Mark Abernethy - Double back

‘And what else?’ asked Mac, pointing at the radio handset that sat the bottom of Yohannes’s pack.

‘Call him, if problem in jungle,’ said the boy, eyes like saucers as Mac handed him a chocolate bar before giving one to Rodrigo, who cheered up with the gift.

‘What problem?’ asked Mac.

‘Soldier, thief, militia,’ said Yohannes, getting the Hershey wrapper off in record time. ‘If anyone try to take pack, if soldier around, we must call Korea.’

‘And then?’ asked Mac.

‘Then, walk back and then a lot of carrier come along then,’ nodded Yohannes. ‘’Cos safe now.’

‘Who do you take the packs to?’ asked Mac.

Pointing, Yohannes indicated the airfield.

‘You take it down there?’

‘Yes, mister,’ said Yohannes.

‘You know his name?’

‘No, mister.’

‘No?’

‘No, mister – a secret.’

‘I bet it is,’ muttered Mac, and handed another chocolate bar to each kid.

Looking down on the airfield from the OP, Mac slugged at water and tried to get his mind clear. He hated complications, disliked civilians involving themselves in the action.

‘What do you want to do with them?’ came Robbo’s voice from behind him.

‘Can’t let them go down to the base,’ said Mac, eyes on the admin block. ‘We’d be made and we still have two locations to cover.’

‘So?’ asked Robbo.

‘So I don’t want them with us either,’ admitted Mac. ‘We don’t have enough food, and we don’t have the numbers to run a security detail while doing the op.’

‘It’s better than the alternative,’ said Robbo after a pause.

‘The choice is between bad and worse,’ said Mac. ‘Bad might be one thing; worse might be six troopers and a spook getting torn to pieces by a door-gunner doing some target practice. We’re sitting ducks out here once we’re made.’

‘Well, the obvious is out of the question, Macca,’ said Robbo, uneasy, his foot kicking into the dust.

Jaw muscles clenching, Mac tried to stay calm. ‘The fact that we both know the obvious sort of resolves the question, doesn’t it?’

‘My boys wouldn’t let us do it, McQueen. And I’d side with them, so no – it doesn’t resolve the question.’

Mac nodded and looked down at the ground, tried to think of a way forward. ‘Okay, Robbo. The lesser evil is taking them along but we need a stop-loss.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Robbo. Mac knew he’d been a handy bullrider as a teenager and Robbo sometimes took his leave in Canada and the United States, taking eight-second rides for cash. There was a coiled quality to the man that wasn’t always relaxing to be around.

‘If they directly endanger our lives, then we vote on it,’ said Robbo. ‘There’s seven of us, so stop-loss is four votes in favour.’

‘And the proposer gets the gig,’ said Mac.

‘Of course,’ said Robbo.

It was 12.34 when they arrived at the escarpment overlooking the river gorge. The local boys walked in the middle of the troop, rope nooses around their throats which were connected by a rope leash to Toolie’s hand. The idea was that if they tried to run, a decent tug on the leash would tighten the rope around their necks.

‘This your footpad?’ Mac asked Yohannes.

‘Yes, mister,’ said the boy.

‘Got an idea,’ said Mac.

They stopped and Johnno and Didge jogged up a rise to assess the ground ahead.

Pulling the money bags from the boys’ packs, Mac smashed the radio on a tree and threw it in pieces on the ground.

‘Never liked that radio much anyhow,’ mumbled Beast.

After asking Beast for his knife, Mac cut a slice into the inside of his forearm and held the wound over the first empty pack, letting the blood run over it.

‘Robbo, can we get some more blood?’ asked Mac.

Nodding at Beast, the big redhead took his knife back and gave Mac a questioning look.

‘The other one,’ said Mac, ‘and some on the radio if you want.’

When there was enough blood to make it look good, Mac asked for Rodrigo’s shirt, took it and wrapped it around a small log, making sure the 49ers emblem was visible. Then he tied it up by the sleeves on the reverse side, hoping it would look like a boy floating in the river at the foot of the gorge.

After swinging the log back and forth until he had some momentum, Robbo let go of it and they watched as it arced through the air and plunged into the river twenty metres below. Within seconds, the T-shirt-covered log had submerged and disappeared, ruining the desired effect of a body floating in the river.

They watched and waited, but the log didn’t resurface.

‘Fucked that up good and proper,’ mumbled Robbo.

‘Have to think of something else,’ said Mac. ‘Just don’t want the Indonesian Army chasing us for their money.’

As they took turns on the water bottles, Robbo and Mac looked at the map and decided on the safest way into the Lombok facility.

Panting, Didge and Johnno came down from the peak.

‘More helos heading for that airfield,’ said Didge. ‘Four of them.’

‘No interest in us?’ asked Robbo. ‘Shooters hanging out the doors?’

‘Couldn’t see,’ said Didge. ‘Too far away and they were gone before we got the binos on them.’

‘Okay,’ said Robbo, nodding. ‘Let’s move.’

Mac pulled the rucksack over his shoulders onto his wet back, letting out the straps slightly. He was now carrying what he estimated was two hundred thousand US dollars through the Timor bush.

Didge led them out, and as he did, he looked over the escarpment. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘That looks like the kid.’

Looking over, Mac saw the 49ers T-shirt floating with the other logs in the river eddy. It looked like a body and, with any luck, the people looking for their money might think that the boys had been whacked.

Pillars of smoke rose into the sky as Robbo stopped them on the outskirts of Maliana.

They had camped in a hide overnight and travelled carefully but slowly through the well-populated countryside during the day, avoiding contact with the locals or military. It was now Saturday afternoon and they’d have about ten hours of darkness in which to infiltrate Lombok and then snatch Blackbird, before heading back across the island to the Sunday RV with the Royal Australian Navy. On Monday the ballot would open and by then Mac and the 63 Recon Troop were supposed to be out of harm’s way.

‘Shit,’ said Robbo, before passing the field-glasses to Mac. ‘How many more houses can they burn?’

Making his own sweep with the binos, Mac saw thick smoke erupting from one of Maliana’s satellite hamlets about eight kilometres in the distance.

‘Got a pain-free route to Saturn?’ asked Mac, referring to Lombok by its operational code name. ‘Lot of open ground out there.’

‘If we go to the west of this village, we can tab down that river valley to the target,’ said Robbo, pointing.

The sound of distant assault-rifle fire drifted to their position and Mac felt nervous reflux threatening. He wanted to say something about Rodrigo, who’d been sulking since they’d picked him up and had then descended into hysterical tears once he’d seen the smoke around Maliana. But the time wasn’t right.

‘Can you give me eyes on this valley over here, boys?’ Robbo asked Mitch and Toolie. ‘We’ll RV in thirty minutes at the head of the valley. Can do?’

‘Can do, Sarge,’ said Toolie, before the two of them moved off in a crouch.

Back with the main group, Mac drank from a water bottle and saw Didge sitting and talking with Rodrigo. The kid wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, his bottom lip puffy. For Mac, the two kids were still an unwanted complication, impairing the troop’s ability to saddle up and move quickly and silently through the countryside. The militias and soldiers around Maliana had scared him shitless the first time around. Mac just wanted to do his job without ending up on his knees in the changing sheds of the Ginasio.