Rogue Element (14 page)

Joe and Suryei ran.

Sergeant Marturak heard the scream and the spray of automatic fire. It took them seven minutes to reach the spot where their comrade was lying on the ground. The soldier was convulsing violently and white froth bubbled from his mouth. The cobra’s shattered body writhed
beside him. It wasn’t dead. Bullets had broken its back in several places and it was coiling itself into a knot.

One of the soldiers gripped the snake from behind the head and sliced it off with his machete. Sergeant Marturak had once before seen a man die from a cobra bite. He felt pity for the private. Fortunately, they carried antivenom in their kit. One of the soldiers administered a double shot of the pale liquid with a disposable hypodermic. The man shaking uncontrollably on the jungle floor was in a bad way. Antivenom or not, it was by no means certain he would survive.

Marturak cursed softly. He would have to leave one man behind with the stricken soldier. Morale would suffer if he just left the man to his fate. His force was steadily shrinking. Including the two he’d lost in the fire, his squad was now effectively reduced by twenty percent, with four men either dead, wounded, or otherwise out of action. Again, he wondered whether this man convulsing on the ground had walked into some kind of booby trap set by the man he was hunting.

He questioned the soldier babbling at his feet, but got nothing coherent. One of his soldiers called Marturak over to the base of the tree that dominated the clearing. There was blood. Another found a piece of material hanging on some thorns. More blood. There had definitely been some kind of struggle here. With luck, the injuries would slow the target. Sergeant Marturak now had a rich, red trail to follow. He deployed his diminished forces for the pursuit. Things were looking up.

Joe and Suryei knew the soldiers were close behind. They heard an eerie, lone bird call carried on the still, early morning air. They moved quickly and carelessly through
the living obstacle course of the jungle. Their passage alerted the local inhabitants of this world and sent them scurrying noisily from trees and bushes. The monkeys were the worst. It was almost as if they delighted in giving away Joe and Suryei’s position, which, in fact, was true. The primates were the jungle’s early warning system, and they were remarkably good at their job. The soldiers, however, knew how to thread through the jungle quickly, and relatively effortlessly, with little noise or disturbance. Although Joe and Suryei had several minutes head start, that advantage was whittled away with every step.

Suryei began to claw her way desperately through the foliage. Joe caught the urgency. The jungle was now full of sound. Bushes and ferns were moving, seemingly of their own accord, all around them. They were being surrounded.

A soldier appeared in front of them, stepping from behind the trunk of one of the jungle’s giants, and barred their path. He raised his carbine to fire. Not fast enough. Joe swung his axe against the man’s rifle. It discharged harmlessly into the air. Three of the man’s fingers plopped like fat grubs to the jungle floor as the blade of his axe clinked against the weapon’s metal barrel. The soldier looked at his hand in disbelief. He dropped to the ground and tried to pick up his digits with the hand that no longer had any fingers.

Joe dodged around the tree trunk as automatic fire cracked behind them and slugs fizzed past just centimetres from his body. Joe and Suryei ran blindly, oblivious to the thorns and spikes that tore at them as they raced. The fact that Joe was facing death was apparent to his subconscious. Base survival instincts overwhelmed him. He was
merely an organism trying to stay alive, clawing through the kaleidoscope of green, running as a terrified animal might run from a predator.

Joe suddenly burst out of the bush and into a campsite where half a dozen tents were neatly arranged in a semicircle in a clearing hacked out of the jungle. He stood there swaying, mouth open, brain fighting to come to grips with the sudden appearance of civilisation. Smoke curled from a few low breakfast fires. He smelled coffee. Joe would not have been more astonished if he’d found himself in a shopping mall. Suryei staggered into the clearing, panting, seconds behind him. She stopped in her tracks and looked around in shock.

They stood, sucking in air, in front of a group of men, all of whom were armed and wearing building-style hard hats. The men were obviously nervous, fingering a range of weapons including rifles and machetes. Their camp was in a slight depression, and the noise from the exploding 747 five kilometres away had apparently passed unnoticed, shielded as they were by a ridge. The few who had been woken by the distant rumble thought it nothing more than the last gasp of the monsoon thundering over the horizon. But all of them had heard the approaching gunfire. Nature was also in an uproar with macaques leaping and screeching in the treetops. The sight and state of the two people spat out by the jungle into their clearing took them totally by surprise. Swaying breathlessly in the middle of their camp were two wild and desperate-looking people, covered in dirt and bloody scratches.

The group of clean-shaven men, some Asian, some Caucasian, who were lined up opposite them, lowered their weapons in astonishment, mouths agape. There was
a crack and the face of the man standing in front of Suryei disappeared in a spray of red.

Suryei and Joe were running out the other side of the clearing, into the bush, before they were aware of the soldiers charging in behind them. Automatic weapons fire and the screams of men filled the jungle around them. Two explosions boomed. Joe grabbed Suryei’s hand as they ran, frantically looking for an escape from the hell erupting around them.

Sergeant Marturak now knew for sure that he was chasing two people, a man and a woman, both young. He had seen them. Where had the woman come from? he wondered. He’d taken cover with two of his men behind a conveniently sited berm of earth at the perimeter of the clearing, to assess the situation. His crash survivors had blundered into what must have been some kind of forward survey camp for a logging operation. Sulawesi was full of them. They came in, counted the trees to determine whether the effort required to build the roads and infrastructure needed to pull the logs out was economically viable, and then surveyed the terrain for the road crews to follow.

The sergeant had no particular view about the rights or wrongs associated with the practice that was stripping parts of his country bare, despite the fact that he thought of the virgin jungle as a second home. These particular people did present him with a problem, however. The loggers were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He couldn’t allow the crash survivors access to the outside world, and these people contaminated the integrity of his mission. No survivors. No witnesses. These men had to be killed. Especially now that one of his soldiers had, in the
excitement of the chase, blown one of the logger’s heads clean off.

He unhitched a grenade from his chest webbing and lobbed it twenty metres into the centre of the clearing. It detonated in a hard pulse of grey smoke, disabling at least five of the men with flying shrapnel, while the concussion wave shook dust from the tents, trestle tables and trees that crowded the clearing. Marturak’s eardrums rang with the noise. Another grenade landed to the left of the first, taking out three more loggers. Automatic fire then swept the clearing, cutting the legs out from any men left standing. None of the loggers had managed to get off a single shot, which was as it should be, thought Sergeant Marturak with satisfaction, as the violence of the exploding ordnance bellowed through the jungle.

Marturak stood and carefully walked into the clearing, safety catch off, ready to shoot. He was a good and careful soldier. Others in his command quickly went from corpse to corpse. Nine millimetre pistol rounds were pumped into the heads of men who showed the vaguest sign of life. The sergeant did a quick count of his section. All present. No deaths, no injuries amongst his own. A satisfying result. He patted a couple of his men warmly on the back.

He thought about the two people he had been chasing, and had seen at long last. Both were obviously unarmed. And frightened.

He had the main tent searched. This confirmed his first thought that this was indeed a survey party for a logging company. Several of the dead had blond hair and one was a redhead. It was a joint American–Indonesian venture apparently, according to the paperwork lying around. He shrugged mentally. What did the Americans call this?
That’s right, collateral damage. Sometimes it was unavoidable. He detailed five men to pack up the campsite, bury the tents and the bodies, and burn the trestle tables, chairs and papers.

The sergeant asked them to take particular notice of all communications equipment, instructing his men to smash them before placing them on the growing bonfire. It was important to keep the area cut off from the outside world.

He’d seen his quarry exit the clearing so he knew which way they were headed. And one of them was wounded, leaving a blood trail that could easily be picked up. They were mortal, after all. It was just a matter of time before he caught and killed them. Marturak allowed himself the hint of a smile. They’d be dead before lunch.

The crowd had not diminished overnight, rather it had swelled, supported now by friends of friends and relatives. Pillows and blankets, provided by Qantas and other airlines, were strewn everywhere together with fast food packaging and empty coffee cups, many stuffed with cigarette butts.

The news went round like wildfire and soon the newsstand was cleaned out. The morning paper carried the headline ‘Terror in the skies’. The accompanying story, based on hearsay and speculation rather than fact, suggested that Indonesian terrorists had blown QF-1 out of the sky with a bomb secreted in Sydney.

Mothers became frantic, sobbing and crying for their lost children. The men were angry. A Garuda flight to Denpasar was loading. Several people hyped up on coffee and lack of sleep started abusing the ticketing staff, accusing them of crimes they had nothing to do with and no knowledge of. It was something the crowd could focus on, and perhaps gain some obtuse meaning from. More people joined in. They began to tear down the airline’s signage and throw what came to hand at the innocent staff: garbage cans, barricades, food scraps.

A television crew setting up to interview people for human interest fillers caught it all on camera and did a live cross to the morning news.

Security arrived again, this time less inclined to be understanding.

Niven woke with a start. Six am. Jesus, must have dozed off. The phone was ringing beside him. He picked up the handset groggily.

‘Morning, Griff. Yeah, went home and slept like a baby,’ he lied. ‘Sure, gimme five.’ He hung up.

The air vice marshal almost did look as if he’d been home, had a good night’s sleep and a hot shower when the ASIS director stepped in to his office trailing the Minister of Defence, Hugh Greenway.

Niven ran his eye over the minister. He hadn’t yet decided whose team the man was on. Lurch was in his
mid-fifties, very tall and stooped. His skin was pale and freckled. He had ginger hair and strong hands. A farm boy. Greenway had intense green eyes and his brow was fine, rather than overhanging like the character in the television show. But nicknames were rarely given to be flattering. Do I trust you? Greenway was a new appointment in a recent cabinet reshuffle. Niven just hadn’t had enough experience with the man to make up his mind either way.

Barely in the CDF’s office, the minister said, ‘I’ve just got off the phone to Byron Mills. I wanted to tell you both at the same time, rather than double up. There’s good news and bad news.’

Niven was an optimist. Even so, when offered the choice, he’d always go for the bad news first. It was like eating your greens before anything else, getting them over with and saving the best for last. ‘Give us the bad,’ he said.

‘The ambassador has been on at the Yanks about the satellite but they haven’t budged.’

‘Okay, we’ve already taken that on the chin. What else?’ said Niven, impatience creeping into his tone.

‘Mills had a talk with the people down at DIGO.’

Niven raised his eyebrows. The Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation was the department charged with, amongst other things, photo intelligence. They were the obvious experts to talk to when it came to spy satellites.

‘No specifics, Spike, don’t worry,’ said Greenway, reading the CDF’s frown. They’d all agreed that it would be best not to bring anyone else into the loop, at least until something concrete turned up. ‘They had a couple of ideas. He followed up on them and found us a private spy satellite. A company called SpaceEye.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard of them,’ said Niven, his interest surging.

‘Launched their first satellite in ’99, then ran into problems with the US Congress. Issues about privacy, mainly. There was some attempt to have their technology limited.’

‘Did Congress succeed?’ Griffin asked.

‘Publicly yes, privately no. The sats were built by Rockwell and Kodak, with pretty much the same technology available to the US military – keyhole imaging, infrared, x-ray . . .’

‘How’d they manage that?’ asked Griffin.

‘Money, basically. Defence Intelligence prepared a circular on it last year. The satellite program was being funded by Mitsubishi, Hyundai and a few others, and they didn’t want their investment compromised.’

‘Look, guys, with respect, the investment strategy’s secondary. Can the satellite do the job for us?’ Niven said impatiently. The game of twenty questions was starting to annoy him. No one had rung to announce that the plane had been found. That meant the nightmare was continuing.

‘It’s being positioned as we speak,’ said Greenway virtually without moving his lips, in a broad, flat Australian accent that reminded Niven of vast, dusty cattle stations. ‘A mining company surveying the jungles of New Guinea has just finished using it. So the sat’s pretty close, which is fortunate. It’ll be in place over Sulawesi within three hours. Should be getting pictures by . . .’ he checked his Seiko, ‘. . . by lunch.’ Greenway stood.

‘Hugh, thanks. That is good news,’ said Niven, meaning it, his foul mood turned around.

Griffin also stood to go as the minister smiled and left.

‘Actually, Graeme, if you wouldn’t mind, could you stay for a bit? There are a few thoughts I want to run by you.’

‘Sure.’ Griffin sat back down and poured himself some
water from the glass pitcher on the low table in front of him.

‘What’s up?’ Griffin knew the CDF well. When he’d left him last night, the man had had
that
look in his eye, a certain intensity that gripped Niven whenever there was danger in the air.

After some hesitation Niven said, ‘What do you know about Flight 007?’

Here it is, thought Griffin. He resisted the temptation to say something trite about James Bond. Niven was obviously not in any mood for banter. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he said instead.

‘Then how about if I add Sakhalin Island?’ Niven was leaning forward on his desk, fingers forming a triangle in front of his face, forehead creased.

‘Okay, yes, as a matter of fact. The Korean Airlines 747 shot down by a Soviet rocket in . . .’85, I think, over Sakhalin Island. Soviet territory.’

‘September 1, 1983. And it was an SU-15 tactical fighter that fired the missile, an Anab air-to-air.’

‘Been doing some research have we?’ The question was rhetorical.

‘You remember before you left last night I mentioned that there were –’

‘– three hundred and forty-seven sites dedicated to aeroplane crashes? Yes, I remember.’

‘I was bullshitting you. There are far more than that. I was looking into the survivability of the Boeing 747.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘And I found out that they are one very difficult mother to bring down. Unless you plough into something, or have a mid-air, or knock a wing off, they’ll keep flying until the
pilots, or the on-board computers, are good and ready to land it.’

‘You forgot blowing it out of the sky with missiles,’ added Griffin, interested in seeing where this would go. He knew Niven rarely went on wild goose chases.

‘I’ll get to that.’ Niven consulted his notes. ‘On May 2, 1988, a United Airlines Boeing 747 with 258 people on board landed safely at New Tokyo International Airport after three of its four engines failed. There were no deaths or injuries.’

Griffin nodded and tilted his head. Landing on just one engine! He had to admit that was impressive.

Niven continued reading aloud. ‘The 747 has four separate hydraulic systems. Knock three of them out and the plane will keep flying.’

‘And if you take all of them out?’

‘Yeah, it’ll crash, but get this.’ Niven wagged his finger, almost in triumph, and rifled through a sheaf of notes. Eventually he found the scrap of paper he was searching for. ‘August 12, 1985: a Japan Air Lines 747 suffered massive structural failure destroying all of its hydraulics systems. For more than thirty minutes, the pilots controlled the plane’s stability with engine power alone!’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Well, it eventually flew into a mountain killing 520 out of 524 passengers and crew – the worst single plane accident in history.’

‘Uh-huh. Do you mind if I ask a question?’ Griffin interjected.

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Where’s this leading?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but it scares the hell out of me.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Griffin, who now had his professional hat well and truly on.

‘From what I can discover, backed up by what the people at Boeing say, it takes a hell of a lot to knock down a 747. They just want to keep flying. So, conclusion one – there was a bomb on board QF-1. Conclusion two – the plane was shot down.’

Griffin scoffed. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Spike, who would want to do that? Don’t you think that’s a bit of a massive leap into the unknown?’

‘Who do you think the prime suspect would be, Griff?’ said Niven, ignoring the questions.

‘Now let’s stop right there. What possible reason, what motive, would Indonesia have for doing that? Relations have been, well, a bit jumpy for a while, but . . . shooting down a 747? They’re not exactly the Soviets, you know. For that matter not even the Soviets are the Soviets any more.’

The Commander in Chief leaned back in his chair with a vaguely triumphant smile. ‘It’s interesting, and telling, don’t you think, that the Indonesians spring so quickly to your mind?’

Griffin was flustered. ‘Look, Spikey, we have a plane that’s gone missing for twenty-four hours. No doubt in my mind – or anyone else’s in this building, for that matter – it has crashed somewhere on the island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. That explains why Indonesia is my natural context for speculation. I think the hypothesis you’re pushing is just a bit off the wall.’

‘I agree it’s a chilling thought, but the facts, what facts we have, do lead in a certain direction.’

‘Yeah, and my problem is, we don’t have any facts and
therefore any direction, just a lot of unanswered questions,’ said Griffin.

‘Okay, but we also have history. A 747 is a very large object. It weighs over a quarter of a million kilos or half a million pounds. If it did blow up at 35 000 feet, how large an area do you think the wreckage would be scattered over?’

‘Very,’ Griffin was drawn in despite himself.

Niven sifted through his notes again. ‘On November 27, 1987, a South African Airways 747 crashed in the Indian Ocean near the island of Mauritius. Debris was scattered over
230 square kilometres
! If that Qantas plane blew apart at altitude over Sulawesi, it would be raining aeroplane from one end of the island to the other. Indonesia would know about it.’

‘Hang on. Now you’re arguing that the plane wasn’t shot down?’

‘No, I’m arguing that the Indonesians are playing dumb.’

‘Okay, I see your point . . . I think,’ Griffin added, cautiously piecing together the logic. ‘You think QF-1 met with violence over Indonesia, because violence is the only thing that’ll stop a 747 short of a mid-air or a mountain.’

‘Correct.’

‘You think the plane didn’t blow up, but nevertheless eventually crashed.’

‘Correct.’

‘You also think that the Indonesians have found the wreckage already, but aren’t admitting to that for some sinister reason.’

‘Correct again.’

‘It’s the whole sinister bit I just can’t buy. Sorry, Spike.’

Niven began shuffling papers, obviously annoyed at his friend’s reluctance to see what he believed was readily apparent.

‘Look,’ said Griffin, ‘there’s another alternative, the one no one’s taking seriously, that the plane flew on crippled by some massive systems malfunction and has crashed well outside the search area, which is why they haven’t found it.’

‘The line the Indons are pushing.’

‘Is it really that ridiculous?’

Niven twirled a pencil around his thumb. ‘In my view, yes. The 747-400 has two transponders. As I said, a transponder is something that belts out an aircraft’s sign to air traffic radars. The controller at Bali central said both transponders went out at the same time. I believe that means disaster struck the plane. It came to earth somewhere near that point on Sulawesi.’

Griffin stood up and stretched. ‘Call me when you get some hard evidence, mate,’ he said.

‘Would you settle for circumstantial corroboration?’ asked Niven, smiling.

‘No,’ said Griffin, smiling back. ‘But tell me anyway.’

‘Okay, that report you gave me last night about the Super Pumas . . .’ Niven sifted through the pile of books and notes on the table and pulled out the WAC of Sulawesi on which he’d marked the track of QF-1. He passed it to the ASIS Director-General.

‘I’ve seen this, haven’t I?’ asked Griffin, frowning, concentrating.

‘The report says the Pumas went somewhere with a load of Kopassus and came back three hours later, empty,’ said Niven.

‘Yes . . .’

‘Those helos cruise between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty knots. So, assuming nil wind, it could have flown a maximum distance outbound from Hasanuddin of around a hundred and eighty nautical miles before returning.’

Griffin was still frowning. ‘You’re grasping,’ he said.

‘The red grease pencil is QF-1. The black line is a possible track for those Pumas.’

Griffin saw that the black line ended with an X almost on top of the spot Niven had marked for the crash site of the Qantas plane. ‘You really want to believe the worst, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Griff, I know this is not something we want to face as a possibility, particularly as there’s no supporting evidence yet, but the fact that the Indonesian air force wants to stop looking in Sulawesi and start looking somewhere else entirely . . . well, that
is
highly suspicious to my mind.’

‘And I’d rather believe the tooth fairy spirited the plane away. Sulawesi is not Sakhalin Island. Those Pumas could just as easily have flown their load of Kopassus troops to a piss-up on some deserted beach twenty klicks down the coast and partied for a few hours before flying home.’

‘Look, I know that. As I said,
circumstantial
corroboration.’ Niven stretched his aching back and rolled his head a couple of times. There was a tickle in the back of his throat. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. Not now. ‘You think I’m just being a bloody hawk and, because we’ve known each other so long, I think you should know better. There’s something smelly about this and while I hope I’m wrong . . .’

‘Sorry, Spike. I don’t want you to be right because, if you
are, well, we’d all be in one big fucking mess. Also, I can’t believe you’re right because we have absolutely no information to go on. And I’ll remind you, I’m in the intelligence business, not the speculation business.’ Griffin rose to leave.

‘Before you go . . .’

Griffin raised his eyebrows, pausing at the door.

‘There’s a twist to the Sakhalin Island story.’

‘Which is?’ Griffin was drawn in despite himself.

‘You’d expect that the Soviets would have denied shooting the plane down, but they didn’t. They actually released the voice tapes from the fighter pilot’s cockpit. The tapes from the air traffic controller in Japan were also released. You can hear the Korean pilots informing ATC that the plane had suffered rapid decompression and that they were descending to one-zero thousand feet – 10 000 feet. Then, nothing. Gone. The Russians said it crashed. The Americans hurried to agree. But strangely, out of 258 PAX on board, and over half a million pounds of weight, only two bodies and a few small bits and pieces of KAL Flight 007 were ever found. Those statistics were completely at odds with what the experts would expect from a plane supposedly blown out of the sky – there should have been bodies and wreckage everywhere.’