‘Yes.’
‘That is absolutely fucking crazy. Why?’ continued the PM, experiencing a kind of sensory overload.
‘For the effect it would have on our own people. As I said, it would re-establish the military’s strength.’
The Australians sat back in their seats, their minds clouded with outrage. It was true – had to be true. Here was one of the conspirators laying it all out for them. Indonesia planned to invade Australia! That was bad enough, but the reason for it? Nothing more than a bit of a show for their countrymen. The irony was that, if not for the crashed Qantas plane and the deaths of all those innocent people, they never would have found out about it until it was too late.
The men let the incredible tale sink in, and struggled with their own thoughts.
‘Who else was in your merry band, general? Who were the other co-conspirators?’ Niven wanted to know. Something would have to be done about neutralising them, and damn quickly.
Masri swallowed and appeared nervous. No matter what the circumstances, giving up comrades was painful. ‘Besides myself and General Suluang, there was Lanti Rajasa, Colonel Javid Jayakatong, Admiral Sampurno Siwalette, and air force Colonel Ari Ajirake.’
Niven pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He knew nearly all these men by reputation. They were good soldiers, members of the Indonesian parliament, and commanded a considerable chunk of Indonesia’s armed forces between them. The exception was Lanti Rajasa. He was a policeman and not a soldier.
‘How would you deploy your invasion forces? You don’t have the assets for a major amphibious landing,’ said Niven, curious about how the Indonesians intended to pull off that aspect of their plan.
‘Ah . . . you are talking about conventional assets.’ There was the barest hint of a smile on the Indonesian general’s lips. ‘In World War 1, the French delivered its troops to the Western Front in the cabs of Paris. Japan invaded Indo-China on bicycles in the Second World War. And Indonesia, as you know, has fishing boats. Many thousands of fishing boats.’
Suddenly, Niven knew exactly how they’d pull it off. And it was so bloody obvious, all the musings by defence academics and strategists had failed to consider it. ‘Jesus . . .’ he swallowed. The navy could barely cope with half a dozen slow, leaking refugee vessels at any one time. A flotilla of such boats – they would only need a few hundred or so – would swamp Australia’s coastal warning systems. It would be impossible to determine which boats held troops and which did not; many would obviously be decoys. The new, over-the-horizon Jindalee radar would certainly provide information about the closing flotilla to Australia’s armed forces, but there simply wouldn’t be enough defence to go round. In a sense, there’d almost be too much information. The navy and air force would be overwhelmed.
The diverted Australian forces would be thrown into confusion, allowing the TNI-AU to drop paratroopers into Townsville. The aircraft would come in low, then pop up near the coastline, disgorging their soldiers. Divers could easily mine the navy ships bobbing unknowingly in Darwin harbour. It would probably all happen at night, or in the early morning, when reaction times were at their slowest. The Indonesian plan would probably succeed at the cost of possibly thousands of Australian lives. But they wouldn’t be able to hold those positions for long. Their supply lines would be way too long and Australia would have the home-soil advantage and, hopefully, assistance from the US. But for a couple of days, maybe three or four until the home defences could rally with the help of a US Carrier Battle Group . . . yes, the TNI could do it.
‘The border of East and West Timor would be very active too. Another diversion,’ the general added.
‘Of course,’ said Niven distantly, his mind seeing clouds of parachutes in the skies over Townsville.
‘Did you consider that the sort of action you’re talking about would make your bloody country a pariah in the civilised world?’ asked the PM, having difficulty believing educated men could formulate such an outlaw strategy. ‘What do you think would happen to your trade links with other countries after you’ve invaded us?’ The more the PM thought about it, the more indignant he became. ‘The whole thing’s bloody absurd . . .’
The general visibly stiffened. ‘We’ve bounced back from the crash of ’97. And we don’t need direct links with the West for prosperity. We have trade through organisations and groups like ASEAN. We are Asian and Muslim. We have our own networks. We don’t need Europeans to get on our feet.’
Masri appeared to sigh. ‘I do not think much of your understanding of the situation, Mr Blight,’ he said. ‘Your country is too full of its own self-importance to see the world as it really is. You think America would rush to your aid?’ From his tone, the general obviously believed that it wouldn’t.
Blight felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t take the general’s bait.
‘The US wants a stable Indonesia. That’s its first priority. It talks democracy, but it wants stability more. Indonesia is a democracy at the moment, but this so-called freedom threatens our very existence. There are forces within that want the nation torn apart. And the government won’t do anything about it, because it doesn’t have the required strength. Religious fundamentalism is growing in voice and action. You have felt the effects of that yourselves. And, as you know, many provinces now openly demand secession. A strong military hand is the only answer. Indeed, it is in your interest. We would stop this disintegration. We see no other way. You might not like having a strong military government in the region, but what is the alternative?’ Masri let the thought hang in the air before continuing. ‘America would realise this, and do nothing.’
Griffin cleared his throat uncomfortably. He’d talked about Indonesia going down this path. He felt like he’d almost willed it to come to pass, but at the same time knew that was ridiculious.
‘It sounds to me like you don’t regret any of this. So why did you turn yourself over to our embassy?’ asked Niven calmly.
‘It was the attack on the Qantas plane,’ said Masri, looking down at his hands. All at once, his demeanour changed from a proud general to that of a deeply disillusioned man.
‘General Suluang told us a file containing invasion details was stolen over the Internet. The terrorist was traced to the plane. He had the aircraft shot down to keep the plan a secret.’
‘You, personally, would happily invade Australia but not shoot down a plane?’ said Griffin, that particular piece of logic seeming dubious to him.
‘Yes, I’m a soldier and soldiers don’t kill civilians. I’m tired of killing civilians. I’m a patriot, not a murderer,’ said Masri, becoming more agitated. ‘That’s why I agreed to the coup – because I saw a way to end the bloodshed between my men and the people of Indonesia. But what Suluang did was murder and I wanted no part of it. That’s why I’ve turned my back on him and the rest – why I’m here, talking to you. And there is something else you should know.’ He slumped back down against his pillows, head forward, a ruined, beaten figure.
‘And what’s that?’ asked the PM, ready for anything.
‘There are survivors.’
‘We know,’ said the PM, relieved that it wasn’t yet another bombshell. ‘You told our ambassador after your car accident. You were semiconscious.’
Masri suddenly appeared disoriented. ‘Did I also tell you that Suluang’s Kopassus are trying to find and kill them?’
‘Yes,’ said the PM.
Masri looked around nervously, unsure of what he might or might not have said when he was lying outside the embassy. ‘General Suluang sent Kopassus to the crash site to secure it; to remove evidence of missile damage, and to ensure there were no witnesses. There were two survivors.’
Niven realised that his own mouth was slack. He swallowed. The general’s confession was an astonishing window on desperation. He fought back the desire to sneeze and gave his nose a good blow into a tissue instead.
The Australians had agreed amongst themselves before the videoconference that th
ey would not reveal to the general the dispatch of SAS troops to Sulawesi.
There was silence in the room. The general sat propped up in bed facing the camera, the bruised skin on his round, smooth face turned the consistency of putty by the videocamera’s resolution. His eyebrows drooped over soft brown eyes and, despite the heavy bandage covering most of his head, the overall effect was surprisingly avuncular. Mao – Niven was aware of the general’s nickname, and he could see the similarity. It was a friendly face. But appearances could be deceptive.
‘Roger, I think we need to talk things over here for a bit,’ said Blight, trying to get his head around some of the practical issues now facing Australia and, more specifically, the men gathered with him in front of the monitor.
‘Okay, Bill. And General Masri . . . ?’
The general. What the hell were they going to do with the bastard? wondered Blight. He considered that before answering. ‘General, for what it’s worth, I think your plan was despicable. You’re nothing more than a mass murderer.’ He paused, fighting with himself. ‘However, and I’m kicking myself for saying this, I also have to thank you for coming to us with this information. If you cooperate with us, you’ll get asylum. But, I stress, that cooperation would be unconditional.’
The general nodded rigidly, with some obvious degree of discomfort that wasn’t just physical.
‘Roger, we’ll get back to you when we have some bloody idea what to do next,’ said Blight.
The ambassador nodded. ‘I’ll let you know if anything else turns up,’ he said before the screen went blank.
There was a chorus of sighs in the room, as if everyone had been holding their breath.
The lights came up and the men squinted painfully.
‘There’s your motive – invasion. It almost makes a crazy kind of sense now,’ said Niven.
‘Yep,’ said Griffin.
‘Jesus. Where do we begin?’ said Sharpe, shaking his head.
‘We have the names of Masri’s co-conspirators,’ said Griffin, sifting through the interview. ‘That’s a start. It explains a lot, actually. Now we know why the TNI have been exercising pretty much constantly over the past year. And of course, the unstable political situation throughout Indonesia is ripe for military unrest. What’s so bloody fantastic is the scope of the coup.’
‘We’re going to have to act fast,’ said Niven. ‘We have to assume their plans will be drastically brought forward. Things will start to unravel for these bastards very quickly now, and we can help that along. They’re going to get desperate. And the only card we have to play is surprise.’
The Commander in Chief stood and resisted the temptation to stretch. An unexpected presence in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Niven had assumed that they were alone in the darkened theatrette, but they were not. It was Parno Batuta, the Indonesian ambassador, sitting up the back in the gloom, mopping the sweat from his face.
Niven turned back and caught the PM’s eye. There was the slightest of smiles on Blight’s lips and then it was gone. He’d been told the PM was a shrewd operator. Niven examined the ambassador’s face again and knew Blight’s gamble had paid off. Batuta’s shock was transmuting to anger. The Australians would need to liaise with Jakarta on this treachery, and devise a counterattack against the Indonesian officers. In Batuta, they now had a willing emissary.
1500 feet AGL, Banda Sea, 1040 Zulu, Friday, 1 May
It all fitted together for Wilkes. The Indonesian army had been robbed of its dirty little secret and subsequent events were merely the attempts to stop it becoming common knowledge. He found the audacity of it almost impossible to believe, despite his experiences in East Timor where he’d witnessed the Indonesian military’s behaviour first hand. But that was quite a few years ago, he reminded himself. Indonesia was supposed to be a different country now. The government was far more accountable – not like the Indonesia of old – and less inclined to resolve conflicts with a big stick. Wilkes found it difficult to believe they’d be capable of such obscene behaviour.
A war against a country as powerful and resourceful as Indonesia? It would be a bloody, vicious encounter. Australia’s arsenal, if not state-of-the-art, was reasonably sophisticated. And its army was a professional force widely regarded for its fighting abilities. But it was comparatively small. Indonesia’s army, however, was large. Certainly much of its equipment was old by Australia’s standards but it could still do a hell of a lot of damage.
He pitted the two countries against each other in his head. It was a frightening thought. And if Suryei was right, it was far more than a thought. It could well be a reality.
The authorities back home must know what was coming their way. But maybe they didn’t. Perhaps that’s why he’d had such a feeling of disquiet at the briefing back in Dili – too many unasked questions, and too many questions without answers. What the hell, he shrugged. Having the extra information wouldn’t have made this gig easier, or more difficult. And maybe they didn’t know anything back home. If that was the case, then he was in charge of a most precious cargo.
Wilkes’s fingers unconsciously went to his breast pocket and felt the hard outline of the plastic inside it. The disk surrendered by the Kopassus sergeant. He’d completely forgotten about it. The soldier had thought it important – important enough to hope it might secure his life.
Joe’s side hurt badly. His body had cramped into the shape of the seat, his bones moulding to its contours. Any movement – any – was agonising. Every twitch from the aeroplane as it rode over air currents made him feel he would scream. He remembered the Australian soldier who’d fixed him up back in the jungle. That bloke had been very offhand about his wounds. He hadn’t exactly said, ‘Get up, ya bludger, it’s only a flesh wound,’ but almost. Christ. The morphine had worn off. At least, he hoped it had worn off. If he felt this bad with morphine still acting on his system, well, it didn’t bear thinking about. He wondered if he should ask for another shot, but he didn’t want to act the girl’s blouse in this company. Just bloody well grin and bear it, he told himself. He forced himself to shift his body to a different position in the hope that he would find a more comfortable place in the seat. He didn’t. The pain made him cross-eyed. Unseen by him, the wound in his back opened and a cup of crimson blood oozed out.
When Joe opened his eyes again after several minutes of keeping them squeezed shut, he saw Suryei, an Australian soldier and a black man hunched together. The soldier pulled out a disk from his breast pocket. Seeing it almost made Joe smile.
‘Where’d you get that from?’ he asked, trying not to grunt with the effort required to block out the stabbing sensation that shot through his side with every word. Christ, it seemed like every part of his body was somehow connected to his broken rib. He tested the theory and gave his eyelids an experimental blink. To his profound surprise, the action didn’t hurt.
There was a fair bit of noise in the cabin, but Wilkes heard Joe’s question above it as if there had been silence.
Joe gestured for a closer inspection of the disk but stopped a few inches into the movement when the pain caught. The sergeant leaned across and placed the disk in Joe’s open hand.
‘That’s mine,’ said Joe, to the astonishment of the soldier. ‘All my rewritables are blue.’ He turned it over. ‘My trademark, see?’ he said, indicating a logo on the reverse side, a caricature of Albert Einstein with dreadlocks and a nose-ring made from a lightning bolt.
Wilkes gave him an odd look.
‘My on-line sign is Cee Squared, as in e = mc2.’ Joe read their concentration as confusion.‘“Cee” is the co-efficient for light. My name’s Joe Light. Cee Squared, light?’
‘Yeah, got it,’ said Wilkes, vaguely resenting being spoon-fed the connection. ‘The disk. What’s on it?’
‘Don’t know. Could be anything. Where’d you find it?’ asked Joe.
‘On the people shooting at you.’
Jesus, thought Joe, his brain working at half speed. It must
have been picked up at the crash site. No, the Indonesians must have actively searched for it. They must have known which seat he’d occupied – easy information to obtain. The Indonesians could have done a little hacking of their own and lifted it from the Qantas server. But how had they known Joe Light had done the hacking? Was it feasible, possible, that the call had been traced? Not only that but his identity known? No it wasn’t, he told himself. Or was it?
Wilkes and Suryei reached for the disk. ‘Is this the disk? The one you saved the map to?’ asked Suryei.
Joe shrugged slightly and squinted with the pain-spike the movement caused. He hoped like hell that the disk was blank. If it held the information he’d lifted from the TNI general’s server, there was no way he’d ever be able to convince himself that his actions – and his actions alone – hadn’t caused the horrible deaths of so many innocent people in the plane crash. The fact that finding the general’s plans might also have prevented a war was too abstract. Too many ifs, buts and maybes.
The four hundred passengers left behind in the Indonesian jungle were an awful fact – unequivocal, irrefutable. It aided his conscience immeasurably to speculate that just maybe something else could have caused the crash. He didn’t want to have to carry around the terrible burden of so many innocent deaths for the rest of his life. ‘Can you run it?’ he asked, hoping they couldn’t.
Wilkes nodded and handed the disk to McBride. ‘How about it?’
The captain paused, uncertain.
‘Look, pal,’ said Wilkes impatiently, sweat, dirt and blood combining with the wicked gash on his cheek to give him the appearance of some kind of horror film creature. ‘All of us are cleared for this kind of stuff. As for Joe and Suryei here, I think they’ve paid their dues. So don’t give me any of your top secret national security crap, okay?’
McBride took the rebuke on the chin. Wilkes was morally right, although his own superiors would no doubt think differently. He shrugged mentally, and tapped the disk on his thumb while he walked from sight into the forward comms compartment. Wilkes instantly regretted handing over the disk. This American spook could switch it, wipe it – anything. He didn’t know much about the NSA or how it operated beyond the fact that it was enormously powerful, and apparently all-pervasive.
Rogue Element Page 35
