Rogue Element

Jakarta, 0235 Zulu, Saturday, 2 May

The operation had been underway for at least an hour and it was running like a Rolex. General Kukuh Masri sat propped in an APC. He moved his bandaged head to an angle that lessened the hammer that pounded in his brain despite the cocktail of drugs he’d been dosed with. In his mind, Masri went over the strategy devised by the Australians with himself and members of the Indonesian government. His partners in the coup were all, by now, more than likely dead. They would not have seen their deaths coming.

Suluang was already removed, found in a hotel room with his brains staining the walls. Suicide was the initial verdict. There was no note. There would be no national mourning. He would be found a traitor to Indonesia, as would Rajasa and the others. The coup would be announced, the perpetrators rooted out and that would be that. Case closed.

Masri would be proclaimed a hero for delivering the traitors to the Indonesian people. Then he would retire quickly and quietly leave Indonesia, never to return. The truth about his involvement would eventually come out, but by then he would be long gone. The thought saddened the general. He loved Indonesia and didn’t want to leave it, but there was no alternative because he also loved living. Masri was just thankful that he was needed to subdue Suluang’s men. Otherwise, he too might have ended up in a lonely hotel room sucking a pistol like Suluang.

He forced his mind back to the present. Soldiers had been exchanging fire for the last thirty minutes. Each shot seemed to make the hammer in his head pound harder. The soldiers in Suluang’s regiment were besieged by the same men they’d overwhelmed the day before, almost exactly twenty-four hours earlier. There was more noise than anything else — more bark than bite — plenty of expended ammunition. There were a few casualties, but no serious attempt to kill or maim had been made by either side. The soldiers on both sides of the barricades knew the outcome of the ‘battle’ before it started. Suluang was gone, shot by his own hand, and nothing would bring him back. The snake’s head had been removed. The firefight happening around Masri was more an expression of grief by Suluang’s men than anything else, the snake’s body writhing in shock.

Understandably, Masri thought, Australia had had a large say in how the operation would go. He was aware that simultaneous manoeuvres were in full swing against other regiments and squadrons loyal to the traitors he had given up to the government. The air force squadrons, unlike the army units, would surrender without a fight because their battles were fought in the sky. They would be overrun on the ground. The rogue naval squadrons would also be surrounded and neutralised. The cancer had to be removed.

It was time. Masri said a few brief words into the intercom and the APC rolled. The mechanised cavalry rumbled forward. They arrived as a phalanx at the front gate of Suluang’s barracks and brought their guns to bear on various structures within the gates.

Masri looked down with surprise at the blood that suddenly welled from under his arm. He wondered what was going on, but only for an instant. A stray, ricocheting FNC80 round had found a gap in the Kevlar plates of his body armour. It bored through his chest and severed the aorta. He died with a look of surprise on his face, slumped like a stuffed doll in the APC’s hatch.

White flags appeared at the gates of the barracks and the soldiers met and embraced, smiling, just as they had done the day before when the roles of victor and vanquished had been reversed.