Duat sat behind a computer terminal and tried to order his mind. If he were to survive, he knew that he must leave the encampment as soon as possible because neither he nor Hendra were aware of the source of the poisoning. More than likely it was in something widely distributed throughout the encampment — the water, the rice, or possibly even the air itself. The drums that contained the VX were stored in Rahim’s quarters. They had examined them and their seals appeared to be intact. It was a mystery. Perhaps Rahim himself had accidentally poisoned the encampment, the white powder having dulled his oncesharp mind.
After several mistakes Duat finally managed to control his fingers well enough to tap the correct Internet address into the bar. The site flashed onto the screen. He keyed in his personal identity code, the number of his favourite Sura from the Qur’an. The screen went blank momentarily before returning. Duat blinked at what he saw. Surely not? He re-entered his code, refreshing the screen in the process, and received the same response. He read the words that flashed red in French, Italian and English across the page: ‘Account terminated. Contact bank administration.’ Duat swallowed as the implications of this dawned on him. The account had been closed, the funds frozen. How could that be? Only one other person knew his account number, the Australian financier. That could only mean one thing: that the infidel had been captured and had talked. Duat realised then how much damage the sickness that had descended on the camp had caused. For almost a week he had lain in his bed, not caring about the world, and that was time he would never win back. If the capture of Kalas was anything to go by, much had probably happened that he should have been aware of. He connected to CNN.com and tapped ‘Kalas’ into the site search engine. The headlines told him the worst: ‘Raid nabs terrorist moneyman’, and then, ‘Terrorist financier cracks’. Duat disconnected from the server, his heart racing. How long did they have? A day? Hours?
‘Duat, good news at last,’ said Hendra, folding a meteorological printout on the bench. ‘Allah has given us a break in the weather.’
‘Then we must launch,’ said Duat. ‘Now.’
Bangkok, Thailand
Warrant Officer Tom Wilkes felt as if he were on some wild theme park ride with a never-ending ticket. After Myanmar, the Eurocopter had flown them to Bangkok, where Jenny Tadzic had disembarked with the agents they’d rescued from General Trip’s holiday camp. There, a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 was waiting for him and Monroe on the apron, its turboprops spinning and a clearance to take off granted. The LM stood on the aircraft’s ramp motioning them to get a hurry on. Wilkes and Monroe jogged over.
‘Hey, boss, s’up?’ Lance Corporal Gary Ellis walked down the ramp towards them, grinning.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ said Wilkes, just a touch confused.
‘Hey, that’s the kind of welcome I was getting from the missus just before we called it quits,’ Ellis yelled over the noise of the Herc’s spinning props. ‘The rest of our blokes are in Jakarta, waiting for us.’
‘Jakarta?’ Wilkes was surprised, and curious. ‘What gives?’
‘Those coordinates you sent back from Myanmar, boss. Someone in Canberra had the bright idea to put us on standby in case you turned up with the goods. We’ve been hanging out for a few days with the Kopassus. Do you know a Captain Mahisa? I hope so, ’cause he says he knows you.’
The LM motioned the men to take their seats on the bench that ran down the plane’s fuselage, and buckle in.
‘The coordinates put the terrorist digs on the southern end of Flores. That means the target is more likely to be Darwin. Jakarta falls outside the drone’s standard range. Just. But the terrorists could have modified the thing, so no one’s taking any chances. Also, the weather looks like it’s going to come good any day now, and you know what that means…People are shitting themselves like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘So what are we doing about it?’
‘Kick freckle, boss. A dawn HALO drop. Like, in half a dozen hours.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Wilkes in disbelief.
‘Nah, fair dinkum.’
Ellis talked Wilkes and Monroe through the essentials of the planned high altitude low opening parachute insertion. They’d be jumping out the back of an Indonesian C-130 with the Kopassus, possibly men from the same battalion Wilkes and his men had fought against less than six months ago — Ellis had been reluctant to enquire. The irony of the partnership Wilkes found hard to shake. But that was the world they were living in: today’s enemy, tomorrow’s best bud. He felt the scar on his cheek and snorted. A Kopassus bullet had given it to him. He’d completely forgotten about it, probably because the scar had stopped itching and he hadn’t been in front of too many mirrors recently. Wounds heal — just like relationships. The Hercules accelerated down the runway with the usual deafening, high-pitched scream transferred into its passengers’ earholes. Wilkes sat back, squashed plugs into his ears and closed his eyes.
‘Hey, sleeping beauty. Rise and shine,’ said Atticus Monroe what seemed like only seconds later, shaking Wilkes roughly.
‘What?’ said Wilkes, momentarily disoriented.
The slight nose-up attitude of the C-130 lowered along with a drop in the engine note. They’d begun to descend.
Flores, Indonesia
Hendra and Duat hurried to prepare the Sword of Allah for launch. The sky overhead was an infinite black. A night launch was something Hendra hadn’t prepared himself for and he began to think only of what might go wrong. He fired up the generator while Duat opened the double doors. Halogen lights blazed over the drone, chasing away the shadows. The aircraft was painted a flat pale grey and seemed to absorb the light, trapping it so that its surfaces and edges were poorly defined.
Duat ran his fingers across the nose, and again admired the seamless repairs carried out by Hendra on the damaged wing and fuselage. The moment had finally arrived, Duat said to himself, mixed emotions jostling for ascendency. Somehow, the group’s isolation, together with the death of Kadar Al-Jahani and the poisoning of the encampment, had subtly changed Duat’s sense of purpose. The weapon had begun as a tool that would rally Indonesia’s faithful and awaken them to their duty. But now, Duat just wanted revenge for his own failure. The coordinated strategy devised by himself and Kadar was in tatters, poisoned by circumstances and VX contamination. The Sword of Allah at his fingertips was all that remained. He would unsheathe it and plunge it into the heart of the unbelievers.
Hendra directed Duat to a drum of aviation fuel carefully sealed against moisture, and showed him how to use the hand pump.
‘How far will it fly?’ Duat asked as he worked the pump.
‘The propeller is slightly longer than standard and I have increased the size of its fuel tanks. It will fly a little faster than it did before, and a lot further. With the wind as it is predicted, around one thousand four hundred miles.’ Hendra took the updated weather forecast from his back pocket and spread it out on the bench.
Duat raised his eyebrows. One thousand four hundred miles was a very long way indeed. He looked at the world map hung on the wall and found the scale. The additional fuel load, he saw, gave them a phenomenal range of possible targets.
Hendra read the METFOR a second time to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. Indications were that conditions looked like they’d remain stable for the following thirty-six hours, but weather was fickle, he reminded himself, and the forecast was nothing more than that — a prediction of what might happen, not a statement of fact about what would actually come to pass. He shrugged. There was nothing that could be done about it, anyway. With the boy’s death, reprogramming the Gameboy chip was not an option, although small alterations allowing for wind direction could be made in the location of the waypoints, downloaded to the UAV’s guidance system from a laptop.