Sword of Allah

Jakarta, Indonesia

Wilkes, Ellis and Monroe arrived at the brightly lit hangar as a man concluded a semi-official address to the Indonesian soldiers. The first thing Wilkes noticed about those soldiers was their red berets: they were Kopassus.

‘I think that’s the Indonesian Minister of Defence,’ said Monroe.

‘Nah,’ said Ellis. ‘A politician prepared to drag his arse out of bed at sparrow’s fart, and no TV camera to witness it?’ He shook his head doubtfully.

‘Hey, boss!’ It was more of a loud whisper than a shout, and the voice was familiar. Wilkes walked inside the hangar and saw the rest of his troop standing in a group away from the Indonesians. Wilkes nodded a greeting to his men — Littlemore, Beck, Morgan, Robson, Coombs and Ferris. They’d been listening attentively, politely, to the politician, despite the fact that none of them understood Bahasa. Then the minister turned to the Australians and said in accented English, ‘I am here on behalf of our president to tell you that all Indonesia thanks you for your assistance and wishes you well. Our prayers go with you. May Allah watch over you and bring you back to your homes and loved ones safely,’ he said, bowing slightly.

Wilkes saluted the minister, and especially the man’s sentiment. He then went up to the nearest Indonesian soldier and shook his hand. If there was any tension between the two groups of men from two very different countries, it dissolved at that moment.

Captain Mahisa pushed his way through the group and clapped Wilkes on the shoulder as the minister climbed into a long black car and departed. ‘Pleased to have you with us, Tom. What do you say…? We shall kick some butt?’

‘Captain Mahisa!’ said Wilkes, happy to see a familiar face amongst the Indonesians. The captain looked in far better spirits than the last time they’d met. ‘Actually, no, we don’t say things like that. But our American friend here does. Do you remember Atticus Monroe? From our first meeting in Canberra?’ Monroe saluted the captain.

‘That’s right, yes,’ said Mahisa, brow knotted as he called on his memory. ‘CIA, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Monroe with a grin.

‘Atticus has been making the tea and running errands for us lately, Captain. We call it work experience. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll prove useful on this mission too,’ said Wilkes, laughing when he saw Monroe appeared to be lost for words. For once.

Wilkes noticed a whiteboard full of numbers and squiggles in black and red pen. ‘We missed the briefing,’ he said to Mahisa. ‘Can you fill us in?’

‘Certainly,’ said Mahisa.

‘Do we have any intel on the camp?’ asked Wilkes. ‘Aside from its position.’

‘No, unfortunately, nothing,’ answered Mahisa. ‘The terrorists could number anywhere from twenty to two hundred persons. There hasn’t been time for an overflight. Our job is to hold the ground until the navy arrives. There are three ships on the way there now, along with a US carrier battle group. The first of these vessels should arrive zero-seven-thirty this morning. We can safely assume the terrorists will be heavily armed and we know they have VX. Do they have the means to use it against us?’ Mahisa shrugged. ‘We don’t know that either. All we can do is expect the worst and take precautions.’

The ‘precautions’ Captain Mahisa referred to was the wearing of a joint service lightweight integrated suit technology or JSLIST. It was a two-piece suit designed for US forces that, together with its M40 gasmask, multipurpose overboots and rubber gloves, gave the wearer twenty-four-hour protection against liquid and vapour chemical agents. Mahisa looked uncomfortable in it, the sweat soaking his hair and running into his eyes.

‘What are our numbers?’ asked Wilkes.

‘I have thirty men.’

Jesus, is that all? Wilkes had nine, including himself and Atticus Monroe. Depending on the terrorists, their commitment and readiness, it could get ugly. He remembered the gun battle in Ramallah and his sphincter tightened involuntarily. Men like this did not capitulate readily.

‘What’s the objective?’ asked Wilkes.

Mahisa could sense Wilkes’s unease. The situation was far from ideal. ‘Secure the VX, stop the launch of the drone and, if possible, capture this man. Duat.’ The captain passed Wilkes a laser print of the terrorist, one of a stack being handed around. It was a face already burned into his memory. The eyes, the gold tooth.

‘And if we’re too late?’

‘Confirm the destination of the weapon.’

‘Prisoners?’ Monroe asked.

‘Yes, if we can. But if we can’t…’ Mahisa shrugged. Taking prisoners was not a priority. ‘You and your men are proficient with HALO drops?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilkes, who glanced at Monroe nodding confidently. He’d forgotten to ask whether Atticus was proficient on the jump when Ellis had first informed them of it. Wilkes was sceptical about his proficiency but there was no way the American would miss out on the drop. Mahisa led them across to the whiteboard covered in figures, the captain’s movement restricted by the JSLIST suit so that he appeared to walk like a robot. A HALO insertion would minimise time in the air over the target, but there was a catch. Unfortunately the bad guys might be able to hear their chutes popping open. That wasn’t so good.

‘Your men have already been briefed, Tom,’ said Mahisa as he picked up a marker pen and faced the board.

‘Okay,’ said Wilkes.

‘We’ll be exiting at eighteen thousand feet above mean sea level,’ he said, underlining the figure in red. ‘The weather people tell us that wind speed at exit altitude is twenty knots, becoming light and variable on the ground. At a hundred and twenty knots indicated air speed, we’ll have a forward throw of around three hundred metres.’

‘What’s the OA?’ asked Wilkes, studying the figures.

‘Our opening altitude is three thousand five hundred feet. You and your men will exit last. Your OA is up to you. Your chutes have a mean descent rate of around fifteen feet per second.’

‘Yeah, but with all the gear we’ll be carrying, it’ll be more like twenty feet per second.’

‘So you’ll be dropping slightly faster than my men,’ said Mahisa.

Wilkes nodded.

Mahisa considered that and then continued. ‘Give us six seconds to exit. How you get your people on the ground is your business.’

Wilkes and his men had done this so many times before, he didn’t need to think about it too hard. He did not, however, want to be anywhere near the Indonesians. He hadn’t trained with these Kopassus and had no idea of their capabilities. ‘We’ll follow four seconds later and exit in a packet. We’ll open at four thousand five hundred. I’ve had a look at your nav boards. They’re different to the ones we use,’ Wilkes said politely. In fact, they seemed downright primitive. ‘You happy with them?’ The navigation board strapped to a man’s chest housed a variety of electrical, magnetic and pressure instruments enabling the jumper to ‘fly blind’ and still hit the target zone. Jumping out the back of a plane at night required some deft in-flight manoeuvring when under the parachute canopy, more so if it was a HAHO jump, a high altitude high opening jump, and a particular landing spot was to be reached with certainty. But in this instance, it should be a pretty simple exercise. There were no waypoints to hit on the descent and the winds were predictable. Wilkes decided not to carry a nav board, and would rely instead on the altimeter strapped to his wrist and the occasional stickybeak through his NVGs.

‘Compared to your system, ours is a bit old fashioned, but it works,’ Mahisa said, jealously casting his eye over the high tech Australian nav board lying on a parachute container.

‘What about oxygen?’

‘Inbound, connect to the aircraft’s oxygen system. Three minutes out, the red jump lights at the rear hatch will give us the signal and we’ll switch to bottled oxygen.’

Wilkes nodded. SOP.

Mahisa put down the pen and vented his JSLIST suit, pulling it in and out at the neck like a bellows to circulate the air inside it. ‘I notice your men have orange chemlights and reflective strips on their helmet and parachute container. We use green. Just follow us in,’ said Mahisa. ‘The terrorists must have a runway of some considerable length if they are intending to launch a drone. We’ll be making for that if we can pick it out.’

‘So will the terrorists,’ Wilkes observed.

‘Yes. The enemy might hear our chutes open, even if they can’t see us. And if they have sophisticated radar, they’ll be able to pick us up long before we exit.’

Well, thought Wilkes, Mahisa was living up to his first impression of the man. He was an honest, straight talker. Frankly, there were better ways to approach the camp. It was right on the sea. A submarine insertion would have been the safest method for the attacking force, but there was no time. They had to go in hard and fast with guns blazing, and hope to demoralise the enemy.

‘Okay, so we’re on the ground. What next? We’ve got different comms to you and your people, we speak a different language, our signals and training are foreign.’ All this was Wilkes’s major concern. This op had been thought up by politicians and cobbled together at the last minute. There were real operational considerations that appeared to have been overlooked, such as how were the two groups of soldiers going to take this camp without whacking each other in the confusion on the ground?

‘My men will head into the encampment’s centre to disorient the terrorists’ command HQ and, hopefully, discourage any organised defence. I was thinking that your men could secure the landing strip itself and work around the perimeter of the encampment.’

‘Okay, but how do we prevent blue on blue?’ said Wilkes, his major concern.

‘Do not advance into the centre of the encampment until after first light,’ said Mahisa. ‘And then, enter the camp only on my command and by a route marked with chemlights. I’ll need your tactical radio frequency so that I can brief you on developments in the camp itself.’

Wilkes took the marker pen and wrote his frequency in large numerals on the whiteboard. All that sounded reasonable, he thought. Mahisa’s plan would keep the Kopassus and the SAS separate until they could be integrated without anyone getting trigger-happy.

One of the Kopassus men interrupted the briefing and handed Mahisa three JSLIST suits. The captain passed them to Wilkes, Monroe and Ellis.

‘What’s our time at the DIP?’ asked Monroe.

Wilkes raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s a DIP?’

‘Hey, I thought you were experienced jumpers,’ said Monroe. ‘Are you sure you amateurs know what you’re doing? A DIP is a desired impact point.’

‘Oh, you mean time on target,’ said Wilkes, smiling.

‘Whatever,’ said Monroe, waving a hand dismissively.

Despite the hard time he was giving Monroe, Wilkes had heard the term DIP before. It was American. If Atticus knew the jargon, did that mean he also knew how to HALO jump? It didn’t matter, anyway. Wilkes had long since given up telling Atticus what he could and couldn’t do.

‘We should hit the target at zero five four zero,’ said Mahisa.

‘Sunrise is…?’ asked Monroe.

‘Zero six hundred.’

‘Perfect,’ said Wilkes, forgetting about Monroe’s experience or his lack of it. ‘We’ll be coming out of the night sky, with just enough light to see by.’ But then, maybe it wasn’t so perfect. If the navy arrived at zero seven thirty, the ground battle would be more than an hour and a half old. A lot could happen in that time, and if it was still going on, most of what was going on would be bad.

‘Can we count on any air support?’ Wilkes asked.

‘No.’ Mahisa shook his head. ‘No one wants the VX accidentally atomised by a stray dumb bomb.’

Fabulous, thought Wilkes.

‘Any other questions?’ asked Mahisa.

Wilkes shook his head. Actually, he had a barrage of them, but Mahisa wouldn’t be able to provide any answers. Mostly, the questions concerned what resistance they’d be meeting at the encampment and those answers were in the laps of the gods.

Perhaps the same questions were also buzzing around Mahisa’s brain because he said, ‘Tom, if you’ll excuse me. There’s something I want to do before we go.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘You should know that the God of Islam is not the God of the men we go to fight. Theirs is a manmade abomination created to justify the evil in their black hearts. Do you believe in God, Tom?’

Wilkes shook his head. ‘No.’ A straight answer to a straight question.

‘Then you are an infidel. That, to the vast majority of Muslims, means that you are a non-believer. It doesn’t make you my enemy. But I feel sorry for you; that you have been denied His love and His wisdom. Maybe, one day, you will see the light, my friend, and I hope that light is the God of Mohammed, may His name be praised.’ Mahisa put his hand on Wilkes’s shoulder.

‘Maybe,’ said Wilkes with a smile. He watched the captain join his men at prayer, laying small rugs on the hard concrete floor.

Watching the soldiers face Mecca and commune with the God of Islam touched Wilkes in an odd way. Even if they were wearing JSLIST suits, the sight gave him an inkling of hope, like the small crack of light that escapes from a closed door. He was proud to serve with these men and for a moment he felt that he was one of them.

The interior of the Indonesian air force C-130 was even noisier than the Australian version, and the sweat that had poured out of Wilkes when on the ground in the JSLIST suit had become cold and clammy now with the temperature one degree at eighteen thousand feet. All the men were wearing helmets and oxygen masks not unlike those worn by pilots, a necessity for clear thinking above altitudes of fourteen thousand feet above mean sea level, unless one had time to become accustomed to it. The helmets and masks and the noise of the turboprops prohibited conversation. Occasional hand signals were exchanged but the isolation left each man alone with his thoughts.

Wilkes tried to think about the jump ahead rather than allowing his mind to wander over the situations that could face them on the ground. HALO jumps were potentially dangerous, especially when there were so many men jumping in a relatively small block of night sky, all heading to the one destination.

He looked across at the row of men sitting opposite. In the JSLIST suits and with their tac radios off, Wilkes didn’t know who was who. That anonymity would amplify once they landed. They’d be working independently of the Indonesians because of the language barrier. The Kopassus were also on a different radio frequency. Add the twilight to the communications separation, and the fact that they were expecting fierce resistance…well, fuckups were guaranteed…Jesus, concentrate on the JUMP!

Wilkes got his mind back on track by again checking over his gear. His preferred weapon, the 5.56mm Minimi light machine gun, hung from his side by its strap and was secured by the parachute harness. Wilkes’s usual insurance policy, the cut-down Remington 870 pump, modified in the garage and loaded with heavy #4 buckshot, was attached to his right leg with Velcro strips, barrel pointing down towards his boot. Wilkes also carried half a dozen M36A2 frag grenades that weren’t at all kind to humans. His oxy bottles were attached to his parachute harness, and readily accessible. He moved his hands carefully over his kit, accounting for various items and making sure the lot was secure. The oxy mask prevented him from looking down, but he couldn’t do without it and that was that. His gloved hand told him his ripcord was in place and weapons secured. He looked at the altimeter strapped to his wrist: still bang on eighteen thousand feet AMSL. He ran the coordinates of the target area through his mind together with remembered wind speeds and forward throw details.

Across the other side of the plane lined up on pulldown seats, Wilkes could see that his men were going through similar routines, touching gear with their hands, mentally ticking it off. Lance Corporal Ellis and Troopers Littlemore, Robson, Beck, Morgan, Coombs and Ferris carried the usual assortment of weaponry: Minimis, M4A2 carbines with the underslung M203 grenade launchers, Heckler & Koch MP5SD nine millimetre submachine guns, H&K sidearms and M36A2 frag grenades. For once, Atticus was happy to fit right in, and strapped to his parachute harness was a plain, ordinary Minimi. Maybe that was the best way to distinguish between his men and Mahisa’s: by the weapons they carried. The primary Indonesian weapon appeared to be the American M16A1 and the locally made FNC80s, a type of M16 lookalike.

Canberra had wanted this to be a joint exercise — Australians and Indonesians working together — and Jakarta had agreed, perhaps because the threat to the two nations was equally split. Wilkes could see the logic but the practice worried him. He turned his tac radio on briefly and, through his earpiece, heard Atticus Monroe humming a tune: ‘…oh, when the saints go marchin’ in…’ Well, at least someone was happy about things, thought Wilkes.

The interior white overhead lights had been replaced by a dull, blood-red glow so that the soldiers’ night vision wouldn’t be impaired. The flight from Jakarta to the exit point was a mercifully quick one and red parachute jump lights beside the rear hatch lit up the back of the plane. Three minutes to exit. All the men jacked out of the aircraft’s oxygen system and switched to their portable bottles. The ubiquitous roar from the C-130’s turboprops became a high-pitched scream as the plane’s rear ramp lowered on its hydraulic struts. The smell of burnt AV-TUR, exhaust from the turboprops, found its way into Wilkes’s oxygen mask. It was a smell Wilkes had always liked: the perfume of action. He watched Captain Mahisa stand, illuminated by the red glow, and move to the back of the ramp. All the soldiers stood. The temperature inside the aircraft had dropped below zero. The green jump lights suddenly began to flash and a large number of men stepped into the void behind the ramp and disappeared — no speeches, no fanfare, no bullshit. A second later, the remaining Kopassus fell into the blackness.

Wilkes counted to four as he walked to the back of the ramp and turned. His men were right behind him in a tight knot. He grabbed the shoulder straps of the two men facing him, and the three of them fell away from the aircraft. The rest of his men followed a second later. Wilkes and the two men beside him quickly assumed the high arch position and stabilised their descent. No one somersaulted or jumped off with a pike and half-twist, the usual horseplay. None of his men had jumped in a JSLIST suit and there was a concern that the hood, even though heavily taped out of the way, might somehow catch their slipstream and act as a sail, flipping and rolling them out of control with disastrous results.

Wilkes looked up and watched the black shadow of the C-130 diminish as he fell away from it. He saw his remaining men drop from the back of the plane, Ellis the last to leave. The men separated quickly, controlling their respective flight paths, heading away at right angles to each other and then lining up with the aircraft’s track. The airflow buffeted Wilkes like a hundred small fists as he shot through nine thousand feet, chasing the minute glowing bars of green chemlights winking faintly below.

Fifteen seconds later, Wilkes glanced at his altimeter. He counted off another ten seconds before pulling the ripcord. He felt the buffet as the airflow pulled his drag chute clear of the parachute container and then…BANG. It was as if a massive hand had reached down from above and wrenched his harness. He looked up and was reassured to see a patch of stars obliterated by the canopy deployed overhead. A vague premonition of dawn, the faintest green glow, gathered on the horizon to Wilkes’s right. The wrist altimeter read four thousand feet. Bottled oxygen was no longer required, so Wilkes tore off his helmet and oxy mask and attached them to the parachute harness on his side. The green chemlights of the Kopassus below were closer, and brighter, a set of glowing dashes that led all the way to the ground. By now, the first of the Indonesians would have touched down and bundled their chutes and unclipped their parachute containers, leaving the lot where they landed.

With some difficulty, Wilkes reached behind him and pulled on the hood of the JSLIST suit. It came away after several tugs. He jammed the hood into his parachute harness and then grabbed hold of the parachute’s risers. The two men he’d jumped with were slightly above and beside him. Good training. Although he couldn’t see them, he knew the rest of his men were also just where they should be.

The ground lay approximately a thousand feet below, as black as a blacksmith’s anvil and every bit as unforgiving. He located the pair of NVGs attached to his belt with Velcro straps and released it. Slipping the unit’s harness over his head, he flipped the lenses down in front of his eyes. The blackness under his feet suddenly became two pools of green light with the terrorist encampment plainly visible. He could see the Kopassus landing beneath him, flaring their rectangular parachute canopies above the airstrip. There didn’t appear to be any gun battles going on, which could only mean that, somehow, they’d managed that most vital of tactical advantages — surprise. But that, surely, would not last too much longer.

Wilkes slipped off the NVGs. He didn’t want to land with the unit in front of his eyes because if he hit the ground heavily, the device could get smashed into his face, blinding him. Also, there was the threat of VX and, with the terrorists’ camp getting closer by the second, it was time to put the JSLIST’s hood on. He hung the NVGs back on his belt and pulled out the hood with its incorporated gasmask and slipped it over his head. The smell of the rubber, charcoal and sweat filled his nostrils.

Now almost overhead of the target area, the fluorescent strips on the soldiers landing below had formed a spiral invisible from the ground. And then he saw the airstrip itself in the dim first light of the pre-dawn, a light scab of grey on the skin of the earth. The camp was barely visible but he could still make it out, off to the right of the strip. It was big, easily capable of housing more than two hundred men and, from this altitude, well laid out — like a proper military compound. As he drifted closer, the huts became clearer. They appeared to be mostly built from some kind of sheeting with corrugated steel roofing — demountables — and the whole operation was obviously well funded.

The strip lay directly below him. Wilkes was the first of the Australians to land. Small piles of discarded equipment dotted the ground like gopher holes. The Indonesian soldiers were still hurriedly gathering in their chutes while others were running at a crouch towards the encampment. And then the ground suddenly appeared to accelerate towards him. Wilkes bent his legs and flared the chute four metres above the rolled, hard-packed dirt of the strip. He hit the earth, legs bent, and his breath was punched out of him.

Wilkes stood quickly and gathered in his parachute as the air left its foils and it began to roll sideways. When it was in his arms, he dropped the bundle at his feet, released the harness and also let the parachute container fall to the ground along with the oxygen bottles, face mask and helmet. With the parachute released, his Minimi was freed. Time to gather his men amongst the moving grey shapes. Get this show on the road. He made the hand signal for ‘on me’. A group of beings that looked more like insects than men quickly formed up around him.

‘Sound off,’ said Wilkes through the tac radio.

‘Ellis.’

‘Monroe.’

‘Robson.’

‘Coombs.’

‘Morgan.’

‘Beck.’

‘Littlemore.’

‘Ferris.’

‘Any problems?’ asked Wilkes.

‘Yeah,’ said Littlemore. ‘Who’s Monroe?’

‘Okay,’ said Wilkes, ignoring Littlemore. ‘Just to recap,

Atticus stay with me. Littlemore, you too. Ellis, take Beck and Ferris and check out that shed at the end of the runway, then work around the back of the camp. Robson, Morgan, Coombs, take the shoreline. Keep me up to speed on what you find. When you’ve done that, reassemble here.’ The distinctive sound of an FNC on full automatic rattled through the morning. ‘Let’s move it.’

Mahisa and his Kopassus squadron had a few minutes’ head start and the assault on the encampment should have been in full swing by now, but things were strangely still. Except for the burst of fire from the FNC, the place was as quiet as a grave.

‘Let’s rock,’ said Monroe.

‘Yeah, sure…’ Wilkes replied, distracted. There was something odd.

The three parties separated, leaving Wilkes, Monroe and Littlemore amongst the piles of discarded gear. Wilkes tucked low and ran a short way along a well-worn path illuminated with green chemlights that snaked towards the huts, Monroe and Littlemore behind, careful not to spook the Kopassus who were conducting hut-to-hut searches. He watched a couple of paratroopers drag two men from a hut by their hair. The terrorists appeared to be alive, but barely. Both of them were gripping their stomachs, rolled into tight balls.

‘Jesus, boss,’ said Littlemore, ‘are you getting that smell or is my filter fucked?’

‘Could be. You’re not supposed to smell anything through these,’ said Monroe. ‘Maybe you got one of the faulty ones — a dud.’

‘Lucky me.’

There was an incredible stillness. A camp like this full of terrorists would be on high alert. There should be lead and tracer flying all over the place. And something else strange; there were no animals, no dogs or cats wandering around.

Several men in JSLIST suits appeared at the head of the track that began where the first of the huts were erected. They were walking towards Wilkes, Monroe and Littlemore, their rifles sweeping through the arc. It occurred to Wilkes that they could be terrorists. If there was VX in the air, there was a good chance the bad guys would also be wearing chemical warfare suits. Wilkes gave the hand signal for his men to go into a crouch. He took a bead on the man leading the group but rested his finger on the trigger guard, prepared to wait until the last possible moment. This kind of potential friendly fire incident was exactly what he’d been concerned about.

‘Tom, is that you?’

‘Captain?’

The men heading down the trail stopped and the man in front lifted his weapon above his head. Wilkes, Monroe and Littlemore did the same. The moment of potential blue on blue vanished, and the men lowered their weapons and walked towards each other. When the two groups met, Captain Mahisa handed his weapon to a subordinate and began waving an instrument through the air. ‘The air is clear of VX,’ he said. He then ran his finger down the JSLIST’s front rubber seal and peeled off the top half of his suit. ‘But it smells like…’

‘…like death,’ said Wilkes, following Mahisa’s lead, removing his hood and sampling the air.

Several Kopassus ran down the path to Mahisa and talked excitedly.

‘Nearly everyone here is dead,’ said the captain, ‘and the ones that aren’t are very sick.’

‘Until we find out exactly what’s going on here, we’d better keep these things on,’ said Wilkes. He felt like he was wearing a mobile sauna. Mahisa agreed and they reluctantly pulled the JSLIST hoods back over their sweat-sodden heads.

The first rays of the sun crossed the horizon and illuminated the clear blue sky, yet a chill remained over the camp — the final breath exhaled by the dead.

‘Boss!’ Wilkes turned and saw three men jogging awkwardly towards them from the direction of the airstrip, encumbered by their suits. It was Ellis, Beck and Ferris. ‘The drone,’ said Ellis. ‘It’s gone — launched. And recently too, by the look of things.’ They presented Wilkes and Mahisa with a fistful of Polaroid photos showing the drone and various people standing beside it. Wilkes and Mahisa recognised Duat instantly. Something in Arabic was painted on the plane’s nose. ‘We found this in the shed at the end of the runway,’ Ellis said, holding up the remains of a laptop. ‘Battery and hard drive are still warm. We also found a man killed — a cap in the head. Been dead less than an hour by the looks of him — no rigor and only a few ants and flies. He’s one of the men in the photos.’ He selected one of the Polaroids and said, ‘This guy.’ The picture showed the drone with Duat, a man and a boy — all smiling. ‘The wound was not self-administered, unless he was a contortionist. The shed was the drone’s hangar. There’s fuel, wheel tracks and this,’ he said, handing him a sheet of paper. ‘Check out the date, boss.’

Wilkes examined the paper. ‘Shit!’ he said. It was a METFOR. And for the following twenty-four hours. How much had they missed the bloody thing by? ‘It’s got to be Darwin then,’ he said, looking up.

‘Can you be sure about that?’ asked Mahisa urgently, joining them. ‘What about Jakarta?’

Wilkes handed him the sheet. Mahisa didn’t need the significance of the data explained. He would have been familiar with METFORs, accurate meteorological forecasts that covered a given time and area. Knowing the wind speed and direction are critical when you’re about to spread chemical weapons over a particular area. And the area covered by this METFOR was the island of Flores, the islands to the west of West Papua, and the north of Australia, including Darwin. The fact that Jakarta wasn’t included eliminated it categorically. ‘That is great news,’ he said, placing a gloved hand on Wilkes’s padded shoulder. ‘Not about Darwin…’ he added quickly.

‘Tom, excuse me. I must get a message off. I am truly sorry but I must radio my superiors immediately.’ Mahisa turned excitedly and chatted with a subordinate, who then ran off to shout at the men handling the unit’s communications. Wilkes understood the captain’s relief. His family lived in Jakarta — wife, three children, mother, father, sisters, brothers; the whole extended family. The panic that had hit the Indonesian city in the wake of the news that a deadly nerve agent could be on its way had already caused much death and destruction there.

The SAS soldiers followed the Kopassus back along the chemlit pathway towards the encampment.

‘Tom, James and I are going to join an Indon patrol and have a look around,’ said Atticus in Wilkes’s earpiece. ‘You cool with that?’

Wilkes turned and nodded. ‘Just make sure you’re home before dark and don’t talk to strangers.’

‘Okay, Mom,’ said Monroe.

Five men split from the main group and headed off in the direction of the beach.

The number of Indonesian troops milling about in the centre of the encampment was starting to swell as the men completed their sweeps. From the body language alone it was evident that most were bewildered by what they had seen. Wilkes, like everyone else, was in the dark about what had happened here and, not understanding Bahasa, he was not party to any intelligence gathered by Mahisa’s men. Altogether, not a particularly ideal situation. But what Wilkes and his troop did know was disturbing enough: that the drone had been launched but the cavalry had arrived too late to save the day, and that within a short period of time, an Australian city would have the dubious honour of being the first in the western world to host the arrival of a weapon of mass destruction.

Two of Mahisa’s men pushed through the gathering knot of soldiers and presented something to their CO — a couple of empty syringes. Wilkes couldn’t hear what was being said, and nor would he have been able to understand it if he could, but the men were excited about something.

‘Tom, we have located the VX!’ Wilkes heard Mahisa say, his voice cracking through the static in his earpiece. ‘There are two drums, two halves of the agent probably, plus what may have been a third mixing drum. And then there are these,’ he said, the empty syringes presented on his gloved palm. The word ‘Atropine’ was stencilled in red on the syringes. ‘From these, would it be reasonable to assume one, possibly two people in the camp knew they had been poisoned by the agent?’

‘So then we should have a couple of comparatively healthy terrorists lurking around someplace,’ said Wilkes.

‘Unless one of them was the man who appears to have been whacked,’ said Ellis. ‘He’s in the photos with Duat. Do you reckon he could have been the brains behind the UAV?’

‘Possible.’ The same thought had occurred to Wilkes. If the terrorists believed they were about to get pounced on, silencing the man who could tip off the enemy on the drone’s flight plan made plenty of sense. ‘What about Duat? Has he turned up yet?’

‘Negative, boss,’ Ellis said. ‘We haven’t found him. Can’t speak for the Indons.’

‘Us neither,’ said Mahisa. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t here?’

‘Or he left in a hurry ’cause the party was turning to shit,’ said the voice of Atticus Monroe. ‘We found their armoury. You won’t believe how many explosives these people have. Enough to prosecute a small war. Something odd…a couple of heavy cases of something have been dragged down to the waterline. Recent, too. The tide hasn’t washed away any of the tracks. There’s one boat there — they probably had another.’

‘Looks like we got ourselves a fugitive, boss,’ Ellis said, trying and failing to imitate Tommy Lee Jones’s southern drawl.

‘Great,’ said Wilkes. Duat could certainly have helped them with their enquiries, but it appeared he’d given himself the antidote and scarpered, leaving them to deal with a drone loaded with VX winging its merry way to Darwin.

‘Boss.’ It was Littlemore’s voice in his earpiece. ‘Come have a look at this. Walk to the first intersection and take your first left. Found their comms suite.’

Three minutes later, Wilkes, Monroe, Mahisa, several Kopassus and most of Wilkes’s troop were standing on a veranda groaning with enough technology to monitor a moon shot. Much of it, however, had been smashed. ‘Any of this junk work?’ Wilkes picked up the remains of a CPU and tossed it back onto the bench.

‘Give me a minute, boss,’ said Littlemore. It was impossible to tell who was who under the JSLIST suit, but the voice at least was unmistakable. Wilkes pictured Littlemore’s flame-red hair matted against his skull under the suit’s hood. Now that the sun was up, the temperature inside the chemical warfare suits had soared. ‘Most of it’s trashed, boss. I’d say someone guessed we were coming and tossed a few grenades in here.’

The hope was that there’d be information lying around that would help locate the drone, but it was a faint hope.

‘Anyone for a game of snooker?’ It was Morgan. ‘Look what we found under the corner pocket.’ He and Robson stepped up on the veranda and one of the men tossed a brick made from epoxy resin on the bench. A corner had been knocked off and white powder crumbled from it. ‘They make the tables and sandwich these between layers of slate. I don’t reckon the stuff in the middle is lemon sherbet, either,’ he said.

‘Jesus,’ said Wilkes. The heroin. This was Jenny Tadzic’s big unanswered question. The encampment was an epicentre for the export of death and destruction — guns to Papua New Guinea, drugs to the streets of Sydney and Melbourne and, soon, nerve agent to Darwin. At least evacuation in the northern city was well underway.

Littlemore had started up one of the electrical generators that powered the suite and was fiddling with various remotes. ‘About the only thing working is the telly, believe it or not.’ He turned it on. The set took a few seconds to warm up. ‘Jesus, boss,’ he said when the picture materialised. ‘I think you’d better come and have a look at this.’

Wilkes crossed to the monitor and his heart leapt into his mouth. Standing in front of the camera on the empty streets of Darwin was the last person he expected to see there.