‘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, lieutenant,’ 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.’