Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘And Khan makes nukes and sells them to terrorists, right?’

Ari frowned. ‘Maybe.’

‘So, these bombings are nukes?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Ari, seemingly unconvinced.

‘Come on, mate,’ snapped Mac. ‘I’m in this now.’

Ari looked at Mac, looked away slightly, looked back.

‘This big explosion, with hole under road. This is very large bomb, or -‘

‘So they’d need a foreign group for that, right?’ said Mac.

‘You need person who can get bomb, person who can use bomb, and also way of bringing this bomb into Bali, yes? I am not thinking that young man with sarung and big smile is doing this, yes?’

Mac nodded. ‘So tell me about Hassan Ali.’

‘Not much to say,’ said Ari. ‘We was watching Hassan and his peoples for two weeks, fi rst in Java and then in Bali, yes?’

Mac nodded, impatient.

‘So on morning of the bombings, Hassan group split. My colleague follow one group back to Java and I stay here, watching the Puri. Then

– ‘ Ari made an explosion gesture with his hands.

Mac had a hundred things on his mind, what with the role he’d been assigned to with the bombings, now called Operation Alliance.

He couldn’t get his mind around all the facts, and he was tired.

With the terror of the gunfi ght and the emotional scenes they’d just witnessed at the hospital, his mind was a blur. He swung his legs out of the car, but stopped as he suddenly remembered that face in the gloom, at the back of the pantry on Penang Princess.

‘Was Abu Samir in the Java crew?’ asked Mac.

Ari fl inched, his grey eyes squinting and glowing like pack-ice.

‘What is it you know about Samir?’ he spat aggressively. Just as quickly the Russian recovered, exhaled and thumped his right palm on the Camry steering wheel.

‘Sorry, McQueen,’ he said, grabbing his smokes from the centre console and sparking one. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Ari’s expression suddenly changed. ‘It is the fucking BAIS again.’

Mac turned and saw a black LandCruiser parked behind the Camry.

Freddi was probably waiting for Mac to get out.

Mac faced Ari again. ‘So?’

Ari stared through the windscreen and sighed. Intel people hated giving too much away, even if it could help them in the medium term. ‘You say and then I say, yes?’ He wound down his window, fl icked an ash.

‘We had eyes on Samir, off Flores yesterday afternoon,’ said Mac, not much to hide. ‘On a JI freighter.’

‘Local eyes?’ asked Ari.

‘It’s confi rmed. It was Samir,’ replied Mac.

Both men sat pondering, getting the timeline right. It seemed like Abu Samir had left for Java on the morning of the bombing and boarded Penang Princess. If the alignment was as it seemed, they could have both Hassan and Samir for the Kuta bombing – the ‘pro’ crew Freddi Gardjito had warned Mac about.

‘Your turn,’ said Mac. ‘That look you gave me when I mentioned Samir?’

Ari stared at Mac, his face grave. ‘I have lost contact with my colleague. Not for a day have I heard from him – I am thinking he is dead,’ he said, then took a huge drag on his ciggie before fl icking it through the window. ‘I am betting this Samir has killed him, fuck his mother.’

Mac got out, watched the Camry drive away and walked to the rear passenger door of the black LandCruiser, slid across to the centre of the seat and leaned forward.

Freddi turned to look at him from the front passenger seat.

‘Getting along very well with Ari,’ he said, big round face impassive.

Mac shrugged, looked at the driver – a thin-faced twenty-eight-year-old Javanese – who stared straight back at him. The Cruiser smelled of Juicy Fruit gum and cordite. ‘Just talking,’ said Mac.

‘Just talking outside the Puri and then just talking while following Hassan to the docks? Lot of talking, McQueen,’ said Freddi. ‘But not much when the shooting started, huh?’

The luggage area at the back of the Cruiser was fi lled with guns, radio sets and Kevlar vests, and Mac saw that Freddi and his driver were still in their black combat pants. The boys from BAIS liked to roll.

‘Your guys catch Hassan?’ asked Mac, trying to make this about the Indonesians.

‘Not yet. But you are disappointing me, McQueen. You know this?’

Mac sighed. ‘Mate!’

‘Given how many Aussies died in the bombings, we were going to be in a loop, remember? Mate? ‘

‘Ari wanted a chat – I had no idea who was in the Puri. Honest,’ said Mac.

Freddi snorted.

‘Honest, Freddi,’ Mac repeated. ‘I’m down here to run the media side of the joint investigation. I’m not even armed.’

‘Joint investigation, eh McQueen?’ said Freddi. ‘Your federal police are telling everyone that it’s their – how you say it – show. Yes, it’s an AFP show.’

‘They did not, Freddi!’

Freddi gave him the old Mona Lisa, and Mac felt himself groaning.

He was hating the public affairs gig before it had even properly started.

Perceptions were such an organic thing that trying to control or alter them seemed futile.

‘By the way,’ said Freddi, changing his tone, ‘I had a call from a friend of mine thirty minutes ago. You know Sosa?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac, quite aware that Freddi already knew the answer to that question.

‘He wanted to get a message to you. Professional courtesy.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Akbar was busted out early this evening.’

Mac’s heart skipped. ‘What? Busted out?! Where did they have him?’

‘Can’t tell you that, McQueen, but I can tell you it was all over pretty quickly.’

Mac felt the bottom falling out of his week. The UN gig seemed to be slipping ever further from his grasp. ‘And don’t tell me, Freddi, it was a pro job, right?’

‘No, no, McQueen,’ said the Indonesian, sarcastic. ‘We have all these Muslim fi shermen and farmers running around who know about shaped charges and how to disable a Swiss security system -‘

Mac started to say that there were Indonesians who knew exactly how to do that, but Freddi leapt back in. ‘And have a chopper waiting for the exfi l.’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Mac muttered, getting out of the LandCruiser. He’d heard enough.

‘Don’t be a stranger, McQueen,’ said Freddi as the motor started.

‘I think there’s something there we can work on.’

The Cruiser squealed into the darkness.

Mac got out of the shower, dried off and changed into casual clothes and boat shoes. He combed his thin blond hair back from his face and stared back into his pale eyes in the mirror. Jenny said he didn’t look thirty-two, but sometimes he felt ten years older.

He wondered what he was going to do about Freddi Gardjito.

Freddi knew Mac had done the Akbar snatch and now Freddi was trying to lure him into a BAIS operation. His ears were still ringing from all the gunfi re and he’d stood far too long in the shower, trying to get the shakes out of his system. In the past two days there had been that kid he’d had to drop on Penang Princess, Ari shooting the Hassan soldier on the back of the patrol boat and Bronwyn in the hospital screaming to die. It was too much, one on top of the other, and he was jangled. It was weird how Jenny could be staunch about the very things that turned him to water. Maybe it was a character defect.

Chester wasn’t around, but his laptop was beside his bed, jammed into a briefcase. Mac thought about having a nosey-poke but fl agged it. Instead he sat on his bed, which had been made, and called Garvs. Mac had come into Kuta without his laptop and with no clean computer. He didn’t like jumping on hotel putes with public networks and dipping into the ASIS secure intranet.