An hour of hard climbing later, they reached the top of the cliff face. There were enough handholds and footholds to reduce the danger of the climb, but the volcanic rock was sharp and unforgiving. It was also bakingly hot. Wilkes and his men had shooter’s gloves to protect their hands. Timbu and Muruk had to wrap cloth around theirs, but only after their palms and fingertips had lacerated and blistered, especially Timbu’s, his hands gone soft from city living. At the cliff’s summit, they could see that there was too much traffic on the river, and on the tributaries flowing into it, to be an everyday occurrence. And all of it was heading in the one direction. Another hour’s climb and they knew exactly what was going on.
‘Shit,’ said Beck, ‘look at that.’
A deep green bay ringed by the volcanic cliffs spread out below them. And in the centre of the bay, an old white cargo ship with a hull bleeding rust swung slowly at anchor, rising and falling on a lubricious swell. A steady stream of native craft plied to and from the vessel.
‘Jesus, all that’s missing here is Greensleeves,’ said Ellis. ‘Mr Whippy’s in da house.’
‘You had a strange childhood, mate,’ said Beck, nose wrinkled under the binoculars as he squinted into them.
‘No, seriously. The Mr Whippy guy in my neighbourhood got busted for dealing pot. The parents became suspicious when the fifteen year olds got more excited than the six year olds every time he drove down the street.’
‘You’re full of crap sometimes, Gary,’ said Beck, snorting.
It was a truly astonishing sight. About thirty dugouts were clustered around the ship and bales of marijuana were being passed up into the hands of waiting crew, in return for which a rifle was handed down. The gunrunning/drug-smuggling operation going on here was far bigger than Wilkes had suspected. Papua New Guinea was a primitive land on the verge of anarchy with many parts of its society breaking down. What effect would a few thousand guns dumped in the place have? Wilkes had witnessed enough of the effects on Muruk’s people to have a point of view on that.
‘Can I look?’ Timbu asked.
Wilkes handed him the binoculars and took out his camera. More tourist photos for the people back home.
Timbu took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘This is very bad,’ he said.
Wilkes nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’
Muruk picked up the sound first and shook Wilkes. The sergeant stopped taking snaps and looked up. ‘Wasmara?’ he said. What’s the matter?
‘Balus,’ said Muruk. Aeroplane.
Wilkes couldn’t hear anything at first, and then he caught it — a distant buzzing. It got louder quickly. Whatever it was, it was approaching fast.
‘Is that a helo?’ asked Beck.
And then the chopper burst through the sea opening between the cliffs and banked hard to stay within them, scribing a tight circle around the ship: a BK-117 Eurocopter. Wilkes snatched his binoculars from Timbu, who was staring at the helo open-mouthed.
‘Now, that’s flying,’ said Littlemore.
Tape covered over the helo’s registration markings. Whoever it was didn’t want to be identified. A man hung in the open doorway facing the ship. ‘What the hell is that guy doing?’ Wilkes asked no one in particular. The helicopter swept around the bay, its jet turbines roaring, blades beating the air with a deafening clatter.
The helo’s sudden arrival had an immediate effect on the ship’s company. They started firing up at it with hand guns, rifles — whatever was available and loaded. Wilkes watched as a man sprinted to the forward deck and threw back a tarpaulin. A large calibre machine gun mounted on a pillar lay beneath it. It looked to Wilkes a lot like the US .50 calibre M2 heavy machine gun. If so, the chopper was in a lot of trouble, especially if the gun was loaded with SLAP rounds. Saboted light armour piercing ammo would turn a civilian chopper with no armour plating into confetti. The man cocked it, aimed and fired, and a new sound filled the bay. High velocity slugs spewed from the weapon peppered with red tracer rounds that reached up for the helo. The machine gun followed the chopper as it circled, a spray of bullets pulverising the rock barely metres below Wilkes and his men.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Littlemore as he scrabbled for cover, his face cut in several places from flying stone chips.
The pilot jinked his aircraft around in an attempt to fool the ground fire. At first he succeeded, the tracer missing its mark. But soon the man behind the machine gun began to lead the target rather than follow it. The helo made three circles and was heading back for a fourth when its aluminium skin was punctured repeatedly by the deadly fusillade. A loud mechanical bang followed a screeching whine that filled the bay. Smoke poured from the helo’s jet exhausts and black transmission fluid fouled its flanks. One more blast from that machine gun and the 117 was fish food.
Wilkes cracked the launcher, punched in a flash-bang, aimed and fired. The trackless ordnance arced towards the ship below and exploded above its decks with a thunderous crash that echoed around the bay. Some of the men dropped their guns and took cover, thinking they’d come under attack from some massively powerful gun or mortar. The man firing the machine gun dropped to the deck, hunching his head into his arms.
As it scrabbled desperately for height, the thump of the helo’s rotor blades thrashing the air combined with the screeching howl of jet engines tearing themselves to pieces. The aircraft somehow managed to clear the lowest of the volcanic spurs ringing the bay and then disappeared from view behind it. Wilkes and the others held their breath, waiting for the explosion the helo would make when it hit the water.
And then…nothing. The deafening noise that had filled the bay only moments before evaporated with a few final small arms pot-shots in the helicopter’s general direction. The crew wandered about the ship, dazed, holding their ears. Wilkes trained his binoculars on the man who had fired the machine gun. He wasn’t Asian, and he wasn’t a local. A thick beard covered his face and a baseball cap kept his eyes hidden in shadow. ‘Who are you?’ Wilkes said quietly. Within half an hour, the commerce was underway again: bags of dope for a rifle. It was as if what had just happened, indeed, what was happening, was the most normal thing in the world.
The Persian Gulf
Commander Steve Drummond pulled the Panamanian registered tanker, Ocean Trader, into focus. ‘Has she decided to come clean, X?’
‘Negative, sir,’ said the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Angus Briggs. ‘We’re getting the same crap about agricultural supplies.’
‘What’s she steering?’ asked Drummond.
Briggs leaned back and checked the figure on the screen. ‘No change, sir.’
Commander Drummond examined the vessel looming larger in the Zeiss lenses. HMAS Arunta’s high power cameras were trained on the tanker, presenting it clearly on the bridge’s colour monitors, but Drummond preferred to use the binoculars, a present from his wife when his command of the brand new Anzac-class frigate had been confirmed. Ocean Trader was an oil tanker, an old clunker long overdue for the boneyard. Who was its master kidding? thought Drummond. HMAS Arunta was making twenty-five knots to the tanker’s fifteen, running down the rust bucket like a young lion tackling an old wart-hog. The commander did the calculations in his head. It’d take thirty minutes to close the five nautical miles between the two ships.