Mark Abernethy: Double back

‘What’s up?’ whispered Mac, as Bongo raised his hand for silence.

Bongo’s mumbled conversations had started up each time they’d heard footfalls in the stockade outside their cell door. The base stockade was staffed by soldiers of the 1635 Regiment, and Bongo was conversing with them in Tetum, the native dialect of East Timor.

‘He says one of the white people will be found in a helicopter, after the spraying,’ said Bongo. ‘The others will be found in the rubble of the base – they’re dynamiting the whole place.’

Their first plan had been to turn Haryono against Simon, which had worked too well. Simon was dead, and the rest of them – with Jessica along for the ride – now looked like being the fall guys for Operasi Boa. The Indonesian Army would find their bodies, connect them with the SARS deaths and the helicopters, and the story would hit the newspapers. Mac already knew what part he’d play – he was connected with Shareholder Services under his Don Jeffries alias, and he had no doubt he’d be ‘found’ in a downed helo belonging to Pik Berger’s company, filled with the SARS bio-weapon. He’d be just another greedy Aussie mercenary, and the papers would love it.

‘These local soldiers don’t care what’s being sprayed on their own families?’ asked Jim, annoyed.

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Bongo, sliding down the concrete wall to take a seat on the floor. ‘They don’t understand what I’m talking about. Spraying a disease onto a village is something they don’t comprehend – they think it’s a joke.’

Stirring, Jessica pushed herself off Mac’s chest and yawned. She was filthy, her face drawn, eyes puffy from fatigue and from crying; she’d been overwhelmed by Simon’s shooting.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘Jail,’ said Mac. ‘But I have to ask – where were you?’

‘Would you believe Kota Baru barracks?’ she said sheepishly.

‘Kota Baru?!’ said Mac. ‘That’s in East Timor. Are you crazy? I thought you were heading back to California?’

‘I was, but a very nice woman at Larrakeyah Army Base told me that Dad was seen at Kota Baru,’ said Jessica, looking pointedly at Mac and then Bongo.

‘Really?’ asked Mac, thinking that Gillian Baddely should keep her scheming female mind to herself.

‘Yeah, so I decided to go up there and see if I could make a deal and they arrested me,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Next thing I know, I’m taken to an airfield and this crazy American is telling me what a genius he is.’

‘Jesus,’ said Mac. ‘You drove up to the Kota Baru barracks to cut a deal with Kopassus?’

‘Don’t mess with me, buster!’ said Jessica, sitting up. ‘What was that finely tuned operation in the mess? And by the way, I guess I’m now calling you McQueen? And Manny – you’re Bongo, right?

‘Sure,’ said Bongo. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, I’ll live,’ she said. ‘This happened before, in Guatemala.’

‘Guatemala?’ asked Mac, surprised.

‘I was doing charity work through BruinCorps, building schools and stuff, and I got caught by the local Marxists,’ said Jessica, matter-of-fact.

‘And?’ asked Mac.

‘We talked about their grievances and they let me go,’ she said.

‘But – hang on,’ said Mac. ‘ Guatemala? What were you doing down there?’

‘Remember I told you Dad paid my college fees?’ said Jessica.

‘Yep,’ said Mac.

‘He said I had to do a week of community service each year – he didn’t want me to become a spoiled brat.’

‘A brat?’ said Mac, chuckling.

‘It was a drag at first,’ said Jessica. ‘But in my second year at UCLA, I started spending most of the summer vacation down there.’

‘You hear that?’ asked Bongo, laughing and kicking at Mac’s foot.

‘Yeah, I heard it,’ said Mac, avoiding Jessica’s gaze.

‘So, you guys soldiers, spies – something like that?’ asked Jessica, sitting cross-legged.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Mac.

‘And you two?’ asked Jessica, turning to Jim and Tommy, who just smiled noncommittally.

‘So what is this place?’ asked Jessica.

‘See the helicopters?’ asked Mac. ‘And those tanks, and the booms that attach to the underside of the helos?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Jessica.

‘They spray a bio-weapon,’ said Mac, so tired he could barely keep his eyelids from dropping.

‘Bio-weapon?’ asked Jessica. ‘You mean like anthrax or something?’

‘Like that,’ said Jim. ‘But this one won’t kill most people.’

‘So -’

‘It gives most people a bad cold,’ said Jim, sounding resigned. ‘But Melanesian – and perhaps Polynesian – people contract a powerful pneumonia and die within forty-eight hours.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Jessica, looking from Mac to Bongo to make sure no one was pulling her leg. ‘It’s racially selective?’

‘No,’ said Jim. ‘It affects everyone, but it will kill the local Maubere people that it’s dropped on today. They have no immunity. It’s called an “Ethno-Bomb”.’

‘It even has a name?!’ said Jessica, amazed. ‘That’s disgusting! Why pick on people who already have so little?’

The four men sighed and looked away – nothing left to say. They’d done what they could and been caught in an historical no-man’s-land, unable to move militarily on Lombok AgriCorp for fear of disrupting the democratic process, yet unable to act within democratic norms because the Indonesian military still ran East Timor. They held a terrible secret yet were unable to do anything about it. Even the US Defense Department, when faced with a rogue from DIA, wanted the embarrassment minimised rather than Operasi Boa shut down. Mac wondered what the East Timorese had done to deserve their lot.

Grimacing in pain, Jessica fished in her pocket, pulled out a pocket knife and threw it to Bongo.

‘I forgot to give it back in Suai,’ said Jessica. ‘Although I guess you have no use for it now.’

Eyes glowing as he picked it up, Bongo opened the blade and then a series of long steel picks.

‘Farrier’s pocket knife,’ said Bongo, standing. ‘The most useless tool known to man – unless he owns a horse…’

‘Or is locked in a cell,’ said Mac, joining Bongo at the door.

Bongo removed the back-plate from the door and tumbled the last barrel in the old lock in less than five minutes.

‘I think the best we can do is disable the choppers and get out of here,’ whispered Jim. ‘I don’t know how to destroy that bio-weapon safely.’

Bongo spoke Tetum through the door and there was no reply, so he pulled back on the cell door and moved into the stockade corridor.

‘Okay,’ he mouthed, and the rest followed him through.

At the end of the hallway a fire axe was mounted on the wall, above a red pail. Grabbing the axe, Mac moved in behind Bongo, holding Jessica by the hand.

Pausing at the vestibule that led into the provost’s office, Bongo peeked through the door and indicated two guards to Mac. Unclasping the long blade of the farrier’s pocket knife, Bongo showed that he’d go right, leaving the left guard for Mac.

The bile rising in his throat, Mac watched Bongo count down from three and then they were through the door, the pale light before dawn gently caressing the sleepy young guard’s face as Mac brought the axe to his throat and held it there.

Waking with a start in his chair, the youngster from the 1635 Regiment tried to yell but Mac had a hand over his mouth. Grabbing the guards’ keys, Mac picked up their M16s and led them to a cell, threw them in and locked the door.

Joining the other four back at the guard’s station, Mac listened to Bongo spell it out: there were no other officers in this part of the building, and the other two guards were down the end of the building.