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  The pillars of smoke were flattened over the pale-green hills of East Timor as they chugged into the valley south of Neptune airfield. It looked as though half the province was on fire. Taking turns with Jim’s field-glasses, they saw Indonesian Huey helicopters in the distance and small spotter planes, but no sign of the Singapore-registered Black Hawks carrying spray booms on their undercarriage.

  ‘Too much breeze?’ shouted Mac, handing the binos to Jim. ‘It’ll be sundown in a couple of hours – we may have a chance to stop this tonight.’

  The sat phone rang and Jim held it to his ear, covering the other ear with his cupped hand.

  ‘Yep?’ said Jim, and then he shook a finger at Tommy, who pulled the laptop from his backpack and opened it.

  ‘Okay,’ yelled Jim into the phone. ‘I’ll put him on.’

  Handing the sat phone to Tommy, who started typing as he hooked it under his chin, Jim smiled at Mac.

  ‘Thank Christ for the privacy-invading capacity of the US intelligence community,’ he said.

  ‘What have we got?’ yelled Mac.

  ‘NSA code-breakers have run the account numbers and name on Simon’s trust account at the Koryo Bank, and they’ve got us in. We now control the money.’

  Bongo waited until Tommy had finished with the sat phone, then tried Joao again.

  ‘No luck,’ he said, shrugging at Mac.

  ‘Try again,’ said Mac, as the helo pushed on.

  Mac wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to stop Operasi Boa. There were only four of them, they would be on foot, in an army base and surrounded by Kopassus special forces. They had to have something up the sleeve, and given that the entire Lombok-Korean-Simon consortium seemed to be about money, he wanted to lever the situation with the moolah.

  ‘We got company!’ said Jim, eyes now glued to the field-glasses. ‘F-16s, at our nine o’clock.’

  Squinting out the window in the port-side door, Mac saw two blue-grey jet fighters streaking low across the sky, about fifteen kilometres north.

  ‘They interested?’ asked Mac.

  Crouching forward, Jim leaned into the cockpit and had a shouted conversation with the pilot before pushing back to sit beside Mac.

  ‘We just got a “friend or foe” challenge,’ said Jim, bringing the glasses back to his face and peering out the window. ‘Might be time to touch down.’

  The co-pilot’s visored face appeared and Jim gave thumbs-up.

  ‘Shit,’ said Jim, as the helo descended.

  ‘Better down there than up here,’ shouted Bongo, zipping his gun bag and checking his M4 for load and safety.

  The Black Hawk dropped to the tree line as the F-16s banked and turned like a couple of blue sharks.

  As the Hawk eased to a clearing in the jungle, the four of them leapt to the forest floor and ran for cover. As fast as it had descended the helo was back in the air, climbing and banking away.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jim, and Bongo moved to point, leading the group down to a small river.

  A moment later the whooshing scream of two fighter jets roared over them, driving the birds and monkeys crazy.

  Mac clung to a rock face, now sweating in the jungle humidity, and looked skywards as the roar faded.

  ‘The rules of travelling with me in the jungle,’ said Bongo, addressing the group but scanning the environment. ‘Don’t speak, don’t smoke, obey instructions, okay? It might be the difference between living and dying.’

  Without waiting for the reply, Bongo hefted his gun bag’s hand-grips over both shoulders and swung the M4’s strap over his neck.

  ‘I’ll walk point, then comes Jim and then Tommy,’ said Bongo. ‘McQueen, you can sweep, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jim, who Mac had noticed was limping. ‘But let’s get it straight, for when we get to Neptune.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Bongo, looking around.

  ‘The priority is Simon – we have to snatch him, and I’d rather have him alive.’

  ‘This is no time for Pentagon politics,’ said Bongo, chewing gum.

  ‘Not politics, buddy,’ said Jim, lowering his voice. ‘If we can root out Simon, debrief him somewhere, maybe we shut down an entire network.’

  ‘Mate, the priority has to be Boa,’ said Mac. ‘Let’s stop the spraying, then worry about the network – I agree with Bongo, this isn’t the time for damage control at the Pentagon.’

  ‘I have to insist,’ said Jim. ‘Sorry guys, but this operation is DIA.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Bongo, his voice a monotone, ‘when I take a bunch of white boys through the jungle, it’s a Bongo operation.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jim. ‘But I -’

  ‘And by the way, I’m employed by McQueen. And this dude, Simon, he shot me, right? So he comes into the open, he’ll probably have to drop.’

  ‘Okay, Bongo,’ said Jim, carefully. ‘It’s just that Simon seems to be running Operasi Boa, and if we shoot him, and the money strategy doesn’t work, how do we call it off?’

  ‘Let’s hope the Simon dude doesn’t want to shoot it out,’ said Bongo, as he turned to go. ‘’Cos that won’t work for anyone, right?’

  It was 7.12 pm, just after dusk, when they reached the ridge that looked over the airfield renamed Neptune. Floodlights illuminated the admin section at the east end of the dusty lime runway, and an armada of unmarked helos with large spray booms underneath were lined up in front of the hangars. Some of the soldiers moving towards a long wooden building wore the red beret of Kopassus – Indonesian special forces. But most did not.

  ‘Two men on the gate,’ said Bongo. ‘And there’s a regiment stationed here and judging by their flag…’ Taking Jim’s field-glasses, Bongo took another look at the dark flags on the parade-ground pole. ‘Two regiments in the barracks,’ said Bongo, a smile on his face. ‘Kopassus and the 1635.’

  ‘Does that work for us?’ asked Jim, wanting his binos back.

  ‘Well, from what McQueen tells me, Kopassus is running Operasi Boa, which is a bad thing.’

  ‘And the 1635?’ asked Jim.

  ‘That could be good,’ said Bongo, handing back the field-glasses. ‘They’re the local regiment.’

  ‘Where does Haryono stay?’ asked Jim.

  ‘See that main administration building?’ asked Mac. ‘The officers’ quarters sit right behind it, with their own guard. Simon will be there, and so will Amir Sudarto – maybe Benni too.’

  The sat phone trilled and Jim picked up. ‘For you, Bongo,’ he said, handing it over.

  ‘Yep?’ said Bongo, and then clicked his fingers at Tommy, who opened the laptop and started typing as Bongo mumbled in his ear.

  ‘You thought there’d be some mercenaries?’ said Jim to Mac.

  ‘Those helos belong to a mob called Shareholder Services, Pik Berger’s crew,’ said Mac. ‘They’re very pro – Saffas and Aussies, mostly. But they’re also contractors, so with any luck they won’t fight.’

  Mac and Jim swapped a look and then hammered out a plan: infiltrate the Neptune camp, hold Simon and Haryono, and coerce them to shut down the operation.

  Signing off on the phone call, Bongo picked up the conversation. ‘We’ll need Haryono as a hostage. No offence, but an American won’t count for Kopassus.’

  ‘And once we have him, we need to make him angry with Simon,’ said Mac.

  ‘Understood,’ said Jim.

  ‘I think we should go now,’ said Bongo, rifling in his gun bag.

  ‘Why?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Smell that?’ said Bongo. ‘Chow time – we know exactly where they are for the next thirty minutes.’

  ‘Still only four of us,’ said Jim, unsure.

  ‘Sure,’ said Bongo, screwing a suppressor onto the Beretta 9mm. ‘Grab a snake by the head, and you control the snake.’

  ‘Grab the head wrong, and you die,’ said Tommy.

  ‘So let’s grab it right,’ said Bongo, slamming a magazine into the grip of the Beretta.

  Mac gasped
for breath as he dived into the long grass abutting the security fence behind the officers’ quarters and mess. Jim followed with a thump, his injured leg starting to weaken.

  ‘What was that shit about a snake?’ breathed Jim, as they looked through the grass at a glowing set of windows along the side of the quarters.

  ‘Just that if we grab Haryono then we control the Kopassus element,’ said Mac, seeing a guard at the foot of the main stairs to the officers’ building. ‘The Kopassus guys will stand off if their major-general is in our hands. Then we have a chance to turn Haryono against the treacherous Anglo.’

  ‘So what about this 1635 Regiment?’ said Jim, not convinced.

  ‘Bongo was probably thinking that a regiment comprised of young East Timorese men might rebel if they know what’s in those spray tanks.’

  ‘You agree?’ asked Jim.

  ‘They have a history of mutiny and desertion,’ said Mac, getting the wire-cutters onto the first ring of the fence and snipping. ‘East Timor and Java might as well be different planets… Time?’ he asked, as he peeled back the small door he’d made in the cyclone fencing.

  ‘Nineteen fifty,’ whispered Jim, tensing.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Mac.

  Slipping through the hole, Mac grabbed his suppressed Beretta and ran with Jim for the side of the officers’ building, both of them lying flat against it while the guard lit a cigarette.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ asked Mac.

  ‘I’ll live,’ said the American.

  ‘Through the wooden walls they heard the sound of chairs being scraped back too fast, and raised voices of panic – Bongo and Tommy were in the officers’ mess, via the side entrance. Running fast but silently along the side of the building, Mac came around the corner to the main entrance, his handgun in a cup-and-saucer grip.

  The soldier reacted quickly and went for his rifle but Mac shot him in the temple, the slide-action of the Beretta making more noise than the small spitting sound of the bullet.

  Joining Mac, Jim helped drag the young man’s body around the side of the building.

  The chow time was dragging on, and although Mac could see the guards at the front gate through the buildings, the alarm had not gone up.

  Pushing into the building’s entrance, they closed the doors silently behind them and moved down a dimly lit corridor. They looked for the portico and pushed through the mahogany swinging doors into a large and well-appointed mess. In front of them about fifteen men sat at dining tables, hands above their heads, looking at Bongo and Tommy.

  Bongo stood beside Ishy Haryono, the suppressed Beretta against the major-general’s ear.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Haryono. ‘What you want, Morales? Money? Drug?’

  ‘Where’s the American?’ said Bongo.

  Spreading out to cover the officers with Jim, Mac looked into Amir Sudarto’s face, a white strap of plaster across his broken nose. The big Indonesian made a throat-slitting gesture as Mac levelled his gun.

  ‘Just bring the American,’ said Bongo.

  Shrugging, Haryono tried to stall, and Bongo aimed his gun past the major-general’s head, shooting the next officer in the shoulder. Groaning, the officer fell to the floor.

  ‘The American, Ishy,’ said Bongo, very calm. ‘Pretty young white boy – can’t miss him.’

  ‘He around,’ said Haryono, trying to look at Bongo without turning his head.

  Looking at Mac, Bongo lifted his eyebrows. Darting out of the mess, Mac headed back down the corridor, found the stairwell he’d passed and ascended the worn steps as quietly as he could.

  The wood creaked as he carefully came around the first landing, and he continued to the next floor.

  There were three doors off the large landing and Mac moved for the first. As he did, he noticed light creeping from under the middle one.

  Stealthing to the door, his heart banging in his temples, he slowly pushed it open, hoping the hinges were oiled. The door swung back as Mac brought up his Beretta, trying to stay behind the doorjamb as he did. There was a desk at the other end of the room and a white man sitting behind it, a phone to his ear.

  The man looked up and Mac looked into Simon’s wide eyes as he tried to make the ground to the desk. Simon’s hand went for a handgun on the blotter, and as Mac brought the unwieldy suppressed handgun up, Simon shot at him twice. Diving to his right, Mac crashed into a chair and sent a hat rack flying. Aiming for the desk, Mac waited for Simon to emerge and finish him off but suddenly his assailant was running across the room and through a side door.

  Picking himself up, Mac moved carefully to the side door, panting and scared but uninjured from the fire-fight.

  ‘Simon!’ said Mac at the doorway, from his hide around the corner. ‘Time to end this, okay?’

  ‘It ends when I say so, McQueen,’ screamed Simon, his superior accent in no way diminished by his anger. ‘Those choppers are taking off tomorrow morning and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’

  ‘I’m not going to let you do it, Simon,’ said Mac, trying to control his ragged breathing. He just wanted Simon sitting in front of Haryono.

  ‘What do you care?’ taunted the American. ‘I mean, really?!’

  ‘Care?’ asked Mac.

  ‘I mean, come on – a bunch of jungle-bunnies? Why would you care if a few thousand of them died from a bad pneumonia? Every year millions die in the Third World from malaria and yellow fever.’

  ‘Come out and I’ll explain it,’ said Mac, getting his breath back.

  ‘Oh, I’m coming out, my friend,’ came Simon’s voice, getting closer to the door. ‘But you can’t shoot, okay?’

  ‘I’m not going to shoot, Simon,’ said Mac, meaning it. ‘You were the only one shooting, mate.’

  ‘Okay, McQueen, I’m coming out, so go easy, okay?’

  Pulse pounding in his temple, Mac stood back from the doorjamb and aimed his gun.

  Simon moved out of the doorway, holding a woman by a choker chain.

  ‘Shit!’ said Mac, immediately lowering his gun.

  ‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Simon, as Jessica Yarrow tried to move her lips beneath the grey duct tape.

  CHAPTER 65

  Mac stumbled forward into the officers’ mess as Simon shoved him in the back. Faces turned as Mac stood still in front of the dining tables, embarrassed to be disarmed and to be dragging Jessica into this situation.

  Bongo quickly grabbed Haryono by the hair and shoved his gun into the major-general’s neck, but Simon kept his nerve.

  ‘I don’t think so, Morales,’ said the American. ‘Pretty white girl versus an ugly old Javanese – do the math.’

  Looking first to Jim and getting no backup, Bongo stared at Mac, who averted his eyes and stared at the carpet.

  ‘Fuck,’ muttered Bongo, allowing the Kopassus officers to rush him and take the weapon from his hands as Tommy and Jim were roughly disarmed. Amir Sudarto stood and issued orders to his men, who raced out of the mess. Through the windows, Mac could see the soldiers being roused from chow to search the base for more interlopers.

  ‘Don’t harm them,’ said Simon, waving his gun towards a group of chairs. ‘I have an idea.’

  As the officers searched the captives and pushed them towards the chairs, Amir Sudarto walked back to Mac and eye-balled him.

  ‘G’day, Amir,’ said Mac. ‘Nasty scratch you got there.’

  Sudarto’s nostrils flared and his dark eyes bore into Mac’s. ‘You and me, McQueen – we got the unfinished business, yeah?’

  ‘Sure, Amy,’ said Mac as Sudarto leaned in. ‘Guess we’re up for round three, right?’

  ‘So you can count?’ said Sudarto.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac, poised for an attack. ‘But don’t let fear hold you back.’

  His eyes turning to saucers, Sudarto threw a fast left elbow at Mac’s jaw, dropping him on the floor. Slightly dazed, Mac pushed himself onto his elbows, waiting for his vision to clear.

  ‘That’s enough, l
ieutenant,’ said Simon. ‘Let’s think about how we can use them?’

  Sitting with Bongo, Jim and Tommy in the middle of the mess, surrounded by armed Kopassus officers, Mac watched Haryono and Sudarto storm out of the mess and he tried to think of options. Across the room, Jessica’s big blue eyes stared at Mac, pleading. She looked scared but not injured.

  ‘This what Mom and Dad thought you’d be doing when you got accepted for a master’s at MIT?’ said Jim, his cold rage aimed at Simon.

  ‘They wouldn’t understand,’ said Simon, his tone slightly dreamlike. ‘There are things I never knew about the world until I knew them.’

  ‘Think that makes you smart?’ snarled Jim, who had a dribble of blood running down his lip from an altercation with a Kopassus officer.

  ‘Not smart, Jimbo – just a greater understanding.’

  ‘Of what?’ asked Mac. ‘You make an Ethno-Bomb to prove you can?’

  ‘Oppenheimer did it,’ snapped Simon, jerking the choker chain around Jessica’s throat. ‘Apollo was the same thing – we went to the Moon, McQueen! What the fuck was that about?’

  ‘It wasn’t about weaponising a disease that kills one race,’ said Mac. ‘There’s already enough diseases that kill poor brown people – we don’t need to create weapons out of them.’

  Mac could sense Bongo bristling beside him. Bongo Morales was a shoot-out guy and he’d be annoyed that Jim and Mac didn’t want to go with him.

  ‘Forget the weapons side of it,’ said Simon. ‘Think of the research, think of the applications!’

  ‘Applications?’ said Jim.

  ‘Can you imagine how fast we could evolve ourselves if we exploited the secrets of which races were the strongest, which ones had the genes to become super-beings?’ said Simon, his face flushed with excitement.

  ‘No offence, Simon,’ said Mac, ‘but why is it always dudes like you who have the super-race fantasies?’

  The bullet sailed past his face and Mac ducked instinctively.

  ‘Don’t do it, Simon,’ Mac begged. ‘Just get on the phone and call it off, okay?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Simon, rueful. ‘It was all going fine, we were going to launch this program and the UN were going to pay us for it.’