Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

He leapt over trees, elbowed low-hanging branches and muttered to himself – a sure sign that he was in danger of doing something from his emotions rather than his brain.

Behind him he could hear Freddi shouting McQueen, McQueen, but he kept sprinting, fi nally bursting out onto the beach and stopping, his legs like jelly, his mouth dry and rasping for breath. He jogged for the jetty, his lungs wheezing as he struggled for oxygen. Behind him, Freddi burst out onto the beach too.

‘McQueen,’ he shouted weakly. ‘Where are we going?’

Mac didn’t turn, just waved at Freddi to follow him, before racing down the jetty, his back a wall of wet fabric. The dressing was peeling from his forehead wound with all the exertion and he whipped it off, chucking it into the water. As he got to the black beauty, three kites squawked into the air. He stopped, heart thumping, resting against a post as he looked down at the pirates’ bodies lying together by the transom. Along the rest of the cockpit decking there was a lot of smeared blood and seven pieces of paper, drying in the sun. The bandage tins and mosquito sprays and tins of Savlon had held the rescued papers in place.

Freddi got alongside him and doubled over, hands on his knees.

‘Too old for this, McQueen,’ he gasped.

‘I hope I’m wrong, Freddi,’ Mac panted, leaping on to the deck of the speedboat and reaching down to pick up the last piece of paper he’d rescued out there in the Malacca. It was now dry and the effect of the water had made the blue ballpoint ink run away from the original lines, leaving those lines thinner and more accurate, perhaps closer to what the writer wanted to express.

‘See this?’ he asked, as Freddi lowered himself into the boat.

‘I found this in that other airfi eld, behind Medan, up behind Binjai.’

Freddi took it, looked at the one thing written on it. ‘Thanks for telling us, McQueen.’

‘You got everything else, mate, remember? Didn’t think this was important,’ Mac shrugged, telling a small lie. ‘I found it in a burned-down building.’

‘Burned? Don’t think we saw a burned building.’

‘No, it had been done after the Kopassus chased them off. I just went up later to have a nosey-poke and I found this charred building, still smoking.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, so whatever they were burning was worth the risk of doubling back while there was Kopassus and BAIS in the area. You with me?’

‘Wish you’d told me earlier.’

‘Thing is, Fred, I kept this because someone had written on it, right? See how the bottom is burned away so that we don’t get the full context of N W because whatever’s below it is gone.’

Freddi nodded. ‘No context.’

‘I spent years wondering about that N W. I asked all our desks, all the analysts, I asked the Indians, Americans, Japs, I asked army guys and diplomats. The only thing I could come up with was the North-West, as in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan.’

‘Pretty broad,’ said Freddi.

‘But, mate, what if it’s got nothing to do with the context?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Freddi.

‘Freddi, in our game we talk about context until we make it religion, but sometimes things are simple.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So what if it’s just the wrong way up?’

Freddi and Mac looked down at the piece of paper as Fred slowly turned it around.

‘Okay, Fred, now what does it say?’ said Mac.

The washed-out blue ballpoint writing now said M IV.

Freddi chewed his bottom lip and looked into Mac’s eyes. ‘Well, it say “M 4”, McQueen, but I guess that not the American assault rifl e?’

‘Let’s get back to context, Freddi,’ said Mac. ‘You’ve got Abu Samir and Hassan Ali, risking their necks to double back and destroy a bunch of documents.’

Freddi’s eyes widened. ‘It say M4 – Mantiqi Four,’ he said very slowly, looking back from the paper to Mac, hardly believing what he was seeing.

‘The part that’s been burned away – I bet – said Operasi or Operation,’ said Mac. ‘I think this was a cover sheet for a plan of their next attack.’

‘But Mantiqi Four is -‘

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Mac, looking back towards the beach. ‘Their Fourth Brigade. The second device is on its way to Australia.’

The meeting with Atkins did not go well. They arm-wrestled about a mini-nuke bound for Australia, a concept Atkins completely dismissed.

When Mac showed Atkins the paper with M IV written on it, the Jakarta operations chief for ASIS actually scoffed.

‘That could be anything, McQueen – I mean, shit,’ he muttered, almost throwing it back.

Mac wasn’t ready to back down and demanded that the embassy’s military attache sit in. Atkins refused and did what all good offi ce guys do: pulled in the troops. Jill Watson, an analyst on the Indonesia Desk who specialised in JI, crept into Atkins’ offi ce, sheepish at the raised voices that had been echoing out.

‘What’s that mean?’ asked Atkins, pointing at Mac’s piece of paper.

She looked at the paper and then looked at Atkins, waiting for her cue. Atkins sneered, asked, ‘I mean, does that tell us that whoever wrote it is about to nuke Australia?’

It was an unfair question but it told Watson what her role was.

‘No,’ she said, with the confi dence of the true weakling. ‘It could mean Mantiqi Four, is that what you’re saying, Alan?’

Mac looked down at her, saw the plain face, the boxy ankles and the look of one-dimensional intellect in her eye and realised it wasn’t her fault that she was like this. If every promotion you ever saw in DFAT was predicated on toadying abilities, then that became the currency.

‘You’re willing to make that call, not knowing anything except what he wants to hear?’ asked Mac, pointing at Atkins.

‘No, not at all,’ she said, fl ustered, looking at Atkins for support.

Atkins looked away – a true offi ce guy, abandoning a person who couldn’t hurt him. ‘It’s just that, um -‘

‘Yes?’ asked Mac,

‘Well, Mantiqi Four is also Papua,’ said Watson.

‘Oh Papua? You mean that famous target of jihadi rhetoric, that mythical land of Anglo pornographers and alcoholics?’ said Mac.

‘Okay,’ she blushed, realising her Alpha Dog had cut her loose and was now leaning back in his chair, pretending to look at his email. ‘It says M4, but so what?’

‘You’re the analyst, Jill. Why aren’t you asking me about the context?’

‘Well -‘

‘Because I’ll tell you something, mate, I’ve been with this fi rm for seventeen years and this is the fi rst time I’ve ever stood in this section and claimed that someone might be trying to nuke Australia, okay?

That’s context one.’

‘Okay,’ she said, wide-eyed.

‘Context two, I’ve got Hassan Ali back in Indonesia, I’ve got confi rmation that Mossad is here chasing him because Hassan’s crew heisted two mini-nukes from Dimona six years ago, but they only used one. And I have a payment of thirteen million US taking place between two accounts that have only been used once before – and that was ten days before the Kuta bombings. That same channel was used again two days ago.’

‘I see,’ said Watson.

‘Do you?’ asked Mac, his voice shrill. He hadn’t had enough sleep in the past week and he was sick of being patronised by his colleagues.

‘Okay, okay!’ snapped Atkins. ‘Time out.’

‘What? There’s a difference for you?’ asked Mac.

Watson looked at the carpet, trying to subdue a smile.

‘Know something, McQueen?’ asked Atkins.

‘I’m sure you’ll tell me.’

‘The last eighteen months, two years, have been so peaceful up here in our little section.’