Second Strike

CHAPTER 22

Putting his head up very slowly, Mac took a look over the parapet of the log. There was no movement, but the small noise he’d heard had come from an area at about a forty-fi ve degree angle to their hide.

Mac needed to get back to his M4 and Merpati, and get the two kids the hell out of there. Looking at Santo, he made a crawling motion with his fi ngers in the direction of Merpati. Santo nodded, scared but brave.

Mac and Santo lay on their stomachs and crawled, Mac’s left hand grasping the back of the boy’s T-shirt so there’d no more runners. The ground behind the log dipped slightly, hiding them from sight, and they moved quickly on their bellies into the clearing with the monkey tree. Behind the tree, Mac stood in a crouch, his heart going crazy.

He looked back and waited, wanting to locate the Hassan soldiers.

Stealthing across the clearing to where Merpati’s legs were visible, they all crouched behind the vine. Mac collected the M4, his eyes darting around in the eerie quiet of the jungle.

Mac wanted to move the kids but he didn’t want to lead Hassan’s people to Freddi and the Kopassus soldiers, which would benefi t no one.

He turned the kids, and aimed them on an angle forty-fi ve degrees away from where the last footfalls had come from. As they started to move, there was a solid click of steel and an eerie pause. Then the air tore open with the sound of automatic weapons.

Diving for the ground, a child under each arm, Mac felt the air shake as bullets whistled and smashed through the foliage. Male voices yelled in excitement from both sides and then there was the thumpa-thumpa of a. 50-cal started up, turning the rainforest into a mist of splinters.

Glancing over his shoulder, Mac realised the Hassan attack had come from further south and the closest shooter was maybe thirty metres south of where he was with the kids. It created a greater danger: that Freddi and the Kopassus unit might mistake Mac and the kids for a hostile target. The three of them crawled sideways out of the blizzard of lead, the kids staying amazingly quiet given the terrifying situation. They slid down a dry creek bed, then Mac knelt and looked back. Still no one had made them, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a fl anking shooter hooking around from the north. He wasn’t sure whether to break cover and get the kids to run for it or fi nd a hide and let them sit it out.

Moving north along the creek bed, Mac found what he was looking for. A large tree had fallen down in the creek bed some years before, and vines had cascaded onto it. Pulling up the vine curtain, Mac kicked away a couple of spiders and helped Merpati and Santo under the tree.

‘If you stay here and stay quiet, you should be safe, okay?’ he whispered miming it at the same time. They nodded at him, big dark eyes scared but trusting.

Letting the vine fall back, Mac jogged back along the creek bed, looking for Freddi and the Kopassus guys.

The noise of gunfi re had subsided into a tactical exchange of three-shot bursts and the enemy fi re seemed to be coming from just south of where the kids had taunted the macaque. Mac crept slowly in that direction, his M4 shouldered as he looked down its sights.

Pausing behind a tree, he looked ahead intently for twenty seconds and fi nally saw something through the undergrowth.

There was a two-man team on a. 50-cal gun, mounted on a tripod: Pakistanis in khaki cams. They sent off a burst and fi re came back, so Mac elbow-crawled to a slight rise which gave him an elevation over the. 50-cal team. He shouldered the M4, brought his eye down to the sights and squeezed two bursts of three-shot. The fi rst burst dropped the gunner and the second burst hit the observer in the chest, making him stagger back on his knees. A third man, standing behind the . 50-cal team, fi red back towards Mac’s position, though he didn’t know exactly where he was shooting. Mac ducked behind the small ridge and then came up to take more shots but the shooter was retreating with a strange running gait.

Mac stood still, waiting.

‘That you, McQueen?’ came Freddi’s voice from a point south of Mac.

‘Roger that,’ yelled Mac.

‘That’s the last of them, I think,’ called Freddi.

Mac moved quickly down the small ridge in a crouch and ran towards the runway. Breaking into the open, Mac saw Freddi and the Kopassus soldiers to his left and helos roaring overhead. Sudarto was yelling into the radio, his fi nger in one ear. The Hueys fanned out and the door gunners started their stuff. Two Kopassus bodies sprawled dead behind the building and there were some massive holes in the side of the structure, obviously caused by the. 50-cal.

Mac stooped over and ran towards Freddi, pointed up at the helos.

‘The Hassan team has SAMs, remember?’

Freddi nodded and gestured to Benni Sudarto, who turned away.

As he did, there was a boom and a fl ash of orange over the jungle.

A torrent of pilots yelling blasted from the radio and Sudarto yelled back. More Kopassus guys arrived from the other side of the runway, then formed up for a push through the jungle.

‘Hassan’s got a boat at the beach with SAMs on the back,’ said Freddi. ‘Major’s pulling the helos back.’

‘No rockets?’ asked Mac.

‘Can’t get the range, and there’s fi shing boats out there. Hassan’s people have the big calibre guns too, and the major doesn’t want to lose more helos. Wants them able to track these guys out to sea till we can get some air power in.’

The helos appeared back over the runway area, forming an observation platform. Sudarto gestured at his sergeant, who gave the orders, then the Indonesian special forces moved back into the jungle at a jog. Mac and Freddi got in behind with the major. The Kopassus soldiers mopped up the remaining three Hassan shooters, taking twenty minutes to reach the beach, where they took their positions behind palm trees and waited for the major.

When Freddi and Mac got to the beach, the Hassan boat – similar to one they used in Denpasar – was already a mile into the Malacca Strait.

‘Any further and they’ll be in Malaysian waters,’ muttered Freddi.

Down the beach, a charred lump of smoking steel was all that remained of the downed Indonesian Huey. As Kopassus soldiers walked out onto the beach and down to the water, another SAM launched from the rear deck of the Hassan boat, skidding through the air like an airborne shark attack. Crossing them from right to left, the Huey it was aimed at pulled up as the missile fl ew under it.

Sudarto frantically gestured the radio guy over and yelled something into his mouthpiece. The helos fanned further out. A new voice came on the radio, sounding like an offi ce guy. Sudarto cocked an ear and made a face. Looked straight up at the sky, took a breath.

‘Jakarta, telling him, No fi ghters today,’ said Freddi. ‘Not going to risk an incident with the Malaysians.’

As they watched the Hassan gang make their getaway, Mac heard a squealing sound coming from behind them. Swivelling, he and Freddi saw a white Bombardier Challenger private jet coming in fl aps-up to land on the runway. Sudarto yelled into the radio but it was too late.

The helos were two miles out to sea and the Bombardier had a top speed of almost four times a Huey. Fifty seconds after disappearing behind the stand of jungle to make its landing, the Bombardier was in the air again, in a steep climb, powering up to full speed. The two Hueys chugged like tractors and were not even over the Kopassus ground position on the beach as the Bombardier vanished into the sun.

As soldiers jogged to the helo wreck, Mac looked at Major Benni Sudarto’s crestfallen face. No doubt he was contemplating his future.

He’d been outwitted and outgunned by a foreign crew: ambushed on his own patch and then decoyed into letting the enemy get away. It didn’t look good. Still, Mac had other things to attend to. Hassan and Gorilla might well have passed Merpati and Santo’s hiding place when they’d run to the airfi eld. He had asked those kids to stay put and do it his way, and then he’d run off. If they’d stayed where Mac had left them, they might have been discovered.

Mac started sprinting, leaving Freddi staring after him in confusion.

Undergrowth slapping his face, roots tripping him, he stumbled on as fast as he could through the jungle. He found the dry creek bed, fell down it, and in a total babbling panic sprinted up it, muttering to himself please, please, hoping that just because someone was a terrorist and a nuclear broker and a bomber, it didn’t mean they would hurt children.

He saw the tree and lunged at it, pulling away the vine curtain and looking in. Merpati lay crumpled on the ground, eyes staring at the tree. As Mac went to touch her she turned and, fl inching, shook her head. Mac saw why as he leaned over. She’d been shot in the shoulder and blood had soaked down her right side, leaving her entire arm and upper body in a total mess.

Mumbling prayers to himself, Mac tried to lift her out but Merpati screamed and fainted. He pulled her into his arms, whipped off his vest and tore off his polo shirt to staunch the bleeding in her upper arm. The whole shoulder was mangled, the bones shattered, her arm hanging by a few tendons. Mac screamed for help, his yells echoing eerily in his own head.

Merpati was stirred back to consciousness by Mac’s screaming, her lips pale and her eyes sleepy.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ he whispered, wiping her brow. ‘Merpati, I’m so sorry.’

He heard voices and yelled again, hysteria creeping into his voice.

He felt like a stranger in his own body.

‘Where’s Santo?’ he said to Merpati. ‘Come on, darling, where’s your brother?’

She shook her head very slightly. ‘They take him, Mr Mac.’

‘Take him?! What do you mean, they took him?’

‘Take Santo,’ she cried, tears rolling out of her eyes.

The Kopassus guys ran up.

‘Who took Santo?’ Mac asked Merpati. He felt almost at the end of his tether, his voice sounding like it was coming from a tinny transistor radio three miles away.

Merpati’s bottom lip quivered. ‘Gorilla and tall one, they took Santo,’ she wailed, then fainted again.

One of the Kopassus troopers tore his medico pack off his webbing, the one behind him radioing with a screaming urgency. Then Freddi jogged up, out of breath, as the soldiers gently dragged the little girl off Mac’s lap, trying to keep her arm in place but not succeeding.

‘McQueen, what happened?’ Freddi panted, hands on knees.

Mac sagged back on the carpet of leaves, close to collapse – guilt and fatigue and stress making his brain feel like it was shutting down.

‘Shot the girl, took the boy,’ he mumbled.

‘Shit!’ said Freddi.

Mac nodded. ‘Fucking Purni!’