No Man's Land - A Russell Carter Thriller (32 page)

27

The “Street Fighting Man” chorus created the split-second opening Carter sought.

His thought processes accelerated and the world around him slowed. He felt a pure and total clarity.

He grabbed the star knife from under his left wetsuit sleeve and flung it at Zaheed to his right.

The Indonesian’s MP5 clattered on the ground. He clutched his right eye and collapsed backward.

Carter had already moved on.

As he whipped the other star knife from his right sleeve, he looked to his left and saw Erina stabbing the second clansman’s throat with his own dagger.

It had all happened in less than a second.

The chorus was still blaring as Alex swung back to face Carter, pulling his sword back behind his head in one swift, fluid motion, poised to strike at Carter’s legs.

Carter threw his arms forward, pushed off hard with his legs and leaped high over Alex’s head, tucking his knees underneath his chest.

The Drying Pole’s blade flashed close beneath his heels.

Carter hit the cement floor a few feet behind Alex, landing sideways and breaking the impact with his good arm before rolling onto his feet, a molten sea of agony surging through his battered body.

Alex spun around and faced him with the sword raised high over his head.

He started his forward strike.

But Carter was quicker.

He’d already flung the second star knife toward Alex.

The knife struck its target. One of the five blades buried itself in Alex’s exposed throat.

The Drying Pole and then Alex dropped to the ground.

Carter stood still, his breath coming hard and fast.

Alex lay on his back, holding his throat in an effort to stem the bleeding. He stared at Carter in a state of shock. His arrogance had given way to a look of bewildered disbelief.

The phone sounded another round of the “Street Fighting Man” chorus.

Carter picked up the Drying Pole, keeping his attention on Alex, and held the sword by his side. It felt light in his hand.

Behind him the phone went silent.

He looked around and saw Erina freeing Vivienne.

The clansman who’d been holding the dagger at her throat lay motionless on his back, almost certainly dead.

Carter moved to the southern end of the walkway and looked down to where Zaheed lay on his back, not moving. The life had drained out of his body. Carter checked for a pulse but was careful not to disturb Zaheed’s clothing. He and his mate were no doubt wired with explosives. This wasn’t over yet. Carter needed to get off the bridge and find Samudra before he could trigger the detonators.

He returned to Alex and knelt down beside his head. A pool of blood had spread out around his shoulders onto the wet cement.

Carter removed the star knife from his throat, then placed his hand over the jagged wound and applied downward pressure. He needed to find out where Samudra was.

Two sets of soft footsteps approached. Erina and Vivienne stopped at Alex’s feet.

Alex looked up at Carter and whispered, “You know I’ve been thinking about killing you every day for the last two years.”

“That was a waste of time,” Carter said.

“It kept me going.”

“Tell me where Samudra is.”

Blood dribbled from Alex’s mouth, which had twisted into a sneer. “You think I’d betray him to you? At least I have the satisfaction of knowing you failed and will be forced to live with the consequences.”

“Don’t worry,” Vivienne said to Carter. “I know where Samudra is and how to find him. I heard them talking on the phone downstairs. Alex has a GPS device on him with the coordinates set.”

Erina looked down at Alex. “You should be more careful when you talk on the phone. You never know who’s listening.”

“Fuck you,” Alex said.

His head dropped to one side but his dead eyes remained open, staring into the night as if trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong.

28

Erina, Vivienne and Carter stood over Alex’s body. They all needed a moment to gather themselves before facing what lay ahead.

Thanks to the adrenalin pumping through his veins, Carter barely registered any pain.

He had retrieved the palm GPS navigation device from Alex’s trouser pocket and held it in his left hand; the still thirsty Drying Pole, now returned to its scabbard, was in his right.

The sword would serve as a powerful reminder of what he’d been through and learned. He remembered the words of Miyamoto Musashi, the great samurai who had defeated the sword’s original owner, Sasaki Kojiro, in a famous bout between the two men on an island off Japan. Musashi had said the only difference between himself and Kojiro was that he used his sword not to conquer the world but rather to advance his spirit. Musashi had used his fighting skills only to perfect his craft and serve others.

Carter looked up into the dark sky. Alex’s blade had passed a hair’s breadth from his body. It could so easily have been him lying on the cold, wet cement, or broken and twisted at the foot of the pylon.

He didn’t necessarily believe in fate or destiny, but he acknowledged the karmic logic of the universe, of cause and effect. Now the fight was over, Alex’s death appeared inevitable.

Carter glanced at Erina, then at Vivienne, both lost in their own thoughts.

He looked down and saw the scowl on Alex’s lifeless face. It revealed the bitter fruit of such an existence – a hollow life and a lonely death.

Alex had abandoned the principles of the order and become driven by ego and the fulfilment of desire, his decline hastened by his use of heavy drugs. Carter had seen the man unravel bit by bit, his soul corrupted by a life of hedonism and the pursuit of his own interest at the expense of others.

Carter recognized the parallels with his own life.

He had allowed his desire for Erina to consume him until he sought to control her, and had been frustrated when she denied him that control. He’d shown Thomas not the love and respect he deserved but pride and anger, rejecting his authority not because it was unjust, but because Thomas asked him to put the order’s interests ahead of his own.

He’d walked away from the problems confronting him rather than facing them.

He’d abandoned the people who loved him and relied on him and instead pursued his own selfish ends.

He’d given up his spiritual beliefs and practices and sought oblivion in physical sensation.

He knew now that he had made the wrong decision. His world had become narrower since leaving the order, and he’d suffered a deep and unshakable unease, almost a sickness, that had only ever been momentarily appeased by the surf.

He was caught in the turbulence of the spiritual no man’s land created by his ego, and eventually he would drown. If he wanted to avoid Alex’s fate, the only way out was to return to the order. By submitting, by allowing himself to be guided by its principles, he could transcend the chaotic waves of the material world and reach calm water. He could know peace.

A surprising wave of compassion for Alex washed through him.

He leaned forward and closed Alex’s eyes.

29

Five minutes later Carter stood on the gun deck, strapped into the harness of Alex’s hang-glider, facing the wind. The flexible black wings fluttered above his head, pulling at him as if an unseen force was impatient to pluck him from the earth.

Vivienne and Erina stood on either side of the glider. They held the struts in place against the wind, ensuring Carter remained earthbound long enough to make a final check of everything before lifting off.

He’d taped two high-powered bombs made up of C4 explosives from his pack to its nose, turning the simple hang-glider into a flying kamikaze missile.

The C4 consisted of explosive chemicals and a plastic binder substance; he’d molded it into a couple of oval balls the size of a small bread roll and then embedded a detonator cap in their hearts. The jury-rigged bombs would detonate on impact.

Erina held Alex’s GPS device in front of him at eye level.

A blinking red light flashed on the screen, marking a point off Watsons Bay near Sydney Heads, roughly four miles from the bridge.

That’s where he expected to find Samudra.

“The light hasn’t moved,” Erina said.

“Good.”

She stuck the palm computer into a side pocket of his daypack and zipped it up.

“You’ll call Watto?” he said.

“You don’t need to worry about things at this end,” she told him. “Vivienne and I will take care of it. You take care of Samudra.”

He pressed the button on the side of Alex’s bluetooth earpiece and heard a dial tone. The earpiece and Alex’s phone were now synced, and tucked into the neck of his wetsuit. Samudra would, he suspected, call at any minute to check in with Alex.

As a final preparation Carter made sure the night-vision binoculars hanging around his neck were secure. Then he pulled the daypack tight against his body and clasped the roll of duct tape in the side pocket to make sure it was still there.

A fresh gust of wind surged in his face.

It was 11.40 p.m.

“All set,” Erina said. “Now get this done.”

“Will do. See you next year. You know where I’ll be.”

She reached out her free hand, still holding onto the strut with the other, and squeezed his shoulder. “That’s a date.”

He nodded at Vivienne, who smiled for the first time and said, “Take the motherfucker down, Carter.”

Still holding onto the controls with his left hand, he gave them a thumbs up with his right.

Time to go.

Vivienne and Erina released the struts.

The strong southerly lifted the wings.

He gripped the steering bar as tightly as he could, held his breath and clenched his stomach muscles to counter the waves of pain stabbing through his ribs.

Then he took three steps forward and leaped into the abyss.

The hang-glider surged high above the pylon. Two seagulls, lit up by the lights from the bridge, hovered alongside, appearing to take a sympathetic interest in him.

He leaned forward on the controls, pointing the hang-glider’s nose toward the dark waters below. His injured arm hung by his side.

For half a second the man-made apparatus quivered in the air as if making up its mind what to do. Then it lurched forward and plunged down, a black flying ghost.

He didn’t look back.

30

Roughly three hundred and fifty feet below Carter, twenty-three-year-old Youssef bin Hassan, dressed in green overalls and wearing a Lakers baseball cap, drove the diesel truck marked
Rapid Transfer
into the underground Sydney Harbour Tunnel, heading toward the city’s northern suburbs.

His boyhood friend Faisel Aman sat in the passenger seat wearing matching overalls and cap. They travelled in silence.

They’d joined the Lakemba cell a year ago. This was their first and last important assignment. They’d been told to wait in the truck until midnight, when the bombs inside would detonate.

Death held no fear for Youssef.

He and Faisel would die as heroes for Allah, bringing honor to their families. They’d receive their reward in the afterlife and spend eternity enjoying the fruits of paradise.

On reaching the first breakdown bay, Youssef pulled over to the left as instructed and turned the hazard lights on. They stepped out of the truck and placed seven orange witch’s hats around the vehicle at regular intervals.

They got back into the front seat. Youssef typed a text into his phone:
Have reached target
.

He pressed send.

The reply came back a minute later from Samudra.
Good work. Allah akbar.

31

Carter stalled the glider so that it hovered about three hundred feet from Watsons Bay, toward the far eastern end of Sydney Harbour, close to Sydney Heads and the open sea. The wind blew into his face from the south-east.

He looked down at the dark waters a hundred and fifty feet below and then over his shoulder at the bright lights of Sydney. The only sound was the vibration of the wings.

For a moment he wondered how many people would be awake, sitting in front of their television sets waiting for the midnight fireworks, hoping it would signal the beginning of better things for the new year.

He shrugged the thought off, hooked his wounded arm under the steering bar and extracted Alex’s palm computer from the daypack with his other hand.

The blinking light was in the same spot, marking a point halfway between the Watsons Bay shoreline and South Head, where he could see a fleet of around fifty pleasure craft gathered in the lee of a headland reserve.

He returned the computer to its pocket in his daypack, brought the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the fleet.

Samudra would choose a position on the edge of the other boats, most likely the closest to Sydney Heads, to facilitate an easy getaway.

The furthest boat to the north of the fleet was a shabby-looking cabin cruiser rolling with the gentle swell.

He focused the high-powered binoculars on two men standing in the bow.

Bingo.

They were Indonesian. One of them was Samudra, dialing a number on a cell phone.

If Samudra stuck to his schedule, he wouldn’t be detonating the bombs until midnight.

However, if Alex or his men had failed to meet a prearranged reporting deadline, it might spook him into striking prematurely – making whatever Carter did too late to stop him.

Samudra put the phone to his ear.

Alex’s cell phone started vibrating under the wetsuit against Carter’s chest, just below his neck.

He checked the time.

Ten minutes to midnight.

He ignored it. He wanted to hold off making contact until he was in his final dive.

After four more rings it fell silent.

Carter lined up the midsection of Samudra’s launch with the armed nose of the glider, pointing the man-made bird toward the ugly craft at a forty-five-degree angle. The hang-glider quivered for a moment in the darkness and then dropped into its final dive.

A bolt of energy surged from the center of his
hara
and he let out a deep “haah,” his version of a battle cry.

He grabbed the roll of duct tape and lashed the controls into place with one arm, breaking the tape off with his teeth.

Satisfied the hang-glider was locked onto its target, he lifted the binoculars to his eyes for the final time.

An enlarged image of Samudra’s normally smiling face stared straight at him. A nasty scowl twisted his features, but there was no look of recognition – not yet.

He’d probably seen the glider, expecting Alex. When the phone failed to answer, he’d most likely suspected something was amiss.

Carter saw Samudra take the phone out of his pocket and dial once more.

Alex’s phone vibrated against his chest again.

Carter took out the phone and pressed answer on the third ring, keeping the binoculars trained on Samudra.

“Abdul-Aleem,” Samudra barked. “What’s going on?”

Carter said nothing.

“Are you there?” Samudra said, his voice urgent. “Is that you on the hang-glider?”

Silence hung over the phone line. A drop of rain spat in Carter’s face.

“Alex is dead,” he said.

“What? Who is this?”

“Carter.”

“It can’t be.”

“Afraid so.” Carter paused to let the information sink in. “Don’t even think about hanging up and dialing the number,” he said. “I’m on the hang-glider and you’re lined up in the night scope of my sniper rifle.”

Samudra lifted his head and stared at the glider.

“I can see you clearly,” Carter said. “You just lifted your head. Make one wrong move and you’re dead. So is the man next to you.”

He saw Samudra peer into the night, holding the phone in his left hand. It was too dark for him to make out whether Carter carried a rifle.

“You start dialing, I start shooting,” Carter said. “Drop the phone. I don’t miss.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Try me.”

A gust of wind caused the glider to accelerate.

The nose of the makeshift missile was perfectly lined up with the midsection of the launch, less than twenty yards away.

Would Samudra choose self-preservation over jihad? Carter would have to wait to find out. He unclipped the harness and pushed himself away from the struts, letting himself drop toward the water. Whatever was meant to happen would happen. He’d done all he could.