Mark Abernethy - Double back

‘Nice work, Blue Team,’ mumbled Didge as Johnno and Beast pulled the two soldiers into the far lee of the building, where they could no longer be seen by Mac and Didge.

Abruptly, Robbo appeared around the corner of the building, suppressed handgun held in cup-and-saucer. Pausing, he nodded and crept quickly towards the gap they’d cut in the fence, followed by Beast with a body in a blanket carried in a fireman’s lift. Johnno worked the sweep as they moved out of the Kopassus camp.

‘Nice work, boys,’ said Didge, standing and sweeping his rifle across the camp, looking for any problems.

Blackbird proved to be both cooperative and fit, and they got to the camp at the observation post shortly before 3.30 am. Leaving Mac and Blackbird in the bivvy, the rest of the 63 Recon Troop grabbed food and water and crawled through to the OP to check what they’d been missing in the past twenty-four hours.

Getting himself comfortable against the bamboo wall, Mac took a decent look at the girl for the first time since they’d cleared out of Maliana. She was tall and athletic, intelligent-looking and quite beautiful, even in a set of borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt.

‘We’ll have a rest, something to eat, and then we’re off,’ said Mac.

‘Where are we going?’ she said in a deep register, not betraying too much in the way of nerves.

‘Out of here,’ said Mac. ‘To a safer place.’

‘Australia? Java?’ she asked, quite self-assured.

‘Not up to me,’ said Mac, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘All you have to do is keep walking and I’ll take care of the rest, okay?’

‘Okay,’ she said, peeling an orange. ‘Your name Mac, right?’

‘That’s it.’

‘You Australian intelligence?’

‘Let’s have a bigger conversation once we’re out of here, okay, Maria?’

‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Can talk now if you want.’

‘I’m not going to debrief you,’ said Mac, ‘but I would like to get an idea what you’ve been speaking to Kopassus about.’

‘Just what I told the Australians,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘I tell the malai all the things I was saying to Canadian.’

‘Everything? You told them everything?’ asked Mac. ‘They torture you, Maria?’

‘No,’ she said, looking away.

‘They threaten your family?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded.

Fishing in his bag, Mac came out with some bars of chocolate, which he handed to Blackbird. He tried to soften the questions.

‘They ask you what you looked at in the army headquarters in Dili?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘They ask you if you stole anything?’

‘Yes, and I told them what I taken.’

‘They ask if you’d taken copies?’ said Mac with a smile.

‘No, mister,’ said Blackbird, shaking her head but keeping her eyes on Mac’s in the dark.

Informal interrogation was best conducted with enough light to clock every reaction, every shift of the eyes and set of the mouth. But Mac had fallen into this line of conversation and he didn’t want to halt the momentum, even as he detected a lie.

‘Did you make any copies at army headquarters, Maria?’ asked Mac.

‘No,’ she said, quite calm.

‘Did you tell the Canadian everything you discovered?’

‘Yes, mister,’ she said, smiling.

‘Did you see any papers in army headquarters about Operasi Ipoh?’ asked Mac conversationally.

‘No, mister,’ she said.

‘Operasi Bali?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Operasi Boa?’

‘No – not that one.’

‘And no copies of any army papers?’ said Mac, bringing his cadence down to suggest the end of a conversation.

‘No, mister,’ she said, her voice relieved.

‘Where did you hide the copies, Maria?’

‘I didn’t… I mean, I took no copies.’

‘The copies of Operasi Boa?’

Waving her hands, and then putting her face in them, Blackbird hesitated. ‘Now I all confused.’

‘Take your time, Maria,’ said Mac, like her best friend.

‘Okay,’ she sighed, breathing out.

Handing her a fresh bottle of water, Mac looked at his G-Shock. ‘Drink up, we’ll leave in five.’

Looking out through the bamboo walls, Mac’s heart was racing. Was there an ambush? Was the snatch a set-up? He did not know. What he did know was that Kopassus intel failing to ask Blackbird if she copied files during her time at army HQ was about as likely as the Ferrari F-1 pit crew turning up for a race without a single wrench. It was a spurious story, and meant that either Kopassus was after something totally different to what Mac and Tony Davidson assumed they were after, or Blackbird was walking both sides of the street.

Mac’s coded radio call to the Royal Australian Navy was successful and he got a commitment for an exfil at midnight, from the same place where he’d set down after the swim from the submarine. Getting close to finishing a successful gig, Mac’s excitement was counterbalanced by stress and fatigue. If someone gave him an air-bed, a shower and a proper pillow, he’d sleep for twelve hours without touching the sides. But for now he was buzzing along on adrenaline, trying to get to the finish line.

They made fast time across the river into West Timor and overland to the kijang ’s hide with Robbo and Beast as the escort. The soldiers flirted with Blackbird, who deflected their attentions with a cold politeness that she’d probably been practising since childhood. She was a cool cookie, this one, thought Mac, and he vowed to test her again before he handed her over.

At 7.03 am the soldiers led them to the head of the river valley that they’d run up two days ago, and Mac made his seven o’clock call to Jim at DIA.

‘Saturn recon was a success,’ said Mac. ‘But I can’t send the pics – busted the camera, so I’ll have to walk them out. Got samples too.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Jim.

‘There were a bunch of people in that underground facility,’ said Mac, wanting to know more about Lombok. ‘Most of them were dead.’

‘Okay – any alive?’ asked Jim.

‘Yeah, about eighty,’ said Mac, wanting Jim to do more of the explaining.

‘Do we have Blackbird?’ said Jim, before Mac could push.

‘She’s here, but she’s claiming no knowledge of Boa or any file copies,’ said Mac.

‘She lying?’ asked Jim.

‘I reckon,’ said Mac.

‘Well that’s unfortunate,’ said Jim.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, because comms chatter from the Indonesian Army suggests Boa is being brought forward – looks like whatever it is will start around the ballot results.’

‘That’s a week away,’ said Mac.

‘Sure. That reminds me,’ said Jim, sounding concerned, ‘you didn’t start that direct action at Saturn?’

‘No, that was Falintil. Villagers on the south coast had been disappearing and they traced them to Saturn. The guards didn’t want to open the gates.’

‘Don’t want to pressure you, buddy,’ said Jim. ‘But Blackbird is now the key to this. Got an ETA?’

‘I’ll get her there as fast as I can,’ said Mac.

‘Drive safely, McQueen – Tony wants a word.’

‘Macca!’ came the greeting, so loud Mac had to pull his ear from the sat phone.

‘Tony, how’s it going?’ asked Mac.

‘Good, mate – just got back from Dili, where I had a chat with our friend.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yep. Still don’t know who the President’s Men are in Jakarta, but he said Kopassus had been running some disinformation strategies.’

‘Like what?’ asked Mac.

‘Like the false flag Operation Extermination – which is really a cover for Boa,’ said Davidson. ‘Like some of the assurances that Canberra is relying on – assurances that the Indonesian military is trying to bring order to Timor, rather than supporting the militias.’