Mark Abernethy - Double back

Standing, Mac advanced as the spook held on to his shoulder wound. Shutting down the Benz transporter, Bongo jumped from the cab and came to Mac as Joao picked up the girl, put her on his hip and walked her to the shelter.

Standing over the injured spook, Mac gestured with his Beretta. ‘Phone?’

The bloke nodded.

Waving his gun, Mac said, ‘Just show me, don’t touch it – you know the drill.’

Grimacing with pain, the spook pointed with his left hand.

‘In the Cruiser?’ asked Mac.

The spook nodded before passing out.

‘Fuck!’ muttered Mac, moving to the 4?4.

‘What’s up?’ asked Bongo.

‘I wanted a chat,’ said Mac, looking into the interior of the LandCruiser, which was now plastered with blood and hair. ‘But a bloke in shock might not be very talkative.’

Reaching over to the centre console, Mac pulled out half a Motorola phone.

‘Won’t be getting much out of that, brother,’ said Bongo, kicking the spook’s face.

Climbing into the cab, Mac took a closer look in the console and glove box, but there was nothing of interest. The dozer made it obvious why they were up here but there were no written orders to confirm it.

The other three Falintil guerrillas jogged through the gates, wide-eyed and breathless. Seeing Mac and Bongo, they peeled away to Joao and the girl under the shelter.

Gulping down the adrenaline and the stress, Mac’s face pulsed where he’d been hit by Amir Sudarto. His left jaw still ached. Checking his Beretta, he spoke softly to Bongo.

‘I was cool to go along with this, but now I have to get back to Denpasar, okay, mate?’

Nodding, Bongo looked around forlornly as the sun strengthened behind the horizon. ‘Guess cross-country with Falintil is going to be too slow, right?’

‘Yeah, and after this,’ said Mac, gesturing around him with the gun, ‘it may be too dangerous.’

‘What about the UN?’ asked Bongo. ‘They got a helo in Maliana.’

‘I’m not going back to Maliana, and I’m not trusting my life to the UN,’ said Mac.

‘Okay,’ nodded Bongo. ‘So, the Cruiser or the truck?’

‘The Cruiser’s an intel vehicle – draw too much attention,’ said Mac. ‘Have to be the truck.’

‘Okay, McQueen,’ smiled Bongo. ‘I got an idea, but we gotta move fast, okay?’

Joao and his guerrillas had surrounded the spook and were lashing out at the man with kicks as Bongo and Mac moved for the truck.

‘Don’t interrupt,’ whispered Bongo, as Mac slowed.

‘I need to ask him something,’ whispered Mac as they got to the cab of the truck and Bongo unbuttoned his shirt.

‘We need to get going before the sun comes up,’ said Bongo.

‘Can we take him with us?’ asked Mac.

‘No, brother – this is Falintil’s kill, not ours.’

Mac decided not to argue. The spook might know every last secret about Blackbird, but he wouldn’t tell Mac in a hurry.

‘So what are they saying?’ asked Mac, unnerved by the ferocity of Joao’s anger.

‘He’s saying, Who are you to betray your fellow human? ’ said Bongo, a little reticent as he pulled off his slacks and folded them. Mac noticed a Conquistador crucifix tattooed on his left shoulder blade, the legend INRI inscribed inside the cross piece.

Spittle flew off Joao’s lips as he reached down, picked up one of the stolen shoes and threw it at the spook’s face.

‘What’s he saying now?’ asked Mac.

‘Now he’s saying, You kill hundreds of my people, and then you steal their shoes? What kind of man are you? ’ said Bongo, pulling on the truck driver’s fatigue pants and buttoning the army shirt.

Walking over to the Falintil leader, Mac offered his hand.

‘Thanks, Joao,’ said Mac. ‘If you can get any intel on what was happening here, please let me know?’ He handed over his Arafura business card with his mobile phone number on it.

‘When I know, you’ll know, okay?’ said Joao, tears welling in his eyes. ‘Your friend has my phone number.’

‘I won’t forget what you guys did for me, okay?’ said Mac.

‘You better not,’ said Joao, ‘because you gotta tell Australia what you saw up here.’

Striding in, Bongo gave the lot of them hugs, then turned for the truck and pushed at Mac’s shoulder.

‘Time to get you out of here, McQueen,’ he said, lighting a smoke and reaching for the cab door.

Climbing in the other side, Mac looked back at the spook with the Falintil guerrillas.

‘What happens now?’ asked Mac, as the truck went into first and Bongo released the handbrake.

‘That intel guy – he gonna die the local way.’

‘The local way?’ asked Mac, confused.

‘See those machetes?’

Mac nodded. Most rural Timorese carried machetes that they sharpened fastidiously.

‘They gonna take his skin off and hang it on the fence, brother, and his scalp gonna hang above it, like a halo,’ said Bongo, continuing the truck’s long arc around the Falintil group and then reaching for third gear as they accelerated through the camp gates.

‘Pretty heavy punishment for a guy just doing his job,’ said Mac, finding a full bottle of water in the console.

Snorting, Bongo reached forward to the radio dial.

‘What!’ demanded Mac.

‘Well, I left out something that Joao was saying.’

‘Like?’ asked Mac.

‘Like, he’s saying to the intel guy, How were you going to make us vote against independence, by having sex with our children? ’

‘I see,’ said Mac, feeling sick.

‘Not like Australia, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘This the local way.’

They made fast time north in the transporter before the sun came up. Indonesia may have possessed one of the world’s largest standing armies but it wasn’t one that rose with the day.

Sitting in the half-cab behind Bongo, Mac stayed out of sight and allowed Bongo to play the cheery army truck driver, delivering a bulldozer to another part of the island. Heading north from Memo, then taking the triangle road that would allow them to avoid Maliana, they hit the main road to Balibo at 5.41 am and had it to themselves.

‘Won’t be like this in ninety minutes,’ said Bongo, lighting a smoke. ‘Be Timor rush hour.’

‘What does that look like?’ asked Mac from his rear perch.

‘Horses, buffalo and women walking,’ said Bongo. ‘Some militia too,’ he added, more serious.

‘Speaking of militia,’ said Mac, ‘is Jessica safe?’

‘Hope so, brother. The Falintil women gonna walk her down to Zumalai, get her into a UN convoy.’

‘You think she’ll go?’ asked Mac.

‘Well, you know her, right?’ grimaced Bongo. ‘I told her she had to go now – being raped and killed is not a good way to find her father.’

‘What did she say?’

Bongo took his time answering. ‘She said, I worry about my father – you worry about Richard. ’

‘She said that?’ asked Mac, a smile breaking out involuntarily.

‘Yeah. She like you, that one. Like you a lot.’

Bongo kept the big rig at an even sixty kilometres per hour, not getting past fourth gear. Even the main thoroughfares of East Timor were unsealed and winding, and frequently punctuated by washouts from beneath or landslides from above.

Slowing for a washout that had been filled in and paved over in a big uneven dip, Mac had to get out of the cab and signal Bongo through the gap to avoid falling in the gorge while not bogging in the roadside ditch.

‘How long have the roads been like this?’ asked Mac, getting back into the half-cab.

‘Twenty, thirty years,’ shrugged Bongo, getting the transporter moving again. ‘The locals just fix it themselves. Some rocks, some trees.’