Sword of Allah

Australian Defence Force HQ, Russell Offices, Canberra, Australia

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Niven, when the Internet connection closed and the frame on the screen turned black. ‘What do you blokes think?’

‘I think Monroe and Wilkes have got it dead right,’ said Felix Mortimer, eating his favourite sandwich of white bread, chips and butter liberally soused with tomato sauce.

Griffin looked at the unconscious doodle on the notepad on his knee. The word ‘shit’ was written, and it was surrounded by stars and exclamation marks. Wilkes and Monroe had followed a path of logic no one else had pursued. Darwin and Jakarta just seemed the natural targets, and the truth was, no one had looked much further than that. Except for Mortimer. He’d also thought Darwin wasn’t the target, but was too polite to say, ‘I told you so.’ As for Wilkes, he was obviously no ordinary grunt, and the CIA spoke highly of their man, Atticus Monroe. Just because they weren’t defence experts or strategists didn’t mean they had to be wrong, did it?

‘Let’s assume these boys are on to something — and I think we have to,’ Niven said. ‘What’s up there?’

‘Around twenty trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, for one thing. Oil, too. We did a paper on it six months ago,’ said Mortimer, his face sweating. A vague pain in his chest had suddenly intensified as if an invisible hand had pushed a hot knife through his breast. Is this normal? Am I okay? ‘There are thirty or forty rigs up there. The VX front could be tens of kilometres wide. If it rolls over three or four of them and maybe a research ship, we could be looking at up to a thousand deaths.’

‘Jesus…’ Niven was at a loss. What could be done to stop the drone in the time left? If Wilkes and Monroe were right, the assets were deployed in all the wrong places.

‘And once the VX settles, it’ll get into every crack,’ said Mortimer, unconsciously rubbing his chest, a dull pain in his left arm. ‘The rigs will be unusable for a very long time afterwards.’

Griffin looked at Mortimer and saw that the man was in some kind of distress. ‘You okay, Felix?’

Mortimer nodded. ‘Forget the casualties for a minute. That’s not what these terrorists are about. If the hit on the Timor Gap succeeds, it could start an oil crisis like the one back in the seventies. It could mean that terrorists are getting smart, targeting the West where it really hurts. Oil prices will skyrocket, especially if this and other groups follow up with a statement about this being the first of many strikes on oil installations, pipelines and refineries, tankers and such.’ Mortimer glanced around the room, looking for some water, wanting more than anything to splash some on his face.

‘Okay, so what have we got in the area?’ Griffin asked, certain the news wouldn’t be good.

A quick review of the vast whiteboard covering one entire wall confirmed the worst. ‘One frigate, two F/A-18s and thirty-six thousand square kilometres of goddam ocean,’ Niven said, grinding his jaws.

‘Striking at an oil field, throwing the West into a panic…that would make a lot of sense if you’re a terrorist group bent on igniting nationalistic and religious fervour,’ said Mortimer with the strange sensation that he was talking, but that no sound was passing his lips. The impression was strengthened when he saw that neither Griffin nor Niven appeared to be listening to him, but he continued the thought anyway. ‘Those fields were Indonesia’s before East Timor’s independence and now they’re pretty much being developed by the West — us, mainly, with money from Shell and a few others. If a fundamentalist group like Babu Islam were to hit those fields with VX nerve agent, poisoning the infrastructure and killing a bunch of westerners into the bargain, what sort of fire —’

‘Jesus, Felix, are you okay?’ said Niven. Mortimer’s face was shaking and his skin had turned purple. The man’s eyes were bulging, fixed and staring.

The hot knife in Mortimer’s chest had suddenly turned into a hand grenade with the locating pin removed. He fell to the floor, spilling his notes and his sandwich onto the carpet. The defence analyst clutched at his heart as the pain exploded within. And in that instant, the answer to the question of the number series suddenly became blindingly apparent to him. 1511472723. Something Niven said in an earlier meeting clicked. We’re banking on them being not significant. Suddenly, he knew exactly what the series meant. He tried to get the words out but they wouldn’t come and instead his mouth opened and closed several times soundlessly.

Niven rolled Mortimer onto his back and began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Griffin was on the phone, calling for an ambulance. Niven knew it was pointless but he continued the heart massage, alternating with mouth to mouth. After several minutes of getting nowhere, he stopped.

‘Poor bugger,’ said Griffin.

‘Yeah.’ Niven’s own heart was racing and he took a few deep breaths to calm it. His mouth tasted of Mortimer’s sandwich and he spat out fragments of salt and vinegar crisps.

‘Hey, what’s this?’ Griffin was studying something on the floor.

Niven stood, knees cracking, and went over to have a look. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

Griffin shook his head. He had no idea. Scratched into tomato sauce smeared across Mortimer’s notes was the word ‘swift’.