Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘Almost there, McQueen. Need some vests.’

The incoming radio was a choir of adrenaline and screaming. Then they all heard the unmistakable pop of automatic weapons bursting out of the radio’s speaker. Mac swivelled around and pulled two blue Kevlar vests from the rear compartment, passed them forward, then grabbed one for himself, fastening it across his overalls. Freddi asked for weapons and Mac passed him two M4s and a pistol-grip pumpy that Freddi wanted.

They had a spare M4 and Mac grabbed it, glad for the fi repower.

Freddi took a fi nal call and told Purni to pull over. They found a small natural culvert and Purni reversed the Cruiser into it. They were gasping fast and shallow as Freddi and Mac kicked their doors to get them open against the undergrowth.

They stood at the front of the Cruiser and, as the big V8 dinked, Freddi gave them the drum. Two carloads of bad guys had broken through and were heading their way, all heavily armed. The Kopassus helo had a fi re in the tail-rotor and the other BAIS operators who’d been giving chase in their LandCruiser had had to stand off given the numerical disadvantage. Another helo was hours away so it was down to Freddi, Mac and Purni.

Purni and Mac stayed on the side of the track where the Cruiser was hidden while Freddi crossed to the other side, stealthing forward and listening, his dark combat fatigue pants blending in with his HiTecs and vest. He had an M4 rifl e on one arm and the matt-black pumpy on the other. Mac noticed he didn’t take his sunnies off as he established his hide in the bushes.

‘Three on one, okay? And don’t go past your three o’clock,’ said Freddi.

Meaning: all three weapons on each vehicle as it came through, and don’t shoot directly across the road.

Eight seconds later, the fi rst sounds of a vehicle rose over the birds and monkeys. There was a faint scream and a thud and the wailing sounds of a 4x4 being driven hard.

‘Let’s go to work,’ said Freddi.

Mac checked for safety and load for the third time since he’d got out of the Cruiser. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he got into his hide and took a standing marksman stance, shouldered the M4 and made a brief ranging scan of the road and his expected fi eld of fi re. He visualised the whole thing, saw the target, then the narrow reaction window and saw himself fi ring with total steadiness.

Purni took a kneeling marksman pose fi fteen metres further down the road.

The mechanical screams got louder and suddenly there was a white Ford pick-up truck powering towards them, doing at least one-thirty klicks. Mac aimed up and as the Ford came into his pre-set range he squeezed on the trigger, letting a blaze of full-auto go at the windscreen of the F350 crew cab.

The Ford’s windscreen fell apart as the air fi lled with lead from both sides of the road. A shooter leaning over the Ford’s crew cab fi red at Freddi. As the truck passed Mac, he saw shooters in the well side, one over the cab and the other leaning on the rear rollbar. Mac ducked back into the culvert as the rear shooter let loose, shots fi ring through the trees above him. But the damage was done and the F350 was sliding off the track like a train derailing. There was a loud crash and the sound of rending steel and breaking trees as the Ford – obviously with a dead-man’s foot – kept the revs up deep into the jungle.

Mac got up and checked Purni and Freddi. They were both okay.

Freddi held his hand up to say no to chasing the shot-up Ford. Mac’s heart pounded in his temples as the sound of another vehicle got louder and they settled back in their hides. It came into view and they let their rifl es drop as they saw the other BAIS LandCruiser.

Freddi stood, put a hand up, and the black Cruiser locked up and slid for sixty metres.

‘We’re missing one truck,’ said Freddi.

Mac and Purni joined him in the middle of the track, checking their rifl es and peering ahead to see if there was another vehicle coming. The Cruiser’s white reversing lights came on and whoever was driving it gave it full revs as it backed up to the three of them and slid to a halt. Freddi jogged to the front passenger door and had a hurried conference with his colleague. Freddi pointed, held up one fi nger, pointed back in the opposite direction, pointed at the ground and shook his head. It seemed he wanted the other LandCruiser to wait until Freddi’s crew had dealt with the fi rst Ford and then both of them could go after the missing truck.

Freddi looked like he’d come to the same conclusion about the second truck as Mac. That they’d sent the B-team on ahead, and the pros were elsewhere, laying a trap. But they were under time pressures and having paused for a few seconds, Freddi relented and allowed the other BAIS crew to double-back and locate Hassan’s gang.

The Ford had cleared an obvious path into the jungle but the three of them stuck to the margins, staying slow, keeping cover as they moved deeper into the thick undergrowth. Whoever these people were, they’d already busted Akbar out of a BAIS detention facility, downed a Kopassus helo and – as best they could fi gure it – created enormous devastation in Kuta. Whatever else might be said about them, they appeared to know what they were doing.

The F350 had ended up in a dry creek bed, its nose jammed deep into dirt, steam rising out of the hissing engine. The well side was empty and they surrounded it very carefully, looked under it and moved up to the cab from a reverse angle. The driver – Pakistani with a shiny helmet of hair – slumped across the centre console with two bullets in his face. The front passenger was younger, maybe just out of his teens but also Pakistani, and he had a bullet hole high on his chest, the blood oozing through his shirt. Mac reckoned that left three unaccounted for: two in the well side and the one face he saw in the rear seats of the crew cab.

The air was heavy with jungle humidity and a cacophony of birds and monkeys but Freddi heard something above it. He put his fi nger up and turned slowly to the front of the truck and then looked beyond, suddenly grabbing Mac’s forearm and pointing up into the trees, where one of the shooters from the well side was jammed in a fork of branches about fi ve metres off the ground. He was unarmed and groaning, his arms and legs twisted in directions they shouldn’t have been in. The F350 must have hit the creek bed with enough speed that the bloke had got airborne, the very reason Mac’s mother had always warned him not to ride in the back of utes.

They moved past the shooter in the tree and Purni picked up a trail, crouched down and had a look, then looked back at Freddi and held up two fi ngers. Freddi lifted his M4 into the ready position and they moved on, fanning out. The heat pushed in on Mac, adding to the nervous sweat under his Kevlar vest. He stealthed carefully through scrubby undergrowth and was suddenly facing a Pakistani bloke on the other side of the clearing, twenty metres away. Pointing his rifl e, the Pakistani fi red several three-shot bursts at him. Mac dropped and rolled to his right through scrub and into a shallow depression, then aimed up as greenery shredded around him. Freddi and Purni opened up on the shooter and he scarpered into the bushes.

Getting to his feet, Mac looked at Freddi, who gave the shoot-and-move sign that had Mac moving fi rst, Freddi second and Purni third while the others laid down support fi re across the clearing.

Mac’s heart raced and his hands slipped on his M4. Panting, he set his eyes on a shady hollow and, when the other two fi red across the clearing, he sprinted and dived for the hollow. Supporting himself on his elbows, he started shooting into the bushes as Freddi made his run across open ground. Freddi didn’t stop running, kept fi ring and went into the bushes after the shooter. Purni and Mac went in after him and found another larger clearing beyond the bushes. They watched two men run across the open space: the shooter closest to them, Akbar beside him.