Double Back (27 page)

Mac lay on the knoll overlooking the Kopassus intel camp, observing the action through his Leica binos. Below him, Beast and Johnno covered Robbo, who stood in the lee of the main building, examining a little screen he held in two hands. Having augered through the side of the building and pushed a fibre-optic camera through the hole, Robbo was now looking at the screen to see what was inside.

‘Come on!’ hissed Mac, checking his G-Shock. It was 12.11 am.

‘Worth getting this part right,’ whispered Didge, lying beside Mac, his M4 shouldered, ready to create supporting fire.

‘I know,’ said Mac. ‘But I’d like to have a few hours’ start on these guys before sun-up. I hate -’

‘Look,’ said Didge, interrupting Mac.

Robbo slowly pulled his fibre optic from the hole in the wall and gestured for Beast, who turned around so Robbo could put the screen and camera in his pack. Robbo then gave a hand command which led to suppressors being screwed onto handguns and Johnno drawing his black Ka-bar combat knife. Next thing, they were moving out of sight around the front of the building.

Raising himself from his prone position, Didge groaned slightly at the pain in his leg. Then, assuming a kneeling-marksman pose he shouldered the M4. Adrenaline rising, Mac swung his Leicas to the left as Mitch emerged from the tree line – weapon at his shoulder – and stealthed further along the security fence. Toolie remained absolutely still in the standing-marksman pose, still looking like a bloke going fishing. It was a classic supporting-fire configuration, covering the raiding party from both inside and outside aggression.

Mac forced himself to stay calm. If the snatch didn’t go well, he reckoned they’d get about five hundred metres before they were taken apart by the Indonesian military. Their only advantage was that the base seemed deserted while the Kodim Maliana took care of the Falintil problem at the Lombok facility.

Didge nudged Mac and pointed at the Kopassus camp entry. Two soldiers in red berets and jungle cams walked up the slight rise into the camp.

‘Blue Dog, this is Albion – two Bandits at your four o’clock; repeat Bandits at your four,’ said Mac into his radio mic.

The soldier nearest the intel building suddenly swivelled, looking at the building the commandos had just entered. Suddenly, his eyes widened and Johnno appeared from the shadows, slapped a hand across the Indonesian’s face and brought his knife quickly across the bloke’s throat. As the soldier sagged in Johnno’s arms, the second Kopassus soldier froze, then fell to the ground as three shots tore silently into his chest. Suppressors were a hassle to configure and to carry, but they were amazingly effective.

‘Nice work, Blue Team,’ mumbled Didge as Johnno and Beast pulled the two soldiers into the far lee of the building, where they could no longer be seen by Mac and Didge.

Abruptly, Robbo appeared around the corner of the building, suppressed handgun held in cup-and-saucer. Pausing, he nodded and crept quickly towards the gap they’d cut in the fence, followed by Beast with a body in a blanket carried in a fireman’s lift. Johnno worked the sweep as they moved out of the Kopassus camp.

‘Nice work, boys,’ said Didge, standing and sweeping his rifle across the camp, looking for any problems.

Blackbird proved to be both cooperative and fit, and they got to the camp at the observation post shortly before 3.30 am. Leaving Mac and Blackbird in the bivvy, the rest of the 63 Recon Troop grabbed food and water and crawled through to the OP to check what they’d been missing in the past twenty-four hours.

Getting himself comfortable against the bamboo wall, Mac took a decent look at the girl for the first time since they’d cleared out of Maliana. She was tall and athletic, intelligent-looking and quite beautiful, even in a set of borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt.

‘We’ll have a rest, something to eat, and then we’re off,’ said Mac.

‘Where are we going?’ she said in a deep register, not betraying too much in the way of nerves.

‘Out of here,’ said Mac. ‘To a safer place.’

‘Australia? Java?’ she asked, quite self-assured.

‘Not up to me,’ said Mac, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘All you have to do is keep walking and I’ll take care of the rest, okay?’

‘Okay,’ she said, peeling an orange. ‘Your name Mac, right?’

‘That’s it.’

‘You Australian intelligence?’

‘Let’s have a bigger conversation once we’re out of here, okay, Maria?’

‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Can talk now if you want.’

‘I’m not going to debrief you,’ said Mac, ‘but I would like to get an idea what you’ve been speaking to Kopassus about.’

‘Just what I told the Australians,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘I tell the malai all the things I was saying to Canadian.’

‘Everything? You told them everything?’ asked Mac. ‘They torture you, Maria?’

‘No,’ she said, looking away.

‘They threaten your family?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded.

Fishing in his bag, Mac came out with some bars of chocolate, which he handed to Blackbird. He tried to soften the questions.

‘They ask you what you looked at in the army headquarters in Dili?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘They ask you if you stole anything?’

‘Yes, and I told them what I taken.’

‘They ask if you’d taken copies?’ said Mac with a smile.

‘No, mister,’ said Blackbird, shaking her head but keeping her eyes on Mac’s in the dark.

Informal interrogation was best conducted with enough light to clock every reaction, every shift of the eyes and set of the mouth. But Mac had fallen into this line of conversation and he didn’t want to halt the momentum, even as he detected a lie.

‘Did you make any copies at army headquarters, Maria?’ asked Mac.

‘No,’ she said, quite calm.

‘Did you tell the Canadian everything you discovered?’

‘Yes, mister,’ she said, smiling.

‘Did you see any papers in army headquarters about Operasi Ipoh?’ asked Mac conversationally.

‘No, mister,’ she said.

‘Operasi Bali?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Operasi Boa?’

‘No – not that one.’

‘And no copies of any army papers?’ said Mac, bringing his cadence down to suggest the end of a conversation.

‘No, mister,’ she said, her voice relieved.

‘Where did you hide the copies, Maria?’

‘I didn’t… I mean, I took no copies.’

‘The copies of Operasi Boa?’

Waving her hands, and then putting her face in them, Blackbird hesitated. ‘Now I all confused.’

‘Take your time, Maria,’ said Mac, like her best friend.

‘Okay,’ she sighed, breathing out.

Handing her a fresh bottle of water, Mac looked at his G-Shock. ‘Drink up, we’ll leave in five.’

Looking out through the bamboo walls, Mac’s heart was racing. Was there an ambush? Was the snatch a set-up? He did not know. What he did know was that Kopassus intel failing to ask Blackbird if she copied files during her time at army HQ was about as likely as the Ferrari F-1 pit crew turning up for a race without a single wrench. It was a spurious story, and meant that either Kopassus was after something totally different to what Mac and Tony Davidson assumed they were after, or Blackbird was walking both sides of the street.

Mac’s coded radio call to the Royal Australian Navy was successful and he got a commitment for an exfil at midnight, from the same place where he’d set down after the swim from the submarine. Getting close to finishing a successful gig, Mac’s excitement was counterbalanced by stress and fatigue. If someone gave him an air-bed, a shower and a proper pillow, he’d sleep for twelve hours without touching the sides. But for now he was buzzing along on adrenaline, trying to get to the finish line.

They made fast time across the river into West Timor and overland to the kijang’s hide with Robbo and Beast as the escort. The soldiers flirted with Blackbird, who deflected their attentions with a cold politeness that she’d probably been practising since childhood. She was a cool cookie, this one, thought Mac, and he vowed to test her again before he handed her over.

At 7.03 am the soldiers led them to the head of the river valley that they’d run up two days ago, and Mac made his seven o’clock call to Jim at DIA.

‘Saturn recon was a success,’ said Mac. ‘But I can’t send the pics – busted the camera, so I’ll have to walk them out. Got samples too.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Jim.

‘There were a bunch of people in that underground facility,’ said Mac, wanting to know more about Lombok. ‘Most of them were dead.’

‘Okay – any alive?’ asked Jim.

‘Yeah, about eighty,’ said Mac, wanting Jim to do more of the explaining.

‘Do we have Blackbird?’ said Jim, before Mac could push.

‘She’s here, but she’s claiming no knowledge of Boa or any file copies,’ said Mac.

‘She lying?’ asked Jim.

‘I reckon,’ said Mac.

‘Well that’s unfortunate,’ said Jim.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, because comms chatter from the Indonesian Army suggests Boa is being brought forward – looks like whatever it is will start around the ballot results.’

‘That’s a week away,’ said Mac.

‘Sure. That reminds me,’ said Jim, sounding concerned, ‘you didn’t start that direct action at Saturn?’

‘No, that was Falintil. Villagers on the south coast had been disappearing and they traced them to Saturn. The guards didn’t want to open the gates.’

‘Don’t want to pressure you, buddy,’ said Jim. ‘But Blackbird is now the key to this. Got an ETA?’

‘I’ll get her there as fast as I can,’ said Mac.

‘Drive safely, McQueen – Tony wants a word.’

‘Macca!’ came the greeting, so loud Mac had to pull his ear from the sat phone.

‘Tony, how’s it going?’ asked Mac.

‘Good, mate – just got back from Dili, where I had a chat with our friend.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yep. Still don’t know who the President’s Men are in Jakarta, but he said Kopassus had been running some disinformation strategies.’

‘Like what?’ asked Mac.

‘Like the false flag Operation Extermination – which is really a cover for Boa,’ said Davidson. ‘Like some of the assurances that Canberra is relying on – assurances that the Indonesian military is trying to bring order to Timor, rather than supporting the militias.’

‘Okay,’ said Mac, distracted and tired. ‘Well Blackbird tells me she doesn’t know about Boa and she never copied a document that covers it.’

‘Does she just?’

‘Yeah, but I’ll bring her in, get to the bottom of it, right?’

‘Sure, Macca,’ said Davidson, a resigned tone in his voice. ‘Let’s see what this bird sings.’ He hung up.

‘That Jim as in DIA?’ asked Robbo, surprising Mac. ‘In Denpasar?’

‘Ah, yeah,’ said Mac, who didn’t like eavesdroppers. ‘Maybe.’

‘Come on, McQueen,’ said Robbo with a smile. ‘I remember him in Jordan, after he was kicked out of UNSCOM. I heard he was in Denpasar.’

‘UNSCOM?’ said Mac. ‘What was Jim doing with the weapons inspectors?’

‘Who knows?’ said Robbo, distracted by a bird flapping noisily out of a tree. ‘I think he was on loan from Detrick – Saddam’s people challenged him and the UN asked him to leave.’

‘Really?’ said Mac.

‘Yeah, mate,’ said Robbo, turning to go. ‘All that UN political shit.’

Head pounding with the possibilities, Mac tried not to dwell on it. Detrick was the nickname for the US Army’s Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease. Fort Detrick was where you went when you wanted to know everything there was to know about biological weapons.

The Timor Sea looked oily as the sun rose above the horizon, turning the ocean from a deep vermilion to green.

Mac’s hide looked over the point on the south coast where he’d come ashore two days earlier, and as the birds started their morning song, Robbo and Beast prepared a natural crow’s nest beneath the palms. Throwing a couple of field jackets on the sea grasses, they gave Blackbird a bed of sorts – somewhere to relax and lay low till the exfil at midnight.

‘Okay here, Macca?’ asked Robbo, M4 held across his forearm, sunnies pushed up. ‘Thought we’d recce the area, see who’s who.’

‘Yeah, sweet, mate,’ said Mac with a small yawn. ‘Might get a kip myself.’

As Robbo and Beast moved out into the surrounding beachhead, Mac built a sleeping hollow for himself at Blackbird’s nine o’clock, but higher in the crow’s nest where he could see anyone approaching.

Making to lie down, he noticed Blackbird sitting up and looking at him.

‘Have a headache,’ she groaned, rubbing the heel of her left hand into her forehead. ‘Shouldn’t wake me and then make me walk so far.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Mac. ‘I haven’t slept properly for more than two days.’

Mac gave her his spare bottle of water and dug into his rucksack. ‘We thought you were being tortured up there.’

‘They didn’t hurt me,’ she said, long black hair held up in a topknot. ‘Just lots of questions.’

‘Benni ask you the questions, Maria?’

In the slight hesitation that followed, Mac could see her constructing a lie. It was the immutable law of his profession that the true liars always believed they were going unnoticed.

‘Benni?’ she asked, sipping some water.

‘Benni wasn’t asking the questions?’

‘I not know -’

‘Florita said you knew him, Maria,’ said Mac softly, then let the silence hang. It was Blackbird’s turn to do the running.

Pulling his small first-aid pack from the rucksack, Mac found some packets of Xanax and Mogadon. Burrowing deeper into the small zippered bag, he found the Nurofens, typically used with snatchees who felt nauseous from the benzodiazepines Mac gave the uncooperative ones.

Pushing a couple of the painkillers from the foil, he passed them to Blackbird, who was looking sadly into her water.

‘You know my sister?’ she asked finally.

‘I met her a week ago, in a hut with some soldiers.’

‘Was she okay?’ said Blackbird, snapping out of her sulk. ‘Tell me she was okay!’

‘We helped her out, Maria.’

‘She okay now? She home?’ she wanted to know, concern in her dark eyes.

‘She was fine, but anything that happened was against her will, okay?’

‘You do not have to tell me that!’ she said, firing up. ‘Florita is a good girl!’

After a quiet sorry, Mac mused on the pride of the Timorese even as the women accepted the risk of official rape and the boys knew that a military execution might result from a simple cheeky comment.

Wiping tears from her cheeks, Blackbird tried to regain her composure. ‘What did Florita tell you?’

‘She told me about Benni Sudarto,’ said Mac.

‘What did she say?!’ she snapped.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ asked Mac.

Blackbird looked away, her back heaving through the sweatshirt.

‘You have no right!’ she cried. ‘Do not come in my country and be the judge of me.’

‘It was a question, Maria – not a judgment. What is your relationship with Benni Sudarto?’

Shaking her head slowly, she gave him a hard look. ‘You people – the Indonesi, the Australi – you come to Timor and play with us like a chess game.’

‘That’s not -’

‘All I wanted was to go to the university in Surabaya, okay?’ she said, defiant. ‘First, Indonesi army say, Work for us for a year and we maybe sponsor you to Surabaya. Then Australi say, Tell us the Indonesi secrets and we’ll send you and Florita to any university you want; Surabaya, Sydney, Queensland – you naming it, Maria! Then Captain Sudarto, he take me out in his car, and he tell me, Work for me, Maria, and your family will live. Let me down, and I kill them in front of you.’ She was really sobbing now, tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘What’s Operasi Boa?’ asked Mac, thinking he might be able to unhinge her.

‘Boa?’ she said, recovering her former poise. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

‘I told -’

‘You could be anyone, you could be working for anybody. I never met you.’

Shrugging, Mac conceded her point. His job was to bring her out of East Timor, and then her trusted controller – Atkins most likely – would run the debrief.

‘I am sorry to waste your time and make you run around in jungle,’ she said, with kind eyes. ‘But I did what you asked, I took the files and did the drop box, so please do not ask me to betray my own family.’

‘I thought the Timorese were proud people,’ said Mac, trying for one last manipulation to turn her back.

‘We are,’ smiled the young woman, sniffling. ‘And I am proud to keep my family alive.’

Looking out over the beach, Mac assessed possible problem points for the exfil. The tide was in and by midnight it would be almost back in the same place. He would have to be careful to bring the boat in between a couple of markers and, walking to the water’s edge, he identified the distinctive rocks, gave them names and committed them to memory. He wanted to be able to give the navy boat crew some basic trig points to get them to shore without being snagged on the reef just below the surface.

Looking at his G-Shock, he felt a wave of fatigue and wondered if he shouldn’t take a nap while the commandos were still guarding the perimeter.

Making a single round of the crow’s nest, he made back to his hide and slugged at his water while Blackbird slept. It was amazing how sweet water tasted when it was all you had, he mused. As he replaced the bottle in his rucksack, he noticed the water was slightly milky. Licking at his lips, he realised it actually was sweet – his thirst had nothing to do with it.

Mind spinning, Mac reached for his rucksack, eyelids starting to droop. Pulling out the first-aid kit, he clocked that one of the benzo boxes had been torn open, the half-empty foil beside it.

‘Fuck,’ thought Mac, ‘she’s used half a packet.’

Darkness closed in from the sides of his vision and a warm, safe sleepiness engulfed him. After nine years of pushing them into people’s mouths, he finally knew what Mogadon felt like.

The onshore wind felt beautiful on Mac’s face as he opened his eyes, becoming aware of the crashing surf and the night sky through the swishing palms.

Leaning over him, Beast peered and waved his hand from side to side. ‘Awake, Macca?’ he asked, squinting.

‘Think so,’ croaked Mac, his voice sounding like it was coming from a thousand miles away.

Robbo appeared beside Beast and they pulled him up into a sitting position, Mac’s brain swirling like a top.

‘Sorry, boys…’ he started, and then leaned to the side and vomited as Beast jumped back to keep his pants clean.

He felt foggy in the brain and hungry in the stomach, but mostly Mac was confused. ‘What’s up, guys?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with his shirt front.

‘You lost the girl,’ said Robbo, pushing up Mac’s eyeballs and shining his flashlight in them. ‘You were out to it, mate – girl drugged you. Mogadon by the looks of it.’

Shaking some clarity into his brain, Mac recalled some of the morning’s events and moaned as he realised he’d been duped.

‘She gone?’ he slurred.

‘No, we caught her,’ said Robbo. ‘But we had to move, and you have to get on the net, re-call the exfil.’

‘I do?’ asked Mac, still waking up.

Behind Robbo, Blackbird’s hair blew in the sea breeze. Locking eyes with Mac, she gave a shrug that might have been an apology.

‘Our position was blown,’ said Robbo. ‘And you’re the one with the exfil call signs – we’ve been waiting for you to wake up.’

‘We’ve been made?’ said Mac.

‘No, mate – we moved before that,’ said Robbo, offering him another banana.

‘How did you know we were blown?’ asked Mac, confused.

‘The girl took off with your sat phone.’

‘Bitch,’ sighed Mac, despite some begrudging admiration.

‘Something like that,’ said Robbo.