac smiled, nodded.

  Outside his cottage Mac fi lled a white plastic pail with water from an outdoor tap and poured it through his hair and over his body.

  There were only ten cottages on Seraya Beach, and because they had outdoor concrete lavs that had to be fl ushed manually, and you could only get fresh water when they turned on the pumps between six and nine pm, ninety-nine per cent of the Anglo world avoided them.

  Which was fi ne with Mac.

  He drank half a beer, and felt fatigue take over. Hitting the hay shortly after nine, he thought about the UN and then about Jenny Toohey, his casual-yet-serious girlfriend who worked with the Australian Federal Police in Jakarta. Manila felt far enough away from Jen and he wondered how far New York would feel. What did she really think about him going and would she try to join him? He fell asleep thinking about shooting that sailor on Penang Princess and mumbling a prayer that the face he had seen wasn’t Abu Samir’s.

  CHAPTER 4

  The door rattled, jolting Mac out of a deep sleep. Grabbing his pack, he threw himself off the bed, rolled across the bare teak fl oor, pulled the Heckler from the pack and aime
d it. It was dark, no moon, and the breeze wafted through the windowless frames, fl apping the white curtains over Mac’s head as he steadied himself and got his breathing under control.

  He sat naked on the fl oor like that for eight seconds, his heart pounding in his head. Then he heard it again; a rattling at the bamboo door. And then, ‘Mr Richard, please, sorry, sir. Mr Richard, please…’

  It was Philip.

  Mac took a deep breath and winced as his sternum fl ared, making lights appear at the edges of his vision.

  ‘What is it?’ said Mac, looking at his G-Shock: 3.12 am local.

  ‘I have phone for you, Mr Richard.’

  Moving to the bamboo wall, Mac peered out the side window.

  ‘You alone, mate?’ Mac rasped.

  ‘Yes, I alone, Mr Richard. It the phone for you, sir.’

  Mac leaned against the front wall of the cottage, looked around the corner and cased the beach. It was deserted. He pulled on a pair of undies and put one foot through the windowless space and then the other.

  ‘Be right with you, champ!’ he yelled, throwing himself to the sand twelve feet below. He doubled around the front of the raised cottage in cup-and-saucer mode, and up the side path to the back door. Holding his breath, he levelled the Heckler as he peeked around the corner, expecting to fi nd Philip with a gun to his head. But Philip was alone.

  ‘Nice this time of evening, eh?’ said Mac, having slipped his gun into the back of his undies.

  Philip jumped out of his skin, yelped slightly, and Mac regretted surprising him. A few years older than Mac, Philip was a former high school teacher. He and his wife had taken over Seraya Beach from her father and uncles a few years earlier.

  Mac and Philip chatted as they strolled back to the offi ce at the southern end of the beach.

  ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ laughed Philip.

  ‘Indonesian ghosts are white?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Philip. ‘But often they friendly,’ he added quickly, realising he may have caused offence.

  The phone handpiece sat on the front desk of the offi ce area – really just a porch at the entry to Philip’s house. Philip pointed at it and Mac picked it up and said, ‘Davis.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ yelled the unmistakable voice of Joe Imbruglia, ASIS station chief in Manila, ‘where the fuck are you?’

  ‘Up early, Joe. You shit the bed?’

  A hiss of breath came through the phone. Joe had been one of the fi rm’s best-ever operatives in Beijing, with a special talent for East Asian languages and a good feel for the weird political and cultural problems between Japan, Korea and China. But now he was a reluctant offi ce guy expected to run Mac, and while they respected one another they also clashed.

  ‘Don’t give me grief, McQueen. I need you in Denpasar, now!’

  ‘What, Garvey’s in the cells again? Just tell them to hose him down – he’ll come right.’

  ‘Don’t get smart, McQueen. We’ve got a multiple IED incident in Kuta, Garvey’s gone down there as a declared but we need a covert.

  Understand?’

  Mac massaged his temples with his left hand. ‘Well, if Garvey’s running it…’

  ‘Don’t argue with me, mate. I’ve got reports of hundreds dead – most of them Aussies. Those JI fuckers bombed a couple of nightclubs.

  In Kuta! Eleven o’clock at night! You believe these people?’

  Mac could hear the emotion coming up in Joe’s voice. ‘So, my role is what?’

  ‘The fucking Feds have a forward command post already on the move, okay? Your job is to keep an eye on things, make sure the story doesn’t get too out of shape.’

  Mac nodded. Joe was worried about the Australian Federal Police taking control and doing naive things like telling the media precisely what was going on. Mac would need to tailor the story, stop any Boy Scout behaviour.

  ‘My cover?’

  ‘Embassy – your usual shit. If DFAT get to run the show, then you’ll have veto on the media releases. You’re public affairs, okay?’

  ‘Got it.’

  Joe told him there was an Australian Navy Sea King helo on its way. ‘And McQueen?’

  ‘Yes, Joe?’

  ‘They’re on your side. None of that survivalist bullshit, okay?’

  Mac walked slowly back to the cottage wondering what the real story might be in Kuta. His UN gig was in jeopardy – Mac could feel it. But there was a deeper worry in Joe’s voice, like the world had just changed forever.

  The Sea King landed on Seraya Beach just before four am. Mac took the loadmaster’s arm-grip and jumped on with his pack. The helo rose, turned and headed west towards Bali. Mac cadged a pair of overalls to ward off the draught, strapped himself into the awkward hammock seat and tried to think through what this was all about.

  The Australian Secret Intelligence Service was a spy agency but it was part of DFAT – the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

  So it was part of the same set-up as the diplomats and the trade commissioners. When ASIS offi cers were posted to an embassy, they were either a ‘declared’ intelligence operative or they had a cover. The cover would normally be something like a second trade attache or a diplomatic mid-ranker with vaguely defi ned public affairs duties.

  The way embassies worked – which really annoyed Australians who worked abroad for their country – was that ASIS spent as much time spying on their own people as they did trying to gain information advantages over other nationalities. To preserve that internal security capacity, ASIS offi cers working within a cover in the embassy were not usually declared to other Australians in the embassy. The ambassador might know and the ASIS station chief would know, but there wouldn’t be many outside that circle.

  Now Joe Imbruglia was sending in Mac under embassy cover, and doing so from Manila rather than Jakarta, further complicating the situation. Mac had about forty-fi ve minutes to work up his cover, get himself back into his normal role, which at most Australian embassies in South-East Asia was assistant third secretary – political, a position that conveniently had partial oversight of the public affairs and media functions. The ASIS cover role had once been assistant counsellor public affairs, but the public affairs section of the Australian diplomatic mission was being gutted and dismantled because some genius in Canberra had decided it wasn’t a specialist discipline. Mac had a view on that: if the Americans and the Chinese said public propaganda was a specialist diplomatic discipline then that’s precisely what it was.

  They landed in the military section behind Denpasar Airport at quarter to fi ve. A young woman from the embassy in Jakarta met Mac and led him to a white Holden Commodore. Julie had honey-blonde hair pulled back and a gold chain-and-bar necklace. Mac had her as a landed Queensland girl who’d gone to a Protestant boarding school and then UQ.

  On the front passenger seat was Mac’s overnight bag from his locker at the Jakarta embassy. Always packed, it contained two sets of chinos, two polo shirts, undies, socks, a tropical sports jacket, a pair of overalls, and two pairs of Hi-Tecs and boat shoes. A set of IDs and Nokias were in the side pocket.

  They drove past the civilian terminal of Ngurah Rai Airport, better known to Westerners as Bali International Airport, where what looked like the entire tourist population of the island was trying to get into the terminal. Buses and taxis stood in long queues on the apron under the shimmering orange fl oodlights as worried-looking Anglos tried to push through the doors into the crowded terminal.

  They accelerated past a long line of traffi c and a phalanx of traffi c cops as they headed towards Kuta Beach. Mac was still trying to adjust to his rude awakening ninety minutes before and he could feel a hunger stirring.

  ‘So what happened here?’ he asked, yawning, as Julie sped past thousands of locals and tourists walking around in a daze.

  ‘Two bomb blasts outside a couple of nightclubs at Kuta, down on Legian Street,’ said Julie mechanically. ‘Aussie tourist places. There’s a lot of dead – maybe in the hundr
eds. US Consulate had a small one go off too.’

  An ambulance screamed past in the opposite direction as they got closer to the beach. Soon after, they hit a roadblock manned by POLRI and some plainclothes, and Julie stopped, handed over her ID. Mac went for the bag between his legs and immediately felt guns coming up. He raised his hands, opened the door and let the POLRI guy with the M16 see what he was doing with his hands. Mac reached down, pulled his diplomatic passport from the pocket in the black Cordura bag and handed to it the POLRI with the German shepherd.

  The plainclothes came around to Mac’s side, eyeballed him, took the passport and smirked.

  ‘Bit early for you, eh McQueen? You’d be sleeping off the booze this time of the morning, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Bloke’s not a camel, Bongo, you know how it is.’

  Bongo Sitepu, a peer of Mac’s from Indonesian intelligence, snorted, fl icked the passport to the dog-handler without looking at it and walked off.

  Julie spoke with the uniform POLRI. She spoke good Bahasa and Mac picked up that she was saying they were Australian Embassy staff, going straight to the Hard Rock Hotel. They were waved through as Mac watched the police carbines being lifted and aimed at an old pale blue HiAce van pulling up behind them.

  They hit another roadblock forty metres from the Hard Rock.

  Concrete sleds were arranged in an overlap, with a dozen riot squad POLRI inside and outside the perimeter to the hotel. Julie showed the ID and a POLRI bloke with a bum-fl uff mo fl ashed a torch in Mac’s face and then waved them through to the hotel.

  As Mac got out and stretched he was hit by the noise: trucks, fi re appliances, generators powering fl oodies, shouts from panicked men.

  He could see the lights originating from three blocks away. Buses fi lled with locals in white overalls fi led past; morgue trucks and cranes, police rescue, fi re rescue, ambulances – hundreds of people, running around with injured locals, yelling at one another. As he pulled his overnight bag from the Commodore, Julie came round the front and handed Mac a white envelope.