Sword of Allah

Nam Sa River, Myanmar

‘I must apologise for the rough treatment, but we’re not used to the CIA dropping in,’ said General Trip.

Tadzic, Wilkes and Monroe were lifted off the ground and restrained by more than a dozen heavily armed soldiers. A couple of the men were rummaging through Wilkes’s backpack. They lifted out the satellite vone and the tactical radio beacon, examined them cursorily, then returned them to the pack and passed it to the general.

‘We have a proposition we’d like to discuss with you,’said Monroe, not wanting to delay proceedings unnecessarily.

‘Certainly,’ said the general, his horse now chewing on its bridle. ‘Always happy to thrash out an agreement with the United States of America. Indeed, I’m flattered. Perhaps you’d like to come to my pad? We can sit on the veranda out of the sun and sip something cool.’

‘Thank you, General,’ said Monroe.

‘Please,’ said the general, gesturing at one of the Humvees. He climbed down from his horse, handed the reins to a soldier, and then took a seat in the vehicle — his customary one, up behind the mounted machine gun.

‘First of all, General, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to this meeting,’ said Monroe as the vehicle headed towards the villa barely fifty metres away.

‘Yes, well, I have to admit I was intrigued,’the general said.

‘Do you think I could have my backpack returned?’ asked Wilkes.

‘No need to be impatient, Mr…?’

‘Warrant Officer Wilkes.’

‘Ah, a military man. And by the accent, I’d say Australian. Special Forces, no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ Wilkes said.

‘I see,’ he said, eyeing Wilkes warily. ‘And you, madam?’

‘AFP.’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ said the general as they pulled up to the sweeping stairs of the absurd villa. ‘CIA, SAS and Australian Federal Police. An interesting cocktail.’

Soldiers, all of whom appeared tense and nervous, surrounded the general’s Humvee. A guard of six escorted Tadzic, Monroe and Wilkes into the house. The general led the way, his fat legs taking small, effeminate steps. Monroe eyed his watch and glanced at Wilkes, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

‘Please sit,’ he said to his guests when they arrived at a balcony overlooking the ornate garden. The guards withdrew when the general gave them a staccato order. ‘Well now, what’s this about?’ he asked, leaning back in his seat.

‘Well, I could say world peace, but I’ll break it down for you further so there’s no misunderstanding,’ said Monroe. ‘Let’s talk about your continued survival.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said the general, frowning. ‘Brave words indeed from a man deep inside — what do you Americans call it? Injun country?’

‘General, you surprise me. You should know we Americans never go anywhere without a big stick.’

The first of the JSOWs arrived in the target area and switched to imaging infrared seeker, comparing the chosen target with the photo stored in its preset memory. The target successfully confirmed by the IIR, it banked steeply left. Four seconds later, half a dozen of the general’s soldiers on patrol gawked as the missile flew past them up the valley floor. Loaded with a BLU-11/B variant of the Mk 82 five hundred pound general-purpose bomb, it slammed into the general’s land-based Phalanx system and turned it instantly into scrap metal.

The sudden massive explosion shook the villa and a fireball rolled skywards from the wall that ringed it. The Phalanx’s munitions then began to cook off, a battery of smaller explosions within the firestorm banging away like lethal popcorn. The general leapt to his feet and shouted something at the soldiers, who rushed pointlessly from other buildings in the compound like ants from a nest poked with a stick.

Wilkes smiled and quietly said, ‘…five, four, three, two…’

Tadzic, better prepared this time, squeezed her hands against her ears.

The second JSOW made its presence known. It was loaded with four anti-armour BLU-108/B sub-munitions that released six projectiles each. With nothing other than the heat signature of the first missile’s hit to zero in on, their impact was concentrated at the fire raging at the base of the thick perimeter wall. Clustered in this small area, their explosively formed shaped charges easily defeated the general’s prized reactive armour and, with a series of earshattering eruptions, created a gaping breach.

The thunderous detonations were followed by multiple shock waves that rolled through the villa’s foundations and up through the floor, bouncing the chairs Monroe, Wilkes, Tadzic and the general were seated on.

‘This is you, your doing!’ the general leapt up and screamed accusingly at Monroe, Wilkes and Tadzic. ‘I will have you killed!’

‘If you wish to stay in business, General Trip, you will sit down and you will shut the fuck up,’ said Monroe, trying hard to keep the grin off his face.

General Trip removed an H&K pistol from a holster beside him and pointed it, shaking with anger, at Monroe.

‘If you don’t do as I ask, we will start destroying your crops,’ Monroe said calmly.

‘And you will be dead,’ screamed the general, cocking the weapon.

‘You are being attacked by precision guided missiles launched from a B-52 bomber orbiting in Myanmar airspace,’ said Monroe, not too far from the truth and enjoying himself. ‘Your government has sold you out. We are the only ones who can stop the attack. If you kill us, the assault will go on until you have nothing left.’

‘You are lying,’ he said, unsettled by Monroe’s confidence.

The third JSOW, containing a hundred and forty-five BLU-97/B bomblets, scattered its cargo over a heavily cultivated field. The devices detonated when they hit the ground, their cases fragmenting into metal splinters that cut swaths through the ordered rows of mature poppies. An instant later, the zirconium contained within each bomblet ignited and combined in a raging firestorm that immolated the entire hillside.

A large, black mushroom of smoke rose from the valley beyond. The general’s mouth dropped open when he saw the cloud forked with red and orange snakes rising above the ridge, the heat from it washing over them a handful of seconds after the sound.

‘What do you want?’ he said, lowering the pistol and then letting it clatter to the floor.

‘We want to find one of your customers,’ said Monroe. ‘You can help us.’

‘I have seen the news. I know who you want.’ The general sat heavily. ‘Make it stop.’

‘I need my radio, in the backpack,’ Wilkes said.

The general raised his hand and the pack was returned. Wilkes removed the TACBE, a short-range transceiver, and turned it on, thumbing the send button with a prearranged signal to the helo.

‘We also want any prisoners, any drug enforcement people you might have detained, released immediately,’ said Tadzic.

Monroe and Wilkes both turned to look at the police officer. What the hell was this all about? The helo was now on the way and they had one foot out of this place. They had what they came for. Monroe shot Wilkes an angry glance. Wilkes gave an imperceptible shrug that said, ‘Go with it’. They had no choice now, anyway.

‘I don’t have any prisoners,’ said the general a little too quickly.

‘Well, that’s unfortunate,’ said Monroe, playing along with Tadzic’s surprise demand even though he wasn’t really sure where it was going, ‘because we have plenty more missiles.’

Twelve minutes later, three very sick people were delivered on stretchers and laid on the manicured lawn in front of the villa: one woman and two men. All three looked closer to the dead than to the living, covered in filth with fat green flies circling lazily around them. ‘That fucking bastard,’ said Tadzic as she knelt beside the stretcher and wiped the woman’s face. Her eyelids cracked open. The pupils were dilated, with no response behind them.

‘They all your people?’ asked Wilkes.

‘The woman is AFP, a researcher. She’s mine. One of these men — I’m not sure which — is her boyfriend. The other, I think, is an American, a DEA agent who’s been missing six months,’ said Tadzic, rage building within her.

‘They’re lucky to be alive,’ Monroe said, a little bewildered. He’d intended to give Tadzic both barrels, but her brazen demand had yielded results.

‘Your researcher is even luckier to have you for a boss,’ said Wilkes, and he meant it. The federal agent was tough and resourceful. She’d done what she had to do. He’d have preferred it if Tadzic had brought him into her confidence over the hostages, but he understood why she didn’t. Perhaps she thought he wouldn’t allow the mission’s focus to be split. Tadzic had never worked with him before and therefore didn’t know what to expect. Maybe next time, if there were a next time, she’d know better.

The thump of helicopter blades rose above the erratic explosions of burning ammunition still cooking. Wilkes called up the helo on the TACBE and redirected it to land on the villa’s forecourt.

‘You know,’ said Tadzic as she watched soldiers rushing about in an uncoordinated panic, ‘we’ve got unconfirmed rumours that the general here buys young girls — some as young as six years old — from the local villages. Then, when he’s finished soiling their little bodies as they reach puberty, he puts them to work in the drug factories. Only, most of the girls don’t last long. By then, they’re heavy users and full of shame. They overdose or find some other way to kick off.’

As if on cue, three very young girls, children, ran from the house screaming.

‘Nice,’ said Monroe. ‘Maybe we should fix his little red wagon while we’re here.’

‘I feel the same way, Atticus, but —’

‘Come on, Tom. Jesus, look at the people on the ground here,’ he said, waving a hand at the stretchered hostages. ‘If ever someone deserved to chew on a bullet it’s this guy. He —’

A sudden loud bang beside Atticus’s head made him duck and spin. ‘Jesus!’

‘My thought exactly, Atticus,’ said Tadzic, a curl of grey smoke rising from the muzzle of the gun in her outstretched hand. It was the general’s H&K. She dropped it on the ground and kicked it away.

Wilkes saw the general fall. He caught the bullet with his throat and began to die slowly, his blood bubbling away, surprise and fear in his eyes. A man caught him as he fell, a man with a very bald, shiny head, who laid him on the grass as purple blood gurgled from his lips and the wounds on either side of his neck. When the bald man realised the general was dying, he began to pat him down. He then shot the general point blank in the head with a revolver and took his polished riding boots.

‘Obviously much loved by his people,’ observed Wilkes.

‘Federal Agent,’ said Monroe, rubbing his ear, ‘if it’s not a personal question, are you married?’

There was the slightest of smiles on Tadzic’s lips.

Capping the drug lord annoyed Wilkes, but the milk was spilt. If Canberra or Langley superiors wanted more information from Trip in the future — well, too bad, because it had now gone with him to the grave.

The helo sideslipped towards them through a column of black smoke and flared into a hover half a metre above the grass, the co-pilot now wearing body armour and sitting up behind the Browning removed from its hiding place.

‘Shit,’ said Tadzic, shaking her head as they carefully lifted the inert bodies into the helo.

‘What’s up?’ Wilkes asked.

‘We didn’t get Trip to tell us how the terrorists were smuggling the heroin into Australia.’

‘Would he have known? He was the wholesaler,’ Wilkes said.

‘Yes, he was, but you can bet an arsehole like General Trip would’ve made it his business to find out,’ said Tadzic, grunting as she helped Wilkes lift the last stretcher into the Eurocopter. ‘It might even have been a network he personally set up and controlled.’ A bullet passed close to her head, the air crackling, and buried itself in the helo’s airframe. Three more rounds fizzed by too close for comfort. Time to leave — the party was definitely over.

Tadzic took the co-pilot’s offered hand and he pulled her in. Monroe and Wilkes jumped onto the aircraft’s skids as the helo left the ground. The Eurocopter accelerated and climbed with a steep nose-down attitude. Several groups of soldiers began firing up at them. A couple of rounds pinged off the skids where Monroe and Wilkes had been standing. The Browning issued a reply, the co-pilot swinging the heavy machine gun in an arc towards the ground, showering Tadzic and Wilkes with hot brass casings.

The helo climbed over the ridge then slipped behind it, putting the hill between them and the anger of the general’s encampment. Wilkes pulled the scrap of paper from his top pocket, the lat and long coords scribbled on it in the general’s own hand. He passed the paper to the co-pilot. ‘Better get these off,’ he said, yelling over the noise of the twin jet engines and the whirling blades above.

Federal Agent Tadzic looked down at the three people at her feet and examined her feelings. She was angry and elated at the same time; angry with herself for giving in to the desire for revenge, but she had to admit that removing Trip from the gene pool was the most satisfying moment of her fifteen-year career as a federal agent.