Rogue Element

1500 feet AGL, Banda Sea, 1040 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

It all fitted together for Wilkes. The Indonesian army had been robbed of its dirty little secret and subsequent events were merely the attempts to stop it becoming common knowledge. He found the audacity of it almost impossible to believe, despite his experiences in East Timor where he’d witnessed the Indonesian military’s behaviour first hand. But that was quite a few years ago, he reminded himself. Indonesia was supposed to be a different country now. The government was far more accountable — not like the Indonesia of old — and less inclined to resolve conflicts with a big stick. Wilkes found it difficult to believe they’d be capable of such obscene behaviour.

A war against a country as powerful and resourceful as Indonesia? It would be a bloody, vicious encounter. Australia’s arsenal, if not state-of-the-art, was reasonably sophisticated. And its army was a professional force widely regarded for its fighting abilities. But it was comparatively small. Indonesia’s army, however, was large. Certainly much of its equipment was old by Australia’s standards but it could still do a hell of a lot of damage.

He pitted the two countries against each other in his head. It was a frightening thought. And if Suryei was right, it was far more than a thought. It could well be a reality.

The authorities back home must know what was coming their way. But maybe they didn’t. Perhaps that’s why he’d had such a feeling of disquiet at the briefing back in Dili — too many unasked questions, and too many questions without answers. What the hell, he shrugged. Having the extra information wouldn’t have made this gig easier, or more difficult. And maybe they didn’t know anything back home. If that was the case, then he was in charge of a most precious cargo.

Wilkes’s fingers unconsciously went to his breast pocket and felt the hard outline of the plastic inside it. The disk surrendered by the Kopassus sergeant. He’d completely forgotten about it. The soldier had thought it important — important enough to hope it might secure his life.

Joe’s side hurt badly. His body had cramped into the shape of the seat, his bones moulding to its contours. Any movement — any — was agonising. Every twitch from the aeroplane as it rode over air currents made him feel he would scream. He remembered the Australian soldier who’d fixed him up back in the jungle. That bloke had been very offhand about his wounds. He hadn’t exactly said, ‘Get up, ya bludger, it’s only a flesh wound,’ but almost. Christ. The morphine had worn off. At least, he hoped it had worn off. If he felt this bad with morphine still acting on his system, well, it didn’t bear thinking about. He wondered if he should ask for another shot, but he didn’t want to act the girl’s blouse in this company. Just bloody well grin and bear it, he told himself. He forced himself to shift his body to a different position in the hope that he would find a more comfortable place in the seat. He didn’t. The pain made him cross-eyed. Unseen by him, the wound in his back opened and a cup of crimson blood oozed out.

When Joe opened his eyes again after several minutes of keeping them squeezed shut, he saw Suryei, an Australian soldier and a black man hunched together. The soldier pulled out a disk from his breast pocket. Seeing it almost made Joe smile.

‘Where’d you get that from?’ he asked, trying not to grunt with the effort required to block out the stabbing sensation that shot through his side with every word. Christ, it seemed like every part of his body was somehow connected to his broken rib. He tested the theory and gave his eyelids an experimental blink. To his profound surprise, the action didn’t hurt.

There was a fair bit of noise in the cabin, but Wilkes heard Joe’s question above it as if there had been silence.

Joe gestured for a closer inspection of the disk but stopped a few inches into the movement when the pain caught. The sergeant leaned across and placed the disk in Joe’s open hand.

‘That’s mine,’ said Joe, to the astonishment of the soldier. ‘All my rewritables are blue.’ He turned it over. ‘My trademark, see?’ he said, indicating a logo on the reverse side, a caricature of Albert Einstein with dreadlocks and a nose-ring made from a lightning bolt.

Wilkes gave him an odd look.

‘My on-line sign is Cee Squared, as in e = mc².’ Joe read their concentration as confusion.‘“Cee” is the co-efficient for light. My name’s Joe Light. Cee Squared, light?’

‘Yeah, got it,’ said Wilkes, vaguely resenting being spoon-fed the connection. ‘The disk. What’s on it?’

‘Don’t know. Could be anything. Where’d you find it?’ asked Joe.

‘On the people shooting at you.’

Jesus, thought Joe, his brain working at half speed. It must have been picked up at the crash site. No, the Indonesians must have actively searched for it. They must have known which seat he’d occupied — easy information to obtain. The Indonesians could have done a little hacking of their own and lifted it from the Qantas server. But how had they known Joe Light had done the hacking? Was it feasible, possible, that the call had been traced? Not only that but his identity known? No it wasn’t, he told himself. Or was it?

Wilkes and Suryei reached for the disk. ‘Is this the disk? The one you saved the map to?’ asked Suryei.

Joe shrugged slightly and squinted with the pain-spike the movement caused. He hoped like hell that the disk was blank. If it held the information he’d lifted from the TNI general’s server, there was no way he’d ever be able to convince himself that his actions — and his actions alone — hadn’t caused the horrible deaths of so many innocent people in the plane crash. The fact that finding the general’s plans might also have prevented a war was too abstract. Too many ifs, buts and maybes.

The four hundred passengers left behind in the Indonesian jungle were an awful fact — unequivocal, irrefutable. It aided his conscience immeasurably to speculate that just maybe something else could have caused the crash. He didn’t want to have to carry around the terrible burden of so many innocent deaths for the rest of his life. ‘Can you run it?’ he asked, hoping they couldn’t.

Wilkes nodded and handed the disk to McBride. ‘How about it?’

The captain paused, uncertain.

‘Look, pal,’ said Wilkes impatiently, sweat, dirt and blood combining with the wicked gash on his cheek to give him the appearance of some kind of horror film creature. ‘All of us are cleared for this kind of stuff. As for Joe and Suryei here, I think they’ve paid their dues. So don’t give me any of your top secret national security crap, okay?’

McBride took the rebuke on the chin. Wilkes was morally right, although his own superiors would no doubt think differently. He shrugged mentally, and tapped the disk on his thumb while he walked from sight into the forward comms compartment. Wilkes instantly regretted handing over the disk. This American spook could switch it, wipe it — anything. He didn’t know much about the NSA or how it operated beyond the fact that it was enormously powerful, and apparently all-pervasive.

A dull white square of projected light appeared on the bulkhead that doubled as a screen. Static scrambled across it. The soldiers all looked up, expectantly. A few floaters drifted lazily down the screen. The audio channel came to life with a bottomless atmosphere. The air in the V22 was charged with electricity. The men craned their necks from side to side to get a better view over the heads in front. After a pause, a violin hummed a single high note and held it for several seconds. A chord of music from an electric guitar crashed through the headphones and the speaker boxes hidden throughout the aircraft. Then the vocals came, screamed by a man who sounded as if he was in agony.

The music fell abruptly to silence, the wall of sound seeming to echo through the aircraft. The soldiers, who had, until a moment ago, been drifting in and out of their own thoughts, were sitting forward in their seats, puzzled, their senses assaulted by the thrash coming through their headphones and the speakers. McBride put his head round the corner and apologised for the one hundred decibels of heavy-metal rock and roll. ‘Sorry, guys,’ he said almost comically.

The American made his way back to Wilkes, Suryei and Joe. He handed the disk to Wilkes. ‘Just a bit of audio streaming. Nothing else on it.’

Joe held his hand out for the disk. Wilkes intercepted it and turned it over, examining it again.

‘I was listening to that track in the plane before… you know…’ Joe stumbled over his words. He tried to remember the hour before the 747 began its dive. Where had he saved those files to? It was possible that they were indeed captured on the disk in his hand, but saved as background, a little trick he’d learned from the games fraternity for concealing cheat codes. A battle raged in his conscience. The side of certainty ultimately won. Joe had to know.

‘Paper and a pen…’ he grunted.

McBride provided him with a notebook and pencil. With obvious discomfort, Joe scribbled a DOS command on it and handed it back. ‘Try that.’

Joe stared at the empty square of projected white space on the bulkhead and hoped it would stay that way.

Something flashed up and then disappeared, a ghost image. Floaters again drifted slowly from top to bottom. And then, suddenly, there it was. The map.

It depicted South-East Asia and northern Australia. Rough arrows drawn in black squeaker pen flashed dramatically here and there. Darwin and Townsville were obvious areas of interest, for that’s where many of the arrows ended. Notes were hurriedly scribbled in the margin in Indonesian, none of which Joe understood. Australia was called Selatan Irian Jaya, Southern High Victory. He knew that much. Joe swallowed, drily. Suryei was transfixed. Wilkes, McBride and the rest found it hard to believe their eyes.

Ellis caught Wilkes’s attention, gesturing at him to put his headphones on. Wilkes briefly put his ear in one of the cups.

‘Suryei,’ he said, tapping her gently on the shoulder, breaking into her amazement, ‘I’ve just been told we’re out of Indonesian airspace. But I’m afraid I can’t allow you to call anyone.’

Suryei nodded. There was no point arguing. She had the biggest story of her life, but it wasn’t hers to tell. There was plainly much at stake for both Australia and Indonesia. The implications of spreading her knowledge vicariously through the media would profoundly affect events in ways she did not want to be responsible for. Truth, black and white. Grey. How would the papers deal with the astonishing revelations? Besides, she had done her bit. She had survived against impossible odds, and so had Joe. They had somehow managed to escape death many times; perhaps, the fates had ruled, just so they could bring the facts out of the jungle.

Now Wilkes and McBride had those facts. She was absolved of further responsibility. They could be the messengers now.

The realisation that she was no longer responsible for protecting the truth had a profound effect on Suryei. Suddenly, she felt bone-weary. She understood that expression for the first time in her life, because she was exhausted right to her core. It was almost impossible to move. The chair was warm and comfortable and she felt safe. Joe was next to her, eyes squeezed tightly shut, a grimace distorting his mouth. She wanted to put her arm around him and comfort him, only she knew doing so would probably make him scream. Every muscle in her body ached. Her eyes were hot and dry. She allowed herself to close them and was instantly asleep.