‘Come on!’ hissed Mac, checking his G-Shock. It was 12.11 am.
‘Worth getting this part right,’ whispered Didge, lying beside Mac, his M4 shouldered, ready to create supporting fire.
‘I know,’ said Mac. ‘But I’d like to have a few hours’ start on these guys before sun-up. I hate -’
‘Look,’ said Didge, interrupting Mac.
Robbo slowly pulled his fibre optic from the hole in the wall and gestured for Beast, who turned around so Robbo could put the screen and camera in his pack. Robbo then gave a hand command which led to suppressors being screwed onto handguns and Johnno drawing his black Ka-bar combat knife. Next thing, they were moving out of sight around the front of the building.
Raising himself from his prone position, Didge groaned slightly at the pain in his leg. Then, assuming a kneeling-marksman pose he shouldered the M4. Adrenaline rising, Mac swung his Leicas to the left as Mitch emerged from the tree line – weapon at his shoulder – and stealthed further along the security fence. Toolie remained absolutely still in the standing-marksman pose, still looking like a bloke going fishing. It was a classic supporting-fire configuration, covering the raiding party from both inside and outside aggression.
Mac forced himself to stay calm. If the snatch didn’t go well, he reckoned they’d get about five hundred metres before they were taken apart by the Indonesian military. Their only advantage was that the base seemed deserted while the Kodim Maliana took care of the Falintil problem at the Lombok facility.
Didge nudged Mac and pointed at the Kopassus camp entry. Two soldiers in red berets and jungle cams walked up the slight rise into the camp.
‘Blue Dog, this is Albion – two Bandits at your four o’clock; repeat Bandits at your four,’ said Mac into his radio mic.
The soldier nearest the intel building suddenly swivelled, looking at the building the commandos had just entered. Suddenly, his eyes widened and Johnno appeared from the shadows, slapped a hand across the Indonesian’s face and brought his knife quickly across the bloke’s throat. As the soldier sagged in Johnno’s arms, the second Kopassus soldier froze, then fell to the ground as three shots tore silently into his chest. Suppressors were a hassle to configure and to carry, but they were amazingly effective.
‘Nice work, Blue Team,’ mumbled Didge as Johnno and Beast pulled the two soldiers into the far lee of the building, where they could no longer be seen by Mac and Didge.
Abruptly, Robbo appeared around the corner of the building, suppressed handgun held in cup-and-saucer. Pausing, he nodded and crept quickly towards the gap they’d cut in the fence, followed by Beast with a body in a blanket carried in a fireman’s lift. Johnno worked the sweep as they moved out of the Kopassus camp.
‘Nice work, boys,’ said Didge, standing and sweeping his rifle across the camp, looking for any problems.
Blackbird proved to be both cooperative and fit, and they got to the camp at the observation post shortly before 3.30 am. Leaving Mac and Blackbird in the bivvy, the rest of the 63 Recon Troop grabbed food and water and crawled through to the OP to check what they’d been missing in the past twenty-four hours.
Getting himself comfortable against the bamboo wall, Mac took a decent look at the girl for the first time since they’d cleared out of Maliana. She was tall and athletic, intelligent-looking and quite beautiful, even in a set of borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt.
‘We’ll have a rest, something to eat, and then we’re off,’ said Mac.
‘Where are we going?’ she said in a deep register, not betraying too much in the way of nerves.
‘Out of here,’ said Mac. ‘To a safer place.’
‘Australia? Java?’ she asked, quite self-assured.
‘Not up to me,’ said Mac, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘All you have to do is keep walking and I’ll take care of the rest, okay?’
‘Okay,’ she said, peeling an orange. ‘Your name Mac, right?’
‘That’s it.’
‘You Australian intelligence?’
‘Let’s have a bigger conversation once we’re out of here, okay, Maria?’
‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Can talk now if you want.’
‘I’m not going to debrief you,’ said Mac, ‘but I would like to get an idea what you’ve been speaking to Kopassus about.’
‘Just what I told the Australians,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘I tell the malai all the things I was saying to Canadian.’
‘Everything? You told them everything?’ asked Mac. ‘They torture you, Maria?’
‘No,’ she said, looking away.
‘They threaten your family?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded.
Fishing in his bag, Mac came out with some bars of chocolate, which he handed to Blackbird. He tried to soften the questions.
‘They ask you what you looked at in the army headquarters in Dili?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘They ask you if you stole anything?’
‘Yes, and I told them what I taken.’
‘They ask if you’d taken copies?’ said Mac with a smile.
‘No, mister,’ said Blackbird, shaking her head but keeping her eyes on Mac’s in the dark.
Informal interrogation was best conducted with enough light to clock every reaction, every shift of the eyes and set of the mouth. But Mac had fallen into this line of conversation and he didn’t want to halt the momentum, even as he detected a lie.
‘Did you make any copies at army headquarters, Maria?’ asked Mac.
‘No,’ she said, quite calm.
‘Did you tell the Canadian everything you discovered?’
‘Yes, mister,’ she said, smiling.
‘Did you see any papers in army headquarters about Operasi Ipoh?’ asked Mac conversationally.
‘No, mister,’ she said.
‘Operasi Bali?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Operasi Boa?’
‘No – not that one.’
‘And no copies of any army papers?’ said Mac, bringing his cadence down to suggest the end of a conversation.
‘No, mister,’ she said, her voice relieved.
‘Where did you hide the copies, Maria?’
‘I didn’t… I mean, I took no copies.’
‘The copies of Operasi Boa?’
Waving her hands, and then putting her face in them, Blackbird hesitated. ‘Now I all confused.’
‘Take your time, Maria,’ said Mac, like her best friend.
‘Okay,’ she sighed, breathing out.
Handing her a fresh bottle of water, Mac looked at his G-Shock. ‘Drink up, we’ll leave in five.’
Looking out through the bamboo walls, Mac’s heart was racing. Was there an ambush? Was the snatch a set-up? He did not know. What he did know was that Kopassus intel failing to ask Blackbird if she copied files during her time at army HQ was about as likely as the Ferrari F-1 pit crew turning up for a race without a single wrench. It was a spurious story, and meant that either Kopassus was after something totally different to what Mac and Tony Davidson assumed they were after, or Blackbird was walking both sides of the street.
Mac’s coded radio call to the Royal Australian Navy was successful and he got a commitment for an exfil at midnight, from the same place where he’d set down after the swim from the submarine. Getting close to finishing a successful gig, Mac’s excitement was counterbalanced by stress and fatigue. If someone gave him an air-bed, a shower and a proper pillow, he’d sleep for twelve hours without touching the sides. But for now he was buzzing along on adrenaline, trying to get to the finish line.
They made fast time across the river into West Timor and overland to the kijang’s hide with Robbo and Beast as the escort. The soldiers flirted with Blackbird, who deflected their attentions with a cold politeness that she’d probably been practising since childhood. She was a cool cookie, this one, thought Mac, and he vowed to test her again before he handed her over.