Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Israeli intelligence had always had problems getting traction in Indonesia; not just because it wasn’t possible to enter the Republic on an Israeli passport, but because there were severe cultural differences between the Indons and the Israelis that made it hard for Israeli-born Mossad agents to blend in. They were too intense, for starters. The Javanese used a lot of humour in their communications, which made it easy for Australians to get along in the Archipelago, but Israelis tended to stare too long and too seriously into another man’s eyes, which instantly triggered the Javanese social defences. The Israelis also had a basic personality clash in the region. Even when a Javanese wanted to say no, he would nod, smile, make a joke, slap you on the back, equivocate – do whatever had to be done to say no without actually saying the word. The Israelis – in Mac’s experience – saw this face-saving mechanism as weakness or uncertainty, and even the most highly trained of them found it hard not to press their advantage. They just didn’t get it. Mac had tried to point this out to Mossad agents he’d known in the past but mostly they argued with his assessment, so he’d smile, slap them on the back, buy them a drink.

For these reasons, Israel’s intelligence services tended to use their Russian-born-and-bred operators in Indonesia and Malaysia.

And in the absence of an Israeli embassy or consulate, they ran front companies in shipping, telecoms and import-export which helped them to raise intelligence on the world’s largest Muslim nation.

Mac knew all this and should have at least countered Ari, fi gured him out better. He’d been tired and rushed and had fallen into assumptions. It was his fault.

‘Think I overreacted, Fred?’

‘Sure,’ said Freddi, smiling. ‘But we’re all on edge, yeah?’

Mac keyed his Nokia, got through to Ari in the tailing car. ‘Sorry about that, mate. Had a brain-snap.’

‘You hit like boxer – all Australians punch like this?’

‘All Russians have iron heads like this?’ said Mac shaking his left hand out the window.

Ari boomed laughter into the phone.

‘Listen, Ari,’ said Mac. ‘I’ve got a bunch of US dollars – can I buy you all lunch?’ He looked around and Freddi and Purni nodded.

‘Too the fucking right, mite,’ shouted Ari.

There was a riverside fi sh stand on the road back inland from Belawan to Medan. Freddi, Ari and Purni sat at the table, talking about Hassan and Gorilla, while Mac tried to fi nd some beers. The woman behind the stand pulled a green curtain aside and opened a dark blue esky on the fl oor behind it, pulling three Tigers from the ice. In northern Sumatra the conservative Muslims were not insulted by alcohol consumption so long as it wasn’t prominently displayed at the counter. A big glass fridge of booze might be construed as tempting the believers.

Mac put the beers on the table, with Purni the only one not to reach for a bottle.

‘That wasn’t the other device – no way,’ Freddi was saying to Ari.

‘You are right,’ said Ari, gulping at the cold beer. ‘Not enough blast, no incendiary phase.’

Mac wanted more on the Port Authority blast. ‘So what happened back there?’

‘Stored anfo,’ said Freddi. ‘That’s my guess. Microwaves can spark the fumes, we all know that.’

‘So Hassan’s still got the other device?’

Ari and Freddi were silent, naturally cagey.

‘Or it’s stored, yes?’ asked Ari. ‘And Hassan and his camel-fuckers are trying to get off this island.’

While Mac wolfed down the grilled fi sh chunks, he thought about how he was going to get either Ari or Freddi to come clean on what had destroyed the Sari Club.

‘So, one of you two going to tell me what this other device is?’

They both did their shrugs, the Javanese and Russian versions almost a parody of each other.

‘Well?’ asked Mac.

‘Nothing to say, McQueen,’ said Freddi, washing his food down with beer. ‘It’s small, it has a huge yield, it was brought in by the Pakistanis. And we are ninety-nine per cent sure they brought in two of them.’

A thromp sounded in the distance and as it got louder Freddi stood with his portable radio handset and walked out of the courtyard into the sun. Looking over, Mac saw three Indonesian Army Hueys about half a mile away, heading north up the coast at full speed.

Keying the radio, Freddi demanded something, and after a few seconds an adrenaline-charged voice yelled down the airwaves in raucous outbursts. Mac recognised the shortness of breath and the nervous excitement – it was the way he’d felt for the last three days.

Freddi barked into the radio as he strode back towards the fi sh shack. Mac noticed a change in the noise of the helos and that one of the Hueys had doubled back towards them.

‘Only room for two,’ snapped Freddi, then pointed at Purni and rattled an order.

‘It’s still Handmaiden, McQueen. Okay?’ said Freddi as Purni ran out to the Cruiser.

Mac’s heart sank. He just wanted to eat and sleep properly and go to New York.

Ari stood beside Mac, annoyed. ‘So where is this? Where are we going?’

Freddi looked back at them, smiling. ‘This could be it.’

As they walked outside, the Huey was landing in the grassed forecourt area putting up a blanket of dust, leaves and insects. The traffi c on the road to Medan slowed to a crawl as Purni brought over two M4s, two vests and a black Cordura bag fi lled with what Mac assumed were spare magazines, replacement radio handsets and the interrogation kit Indonesian intelligence operatives travelled around with. Mac threw his Oakley backpack over his left shoulder and took the Cordura bag, a vest and an M4. The dust drove past Mac’s sunnies and into his eyes as they moved towards where the loadmaster had his arm extended out of the army helo. Mac got into the cabin, took a hammock seat, then looked out and saw Freddi yelling something into Purni’s ear and giving him the radio, before jogging to the Huey with his vest and assault rifl e. Freddi got in and sat beside Mac, facing forward with his back against the rear bulkhead.

The revs came up and the loadmaster slid home the side door.

As the helo rose Mac noticed two things simultaneously: the person sitting beside the pilot was Major Benni Sudarto. And outside on the grass apron, Purni was looking at the rising helo… but Ari was looking at Purni with a look Mac couldn’t quite decipher.

They landed about ten miles north of a pirate town called Idi, on the Malaccan coast. Deplaning onto the dirt pan of a coastal airfi eld, Mac let two of the Kopassus troopers go in front of him as the dust fl ew in the mid-afternoon heat haze of northern Sumatra. Sudarto’s intel had the Hassan gang planning to use this long-abandoned airfi eld, and from Freddi’s comments Mac guessed that Kopassus and BAIS were intercepting signals. The Indonesian military, police and intelligence agencies were confi dent they had shut down Northern Sumatra and were about to trap the Kuta bombers.

Sudarto led the boys to the edges of the dirt pan where palms and wild pineapples created a natural cover. Then the helos powered up and got airborne, their loadmasters setting up. 50-cal door-mounted guns for possible air support. Mac wore a borrowed Kevlar special forces helmet but he’d missed out on a headset. He wouldn’t have been able to follow the Bahasa anyway, but he’d have liked to stay connected with Freddi.

Sudarto split them into three groups. Two went opposite ways around the perimeter of the airfi eld. Their job was to fl ush out any tangos who might be hiding, and if they couldn’t fi nd any, to dig in, create a hide and wait for orders. Sudarto was taking Freddi, Mac and three Kopassus troopers to check the array of old buildings that sat behind the concrete control tower, its black-and-white chequered paint job telling Mac that this had been a military installation at some point, probably during Konfrontasi – a dispute from the early 1960s when Indonesia tried to stop the creation of the modern Malaysia by making military incursions into the new country.