Baby Face, Annabelle, Weaver and the cameraman stepped out into the humid sunshine, between two of the light armoured vehicles, and onto the asphalt of the airport parking lot. The sun was rapidly burning a very big and dangerous hole in the cloudbank. Beyond the concrete barricades ringing the bus, a mass of humanity swirled, trying to get into the airport terminal. A steady stream of Qantas jets and Hercules C-130s were taking off and landing, and the air smelled of body odour, steamed bitumen and kerosene.
‘What was the shooting about, General?’ asked Weaver, now doing his best to get up as many noses as possible.
The big kid didn’t bite. ‘I’m a lance corporal, sir,’ he said politely.
‘Sorry.’
‘It sounded like a couple of Steyrs, sir — our rifles. A few shots were fired in the air earlier today when the crowd got nasty. The volley got their attention all right but the slugs came back to earth. Killed one person, wounded another. We’re under strict orders not to let that happen again.’
‘Can we report that?’ asked Annabelle.
‘Anything you want to report will have to be written up first and submitted for approval,’ said Baby Face, his cheeks wobbling as he spoke, his words overwhelmed by the noise of a 747 flying low overhead. Annabelle looked up as it passed and wondered how much damage a few randomly fired bullets could do to a 747, and instantly purged the thought from her brain lest thinking it actually made it happen.
‘So, who’s doing the crowd control?’ Weaver asked.
‘Mostly 5/7 Battalion, part of the regular army brigade posted hereabouts. And we’ve got a company of Army Reserves. Weekend warriors, and some of them aren’t as disciplined as they should be.’
The army had a compound within the airport parking lot for its vehicles, the space kept free of the citizenry by more concrete bollards and armed troopers. Baby Face walked up to one of the Land Rovers and opened the rear hatch. The cameraman and Weaver hoisted the battered aluminium boxes that carried their laptops, two satellite vones and a satellite fax and colour printer into the available space, and threw their backpacks plus Annabelle’s on top.
Only two news crews were permitted inside the restricted area in and around Darwin, ANTV and the national broadcaster, the ABC. The ABC had the full outside broadcast truck, but the satellite vone and peripherals could do everything the truck could do, only the vone pictures were degraded somewhat. Weaver, as producer, the Man in Charge, was fine with that because it gave their reports a more dangerous, in-the-war-zone look. Annabelle took the front passenger seat beside the lance corporal while Weaver and the cameraman sat behind. ‘Do you want the air-con on, miss?’ said the soldier.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Got any Billy Joel?’ said Weaver.
Annabelle turned to look behind her and give Weaver a smile. She didn’t think much of his taste in music but she was warming to his fuck-you attitude, if only because he spread it around with equal and unfettered favour. She also noticed the Land Rover on their tail, on account of the truck’s grille was almost in the back seat. ‘I think we’re being followed,’ she said.
‘Armed escort, miss.’
‘Yeah, so what do we need one of those for, again? I mean, we only have to beat off one other network and we don’t need guns for that.’
‘Looters mainly, sir. There were quite a few gangs on the streets before the army moved in.’
‘And now?’ asked Annabelle.
‘Mostly under control now.’
Weaver had been around long enough to know that ‘mostly’ meant mostly not. He shrugged, letting it pass. Maybe they’d get a good story from Darwin after all.
A burst of noise came through the radio speakers. It sounded only vaguely reminiscent of English. ‘What are they saying?’ Annabelle asked.
‘ARCOM wants all PUBCOMs to present at DARCON asap.’
‘Right,’ said Annabelle.
‘I think the lady means can we hear the translation,’ Weaver said from the back seat.
‘Pardon, miss. We hear the acronyms so much, they sound kinda normal after a while. Army Command wants all public communications — you guys, basically — to come to Darwin Control now, if not sooner.’
‘So DARCON is the Novotel?’ Annabelle asked.
‘That’s right. You know, the Seventh Day Adventist retreat?’ said Weaver, keeping himself entertained.
‘Yes, miss.’ The soldier addressed himself to Annabelle, ignoring Weaver.
The two-car convoy crawled cautiously along the highway, which had become a barely moving snarl of trucks, utes and four-by-fours heading south beneath a pall of black diesel smoke. Here and there, brawls had broken out involving sometimes up to a dozen people, due to perceived slights induced by alcohol. There were police cars amongst the confusion, but they were clearly overwhelmed by the task at hand. The cameraman had a micro digital recorder in his hand, committing the exodus to hard disk.
‘Annabelle, I prepared these notes for you on the plane up. A bit on the history of Darwin, background, that sort of thing,’ said Weaver, with his producer’s hat back on. Annabelle Gilbert had to be properly briefed before she stood in front of the camera. ‘Might be worth skimming before we meet DARCON the ARCON, great warrior from the outer galaxy of somewhere or other. We’ll file straight after, when we know what they’ll let us say.’
‘Okay,’ said Annabelle, flicking through the five-page summary.
‘Also, I reckon a good backdrop might be the deck gun of the USS Peary, with Port Darwin behind it. It’s all in there,’ he said, motioning at the report. ‘The Peary sank when Darwin was bombed in the last war.’
Annabelle Gilbert put the brief down. It was good and thorough. The background it contained would form the basis of all her reports.
‘And, as chance would have it, the USS Peary monument is virtually across the road from our Adventist friends at the Novotel.’
Annabelle knew Tom didn’t like Barry Weaver. He’d called the producer a pain in the butt. And indeed, he wasn’t well liked by the staff around the office. She suddenly realised that the only people Weaver got on with were the people he’d worked with out in the field, where it really counted. The longer she spent with him on this assignment, the more she could see why. He was still a sleaze, albeit one with a blunt charm. Barry Weaver would be something — another thing — she and Tom would have to agree to disagree on. The thought of Tom swung her mood from tough reporter to pathetic glob of wet tissue paper. Wherever you are, Tom, I hope you’re okay…
Flores, Indonesia
Duat and Hendra both woke from a sleep filled with horrors, yet some of their strength had returned. They wandered through the encampment by torchlight noticing for the first time the stench of death hanging in the night air. It seemed that many people had died, either from the poison, or from a self-administered bullet when the madness from the VX-induced dreams became too much to bear. The suicide squads had been virtually annihilated. No one remained in any fit state to take Babu Islam’s message beyond the encampment. Hendra’s young protégé, Unang, had also died, but he’d lived long enough to see his whole family perish in the frightening nightmarish way common to VX exposure.
Duat and Hendra returned to Rahim’s quarters to conduct a thorough search in the hope of finding more antidote, but there was none. They turned next to the Internet in a quest for additional supplies but, in an irony that escaped neither himself nor Hendra, all available stocks of atropine appeared to have been cornered by the Indonesian and Australian governments as they waited for the terrorist weapon to burst over their cities.