No Man's Land

1

A breaking wave thumped into the sandbank a few feet from where he stood and a fine cool mist of spray washed over him. He tightened his low-slung board shorts and shifted his six-footer from under his left arm to his right. The surf was pumping. It was shaping up as a solid day and he was itching to get amongst it.

But a man like Russell Carter knew when someone intended doing him serious bodily harm. Something about those three guys who’d pulled up next to him in the parking lot a few minutes earlier had triggered his internal alarm. It rarely let him down.

And it wouldn’t shut up.

Full light was five to ten minutes away. The rising sun sat just below the ocean’s horizon, hovering between the darkness and the light, the past and the future. He was standing alone on the jagged rocks, studying the break he’d been surfing since he was a kid, trying to get a read on it.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. The surf was his church, the one place where he found solace and the world made sense.

Since returning to his childhood home, more than a year ago now, he’d surfed this break every morning. Life was good. His past had stayed where it belonged.

He glanced over his shoulder. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the parking lot. But nobody was coming down the dirt track toward him.

He was hung-over and hadn’t had much sleep, and he’d been out of the game for over a year — perhaps there was nothing more to it than that. There was no reason to suspect trouble.

A huge wave boomed out to sea. He pushed his long black hair out of his eyes and watched the bubbling foam surge over the rocks below before retreating.

Then the ocean went quiet, as if holding its breath.

The lull between sets presented the window of calm he was waiting for.

He launched himself board first off the rocks and hit the water with a thud. He started stroking hard and deep, heading for the still-water channel that ran to the left of the break. The cool of the ocean and the feel of his board ploughing through the water helped to clear his head.

It took him five minutes to fight his way through the oncoming walls of surging foam and reach calm water. When he was halfway toward the take-off zone where the other surfers sat in a pack, he stopped paddling and looked toward the shore.

The three guys were already in the water, powering their boards through the first set of broken waves. They were heading toward him, negotiating the challenging surf like pros.

He lay back down and started stroking out to sea at a steady pace. He’d find out soon enough whether his instincts about them were on the mark or if it was just his hangover talking.

2

Carter paddled into the line-up, where a dozen local surfers straddled their boards in the gathering light. The dawn patrol bobbed up and down with the incoming swell, staring out to sea like naked buddhas, giving nothing away.

He glided to a halt and sat upright, sinking the tail of his board into the water. His height and weight made him large for a surfer, even though he carried little body fat. At thirty-seven he was over a decade older than any of the other hardcore locals. They respected his ability but most of them gave him a wide berth.

In a few moments the feeling of calm surrounding the pack would evaporate and the dogfight for the first wave of the morning would begin. He ran his right hand unhurriedly along the smooth curved edges of his board, watching the three strangers approach the take-off zone.

As they came closer and the light improved, he pegged them as Indonesian. Before returning to Lennox, he’d spent the last twenty years living and working in South-East Asia.

They were in their early twenties, lean and compact with wispy goatees, and looked like typical surf rats from any of the legendary breaks in Indonesia, which possessed some of the best, most powerful and consistent waves on the planet.

Each wore a sleeveless wetsuit, which made them stand out; the locals wore only board shorts. The water was warm and, even at this early hour, the high level of humidity suggested a midsummer stinker of a day.

“Hey, Carter!”

He turned his board in a one hundred and eighty degree arc and saw a familiar figure paddling in his direction.

Knowlsie, a scrawny fourteen-year-old grommet with sun-bleached hair and a face full of freckles, was one of the few people in Lennox with whom Carter felt any real connection.

He was a young daredevil who’d take off on anything and thought he was bulletproof in the surf. Carter had been the same at his age.

Knowlsie pulled up beside him on a shiny cherry-colored five-footer and grinned.

“Like your new board,” Carter said.

“Mum gave it to me last night for Chrissy. Can’t wait to get me first wave.”

Carter gave him a half-smile. “Merry Christmas, Knowlsie.”

“Yeah, you too,” the boy said. “What did you get?”

“A few decent waves will do me.”

“I reckon Hughie’s delivered on that.”

“He sure has.”

Hughie was the imaginary god of the ocean who surfers called upon to bring them good waves.

Knowlsie looked at the strangers and laughed. “What about those dickheads all wearing the same wetties? You reckon they got ’em for Christmas?”

Carter didn’t answer but nodded in the direction of the take-off zone. “Go jag yourself a few. I’ll join you in a sec. And if you hook into a big mother, charge.”

“Yeah, righto.”

Knowlsie lay down on his board and paddled away. Carter bobbed up and down, wondering whether he should warn Knowlsie to back off until he figured out what the three guys were up to.

He decided to stay put. After all, they wouldn’t be after the kid.

To Carter’s left, two seagulls squawked and dived beside a brown mat of seaweed that rose and fell as the first wave of the set passed underneath. It hit the sandbank and jacked up near vertical, creating a perfect clean wall of fast-moving water.

The pack sprung to life and converged on the critical take-off point, angling for pole position.

As Carter watched, one of the Indonesians paddled hard for the wave. So did two of the locals, who had the inside running. One of them, Knowlsie, got into the wave and leaped to his feet.

The stranger took off in front of him, gunning his board forward and ignoring Knowlsie’s right of way.

“Oi, dickhead! My wave!” Knowlsie screamed.

His board charged across the steep wave toward the Indonesian, who cut up and down the face.

The Indonesian shouted something back at him.

It was hard to hear from that distance, but it sounded to Carter like Javanese.

There was only room for one surfer on the hollow, breaking wave. The edge of the Indonesian’s board caught the lip and stalled. Knowlsie kept charging like Carter had told him to and Carter swore under his breath.

The sharp crack of two boards colliding cut through the still air.

Both surfers were sent flying.

Knowlsie dropped straight down the face and ploughed into the foaming trough.

At the exact same moment the lip of the wave hit the stranger from behind, throwing him forward.

The force of the water swept Knowlsie into no man’s land, the one place a surfer didn’t want to get caught.

In a war, “no man’s land” was the desolate and deadly zone that existed between enemy lines. In the surf, it was the wasteland between the rocks and where the waves broke, a washing machine of turbulent white water that drove you deeper and deeper toward the bottom.

If you kept your head and went with the flow of the ocean, you eventually rose to the surface and could paddle toward clear water. But inexperienced surfers often lost their center, panicked and got into serious trouble.

Knowlsie could handle it under normal circumstances. But he’d been caught by surprise and might even have been knocked out by his board.

The Javanese guy had fared better. The angle of the hit had propelled him in the direction of the deepwater channel running alongside the break.

The second wave of the set, bigger and more powerful than the first, smashed hard into Knowlsie, pushing him closer to the rocky shoreline. Carter started paddling at full throttle straight for him.

The third wave, the biggest of the set, crashed onto the shallow bank. It created a six-foot wall of boiling foam, thrusting Knowlsie even deeper into the churn of violent water.

Carter just hoped the kid had managed to gulp down some air before getting chundered.

3

Carter stroked hard across the strong rip sweeping toward the headland, focusing on the point where he expected Knowlsie to surface. The sharp nose of his board sliced through the chop.

Twenty yards in front of him, the ocean spat out three-quarters of a cherry board, minus the nose.

He slowed his paddle, just before Knowlsie’s head popped up next to the busted board.

“Thank Christ,” Carter muttered under his breath.

Knowlsie shook his head and gasped for air.

Carter took four powerful strokes toward him and sat upright. “You okay?”

Knowlsie, too out of breath to speak, nodded. He used his leg-rope to pull what was left of his broken board toward him and scrambled onto it.

Carter glanced back over his shoulder.

The Indonesian had surfaced much closer to the open water and was climbing back onto his undamaged board. His two mates paddled along the channel toward him.

“Shit, man!” Knowlsie said, still panting hard. “Look at my stick!”

“Mate, it’s only a board.”

“Mum’s gonna kill me.”

“The point is you’re okay. She’ll get over it.”

“You don’t know my mum.”

Carter smiled to himself and thought back to his own mother, who’d certainly ripped into him often enough over very little.

Knowlsie pointed at the three strangers sitting in a huddle forty yards away. “What the hell is the story with those arseholes?”

“The world’s full of them. Just worry about your own game.”

The comment didn’t seem to register with Knowlsie. “Bloody selfish drop-in artists,” he said. “Disrespecting the local rules. They need to be taught a lesson.”

“That’s how wars get started.”

Carter looked over at the Indonesians, who were discussing something. One of them pointed at him.

He needed to get Knowlsie out of there.

Besides the potential threat of violence, the rip was carrying the two of them at a steady rate back into the heart of no man’s land. The next set was already building out to sea, rolling toward them.

“You need to head in,” Carter said.

Knowlsie scrunched up his freckled nose. “Not before I tell those dickheads off.”

“Forget about ’em. They’re not worth it.”

Knowlsie ignored him and started paddling across the rip toward the channel.

“Hey,” Carter said in a stronger tone.

Knowlsie stopped, turned his head and gave him a defiant stare.

Carter’s gaze remained calm and steady.

After a few moments Knowlsie looked away, silently admitting defeat.

He turned his busted board toward the headland and started paddling toward it, managing to catch a small wave that carried him on his belly toward one of the few safe exit points on the rock-lined shore.

Knowlsie would be okay.

Carter turned out to sea. Another wave rushed toward him. He duck-dived through a wall of foam and popped out the other side.

When he’d negotiated the next two waves of the set, he slowed his paddle, looked up and scoped the three strangers. They sat astride their boards at twenty-yard intervals along the still waters of the channel, watching him.

He was starting to get a handle on what this was about.

At first he’d thought it unlikely anyone would choose to attack him in the surf. It would have been easier to take him out on dry land.

But now he understood. They were intending to attack him in no man’s land and make his death look like an accident.

It wouldn’t be hard on a day like this.

In theory, anyway.

One thing was for sure — they weren’t there for a friendly chat.

If nothing else, the unexpected threat had shaken off the remnants of his hangover.

4

Carter sat up on his board and savored the fresh salty smell and tang of the ocean.

Waiting for them to take the initiative was out of the question. And if he struck first, he needed to go all out. Half-measures would get him killed.

He stretched his arms over his head and rotated his shoulders and neck, wondering what weapons might be concealed under their wetsuits.

Something to keep an eye on.

He slid off his board into the choppy water, detached the leg-rope from his right ankle and unhooked the other end from the tail of his board.

His movements galvanized the Indonesian closest to him into action, and he stroked furiously along the channel toward Carter.

Carter didn’t waste a second.

He climbed back onto his board and lay prone, secured the leg-rope under his chest to keep it close and began paddling away from the approaching stranger at a forty-five-degree angle. He aimed his board for a position well inside the pack, where he figured a smaller but still solid wave would break. The other surfers kept their focus out to sea watching for the next wave, oblivious to anything else.

Carter reached his targeted take-off point just before the incoming wave hit.

The lip curled and a wall of steep water reared up.

He whipped his board around, pointed the nose at a slanting angle toward the wave’s face and powered his board forward.

His board came to life. He grabbed the ends of the leg-rope in either hand and jumped to his feet, bending his knees to keep his center of gravity low, and accelerated across the near-vertical face.

A quick backward glance told him he’d left the guy paddling toward him well behind, but one of his friends was now stroking at a frantic pace in an effort to cut Carter off.

He was just yards away when Carter shifted his weight on the sticky waxed deck of his board, lining its nose up with the man’s forehead.

The startled Indonesian stopped paddling, sat up on his board and reached behind his back.

Too late.

Carter jammed down on his back foot, thrusting the speeding board forward.

At the same instant he threw himself off the back of the wave into the arms of the ocean. The board flew through the air toward its target.

A second later Carter’s head breached the surface.

Just in time to see the Indonesian collapsing forward onto his board, blood streaming from a head wound.

The flying board had found its mark. He was out cold.

Carter switched his attention to the first guy, who was once again paddling straight for him.

Carter held his position in the water, still holding the leg-rope. There wasn’t time to grab his board.

The Indonesian stopped and sat up four yards away. He reached into the back of his wetsuit.

Carter knew what was coming.

He took a deep breath, stuck the leg-rope between his teeth, dived underwater and swam under the assailant’s board.

When he was half a body length behind the tail, he popped his head out of the water.

The Indonesian faced away from him, holding a fishing knife in his right hand and peering into the water from side to side, trying to figure out where Carter was.

Carter kicked hard to propel himself upward out of the water and stretched his arms high in the air.

The guy started to turn his head.

Again, too late.

Carter looped the plastic-covered leash around his neck, yanked back and dragged him off his board, tightening the leg-rope like a hangman’s noose.

The startled surfer tried to grab the rope with his left hand, while his right hand whipped the knife back and forth.

Carter pulled the rope even tighter with his left hand and smashed his right elbow against the base of the Indonesian’s skull.

The strike was designed to pinch a nerve in his neck and paralyze the right side of his body. The knife dropped from his now limp hand and slid into the water.

Carter let go of his leg-rope, lifted the unconscious guy back onto his board and turned toward shore, leaving him floating there.

The final Indonesian was fifteen yards away and paddling toward him with an eight-inch dagger clenched between his teeth.

Carter recognized the distinctive pistol-grip hilt and wavy blade of a Javanese kris, an ancient weapon favored by practitioners of pencak silat, the Indonesian martial art.

Carter swam toward his board, climbed onto it and faced his attacker.

The Indonesian stopped paddling two body lengths from him and straddled his board.

He took the dagger out of his mouth, pulled it back behind his ear and yelled, “Allah akbar!” God is great!

5

A split second before the kris left the Indonesian’s hand, Carter slid off the tail of his board into the water. He grabbed the sides and held the fiberglass deck in front of him as a shield.

The dagger slammed into the board with a thud, slicing straight through its middle but holding firm at the hilt, the point of the blade stopping two inches from Carter’s face.

Carter rolled the board over and pulled the kris from the deck. The traditional blade was both weapon and holy object, believed to have a spiritual presence. Some blades bestowed good luck. Others bad. For its current owner, it was going to be all bad.

Carter flung the dagger at his assailant’s right shoulder.

The kris penetrated the man’s pectoral muscle, throwing him back on his board, screaming.

Carter swam up to him, grabbed his dreadlocked hair, pulled his head back and struck him behind the neck with a closed fist.

Knocking him out and shutting him up.

Religious fanatics, Carter thought. After living in the sleepy surf town of Lennox for a year, he thought he’d left this madness behind.

He laid the third surfer on his board and wrapped the man’s leg-rope around him to secure his unconscious body. He did the same for the other two, glad they were still breathing.

Not because he thought the world would be better off with these three guys still in it. On the contrary. But dead bodies generated official investigations, creating a potential hassle he could do without.

Hopefully they’d come to and make it to shore. If not, too bad. He’d be long gone and would have to take his chances with the law. It wasn’t like anyone would be filing an official complaint.

He paddled to shore and left the water by riding a surge onto the rocks. He stood with his board tucked under his arm and scanned the break. None of the surfers at the line-up were paying the slightest attention to anything beyond the next wave.

He shifted his focus to the grassy headland that rose out of the ocean like a lioness guarding her domain. A lone figure stood just on the edge of the parking lot, watching him, and he felt a pulse of adrenalin.

Though he hadn’t seen her for over a year and had tried to make a relationship work with another woman, not a day went by that Erina wasn’t in his thoughts.

She was a far tougher opponent than the three fanatics put together. And considering the morning’s events, he knew she hadn’t turned up to wish him a merry Christmas.

6

Carter followed the dirt track up the gentle sloping hill toward her, carrying his badly dinged surfboard under his right arm. The coarse gravel pressed into the hardened soles of his bare feet. He noted a slight quickening of his heart rate.

Erina Wing leaned against the hood of her black four-wheel drive, dressed in a white T-shirt, tight-fitting black jeans and sneakers. At thirty-two, she possessed the lithe body and grace of an Olympic gymnast.

A discreet black bag lay on the ground behind her. It looked like any normal sports bag, but instead of the usual make-up, deodorant and a towel, she’d be packing a handgun, poison darts and throwing knives.

He reached the edge of the parking lot and stopped. Behind him a powerful wave crashed against the rocks.

Erina touched the peak of her red San Francisco 49ers baseball cap and gave him an enigmatic smile.

The familiarity of her fine features stirred a host of memories. Part of him longed to hug her. Another wanted to turn and run.

He placed his board on the grass a couple of yards in front of her and said nothing. Any decisions he made now could have significant long-term implications and Erina wouldn’t necessarily have his best interests at heart.

She removed her baseball cap and placed it on the hood, revealing jet-black hair tied in a loose ponytail. Fine wisps blew over her face in the gentle breeze. The rising sun created a luminous sheen across her head like a halo.

A dark angel.

She motioned her head toward the surf. “Glad to see you didn’t need me out there.”

“I get by okay on my own.”

He waited for her to make a move, trying to read from her body language what she wanted. Like him, Erina buried her true emotions deep, giving nothing away.

She took a couple of steps toward him. “I know that attack probably took you by surprise, Carter, but as you can see, we’ve got a problem.”

“We?” he asked. “What’s it got to do with me?” His words came out harsher than he intended.

“It involves all of the order and then some. We need your help.”

Though her tone was light, he could tell she was serious.

“Erina, it’s not the first time some fundamentalist wack job has tried to kill one of us.”

“This is different.”

“No, Erina. It’s always the same.”

“This is the first time they’ve come to Australia. Why do you think that is?”

“I’ll leave that for you guys to figure out.”

He looked down at his board as if expecting it to offer him some answers. The sooner he brought the conversation to an end and got out of there, the better. Now that everyone seemed to know where he lived, he needed to grab his stuff, make a swift exit and set up a new life somewhere else.

He knew how to disappear without leaving a trace.

The only thing keeping him at Lennox was the surf. All his friends from his early teens had long gone. Maybe Margaret River in Western Australia would be worth a shot. It was out of the way and he knew the surf ripped as good as Lennox.

He bent down to pick up his board.

“Thomas wants to fill you in on the details himself,” Erina said.

He stood up and left his board where it was. “Thomas is here?”

She nodded. “I’ll take you to him.”

“Why didn’t he come himself?”

“I offered to pick you up. I wanted to see you first.”

“I’ve got other plans for today.”

“What, another surf?”

“Maybe.”

She slipped her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and took a step toward him. “Don’t you care about anything beyond the next wave?”

He looked into her dark brown eyes. She didn’t blink.

His heart quickened again.

Arguing with her was pointless, but he tried anyway. “You know as well as I do that there are no winners in this kind of situation,” he said. “Only losers. The harder we retaliate, the more they hate us. If we ignore them, they’ll eventually go away.”

“You’re not hearing me, Carter.”

All she cared about was getting him to do what she and Thomas wanted.

He looked over his shoulder.

The three guys were drifting out to sea, slumped over their boards.

Two of them were out for the long count, but the guy with the dreadlocks was starting to come to.

He needed to make a decision. Either go with Erina, meet with Thomas and be put through the emotional wringer once again, or just walk away.

Out the back of the break, an anonymous surfer took off on a screamer.

“Look at me, Carter.”

He turned his head and met her steely gaze.

“We’re your family. You need to think about what kind of man you want to be.”

It was as much a threat as a plea, and deep down he recognized the truth of what she said. The order was the closest thing he had to a family, and he had to admit he’d struggled to live in the world without them.

Thomas would play on that.

But it wasn’t going to happen. Not today.

He picked up his board. It felt light in his hands.

“So what’s your answer?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Erina,” he said, softening his tone. “I’d like to help. But I can’t.”

He kept his focus on her, pushing down the emotion welling in his chest. He needed to make her see he was serious so she would leave him alone.

After a few moments she raised her hands and smiled, revealing the single dimple in her left cheek.

“Okay,” she said. “You do what you need to do. I’ll respect your decision.”

Carter’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.”

“Thomas said if you wouldn’t come back willingly, you’d be no use to us.”

“Thomas is a wise man.”

She extended her hand and he took it in his own. The familiar calluses from countless hours of martial-arts training, including up to a hundred chin-ups a day to maintain her upper-body strength, rubbed against his palm.

“We can do better than that,” she said.

She dropped his hand and held out her arms.

Without thinking, and still holding his board, he stepped into her embrace and felt her arms wrap around him.

He drank in the freshness of her hair and the warmth of her body. They fitted together like the last two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

Against his better judgement, he allowed his whole body to relax. He closed his eyes and for a fleeting moment felt like he’d come home.

Then a sharp shiver ran down his spine, breaking the potent spell.

A warning.

He started to pull back.

Too late.

He felt the sharp prick of a needle at the back of his neck.

Numbness spread down his shoulder and arm.

“Fuck you, Erina.”

He wanted to say more, but no words came out.

His muscles went slack. He heard the board drop onto the gravel.

There was a moment of great peace.

A sensation of falling.

She gently guided him to the ground, and his world faded to black.

7

Carter drifted back into consciousness sitting in the front seat of Erina’s four-wheel drive, speeding down a narrow tree-lined road.

The first thing he noticed was that his hands were cuffed and resting in his lap. He was still in his board shorts, and his naked back and legs sweated against the leather seats.

Every muscle ached. His stomach was queasy, his skin clammy and his bone-dry mouth tasted of zinc. She must have used scopolamine hydrobromide. In low doses it put the subject to sleep for under an hour and had no long-term effects.

He glanced out the tinted window and recognized the rolling hills behind the picturesque town of Mullumbimby, twenty-odd miles north-west of Lennox. The aptly named Mount Warning, usually one of his favorite local landmarks, stood tall and remote in the hazy distance, its head lost in the clouds, removed from life below.

He moved his tongue, trying to work up some spit.

“You okay?” Erina asked.

He could barely form the word. “Fantastic.”

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said gently. “But avoiding Thomas wasn’t an option today.”

“So it seems.”

“You never should’ve left without saying goodbye.”

Carter stayed silent and refrained from looking at her. He wasn’t going there.

Erina was an elite member of the Order of the White Pole, a private black ops organization based in South-East Asia. He’d been a member too, for over twenty years. The only way he’d managed to escape was to walk away without any explanation or argument and stay away.

“If you still refuse to join us after hearing him out,” she said, “no one will try to stop you.”

He’d heard that one before.

“I promise,” she said, using her free left hand to lift a small plastic bottle with a straw to his lips.

He drank the warm milky antidote and flexed and relaxed his legs to get his blood flowing.

He wasn’t thrilled with what she’d done, but blaming her was pointless. Thomas was not only her leader but also her father. And whatever feelings she might have once had for Carter were now long buried. For Erina, the ends always justified the means, and she wouldn’t allow sentiment to cloud her actions.

On assignment her motto was Get the job done or die trying. That’s what made her a dangerous opponent when you crossed her and a great ally when working on the same side — something he could no longer do.

He was mostly angry with himself. He should’ve been more alert. Getting close to Erina in any sense was way too dangerous.

“How’s it going with that woman you left us for?” she asked. “Jessica, wasn’t it?”

“You know my leaving had nothing to do with her.”

She glanced at him sideways, as if she knew what had happened to him the night before, why he’d gone on such a bender.

“It’s over,” he continued. “She said she’d met laptop computers with more emotion.”

Erina giggled like a young girl, reminding him how sweet and lighthearted she could be. “She obviously doesn’t understand you.”

He looked out the window at the trees rushing by and said, “I wouldn’t have thought I was that complicated.”

She accelerated out of a tight corner. “You need to find a woman who knows how to handle you.”

Carter looked across at her. “What, like you do?”

An impish grin spread across her face. “I never said that.”

He almost cracked a smile. “No one would ever accuse you of letting your finer emotions get in the way.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She held the bottle to his lips again and he took another long sip. The reason the relationship with Jessica had never worked was that his heart was never in it. He hated himself for hurting her. But he couldn’t shake his feelings for Erina and wasn’t about to tell either woman that.

He stretched his shoulders back and shook his head. The antidote was starting to kick in.

Erina turned right off the deserted bitumen road, slowed down and continued along a flat dirt track covered by overhanging foliage, which became thicker and denser the further they moved in.

The four-wheel drive bumped through the shadowy green tunnel for about a hundred and fifty yards until the thick vegetation opened up, revealing a lawn the size of a football field. The track led to a traditional country homestead, complete with sloping red-tile roof, brick chimney and wraparound verandah. Carter spotted several makeshift sensors and security cameras placed strategically around the grounds.

The wooden house stood in front of a hilly ridge that ran along the back of the property. A black four-wheel drive was parked to the left of the house under one of the half-dozen tall gum trees spread around the lawn area. The set-up guaranteed privacy, but Carter reckoned the place would be vulnerable to a well-organized attack. He wondered what had prompted the order to set up a temporary headquarters here.

Thomas would have his reasons.

The tires crunched to a halt on the loose gravel.

Carter looked deep into the shade of the covered verandah. His pulse quickened as he recognized the familiar silhouette.

Thomas Wing stepped out of the shadows.

He walked down the stairs toward them and stopped. Standing just under six foot tall, Thomas wore a black cotton shirt, loose pants and sandals. The early-morning sunlight reflected off his bald head.

His features were distinctly Asian; he took after his Chinese mother, rather than his American father. He was sixty-eight, but could’ve easily passed for fifty.

Erina stepped out of the vehicle, walked round the front and opened Carter’s door.

He breathed in the smell of moist grass. A kookaburra laughed as if amused by Carter’s predicament.

Thomas moved toward him, calm and unhurried, stopping a yard from the open door.

His unlined face looked paler and gaunter than Carter remembered. Thomas’s dark eyes examined him as though probing directly into his soul.

Carter wanted to look away but forced himself to maintain eye contact. Thomas and Erina were the only two people in the world who could throw him off balance with their eyes.

Thomas broke off his gaze, placed his hands in the prayer position and bowed his head.

“My heartfelt apologies,” he said. “Desperation forced our hand.”

“You always said the ends never justify the means.”

“I did what I thought necessary given the circumstances.”

The hint of an ironic smile softened Thomas’s face. He nodded at Erina, who unlocked Carter’s handcuffs.

Carter stepped into the sunlight, kicked his legs out and shook his arms, wrists and shoulders.

Erina got back into her car, turned on the ignition and opened the window.

“Where are you going?” Carter asked.

“Unlike some people, I’ve got a job to do.”

“So the package has been delivered and you move on to the next assignment. Don’t you ever clock off?”

“Life’s too short. I’ll be seeing you, Carter.”

“Don’t count on it.”

She smiled at him and the tinted window slid up, hiding her from view.

The car rolled down the drive and gathered speed. He watched it disappear under the canopy of trees, feeling a curious mix of relief and disappointment.

Carter turned back to Thomas, who stood with his arms folded. A knowing smile broke the smooth lines of the older man’s face.

“What?” Carter asked.

Thomas said nothing, just turned and walked toward the house.

Carter waited a moment and then followed.

8

Thomas led Carter through the sparsely furnished house into an old-style kitchen at the rear. He gestured for him to sit on one of four wooden chairs placed around a rectangular table, bare except for a pile of documents and a slim MacBook Air sleeping at one end. A cool breeze drifted through the sun-filled room.

“I’ll make some tea,” Thomas said.

Carter settled into his chair, stared out the window at the grey ghost gum standing alone against the pale blue sky and suppressed a sigh. Accept what is, is, he told himself. It was the first of the order’s principles and one he had always struggled with. Another was Expect the unexpected. As he considered what had transpired that morning, Carter smiled wryly to himself. He’d clearly let that one slip over the past few months.

The order was based on the thousand-year-old White Pole school of martial arts. It’d been established in 1937 by a consortium of wealthy Shanghai families to protect Chinese citizens from being victimized by Japanese aggressors during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Its initial charter was to serve the weak and vulnerable, regardless of their ethnicity, financial status, political orientation or religious persuasion.

Over a number of decades the order’s role had expanded and they began to operate throughout South-East Asia, guided always by spiritual and altruistic values. Carter’s jobs had included smuggling refugees out of volatile border regions, rescuing women from slavery in the sex industry, cracking pedophile networks and intercepting drug and weapons shipments across unpatrolled seas.

The landscape had changed in the late nineties after the Asian financial crisis. Many voluntary supporters of the order could no longer donate regularly to keep it running. The society was forced to become fully self-supporting and obliged to work for business and government organizations to survive.

Further change had come after the first Bali bombing in 2002, when two hundred and two people, many of them young Australian tourists, were killed at the Sari Club in Kuta. The order had moved its primary base from Bangkok to Bali and started working with the Trident Bureau, an Australian government agency set up to run covert operations to fight terrorism in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. After the second Bali bombing in 2005, the order entered into an exclusive government contract with Trident, even though they did the occasional pro bono case on the side.

The lucrative agreement came with strict guidelines and reporting protocols. Political decisions were made in Sydney and Canberra with little or no regard for the needs of the operatives risking their lives in the field.

Carter glanced over at Thomas, who stood with his back to him, measuring precise quantities of tea into the pot.

After signing off on the Trident contract, Thomas’s approach had changed. He’d always been the leader of the order, but now he became far less inclusive of the team when running operations, adopting a military style and imposing a clear chain of command to make sure that Trident policies were implemented.

Whenever Carter had voiced his concerns, Thomas patiently heard him out, but he never shifted his views or altered his leadership style. He claimed he always did what was best for the order to safeguard its survival. Carter understood where he was coming from but didn’t agree.

And then there was the unwritten principle — no emotional attachments on the job. That one had done Erina’s head in.

She and Carter had first become romantically involved when he was in his early thirties and she was twenty-six. She’d felt guilty about betraying her father and his code. Thomas had been too smart to forbid them from seeing each other, but he never sanctioned the relationship either. He avoided teaming them up on assignment wherever possible and refused to discuss it with Carter, except to say that the order’s principles, including the unwritten one, were there for a reason and it wasn’t Carter’s place to question them.

Ultimately, it was these changes to the order’s modus operandi, Thomas’s increasingly autocratic style and Carter’s torturous relationship with Erina that caused him to walk away and stay away. They’d stopped being romantically involved nine months before he left. He’d felt much better being out of her orbit, even though he knew he’d left the order short handed. At the time of his departure there had been just fifteen active members, including two support staff and four trainees. Before the Asian financial crisis there’d been over two hundred members, many of whom had been volunteers.

Carter heard the back door open and close and a set of light footsteps tread across wooden floorboards toward the kitchen.

The kettle boiled. Thomas bowed his head over the pot.

9

Wayan Gusti, Thomas’s latest protégé, stood in the doorway holding his head high. When Carter had last seen him a year and a half ago, Wayan was a shy, slightly built sixteen-year-old Balinese boy. He’d developed into a fine-looking young man. He wore loose black trousers, a cutaway white cotton T-shirt and a black bandana wrapped around his forehead. His cheeks shone with a light sheen of sweat, suggesting he’d been working out. The muscle definition of his arms and chest was impressive. He’d developed strength and power to complement his natural agility and speed.

Wayan looked at Carter with a mixture of judgement and censure, suggesting he hadn’t forgiven him for disappearing without saying goodbye.

Physically he looked ready to become a sanjuro, the name given to the order’s elite field operatives. But Carter, who’d been the youngest member to graduate as a sanjuro in the order’s history, wondered whether he yet possessed the emotional and spiritual maturity required. They were a warrior’s most important qualities and were the hardest to master.

In his left hand Wayan carried a staff made from bamboo, a batang, the most versatile of the pencak silat weapons and a favorite of Carter’s. Wayan held it like it was an extension of his body.

A good sign.

Carter stood up and was surprised at how tall Wayan had grown. He was nearly six foot, only a couple of inches shorter than himself.

Carter extended his hand. “Good to see you.”

The young man shook it without enthusiasm. “Thomas says you’ve become a full-time surfer. You like that?”

“It has its moments.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I needed some space.”

“You could’ve at least said goodbye.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

They stood in an uncomfortable silence. Carter knew how much the younger man had looked up to him and understood his disappointment and hurt.

“Has Thomas sent you into the field yet?” Carter asked.

“He says I’m not ready. But I’m in the process of proving him wrong. Are you coming back?”

“That wasn’t the plan when I woke up this morning.”

“So you’re just going to keep drifting like a surf bum when there’s important work to do?”

Carter didn’t know what to say to that.

“We need you,” Wayan told him.

“Enough,” Thomas said, walking toward the table carrying a wooden tray with a Chinese teapot and three small cups on it. “Fetch Carter a T-shirt. We need to get down to business.”

Wayan left the room. Thomas placed the tray on the table and turned his attention to Carter. “As Erina has undoubtedly informed you, changing fortunes and the alignment of the stars mean your services are again required.”

Carter sat back down and rested his forearms on the table. “Whether I like it or not?”

“I believe I have your best interests at heart.”

“Really?”

“Your trouble is you’ve lost your faith. You are no longer governed by your duty and the flow of the universe.”

Carter folded his arms and said nothing.

“Rather,” Thomas continued, “you give every indication of following only the dictates of your ego. The order’s principles apply to every aspect of your life, not just when you’re on assignment.”

“The reason I left had nothing to do with me questioning the principles,” Carter said. “It was the way you tried to impose your will on me and force me to do things I didn’t believe in. You’re still doing it, even now.”

“There is something much bigger going on here. The order needs you. This work is your calling, whether you realize it or not.”

“And you still won’t listen to a word I say.”

“There has to be a chain of command. We each have to know our place within the chain. Life without faith, duty and discipline is meaningless.”

Thomas had been saying much the same thing since they first met at his Bangkok dojo when Carter was fourteen years old. The young Australian boy had been rebellious on the surface, but deep down, an insatiable hunger for guidance and order drove him. The dojo became his sanctuary, the only place in the chaotic city where he felt safe and at peace.

Up until then he’d been an outsider in Bangkok. The local kids had found out about his mother and called her a filthy junkie. Carter felt compelled to defend her honor, like he had at Lennox, and constantly fought against bigger and older local boys who saw him as a loner and a soft target with no one to back him up.

After a few months of intense training he began to combine what he learned at the dojo with his natural talents and instincts on the streets to stunning effect. The boys soon stopped taunting him about his mother and his attackers left him alone. But he made no friends.

Thomas poured the steaming tea into each cup with silent reverence. The powerful aroma of fresh ginger and aniseed and the formality of Thomas’s ceremony brought back a flood of memories.

Moving to Bangkok and meeting Thomas had changed his life forever. His mother had instigated the relocation from the country quiet of Lennox Head to the sleaze of the Patpong district — officially to teach English as a second language, unofficially for the smack, which was pure and cheap. More than once he’d come home to find her passed out on the couch with a needle sticking out of her arm. Two days before his fifteenth birthday she took an overdose and died.

As Carter had no living relatives in Australia, Thomas used his influential government contacts to become his guardian and introduced him to the order’s strict training regimen and full range of mystical arts. It was a comprehensive and very different education to what he would’ve received in Australia.

On his eighteenth birthday, he became a fully fledged member of the order and was inducted as the youngest ever sanjuro.

Thomas placed a cup in front of Carter. “Every disturbance has a spiritual cause. A man isn’t an island. Tell me, how have you been faring on your own without a connection to a higher source?”

Wayan walked back into the kitchen and handed Carter a grey T-shirt.

He put it on, then took a sip of hot tea, savoring the sharp taste of his favorite blend, and said, “Let’s move on from my moral and spiritual shortcomings and get to what this is about, shall we?”

10

Carter placed his cup back on the table and asked, “Has someone issued a fatwa against the order?”

“Indeed they have,” Thomas said. “The Sungkar clan have issued an edict saying the order is guilty of murder and we are enemies of God and Islam. A clan-controlled mufti has issued the fatwa, meaning a death sentence hangs over every one of us.”

In his last few years working for the order, Carter had plenty to do with the Sungkar clan. It was one of many powerful family organizations in Indonesia; such clans had controlled large sections of cities and entire villages for hundreds of years. It was impossible to sell a cup of tea in a clan’s domain without paying a protection fee.

This wasn’t a big deal in Indonesia, where petty extortion and corruption were an ingrained part of society. For the most part the clans were relatively harmless and fulfilled the useful role of maintaining law and order.

For twenty years Aamir Sungkar, a moderate Muslim, had led his clan and gathered significant wealth through traditional means — mainly protection and minor corruption. But when his oldest son, Arung, took over after his death, he had pushed the boundaries of tradition and law, expanding the Sungkar clan’s interests to include drug trafficking, prostitution, gun running, piracy and people smuggling.

Arung was corrupt and ruthless, but he certainly wasn’t a religious fanatic prone to issuing fatwas.

“Remember your last assignment with us?” Thomas said. “You intercepted a shipment of the clan’s guns being run across the Strait of Malacca from Indonesia to Malaysia?”

“Of course.”

Just thinking about it stirred a rush of anger in Carter’s gut. As well as transporting weapons, he discovered, the targeted boat was also carrying five frightened young Hindu women from Bali, who he suspected had been kidnapped. He’d argued with Thomas, saying they should abort the operation, as the risk to the women was too great. Thomas had overruled his objections in no uncertain terms and ordered him to proceed.

Later he found out that Detachment 88, the brutal Indonesian anti-terrorist unit, had discovered the boat was also transporting C4 explosives to Malaysia. They, along with the cache of weapons, were being delivered to a known terrorist cell in Kuala Lumpur. When the Trident Bureau heard this, they insisted the operation be carried out and Thomas had complied.

“As you know,” Thomas said, “one of their boats was blown up in the process, killing a number of crew and clan members.”

“Don’t forget the five young women. You should’ve listened to me.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“It actually is the point as far as I’m concerned—”

“What you don’t know,” Thomas said, cutting him off, “is that Arung Sungkar was killed in the explosion.”

“Can’t say that upsets me. I’ve met sewer rats with more humanity.”

“That may be so, but every action creates a reaction. They now have a new leader.”

Thomas nodded at Wayan, who sat down at the table and clicked a key on the laptop’s keyboard. An image of a slim Indonesian man in his mid-thirties appeared. He wore a white skullcap and flowing white robes. A wispy moustache and wiry goatee framed perfect white teeth and a smile full of mischief.

Carter remembered Arung’s younger brother Samudra. His expression reminded him of one of the Bali bombers, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, who, on hearing that he’d been sentenced to death, had welcomed the news with a huge smile and a thumbs up, saying, “There will be a million more Amrozis to come.” He’d been executed in 2008, unrepentant to the end.

“Samudra Sungkar took over as leader eleven months ago,” Thomas said.

Carter knew the thirty-nine-year-old’s history. He’d had a privileged upbringing and studied engineering and information technology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. From what Carter had heard, Samudra, like Amrozi, had for many years strayed from the strict moral tenets of Islam. He drank, had sex with prostitutes and paid scant attention to the principles of his Muslim faith. Three years ago he had disappeared off the radar.

“He’s a dangerous man,” Thomas said. “He believes he knows God’s will.”

“Not another one,” Carter said. “I thought he was a party boy.”

“He was, but now he says he was corrupted by the decadence and moral depravation of life in Sydney. And that Australians are racist and treated him like a second-class citizen.”

“Something else must’ve turned him to the dark side, though?”

“Yes — it started when his younger brother was killed in Afghanistan in 2009 by Australian special forces in Helmand Province. It pushed him into the arms of the Islamic fundamentalists — his wealth and position meant they targeted him and gave him the full treatment.”

“I bet they did.”

“For two years he attended training camps in Malaysia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his instruction covered military tactics, propaganda, weapons and explosives, as well as extensive religious study. And now that Arung is dead, he’s in charge.”

“Sounds like he’s following in the footsteps of his grandfather.”

“So it seems,” Thomas said, topping up Carter’s tea.

Samudra’s grandfather, Fajar Sungkar, had been a member of the radical Indonesian fundamentalist sect Darul Islam, established in 1942 by Muslim militia. Its sole aim was to create an independent Islamic state where the only valid source of law was sharia, a legal code based on a strict interpretation of Islam.

They fought an armed rebellion against the Sukarno government in the 1950s and ’60s. Later, a number of them travelled to camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where battle-hardened mujaheddin trained and inspired them to commit to a life of jihad.

The “Afghans,” as they called themselves, became the leaders, ideologues and commanders of Jemaah Islamiah, the violent extremist group responsible for the Bali bombings and other terrorist activities led by Abu Bakar Bashir.

One of their goals — introducing sharia law into Indonesian society — had met with partial success. The northern Indonesian province of Aceh was now legitimately ruled by sharia, its legal code based on their own interpretation of the Koran. He’d heard reports that people had been caned and even stoned for adultery.

Carter knew that the jihadi extremists were very much in the minority. The vast majority of Indonesia’s Muslims were good, friendly people who contributed to society in a positive way — like the majority of people belonging to any other culture or religion. But Indonesia had the world’s largest Muslim population — over two hundred million — which meant that even a small percentage of them represented a sizeable number.

“So what’s God telling Samudra?” Carter asked.

“He’s publicly declared that there is no nobler way to die than as a martyr. He’s called on the members of the Sungkar clan and its international affiliates to pledge every cell of their being to wreaking God’s vengeance on Australia and the order before the new year, less than a week away.”

“All because we killed Arung?”

“That was the tipping point that took him from being a radical fundamentalist to initiating a jihadist call to arms.”

“So you reckon Samudra sees himself as what? The next Osama bin Laden?”

“Correct.” Thomas took a delicate sip of tea and placed it on the table. “And you are involved whether you like it or not.”

11

Carter drained his teacup and looked out the open window, studying the shedding bark of a ghost gum. He wondered what Thomas wasn’t telling him. Thomas only shared information on a need-to-know basis.

“How do you know it’s not just the mad ranting of a fanatic preaching to the converted?” Carter asked. “Why take it so seriously?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, three clan members did try to kill you this morning.”

“Could’ve just been a one-off act of revenge.”

“I can assure you it’s not just about you. We have evidence that Samudra has set up a military-style training camp on Batak Island at the top end of Sumatra.”

“A bunch of radical Muslims running round in army fatigues on a remote tropical island and a revenge attempt on my life hardly constitute a threat to Australia’s national security.”

“Perhaps not, but we’ve discovered a Sungkar clan cell four hours west of here, on a cattle property close to Boggabilla on the Queensland — New South Wales border.”

Carter put his hands behind his head and stretched back. There had been a couple of credible terrorist threats against Australia in the late nineties and in the aftermath of 9/11, both involving local branches of Jemaah Islamiah. One had involved the group Mantiqi IV, who had a base in the Blue Mountains, an hour and a half drive west of Sydney. Another group had set up a military-style training operation in Western Australia — it had been run by the Ayub twins, who fled Australia after the 2002 Bali bombing. Despite the initial concern, neither had amounted to anything.

“What else?” Carter asked, knowing there must be more to it.

“Samudra’s sister Kemala strongly maintains the Sungkar clan intends to wipe out the order and execute a jihad on Australian soil,” Thomas said. “Most likely in Sydney.”

“Samudra’s sister? Is she a reliable source?”

“Absolutely. Kemala has been actively watching Samudra’s activities since he assumed leadership of the Sungkar clan shortly after you went walkabout.”

Carter detected a sly glance in his direction from Wayan, indicating that Thomas’s interest in Kemala went beyond the purely professional. If that was the case, it was out of character. He filed the information away.

“Erina is in Boggabilla investigating the clan and has confirmed some disturbing activity,” Thomas continued. “And there’s one piece of information that will be of particular interest to you.”

Carter didn’t respond. It felt like Thomas was playing him, drip-feeding information.

“Alex Botha has joined Samudra’s clan.”

The mention of Alex’s name caused Carter to sit up straighter in his chair.

In many ways Alex was his alter ego. He was South African by birth, a former member of the order and, like Carter and Erina, a sanjuro. He and Carter were the same age and shared the same birthday, 19 November. For a number of years they had been close friends. Alex and he shared a passion for the Japanese samurai tradition and both were master swordsmen. When Alex was training to be a sanjuro, they had often sparred for hours with wooden swords. But about five or six years before Carter left the order, Alex’s arrogance and pride had begun to take over his personality.

They both collected replicas of famous swords, and when one of Carter’s favorites disappeared — the “Drying Pole,” used by the famous samurai Kojiro — he confronted Alex, who claimed he’d never touched it. Their relationship had never been the same after that.

Alex had become increasingly competitive with Carter and started using his substantial talent for the martial arts and combat in a cruel and self-serving way. He’d stopped paying attention to the spiritual principles of the order and Carter suspected he was taking drugs, too.

When he shared his suspicions with Thomas, Thomas had tried to counsel Alex and bring him back into the fold. But it soon became clear that he was not only using drugs but also running them while on assignment with the order.

The problem had resolved itself two years ago when Alex was arrested at Jakarta Airport carrying half a kilo of heroin. Alex had sent messages to Thomas and Carter from jail, asking for their help, but they’d decided to let him sit in prison for six months, hoping it’d give him time to reflect on the choices he had made, and find his way back to the true path. Unbeknown to Alex, Thomas had used his influence to make sure the case would never come to trial. If he’d been convicted, he would’ve faced a firing squad.

After only a few months Alex had escaped — and that was the last they had heard from him. He hadn’t created any trouble for them, and Thomas had decided against pursuing him.

“So what happened?” Carter asked.

“It turns out that he converted to Islam, joined the Sungkar clan and is now going by the name Abdul-Aleem.”

The fact that the clan had got to Alex both surprised and didn’t surprise Carter. Muslim fundamentalists had for years maintained a level of covert control across many Indonesian prisons.

Following the Bali bombings, the Indonesian security forces and the Australian Federal Police had tracked down and arrested many terrorists. While incarcerated, they’d set up shadow governments in prisons, recruited members, sent money from jail to jail and, at least once, coordinated an outside terrorist attack. They also ran businesses, used cell phones to preach sermons to followers outside and dominated prison mosques. Alex had a weakness for power and influence, and would naturally have been drawn to them. His use to them would have been immediately obvious — a westerner with his training and connections, bearing a grudge against their common enemy.

“The clan used their influence to get him out of jail,” Thomas continued, “and helped him establish a new identity.”

“That’s about the only path that’d lead Alex to God.”

“I agree. His conversion was, I suspect, motivated by his desire to save his skin rather than his soul.”

Carter nodded.

“Alex’s reappearance is a major concern,” Thomas said. “With his knowledge and experience, he could cause us a great deal of trouble — but Erina is taking care of things in Boggabilla for now. What I want you to do is go to Sydney and check out Trident for me, as I believe the bureau’s security has been compromised.”

He reached into the bag sitting on the floor next to him and slid three stapled A4 pages across the table.

Carter leaned forward. His curiosity had been piqued. But before he had a chance to finish the first paragraph, Wayan’s computer started to beep.

“You expecting more guests?” Carter asked.

Thomas shook his head.

Wayan hit a few buttons on the computer keyboard.

A map of the property appeared on screen. A red light flashed one-third of the way along the entrance road.

12

Carter and Thomas stood on either side of Wayan, staring at the blinking light on the screen. The freshening nor’-easter rustled the stacked papers on the table and Carter placed his teacup on them.

Wayan explained how the property’s security system worked. The laptop was linked wirelessly to eight motion sensors placed around the property, designed to alert them to intrusions along the perimeter.

Once alerted, four cameras, one pointing in each direction of the compass, could be used to determine what had set off the alarm. As Carter had noted earlier, though, the dense foliage that led into the property made it difficult to identify who or what had triggered the sensors until the intruder moved onto the open lawn.

Wayan clicked through four camera icons, north, south, east and west. The images that came up on his screen revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

He tapped another key and a map of the property appeared. A red light flashed along the track leading into the property about twenty yards from the point where the foliage and bush turned into lawn.

“Maybe it’s Erina?” Carter asked.

“No. She would’ve called first.”

Wayan stood and picked up a daypack that was resting against the wall. “I’m going to the ridge at the back of the house to see what I can from there.”

“No,” Carter said without hesitation. “You stay on the computer. I’ll go.”

Wayan looked at Thomas. “But I know the layout of the property.”

Thomas gave his head a slight shake. “You’ll get your chance soon enough.”

Carter understood how Thomas operated. He knew the value of dealing in hope. All warriors in training craved recognition and the opportunity to prove themselves.

Wayan nodded and handed Carter the daypack. Carter placed it on the table, slid the zipper open, reached inside and pulled out a Gore-Tex holster holding a Glock 18, his favored handgun.

The beautifully balanced weapon had a sighting range of fifty yards, but it was only accurate up to twenty. It had a seventeen-shot magazine, which allowed the shooter to fire the first round without any preparation. Carter slid the weapon out of its holster and ran his hands over the cool steel of its lightly oiled barrel.

After checking the magazine, he hung a set of black Vivitar binoculars around his neck and returned the handgun and holster to the daypack, which he slung over his shoulders.

Thomas handed him a bluetooth earpiece and a satellite phone. Both looked like they had just come out of their packaging.

“Since when did satphones come with bluetooth?”

“It’s the latest technology.”

“That’s one benefit of working with the government,” Carter said, unable to hold back the barb.

“It’s brand-new for you.”

“You’re that confident I’ll come on board?”

“You need to get moving,” Thomas said, ignoring the question. “I’ve preset it with my number. As soon as you’re in position, press 1 and report. Keep the line open.”

Carter nodded and headed toward the back door.

It took him a couple of minutes to climb the rocky ridge that ran along the top of the summit, using the trees and bushes for cover.

A wild rabbit ran across his path and disappeared. He followed it into the bushes and went as far along the ridge as he could without being exposed from below. He crawled into a small clearing surrounded by thick low scrub, lay on his belly, placed the bluetooth in his ear and the satphone in front of him.

He was about eighty yards from the back of the house, giving him a clear view of the property all the way to the highway he and Erina had driven along, about a quarter of a mile away. In the distance beyond the rich green of the long valley, he glimpsed the blue of the ocean. Thomas’s four-wheel drive, parked in the shade of the gum tree, sat ten yards to the right of the house.

The only problem with his position was that he couldn’t see the front or the left-hand side of the building. But that shouldn’t be an issue. All he needed to do was identify what had triggered the alarm and warn Thomas.

He took the Glock and its stock out of the daypack and laid them next to the satphone, then focused the binoculars in the direction of where the sensor had been triggered. He scanned further along to the right, following the track to the highway, trying to locate anything through the foliage.

Nothing.

He pulled out the antenna on the side of the satphone, turned on the bluetooth and pressed 1. Thomas answered straightaway.

“What can you see?” he asked.

“All clear for now. Has the intruder changed position?”

“No change,” Thomas replied. “Keep me posted.”

“Will do.”

All he could do was watch and wait.

13

Carter lay motionless under the scrub, watching the property below through the binoculars and trying to get his head around everything Thomas had told him.

Most Australians believed a major terrorist attack on Sydney would never happen, but logistically it wouldn’t be difficult. Security around Sydney, especially the harbor, the bridge and its foreshores, was lax. Which, if the clan was planning a significant strike around New Year’s Eve, could create a serious problem.

He knew of plain-clothes police who’d entered the naval base at Garden Island on the harbor using library cards as ID. And, not so long ago, two state police agencies had discovered that a company subcontracted to guard HMAS Penguin and the Garden Island naval base was closely linked to the well-known organized crime figure Hassan Bakir, a member of the Iron Dogs outlaw motorcycle gang.

Also of concern was another hardcore bikie group, the Soldiers of Allah. Even before Carter had left the order, they’d been on a Trident watch list. Members of the group were known to have jobs in harbor security and were suspected of engaging in weapons smuggling and drug trafficking on a significant scale. If the clan had infiltrated one of these groups, they could use them to orchestrate an act of terrorism on Sydney Harbour, making the threat very real.

Carter ran his binoculars over the track that ran from the lawn to the highway, looking for any movement under the foliage. There was none. He switched his attention to the road leading to the ocean.

Did he want to get embroiled in a fight that’d been going on for centuries and where there were no winners?

The issues were far from simple. During his training with the order, Carter had studied Islamic history in an effort to understand the deeper dynamics of the fundamentalist Muslims’ conflict with the West and what motivated modern-day terrorists.

It’d surprised him to learn that the period of Islamic supremacy, beginning in the eighth century and continuing into the twelfth, had been a time of relative peace, prosperity and cultural and technological advancement. Different religions, including Judaism and Christianity, had been tolerated under Islamic rule. This was known as the Golden Age of Islam.

The fuelling of the jihadists’ religious fervor began in the eleventh century with the first of the Christian crusades, initiated by Pope Urban II; the aim had been to restore Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. The city was a sacred site for all three major Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Throughout the next two centuries, the Muslims maintained the strength of their powerful empire, which stretched across Middle and Eastern Europe and into Asia, managing to repel the crusaders, who came from all over Western Europe. In later centuries, though, the western invaders had more success, and many Muslims came to see westerners as the enemy, intent on humiliating and subjugating all devout followers of Islam.

In Europe the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries was a time of great scientific, artistic, philosophical and — most importantly — industrial expansion, propelling the western world out of the Middle Ages and into the modern era.

As Islamic power waned and the western powers seized control of large parts of the globe, Muslim clerics claimed that the followers of Islam were suffering because they’d strayed from the path laid out in the Koran and were being punished for their sins. The solution, they preached (according to historians), was to return to the practice of Islam as it’d been in the time of Mohammed, more than a thousand years earlier. They rejected industrialization and modernization, and instead sought to enforce the strictest possible interpretation of the Koran.

While the twentieth century witnessed the independence of numerous Muslim countries from colonial rule, many of their leaders regarded the establishment of Israel as an extension of a historic campaign against Islamic lands. The West, particularly the United States, was held responsible for supporting the original intrusion and for subsequently sustaining the Jewish state in the Middle East.

Ironically, in the 1980s, the United States worked with the Afghan Muslims in their fight against the Soviets. The CIA gave over nine hundred surface-to-air Stinger missiles to the mujaheddin, handing them out like they were lollipops.

All that changed in the early nineties, when George Bush snr sent armed forces into Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden described the huge influx of US troops into what he regarded as the holiest land of Islam as the greatest disaster since the death of Mohammed. He saw it as the final insult after centuries of western victimization of the Muslim world.

According to bin Laden, that was the action that drove him to strike back at “the American soldiers of Satan and their allies of the devil.”

In the current international climate, post 9/11, there was a tendency to view the historical relations between Islam and the West in simplistic terms. The current conflict was often portrayed in the western media as the struggle of freedom versus oppression, tolerance versus fanaticism, civilization versus barbarism. When put into religious terms, it became Christianity versus Islam, and finally it was reduced to the ultimate moral battle of good versus evil.

A flock of squawking white cockatoos flew across the sky above Carter, interrupting his thoughts. He watched them swoop down as if dive-bombing the ground before flying away.

Again he scanned the property and the bushland surrounding the perimeter. Still no sign of activity.

Like most people, he had no time for fundamentalism of any sort — and that included Christian fundamentalism. He believed every individual ought to be free to worship any god and follow their own path to him or her. Many roads led to the top of the mountain.

The struggle between religions brought out the worst in both sides. He’d seen it firsthand, and it was ugly. The fact that Alex had joined the Sungkar clan disturbed him. Alex was highly trained, dangerous and almost certainly driven to seek revenge against the order.

But that didn’t mean Carter had to be the one to stop him. If Thomas had listened to him earlier, none of this would have happened.

He made a decision.

As soon as this present trouble with the Sungkar clan was resolved and Thomas, Erina and Wayan were free to go about their business, he’d head back to Lennox, grab his stuff and disappear.

Margaret River with its cranking waves and remote location was looking as good as anywhere.

A movement to his right on the highway that ran alongside the property caught his attention. He pointed his binoculars toward it. A large white freight truck, with the words Rapid Transfer painted on the side in red, slowed. It passed the entrance, stopped and then started reversing into the dirt track leading to the property.

“Thomas,” Carter said.

There was no answer. The line had dropped out. He pressed 1 on the keypad.

14

Thomas answered on the first ring and said, “What can you see?”

“There’s a freight truck backing into the property. It could be just turning around, but I doubt it.”

“Maintain your position and monitor the situation for one minute. Then report.”

“Will do.”

Carter scanned the track again all the way back to the homestead.

Nothing.

He looked back at the truck. It’d reversed most of the way in and stopped. The front half of the cabin jutted out onto the highway. A man stepped out of the cabin’s passenger seat, followed closely by the driver, who walked around the front of the cabin and joined him.

Carter focused on them. They were Caucasian and both wore T-shirts, dark blue jeans, baseball caps and wraparound sunglasses. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the intricate tattoos leaking from under their sleeves and the handguns they shoved down the back of their pants.

The driver put a phone to his ear and began talking.

Carter was about to give Thomas an update when he heard a loud clap followed by a whooshing sound coming from the bush near the homestead.

Half a second later the unmistakable crash of breaking glass from the house caused his gut to tighten.

The sound almost certainly came from a high-tech grenade launcher firing a gas canister through a window. If he was right, the gas would knock them out within seconds.

“Thomas, Wayan. If you can hear me, get the fuck out of there.”

There was no answer over the phone.

“Thomas, can you hear me?”

No reply came. Instead, he heard the faint whir of an engine starting and switched his attention back to where the track met the lawn.

A glint of metal flashed through the overhanging trees and a khaki-colored Humvee with a bull bar at the front glided out of the bushes.

The three-ton metal monster headed straight for the homestead at around five or six miles an hour, barely making a sound as it moved across the grass. The vehicle had bulletproof tires, was powered by an electric engine and didn’t appear to be in a hurry.

He put the binoculars down and, in a reflex action, fitted the Glock to its stock and jammed it against his right shoulder, lining up the Humvee in his sights and brushing the trigger with his finger.

A slow breath helped calm his mind. The last thing he needed was to act impulsively and make a bad situation worse.

He eased his finger off the trigger, laid the weapon on the ground and stared through the binoculars.

The Humvee disappeared from Carter’s line of sight, presumably pulling up close to the front of the house.

The sound of the vehicle’s doors opening and closing cut through the quiet of the bush. After a brief silence the front door of the house slammed shut.

Carter was about to move further down the ridge when a solidly built Indonesian dressed in dark brown overalls, probably a clan member, ran around the corner of the house, carrying an automatic assault weapon in two hands. He looked through the windows of Thomas’s four-wheel drive and then underneath it before heading to the back of the house, swinging his gun in an arc, scanning the ridge where Carter lay hidden as if expecting to find someone, probably him.

Carter didn’t move a muscle. An eerie silence descended over the property. Every cell in his body wanted to charge down the hill and attack the intruders. He reminded himself that any rash action on his part would only put Thomas and Wayan’s lives in even greater danger.

An excruciating thirty seconds ticked by. Even the birds had gone quiet, as if sensing trouble brewing.

He heard the front door opening, followed by three Humvee doors opening and closing, one after the other. He saw the vehicle appear again as it slowly backed away from the house, veering to the right before coming to a stop.

The guard at the back abandoned his post and ran toward the front of the house. The vehicle’s passenger window slid down and a man shouted, “Kamu melihatnja?” You see him?

The guard shook his head.

The man in the Humvee said something Carter couldn’t quite hear and the guard turned and walked back toward Thomas’s four-wheel drive.

Carter raised the Glock’s stock to his shoulder and tried to line up the guy’s head in the gun sight. But he knew a hundred yards was way too far to even consider taking a shot. To do so would’ve been pointless.

He put the gun down.

The guard moved around the four-wheel drive and shot out each tire. The vehicle sunk to the rims. He then ran to the Humvee, opened the back door and climbed in. The vehicle turned and headed across the open lawn at a steady pace before disappearing under the canopy of trees.

Carter grabbed the binoculars and trained them on the stationary truck out on the highway. The back door was now open and a ramp led up to it.

The Humvee emerged from the cover of foliage and drove up into the truck’s bowels. The two Caucasians loaded the ramp and shut the back door before climbing into the cabin. Carter heard the engine growl to life and watched smoke billow from the exhaust. The truck turned right and accelerated down the highway away from the coast.

Carter watched it swing around a bend and disappear from sight. Several seconds later he was unable to hear the engine. It would be just another anonymous truck rumbling down the road.

The well-executed attack had taken exactly three minutes from start to finish.

15

Carter waited and watched for eight minutes without moving, even though it felt like his whole world had been turned upside down.

He crawled down the hill and crouched behind a burned eucalypt stump, thirty yards from the back door of the homestead, and waited some more, looking for any movement or sign of activity inside.

Thomas and Wayan were either dead or at best unconscious and miles away in the back of the speeding truck.

He had to make sure, one way or the other, before making any decisions. Plus, if possible, he needed to get his hands on the laptop and the documents Thomas had wanted to give him.

He resisted the urge to rush in.

It seemed likely the clan members knew he was in the area and were looking for him. There was a good chance one of them had remained behind, armed and waiting inside the house.

He needed to exercise patience and give events time to unfold. On several occasions waiting that extra five minutes had saved his life.

The seconds crawled by without incident. The house was still and silent.

He rechecked the Glock, counted to three and then sprinted at full pace toward the house, keeping his body at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.

It took six seconds to reach the back wall near the kitchen and press his back flush against it.

He listened.

Nothing.

He crept along the side of the house, pausing every five yards.

Again, nothing out of the ordinary grabbed his attention.

He reached the front verandah and scanned the grounds and nearby bushes, checking for any sign of life. The only movement came from the leaves quivering in the light nor’-easter.

It was time to move.

He climbed the verandah stairs without making a sound, crouched low beside the front door and put his ear against it.

Not a sound.

He noticed a strong smell, though — the pungent odor of a noxious gas.

When it was first released into the air, it would have taken only a tiny amount to knock a person out, but by now the gas would’ve dispersed and lost much of its toxicity.

He turned his head and breathed in a lungful of fresh air. Then he dropped his shoulder into the wooden door, pushed it open and plunged inside, holding the Glock two-handed in front of him.

He made his way carefully through the deserted living room, along the hallway and into the kitchen.

There was no sign of Thomas or Wayan. The laptop and the pile of documents were gone.

He checked all six rooms, looking for any useful source of information, like a backup hard drive, a memory stick or notebooks. All he found was the satphone charger alongside its packaging in one of the spare bedrooms. Apart from that, nothing.

They’d done a clean, professional job. Any further search was a waste of time.

His lungs were crying out for oxygen. Carter grabbed the charger and ran back through the house. Out on the verandah he sucked in three huge breaths of fresh air. He shoved the Glock into the daypack and ran along the track away from the homestead, heading for Lennox Head.