Rogue Element (31 page)

He examined the soldiers who had so adeptly surrounded, cornered and slaughtered his men. They were young, serious, but far from nervous, as his men would have been if the roles had been reversed. These soldiers were cool, calculated professionals. No emotion, just business. It wouldn’t take much for one (or all) of them to pull their triggers and kill him in cold blood. Again, if the positions had been reversed, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it and he didn’t expect them to either. His hunch was right. They were Australian SAS. The way they carried themselves and did their job made them instantly recognisable. Marturak had trained with these people before, and even fought against them in a skirmish on the border of West and East Timor. He remembered that battle vividly. He’d managed to shoot one in the head as the man stood over his fallen comrade, yet still the soldier had stood his ground and kept firing. He’d been fighting against the Australian occupation forces with the militia and had barely managed to escape with his life. Yes, they were good.

Marturak talked to them, quietly at first. He knew they probably wouldn’t understand Indonesian but if he somehow forced his humanity on them, there was a slight chance that they would find it harder to kill him. That’s what the TNI psychs said. Now he played that card for all it was worth.

Marturak clasped his hands together in front of his face in the universal gesture of prayer and babbled pathetically, beseeching, pleading. He almost made himself sick grovelling like this. Such antics had never deflected him from a chosen course of action, namely, to pull the trigger. But he
needed time. It was all about time. The stocky soldier who appeared to be the leader – he couldn’t be sure because none of the men carried any insignia of rank – ignored his pleas. The soldier stuck the barrel of his shotgun above one of Marturak’s wrists and forced it down, gesturing at him to put his hands behind his back. Another soldier, one he couldn’t see, held his fingers interlocked together and secured his wrists tightly with a nylon lock-tie while a third soldier patted him down, removing his sidearm, grenades and knife. A muzzle jabbed him in the back and he was walking forward, a captured prisoner in his own country.

Getting his mind back into gear took a couple of minutes but the shock of capture passed as he began assessing the situation, sifting through options. He knew he had more men out there in the bush. They would have heard the shooting. They had a radio, and they were in Indonesia. It was their home. He needed time to turn it around on these invaders. These . . . Australians (he mentally spat the word). In the meantime, he had to stay alive, so he prayed for mercy and tried to squeeze tears out of his eyes.

Wilkes couldn’t speak Bahasa, but he didn’t need to. The man was obviously begging for his life. Wilkes was not a cold-blooded killer. He had not been specifically ordered to slot this man. But he also had absolutely no idea what to do with him. Slotting him seemed his only option. Perhaps an alternative would present itself.

Coombs came up to Wilkes and revealed the contents of a rucksack belonging to one of the dead Indonesian soldiers. ‘Looks like black boxes to me, boss. From the plane.’

That was a find. The people back home would be interested
in those, big time.

Marturak walked into the small clearing pushed in front of his captors, head bowed and hands behind his back. The SAS soldiers filed in behind him. Beck and Littlemore stood to meet the advancing party, as did Suryei, while Joe stayed on his back, hypnotised by the canopy swaying high overhead. Marturak saw more of his men laid out next to each other on the ground, their shirts pulled over their heads to hide the gore from view. It took every ounce of willpower not to scream with rage at the sight of his men slaughtered by these fucking Australian pigs. He tried not to look at the bodies. It was important to keep intact the cloak of meekness he’d managed to pull over himself.

Then the woman, one of the survivors he’d failed to hunt down, came up to him and spat in his face and that was the end of his composure. He staggered forward in an attempt to shoulder-charge her, but having his hands tied behind his back upset his balance. Marturak tripped and ploughed head first into the ground, dirt filling his mouth. He struggled to get his feet under his body until a hand grabbed his shirt firmly by the collar and hauled him up.

The woman stared at him defiantly. She appeared to be Indonesian. This was one of the people who’d made him and his men look stupid. Her companion was on the ground, wounded by the look of him. Good.

Suryei feared this man. He’d come to represent for her all the senseless brutality of a nation, the torment of East Timor – the graves, so much destruction. He had pursued them through the jungle in order to kill them. She looked at the bodies being lined up on the ground, and thought
about the men who probably lay dead beyond her view in the jungle. It struck Suryei that her and Joe’s survival was nothing more than sheer good luck. The odds of living through the plane crash had been staggering, but then there was the jungle and this bunch of killers to contend with. The soldier didn’t even know her. The soldier’s hate was mindless. He inhabited a brutal world she wanted no part of. With that fresh realisation, she turned her back on the invective streaming from Marturak’s mouth and quietly sat beside Joe.

There were more Indonesian soldiers out there somewhere. Wilkes glanced at his watch. Just on forty-nine minutes till extraction. It would take them a good thirty-five minutes to reach the RV – the place where the felled hardwood had torn a huge gash in the canopy, large enough for the V22 to drop in and lift them out. Better to take it slow and careful. It was time to move. Now. Any Kopassus within cooee would have been drawn to the gunfire at a run.

‘Stu, you ready?’ he asked.

‘When you are, boss.’

‘How about Joe there?’ he said, nodding at Joe, who was staring up at the canopy, smiling.

‘Having a wonderful time, by the looks of things. He’ll be right.’

‘Okay, fuck-knuckles, let’s blow,’ said Wilkes quietly into his boom mike. ‘Stu, stay with the civilians. James, you’ve done bugger-all on this job. Make yourself useful and take the point. Get your machete out and cut us a path. Gary, you and Coombsy ranger for us. Mac, you take the rear. If anyone takes the easy way down our trail, let them know they’re making a big mistake. We don’t want
any surprises and we’ve still got quite a few unfriendlies out there.’ Wilkes had no idea where the Indons would be coming from, but if they came across an obvious path cleared through the jungle, they just might follow it. That would be handy, because knowing where the Indonesians were would make dealing with them that much easier.

‘No wukkas, boss,’ said Mac Robson, checking the ammo box on his Minimi and moving off at the trot.

‘What do we do with blubber-mouth here?’ asked Ellis, gesturing at the Indonesian prisoner.

Wilkes had momentarily forgotten about the Indon sergeant. He sized the man up and again considered the alternatives. The Kopassus soldier was an ugly son-of-a-bitch, that was for sure, with the skin on his face so badly pockmarked it had the appearance of a dirty golf-ball. He tried not to let the look of the man influence his decision either way. The humanitarian side of him considered leaving him behind to care for his own man, the snakebite victim. The SAS soldier in him thought that he should at least take the man with them so that their identity, strength and position weren’t passed to his Kopassus mates, if they happened to stumble across each other. The soldier won the internal debate. ‘He comes with us. Tell him any funny business and we send him to Allah,’ said Wilkes simply.

The woman stepped up to within centimetres of the Indon soldier, yelled something at him, then turned and walked away.

Wilkes pulled her aside. ‘You speak Bahasa. What did you say to him?’

‘That if he doesn’t behave you’ll stick your shotgun up his arse and pull the trigger,’ she said coolly.

Wilkes cleared his throat involuntarily. ‘That’s about
right, Suryei, thanks. We’re moving off now to our rendezvous. Getting airlifted out in forty-six minutes. You could give us a hand by staying close to Joe and helping him. He’s going to need it. We’re not going to race, but I want to get there with time to spare to set up a few defences, just in case.’

‘Ah, what’s your name again?’ enquired Suryei, embarrassed, aware that in the surprise of the arrival of the Australian soldiers, she’d forgotten it.

‘Tom will do,’ said Wilkes. ‘And this is my merry band of wankers.’ Several men laughed out loud.

‘If there’s one thing Joe and I can do after three days in this place, it’s move through the jungle. Don’t worry about us.’

‘Okay.’

Suryei suddenly realised that she had no idea how long they had been marooned here. ‘What day is it?’

‘It’s Friday. Thank God.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘All day . . .’ said Tom with a smile.

Suryei couldn’t believe it. It was only Friday? So much had happened. She had left Sydney on the Tuesday afternoon, and the plane had crashed in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just two days ago. Unbelievable.

Suryei saw the soldier talk softly into the wire in front of his mouth. The mood in the clearing changed. Joe was lifted to his feet, supported by the soldier who’d dressed his wounds. Joe was obviously shaky, swaying on rubbery legs. Suryei went over to him and put her arm around him carefully, supporting him. He gave her a wan smile. Before she realised exactly what was going on, they were picking their way through the jungle again. Only this time it was
different. The soldiers ahead were blazing the trail, and they knew where they were going. She felt safe with these people. They were
her
army. She felt good, secure, and Joe was doing better than expected.

As they walked, Wilkes reached up and plucked a piece of fruit, seemingly from out of the air, and gave it to her, smiling. He made a peeling gesture. She removed a portion of the skin and took a small bite. Whatever it was, it was sweet and delicious. She knew when they’d found the jackfruit that they were probably surrounded by food, and the soldier had just proved it. A small shiver went through her. It was good to be alive – a tangible thrill.

And then it hit her. The plane crash. The old couple shot dead. Finding Joe. Fire. Running. Death. And the awful question: why? Had the Qantas plane really been shot down because Joe had hacked into the Indonesian general’s computer and stolen invasion plans? Christ Almighty! The invasion! She couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten the most important thing.

Shit, it was more than important. And yet it had completely slipped her mind. Purely surviving had overwhelmed everything. One breath at a time. One step at a time. And why were Australian soldiers here in Indonesia fighting, shooting Indonesian soldiers? Jesus! Had it already begun? Were Australia and Indonesia at war? One country’s soldiers didn’t go into another country and kill that country’s soldiers unless they were. The thought sent a shudder down her spine. She kicked herself for being so self-absorbed.

‘I need a radio or a phone or something,’ she blurted to Wilkes. ‘I know why the Indonesians shot down our plane.’

Wilkes was taken aback. He had been expecting her to
say that she liked the breadfruit. ‘How do you know the Indonesians shot it down?’

‘Because we found one of the plane’s engines in the jungle, blasted off the wing. There was an Indonesian missile still stuck in it.’

Jesus. Wilkes was genuinely surprised.

‘Are we at war with Indonesia?’ she asked nervously.

‘Not when we left East Timor,’ said Wilkes, frowning.

That’s something at least, thought Suryei. ‘I have to use your radio.’

‘We already know Indonesia shot the plane down, ’Wilkes said, attempting to calm her.

‘You know? You knew? How long have you known?’

‘About a day, maybe more.’

‘Then why has it taken so much time to get to us?’

‘Hang on, you asked how long it has been since we knew the plane was shot down. Not how long we’ve known about survivors.’

‘Okay, then when did you know about us?’

‘About as long as it takes to stuff us into a plane and get us here – a few hours, no more.’

Suryei chewed her lip. ‘Are you here because of Joe?’

‘Eh?!’ He looked at her, puzzled.

Suryei desperately wanted to tell the soldier everything, but she was afraid. Perhaps if they knew what Joe had done, these men would be less inclined to bring them to safety.

Wilkes felt she was holding something back. Suryei had become silent. ‘If you want to talk to anyone in Australia, you’ll have to wait. We’ve got a satellite phone but it’s not working. Something to do with interference from the canopy.’

Suryei had no reason to doubt the man. He was on her
side. Still, a powerful feeling of unease swept through her. How much time did they have? Or had time run out? And who was she going to call anyway? It wasn’t as if she knew the Prime Minister . . .

Suryei watched Joe pick his way carefully through the jungle, leaning on a soldier. The morphine had wrapped him in its protective sheath. ‘How long will the morphine last?’ asked Suryei.

‘Depends on the person – their sensitivity to the drug, body weight, the level of pain. I’d say Joe’s got forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, before he comes back to earth. And he will land hard. That wound is going to hurt.’

The steep bow of the prahu sliced through the murky brown coastal waters just beyond the reach of the mangrove trees. Wyan, one of three Wyans on the pirate vessel, was counting the number of sharks churning the water in the boat’s lazy wake. He lowered the bucket into the water to give it a rinse. It had contained various scraps from the kitchen and it was coated with a layer of evil-smelling slime. No sooner did the bucket touch the water than he had to yank on the dirty orange nylon cord it was suspended on, lifting it out of reach of snapping grey heads.

Wyan almost lost his footing as the captain turned the wheel sharply to port to keep the prahu hugging the edge of the mangroves. Something was wrong with the boat’s radar. It had mysteriously stopped working. One minute it was fine, the next it presented a barrage of static. One of
the other Wyans, the one from Bali and the boat’s electrical expert, pronounced that something was terminally wrong with the unit’s sealed components, so they had turned it off. A pirate vessel without radar was naked, so they were lying low, hugging the coast. It would be bad to run into an Indonesian patrol boat. His brother in the air force wouldn’t be able to help him then.

Wyan thought about that. It was funny; two brothers, both so different. One a pirate, the other a pilot, an officer in the air force. And so serious his older brother was too. It was almost like his little brother Wyan was an embarrassment. But who, at the end of the day, brought home more money? Wyan thought that that was the reason his older brother was always so angry with him. It wasn’t because he was a pirate. It came down to money. Everything always did. A large tiger shark bit one of the smaller grey-blue ones and blood swirled through the brown murk. The water boiled with swishing tails and fins and teeth.

The prahu rounded the point just clear of the mangroves and the air was full of mechanical thunder. Wyan ducked as an aircraft roared low overhead, barely clearing the boat’s stubby radio mast. The plane was gone before anyone in the wheelhouse or below decks could run out and see what all the noise was about. Wyan had seen it, though. He’d seen enough to know that it was a military plane. He recognised it. His brother had spent most of their childhood collecting photos and books of warplanes, and the strange-looking aircraft made an occasional appearance in these as an experimental concept. What in Allah’s name was it called?

The small dish on the wheelhouse caught his attention.
Wyan decided to call up his brother and ask about an aircraft that appeared to be part helicopter, part fixed wing plane, that had just flown into Indonesia from the sea. Wyan pulled the satellite phone out of his back pocket, checked for signal strength, and dialled the number. The greatest pleasure about being successful, thought Wyan, was being able to afford the latest gear.

The MAG made its way cautiously to the edge of the clearing around the giant fallen tree. This was their revised RV with the V22, but they wouldn’t move into its centre until the transport home arrived. They would be asking for trouble out there in the centre of the clearing. The group took a few minutes to thoroughly reconnoitre the area from the cover of the tree line.

They had made good time. Fifteen minutes plus or minus two minutes until pick-up, Wilkes calculated. Enough time for a little defensive work, especially in their rear. He gave the appropriate instructions quietly into the boom mike and directed the core of his group – Joe, Suryei, Curry, Coombs and the Indonesian soldier – to the protective cover of a dense copse of trees. Ellis and Beck crouched, removed their rucksacks and extracted a stack of slim, curved grey claymores. Robson trotted in, took four of the mines, then the three soldiers left in different directions to position them for the greatest defensive effect.

‘Have I got time for a brew-up, boss?’ asked Robson over the comms. Wilkes glanced up at Mac and gave him a quizzical look. And then he realised what Robson was about and gave him the thumb’s up, shaking his head with a half-smile.

Mac quickly checked his pack to ensure he had everything
he needed, then dashed to the trail they’d hacked into the bush.

Wilks surveyed the clearing from behind an ancient, half-rotted hardwood. It was not quite as spacious as he had remembered, but big enough, he hoped, to get the V22 in. The wait was making him edgy. They weren’t here for a picnic, after all. He observed that there was fuck-all cover out in the middle of the RV. Withdrawing to the aircraft would be a tricky exercise if the Indons had their shit together. Wilkes’s men could easily be surrounded here and cut down. A couple of well-placed snipers would do the trick. They’d be firing from the dark into the light and they’d be virtually invisible. If the positions were reversed, he wouldn’t think twice about it. He looked up at the sky. Dusk. The night would come down fast.

Was there anything good about this place? Wilkes turned around slowly through 360 degrees, considering their position. Well, at least they didn’t have to make their way back to the crash site of the Qantas plane, as originally planned. The Indon soldiers would have to find them, and that wouldn’t be easy; the jungle was some of the thickest he’d ever seen. It would be helpful if the Indons took the easy way and wandered up the track they’d slashed in the jungle. The claymores Robson was positioning would provide a warm welcome, and alert the Australians to any advance in their rear.

Also, there would be enough room in here to launch grenades from the M203s, without worrying about the ordnance being deflected back at them. Again, thinking negatively, if the Indonesians had grenade launchers, the open space would work for them too, and for exactly the same reason. Wilkes frowned. The more he thought about
it, the more this place was bad news.

He sighted down his Minimi machine gun, resting the short barrel against the tree. He had an unobstructed field of fire across the clearing and into the trees on the opposite side. He had two other Minimis in the group. He’d keep one back for roving fire. The other he’d position twenty-five metres along the tree line, providing a wider field of fire than if just one of the Minimis had been employed. Morgan could rove with his H&K sub-machine gun, pitching in where needed.

Wilkes wondered whether he was being paranoid but decided that he was just being careful. He was still alive and kicking after all these years of soldiering and he intended to stay that way. Furthermore, something told him that this mission was perhaps the most important of his career. He was going to get these two civilians back in one piece, even if it killed him. He smirked at himself for his own poor choice of words.

Beck caught Wilkes’s eye away to the left and gave a nod. The sergeant held up seven fingers. Seven minutes till pick-up.

Robson returned.

‘Mac, take your Minimi down there,’ he said, pointing to another large tree.

‘Easy, boss.’ Robson checked his weapon and sprang through the jungle, avoiding clear space. He lay down on his stomach behind a rock and scanned the tree line.

Automatic fire cracked unexpectedly from the edge of the clearing opposite, and the tree beside Wilkes’s face exploded in a cloud of pulverised wood. He turned to look quickly over his shoulder and saw Coombs go down, shot, then Curry. The woman, Suryei, was next. She spun on her
heels and fell over Joe, who was lying on the ground. The copse of trees provided absolutely no cover from gunfire directly opposite. It happened so fast. Wilkes dropped to one knee. He watched for the muzzle flash amongst the black and raked the area with a quick burst to see if it would be returned.

Geysers of dirt rose from the ground in front of Wilkes. One of the slugs splintered as it hit a small outcrop of rock, a fragment burrowing into the skin at the point of Wilkes’s chin. It flayed the skin from his jaw and opened up his cheek before exiting below his temple. Blood gushed down his arm and made the stock of his Minimi slick. Wilkes was in shock. ‘Shit, I’m hit!’ he said. He shifted his weapon to his left hand and brought his right hand up to hold the side of his face together. The pressure stopped the bleeding. Wilkes retreated, finding cover behind a rock. Beck joined him.

‘Cool, boss,’ he said, checking the wicked gash.

‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t tell me, chicks dig scars,’ said Wilkes.

‘Team it with an eye patch,’ Beck advised, closing the wound with a couple of drops of superglue.

Wilkes felt no pain. There was too much adrenaline in his system.

Flashes. Slugs slapped through the foliage by Beck’s shoulder. There. Wilkes could see them off to one side of the clearing. The Indonesian position was vulnerable to a grenade. It took a second for the sergeant to react. He ran the five metres to Coombs, who was lying on the ground groaning, and exchanged his weapon for the wounded man’s M4 propped against a tree. Ellis’s Minimi fired into the foliage concealing the enemy. Robson did the same from behind his rock.

Wilkes’s men were quick to recover their equilibrium.
They formed pairs and began firing and moving through the tree line around the edge of the clearing, one covering the advance of the other. The hostile bursts of fire slowed quickly, the attention of the enemy diverted, and no doubt surprised, by the speed and focus of the counterattack.

Bang
. A claymore went off in their rear. Screams. Some Indons had run into their perimeter security. Robson smiled.

Wilkes freed M203 grenades from Coombs’s chest webbing. He cracked the launcher, fed in a round, and waited for muzzle flashes to provide him with a target. There, a tracer round originating from behind a particularly dark bush opposite.

Wilkes launched the grenade, the butt kicking against his shoulder. The round arced towards the trees, spinning, the revolutions arming the fuse.
Boom
. A vicious smudge of grey smoke appeared behind the trees he’d fired into. Wilkes chambered another round and squeezed the trigger. Kick.
Boom.
A scream. Muzzle flashes, twenty metres further left this time. The M4 kicked again.
Boom.
Morgan was running at a tangent to the hot area, hoping to outflank the Indons. His weapon was not shouldered. It was next to useless to run and fire, it slowed the shooter down and made aiming impossible. Morgan would find cover, locate the enemy, and then hopefully pick them off from an angle they’d least expect.

Littlemore was kneeling at the tree line, putting down covering fire while Morgan ran. Quick bursts. He counted off the rounds in his head. He always packed magazines with tracer second to last. When he saw it fired, he changed magazines. That way, he wouldn’t get caught without any change in the till. Tracer. Magazine empty.
Release. New mag. Quick bursts. Tracer.

Now Littlemore was up and running around the edge of the clearing, towards the trees opposite. Wilkes could see Chris Ferris also taking cover behind a hardwood blanketed in luxurious, thick moss. Enemy fire was all around him. He watched Ferris pop his head around the trunk. Once. Nothing. Twice. Nothing. He then turned and broke cover, unexpectedly coming round the other side of the tree. A spray of bullets answered his move but the rounds found only air. Ferris was too quick, too wily.

Wilkes made his way back to Coombs and the others. Coombs had been hit in the leg. Fortunately, the blade of his machete had deflected the bullet, but the force of the round had been the equivalent of having his leg thumped with a sledgehammer. Coombs thought his femur was broken. Wilkes gave it a cursory check. It wasn’t, but Coombs wasn’t going to be ballroom dancing anytime soon. Curry, however, looked bad. Shoulder wound. The woman was okay. He thought she’d been shot, but it was just her reaction to the incoming fusillade. She had wasted no time dropping to the ground – that had probably saved her life.

But the prisoner was gone.

Mac had also moved back to check on Coombs, Curry and the crash survivors. He gave Wilkes a reassuring nod. He fired off a burst from his Minimi at the muzzle flashes, showering Suryei and Joe with hot, spent cases.

Experience had kicked in. Panic was gone.
Boom
– an explosion from the opposite side of the clearing. A scream. Another claymore. Another scream.

Wilkes liberated his shotgun, checked that the magazine was full, and joined Ellis, Ferris and Littlemore as they
moved into the trees to mop up the remnants of the Indon force. It took a precious minute for their eyes to adapt to the lower light back in the jungle proper. Ferris had first contact. There were six, possibly seven Indonesian soldiers left. An M34 white phosphorous grenade exploded in the middle of a group of three. Littlemore had thrown it, unseen behind him.
Boom
. The flash caught Ferris by surprise and momentarily blinded him. The damage to the Indons was infinitely worse. A mushroom cloud of smoke rose quickly to the canopy above on a pillow of intensely hot air. An M26 grenade followed the incendiary ordnance. Insurance.
Boom
.

Ferris’s sight recovered from the flash of the M34 grenade in time to see a pair of Indons on the move, over to the left. He relayed the observation over the comms. Wilkes set up the attack. Advance. Cover fire. Split the angles. Move. Fire. Split. Advance. The Indonesians sprayed the jungle blind, firing at trees. The SAS moved. Split. Covered. An M34 grenade lit up the trees. Screams. Ellis and Wilkes cut off two more Kopassus. A blast from a large-bore shotgun echoed through the trees, followed by a couple of two-shot bursts from silenced M4s. Phut-phut, phut-phut.

Marturak had run blindly when the shooting started, trying to find effective cover. He then made his way around to the opposite end of the clearing. One of his own men had bailed him up after a tense moment in the growing gloom and nearly shot him as one of the enemy. A few terse words had ended the confusion. His restraint had been cut and he’d picked up a weapon lying beside a dead comrade and continued to move around the perimeter of the clearing. That was barely ten minutes ago. The SAS had been brutally
effective and now, he knew he was the last.

The pattern of gunfire told a deadly tale. Two-shot bursts. To the head, no doubt. The coup de grace. And now there was silence. Except for the crash of his own heart against his ribcage, the jungle was eerily quiet. Marturak dropped his weapon and waited. He caught movement in the corner of his eye. It occurred to him that these people never seemed to come from the direction anticipated.