Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

‘Hassan’s got a boat at the beach with SAMs on the back,’ said Freddi. ‘Major’s pulling the helos back.’

‘No rockets?’ asked Mac.

‘Can’t get the range, and there’s fi shing boats out there. Hassan’s people have the big calibre guns too, and the major doesn’t want to lose more helos. Wants them able to track these guys out to sea till we can get some air power in.’

The helos appeared back over the runway area, forming an observation platform. Sudarto gestured at his sergeant, who gave the orders, then the Indonesian special forces moved back into the jungle at a jog. Mac and Freddi got in behind with the major. The Kopassus soldiers mopped up the remaining three Hassan shooters, taking twenty minutes to reach the beach, where they took their positions behind palm trees and waited for the major.

When Freddi and Mac got to the beach, the Hassan boat – similar to one they used in Denpasar – was already a mile into the Malacca Strait.

‘Any further and they’ll be in Malaysian waters,’ muttered Freddi.

Down the beach, a charred lump of smoking steel was all that remained of the downed Indonesian Huey. As Kopassus soldiers walked out onto the beach and down to the water, another SAM launched from the rear deck of the Hassan boat, skidding through the air like an airborne shark attack. Crossing them from right to left, the Huey it was aimed at pulled up as the missile fl ew under it.

Sudarto frantically gestured the radio guy over and yelled something into his mouthpiece. The helos fanned further out. A new voice came on the radio, sounding like an offi ce guy. Sudarto cocked an ear and made a face. Looked straight up at the sky, took a breath.

‘Jakarta, telling him, No fi ghters today,’ said Freddi. ‘Not going to risk an incident with the Malaysians.’

As they watched the Hassan gang make their getaway, Mac heard a squealing sound coming from behind them. Swivelling, he and Freddi saw a white Bombardier Challenger private jet coming in fl aps-up to land on the runway. Sudarto yelled into the radio but it was too late.

The helos were two miles out to sea and the Bombardier had a top speed of almost four times a Huey. Fifty seconds after disappearing behind the stand of jungle to make its landing, the Bombardier was in the air again, in a steep climb, powering up to full speed. The two Hueys chugged like tractors and were not even over the Kopassus ground position on the beach as the Bombardier vanished into the sun.

As soldiers jogged to the helo wreck, Mac looked at Major Benni Sudarto’s crestfallen face. No doubt he was contemplating his future.

He’d been outwitted and outgunned by a foreign crew: ambushed on his own patch and then decoyed into letting the enemy get away. It didn’t look good. Still, Mac had other things to attend to. Hassan and Gorilla might well have passed Merpati and Santo’s hiding place when they’d run to the airfi eld. He had asked those kids to stay put and do it his way, and then he’d run off. If they’d stayed where Mac had left them, they might have been discovered.

Mac started sprinting, leaving Freddi staring after him in confusion.

Undergrowth slapping his face, roots tripping him, he stumbled on as fast as he could through the jungle. He found the dry creek bed, fell down it, and in a total babbling panic sprinted up it, muttering to himself please, please, hoping that just because someone was a terrorist and a nuclear broker and a bomber, it didn’t mean they would hurt children.

He saw the tree and lunged at it, pulling away the vine curtain and looking in. Merpati lay crumpled on the ground, eyes staring at the tree. As Mac went to touch her she turned and, fl inching, shook her head. Mac saw why as he leaned over. She’d been shot in the shoulder and blood had soaked down her right side, leaving her entire arm and upper body in a total mess.

Mumbling prayers to himself, Mac tried to lift her out but Merpati screamed and fainted. He pulled her into his arms, whipped off his vest and tore off his polo shirt to staunch the bleeding in her upper arm. The whole shoulder was mangled, the bones shattered, her arm hanging by a few tendons. Mac screamed for help, his yells echoing eerily in his own head.

Merpati was stirred back to consciousness by Mac’s screaming, her lips pale and her eyes sleepy.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ he whispered, wiping her brow. ‘Merpati, I’m so sorry.’

He heard voices and yelled again, hysteria creeping into his voice.

He felt like a stranger in his own body.

‘Where’s Santo?’ he said to Merpati. ‘Come on, darling, where’s your brother?’

She shook her head very slightly. ‘They take him, Mr Mac.’

‘Take him?! What do you mean, they took him?’

‘Take Santo,’ she cried, tears rolling out of her eyes.

The Kopassus guys ran up.

‘Who took Santo?’ Mac asked Merpati. He felt almost at the end of his tether, his voice sounding like it was coming from a tinny transistor radio three miles away.

Merpati’s bottom lip quivered. ‘Gorilla and tall one, they took Santo,’ she wailed, then fainted again.

One of the Kopassus troopers tore his medico pack off his webbing, the one behind him radioing with a screaming urgency. Then Freddi jogged up, out of breath, as the soldiers gently dragged the little girl off Mac’s lap, trying to keep her arm in place but not succeeding.

‘McQueen, what happened?’ Freddi panted, hands on knees.

Mac sagged back on the carpet of leaves, close to collapse – guilt and fatigue and stress making his brain feel like it was shutting down.

‘Shot the girl, took the boy,’ he mumbled.

‘Shit!’ said Freddi.

Mac nodded. ‘Fucking Purni!’

Six years later

Johnny Hukapa came in hard, leading with a right roundhouse kick at Mac’s left thigh. Mac lifted his left leg slightly and covered up his face, drifting beyond the big Maori’s left hooks. Shifting his weight to the left foot, Mac left-jabbed twice at Johnny’s jaw and followed with a straight right, connecting fl ush with Johnny’s mouth, before skipping away.

‘Fuck!’ yelled Johnny through his mouthguard, annoyed at being tagged for the third time. He was slightly bigger than Mac but his strengths were in hand-to-hand combat and ground fi ghting, perfected in the Aussie SAS.

Watching Johnny’s face and eyes through the headgear, Mac threw out a few lefts and followed with a stamp kick into Johnny’s groin protector. Johnny tucked his chin down and came straight at Mac with a fl urry of punches to the headgear, pushing Mac backwards into the ropes of the Gold Coast PCYC boxing ring. Mac covered up and put in a short uppercut to Johnny’s chin, ducked and bobbed and came up on Johnny’s right, threw a cheeky left hook into the side of Johnny’s face before fading to his left and watching Johnny fall into the ropes where Mac had just been.

‘Shit!’ spat Johnny as the timer tinged.

After showering, Mac and Johnny walked down Monaco Street towards Gold Coast Highway, the early December sun hot on their backs and heating up their baseball caps. Johnny had been working in Sumatra but when his girlfriend became pregnant and put the hard word on him, the result was marriage and a move back to Australia.

Now Johnny had a fourteen-month-old son called James, while Mac’s nine-month-old, Rachel, was at home with Jenny.

‘So,’ said Mac, trying not to pry, ‘you said no again, huh? Boss’s orders?’

Johnny shrugged, put a piece of Juicy Fruit in his mouth and offered the pack to Mac. ‘Nah, mate, Arti’s cool. I’m just not ready for that shit again, know what I mean?’

Mac did know what Johnny meant. The mercenary outfi ts made the work in Iraq and Afghanistan sound great with your basic US$180,000 for a twelve-month contract, plus full medical and a whacking great life insurance policy. But once you were a parent and you’d been out of the action for a few years, it was hard to just switch on your instincts and appetite for that life all over again. Johnny had been approached three times in as many months for his old SAS expertise of infrastructure security. Some of the contracts out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Brunei and even Peru were too good to totally ignore.