Mark Abernethy - Double back

As Robbo signalled for the group to get moving, there was a familiar sound.

Searching for the source, Mac’s eyes settled on Didge, who was puffing into his cupped hands, fingers fanning over the top, making an improvised didgeridoo. The music quacked out of Didge’s hands, making the two boys smile and laugh.

‘Here come the brolga,’ said Didge quickly, creating a squeaking sound above the hum of the didgeridoo.

‘And then along come goanna,’ he smiled, adding a hiss to the orchestra of sounds as the boys started clapping with joy.

Mac slugged at his water and decided to relax and enjoy Didge’s performance. Robbo took a seat beside him as Didge added the croc to his story.

‘We were in Bougainville for BEL-ISI last year and Didge starts up with this stuff in the bar,’ said Robbo, shaking his head. ‘Ten minutes later the whole boozer’s crying like a bunch of girls.’

‘Homesick?’ asked Mac.

‘Something bad,’ said Robbo.

‘When I was growing up in Rockie, they didn’t let the blackfellas play their didge in town,’ said Mac. ‘But it still sounds like home.’

‘I’m from out Narrabri,’ said Robbo, ‘and I’ll tell ya, mate, no blackfella would have dared come into my dad’s pub and do the didge. Would have got bashed for that.’

‘Kids seem to like it,’ said Mac, lost in the sounds of Cape York.

‘Yeah, and Didge isn’t just an entertainer,’ said Robbo. ‘When the shit starts, he’s the bloke you want beside you.’

It was late afternoon when Robbo signalled for them to establish base in the uplands surrounding the Lombok facility. After they’d set up, Robbo called Didge, Johnno and Mac to have a recce. From a stand of trees overlooking the Lombok AgriCorp car park, they saw about a hundred people milling in the same place where Amir Sudarto had apprehended Mac a few days earlier. The incinerator stack was not operating but the six ventilator outlets were visible in their stands of shrubs, line abreast down the middle of the otherwise empty paddock.

‘Four sentries at the gate house,’ mumbled Robbo as he looked through the field-glasses.

Army trucks were idling, waiting to leave the facility, their drivers handing over clipboards which were checked by the sentries. The people in the car park were lining up, suitcases in hand, and were being escorted into the back of army trucks. It wasn’t what Mac had been expecting.

Mac took the field-glasses from Robbo. Looking through them, he saw a bunch of women close up: hair pulled back in tight buns, glasses, middle-class blouses and expensive rings. They were laughing as their suitcases were loaded by soldiers. If Mac had to guess, he’d say the technical staff at the facility had finished their contracts and were heading home.

Sweeping the glasses around towards the other end of the compound, Mac concentrated on the pillbox guard tower in the middle of the far fence line, where DIA suspected there was an underground facility. There were no soldiers in the tower and Mac decided that if the ventilator outlets weren’t too tricky to open, they could be the best way into the hidden part of Lombok.

‘Well?’ asked Robbo.

‘Can you see any unfriendlies in that far sentry box?’ asked Mac, handing the field-glasses back to Robbo. ‘I think they might be shutting down the facility, and reducing the security – that might give us our way in.’

‘We talking about those ventilators?’ asked Robbo, adjusting the focus ring.

‘I reckon we stealth to them and break in,’ said Mac. ‘I can’t see anything easier.’

‘Roger that,’ said Robbo, ‘but check the K-9, your eleven.’

Mac turned slightly and clocked them immediately: two MPs, one of them with a German shepherd straining on a chain leash. ‘Fuck!’ muttered Mac.

As the sun set Mac knelt and pushed caps of Xanax out of the foil while Didge created slits in the chunks of cuscus flesh and pushed the capsules into the meat.

Beside them, Robbo averted his eyes and his nose.

‘That’s disgusting,’ he mumbled.

‘Nah, boss,’ said Didge, chuckling as he pushed another Xanax capsule into a chunk of cuscus. ‘Good eating, him,’ he said, playing up the Cape York talk. ‘Feed a whole mob on him, there.’

‘Your mob from down Barmaga, down there?’ aped Mac.

‘Watch it, bra,’ growled Didge, reverting to Strine. ‘Don’t get cheeky.’

They waited for the guards to start another loop, then Mac followed Didge down to an area by the fence where they were partially unsighted to the main entry guard house.

‘You’re clear, boys,’ crackled Robbo’s voice over the radio headsets.

Mac followed Didge to the fence, grabbed four chunks of cuscus meat and threw them onto the grass on the other side.

Moving back to Robbo, they waited for the guards to do their tour. Darkness was settling as the guards walked the near fence, smoking. The German shepherd tried to lurch at one of the chunks of meat as the guards passed it, but he couldn’t reach and was wrenched back into line.

‘Dammit,’ snarled Didge.

The guards kept to their route and Mac prayed the dog would notice the baits that Didge threw. But then the guards stopped, lighting cigarettes, while the talkative one remonstrated.

‘Are these people going to talk all night?’ whispered Robbo. ‘It’s like a bloody sewing circle down there.’

The guards moved on and, as they settled back into their rhythm, the shepherd suddenly lurched to his right, snapped at a bait with flashing teeth, and was back in line before the handler could tug at him.

‘Sleep tight,’ said Robbo.

Robbo talked them through the final instructions: Mitch and Beast were covering the fence lines with supporting fire should the need arise, while Johnno was going to access the main switchboard for the facility and see if he could disable the security camera systems. Didge was going into the facility with Mac, while Toolie played babysitter.

Going through final prep for the gig, Mac listened to Robbo give the various contingencies and warnings. There was a chance that the radios wouldn’t operate underground, so they agreed on a sixty-minute shutdown for the gig. If Didge and Mac weren’t out of there in under an hour, the rest of 63 Recon would do the Harold.

As Didge checked and rechecked his B amp;E gear, Robbo’s tone of voice changed.

‘What the fuck’s that?’ he hissed.

Mac followed Robbo’s gaze through his field-glasses to the main block of the compound.

‘ Shit!’ muttered Mac when he saw what Robbo was looking at. Three people were standing in front of the main loading bay, illuminated by floodlights and all dressed in white NIOSH-10 clothing – better known as biohazard suits.

‘What the fuck is this, McQueen?’ snarled Robbo, still looking through the glasses. ‘What is this place?’

‘You know, vaccines and -’

‘Vaccines?’ rasped Robbo.

‘Look,’ said Mac, voice soothing. ‘It may be nothing, we’re just checking -’

‘What is this fucking place?’ demanded Robbo, slow and threatening.

Though he realised it didn’t look good, Mac tried to hold firm. ‘It’s classified, Robbo.’

Robbo planted his hands on his hips, his face furious.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, trying to lighten it. ‘It’s officially vaccine research, but there’s an undeclared area underground, okay? It’s probably a drug lab.’

‘Vaccines? Are you fucking kidding me?!’

‘Look -’

‘It’s just a place where they grow diseases, McQueen!’ said Robbo.

‘Yeah, I know, mate,’ said Mac. ‘It’s the underground facility we’re interested in.’

‘Oh, now I feel better,’ said Robbo sarcastically. ‘When were you going to tell me? Huh?’ said Robbo, tapping Mac in the chest. ‘You don’t think I have the right to warn my own men about walking into a place like this?’