‘That’s a negative on a fresh satellite pass, boss,’ said Littlemore, disappointed, when Wilkes returned.
Wilkes was not aware of the satellite’s period, but he was reasonably sure another pass would have been made by now so it was worth the ask. And they had to update Canberra when contact was made with any survivors anyway. ‘Give Canberra a call and see what they’ve got.’
‘The sat phone’s out, boss. Deader than Kurt Cobain.’
‘What’s the story?’ asked Wilkes.
‘Dunno. It’s not batteries,’ shrugged Littlemore. ‘The jungle canopy might be acting as a shield . . . Could be the phone, but I checked it twice back at Dili.’
‘Have you tried hitting it?’ Morgan chipped in.
‘Violence and microprocessors go together like fish and chocolate, Smell,’ said Littlemore. ‘But I did give it a little tap – nothing.’
The satellite phones were their only secure communications link. Wilkes was not keen about using the AWACS as a relay station. If anyone was listening in, their presence would be known. A message to Canberra would have to wait until they were outside Indonesian airspace.
Wilkes went through the odds of further meetings with the Kopassus in his head. In all, there’d been twenty contacts illuminated by the sat. Two were the survivors Joe and Suryei, the one with the odd heat signature must have been the man incapacitated by snakebite, and they’d just taken three more out of the game. That left a maximum of fourteen Kopassus troops to contend with. Nine against fourteen. Shit odds in a game of footie, but the difference here was that the Indons weren’t aware that the SAS were on the field.
‘Okay, let’s fuck off out of here,’ said Wilkes, getting edgy. ‘This place is soon going to be crawling with nasties.’ Every Indon soldier within earshot would be zeroing in on their position, and he was unsure of the direction they’d be coming from.
Wilkes had noted from the Indons already taken out that the Kopassus weren’t wearing comms, so it was likely that the rest of them didn’t know shit from shinola, but they would have heard the shot from the FNC80 just as they had. Wilkes’s Warriors should have been gone from this location already. ‘How you going there, Beck? Can we move out yet?’
‘Just about, boss.’
‘We’ve got to hoof it. If they can’t walk, carry them.’
Suryei’s cuts and abrasions were being seen to. The burns on her forearms had been bandaged in a way that would keep the insects off while allowing the air to circulate. Her forearms throbbed hotly under the bandages. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, finding that her smile came easily. Beck produced a hypodermic syringe and swabbed her skin before driving in the needle. ‘Antibiotics cocktail,’ he said. ‘The cut in your belly. You don’t know where that soldier’s knife has been, but you can bet it wasn’t sterile.’ Suryei nodded. ‘Those burns on your arms don’t look too good either.’
She crouched beside Joe, who was lying on a groundsheet. He had stopped vomiting. ‘How you going?’ Suryei asked.
‘Can’t feel a thing,’ said Joe dreamily. ‘My brain tells me I should be in pain, but nothing’s getting through. I know it’s there. Very weird. You should try this stuff.’ Joe brought his hand up to his face and turned it slowly in front of his eyes as if it was something strange and foreign. ‘Unreal . . .’ he said.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Baby, I can fly.’ Joe struggled to his feet, helped by Suryei.
LCPL Ellis came up to Suryei and held out his hand. ‘This might come in handy, Miss,’ he said. In his palm was the button the Indonesian soldier had sliced off. He’d found it next to the snakebite victim. ‘I’ve got a needle and thread too.’ He produced the items from one of the many pouches hung on his belt.
Suryei realised that her pants were open at the front and that someone, unnoticed, had draped a camouflage shirt over her shoulders. Joe was also now wearing an Australian regulation army shirt. She looked around. A couple of the men had stripped down to khaki singlets. ‘Thanks,’ she said, accepting the offer.
‘You’ll have us knitting tea cosies next, Ellis,’ said Wilkes, humour and impatience mixed in equal measure. ‘We don’t have time for that.’
Ellis nodded and produced a small tube from his medical kit. He put a few drops of the liquid on the open flaps of her pants. ‘Don’t get this on your fingertips or it’ll stick them together,’ he said quickly. ‘Superglue – originally developed for battlefield wounds . . . liquid stitches.’
And then Suryei was aware that the mood in the clearing had suddenly changed. Within an instant, all the Australian soldiers, except for Corporal Needle-and-thread and the medic, had disappeared. The medic put his finger to his lips for them to be quiet. Then he cocked his head to the side, concentrating. He nodded and spoke softly into a small boom mike which, until now, had been folded back away from his mouth.
Several pairs of Indonesian soldiers, including Sergeant Marturak, converged on the clearing where they’d left one of their number to care for the snakebite victim. The men met up unexpectedly in the thick jungle drawn by the sound of the gunshot, and the surprise rendezvous, coupled with their nervousness, nearly resulted in a firefight. Had they been aware that enemy soldiers were also in the immediate area, they would almost certainly have started shooting at each other.
The Indon soldiers were wary. Nervous. Three days in the jungle tracking a foe that had eluded their best efforts – and killed or incapacitated a number of their comrades – had made them tense. And cautious.
There was a single silenced shot, phut. One of Marturak’s men fell, and then suddenly the jungle was alive with the sound of automatic FNC80 fire.
One of the Indonesian soldiers walking in a crouch beside Marturak collapsed forwards into fern trees as a small fountain of blood plumed from the back of his head. Marturak’s surprise only lasted an instant. He dropped to the ground with the rest of his men and emptied his magazine in what he thought was the general direction of the shot. He then changed magazines.
Were they under friendly fire? Another of his men fell down beside him, much like the first, with one shot removing half his skull. The shot sounded different. It was-n’t like the familiar noise made by his soldiers’ weapons. The combination of confusion and stress was not allowing his brain to draw the correct conclusion that perhaps these weren’t his own men firing on them. He called out again to cease fire but his words were cut to pieces by a thirty-round burst fired by one of his men off to the left.
The blanket of fire put down by the familiar-sounding FNCs was reducing in intensity. Marturak realised that his men were being cut down. He worked towards what cover he could find on his belly, snaking through razor grass. It was impossible to see what was going on. He had to keep his head down or lose it. Moving constantly meant survival. If he stayed where he was, he would eventually be encircled and death would pour in from all sides. Marturak glanced left and right. He had a man on either side of him that he could see. They were his men. Beyond that, he had no idea what was left of his force.
Retreat was the only answer. Was it possible that the two survivors from the plane crash had found themselves weapons and were now hunting them? No, impossible. He then reminded himself that the fire coming from unseen sources sounded different. It wasn’t Indonesian issue, whatever it was.
That meant there were other soldiers in the jungle. Marturak tried to piece together the action of the last few minutes. His men had fired possibly upwards of three hundred rounds, yet he had heard only several of the deadly ‘popping’ sounds. Silenced weapons. He was aware that at least two of those shots had found targets. Head shots.
Marturak’s mind was starting to work now and the picture it was painting did not augur particularly favourably for his future health and well-being. It had to be some kind of Special Forces group. But whose? He called to his men that he would cover their retreat to trees ten metres behind. He came up on one knee and sprayed the jungle ahead of him in a forty-five degree arc. He kept the
trigger squeezed against the guard until the magazine ran dry. He dropped flat to the ground and fumbled with another magazine. Silence. Perhaps he’d been lucky, taken the opposition by surprise and killed the lot of them.
Marturak worked his way backwards to the trees on his stomach, as quietly and as quickly as he could. The chest-high growth was good cover. His feet pushed against something immovable. Swinging himself around, Marturak came face to face with two more of his men. He couldn’t recognise either of them because their faces were missing. Marturak was cornered and he knew it. It was pure luck that had saved him from sharing the fate of the handful of men now lying silently in the grass around him.
It was the first time in his career as a soldier that he felt helpless. Worse than that, he was paralysed with fear. If he stayed where he was, he would be surrounded – if he wasn’t already – and slaughtered. If he tried to fight it out, he would end up like the rest of his men. When he realised exactly how limited his choices were, Marturak’s temper snapped, breaking his paralysis.
He had been after two pathetic survivors, civilians, for well over forty-eight hours. They were unarmed, untrained (as far as he knew) and they had managed, somehow, to make him look like an amateur. He had failed in his mission. If he ever made it back to Jakarta alive, he was certain he wouldn’t stay that way for long. The men he worked for would see to that. Marturak thumbed the selector switch to single shot. He couldn’t remember how many rounds were left in his magazine; in the excitement, he’d lost count of the number of shots he’d fired. He expelled the magazine, placing it inside his shirt, and fitted a fresh mag with one oiled movement.
Marturak bit a large chunk out of his lower lip and blood filled his mouth. The pain worked. It sent him into a rage. The scream filled his throat and he sprang to his feet, weapon ready for killing. But just as quickly, the scream died, strangled. Marturak was surrounded, literally ringed by soldiers, high-tech camouflaged warriors, weapons zeroed at his head. Suicide suddenly seemed a pointless option. Marturak flung his rifle away from him as if it was poisonous. Holding onto it would definitely end his life. It was bald reaction.
One of the soldiers moved forward. His weapon was different to the others’. It was a sawn-off shotgun and blue smoke snaked lazily from the black pit pointed at his head. Shotgun blasts. Marturak realised now why he couldn’t recognise the mashed faces of his comrades. He raised his hands slowly, interlocking his fingers behind his head.
He examined the soldiers who had so adeptly surrounded, cornered and slaughtered his men. They were young, serious, but far from nervous, as his men would have been if the roles had been reversed. These soldiers were cool, calculated professionals. No emotion, just business. It wouldn’t take much for one (or all) of them to pull their triggers and kill him in cold blood. Again, if the positions had been reversed, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it and he didn’t expect them to either. His hunch was right. They were Australian SAS. The way they carried themselves and did their job made them instantly recognisable. Marturak had trained with these people before, and even fought against them in a skirmish on the border of West and East Timor. He remembered that battle vividly. He’d managed to shoot one in the head as the man stood over his fallen comrade, yet still the soldier had stood his ground and kept firing. He’d been fighting against the Australian occupation forces with the militia and had barely managed to escape with his life. Yes, they were good.
Marturak talked to them, quietly at first. He knew they probably wouldn’t understand Indonesian but if he somehow forced his humanity on them, there was a slight chance that they would find it harder to kill him. That’s what the TNI psychs said. Now he played that card for all it was worth.
Marturak clasped his hands together in front of his face in the universal gesture of prayer and babbled pathetically, beseeching, pleading. He almost made himself sick grovelling like this. Such antics had never deflected him from a chosen course of action, namely, to pull the trigger. But he needed time. It was all about time. The stocky soldier who appeared to be the leader – he couldn’t be sure because none of the men carried any insignia of rank – ignored his pleas. The soldier stuck the barrel of his shotgun above one of Marturak’s wrists and forced it down, gesturing at him to put his hands behind his back. Another soldier, one he couldn’t see, held his fingers interlocked together and secured his wrists tightly with a nylon lock-tie while a third soldier patted him down, removing his sidearm, grenades and knife. A muzzle jabbed him in the back and he was walking forward, a captured prisoner in his own country.
Getting his mind back into gear took a couple of minutes but the shock of capture passed as he began assessing the situation, sifting through options. He knew he had more men out there in the bush. They would have heard the shooting. They had a radio, and they were in Indonesia. It was their home. He needed time to turn it around on these invaders. These . . . Australians (he mentally spat the word). In the meantime, he had to stay alive, so he prayed for mercy and tried to squeeze tears out of his eyes.
Wilkes couldn’t speak Bahasa, but he didn’t need to. The man was obviously begging for his life. Wilkes was not a cold-blooded killer. He had not been specifically ordered to slot this man. But he also had absolutely no idea what to do with him. Slotting him seemed his only option. Perhaps an alternative would present itself.
Coombs came up to Wilkes and revealed the contents of a rucksack belonging to one of the dead Indonesian soldiers. ‘Looks like black boxes to me, boss. From the plane.’
That was a find. The people back home would be interested in those, big time.
Marturak walked into the small clearing pushed in front of his captors, head bowed and hands behind his back. The SAS soldiers filed in behind him. Beck and Littlemore stood to meet the advancing party, as did Suryei, while Joe stayed on his back, hypnotised by the canopy swaying high overhead. Marturak saw more of his men laid out next to each other on the ground, their shirts pulled over their heads to hide the gore from view. It took every ounce of willpower not to scream with rage at the sight of his men slaughtered by these fucking Australian pigs. He tried not to look at the bodies. It was important to keep intact the cloak of meekness he’d managed to pull over himself.
Then the woman, one of the survivors he’d failed to hunt down, came up to him and spat in his face and that was the end of his composure. He staggered forward in an attempt to shoulder-charge her, but having his hands tied behind his back upset his balance. Marturak tripped and ploughed head first into the ground, dirt filling his mouth. He struggled to get his feet under his body until a hand grabbed his shirt firmly by the collar and hauled him up.
The woman stared at him defiantly. She appeared to be Indonesian. This was one of the people who’d made him and his men look stupid. Her companion was on the ground, wounded by the look of him. Good.
Suryei feared this man. He’d come to represent for her all the senseless brutality of a nation, the torment of East Timor – the graves, so much destruction. He had pursued them through the jungle in order to kill them. She looked at the bodies being lined up on the ground, and thought about the men who probably lay dead beyond her view in the jungle. It struck Suryei that her and Joe’s survival was nothing more than sheer good luck. The odds of living through the plane crash had been staggering, but then there was the jungle and this bunch of killers to contend with. The soldier didn’t even know her. The soldier’s hate was mindless. He inhabited a brutal world she wanted no part of. With that fresh realisation, she turned her back on the invective streaming from Marturak’s mouth and quietly sat beside Joe.
There were more Indonesian soldiers out there somewhere. Wilkes glanced at his watch. Just on forty-nine minutes till extraction. It would take them a good thirty-five minutes to reach the RV – the place where the felled hardwood had torn a huge gash in the canopy, large enough for the V22 to drop in and lift them out. Better to take it slow and careful. It was time to move. Now. Any Kopassus within cooee would have bee
n drawn to the gunfire at a run.
‘Stu, you ready?’ he asked.
‘When you are, boss.’
‘How about Joe there?’ he said, nodding at Joe, who was staring up at the canopy, smiling.
‘Having a wonderful time, by the looks of things. He’ll be right.’
‘Okay, fuck-knuckles, let’s blow,’ said Wilkes quietly into his boom mike. ‘Stu, stay with the civilians. James, you’ve done bugger-all on this job. Make yourself useful and take the point. Get your machete out and cut us a path. Gary, you and Coombsy ranger for us. Mac, you take the rear. If anyone takes the easy way down our trail, let them know they’re making a big mistake. We don’t want any surprises and we’ve still got quite a few unfriendlies out there.’ Wilkes had no idea where the Indons would be coming from, but if they came across an obvious path cleared through the jungle, they just might follow it. That would be handy, because knowing where the Indonesians were would make dealing with them that much easier.
‘No wukkas, boss,’ said Mac Robson, checking the ammo box on his Minimi and moving off at the trot.
‘What do we do with blubber-mouth here?’ asked Ellis, gesturing at the Indonesian prisoner.
Wilkes had momentarily forgotten about the Indon sergeant. He sized the man up and again considered the alternatives. The Kopassus soldier was an ugly son-of-a-bitch, that was for sure, with the skin on his face so badly pockmarked it had the appearance of a dirty golf-ball. He tried not to let the look of the man influence his decision either way. The humanitarian side of him considered leaving him behind to care for his own man, the snakebite victim. The SAS soldier in him thought that he should at least take the man with them so that their identity, strength and position weren’t passed to his Kopassus mates, if they happened to stumble across each other. The soldier won the internal debate. ‘He comes with us. Tell him any funny business and we send him to Allah,’ said Wilkes simply.
The woman stepped up to within centimetres of the Indon soldier, yelled something at him, then turned and walked away.
Rogue Element Page 30
