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.