Mark Abernethy: Double back

Taking turns looking out the windows, they tried to find the second helo, unable to hear anything above the scream of the Nissan’s engine and the cacophony of birds and monkeys in the rainforest. Mac figured that when the mercs secured the mine site, they’d find the trail of the Patrol and come looking.

‘Got a plan?’ asked Mac as water bottles were handed out, the humidity of the tropics now filling the cabin.

‘Plan was to annoy the mine owners, make them think that OPM was too costly,’ smiled Kaui. ‘Right, McQueen?’

‘Well, it worked with those Brazilians,’ shrugged Mac, sipping at the water. ‘Trust the Koreans to find a bunch of hard-ons like this lot.’

The four-wheel drive crested a ridge and started into a steep incline down the road connecting the Papuan highlands with the coastal plain. Mac instinctively pulled back into his seat and put his foot on the back of the driver’s seat, the sensation like the downhill section of a rollercoaster.

The road went down the side of a large spur for what looked like fifteen or twenty k and Mac knew immediately they’d be spotted from the air. Before he could warn Kaui, the second Black Hawk appeared, about a kilometre across the valley, its ‘9V’ registration marking it as a Singapore-registered aircraft.

‘Got company,’ muttered Mac, and all heads swivelled to the right side of the Nissan. ‘Options, Kaui?’

Keeping his eyes on the Hawk’s door-gunner in the opened fuselage, Kaui said something in Papuan to Albert, who replied to his boss then hesitated, glancing at Mac. Mac suspected they’d decided on a plan but were worried about freaking out the Anglo.

Ordering the driver to pull over under the cover of the forest canopy, Kaui looked mischievous. ‘Got an idea,’ he said, opening his door and sliding off the seat.

‘Okay,’ snapped Mac. ‘But none of that wacky Papuan shit, all right?’

The five of them jogged along the forest floor, the altitude and humidity almost choking Mac’s breath out of him as he struggled to keep up with the Papuans. In his days with the Royal Marines Commandos, he’d ended up doing the SBS swimmer-canoeist course which culminated in a survival run in the Brunei jungle. It had almost killed him, and he had a lasting memory of the way a Malaysian candidate had taken the whole thing in his stride, as if eating snakes and scraping leeches in an environment where you could barely breathe was the most natural thing in the world. Mac felt that now – the Papuans loping along in board shorts, talking with one another, while Mac stumbled along in the Saffa fatigues and military boots. In front of him, Albert and the Papuan who’d dressed his burn each carried a piece of the Patrol’s back seat, though Mac wasn’t totally sure why.

Kaui ran point, slowing every so often to get a sighting of the mercenaries’ helo through the high canopy. After ten minutes, Mac saw the Papuans waiting ahead and walked the last fifty metres to them, his legs rubbery, lungs empty.

‘Water, fellers,’ he gasped as he put a hand on a tree for support. ‘Need a drink.’

The OPM boys chuckled and Kaui pointed down to a steeply inclined water race. It consisted of a half-pipe that was at least three metres across, set in concrete braces. Water half-filled the race and it was moving at speed. Climbing one of the concrete braces of the structure, Mac dipped his cupped hand into the manmade rapid and drank greedily. Looking up, he saw that although the forest had been cleared to build the water race, that had been probably ten years ago, and the canopy had almost joined over the half-pipe again.

His thirst sated, Mac turned to find Kaui and the other OPM operators beside him on the large concrete brace, still carrying the Patrol’s back seats.

‘What are they for?’ asked Mac, as Albert laid the foam and fabric back seat on the surface of the rapids, making water rise up and over it.

‘Get on,’ said Kaui, smiling broadly.

‘Get on what?’ demanded Mac.

‘Your raft,’ winked Kaui.

Mac stared at him. He’d first met Kaui at UQ, when Mac was a solid centre for the university rugby club and Kaui was a flashy winger. They’d shared a sense of humour and an understanding of bending the rules as far as they had to be bent in order to win. He liked the man and trusted him, but Kaui also liked to make Anglos uncomfortable when they came into his world.

‘This is a wind-up, right?’ laughed Mac. ‘I’m not getting on that thing!’

Kaui deadpanned him and the sound of the mercs’ helo thromped above the screech of birds and the rush of the water race.

‘Fuck, mate,’ spat Mac, not wanting to lose face. ‘What is this?’

‘Slurry flume – it’s how they get the copper ore from Lok Kok to the loading terminal at the coast.’

‘Slurry?’ asked Mac, sceptical.

‘Yeah, but when the mine’s shut down for maintenance, they just run overflow from the reservoir down it,’ said Kaui.

‘Where does it go? How far does it drop like this?’ said Mac.

Shrugging, Kaui said, ‘Well, it drops like this to the coastal plain, then it goes through pumping stations to the port at Amamapare.’

‘Fuck’s sake, Kaui,’ said Mac, certain that the other Papuans were finding this highly amusing.

‘We need to get off the road,’ Kaui pointed out. ‘Less you want to run through the jungle all day?’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ grumbled Mac as he leaned forward onto the Patrol’s foam seat, water immediately rushing up the back of his shirt and through the Steyr. Mac had performed HALO jumps from planes and nocturnal combat-diving missions. But just standing at the top of the big slide at Wet ’n’ Wild on the Gold Coast gave him sweaty palms.

‘See you down there, Mac,’ shouted Kaui, suddenly pushing the foam seat into the rapid. Before Mac could protest, Albert was landing on his back. The makeshift raft took off like a bullet out of a gun and as they accelerated Mac wondered how his youthful visions of being a gentleman spy had turned into tobogganing down a mine slurry pipe in West Papua, being held down by a large local called Albert.

Sensing Mac’s fear, Albert whispered into his ear that it was all going to be okay, that it was a cakewalk the whole way down. Then they crested a ridge and the half-pipe turned into a full pipe as it went almost vertical.

Mac’s screams echoed for thousands of metres as they free-fell into the darkness.

Mac lay on the floor of the Hino minibus with Kaui as Albert drove through the outskirts of Amamapare, the port on the south coast of West Papua which serviced the major mines in the highlands. The South African mercs would be looking for payback regardless of whether the Korean mining company was still paying them. They’d be staking out the airports in the southern part of West Papua, and if they had connections in Jakarta, the Indonesian military might help them look for Mac and Kaui.

They found a small copying and business centre and Albert went in, opened Mac’s mail box and returned with his emergency pack of passports, credit cards and a change of clothes. Driving in silence through Amamapare, the eventual grinding sounds of conveyor belts and ore spreaders indicated they were probably in Portsite, where ships were loaded with what was dug out of the Lok Kok mine.

‘Sounds like your stop, Mac,’ said Kaui in the darkness.

Still recovering from his terror-ride down the slurry pipe, Mac wanted to be grateful to Kaui but he’d lost his sense of humour. People often misunderstood his special forces background: to succeed in that world was not about reckless risks, it was all about calculated, controlled execution. And free-falling into a slurry pipe was not his idea of control.