Sword of Allah (45 page)

There was still one boat left. Everyone was accounted for, even the goddam chief engineer who took his own sweet time capping the well. The rig manager hid his anger as the man stepped onto the boat. Yes, the oil was important, but not worth anyone’s life, especially his. As the manager, he felt that he should supervise the evacuation, and that meant being the last person to leave. The drilling contractor was also on this last boat, and that raised the man considerably in the manager’s esteem. He had one last quick look about before boarding the boat, and wondered
whether the cloud of nerve agent was even now settling on the rig. Perhaps they were already contaminated.

The rig manager took his seat in the crowded boat and looped a rope safety line around his forearm, bracing himself against the gunwale for the thirty-foot drop to the sea below. ‘Okay, everyone,’ he said, ‘hold on.’

In the air-conditioned cool on the bridge of the
Arunta
, Drummond and Briggs were sweating. They watched the radar returns of both the Hornet and the UAV, and there was now no room for error. The gas and oil platforms were within range of the VX. The
Arunta
had done a good job of staying out of the pilot’s face with helpful suggestions, but something had to be said.

Drummond hit the send button. ‘Shogun two.
Arunta.
You are getting too damn close. Smoke the son of a bitch! DO. IT. NOW!’

Burns heard the command loud and clear. Shit! He punched air-to-ground mode and a bloody oil rig showed on his radar less than five miles away. Jesus! Three thousand two hundred and fifty feet on the altimeter and fumes in the tanks. He selected the AIM-9s and shot them both into the sea. They snaked and twitched, hunting for targets that didn’t exist, before they hit the water. How much time before the drone’s on-board explosives would release the deadly cargo into the air? Burns knew there was no alternative. He would have to Fox four it.

He eased the throttle forward and bunted the stick, extending the diameter of his orbit around the bandit. He extended further and further, but all the while keeping his
watering eyes glued on the UAV. Fuel check. Down to 400 pounds. Christ! Three, maybe four minutes of air time. Maybe nothing was left in those tanks. Not now
,
please
,
fo
r
God’s sake
!
The UAV was climbing so its underside was silhouetted against the sky, making it a little easier to see. Yo
u
might only get one attempt
,
so don’t fuck up
.
Burns had to slow the geometry down between his aircraft and the UAV to get the best tactical position on it. He’d approach the UAV from its stern. There was not a lot of time to think about it. The nose of the Hornet came around on the Prowler’s six. Half a mile
,
dead ahead
.
He smiled again, a grim, tight smile at his internal voice’s poor choice of words. His speed was 150 KCAS. The drone climbed at 55 knots. Their closing speed was therefore around 95 knots. Ordinarily, his reactions could easily handle those numbers. But now…? His hand shook on the stick.

The fuel indicator sat on empty. He would not get a second chance at it. Burns took a deep breath and gripped the throttle slider tightly to stop the shakes. He was closing in on it. The drone grew in size. He eased back on the control column. The nose came up. The drone grew large. Throttle forward. Engine roar. Forced back into his seat. Three, two, one. NOW
!
Burns jammed the control column to its left stop then centred it. The Hornet rolled viciously to a ninety degree angle and then…BANG! Wing against wing. The Hornet yawed sickeningly with the impact. And then, miraculously, it recovered. Burns pulled lightly on the control column and throttled right back. The F/A-18 made a flat, low-g turn, a final orbit, and watched the two halves of the drone spiral towards the sea, its mission ended. The bandit’s wing was ripped off at the root. There
was no explosion and a wave of relief swept through him.

LS Mark Wallage had watched it all unfold on the Vectronics display along with everyone else in the operations room. The system had a profile of the drone, so it was now easy to identify. His heart was in his mouth when he saw the two contacts converging on a collision course. That pilot was one brave son of a bitch. And then the two contacts had become one. There was a moment of silence, and then a crackle of static over the speakers.

‘
Arunta
, Shogun two wingman. Fox four the bandit. Repeat Fox four the bandit. Bandit splashed!’

‘Yes!’ said Wallage as whoops of delight erupted around him. The outcome of the battle must also have been known up on the bridge for the
Arunta
’s siren wailed loudly in salute of the young pilot’s desperate courage. Wallage marked the spot of the UAV’s crash. With VX in the water, the area would more than likely become an exclusion zone for some time to come.

Meanwhile Burns pushed the throttle slider forward and the turbo fans surged, squashing him back in his seat as the Hornet accelerated. He needed altitude. He banked the aircraft away from the approaching thicket of oil rigs. One of his engines faded then caught. He had very little time left in the aircraft. ‘
Arunta
, Shogun two. Ejecting from aircraft. Despatch SAR.’ With 6000 feet on the HUD, Burns pulled the striped yellow cord between his thighs. Within a fraction of a second the canopy jettisoned and a series of charges blew him and his seat safely clear of the dying plane.

The rig manager’s face was pale. A medic was in the process of splinting his broken wrist. Their lifeboat had hit the wave bow first and he’d been thrown forward. His arm, wrapped in the rope, had broken like a dry stick. Behind them, their platform stood clearly against the horizon and disappeared when they chugged into a trough. Several people were throwing up from seasickness. At least we’re all alive, thought the rig manager wanly. He looked out the window up at the sky, through the glass and the clear plastic sheeting, just as an aircraft, a fighter by the looks of it, dived through his line of sight. A wave picked the boat up in time for the manager to see the plane spear silently into the sea a kilometre away.

Federal Agent Jenny Tadzic stood in the sun and felt its rays penetrate her clothes and warm her skin. It was one of those Indian summer days in Sydney when the sky was a perfect cloudless blue, painted as if by some divine hand. At thirty-seven, twice divorced and the AFP’s top transnational crime cop, Tadzic had seen enough of the world to have had most of her little girl illusions trampled on. Yet a small part of her still hoped, still believed in happy endings, particularly on days such as this when even the capricious gods themselves seemed in a benign mood.

ASIO had been brought in on the bust. The drugs were tied in with terrorists and that made it ASIO’s concern. It wasn’t usual for the boss himself to be present on these
occasions, but Peter Meyer, the director-general, had wanted to be there first hand to witness whatever went down. He walked up behind Tadzic, clapped his hands together and said cheerily, ‘Well, this is something, isn’t it?’

Tadzic turned to the D-G. The man was happy. For him, this operation was evidence of industry, proof of effectiveness, but for Tadzic and the woman in the wheelchair in front of her, it meant much more. She said, ‘With respect, sir, it’s everything.’

Meyer nodded and cleared his throat. It wasn’t every day that he was made aware of his own insensitivity, but he was aware of it now. He hadn’t seen the wheelchair

Angie Noonan, AFP forensics expert, former prisoner of General Trip and, until recently, heroin junkie, had a blanket over her knees despite the blazing sun. An ambulance waited to transport her back to hospital. The government had picked up the tab, as it should, providing the very best care to help her beat the addiction and return her to health. Noonan had been lucky. Clean needles had been used. She and her boyfriend were free from hepatitis, HIV and other nasties. The DEA agent had been less fortunate. He was still fighting for his life, battling hep B and malaria.

Tadzic thought back to Myanmar, and savoured the memory. When the general had dropped his gun, it had been easy to pick it up with the incoming missiles providing such an absorbing distraction. Had she known then why she’d picked it up, what her intentions were? Perhaps, yes, she had known, but not consciously. The decision would have been made way down deep, somewhere in her brain uncomplicated by the notion of a fair trial and due
process that thought an eye for an eye was fit punishment for a monster like General Trip.

Tadzic breathed in the warm Sydney breeze coming off the harbour, and watched a flock of seagulls diving and wheeling above a shoal of taylor churning the water silver. Angie Noonan’s shoulder shivered lightly under her fingertips. The young woman was still very sick, but this bust would mean a lot to her. And then the devil on Tadzic’s shoulder whispered in her ear not to get her hopes up because life often disappoints. ‘Not always,’ she said out loud. Not now, not today. Today, she had a good feeling.

‘Pardon?’ said Noonan, turning uncomfortably in her wheelchair.

‘I said, it’s a good day.’ Tadzic watched the combined AFP–ASIO–New South Wales police force swarm through the rows of containers on the dock around them.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Angie Noonan, pulling the rug up around her shoulders.

Tadzic had aimed for the face and missed, shooting the general instead in the throat. He died slowly, knowing he was dying, afraid and alone. The look in his eyes said it all. Tadzic breathed deeply again and smiled. It had been the most satisfying moment in her long career on the force. And the two men with her, Tom and Atticus, had both patted her on the back for it. They understood. They also understood that her action would have to remain a secret between the three of them. They were fine with that. They lived in a world full of secrets.

The two Australian Customs officers and their dog led the police wedge descending on container 2209LK. The animal seemed excited, but that had more to do with the
testosterone in the air than the presence of illegal drugs. Container 2209LK had already been inspected, apparently by the very customs officers in the process of opening it for a second going-over. The container had been sitting on the docks for some time, waiting for its owners to claim the contents. No one had turned up. For the past two days, the container had been staked out, but it was obvious to all that the word had gotten out that retrieving the goods would be a bust. Tadzic believed that the terrorists’ distribution network had been General Trip’s. When he’d died, when I shot him, that distribution network would have been tipped off. That was an unfortunate consequence, she admitted to herself.

Various TV outside broadcast units pulled up and bunches of people jumped out of accompanying vehicles as the trucks’ antenna dishes rose on their hydraulic telescopes. A drug bust was good news for everyone: good for ratings, good for the police and especially good for the politicians. It was reassuring for the community. It said everyone was doing their job. A hundred other containers sat on the docks, and Tadzic wondered how many kilos of death and unhappiness hidden within would pass under their radar on this day. What the hell, she shrugged, she was doing her best.

Daisy was excited. She bounded up to the door before it was opened, pawing it, and ran back and forth. She wanted in. Craig and Robert knew it was just her natural exuberance. The inexperienced uniformed cops thought the dog’s behaviour was confirmation that a major find lay on the other side. The customs officers knew what they were looking for anyway, and didn’t need Daisy. But they
were curious to see if, given a second chance, she could find what they already knew to be there.

The door opened with a rusty groan and the officers walked in, their flashlights searching the blackness of the far end wall. Daisy raced from pot to pot, running her nose over every item. ‘Here’s your chance to get even with those pesky snooker tables, mate,’ said Robert. The state police were right behind them and the darkness was suddenly chased away by electric lights powered by a portable generator. The two customs officers strode up to the tables, Daisy on point. The dog wandered through the legs of the tables and put her nose up, under and around them, but failed to find anything suspicious. She sat, tail wagging, panting, as if to say, ‘Nothing here, boys.’ But there was something there according to firm leads.

Craig took a pocket knife and cut under the baize. He then ripped it off. Nothing. Well, nothing but slate. ‘These are very good tables,’ he said. ‘Look at the thickness of that slate. The cheap ones just have wood bases and –’

Robert swung the hatchet down onto the slate and discovered it wasn’t so thick after all. Craig winced, uncomfortable with the symbolism of the destruction. The slate base shattered away easily, revealing yellow bricks of epoxy resin beneath. Craig shone his flashlight down onto one of these bricks. Encased within it appeared to be a white core. ‘Bingo,’ he said. ‘Strike one up to the Feds.’

Half an hour later, the police had removed the epoxy bricks from the six tables and loaded them into a police security van for transport to a high security lockdown. One of the bricks had been split open and the central core
held a tile of compressed heroin of the highest grade. Depending on how it was cut, the street value of the haul was estimated to be more than ninety million Australian dollars.

The state police asked Tadzic if she wanted to make a statement for the television cameras on behalf of the AFP, but she declined. The limelight would have made her uncomfortable. She’d done her job and more on this one. Time to let it go.

The heat from the sun was ruthless despite the midmorning hour, and already the bitumen joins in the concrete slabs of the airport tarmac had softened to the consistency of sticky black treacle. Atticus Monroe and Tom Wilkes sat under a banyan tree, its hanging roots a screen around them, keeping the worst of the heat at bay as they half-heartedly brushed at the swarms of flies. They sat mostly in silence in the shade, trying to conserve energy, watching the flights come and go across the other side of the apron, the civilian side, and occasionally picked over mission details. Between them, back on Flores, they’d managed to figure out the terrorists’ real intentions at the last minute, saving many lives. Monroe had received a personal call from the D-G of the CIA, passing on the warm regards of the President of the United States himself. That felt good, the recognition of a job well done. Wilkes’s boss, Colonel Hardcastle, had said, ‘Good onya, mate,’ or words
to that effect, and that had been the sum total of the official appreciation of the man who’d literally saved the day.

‘You Aussies sure have a low-key way of showing your gratitude,’ Monroe had said after the connection with Canberra had broken. It hadn’t seemed to trouble Wilkes, though. He just went on with the job – business as usual. And the business was still unfinished: a certain loose end by the name of Duat that needed tying up. The terrorist had completely disappeared. Was he dead, killed somehow by persons unknown, or still alive waiting to pop up sometime in the future with a new plan for death and destruction?

Several soldiers from the PNG army wandered around, ignoring their presence, coming and going from the large hangar that doubled as a storage facility and garage for various army vehicles. A flight from Mt Hagen in the highlands arrived, a largish Saab turbo prop. The stairs were wheeled across, the door opened and a small number of passengers disembarked: Europeans, PNG businessmen and several highland tribesmen compete with bird of paradise feathers and boar tusks through their broad noses, and the ubiquitous koteka, an incongruous clash of the ancient with the present. Wilkes was in the middle of wondering whether the tribesmen had been offered tea and coffee along with the other passengers when he was distracted by the arrival of an executive jet reversing its engines on the runway.

The Cessna Citation rolled off onto the taxiway that would bring it to the banyan tree that Wilkes and Monroe had retreated under. The door in the fuse cracked open and the co-pilot popped his head out and then exited,
offering a hand to a woman dressed in military fatigues who was descending the narrow stepladder. She declined assistance.

Wilkes watched her as she walked towards them, a backpack over one shoulder, M4 over the other. She seemed comfortable enough. ‘Morning. Lovely day,’ she said, swinging her pack off her shoulder and placing it beside Wilkes’s and Monroe’s gear.

‘Gia,’ said Monroe, standing and giving her a blokey handshake. ‘Glad you could make it.’

Wilkes settled for a simple ‘Hi.’ He’d told her where they were off to and the reasons why, and the deputy station chief had immediately demanded to come along. Wilkes was unsure about her presence. The New Guinea highlands were tough going at the best of times and they were headed way off the beaten track. ‘Don’t worry about Gia,’ Monroe had said. ‘She knows her limits.’ Ferallo was plainly determined and had more than enough seniority for Wilkes’s initial reluctance to metamorphose into a shrug.

‘You boys look thirsty,’ she said, breaking out Cokes from her pack, tossing one each to Wilkes and Monroe. ‘The bird has a fridge,’ she explained, gesturing at the jet behind her.

The Citation’s engines throttled up, the noise killing any attempt at conversation. Monroe and Wilkes sat, backs against the tree trunk, leaving room between them for Ferallo. The executive jet’s nose wheel turned as the throttles were goosed, the pilots waved, and the aircraft swung away on its short taxi to the runway.

‘So, what gives?’ said Monroe suddenly. There were ten
minutes or so before the helo was due to arrive to take them up to the Western Highlands – another of Monroe’s CIA specials, no doubt, thought Wilkes – and so there was time to pump Ferallo for details of the mission Wilkes would not normally be privy to.

‘About what?’ said Ferallo, blinking innocently, face blank.

‘C’mon, Gia, don’t be shy. We’ve been jumping out of planes, playing Johnny Adventure…what’s been going on?’

Ferallo belched quietly, the back of her hand attempting to politely disguise the fact as she put the empty Coke bottle on the ground. She’d been authorised to debrief them and there was no time like the present. ‘Okay, well, the biggest development? When it’s all said and done, it turns out Duat was just a patsy, a flunky used in a scam,’ Ferallo said as the heat caught up with her and the beads of perspiration began to gather on her forehead.

‘What do you mean?’ Monroe said.

‘He was being used.’

‘How…?’ asked Wilkes.

‘Before we knew what this was all about, Kadar Al-Jahani met up with three men at a cafe in Rome. We – the CIA – caught some of that meeting on tape. You remember, Atticus?’

‘Yeah, I remember,’ said Monroe, brushing the flies away from his face in a constant salute.

‘At the time, we didn’t know what the conversation was about, did we? But, with the benefit of hindsight and a dash of insight, well, we’ve filled in the gaps. There was a Saudi, a Yemeni and a Palestinian –’

‘Hey, is this the one where they each jump out of a plane and yell, “God, save me”?’ said Monroe.

‘Not unless all three were financiers of terror.’

‘You’re getting it mixed up with the one about an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman,’ said Wilkes, taking a swig of his Coke.

‘Guys?’ Ferallo was doing her best impression of an impatient assistant deputy CIA chief.

‘Sorry, it’s the heat,’ said Monroe. ‘So, they were financiers?’

‘Yep. They were known to the Israelis. Mostly, they underwrote the purchase of weapons for the Palestinian Intifada against Israel. They gave Kadar Al-Jahani a bunch of money ostensibly to set up a second Islamic front. The stated objective of this front – and a very noble one in the eyes of their associates in Hamas and Hezbollah – was to divert attention and resources away from the Middle East, and thus give everyone there a little more room to move.’

‘To make more murder and mayhem,’ Monroe added unnecessarily.

‘One would assume so,’ Ferallo said, now also swatting at the flies. ‘It appears these associates in terror supplied Kadar with the VX and the drone. Launched against the appropriate target, so the idea was, this WMD would be the catalyst for Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to rise up and create the South East Asian Islamic super state.’

‘Hit an oil field and ignite a whole region,’ said Monroe.

Ferallo nodded. ‘Only Kadar Al-Jahani and his financier friends forgot to mention to Duat that they were also business partners. In oil.’

‘What?’ said Monroe, frowning, the revelation throwing him somewhat.

‘I think I get it,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in amazement.

‘Well then, can you help me?’ Monroe said.

‘Did they buy shares in Saudi Petroleum or something?’ said Wilkes.

‘Sort of. They bought “warrants”. In Exxon. For a small outlay, a warrant gives you a large exposure to the market, so you can make a lot. You can also lose everything. Only these guys had no intention of losing. They bought several million of these warrants, over a short period through various intermediaries,’ said Ferallo. Wilkes impressed her. He was an action man with, obviously, something solid between the ears. She’d asked him to have a drink with her several months ago and he’d declined because he’d become engaged to his TV-land girlfriend. A pretty reasonable excuse. Particularly as Ferallo remembered having a little bit more in mind than a cocktail. Now she wished she’d pushed him a bit harder. And there was news on the engagement front – apparently, the wedding was off.

‘Think insider trading, Atticus,’ said Wilkes. ‘If a WMD is launched against an entire oil field, then everyone’s going to think terrorism has a new focus – interrupting the world’s oil supply. National economies would teeter. After an initial dip oil prices would go through the roof, as would oil shares. If you know that’s going to happen beforehand, you could make a killing.’

‘Appropriate for a bunch of terrorists,’ said Monroe with a snort.

‘If the price went up thirty percent as the result of the
attack, a conservative rise experts tell us, Kadar Al-Jahani personally would have made around five hundred million US,’ said Farallo.

Monroe whistled.

‘And Duat knew nothing about any of this?’ Wilkes asked.

‘No. We believe he wasn’t part of the deal. Kadar was siphoning off money for the purchase of these warrants from the money made running guns and smuggling drugs. Not even the moneyman we arrested in Sydney was in on it.’

‘So, how do you know what Kadar was up to?’ asked Monroe.

‘Do you remember the Defence Intelligence Organisation guy – Felix Mortimer?’

Wilkes nodded.

‘Yep, I remember him. Big guy, smart, bad dresser,’ said Monroe.

‘Yeah,’ said Ferallo. ‘He figured it out. Kadar Al-Jahani gave up a series of numbers when he was being interrogated. Everyone thought it was some kind of code that would lead to the location of the weapon, the
Sword of Allah
.’

Monroe had wondered what the Arabic lettering on the nose of the UAV in the photos had meant.

‘
Sword of Allah
. He was a general in the time of the prophet Mohammed, and Kadar Al-Jahani was big on the legends,’ Ferallo continued. ‘Anyway, the numbers represented a swift code. That’s a code used to identify a bank and its branch. The numbers were a simple exposition to letters in the alphabet, minus one then plus one for each subsequent number.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Monroe.

The frown on Wilkes’s face told Ferallo he didn’t either.

Ferallo retrieved a notebook from a side pocket of her

pack and flipped it open. ‘I thought you might like to see this,’ she said. Hand-drawn on the page was a grid of numbers and letters.

‘Okay, look here. These were Kadar Al-Jahani’s numbers: 1511472723.’ Ferallo wrote the numbers down, then underlined and circled various numbers and figures on a grid while Wilkes and Monroe looked over her shoulder. ‘Start with the number 1. Add one and the corresponding letter is B. Subtract one from the number 5 and the corresponding letter is D. Follow the series and the 11 becomes an L. “BDL” is the acronym used for the Banco di Luca in its swift code. Once you get a grip on that, the rest is easy. The full swift code is BDLCHZ2D, a particular branch of the Banco di Luca in Zurich.

‘The password to Kadar Al-Jahani’s account was “Khalid bin Al-Waleed”, otherwise known as…’

‘The Sword of Allah,’ said Wilkes.

Ferallo smiled. ‘Give that man a cigar. The numbers given up by Kadar meant absolutely nothing until we knew what we were looking for. And we’ve got Mortimer to thank for that.’

‘Shit,’ said Wilkes, shaking his head in disbelief. Wilkes remembered the flight to Guantanamo Bay and the conversation he’d had with Kadar Al-Jahani. He never would have guessed that the man’s motives had been anything other than idealism. ‘When this is all over, Atticus, we should buy Mortimer a beer.’

‘That might be a bit hard to arrange,’ said Ferallo.

‘Why?’ asked Atticus.

‘He’s dead,’ Ferallo said.

‘Oh?’ Wilkes swatted at the flies. ‘How? What happened?’

‘Had a heart attack,’ said Ferallo. ‘Lots of stress, bad food and no exercise.’

‘That’ll do it,’ Monroe agreed.

Ferallo continued: ‘Anyway, Duat’s motivations in all of this were pure, if you can call wanting to kill a lot of innocent people in a most unpleasant way pure,’ said Ferallo, as the familiar beat of a helicopter’s rotors signalled the arrival of their transport.

‘So it was just about money?’ said Monroe.

‘No, it was about kingship. Kadar Al-Jahani would have been extremely wealthy and, if the other half of the plan had worked and they’d ended up with a fundamentalist home in Asia, he and his cronies would have ruled it.’

‘And everyone would have lived happily ever after,’ said Monroe.

‘Everyone except Duat. He’d have figured the doublecross sooner or later…if they’d ever let him live long
enough, that is.’Wilkes stood as the helo approached, taxiing towards them in a slow hover three metres above the blistering blacktop.

‘Do you feel sorry for him?’ Ferallo asked.

‘Who, Duat?’ said Wilkes. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘You know
muruk
means “cassowary” in Pidgin?’ said Gia Ferallo as they stopped for a rest on one of the high passes that separated Muruk’s village from their destination.

‘The bird? No, I didn’t know that,’ said Wilkes, looking down on the jungle spread out below them. He had a vague feeling of déjà vu, accentuated by the presence of Timbu and Muruk, the chief’s young son. ‘And I didn’t know you spoke the local lingo either.’

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘It’s here, in the tourist phrase book.’ Ferallo held up the small booklet she’d been reading and wiggled it.