Second Strike am-2

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Maybe he made the Sari bombing,’ said Ari, eyes on the road ahead.

  ‘A Pakistani?’ scoffed Mac. ‘Come on, mate!’

  ‘No, no,’ insisted Ari. ‘How do I say rightly? Hassan is the one who is working for the Dr Khan.’

  ‘ Khan?!’ said Mac, shrieking slightly.

  ‘Yes, he sells the atomic bomb, fuck his mother.’

  CHAPTER 9

  They followed the Vitara east towards the river. As they got to the Denpasar side of the bridge, the Vitara slowed. Ari hit the brakes as they saw tail-lights glow. The Vitara’s silver paintwork fl ashed white as it turned left and was caught by the glare of headlights.

  ‘Okay, to the river,’ mumbled Ari as cars sounded their horns at his cautious speed. Mac liked that – didn’t want to go jaunting into an ambush. The Vitara’s red lights headed through an area of warehouses and loading bays down to the piers on the river. Ari headed into the same dark street, then stopped and killed the lights. Pulling their P9s from their holster-bags, they checked and cocked them. Neither said a word as they went through their drills, steadied their breathing, psyched themselves, Mac trying to envisage a successful outcome.

  The Dr Khan connection had come as a shock. After Khan was stung by the Yanks and Israelis, his operation had been partially shut down. But questions had remained within the IAEA, including the identity of Khan’s intermediaries. Who in the Pakistani military was protecting Khan and were there really elements in the ISI who worked for the Khan set-up? It was a time when Pakistan was being protected by the Americans, and the British were bringing Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold. Western intelligence was supposed to play along, but the Russians, Indians and Israelis despised the deal. They wanted Khan’s apparatus shut down, not just a few guys at the top paraded for the media.

  So what was the story now? Mac wondered. The Sari bombing was a nuke? That’s how they got that crater? There was something so strange about the idea that he just couldn’t digest it.

  Ari coasted the Camry down the gentle rise between single-level warehouses and parked trucks and vans. As it got darker, Mac’s heart rate increased and his senses became heightened. He could smell Ari’s aftershave, smell the nicotine in his sweat. Up ahead, the Vitara swung right and disappeared. As Ari put his foot down they were overtaken by the squealing of engines. Mac fl inched and turned his gun at the driver’s side window. Ari shouted and swung the Camry to the kerb, raising his gun.

  They both winced, waiting for the hail of lead, but it didn’t come.

  Two black LandCruisers, with what sounded like souped-up engines, screamed past with the high-pitched wailing of transmissions and drive shafts. Mac gasped for air and looked through the rear winds creen. Nothing. Ari took his foot off the brake and followed the LandCruisers.

  Mac didn’t like it. ‘Mate, let’s hang back.’

  ‘We’re here now, McQueen, yes?’ Ari fi red back.

  They accelerated and, turning the right-hander, came to a waterfront street. A gunfi ght was underway between the men around the two black LandCruisers and the Hassan crew behind the Vitara, which was another fi fty metres away. It was assault weapons on full-auto, tracer rounds fi lling the air, lead whistling and splatting against concrete warehouse walls. One round shattered a LandCruiser’s windscreen and Ari fl oored the accelerator to get behind the LandCruisers, which were parked in an arrowhead.

  Leaping from the Camry, Mac ran doubled over to where Freddi Gardjito was shouting into a hand-held radio. Protected in a blue Kevlar vest, Freddi was crouching behind the hood of the left-side Cruiser, an M4 carbine assault rifl e standing on its butt beside him.

  BAIS used LandCruisers with tricked V8s and armour plates in the doors and fl oor pans and Mac was glad of the extra cover.

  From the right-side Cruiser the BAIS operators returned fi re at the Vitara, their M4s spewing brass cases, the static yell of voices sounding over the radio system. The fi re came back at the LandCruisers like hail, before slowing.

  Putting his head up, Mac saw the Vitara’s tyres had been blown out and Hassan’s crew were running for the piers behind.

  Freddi gabbled into the radio and the BAIS team stood and assessed the ground. The throb of what sounded like a helo grew closer and Ari bolted for the Camry.

  ‘Ari, what’s up?’ yelled Mac as the BAIS operators fi led around the Cruisers and moved across the ground and down to the pier. Ari didn’t respond, just opened the boot of the Camry, put his hands in, and then walked towards Mac with a large black assault rifl e in each hand, a Kevlar vest hooked over each barrel.

  Handing one of the vest/gun sets to Mac, Ari threw on his own black vest. Mac’s weapon looked like an American M16 but heavier, and with a grenade launcher under the main barrel.

  ‘Safety is off,’ said Ari, fastening his vest. ‘Just cock and fi re.’

  Mac put on the vest, slid the rifl e’s cocking lever back and followed Ari, who was jogging behind Freddi towards the pier. Temples pounding, Mac wondered fl eetingly how a little message-tweaking for DFAT could have turned into this.

  A helo came into sight over the river, its searchlight scanning the piers along the bank. A shot sounded, the searchlight went dead, and bits of glowing lamp cascaded over the water. There was a sudden whooshing sound, then a missile sailed through the night, gaining speed on the helo. The shooters on both sides seemed to hold their breaths and Mac winced as what he assumed was an SA-7 missile fl ew into the helo. Mac gasped – couldn’t help it – but there was no explosion, only a loud clanking sound and the missile turned and powered into the water at top speed. Its tail had probably hit the undercarriage and simply defl ected.

  A yelled series of messages sounded out of Freddi’s radio as he stopped in front of Mac. The Indonesian nodded and signed off and the helo rose up and away, the pilot clearly wanting to stand off.

  They kept running and, as the BAIS team rounded a corner of a warehouse, the fi ring started up again, this time with more force.

  Some of the Indonesians came running back the other way to get behind the warehouse as chunks fl ew from the concrete wall, a different thumping sound now accompanying the shooting.

  ‘Fifty-cal,’ said Freddi as the concrete dust fl ew like a sandstorm.

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  One of the BAIS guys rabbited something to Freddi. Mac craned his neck around the corner and then saw the problem. Hassan’s crew had a large black powerboat – big enough to be a navy patrol boat

  – with a crew of fi ve or six and a bow-mounted, box-fed machine gun that was hammering out loads in their direction.

  The boat’s engines throbbed as they pulled away from the pier.

  When two of the BAIS operators opened fi re again, the incoming from the. 50-cal came back twice as hard and they all leaned back for safety. As soon as the fi re rate died Ari said, ‘Cover, please,’ and ran to a hip-high brick wall appended to another small building about twenty metres away. Mac and Freddi laid down fi re and return fi re came back as the boat left the pier and surged up onto a plane. Ari knelt, marksman style, and emptied his magazine at the departing boat, his head steady and focused. One of the Hassan guys dropped his rifl e and sagged to the rear decks as the boat roared into the night.

  Another SA-7 missile sailed upriver, forcing the Indonesian helo to back off even further. Freddi worked the radio in what Mac assumed was a call for the navy, given that the boat was heading towards the river mouth and the sea.

  Mac tried to breathe deeply, to get on top of the shakes before they set in. He didn’t like gunfi ghts – he’d gone through the Royal Marines Commandos and the SBS selection, but fi rearms were something he used as a threat, a way of controlling people. He didn’t like the way soldiers used them. Didn’t like incoming, didn’t even like paintball.

  Mac made to go to Ari, who was sitting against the wall, but Freddi grabbed him fi rst. ‘Next time we’re looking at the same person, maybe we should swap notes, eh McQueen?’


  ‘Mate, didn’t know about Hassan till twenty minutes ago.

  Honest.’

  Freddi cocked his head to the radio then turned back to Mac.

  ‘Why don’t we stay in a loop for the next stages? Okay, McQueen? No point being at a crossroad.’

  ‘Cross-purposes, and you’re right, Freddi. Sweet as.’

  ‘Your man got one of them, I think,’ said Freddi, before one of his guys asked him something in Bahasa.

  Dismissed, Mac went over to Ari, who was still sitting. ‘How you doing?’ asked Mac.

  The Russian pointed to his Levis, which now had a rectangular hole down the side of the calf and blood pouring over his boot into the dirt. ‘I put on the vest but it is shooting me in the leg, eh McQueen?

  I am getting angry with these sons of a fucking camel.’

  Mac sat with Ari in a corridor at Kasih Ibu Hospital in west Denpasar

  – the closest medical facility to where they’d been. Quickly cutting off the leg of Ari’s jeans, the nurse swabbed the big bullet graze, which glistened and ran steadily with blood. The top layers of muscle tissue had been torn open yet although the Russian grimaced at being touched there, he didn’t say a word.

  The hospital was packed: people with burns, people blinded, people having amputations, kids lying on gurneys in the corridors, female burns victims having breasts removed, people wandering around with hastily printed pictures of friends, kids, spouses. Everywhere smelled of death and hope.

  Having seen her white AFP Commodore in the car park, Mac assumed Jenny was about and went for a look while the nurse started on Ari’s stitches. The second fl oor was less crowded and Mac moved past the private rooms, some of them two-bed, some three, all of them occupied. He wondered why there were so many women in the place. Neither the Sari nor Paddy’s had been particularly female drinking holes.

  Unable to fi nd Jenny, Mac returned as Ari got the last of his stitches.

  Looking down, Mac noticed a clipboard on the nurse’s station with Bronwyn in the name box. Below was the Bahasa word Australi, then a box that said ‘2-6’ and some clinical notes. Mac asked the sister where room two-six was, and she pointed upstairs. ‘Number six.’

  Mac sprinted up the stairs and tapped on the door of suite six.

  A local nurse opened it and Mac introduced himself, pulled his DFAT lanyard from under his overalls and said he was looking for a girl called Bronnie, or Bronwyn.

  The nurse smiled, nodded and opened the door wider for him.

  ‘She just woken up, Mr Alan.’

  Inside was a woman lying supine on a bed, bandaged like a mummy, wires holding her hands up in muslin slings. Her face seemed fi ne but there was a lot of bandaging and cotton netting around her head which suggested bad burning. Mac sensed from the profi le of the bandages that she’d lost her left ear.

  ‘Bronwyn Bruce?’ asked Mac.

  The girl nodded, whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Alan McQueen, Australian Foreign Affairs.’

  ‘Hello,’ came the whispered reply.

  ‘I met your brother and husband and mum this morning – they were looking for you. They thought the worst, so I’m going to tell them you’re here, okay, Bronwyn?’

  She nodded, and Mac let himself out into the hallway, fi shed for the card in his breast pocket, found David Bruce’s hotel number and called. The desk guy put the phone down and three minutes later David came on the line. He sounded empty, fl at.

  When Mac told him the news, he started crying.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Mr McQueen,’ he managed when he got his breath back. ‘Thank you so much. Is everything fi ne? I mean -‘

  Mac told him as much as he knew, told him the suite number and let himself back into the room. ‘They’re on their way,’ said Mac.

  Bronwyn nodded slowly and Mac was going to let her get some rest but noticed her hands were moving about on the wires, trying to touch her belly. Then Bronwyn’s eyes darted down to her stomach and they went wide, like she’d been slapped. ‘My baby,’ she whispered, her bandaged hands straining to reach her belly. ‘My baby’s gone.

  My baby!’

  Mac didn’t understand and looked at the nurse.

  ‘Bronwyn come in with baby,’ said the nurse, making a shape of a pregnant woman.

  Mac looked down at Bronwyn’s abdomen, which was fl at, and the nurse gave him a look that said more than a million words.

  ‘ My baby, my baby, my baby, where’s my baby? ‘ Bronnie’s face was screwed up in anguish, her voice getting louder. ‘ I want my baby, oh God, God, oh my God, my baby, I want my baby! ‘

  Mac stood there feeling as sad and useless as he’d ever felt.

  He couldn’t do anything for the woman – couldn’t even hold her bandaged hands for fear of hurting her, and he couldn’t say anything.

  What was there to say? It’s okay? It’s going to be all right? It wasn’t okay and it wasn’t all right. She’d been fi re-bombed and lost her baby. It was all wrong.

  Bronwyn’s voice was becoming hysterical, building and building like a storm. Soon she was screaming for God, for her mother, for her baby, then demanding she be allowed to die. Her screams were so loud and disturbing that a doctor and nurse ran in to see what the commotion was about, by which time Bronwyn’s face was purple and she was trying to pull off her bandages.

  Mac backed out of the room into the corridor, where staff were gathering. Other patients emerged into the corridor, worried by the cries that signalled pain well beyond the physical. Mac saw Jenny approaching down the hall and told her what was going on. She walked into the room and a few seconds later Bronwyn’s screams had subsided into loud sobbing. As the noise level got lower Mac heard Bronnie crying, I can’t, and Jenny saying, Yes you can.

  Mac couldn’t get enough air and, fi nding a rubbish bin, vomited into it through mouth and nose. His knees were weak so he sat on the lino fl oor and prayed for that girl. From inside the room, he heard Bronnie beg to be allowed to die.

  The nurses cleared the corridor and Mac was about to check on Ari when the Russian limped up to Mac’s end of the hallway, ashen-faced. When Mac told him what was happening, Ari shook his head at Bronnie and Jen’s conversation, which seemed to echo through the wards. ‘It is not right to make the womens sound like this,’ he said, looking up at the ceiling.

  Just then Mac saw Bronwyn’s mother, husband and brother at the end of the hall. He stood in a hurry, opened the door to the room and motioned Jenny over. Bronnie’s lips were swollen – she didn’t take her bloodshot eyes off Jenny.

  ‘What is it?’ said Jenny as she stepped outside.

  Mac tilted his head. ‘This is the husband, mother and brother.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Which one’s the husband?’

  ‘The taller one, Gavin.’

  Jenny walked up to the party and gave her AFP title. ‘Bronwyn is doing well but Gavin, I’m going to have to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, laden with fl owers but his mood switching to fear.

  ‘I’m going to need you to be strong for your wife, okay? This is a time for Bronnie, not for the rest of us. Can you do that for her?’

  Mac moved away, grabbed Ari and left. As he went through the swinging exit doors at the end of the ward, he looked back and saw Gavin sagging, David and Jenny holding him up by his armpits.

  Flowers spilled on the lino.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ari stopped outside the hotel and Mac started to get out then paused and looked back at the Russian – one leg of his Levis looking like shorts, the other like jeans.

  ‘So, what have we got, mate?’ asked Mac.

  Ari shrugged, chewed his gum.

  ‘We’re chasing Hassan, who apparently works for Khan,’ said Mac.

  ‘And Khan makes nukes and sells them to terrorists, right?’

  Ari frowned. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So, these bombings are nukes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Ari, seemingly unconvinced.

&nb
sp; ‘Come on, mate,’ snapped Mac. ‘I’m in this now.’

  Ari looked at Mac, looked away slightly, looked back.

  ‘This big explosion, with hole under road. This is very large bomb, or -‘

  ‘So they’d need a foreign group for that, right?’ said Mac.

  ‘You need person who can get bomb, person who can use bomb, and also way of bringing this bomb into Bali, yes? I am not thinking that young man with sarung and big smile is doing this, yes?’

  Mac nodded. ‘So tell me about Hassan Ali.’

  ‘Not much to say,’ said Ari. ‘We was watching Hassan and his peoples for two weeks, fi rst in Java and then in Bali, yes?’

  Mac nodded, impatient.

  ‘So on morning of the bombings, Hassan group split. My colleague follow one group back to Java and I stay here, watching the Puri. Then

  – ‘ Ari made an explosion gesture with his hands.

  Mac had a hundred things on his mind, what with the role he’d been assigned to with the bombings, now called Operation Alliance.

  He couldn’t get his mind around all the facts, and he was tired.

  With the terror of the gunfi ght and the emotional scenes they’d just witnessed at the hospital, his mind was a blur. He swung his legs out of the car, but stopped as he suddenly remembered that face in the gloom, at the back of the pantry on Penang Princess.

  ‘Was Abu Samir in the Java crew?’ asked Mac.

  Ari fl inched, his grey eyes squinting and glowing like pack-ice.

  ‘What is it you know about Samir?’ he spat aggressively. Just as quickly the Russian recovered, exhaled and thumped his right palm on the Camry steering wheel.

  ‘Sorry, McQueen,’ he said, grabbing his smokes from the centre console and sparking one. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Ari’s expression suddenly changed. ‘It is the fucking BAIS again.’

  Mac turned and saw a black LandCruiser parked behind the Camry.