Sword of Allah (36 page)

The BK-117 Eurocopter had civilian markings and was flying a logged civilian flight plan but, being part of the CIA’s
air wing, the aircraft was not exactly what it seemed. It had been modified. If the situation called for it, a Browning .50 calibre machine gun hidden away in a floor locker could be lifted out, mounted on a sling and fired through the side opening by the co-pilot. But apart from the Browning, Wilkes, Monroe and Federal Agent Jenny Tadzic were going in unarmed. Wilkes and Monroe were uncomfortable about it but that had been a condition of entry stipulated by their host.

‘There comes a point when you have to shrug and say, “What the fuck?” ’ Wilkes had said to Atticus when the discussion became heated. The what-the-fuck point had definitely been reached and Wilkes was in charge, so that was that. Their safety was in the lap of the gods – that and good timing. At least they had the Browning. As far as Wilkes was concerned, worse than being unarmed was that they were wearing civilian clothes rather than fatigues – jeans and T-shirts. It was like going to work naked.

The jungle slid by underneath in a series of ridgelines that stretched towards the horizon, a green sea with mountainous waves. The landscape had a familiarity about it. It reminded Wilkes of jungles from North Queensland to West Papua to Vietnam; different borders, customs, governments and problems, all of which meant nothing to this giant living band of greenery.

The helo made a course change that Wilkes felt in the muscles of his neck, to bring it low and slow over the targeted cultivated field. It was still deserted and Wilkes breathed a sigh of relief. The aircraft swung around to the right and descended into a narrow valley. The ground rose
slowly to meet them as the valley broadened. And suddenly they scudded low over a vast walled compound crowned by an extraordinary building that reminded Wilkes of a Hollywood-style Roman villa: Jed Clampett’s house from
The Beverly Hillbillies
. He smiled at that, and began to quietly whistle the show’s theme song.

The rotors beat the air with a thump as the helo climbed into a hundred and eighty degree turn and decelerated. Goddam chopper pilots. Wilkes had never met one that didn’t like making an entrance. The helo flared and then lowered gradually onto its skids. Wilkes and Monroe hopped out, followed by Tadzic. They quickly made their way beyond the flickering circle carved by the helo’s rotors. The pilot gave them the thumbs up and then the helo was gone, climbing rapidly towards the ridge above the valley and then dropping behind it.

‘Welcome to my humble house.’

Wilkes, Monroe and Tadzic turned. The greeting came from a fat man with heavily rouged cheeks dressed in jungle greens. He was sitting atop a magnificent white horse chewing at its bit. A couple of Humvees squealed to a halt behind the horse, bristling with soldiers armed with a variety of weapons. The men swarmed out of the vehicles shouting and yelling as they ran. The soldiers snatched Wilkes’s backpack and then forced the three of them onto their stomachs and patted them down for weapons.

The navigator reconfirmed the airway’s clearance with the flight deck. Lieutenant Pete Crawford wondered if the Thais would be so happy to wave them through if they knew that this little BUFF was not a commercial flight as indicated by the flight plan and transponder emissions.

The B-52 was in position, just inside the maximum range of the joint stand-off weapons cradled under the bomber’s wing. ‘Fly present heading,’ said the navigator sitting on the lower deck. The colonel gave Crawford the nod.

Down on the lower flight deck, the radar navigator confirmed that the azimuth, elevation and coordinates downloaded into the missiles’ systems prior to takeoff tallied with those held on her computers. She keyed in the appropriate strokes and saw that the information was a match. No further advice had been received amending or aborting the mission from either Diego Garcia or a man-in-the-loop down on the ground. A quick scan of the system’s defensive avionics told her that no missile tracking radars had locked on to their aircraft and that electronic countermeasures were therefore unnecessary. The radar navigator knew this would be the case but it paid to stay sharp. She armed the missile, informed the flight deck that a ten-second countdown was in progress, and the JSOW designated number one on her offensive avionics display dropped from its pylon. ‘Fox one,’ she said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.

As the AGM-154D dropped away from the B-52, its wings flipped out and locked in position, the small turbofan catching as the airflow through its fan blades turned over the compressor unit like a vehicle jumpstarting down a hill. The missile verified its position in relation to the general target area through an onboard GPS integrated with an inertial navigation system. The INS altered the JSOW’s course four degrees to the left, allowing for wind drift, and the aircraft accelerated into a shallow dive.

Sixty seconds later the radar nav announced the departure of the second AGM-154D, ‘Fox one,’ and another sixty seconds after that, a third: ‘Fox one.’

Lieutenant Pete Crawford was intrigued. Here they were up in northern Thailand cruising towards Myanmar and three live JSOWs had just been released. Where were the missiles going? What was their target? All the information fed into the missile systems was coded so not even the radar nav had any real idea. Guesses, yes, but nothing certain. The rumour was that they were in support of a covert Special Forces op aimed at toppling the military regime there. Crawford doubted that. What difference would three little missiles make? He shrugged and let the thought go. ‘We’re just the pizza delivery boy,’ he’d heard the colonel say once. ‘The only difference is, we always deliver hot.’

‘Okay, the sows have been taken to market, so let’s get this little piggy home,’ said Colonel Zeke Chapman. ‘By the way, Pete, you’re doing a fine job. Wake me up on final.’

‘Wilco, sir.’ The whole thing had been too easy, thought Crawford as he watched his commander sit back in his
chair and place a fishing magazine over his face. All temps and pressures normal. A walk in the park.

‘I must apologise for the rough treatment, but we’re not used to the CIA dropping in,’ said General Trip.

Tadzic, Wilkes and Monroe were lifted off the ground and restrained by more than a dozen heavily armed soldiers. A couple of the men were rummaging through Wilkes’s backpack. They lifted out the satellite vone and the tactical radio beacon, examined them cursorily, then returned them to the pack and passed it to the general.

‘We have a proposition we’d like to discuss with you,’said Monroe, not wanting to delay proceedings unnecessarily.

‘Certainly,’ said the general, his horse now chewing on its bridle. ‘Always happy to thrash out an agreement with the United States of America. Indeed, I’m flattered. Perhaps you’d like to come to my pad? We can sit on the veranda out of the sun and sip something cool.’

‘Thank you, General,’ said Monroe.

‘Please,’ said the general, gesturing at one of the Humvees. He climbed down from his horse, handed the reins to a soldier, and then took a seat in the vehicle – his customary one, up behind the mounted machine gun.

‘First of all, General, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to this meeting,’ said Monroe as the vehicle headed towards the villa barely fifty metres away.

‘Yes, well, I have to admit I was intrigued,’the general said.

‘Do you think I could have my backpack returned?’ asked Wilkes.

‘No need to be impatient, Mr…?’

‘Warrant Officer Wilkes.’

‘Ah, a military man. And by the accent, I’d say Australian. Special Forces, no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ Wilkes said.

‘I see,’ he said, eyeing Wilkes warily. ‘And you, madam?’

‘AFP.’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ said the general as they pulled up to the sweeping stairs of the absurd villa. ‘CIA, SAS and Australian Federal Police. An interesting cocktail.’

Soldiers, all of whom appeared tense and nervous, surrounded the general’s Humvee. A guard of six escorted Tadzic, Monroe and Wilkes into the house. The general led the way, his fat legs taking small, effeminate steps. Monroe eyed his watch and glanced at Wilkes, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

‘Please sit,’ he said to his guests when they arrived at a balcony overlooking the ornate garden. The guards withdrew when the general gave them a staccato order. ‘Well now, what’s this about?’ he asked, leaning back in his seat.

‘Well, I could say world peace, but I’ll break it down for you further so there’s no misunderstanding,’ said Monroe. ‘Let’s talk about your continued survival.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said the general, frowning. ‘Brave words indeed from a man deep inside – what do you Americans call it? Injun country?’

‘General, you surprise me. You should know we Americans never go anywhere without a big stick.’

The first of the JSOWs arrived in the target area and
switched to imaging infrared seeker, comparing the chosen target with the photo stored in its preset memory. The target successfully confirmed by the IIR, it banked steeply left. Four seconds later, half a dozen of the general’s soldiers on patrol gawked as the missile flew past them
up
the valley floor. Loaded with a BLU-11/B variant of the Mk 82 five hundred pound general-purpose bomb, it slammed into the general’s land-based Phalanx system and turned it instantly into scrap metal.

The sudden massive explosion shook the villa and a fireball rolled skywards from the wall that ringed it. The Phalanx’s munitions then began to cook off, a battery of smaller explosions within the firestorm banging away like lethal popcorn. The general leapt to his feet and shouted something at the soldiers, who rushed pointlessly from other buildings in the compound like ants from a nest poked with a stick.

Wilkes smiled and quietly said, ‘…five, four, three, two…’

Tadzic, better prepared this time, squeezed her hands against her ears.

The second JSOW made its presence known. It was loaded with four anti-armour BLU-108/B sub-munitions that released six projectiles each. With nothing other than the heat signature of the first missile’s hit to zero in on, their impact was concentrated at the fire raging at the base of the thick perimeter wall. Clustered in this small area, their explosively formed shaped charges easily defeated the general’s prized reactive armour and, with a series of earshattering eruptions, created a gaping breach.

The thunderous detonations were followed by multiple
shock waves that rolled through the villa’s foundations and up through the floor, bouncing the chairs Monroe, Wilkes, Tadzic and the general were seated on.

‘This is you, your doing!’ the general leapt up and screamed accusingly at Monroe, Wilkes and Tadzic. ‘I will have you killed!’

‘If you wish to stay in business, General Trip, you will sit down and you will shut the fuck up,’ said Monroe, trying hard to keep the grin off his face.

General Trip removed an H&K pistol from a holster beside him and pointed it, shaking with anger, at Monroe.

‘If you don’t do as I ask, we will start destroying your crops,’ Monroe said calmly.

‘And you will be dead,’ screamed the general, cocking the weapon.

‘You are being attacked by precision guided missiles launched from a B-52 bomber orbiting in Myanmar airspace,’ said Monroe, not too far from the truth and enjoying himself. ‘Your government has sold you out. We are the only ones who can stop the attack. If you kill us, the assault will go on until you have nothing left.’

‘You are lying,’ he said, unsettled by Monroe’s confidence.

The third JSOW, containing a hundred and forty-five BLU-97/B bomblets, scattered its cargo over a heavily cultivated field. The devices detonated when they hit the ground, their cases fragmenting into metal splinters that cut swaths through the ordered rows of mature poppies. An instant later, the zirconium contained within each bomblet ignited and combined in a raging firestorm that immolated the entire hillside.

A large, black mushroom of smoke rose from the valley beyond. The general’s mouth dropped open when he saw the cloud forked with red and orange snakes rising above the ridge, the heat from it washing over them a handful of seconds after the sound.

‘What do you want?’ he said, lowering the pistol and then letting it clatter to the floor.

‘We want to find one of your customers,’ said Monroe. ‘You can help us.’

‘I have seen the news. I know who you want.’ The general sat heavily. ‘Make it stop.’

‘I need my radio, in the backpack,’ Wilkes said.

The general raised his hand and the pack was returned. Wilkes removed the TACBE, a short-range transceiver, and turned it on, thumbing the send button with a prearranged signal to the helo.

‘We also want any prisoners, any drug enforcement people you might have detained, released immediately,’ said Tadzic.

Monroe and Wilkes both turned to look at the police officer. What the hell was this all about? The helo was now on the way and they had one foot out of this place. They had what they came for. Monroe shot Wilkes an angry glance. Wilkes gave an imperceptible shrug that said, ‘Go with it’. They had no choice now, anyway.

‘I don’t have any prisoners,’ said the general a little too quickly.

‘Well, that’s unfortunate,’ said Monroe, playing along with Tadzic’s surprise demand even though he wasn’t really sure where it was going, ‘because we have plenty more missiles.’

Twelve minutes later, three very sick people were delivered on stretchers and laid on the manicured lawn in front of the villa: one woman and two men. All three looked closer to the dead than to the living, covered in filth with fat green flies circling lazily around them. ‘That fucking bastard,’ said Tadzic as she knelt beside the stretcher and wiped the woman’s face. Her eyelids cracked open. The pupils were dilated, with no response behind them.

‘They all your people?’ asked Wilkes.

‘The woman is AFP, a researcher. She’s mine. One of these men – I’m not sure which – is her boyfriend. The other, I think, is an American, a DEA agent who’s been missing six months,’ said Tadzic, rage building within her.

‘They’re lucky to be alive,’ Monroe said, a little bewildered. He’d intended to give Tadzic both barrels, but her brazen demand had yielded results.

‘Your researcher is even luckier to have you for a boss,’ said Wilkes, and he meant it. The federal agent was tough and resourceful. She’d done what she had to do. He’d have preferred it if Tadzic had brought him into her confidence over the hostages, but he understood why she didn’t. Perhaps she thought he wouldn’t allow the mission’s focus to be split. Tadzic had never worked with him before and therefore didn’t know what to expect. Maybe next time, if there were a next time, she’d know better.

The thump of helicopter blades rose above the erratic explosions of burning ammunition still cooking. Wilkes called up the helo on the TACBE and redirected it to land on the villa’s forecourt.

‘You know,’ said Tadzic as she watched soldiers rushing
about in an uncoordinated panic, ‘we’ve got unconfirmed rumours that the general here buys young girls – some as young as six years old – from the local villages. Then, when he’s finished soiling their little bodies as they reach puberty, he puts them to work in the drug factories. Only, most of the girls don’t last long. By then, they’re heavy users and full of shame. They overdose or find some other way to kick off.’

As if on cue, three very young girls, children, ran from the house screaming.

‘Nice,’ said Monroe. ‘Maybe we should fix his little red wagon while we’re here.’

‘I feel the same way, Atticus, but –’

‘Come on, Tom. Jesus, look at the people on the ground here,’ he said, waving a hand at the stretchered hostages. ‘If ever someone deserved to chew on a bullet it’s this guy. He –’

A sudden loud bang beside Atticus’s head made him duck and spin. ‘Jesus!’

‘My thought exactly, Atticus,’ said Tadzic, a curl of grey smoke rising from the muzzle of the gun in her outstretched hand. It was the general’s H&K. She dropped it on the ground and kicked it away.

Wilkes saw the general fall. He caught the bullet with his throat and began to die slowly, his blood bubbling away, surprise and fear in his eyes. A man caught him as he fell, a man with a very bald, shiny head, who laid him on the grass as purple blood gurgled from his lips and the wounds on either side of his neck. When the bald man realised the general was dying, he began to pat him down. He then shot the general point blank in the head with a revolver and took his polished riding boots.

‘Obviously much loved by his people,’ observed Wilkes.

‘Federal Agent,’ said Monroe, rubbing his ear, ‘if it’s not a personal question, are you married?’

There was the slightest of smiles on Tadzic’s lips.

Capping the drug lord annoyed Wilkes, but the milk was spilt. If Canberra or Langley superiors wanted more information from Trip in the future – well, too bad, because it had now gone with him to the grave.

The helo sideslipped towards them through a column of black smoke and flared into a hover half a metre above the grass, the co-pilot now wearing body armour and sitting up behind the Browning removed from its hiding place.

‘Shit,’ said Tadzic, shaking her head as they carefully lifted the inert bodies into the helo.

‘What’s up?’ Wilkes asked.

‘We didn’t get Trip to tell us how the terrorists were smuggling the heroin into Australia.’

‘Would he have known? He was the wholesaler,’ Wilkes said.

‘Yes, he was, but you can bet an arsehole like General Trip would’ve made it his business to find out,’ said Tadzic, grunting as she helped Wilkes lift the last stretcher into the Eurocopter. ‘It might even have been a network he personally set up and controlled.’ A bullet passed close to her head, the air crackling, and buried itself in the helo’s airframe. Three more rounds fizzed by too close for comfort. Time to leave – the party was definitely over.

Tadzic took the co-pilot’s offered hand and he pulled her in. Monroe and Wilkes jumped onto the aircraft’s skids as the helo left the ground. The Eurocopter accelerated and
climbed with a steep nose-down attitude. Several groups of soldiers began firing up at them. A couple of rounds pinged off the skids where Monroe and Wilkes had been standing. The Browning issued a reply, the co-pilot swinging the heavy machine gun in an arc towards the ground, showering Tadzic and Wilkes with hot brass casings.

The helo climbed over the ridge then slipped behind it, putting the hill between them and the anger of the general’s encampment. Wilkes pulled the scrap of paper from his top pocket, the lat and long coords scribbled on it in the general’s own hand. He passed the paper to the co-pilot. ‘Better get these off,’ he said, yelling over the noise of the twin jet engines and the whirling blades above.

Federal Agent Tadzic looked down at the three people at her feet and examined her feelings. She was angry and elated at the same time; angry with herself for giving in to the desire for revenge, but she had to admit that removing Trip from the gene pool was the most satisfying moment of her fifteen-year career as a federal agent.