‘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’.
Sirius 3, Bayu-Unadan field, Timor Gap, Timor Sea
The rig manager’s throat was dry and swallowing didn’t help.
‘Fuck,’ said the drilling contactor, blinking. ‘How long is it going to take us to shut the platform down and get everyone off?’ He was new to the job, having spent most of his time on dry land in head office.
‘We’ve got two shifts, one of them asleep. Ninety people in all. We can pinch the drill string…twenty minutes.’
‘We’ve got ten.’
Both men were vaguely paralysed by the news that the terrorist weapon was not targeted at Darwin, but at them. Or rather, the entire oil field. The news had just been conveyed via satellite link from Canberra by no less than the head of Australia’s defence forces himself, Air Marshal Ted Niven. Understandably, everyone on the rig with friends and family in the north of Australia had been preoccupied with the evacuation of the city ever since the prime minister’s shock address. And all the while they’d been the ones in the target zone. Right now, the platform had to be cleared, but the reasons for it would have to wait until they were bobbing in the Timor Sea. That was the air marshal’s advice — get into the lifeboats and motor upwind of their platform as fast as they could. Australian warships and merchant vessels were heading there now to pick them up.
The rig manager hit the large red knob hard with the flat of his hand and the air around them suddenly filled with an ear-splitting wail. The rig was sitting on a trillion tons of explosive gas and everyone was well versed on the emergency evacuation procedures. All over the rig, the manager knew, the men and women would have one thing on their mind — to get the fuck off the platform now, now, now.
S10°51′12″ E126°17′09″, Timor Sea
Commander Drummond had brought Arunta through a forty-five degree course change and was now steaming south, the edge of the Timor Gap a few miles off its port beam, a long, curved white road of foam behind the stern. ‘Jesus wept,’ he muttered under his breath. Commander, the fact is we have your ship, two Hornets and a KC-130. That’s it. What happens from here on in is up to you and those aircraft. They’d received the message only minutes ago from Canberra. In other words, there was virtually nothing between the Bayu-Unadan gas and oil fields and a load of VX gas. So the target wasn’t Darwin after all. I wish the buggers would make up their bloody minds… Drummond was back out on the starboard wing with his Zeiss binoculars, scanning the horizon, the band of grey-white haze that obscured the transition between sea and sky.
Leading Seaman Mark Wallage stepped onto the confined space and announced himself to the captain.
‘Mark, you know the task. What are our chances of finding the UAV?’ said Drummond, scowling. It had been a long cruise and the men all knew each other well enough to dispense with rigid navy formality.
‘Sir, the Vectronics is an amazing piece of technology, but it’s not magic,’ he said, the airflow tearing the words from his mouth so that he had to shout. ‘The UAV we’re looking for’s designed not to be seen. It’s constructed with RAM — so we’d be lucky to get a primary even if it was sitting right on top of us. If we get it at all it’s likely to register on our screens like a couple of birds, and small ones at that. And if it’s clipping the waves like everyone suspects, well, for us to see it it’s going to have to pass within nine miles of us, otherwise it’s going to be over the horizon.’ And there’s a lot of bloody sea out there… ‘We’re going to be looking for it as hard as we can and we might get lucky, sir, but, frankly, the best chance we’ve got of finding it is if it knocks on our door and asks to borrow a cup of sugar.’
‘I think I get the picture. Okay, Mark, I know you’ll do your best.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the leading seaman, aware that his best wouldn’t be nearly good enough. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
‘On your way back, ask the XO to join me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Drummond scanned the horizon again while he waited for the executive officer. ‘Captain?’ said Briggs moments later.
‘X, how many pairs of these have we got on board, do you think?’ Drummond asked, holding up his binoculars.
‘No idea exactly, sir, but there’d be a few.’
‘Post as many lookouts around the ship as possible. Looks like eyeballs are the best chance we’ve got of finding the damn thing.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Briggs, the hopelessness of the task now confirmed by their reliance on binoculars.
Drummond resumed his search. He trained the lenses on the horizon, realising as he did so that the UAV could pass the ship closer in and he’d miss it completely. He followed an albatross heading away from the boat, watching it wheel and bank through the sky on its three-metre wingspan. The bird’s flight was graceful and flowing, carving circles against a background of mist. And then it abruptly shifted course, appearing to stop in mid air before climbing rapidly. Drummond lowered the binoculars to see what had spooked it and saw what appeared to be a handful of flying fish flickering across the wave tops. And that’s when he saw it. Or at least, he thought he saw it, a patch of water that — oddly — appeared to be travelling faster than the sea around it.