“You give me medicines,” Konner said. “We be even Steven.”
“Okay,” Adara said into the sat phone. She was talking to the air boss on the ship now, and the pilot who was remotely operating the Fire Scout from the USS Fort Worth. She held out her hand to Chavez, who knew exactly what she wanted. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and cued up the compass, aiming it at the UAV to give her an azimuth. “We’re lined up,” she said. “The Fire Scout is directly over the tree with the first group of bad guys. They are armed and hostile. We’re seventy-five meters due north if you line us up. Second set of bad guys another fifty meters to our north, spread out.”
Adara listened and then said, “Roger that. We don’t have a choice.”
She turned to Chavez and Konner. “Hug the ground, boys,” she said.
The Hydra 70 laser-guided rocket fired by the MQ-8 had a blast radius of ten meters and a lethal fragmentation radius of fifty meters. Delivering a ten-pound warhead, the slender rocket traveled at speeds approaching Mach 3. At this range, it didn’t have time to reach full speed, but the explosion was nearly instantaneous from the time of firing. Bits of dirt and foliage and probably drug smugglers rained down on Chavez and the others. He felt the blast as much as he heard it, and still wondered how long it was going to be before he’d need hearing aids.
Incredibly, stupidly, the men uphill began to fire at the helicopter.
“They’re too close for a missile,” Chavez said.
Adara simply smiled, pointing seaward again as the MH-60 Romeo Seahawk from the Fort Worth hove into view above the smoldering hibiscus tree.
The big sister of the little Fire Scout flew directly overhead, with Adara guiding her in. A half-second later, the remotely piloted helicopter’s GAU-17 “Vulcan” electric Gatling gun began to burp lead into the trees at six thousand rounds per minute.
The MH-60 pilot made two passes to surveil the hillside and then overflew the twisted remains of the hibiscus tree one more time. Satisfied the threat was neutralized, he gave the all-clear for Chavez and the others to come to the beach for pickup. The little Fire Scout remained aloft, providing overwatch.
The MH-60 pilots weren’t keen about spending any more time than necessary in Indonesian airspace, but since the orders to pick up this package had come directly from the secretary of defense, they did as Adara requested and flew seven miles down the beach, where they dropped off Konner Toba a mile past his house so he couldn’t be identified by any neighbors getting off the helicopter.
The Papuan shook Chavez’s hand and then cried when Adara gave him her entire med kit. “You good folk,” he shouted, as the helicopter prepared to lift off from the beach. “Me say prayer for you.”
Chavez collapsed into his seat, wounded, exhausted, and wondering to whom Konner Toba planned on directing his prayer.
60
President Gumelar used the telephone aboard Marine One during the forty-minute flight to Nusa Kambangan Island. He made a quick call to his military adviser first, clearing the way for Marine One and the accompanying aircraft to overfly the country unmolested. Not surprisingly, he called his press secretary next, speaking in rapid-fire Bahasa Indonesian. Ryan couldn’t understand the conversation but got the gist of it when Gumelar used the words hashtag and China in the same contemptuous-sounding phrase. Like everywhere else in the world with access to the Internet, Indonesians were sensitive to public sentiment. Astroturfing what looked like a grassroots campaign to question the validity of Chinese influence in Indonesia would take some political pressure off the president. Such a life ring might come at the expense of Chinese Indonesians — but Gumelar had always struck Ryan as the sort of man who would climb on top of his own mother in order to save himself from drowning.
Only after he’d created a backstop for himself did he call his commanding general of the Indonesian National Police. Marine One was fifteen minutes out when he was finally assured that everything would be in order when they arrived on the prison island. Gumelar passed the phone to his security man, who spoke to the Marine One crew chief with instructions on where to fly. Sergeant Scott in turn relayed the instructions to the pilots, who passed the word to the other aircraft in the presidential lift.
As in the United States, three identical White Tops flew in shuffling formation. Two greenside V-22 Ospreys loaned to HMX-1 from VMM-262 out of Okinawa flew overwatch. At the insistence of President Gumelar, three heavily armed Embraer Super Tucano turboprop fighters accompanied the lift on behalf of the Indonesian Air Force.
Only Marine One would land at the prison.
With his phone calls complete, Gumelar’s hands fell into his lap. “Very well,” he said. “There are seven prison sites on the island. Father West is being held at the one called Batu. Your pilot will land at a small soccer field behind the compound itself. I will exit the helicopter first to let the guards know I am acting of my own volition, after which point you and I will enter the facility together. I will sign the requisite clemency papers, a few—”
Special Agent Gary Montgomery leaned forward against his harness, very nearly bursting out of his seat. “Mr. President, I cannot let you go inside the prison.”
Gumelar ignored the agent and spoke directly to Ryan. “You must go inside, Jack,” he said. “We will do this together.”
“Mr. President,” Montgomery said. “This is completely unacceptable. You—”
“I hear you, Gary,” Ryan said. “But sometimes I have to—”
Ryan had never seen Montgomery angry. The agent was a bear of a man anyway, but the space he took up in the aircraft seemed to instantly double in size. His face flushed red, the tendons on the side of his neck tensed as if he were lifting a heavy weight. “When was the last time you were inside a lockup, sir?”
Ryan sighed. “Fifteen, twenty years. Maybe more.”
“Everything we train for, prepare for, will be rendered useless inside those walls. We will not be in control. And I like being in control.”
“Gary—”
“The choice is yours, of course, Mr. President,” Montgomery continued. “But if anything goes wrong in there, I will be unable to protect you without killing a lot of people.”
Ryan gazed out the window as Marine One began to descend in the field beside a run-down compound of concrete and corrugated metal. He didn’t give a damn about President Gumelar’s hurt feelings as long as Pat West was released.
“Gary,” Ryan said. “If you’ll bear with me, I think we might reach a compromise on what to do here…”
Father West heard the squeak of shoes on the chipped tile floor long before he saw anyone. His cell was much larger now, fresh water, plenty of light. Even so, the odor of human desperation lingered in the air — and something West recognized immediately as the pall of impending death.
At first, when his conditions improved, he’d thought that his text had gotten through. But he gradually came to realize that these people were going to kill him because of a lie. They just wanted to clean him up beforehand, so they’d feel more civilized while doing it. He’d given up hope of ever being rescued.
There had been no trial. But what would be the point of one, anyway? It was as easy to whip up the records of a trial and conviction as it was to make up evidence of drug trafficking. He’d read about the Bali Nine. He knew that he was just a few kilometers from where two of them had been marched onto a field in front of twelve soldiers and shot.
It was not in West’s nature to hurry the moment of his death, and yet there was absolutely nothing he could do but pray.