Mark Abernethy: Double back

‘Just bring the American,’ said Bongo.

Shrugging, Haryono tried to stall, and Bongo aimed his gun past the major-general’s head, shooting the next officer in the shoulder. Groaning, the officer fell to the floor.

‘The American, Ishy,’ said Bongo, very calm. ‘Pretty young white boy – can’t miss him.’

‘He around,’ said Haryono, trying to look at Bongo without turning his head.

Looking at Mac, Bongo lifted his eyebrows. Darting out of the mess, Mac headed back down the corridor, found the stairwell he’d passed and ascended the worn steps as quietly as he could.

The wood creaked as he carefully came around the first landing, and he continued to the next floor.

There were three doors off the large landing and Mac moved for the first. As he did, he noticed light creeping from under the middle one.

Stealthing to the door, his heart banging in his temples, he slowly pushed it open, hoping the hinges were oiled. The door swung back as Mac brought up his Beretta, trying to stay behind the doorjamb as he did. There was a desk at the other end of the room and a white man sitting behind it, a phone to his ear.

The man looked up and Mac looked into Simon’s wide eyes as he tried to make the ground to the desk. Simon’s hand went for a handgun on the blotter, and as Mac brought the unwieldy suppressed handgun up, Simon shot at him twice. Diving to his right, Mac crashed into a chair and sent a hat rack flying. Aiming for the desk, Mac waited for Simon to emerge and finish him off but suddenly his assailant was running across the room and through a side door.

Picking himself up, Mac moved carefully to the side door, panting and scared but uninjured from the fire-fight.

‘Simon!’ said Mac at the doorway, from his hide around the corner. ‘Time to end this, okay?’

‘It ends when I say so, McQueen,’ screamed Simon, his superior accent in no way diminished by his anger. ‘Those choppers are taking off tomorrow morning and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’

‘I’m not going to let you do it, Simon,’ said Mac, trying to control his ragged breathing. He just wanted Simon sitting in front of Haryono.

‘What do you care?’ taunted the American. ‘I mean, really?!’

‘Care?’ asked Mac.

‘I mean, come on – a bunch of jungle-bunnies? Why would you care if a few thousand of them died from a bad pneumonia? Every year millions die in the Third World from malaria and yellow fever.’

‘Come out and I’ll explain it,’ said Mac, getting his breath back.

‘Oh, I’m coming out, my friend,’ came Simon’s voice, getting closer to the door. ‘But you can’t shoot, okay?’

‘I’m not going to shoot, Simon,’ said Mac, meaning it. ‘You were the only one shooting, mate.’

‘Okay, McQueen, I’m coming out, so go easy, okay?’

Pulse pounding in his temple, Mac stood back from the doorjamb and aimed his gun.

Simon moved out of the doorway, holding a woman by a choker chain.

‘Shit!’ said Mac, immediately lowering his gun.

‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Simon, as Jessica Yarrow tried to move her lips beneath the grey duct tape.

Mac stumbled forward into the officers’ mess as Simon shoved him in the back. Faces turned as Mac stood still in front of the dining tables, embarrassed to be disarmed and to be dragging Jessica into this situation.

Bongo quickly grabbed Haryono by the hair and shoved his gun into the major-general’s neck, but Simon kept his nerve.

‘I don’t think so, Morales,’ said the American. ‘Pretty white girl versus an ugly old Javanese – do the math.’

Looking first to Jim and getting no backup, Bongo stared at Mac, who averted his eyes and stared at the carpet.

‘Fuck,’ muttered Bongo, allowing the Kopassus officers to rush him and take the weapon from his hands as Tommy and Jim were roughly disarmed. Amir Sudarto stood and issued orders to his men, who raced out of the mess. Through the windows, Mac could see the soldiers being roused from chow to search the base for more interlopers.

‘Don’t harm them,’ said Simon, waving his gun towards a group of chairs. ‘I have an idea.’

As the officers searched the captives and pushed them towards the chairs, Amir Sudarto walked back to Mac and eye-balled him.

‘G’day, Amir,’ said Mac. ‘Nasty scratch you got there.’

Sudarto’s nostrils flared and his dark eyes bore into Mac’s. ‘You and me, McQueen – we got the unfinished business, yeah?’

‘Sure, Amy,’ said Mac as Sudarto leaned in. ‘Guess we’re up for round three, right?’

‘So you can count?’ said Sudarto.

‘Sure,’ said Mac, poised for an attack. ‘But don’t let fear hold you back.’

His eyes turning to saucers, Sudarto threw a fast left elbow at Mac’s jaw, dropping him on the floor. Slightly dazed, Mac pushed himself onto his elbows, waiting for his vision to clear.

‘That’s enough, lieutenant,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s think about how we can use them?’

Sitting with Bongo, Jim and Tommy in the middle of the mess, surrounded by armed Kopassus officers, Mac watched Haryono and Sudarto storm out of the mess and he tried to think of options. Across the room, Jessica’s big blue eyes stared at Mac, pleading. She looked scared but not injured.

‘This what Mom and Dad thought you’d be doing when you got accepted for a master’s at MIT?’ said Jim, his cold rage aimed at Simon.

‘They wouldn’t understand,’ said Simon, his tone slightly dreamlike. ‘There are things I never knew about the world until I knew them.’

‘Think that makes you smart?’ snarled Jim, who had a dribble of blood running down his lip from an altercation with a Kopassus officer.

‘Not smart, Jimbo – just a greater understanding.’

‘Of what?’ asked Mac. ‘You make an Ethno-Bomb to prove you can?’

‘Oppenheimer did it,’ snapped Simon, jerking the choker chain around Jessica’s throat. ‘Apollo was the same thing – we went to the Moon, McQueen! What the fuck was that about?’

‘It wasn’t about weaponising a disease that kills one race,’ said Mac. ‘There’s already enough diseases that kill poor brown people – we don’t need to create weapons out of them.’

Mac could sense Bongo bristling beside him. Bongo Morales was a shoot-out guy and he’d be annoyed that Jim and Mac didn’t want to go with him.

‘Forget the weapons side of it,’ said Simon. ‘Think of the research, think of the applications!’

‘Applications?’ said Jim.

‘Can you imagine how fast we could evolve ourselves if we exploited the secrets of which races were the strongest, which ones had the genes to become super-beings?’ said Simon, his face flushed with excitement.

‘No offence, Simon,’ said Mac, ‘but why is it always dudes like you who have the super-race fantasies?’

The bullet sailed past his face and Mac ducked instinctively.

‘Don’t do it, Simon,’ Mac begged. ‘Just get on the phone and call it off, okay?’

‘Jesus,’ said Simon, rueful. ‘It was all going fine, we were going to launch this program and the UN were going to pay us for it.’

‘Clever guy,’ said Mac.

‘But you,’ said Simon, pointing at Mac, ‘the boy scout from Australia – you found that camp up in Memo, and you had no idea what you’d stumbled on, did you?’

‘Looked like a refugee camp that had got out of hand,’ shrugged Mac. ‘Turned into a death camp.’

‘Yeah, but they thought they knew,’ he said, indicating Jim and Tommy. ‘And suddenly, these idiots who were supposed to be monitoring Lombok are now sending an Aussie in there to take photos and have a look? I was thinking, “Holy shit! A bunch of morons from intel are going to unravel this whole thing?”’