‘Nice,’ said Jim, giving Da Silva a clip over the ear. ‘Ever heard of a vaccine that can be sprayed on people?’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Da Silva.
‘Your bosses are planning to put that disease into the villages, they’re not immunising anyone,’ said Jim, angry.
Looking pleadingly into Mac’s eyes, Da Silva shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘We’re talking about Extermination,’ said Jim, snarling in Da Silva’s ear.
‘That’s the operation name,’ said Da Silva, confused. ‘It’s about deporting people across the border, isn’t it?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Mac. ‘When is Boa happening?’
‘Same time as Extermination – the day of the ballot result. Maybe waiting for the right weather for the spraying.’
‘So you depopulate an area yet you’re trying to save the villagers from this super-pneumonia?’
‘It was strange, and I guess that’s why Maria -’
Silence fell on them as the surf pounded.
‘Tell me,’ said Mac.
‘Does she have to be in this?’ asked Da Silva. ‘She’s young and idealistic.’
‘Tell me,’ said Mac, harsher.
‘Maria was put together with me by Cedar Rail – the Australian intel. She was talking with me in my office and she must have seen Operasi Boa when I was called away. She had an attack of conscience – she copied it.’
‘But we miss out?’ said Mac, annoyed that Da Silva had burned the document.
‘Um, no,’ said Da Silva, slow. ‘I burned it, remember?’
‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘So Cedar Rail didn’t get the document that he’d been after?’
‘No,’ said Da Silva, looking Mac in the eye. ‘Cedar Rail didn’t want the Operasi Boa document – he wanted it destroyed.’
‘Destroyed?’ yelled Mac, moving at Da Silva. ‘Why would Aussie intelligence want to destroy it?’
‘That’s what he wanted me to do this morning,’ said Da Silva, gulping, obviously worried he’d triggered another attack.
‘But to destroy it?’ snapped Mac. ‘You must have got it wrong, mate.’
‘No, McQueen,’ said Da Silva softly. ‘Coded message this morning – told me exactly where it was. The codes were correct.’
‘At the Resende?’ asked Mac.
‘Sure,’ said Da Silva, now enjoying seeing Mac off-balance. ‘I was surprised because suddenly he knows where this document is hiding.’
‘I bet he did,’ said Mac, seething. ‘I fucking bet he did.’
CHAPTER 56
The first shot exploded out of Da Silva’s chest. The second took most of his head away before he collapsed in the sand.
Mac dived for the ground, fishing for his Colt as he joined Jim behind a small sand dune. Looking up to the small cliffs under the coast road, they scanned for the shooter.
Three shots in quick succession plopped into the sand, the final one less than a foot from Mac’s boot.
‘The guy in white, behind the central rock,’ hissed Jim, peeping over the dune.
‘I can see him now,’ breathed Mac, checking for load and safety. ‘What’s he got?’
‘Sniper rifle,’ said Jim, his back heaving. ‘Automatic action.’
Shots rang out from the car park, where Jim’s driver was waiting, and the sniper ducked behind his rock.
‘Let’s go,’ said Jim. Standing, they hurtled behind trees and sand dunes as a hail of bullets tore through the foliage.
‘How many?’ Jim asked his Timorese driver, as they joined him in the lee of the Mitsubishi.
‘Two at least,’ said the driver.
Opening the boot, Jim pulled out two M4 assault rifles and a handful of mags as bullets zinged into the steel of the open lid, narrowly missing him.
‘Fuck!’ he spat as he hit the ground, handing M4s to Mac and the driver. While Jim keyed the sat phone, Mac ducked up and loosed a couple of bursts of three-shot at the rock.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Mac, crouching back behind the car and seeing Jim on the phone. ‘No pizza delivery round here, mate!’
‘I promised I wouldn’t do the Yank thing of bringing in the cavalry, right?’ said Jim.
‘Yep,’ said Mac as the rear windscreen erupted in a shower of glass.
‘I lied,’ said Jim, raising a finger as he got his connection.
A long volley of gunfire smashed into the Mitsubishi, rupturing the fuel tank, shredding three of the tyres and removing what was left of the auto glass. Looking over the sill of the door he was crouched behind, Mac watched the three shooters making their way down the cliff to the beach, and fired off a few rounds, hitting one in the leg.
Feeling a knock on his arm, Mac looked where Jim was pointing and saw a large black power boat surging into sight. The size of a twelve-metre power cruiser, it was painted drab black and had a rotating radar dish mounted over the open cockpit. Mac could see it also had a gunner’s pit on the long bow decks holding a Mark 38 machine-gun system – a one-inch naval machine-gun.
‘That a Mark 38?’ asked Mac, feeling nauseous from the gasoline fumes spewing from the car’s shredded fuel tank.
Jim didn’t hear, his attention divided between the sat phone and the shooters as the US Navy power boat leapt across the swell doing about fifty knots.
‘Got a bead?’ asked Jim into the phone. ‘Okay, yeah, we’re getting down,’ he replied as one of the snipers ducked from behind a rock with an RPG on his shoulder. He launched the grenade, a great trail of smoke gushing across the beach as it accelerated towards the power boat.
An unearthly screaming, like a thousand hound-dogs crying, sounded across the water, rising to a shrieking crescendo that had Mac and Jim simultaneously putting their hands to their ears. Transfixed, they watched the Mark 38 bellow fire as it churned out its one-inch bullets at almost three rounds per second.
The RPG disintegrated in a ball of fire, and a glorious silence followed as the Mark 38 was shut down while debris scattered on the beach.
The snipers ran among the rocks, clambering back to the big boulder.
As the snipers made their goal, the awesome firepower focused on the large rock and turned it to rubble as the rounds found their mark. The air shook, the sand vibrated and the sound was incredible – the concussion of such enormous fire-rate shaking Mac’s body.
One of the shooters tried to run from behind the disappearing rock and got caught in the bullet hail, an arm sailing upwards and onto the road and the rest of him vanishing.
The rock now completely obliterated, Mac could see bits of clothing and body parts exploding out of the coastal cliff with the dust and stones from where the rock used to be.
Finally, there was silence again.
‘Guess that’s gunboat diplomacy?’ said Mac, his ears ringing.
‘Nice work, guys,’ said Jim into the sat phone. ‘Can we get a ride?’
They made the north side of Alor in under an hour, the boat coasting along at sixty knots, its turbocharged Cummins diesels singing at a constant pitch.
Sitting under a blanket in his soaked clothes, Mac accepted a coffee from a sailor who – like the officer in charge – was in civvies.
‘Thanks for the help,’ said Mac to the sailor.
‘Thank Mark,’ said the sailor with a smile, nodding at the gun in the bow.
‘That, mate,’ said Mac, ‘is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever!’
‘Yeah, my brother,’ laughed the sailor. ‘And just so long as the bad guys are feeling that too – know what I’m sayin’?’
An unmarked Black Hawk helo was waiting on the beach when they arrived. It flew them into Denpasar, dropping them at the military annexe of Ngurah Rai, where Jim’s sidekicks had a Voyager van waiting on the tarmac. As Mac was making to get in the van, a white Holden Commodore screeched to a stop beside the van.