Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Mac nodded with understanding. Sometimes those darned macaques were too good at the old triple-bluff, double-reverse logic thing. A girl needed to be on her game.

‘I’m Mac,’ he pointed at his chest. ‘What’s your name?’

The girl just stared at him, so Mac smiled, pretended to be shy.

‘Merpati,’ she said, ‘and Santo – Santoso.’

‘Brother?’

Merpati nodded. ‘Santo, brother.’

Mac thought about it, and said, ‘Merpati, I’m with my friends, at airfi eld, yes?’

The girl nodded.

‘But there might be big trouble, so you should go back to beach, yes?’ He pointed away from the airfi eld towards the coast which was about a kilometre east.

Merpati shook her head like a teacher’s pet. ‘The men there.’

Mac’s breath caught. ‘Men, on beach?’

‘In trees, at beach, yes,’ she said, nodding.

Hot air steamed in Mac’s throat as he tried to keep his breathing regular.

‘Trouble there too,’ she added.

‘Man?’ asked Mac, pretending to be calm. ‘Man like me?’

The girl shook her head, big eyes serious, then wiped her hand down her face, which in Indonesia meant normal looks like mine, not like yours.

‘Men tall?’ asked Mac.

Merpati pointed at Mac. Then she remembered something and her face lit up. ‘Man like, like… gorilla?’

Mac gulped and sensed movement through the leaves. A monkey yelled and a hornbill jumped off a branch as his brain screamed fucking ambush. Reaching for the kids’ hands to drag them out of the fi ring zone, he tried to pull them back towards the airfi eld with him, but Santo panicked and wriggled out of Mac’s grip and ran back into the clearing where they’d been playing with the monkey.

‘Stay here!’ Mac snapped at Merpati, and ran after the boy.

As he reached the clearing, Mac saw that Santo had already crossed the open space and was heading back towards Hassan’s people. Mac put on a sprint, trying to stay quiet, tackling the boy about ten metres past the clearing and slapping his hand over the kid’s mouth.

The jungle had turned so quiet they could hear the macaque muttering to itself in the tree. Santo’s little heart raced against Mac’s arm and tiny twig-breaks and footfalls were obvious now that Mac had his ear on the jungle fl oor. He pulled Santo under a log, the boy’s hair swishing forward and revealing a triangular birthmark that ran up behind his left ear and under his hair. Turning Santo over to face him, Mac pointed ahead, put a hush-hush fi nger to his lips and pleaded with his eyes. The boy seemed to get it. He was scared but he trusted Mac.

Mac felt a huge burden of responsibility and made a quick pact with God: If this boy does everything I say, can you let him live?

Putting his head up very slowly, Mac took a look over the parapet of the log. There was no movement, but the small noise he’d heard had come from an area at about a forty-fi ve degree angle to their hide.

Mac needed to get back to his M4 and Merpati, and get the two kids the hell out of there. Looking at Santo, he made a crawling motion with his fi ngers in the direction of Merpati. Santo nodded, scared but brave.

Mac and Santo lay on their stomachs and crawled, Mac’s left hand grasping the back of the boy’s T-shirt so there’d no more runners. The ground behind the log dipped slightly, hiding them from sight, and they moved quickly on their bellies into the clearing with the monkey tree. Behind the tree, Mac stood in a crouch, his heart going crazy.

He looked back and waited, wanting to locate the Hassan soldiers.

Stealthing across the clearing to where Merpati’s legs were visible, they all crouched behind the vine. Mac collected the M4, his eyes darting around in the eerie quiet of the jungle.

Mac wanted to move the kids but he didn’t want to lead Hassan’s people to Freddi and the Kopassus soldiers, which would benefi t no one.

He turned the kids, and aimed them on an angle forty-fi ve degrees away from where the last footfalls had come from. As they started to move, there was a solid click of steel and an eerie pause. Then the air tore open with the sound of automatic weapons.

Diving for the ground, a child under each arm, Mac felt the air shake as bullets whistled and smashed through the foliage. Male voices yelled in excitement from both sides and then there was the thumpa-thumpa of a. 50-cal started up, turning the rainforest into a mist of splinters.

Glancing over his shoulder, Mac realised the Hassan attack had come from further south and the closest shooter was maybe thirty metres south of where he was with the kids. It created a greater danger: that Freddi and the Kopassus unit might mistake Mac and the kids for a hostile target. The three of them crawled sideways out of the blizzard of lead, the kids staying amazingly quiet given the terrifying situation. They slid down a dry creek bed, then Mac knelt and looked back. Still no one had made them, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a fl anking shooter hooking around from the north. He wasn’t sure whether to break cover and get the kids to run for it or fi nd a hide and let them sit it out.

Moving north along the creek bed, Mac found what he was looking for. A large tree had fallen down in the creek bed some years before, and vines had cascaded onto it. Pulling up the vine curtain, Mac kicked away a couple of spiders and helped Merpati and Santo under the tree.

‘If you stay here and stay quiet, you should be safe, okay?’ he whispered miming it at the same time. They nodded at him, big dark eyes scared but trusting.

Letting the vine fall back, Mac jogged back along the creek bed, looking for Freddi and the Kopassus guys.

The noise of gunfi re had subsided into a tactical exchange of three-shot bursts and the enemy fi re seemed to be coming from just south of where the kids had taunted the macaque. Mac crept slowly in that direction, his M4 shouldered as he looked down its sights.

Pausing behind a tree, he looked ahead intently for twenty seconds and fi nally saw something through the undergrowth.

There was a two-man team on a. 50-cal gun, mounted on a tripod: Pakistanis in khaki cams. They sent off a burst and fi re came back, so Mac elbow-crawled to a slight rise which gave him an elevation over the. 50-cal team. He shouldered the M4, brought his eye down to the sights and squeezed two bursts of three-shot. The fi rst burst dropped the gunner and the second burst hit the observer in the chest, making him stagger back on his knees. A third man, standing behind the . 50-cal team, fi red back towards Mac’s position, though he didn’t know exactly where he was shooting. Mac ducked behind the small ridge and then came up to take more shots but the shooter was retreating with a strange running gait.

Mac stood still, waiting.

‘That you, McQueen?’ came Freddi’s voice from a point south of Mac.

‘Roger that,’ yelled Mac.

‘That’s the last of them, I think,’ called Freddi.

Mac moved quickly down the small ridge in a crouch and ran towards the runway. Breaking into the open, Mac saw Freddi and the Kopassus soldiers to his left and helos roaring overhead. Sudarto was yelling into the radio, his fi nger in one ear. The Hueys fanned out and the door gunners started their stuff. Two Kopassus bodies sprawled dead behind the building and there were some massive holes in the side of the structure, obviously caused by the. 50-cal.

Mac stooped over and ran towards Freddi, pointed up at the helos.

‘The Hassan team has SAMs, remember?’

Freddi nodded and gestured to Benni Sudarto, who turned away.

As he did, there was a boom and a fl ash of orange over the jungle.

A torrent of pilots yelling blasted from the radio and Sudarto yelled back. More Kopassus guys arrived from the other side of the runway, then formed up for a push through the jungle.