‘But more importantly,’ Curtis said, looking over her shoulder, ‘the canvas sails of the windmill were stolen. Did you ever have a problem with TCDD in this town?’ Curtis asked, remembering the email Echelon had intercepted.
‘Tetrachloro dibenzene-para-dioxin?’ Davis replied, a quizzical look on his face. ‘As a matter of fact we have. They found some pretty alarming levels among the fishing community so they’ve banned prawning and trawling in the harbour. Why?’
Curtis reached into his leather briefcase and took out a copy of the intercepted email.
‘This is too much of a coincidence,’ Davis said. ‘Stolen windmills might sound a bit far-fetched but when you couple it with Eternity and this email, Sydney might be the curtain-raiser to whatever Kadeer’s planning for his final solution. No offence, mate, but our government’s decision to get involved in this clusterfuck in Iraq has made Australia a much more likely target and, as targets go, they don’t come any bigger than Sydney Harbour. I’m not sure how much time we have but if you’re right, we need to sharpen our readiness. TAG East is on its normal notice to move but we can bring that down as a precaution,’ Brigadier Davis said. He picked up the secure phone and pushed the speed dial button for the Vice Chief of the Defence Force in Canberra.
‘TAG East?’ Kate whispered to Curtis.
‘Tactical Assault Group. These guys have got two of them. One in their Special Air Services Regiment on the west coast and one here on the east coast in their commando battalion.’
‘His minders are here now in the middle of a shit fight with the Police Minister,’ the brigadier explained, winking at Curtis. ‘Always polite… Sir.’ Davis grinned as he put down the receiver. ‘The Vice Chief is Navy and oversees operations. Member of the Commonwealth Club, wears leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket and reminded me I wasn’t flavour of the month in Canberra.’
‘Off the PM’s Christmas card list again?’ Curtis asked.
‘I doubt I’ll ever get over it but life must go on,’ Davis said with a wicked grin. ‘The Vice Chief will brief the Chief of the Defence Force and he’ll speak with Little Lord Fauntleroy.’
‘Little Lord Fauntleroy?’ Kate asked, bemused.
‘Defence Minister. Likes to be kept informed if we so much as change our underpants, let alone readiness states. These days you need his permission to fart,’ Davis said. ‘At least we can brief his minder on our plans to get the TAG ready to move, which might save us some time down the track.’
‘Out of the question,’ Cecil Jensen, the Defence Minister’s chinless, pasty-faced advisor insisted pompously. ‘If it ever gets out that we’ve brought forward readiness states because the earlier low life in this country stole the canvas sails from a windmill,’ he said, glaring at Curtis and Kate, ‘we’re going to look as if we’ve panicked over a “maybe” based on history.’
‘It’s not about how you or the Minister “look” Cecil,’ Brigadier Davis responded coldly. The longstanding animosity between the military man and the jumped-up advisor was obvious. ‘It’s about taking a sensible precaution until we can investigate this more thoroughly. Right now we’re in a very fortunate position. Normally a lot of our Blackhawk helicopters are based in the north,’ he explained to Curtis and Kate, ‘but they arrived down here yesterday for APEC.’
‘We’ve already taken a decision to base some of them in Sydney,’ the Minister’s advisor sniffed.
The Brigadier looked to the right and then to the left. ‘Nope. No media around to catch that one, Cecil. And it’s irrelevant. The point is they’re here and so are the Tigers.’
‘Tigers?’ Kate said to Curtis.
‘Armed reconnaissance helicopters,’ Curtis replied. ‘They pack a powerful punch.’
‘Even on the present notice to move,’ Brigadier Davis argued, ‘there’s no guarantee we can get either the Tigers or the TAG in the air quickly enough if something happens. See that, Cecil,’ Davis said, pointing to the screen on the right. ‘That’s the Ocean Venturer.’ The massive bow of the tanker had come into view with no fewer than four tugs shepherding the great ship around Bradley’s Head and lining her up for the passage where she would pass under the bridge and move on to her berth at Gore Cove.
‘That’s the largest crude oil tanker ever to berth in Sydney and you’ll notice it’s almost high tide. At low tide she would hit the bottom of the harbour. That’s a huge target, and if these guys are right,’ he said, glancing at Curtis and Kate, ‘I’d be a damn sight more comfortable if the TAG was sitting in those choppers with their rotors spinning.’
‘Fortunately those decisions are not up to you, Brigadier,’ Jensen said haughtily, picking up one of the secure phones that would connect him with the Defence Minister in Canberra.
‘For once I agree with Cecil,’ the NSW State Minister for Police said, reinforcing his claim while Jensen was distracted. ‘It’s way too early to involve the Commonwealth. This is a State responsibility and I’ll be holding a media conference to make that point very shortly.’
Tony Davis, Paul Mackey and Curtis O’Connor exchanged glances. The Ocean Venturer was in full view making a slow but inexorable run down to the bridge.
The small, dark-skinned man picked up his mobile phone. The foremast of the cruiser HMAS Sydney had been positioned as a memorial to the men who had taken part in Australia’s first naval engagement of World War I. As the colossal bow of the Ocean Venturer went past, the man pushed the send button on a text message: ‘Passing the war memorial now’. Modern technology meant that Jamal would be able to read the exact moment the message was transmitted and calculate the precise time the tanker would pass over the tunnels. The man’s mobile phone beeped and he read Jamal’s reply: ‘May Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful, be with us’.
Further down the harbour, another of al-Falid’s men standing near the Jeffrey Street Wharf at Kirribilli read the message as well. The text on the location of the tanker and Jamal’s response had also been copied to seven other mobile phones.
Every driver had calculated his start based on the exact time that the tanker’s bow passed the memorial, all designed to get each of them to their targets at the right moment, all linked to the tanker passing over the tunnels on the harbour bed.
The operation had begun.
Further to the south, the weather had thrown the flight schedules at Sydney Airport into chaos and the controllers were battling to clear the backlog.
CHAPTER 69
m ick Hammond was on the third-last shift of his career. He was a big man with a moustache to match and he had a relaxed view of the world; a temperament that made him ideally suited to the extraordinary stresses associated with being an air traffic controller. With forty-two years up next month, he was the longest serving controller among Sydney’s team of highly trained professionals.
The tower had been built at the edge of the main runways, alongside General Holmes Drive, less than 300 metres from where the freeway passed into a tunnel under the taxiways and the main north-south runway. In three days, the little holiday shack at Sussex Inlet on the south coast would become home for him and his wife of thirty-seven years, but at the moment, Mick had no time to reflect on fishing or pottering about in his tool shed.
All of the control tower’s nine operator consoles were at full capacity. Although the weather of the morning was lifting a little and controllers could now see the ends of the runways jutting into Botany Bay, the backlog was fierce. Across the road in the Terminal Control Building, another team of controllers was battling to get aircraft out of their holding patterns and onto final approaches where they could be handed over to the tower. The director for ‘Runway 34 Left’ focused on one of a dozen radar blips on the screen in front of her. The blip that was slowly moving to the point where she’d vectored it for final approach into Sydney was Qantas Flight 12 from Los Angeles with 458 passengers and crew onboard.