Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

They were making for the warehouse when Purni sped out the door and jogged towards them. ‘You gotta smell this,’ he yelled.

‘Anfo fumes.’

Freddi lifted his radio handset but Purni put out a hand before Mac could. Radio waves and microwaves from a mobile phone could trigger unstable explosive vapours. The next step was to shut down the apron and get the army and fi re services to deal with it.

The PA bloke stepped out of the building and even from one hundred metres away the three of them all heard his mobile ring.

They screamed at him not to take the call, in different languages, but almost in slow motion his hand went to his hip, picked up the phone and pressed a button – the knee-jerk of modern life. As he put the phone to his ear the steel-clad walls of the warehouse bulged and split before expanding outward in a rush of air that sent the PA guy across the apron in pieces.

Freddi, Purni and Mac dropped to the ground as the shock wave swept along the container port, taking pieces of building and port worker with it. Mac got his head down, covered his ears and head, and prayed. The blast boomed, and then roared, the air shaking along with the concrete apron. Then came the tinkling, banging, scraping and smashing of thousands of pieces of material coming to earth and hitting other buildings, like the devil’s rain.

They lay like that for thirty seconds, lifting their heads only as the noise of shouts and sirens took over from where the explosion’s roar left off. When Mac sat up, he spat something that felt like hair from his lip and ran his hands over his head, checking for injuries.

Freddi stood, hitting at dust from his pants and looking around like a marooned man trying to work out where he’d landed. Purni sat with his arms on his knees, shaking his head between his legs and coughing at something stuck in his throat.

Dust and paper circulated like a confetti parade. Dead birds fell like a biblical curse.

Mac and Freddi stared at where the southern end of Sunda Logistics had stood thirty seconds ago. It now looked like a skeleton, like an industrial version of a carcass in an elephant graveyard. Blue-black smoke drifted upwards on the breeze and the smell of fuel and ammonia was strong enough to settle on Mac’s lips.

Mac saw something move. ‘Fred, over here.’

They started towards what looked like a body about fi fty metres away from the blast site. As they got closer it looked less hopeful.

Walking the fi nal few metres, Mac gagged on fi nding the PA guy, who was missing both legs and most of the bladder and bowel areas. With his one remaining arm he was trying to hold his entrails in while looking at the sky and mouthing something.

‘ Ambulan! Ambulan! Sekerang-sekerang! Ambulan! ‘ cried Freddi, screaming himself hoarse as he waved his arms at the rescue people wandering onto the apron.

Finally a port worker started their way, and Freddi screamed at him to get over to them, now!

When the worker arrived he visibly freaked at the sight of his co-worker. Freddi slapped the bloke, made him look into his eyes, gave him some orders. And when the worker tried to make a call on his mobile, Freddi grabbed it and threw it away, grabbed the worker by the shirt and remonstrated with him.

The bloke ran off, yelling something at other workers coming into the blast area, some of whom already had mobile phones to their ears.

Freddi gave a statement to the Criminal Investigations offi cers while Purni, Mac and Ari waited by the emergency vehicles inside the port security gates. Ari chain-smoked and stared at the ground, chewing on his gum, gingerly trying to keep his weight off the leg with the bullet wound. Purni was green and Mac slurped on bottled water, still feeling stunned.

The medics wheeled the Port Authority guy past on a gurney and Mac noticed they’d found a leg and some bits that might have been an arm, which they’d placed on the end of the gurney. There was a dark blanket over the guy’s face. Freddi went over and said something to the ambulance guys, who shook their heads – the international sign for The guy didn’t make it.

Mac noticed that on the salvaged leg was a pair of red brief underwear, same as his own.

‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking skywards. When he looked down again he instinctively crossed himself and said a little prayer. Beside him, Freddi – who was Catholic – did the same thing, then Ari joined them.

Unable to believe what he’d just seen, Mac’s facial muscles froze into a mask of anger. Then he got a fl ash of red in his brain, like he was back at Nudgee College, in the dorms, blueing with the Lenihan brothers. Hissing through gritted teeth he stepped up to Ari, threw a left-hook body-rip to the bloke’s right kidney and then followed it with a left hook to his right jaw.

Ari fell sideways, his legs buckling at the knees as he tried for balance, a spray of pink saliva squirting from the other side of his mouth. The Indonesian cops and Port Authority people reacted by going for their guns but Mac didn’t care. Standing over Ari he lifted his polo shirt and rested his hand on his Heckler. Ari pushed himself onto his left elbow and shook his head gingerly, trying to focus his eyes. He looked up at Mac, confused as a child. ‘I got it wrong?’

Mac nodded, his nostrils fl aring. ‘Don’t tell me, all Christians look the same, right? Just some dumb shit about making a cross – how hard can it be?’

Ari nodded, gently touching his right jaw. ‘I get it wrong sometimes,’ he shrugged. ‘Which one this time?’

‘You’re wearing an Orthodox crucifi x, so you cross yourself with three fi ngers,’ growled Mac as Freddi came over.

‘Everything okay, McQueen?’ asked Freddi.

‘Bloke pretends to be an Orthodox, then crosses himself with an open hand, touches his left shoulder fi rst,’ he spat, kicking at Ari’s boot. ‘That’s the Catholic way, you fucking ponce!’

‘Sorry, McQueen,’ said Ari.

Mac breathed out long and hard, tried for some composure. ‘So what are you?’

Ari looked away, spat blood out of his mouth.

‘He’s Israeli,’ said Freddi, sounding a bit confused. ‘He didn’t tell you this?’

‘No. I thought he was Russian.’

Freddi chuckled. ‘He is – he was. But now he’s Ari Scharansky, our local Mossad guy.’

Mac sulked in the front seat of the BAIS LandCruiser, humiliated, furious with Ari, angry with himself for his outburst, annoyed with Freddi for letting the issue just drift along.

‘Could happen to anyone, McQueen,’ smiled Freddi, driving instead of Purni.

‘Oh, this is funny?’

‘Well,’ said Freddi, ‘just a bit.’

‘If I pulled that on you in Australia, it would be all about the uppity Anglos and their superiority complex, Freddi. We’d never hear the end of it.’

‘Sorry, maate. We just get used to our foreign spooks and their covers. You know what Jakarta’s like.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘I honestly didn’t think to tell you. In fact, I thought you guys knew each other.’

Burning with adolescent rage, Mac shot him a look that could kill and Freddi spluttered, turned away laughing.

Collecting himself, Freddi got serious. ‘Anyway, McQueen, that was nice work on the Orthodox thing. Gonna tell my guys that one.’

Mac relaxed a little. It actually was funny and he’d be loading on the jokes with a shovel if it had happened to someone else. When you fi rst started in the fi rm, the overarching rule was: Assumption is the gateway to disaster. It sounded plodding when you were young and had huge faith in your own infallibility. But it was great advice. Mac had made a huge assumption about Ari, probably because he’d been tired and in shock at the state of Kuta when he’d fi rst arrived. But in the spy game, all assumptions had to be discarded on meeting someone new. Just because it looked like a duck and sounded like a duck, didn’t mean it wasn’t a goose.