Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘Fuck!’ spat Maddo, his hand going to the earpiece of his comms gear. ‘Black Ace, Black Ace. Stand by for extraction,’ he whispered.

Maddo turned back to the door. ‘Let’s do it, mate,’ he said, nodding at Pharaoh.

The big man got his elbows in line and squeezed like he was pushing on a Bullworker. The bolt-cutter jaws didn’t make a dent.

Voices sounded above, coming down a level into the ship. Mac stood back from the door and pointed his Heckler at the passageway while Maddo mouthed encouragement at Pharaoh. ‘Come on, mate – it’s like fucking butter, you’re going through it like butter.’

There were more thumps and the sounds of excited chatter coming closer. The diesels dropped revs, meaning Penang Princess ‘s prop was being engaged, and Mac moved away from the combat divers to get a better line of sight.

As the chattering voices came lower through the ship, Mac glanced back and saw Pharaoh go for another squeeze, his face puffi ng up with exertion and the handles of the bolt-cutters fl exing slightly as his muscles strained through his wetsuit. He was built like a professional wrestler, but the shank held.

Human sounds echoed down the iron stairs, now just fi ve metres above. Mac gulped, sweat dripping down his face, praying that whatever checks were being made on Akbar, the sailors would only come down one of the companionways. He didn’t want to die like a rat in a basement.

Aiming up, he watched a pair of plastic-sandalled feet pause on the top of the companionway stairs – more talking, friendly, expressing relief that the navy didn’t want to board. Mac’s heart thumped in his head and he concentrated on what he could control: his breathing and his aim. Glancing over his shoulder again, he saw Pharaoh’s face turning purple as he puffed like a weightlifter, spittle fl ying off his white lips, arms rippling like there were champagne bottles moving beneath his wetsuit.

Finally a tinkling sound rang out as Pharaoh almost collapsed over the bolt-cutters. He’d done it.

Mac back-pedalled to his navy escort, keeping his eyes on the feet at the head of the companionway. Pharaoh caught his breath while Maddo twisted and removed the padlock from the handle. Then the combat diver pulled a small plastic bag from his webbing and removed a wet rag that quickly fi lled the enclosed space with a smell of solvent.

As Maddo pulled open the pantry door, Mac and Pharaoh aimed their guns into the dark. Inside, a well-dressed middle-aged Arabic man lay on a bench at hip-height, looking at them with an expression that fl ickered from relief to fear. Maddo moved straight at Akbar, grabbed him by the collar, pulled him back into his stomach and forced the rag over his mouth and nose, the bloke’s little hands scrabbling at the Australian’s arms until the solvent kicked in. They were lucky Akbar hadn’t made a sound.

Mac pulled the foil out of his webbing, handed it to Pharaoh and moved towards the companionway and those sandalled feet.

As Pharaoh busted the Xanax caps and poured them into Akbar’s mouth, Mac stealthed beneath the companionway stairs and waited for the feet to move, his lungs and heart going crazy, sweat pouring off his face. The feet shifted and the other person moved away as the feet started coming down the stairs, revealing a mid-twenties Indon sailor in sarung and white singlet. As the bloke hit the passageway and turned down to check on Akbar, Mac brought the Heckler up and shot him behind the ear. It was a very quiet weapon and the sound of the bloke dropping to the old black nylon carpet was greater than the mechanical thump of the round detonating. Mac pulled the body back behind the stairs, the bloke’s ankles still warm in his hands. This was the part of his job he didn’t like.

He turned to Maddo and Pharaoh, who were moving towards the companionway at the opposite end of the hall. Akbar lay limp over Pharaoh’s shoulder and the big diver had to duck to get both of them under some of the pipes that hung from the ceiling. As Mac moved over to shut the pantry door, his eyes briefl y caught something. He checked again, thinking his eyes were playing tricks on him.

They burst into the sunlight, panting with the heat and adrenaline.

Pharaoh was fi rst over the side of Penang Princess, one hand on the railing, the other holding Akbar tight against his chest. Maddo joined him and, leaning over the railing, wrapped the climb-rope around Akbar’s ankles, fl ipped him over and lowered him towards Smithee’s outspread arms. Smithee wound off the ankles and, as the rope swung free, Maddo, Mac and then Pharaoh came down the rope in silence.

Mac could sense the tension as Smithee pulled the mask over Akbar’s face, the banker coming up from the solvent and immediately trying to struggle. The mask was joined to a standard SCUBA set since you couldn’t put a drugged-up, inexperienced man in a rebreather, unless you wanted him panicking so bad you had to surface. Mac sized up the bloke’s anxiety, which was greater than the fear of simply being snatched. Maybe the bloke wasn’t a swimmer – many Arabs weren’t. Pulling the syringe of pure Valium out of his webbing, he got behind Akbar and jabbed him in the bum with the shortened needle, plunging the entire contents as fast as he could. Akbar yelped slightly, but after ten seconds he stopped struggling and after twenty he was as fl oppy as a doll.

Smithee strapped Akbar to Maddo’s seat and Maddo kitted up and lay on him. You needed an experienced diver to make sure the snatchee didn’t stop breathing. Pharaoh and Mac put on their rebreathers and gave Maddo the okay through the comms, all of them looking up at the railing, expecting a bunch of faces and a hedgerow of AK-47s to emerge at any minute.

The whine started and the sled slipped below the surface. Mac felt the warm waters envelop him and was happy for the cover, if not the entrapped feeling of the full face mask.

The sled got to fi ve metres submerged and they made for the RV.

Forcing his breathing into the long rhythms needed for the rebreathers, Mac went over the op in his mind. He didn’t like killing another person and usually he had to work hard to keep it from swamping his thoughts. But this time he was preoccupied with something else entirely – he had seen something in that pantry as he shut the door.

It was a pair of human eyes, staring out of a refi ned Indonesian face.

Mac didn’t like taking guesses at what he saw and heard, but he was eighty per cent certain he’d locked eyes with Jemaah Islamiyah general Abu Samir.

They RV’d with Sosa on a deserted beach two kilometres east of Aimere on the Flores south coast. An old-fashioned BAIS hard-head, Sosa was a short, thickly muscled Javanese, about forty. As Mac unharnessed Akbar from the SCUBA, Sosa waded into the water, soaking his tan chinos to the knee, and beckoned for Akbar to come to him. Still groggy, Akbar hesitated. But when Sosa pulled a black SIG Sauer handgun from beneath his white trop shirt, Akbar slipped over the side of the sled into the tropical water. Sosa grabbed him by the arm and walked him to where a taller Indon waited at the opened rear doors of a white Mercedes van.

Mac removed his rebreather and strapped it to his seat. The air was wall-to-wall screeching birds, clattering insects and hollering monkeys. Some of the remotest parts of Indonesia were louder than George Street on a Monday morning.

‘Thanks, boys,’ said Mac, turning.

Maddo shook his hand, told him to take it easy.

When Pharaoh put his paw out, Mac said, ‘Nice work on the padlock, mate.’

‘Sweet as,’ Pharaoh said, winking.

‘Cheers, Macca,’ Smithee called as he started the outboard. The sled, which had been pumped dry and was an infl atable boat again, turned south and accelerated away across the swell in a blast of two-stroke fumes and small frog-leaps. Mac smiled. Team 4 were a bunch of cowboys. Very dangerous cowboys.