At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘There’s a body in one of those fridges,’ I said. ‘Something’s not right.’

  ‘What kind of body?’

  ‘Indonesian or Malay,’ I said. ‘Early thirties, educated. Wearing the same lab clothes as Ramdi.’

  ‘A scientist?’ asked John.

  ‘Could be,’ I said, but I was just guessing. ‘Maybe that’s the real scientist – Ramdi just hangs around, making sure his investment is well spent.’

  We got to the car and I needed to contact my employers. These people don’t like being second in-line with the intel. ‘Mate, I have to call this in. Can you give me some cover?’

  I slipped inside the back seat, grabbed a sandwich from the Esky and took a bottle of water to go with it. I shrugged off the 5.11 pack and pulled out the sat phone. There was one number in the phone book: I hit ‘Call’ and it rang three times before the person with no name – the major – answered.

  ‘We’re done,’ I said. ‘Ramdi identity is confirmed. Ramdi is deceased.’

  ‘Roger that. Cause of death?’

  ‘Bullet in the forehead,’ I said.

  The major skipped a beat. ‘Your bullet?’

  ‘No, he was dead when we arrived,’ I said. ‘But I caught a couple of hangers-on – we’ve handed them over to the Indonesians so there should be some confessions coming soon.’

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked, and I told him I had the hard drive from the lab computer and some manuals and other bits and pieces lying around.

  I described the locations in which I’d taken the photographs, and when we’d signed off I connected the camera to the sat phone via Bluetooth and sent the contents of the camera to the major. As I finished I saw John and James arguing outside the car. James didn’t look happy. I opened the door and James’s finger was in my chest.

  ‘Where were you two?’ started James. ‘We were under fire back there.’

  ‘So were we,’ I said. ‘The tangos looped under the back of the car – you saw that, right?’

  ‘I wanted to go forward, move on those fuckers, but I couldn’t do that with two guys, now, could I?’

  I showed him my hands. ‘Look . . .’

  ‘And you!’ he said, bridging up on John. ‘You’re an American, you don’t get to run from the shit!’

  John stood his ground and I leapt between them. ‘It’s on me,’ I said. ‘Okay, James? Me and John had a separate tasking. A recon tasking.’

  James’s face dropped, going from anger to confusion to revelation. ‘A separate tasking – who from? It’s my fucking gig.’

  ‘No, it’s not your gig. It’s Brandon’s, and we had our own orders.’

  As I said that I realised that James didn’t know Brandon as ‘Brandon’. His face simply didn’t register the name.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘The briefers knew there was more force waiting for us than they were letting on, which is why they gave us a big armed escort. I was always doing the recon end of it. John was personal protection.’

  James put his hands on his hips and looked away.

  As I calmed the waters and wondered what the chances were of us all being happy families for two and a half hours in the car, Calvin wandered over, and now I saw why James was so agitated. Calvin’s right bicep was bandaged and his arm was in a sling.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ I asked as he joined us. He would have liked to say something aggressive but seeing me and John standing shoulder to shoulder probably put him out of the mood.

  ‘I took a shot, it’s a tear – not a bad one,’ he said, and I watched him fish a packet of smokes from his pocket and light a cigarette. ‘Where were you two? Radio not working?’

  ‘Working on this,’ I said, pointing at the shed. ‘The briefers wanted their photos.’

  Calvin nodded and kicked the dirt.

  James said, ‘I think we’re done here,’ and made for the driver’s seat.

  When we got in, the dynamic was immediately toxic. The two gunfighters who’d wanted to go forward sat in the front like Ma and Pa. And John and I sat in the back, the duo with an intel and recon background who’d scarpered off on their own mission. So it was frosty even before James turned the engine and got that crispy Chevrolet air-con going.

  As he slipped the car into Drive, I made the mistake of asking where Anwar was. As a general rule on these jobs, it doesn’t matter how much you hate one another after or during a gig, there’s no musical chairs: everyone occupies the same seat on the way out as they had on the way in. That way you don’t leave some poor bugger behind. And yes, it has happened.

  James didn’t even turn to talk to me. ‘Well, for a man who’s so in the know, you don’t know shit, eh, Mike?’

  ‘Cut the riddles, James,’ I said. ‘Where’s our translator?’

  I was actually quite tired – the adrenaline let-down always hits me badly. I wasn’t up for James’s snideness.

  ‘Well, your Indonesian buddy decided to travel back to Jakarta with his local friends,’ said James in a really unhealthy tone.

  ‘Why, what did you say to him?’ said John.

  And Calvin and James started laughing. John and I looked at one another, and John shrugged. We were going to let it go.

  But James didn’t want to do that. ‘I told that Indo, if God had wanted an Indonesian to go forward instead of an American, he would have made him American.’

  I couldn’t look at John after that comment, but I knew that he would put James in his place when the time was right.

  And he knew that I’d stand beside him all the way.

  15

  We were twenty minutes into the drive home when we got into our first tussle in the car. It began at the second intersection, a classic four-way junction, and the in-car navigation system was giving us a different route than the one we came in on. So James is stopped in the middle of the intersection, handing-off to me because, as he sarcastically put it, I was an Indonesian ‘expert’.

  ‘This is your patch, right, Mike?’ he said.

  But I couldn’t read the signs and I didn’t have much insight. ‘What does the sat-nav say?’

  ‘It says straight through,’ said James, turning and eyeballing me. ‘But we came in from that road,’ he said, pointing right.

  The answer was pretty clear: follow the sat-nav. But special forces people always remember their routes – it’s a survival thing – and he didn’t like the change of direction.

  ‘We need Anwar,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ yelled James. ‘And don’t think of getting on the radio, ’cos I’m telling you now, that little fucker ain’t riding in this car.’

  He said ‘little fucker’ it in such a way that it offended me, and I’m a white guy. I turned to John, caught his eye, and saw homicide, and I gave him a quick shake of the head. And then I leapt in, took the fight.

  ‘You need a drink, James?’ I said. ‘I mean, there’s no shame in it, right? You’re craving a couple of shots, that’s what all this is about?’

  Now James twisted in the driver’s seat, and I saw a man with lines of piano wire straining under his neck. ‘The fuck you say to me?’

  ‘Alcohol,’ I said. ‘I mean, you seem really on edge – you know, a little bitchy, actually.’

  We stared at each other for ten seconds and James finally said, ‘Sat-nav works for me.’

  We drove for almost half an hour, with no one talking. I mean, no one said anything – the atmosphere was so bad that I was running through my legal options should I have to release my SIG Sauer and deal with James. I knew John would cover me and lie for me too. But would Calvin shut his mouth, and what side would Brandon take? I had a recurring thought: that this was the worst gig of my life. Lord give me strength, I thought, to get me through this journey without having to drop the guy sitting in front of me.

  With b
athroom stops and a refuelling – where it turned out there was a bullet hole in the radiator – we got into downtown Jakarta near sundown. Our first stop was the armoury of the embassy detachment, where we handed back our weapons and other equipment. I stood there, emptying rounds from magazines into a steel tray, the armoury sergeant counting them and yelling out the number to a clerk who input the returns into a computer-based manifest. Then they printed out a return form and I signed it. What I didn’t give back was the sat phone, the camera, the hard drive from Ramdi’s computer and the goodies I had for the major. Those were put to one side where the major scooped them into his own pack.

  16

  I was tired but I agreed to a debrief with the major. Agencies generally want the debrief as soon after the event as possible and certainly before the operators have had a chance to speak with anyone else.

  I followed him into the main building of the embassy and we sat in a meeting room where I assumed our discussion was being recorded. The major put down a laptop and a legal pad and walked to the door, where he asked one of the intel staffers to bring a pot of coffee. We small-talked until the coffee came through, and when it did, Brandon followed the staffer through the door.

  ‘So, Mike,’ said Brandon, touching his tie as he sat down. ‘We’ve been through the photographs and we’re having a good look at that hard drive.’

  The major opened the laptop and navigated to the multimedia program. He scrolled through the photo roll and zoomed in on some of the shots, especially the ones of the literature and supplies in the organic bomb lab.

  ‘What did it smell like in there?’ he asked, and I said it was mildewy with maybe a hint of ammonia. In fact, the overriding smell in that lab had been the metallic taste on the back of my tongue from all the blood on the floor – ironic given that organic bombmakers are trying to get metals out of the charges and detonators.

  ‘This one,’ said the major, scrolling to the body in the fridge. ‘Tell us about this guy.’

  I looked at the picture. ‘I’d taken pictures of the fridge with the glass door and I thought that before I left you might want to see what was in the other ones. I opened the door of that fridge and that’s what was there.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Brandon. ‘No one else?’

  ‘Ramdi on the floor, and this guy in the fridge,’ I said.

  ‘Anyone else in there?’

  ‘Not in the labs,’ I said. ‘We took two prisoners.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘They were unconscious for much of the time. Man and a woman.’

  The major winced and swapped a look with Brandon. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘The Indonesians have them,’ I said.

  They ended the meeting and the major walked me out, and as we waited at the elevators I could hear Brandon’s voice, speaking in his cheeriest yet worst Bahasa Indonesia. Brandon was making a hurried, nervous call to the Indonesians.

  I taxied back to the Mandarin, threw on some clean clothes and went down to the hotel bars and restaurants for a burger and a beer. I only stayed down there for forty minutes, just catching my breath and thinking through the decisions I’d made. I’d been given a specific tasking, but I hadn’t been asked to do something aberrant – James’s desire to have a gunfight with the terrorists was the wrong decision. Aside from taking off into the jungle and ignoring my radio, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Calvin’s bullet wound was unfortunate, but I hadn’t gone off the rails. It was time to go home and get paid.

  The waitress came to my table with the burger and I decided against another beer. As I picked at the fries, I saw two men walk into the bar and order drinks: James and Calvin. They walked past my table with their beers and grabbed a table at the back of the room. It didn’t worry me too much. In these jobs the accepted format is to stay separate in your hotel and to make a big social palaver of having a random meeting. In that way, when the police come around – and they eventually do come around – the hotel staff can honestly say that Mike was staying here alone and that the times when he had a beer with someone at the bar, or shared a breakfast table with a stranger, were random occurrences.

  I was halfway through my burger, when I heard a throat clear. Calvin was standing beside me.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ I said, fairly friendly. ‘Having a seat?’

  Calvin stayed on his feet. He didn’t look happy. ‘James wants to talk.’

  ‘So what’s he doing over there?’ I asked, and turned and smiled at James.

  Neither of them were smiling, and I could see that Calvin was uncomfortable, perhaps scared of James.

  ‘You okay, buddy?’ I said, in a lower voice. ‘Things okay with you and James?’

  ‘Can you just talk to him – it’s not good.’

  I almost laughed. We’d been under fire that morning, from a terror cell, and now I was being picked for a fight like we were at high school.

  ‘Are you kidding me, Calvin?’ I said. ‘I’m eating!’

  Calvin couldn’t meet my eyes. So I stood, wiped my fingers and mouth, and walked towards James’s table. He was in a part of the room that was in shadow, a cubicle area hidden from the bar by an ornate screen. James was sitting up against a wall, and as I approached I saw his hands on the tabletop, fists clenched and the white knuckles showing through. His jaw muscles were strained and he eyeballed me as I approached.

  ‘Calvin’s been shot,’ I said as I got to his table. ‘He should be resting in front of a TV screen, not running errands for you at the pub.’

  James stood, fists ready and a big leer on his face. He was a similar height to me but much leaner, and as he straightened out I hit him with a left hook. Got him, cold. James’s legs went from under him and he sagged back in his chair. I grabbed him under the armpits and nodded for Calvin to arrange James’s chair so I could sit him in it properly.

  ‘He drunk?’ I asked as I sat him upright and gave him a gentle slap.

  ‘He started a couple of hours ago,’ said Calvin, checking James’s pulse. ‘He went through his minibar and then came around to my room, drank the lot as fast as he could.’

  ‘His jaw?’ I asked.

  ‘Not broken,’ said Calvin, lifting James’s eyelid. ‘Cracked, maybe. There’s going to be a concussion.’

  Around us, one person looked over, but quickly looked away.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I asked.

  ‘He was obsessing about loss of honour, that sort of crap,’ said Calvin. ‘I couldn’t shake him.’

  ‘You friends?’

  ‘Fuck, no,’ said Calvin. ‘I’m out here to get a house deposit. James just latched on to me.’

  ‘Well he’s sleeping now,’ I said. ‘Could be a good time for us all to get some rest.’

  We left him to sleep it off and walked to the elevators. As we waited for the doors to open, I said to Calvin, ‘You know this was a recon job, right?’

  The doors opened.

  ‘I sure do,’ said Calvin, and we stepped in. ‘Some dudes just need it to be something else.’

  17

  The gig was done: Ramdi was identified and it was time to head for the airport. But I was a direct hire of this foreign government, so in addition to being set up as the pariah who runs a recon game while his buddies are fighting it out, I also had to hang around in Jakarta until Brandon and the major said I could go.

  I got the text shortly after seven the next morning: Brandon, asking me to meet at the Hyatt for breakfast at eight. I walked to the Hyatt complex just up the road and inside I found Brandon at a table in the breakfast restaurant. I took a seat, ordered coffee, and listened. Brandon wanted a quick chat offline before we did a meeting.

  ‘A meeting? With who?’ I asked. I looked around a bit but the place was crowded with business types and any number of them could have been spooks. I wasn’t going to sweat on it.<
br />
  ‘Our Indonesian partners,’ said Brandon, referring to an intelligence agency. ‘They need to clarify a few things.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Brandon.

  We were driven to the embassy by a government driver, and we walked up to the office suites we’d been in the previous night. I’d call it the intelligence section, but they didn’t call it anything except ‘the office’. We grabbed fresh coffee from a dripolator and walked into a room where four Indonesians – three men and a woman – sat along one side of the long table. The major sat solitary on the other side, and stood to greet us.

  The major made introductions and I didn’t pick up many names: I was struck by the state of the woman’s face. She was in her mid-thirties and professionally dressed, and in any city in the world you’d think she was a successful lawyer. But this one had an eye bruised so badly that she couldn’t open it, and a white bandage around her head. I was about to say something when I noticed that the young bloke beside her was also a little bruised. And then I recognised them, and knew where I’d seen them before. In a shed filled with suicide vests, in the Javan jungle.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, before I could take it back. ‘It’s you.’

  As a general rule, when a briefer talks about ‘assets in place’, it means that the people giving you the information are in the village or they’re driving the truck that delivers the supplies. But in this case, I realised, the assets were scientists, probably groomed with bombmaking CVs and planted in Ramdi’s operation. I wasn’t to know that, and I wasn’t told. But here I was, the contractor who’d beaten them unconscious.

  ‘Mike, thanks for coming in,’ started the major. He had that clipped military efficiency in his voice but you could tell he’d worked more broadly than barracks and briefing rooms. ‘Our counterparts wanted to run over a few things that I felt I couldn’t answer myself.’