Mark Abernethy: Double back

‘Probably not,’ said Mac, thinking of the political considerations that meant they had to rush the Blackbird snatch and then disappear from Bobonaro. ‘But I can try.’

Unbuckling and moving forward in the cabin, Mac powered up the Harris radio that was built into US military aircraft. Shielding the settings from his comrades, he found a frequency on the UHF band, picked up the chunky handset and keyed the mic.

‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, copy?’

Waiting, Mac could envisage Robbo’s crew trying to stealth up to a militia or a Kopassus troop, and getting his annoying message.

‘Six-Three, 63 – this is Albion, are you copying, over?’

A faint sound of static hissed from the earpiece and Mac was about to contact the navy’s Shoal Bay comms centre in Darwin when a familiar Aussie voice crackled into Mac’s ear.

‘Albion, Albion this is 63 – please confirm ID, over.’

The cheeky bastard, thought Mac. ‘Six-Three – bullriders from Narrabri wear skirts, confirm, over.’

‘ID confirmed. And you’ll keep, Albion,’ growled Robbo. ‘You’ll fucking keep.’

‘Six-Three, we might need fire support at Neptune, can do?’

‘Negative, Albion – currently Mars-bound and covert, over.’

‘Understand, 63 – good luck, over.’

Sitting back in his seat, Mac buckled up as they swooped onto the tiny island that lay between Dili and Flores. As they depowered on the plantation runway, Mac looked out his window and saw an unmarked Black Hawk being refuelled beside a red Quonset building.

The Citation’s co-pilot unlatched the door and they all unbuckled.

‘What about MIT10?’ said Jim suddenly.

‘Shit, that’s right,’ said Tommy, fingers flashing on the keyboard. ‘He had that golf shirt with the logo -’

‘MIT10?’ asked Mac.

‘Yeah,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s an MIT alumni association.’

‘For people who can’t get over how smart they are,’ said Jim.

‘Eureka! Nice work, boss,’ said Tommy, turning the laptop and letting Jim see.

‘Fuck me,’ muttered Jim as the Citation’s foldout stairs hit the tarmac. ‘He was setting this up under our noses. Look at this one – sent four days ago.’

‘Probably after you briefed me,’ said Mac. ‘Anything we can use?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Jim, swapping a look with Tommy. ‘If I’m not mistaken, we have the bank numbers and the agreements here.’

Tapping through the MIT10 emails, Jim’s face lightened.

‘Simon is running a trust account containing forty million US dollars,’ said Jim, thoughtful. ‘From the wording of the emails, I’d say Haryono can see it but Simon controls it – Simon’s been holding it out there as bait, as a carrot to get the project finished.’

‘If we can access it, we could have some fun,’ said Mac.

‘We’d need somewhere to push it,’ said Tommy.

‘Here’s the sick part, guys,’ said Jim, pointing at the screen. ‘Haryono is getting a bonus of ten million to spray the SARS over the populated areas of Bobonaro, Oecussi, Ainaro and Cova Lima, and then he gets a bonus of thirty million if the UN declares at least ninety per cent of the Maubere population of those regencies dead within three days of the spraying.’

‘Shit,’ said Bongo, disgusted.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Mac, trying to stay calm. ‘We have to get Haryono and Kopassus to shut this down – we need the Indonesians to do this themselves, to turn on Simon and the Koreans.’

‘By using the money?’ asked Bongo, smiling.

‘You’re reading me, brother,’ said Mac.

‘Let’s hear it,’ said Jim.

‘Okay,’ said Mac, getting it straight in his own mind. ‘But first, Bongo has to call his mate Joao and hope he has his sat phone switched on.’

Lugging the gun bags across the tarmac, the four of them clambered into the Black Hawk as the humidity and fumes swirled around them.

‘Neptune’s hot,’ said Jim to Mac and Bongo, taking his seat and yelling over the engines. ‘But it’s where we’ll find Haryono – we’ll deplane in the adjacent valley, hike back over. Copy?’

Mac and Bongo nodded.

‘Last chance for anyone to get off,’ said Jim as the loadmaster slid home the side door and the revs came up. ‘All I can offer is a damaged career and a lifelong feud with Kopassus. But it might be fun.’

‘Never much liked Indonesia anyhow,’ said Bongo, staring out of his wraparound sunnies.

Smiling and giving thumbs-up, Mac resigned himself to a course of action that owed more to the heart than the mind. He crossed himself briefly, watched Bongo do the same, and then the Hawk was climbing into the clear skies above Alor and their hands were reaching into the gun bags.

The pillars of smoke were flattened over the pale-green hills of East Timor as they chugged into the valley south of Neptune airfield. It looked as though half the province was on fire. Taking turns with Jim’s field-glasses, they saw Indonesian Huey helicopters in the distance and small spotter planes, but no sign of the Singapore-registered Black Hawks carrying spray booms on their undercarriage.

‘Too much breeze?’ shouted Mac, handing the binos to Jim. ‘It’ll be sundown in a couple of hours – we may have a chance to stop this tonight.’

The sat phone rang and Jim held it to his ear, covering the other ear with his cupped hand.

‘Yep?’ said Jim, and then he shook a finger at Tommy, who pulled the laptop from his backpack and opened it.

‘Okay,’ yelled Jim into the phone. ‘I’ll put him on.’

Handing the sat phone to Tommy, who started typing as he hooked it under his chin, Jim smiled at Mac.

‘Thank Christ for the privacy-invading capacity of the US intelligence community,’ he said.

‘What have we got?’ yelled Mac.

‘NSA code-breakers have run the account numbers and name on Simon’s trust account at the Koryo Bank, and they’ve got us in. We now control the money.’

Bongo waited until Tommy had finished with the sat phone, then tried Joao again.

‘No luck,’ he said, shrugging at Mac.

‘Try again,’ said Mac, as the helo pushed on.

Mac wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to stop Operasi Boa. There were only four of them, they would be on foot, in an army base and surrounded by Kopassus special forces. They had to have something up the sleeve, and given that the entire Lombok-Korean-Simon consortium seemed to be about money, he wanted to lever the situation with the moolah.

‘We got company!’ said Jim, eyes now glued to the field-glasses. ‘F-16s, at our nine o’clock.’

Squinting out the window in the port-side door, Mac saw two blue-grey jet fighters streaking low across the sky, about fifteen kilometres north.

‘They interested?’ asked Mac.

Crouching forward, Jim leaned into the cockpit and had a shouted conversation with the pilot before pushing back to sit beside Mac.

‘We just got a “friend or foe” challenge,’ said Jim, bringing the glasses back to his face and peering out the window. ‘Might be time to touch down.’

The co-pilot’s visored face appeared and Jim gave thumbs-up.

‘Shit,’ said Jim, as the helo descended.

‘Better down there than up here,’ shouted Bongo, zipping his gun bag and checking his M4 for load and safety.

The Black Hawk dropped to the tree line as the F-16s banked and turned like a couple of blue sharks.

As the Hawk eased to a clearing in the jungle, the four of them leapt to the forest floor and ran for cover. As fast as it had descended the helo was back in the air, climbing and banking away.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jim, and Bongo moved to point, leading the group down to a small river.

A moment later the whooshing scream of two fighter jets roared over them, driving the birds and monkeys crazy.