Rogue Element (2 page)

General Suluang shook a toothpick from the holder. He dug out a piece of chicken that had lodged in the canyon left by a filling broken long ago. The waitress cleared away the meal eaten by the men hunched in the circle of dim light over the table. The general looked up when her scent reached his nostrils. She smiled. He admired the young woman’s body, momentarily diverted from the discussion.

‘Kalimantan is troublesome again,’ said Lanti Rajasa, the head of Indonesia’s security police. ‘We kill the terrorists but the burnings persist.’ His lips were stretched tight across yellow teeth, giving him the appearance of an animal baring its fangs.

The general nodded, relieved that the annoying piece of chicken had finally been dispatched. This was his favourite restaurant in Jakarta. The food was acceptable, the decor a mishmash of jungle themes and Indonesian mythology. The music softly piping through the restaurant’s speakers was a
popular melody played on a continuous loop. The general found the familiarity of it reassuring. The room, though large, was dark and private. Thick brown carpet swallowed conversation and the muted light encouraged anonymity. It was the kind of place businessmen took their mistresses during the day, but it was one o’clock in the morning now and the last of the paying customers had long since left. He especially liked this restaurant because the owner was his cousin, a retired army major from a good regiment, so he didn’t feel that he had to guard his conversation.

Rajasa continued. ‘Aceh is worsening. The police chief there is missing. We don’t think we’ll find him alive. Several government buildings have been torched. The army is on the streets, but the looting, as you know, goes on. The students are the worst. The people no longer wait for the soldiers to turn their backs before they steal. The army doesn’t seem to be an effective deterrent any more.’

The general again nodded thoughtfully, ‘Perhaps we should have had our men remove their red berets way back in the beginning. It would have been helpful having supporters in the area working behind the scenes. We’ve let things get out of hand. Lack of respect is a disease, Lanti, and it spreads. Aceh, Ambon, Kalimantan, Irian Jaya.’

‘You mean West Papua, General,’ said Colonel Javid Jayakatong, commanding officer of a mechanised infantry regiment. ‘I still can’t believe the government caved in to pressure from a few natives waving spears and allowed the place to be renamed.’

‘They can call it what they like, Colonel. It’ll always be Irian Jaya to me,’ said Suluang.

‘Even Bali is proving difficult,’ said Rajasa, snorting in disbelief.

‘Yes, it has never really recovered from those fanatics,’ said Jayakatong, ‘The Balinese resent us. They think we allowed it to happen because they’re Hindu, rather than Muslim. Fools. Don’t all of us here have assets there that rely on the tourists? Why would we hurt our own investments? Still, there is a bright side.’

‘And that is . . .?’ Rajasa was intrigued.

‘The number of Australian flags burned across the country in support of the attacks,’ said Jayakatong.

The men laughed heartily.

The general waited for the laughter to subside and let his face assume a hard, conspiratorial mien. He leaned forward. ‘It started with East Timor. Now, every other island and province with the vaguest historical grudge against Java is moving towards secession. There are racial tensions, religious pressures. Gentlemen, we are sitting on the complete disintegration of Indonesia, nothing less.’

Blood flushed into Colonel Jayakatong’s head at the mention of East Timor. He had been chased through a jungle trail there, humiliated by Australian soldiers, and he hit the table with a closed fist. ‘Australians! Asia’s white trash! They are to blame for so much unrest within our country.’

Lanti Rajasa spoke in a low voice, ‘Many Indonesians feel as you do, Colonel.’

Suluang was pleased to see the anger on the colonel’s face. That was good. It fed his resolve. He glanced quickly at Rajasa and received an imperceptible nod. ‘We all know why we’re here. Indonesia needs a strong hand. Together, united, we have the means at our disposal to act in Indonesia’s interests.’

Rajasa’s eyes flicked from Colonel Jayakatong to General Kukuh Masri, the man known as Mao, for his striking resemblance to the late Chinese leader. They’d all been thinking the
same thought. Indeed, it had been whispered often enough in barracks throughout Indonesia since Australia’s invasion of East Timor. The impact of that blow was still echoing throughout the country, with each subsequent month seeming to bring a further diminution in the power and authority of the country’s armed forces. Finally, someone had put the idea on the table and neither Jayakatong nor Masri had flinched.

General Masri had been silent, Rajasa noted, nodding occasionally but hardly the strident advocate of military intervention they were expecting. They needed him. He commanded a powerful regiment of crack paratroopers. ‘Yes, it’s time to stop killing our own people,’ he said at last.

General Suluang raised his empty glass and saluted Masri’s sentiment. ‘You are absolutely right, Mao. We might be the shepherds, but our flock is wandering off. We need to regather them if Indonesia is to survive.’

The men looked at each other a little nervously. After the initial bluster, each man knew the course they were on was a dangerous one. ‘And,’ said Suluang after a pause, ‘I have an idea that will almost guarantee there’ll be no blood-letting on Indonesian soil.’

‘What of the Americans? How would they react?’ said Colonel Jayakatong. ‘They are an unpredictable quantity.’

‘Yes,’ said Suluang, ‘the Americans.’ He seemed to be placing the question under scrutiny as he took another toothpick and examined its point. ‘They do not want to see Indonesia disintegrate. They will appreciate the benefits of a strong hand holding the archipelago together. And we’re not terrorists, or religious fanatics. We have a legitimate concern for our country’s stability. If we say the right things about trade, promise a return to stability. Free elections, of course . . .’ The general shrugged dismissively.

The officers chuckled, the tension relieved. Suluang’s confidence was contagious. Of course the Americans would fall into line. And there was still so much occupying them in the Middle East. They’d be difficult at first, but they’d come around.

The young waitress again distracted Suluang. She was across the room folding napkins. A light from the kitchen behind her revealed long slender legs beneath the cotton sundress. Women: taking as many of them as possible to his bed was one of the advantages of power. Very few refused him. He caught his reflection in a mirror. He was a man of power and, at only forty-five, in the prime of life. He smiled to himself before calling her over on the pretence of ordering a drink.

‘What’s your name?’ he enquired after placing an order.

‘Elizabeth,’ she said.

Elizabeth caught him staring at her breasts between the buttons as she leaned forward to remove some plates from the table. She moved to improve his view.

Joe Light was wired. His video screen was tuned to the news while his fingers worked the keyboard of his laptop. The title track from
Blood Soaked Earth
crashed through the earphones plugged into a DVD player by his side. He was nervous. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone had been watching. Satisfied, he closed the Internet connection and reopened the game minimised on the toolbar.

Within a few moments he was back in the world he was more comfortable with these days. His right hand gripped a vibrating joystick. On the computer’s screen, millions of colours coalesced to form a grotesque being. Joe smiled as it ripped the head off another warrior. The freakish thing on screen looked familiar. Joe had patched the game with a parasite that allowed him to attach his features to the computer character. He tapped the keys and the monster flexed, swelling its exaggerated pecs, chest and arms to ridiculous proportions.

In the flesh Joe was strong, but he wasn’t muscle-bound. An ex-girlfriend once described him as vaguely handsome in a wiry kind of way, adding that she thought he had a modem for a dick. Joe’s other passion besides technology was boxing. Not the boxercise aerobics favoured by secretaries and marketing execs, but the real thing in real gyms where there wasn’t any piped music or mirrors, and where the air smelled like a sour leather glove.

The game was a new one Joe was reviewing for
Dumb Thumb
magazine, an on-line/off-line rag that specialised
in high-end computer entertainment and technology. Once he had worked his way through it, Joe would crack the cheat codes and post them on his own Internet site. Two sources of income for the one job. Cool. A sweet little earner. There were many streams to Joe’s income, which was why, at twenty-seven, he could afford a holiday to England, flying first-class. Life was good. Yeah.

His fingers flicked over the keys. A hideous mutant flung gobs of its own dung at the warrior-Joe on screen. Instead of dissolving armour, fatigues and skin as it was supposed to, the lethal excretions passed straight through the computer character and melted the wall behind it. Joe noted the keystrokes on his palm pilot and went in search of more cheat codes.

‘Can I get you something to drink, sir?’ asked a flight attendant, leaning forward towards him to catch his answer. Joe had completely forgotten where he was. That often happened when he was on the computer. It was as if his mind became mated with the CPU when his fingers moved over the keys.

‘No, thanks,’ he said, slightly annoyed by the distraction, and went back to the screen.

The rest of the 747 was quiet when Joe woke from a short, fitful sleep, the overhead lights dimmed low. In economy, uncomfortable bundles in grey blankets filled the seats. Occasional arms and heads spilled into the aisles. Here and there passengers drowsily watched video screens. Sleep hung heavily in the warm cabin.

The flight deck was also dark, but nonetheless alert. Captain Andy Flemming, one of Qantas’s most senior captains, wasn’t on the flight deck. He was having a break, retired to the Crew Rest Facilities for a mandatory kip. First
Officer Luke Granger, a young-looking bloke with wiry red hair and a round face spattered with freckles, was in command. Second Officer Jenny Rivers was beside him, in the captain’s seat, checking over the radio work that would be needed in the following Flight Information Region when they tracked out of Indonesian, and into Malaysian, airspace.

The door behind them opened. A flight attendant had come to see if they wanted refreshments. Luke turned. ‘How’s it going back there? Under control?’

‘Yeah, since I drugged the coffee,’ said the flight attendant. ‘Get you guys anything?’

‘I’ll have one of those Korean massages where they walk on your back. Or a coffee, whatever’s easiest,’ grinned Luke, glancing over his shoulder.

Flemming pushed through the door behind the flight attendant. Rivers began to lever herself out of the seat. ‘It’s okay, Jenny. I’ll just watch for a while. That weather delay in Sydney has really mucked up my sleep pattern,’ he said, yawning.

The second officer eased back into the captain’s chair. She liked the left-hand seat. She believed it would be hers one day.

‘Tea for me please, Becky,’ said the captain, noting the name on the flight attendant’s lapel badge. ‘And one of those cakes I saw you handing out at dinner to the first-class passengers, if you’ve got one left.’ He reached up and adjusted the temperature on the flight deck down a couple of degrees.

‘And a Coke, thanks,’ mumbled Rivers into her paperwork. The flight attendant made a mental note of the order and left the crew silhouetted against a galaxy of cockpit instruments and switch lights.

Luke allowed himself the luxury of letting his mind wander and compared piloting the 747 to flying an F/A-18 in his alma mater, the Royal Australian Air Force. He had Blu-tacked a small plastic model of the fighter to the windscreen by his shoulder. He peeled it off and examined it – a beautiful, deadly shape. In reality, the commercial stuff was dull. Computers did everything. They flew the plane. They managed the engines. They monitored the frequencies. They maintained the life support system that pressurised the cabin and kept everyone alive. They found the airports the aircraft flew to. They kept a lookout for weather. And if that wasn’t enough, hell, the 747-438 even had auto-landing capabilities. The plane could put itself on mother earth – and did so if the weather was exceptionally bad – touching down on the runway centreline when the computers considered the task beyond human ability.

Of course, the F/A-18 was a pretty smart plane too, but its intelligence was concentrated on finding and killing the enemy. He ‘flew’ the plastic model through the air before parking it back on the windscreen.

The 747 was no F/A-18 but flying one was still better than just about any other job he could think of in civvy street. Luke checked the altimeter. He was not surprised to see that it was reading exactly 35 000 feet. All engine gauges were synchronised and reading normal. It occurred to him that the 747 was like a big factory, and that the factory’s product was lift. He was merely a foreman who monitored gauges and ensured that enough of that product was rolling off the production line to keep the factory in the black: flying.

They were tracking down the FIR loaded before takeoff
into the Flight Management Computer. The aircraft’s track was checked automatically and constantly by three Inertial Reference Systems, backed up by two Global Positioning Systems. And if some slight error arose, the IRS would update itself against any and all ground-based radio navigation aids.

The concatenating technological wizardry meant that wandering off track was impossible. Getting from one place to another by the shortest possible route was what commercial flying was all about: minimising the burn of precious fuel. It was flying by the balance sheet. There was no need to double-check their heading but he did so anyway. Spot on. What do you expect? Granger asked himself.

He contemplated the moon just risen above the horizon. It was a dirty yellow dinner plate against a black curtain. The moon’s light had dimmed the surrounding stars but it was a beautiful clear sky. Being up here was something he never tired of, even though there was really nothing to do on these long-haul flights except to concentrate on staying awake. You took in the view, kept checking the instruments you checked fifteen minutes ago, and counted the dollars accumulating in your bank account.

Money, or lack of it. That was the reason he’d left the RAAF. He wasn’t sure it had been such a good decision. He’d been poor in uniform – enough money for beers with the boys and little else – but, shit, he was flying. Really flying. Punching military jets through the blue in vertical climbs that took him from sea level to the blurry edge of space in a couple of minutes. Being paid to dogfight in a multi-million dollar aircraft? Christ, he’d have done it for free.

His wife used to say that he
did
do it for free. That was
her problem. There was never enough money for her. Five years he’d been out of the RAAF now, divorced for three of them. His wife ran off with a stockbroker who earned over a quarter of a million dollars a year, not including bonuses. Karma had burst her little bubble, though. The Internet and the rise of on-line investing had put hundreds of brokers on the street, and his wife’s second husband with them.

He’d heard they’d recently had to sell the Beemer. Luke was not a vengeful person, but he had to admit he was pleased. He’d loved the RAAF, and the fighter with his name stencilled on the fuselage. The woman deserved everything fate dealt her. His eyes unconsciously swept the panel for troublesome numbers but failed to find any.