Jaws of Death

by Paul Adam

  He stood up, stretching his shoulders and back, and headed for the door. Max ducked down out of sight, in case Clark turned round, and stayed crouching against the wall for a few minutes, giving him plenty of time to leave the building. Max was about to get up when a couple of floodlights near the perimeter fence suddenly blazed into life, bathing the side of the compound in bright white light. Max threw himself flat on the ground, convinced that a guard must have spotted him. He waited for a shout of alarm, or worse, gunfire, but no sound came until he heard a couple of faint voices somewhere in the distance. Two figures emerged from behind the first office block and walked across to the helicopter. Max realized that the lights were on simply to illuminate the helipad. He recognized one of the men – it was Jaya. The other, he guessed, was the pilot. The men climbed into the helicopter. The engine turned over and the rotor blades began to spin, sending out a draught so powerful that Max could feel it on his face.

  A third man came out into the open and ran in a crouch over to the helicopter, one hand across his chest to stop his jacket and tie blowing around. It was Julius Clark. He clambered into the rear of the helicopter, which took off immediately, lifting slowly into the air, then turning through one hundred and eighty degrees and flying off south along the river.

  A few minutes later, the helipad lights went out. Max waited a while to let his eyes readjust to the darkness, then crept round to the front of the office block. The main door was locked, but Max took the piece of wire from his pocket and had it open in seconds. Clark’s office door was no more of a problem. Max slipped inside and locked the door behind him – he didn’t want any unexpected interruptions. Going across to the desk, he lowered the blind over the window, sat down and switched on the computer. While the machine booted up, he picked the locks on the desk drawers and rummaged through the contents. In the second drawer down he found what he was looking for – a new, unused 8GB memory stick, enough to store a few thousand pages of files.

  The computer screen lit up, glowing softly in the dark. Max clicked on the ‘Shortcut to Documents’ icon and a list of folders appeared. He tried to access the one Julius Clark had opened and got a ‘Password Required’ box. He stared hard at the keyboard, trying to remember exactly which letters and numbers Clark had entered. There had been seven elements – six letters followed by one number. Max had seen Clark’s fingers hit the keys, but he’d been too low down to note the actual letters on the keys. All he had was a pattern of movements, of spacings between keys. But could he recall that pattern?

  Where had Clark begun? The bottom row of the keyboard, somewhere near the middle. The letter B. Then he’d jumped up two rows, moving to the right. Max studied the letters. It had to have been an O. Then he’d gone back to the bottom row, to the letter immediately to the left of B – V. Next was another letter on the top row – a Y, followed by another on the same row – P. The final letter had also been on the top row, but towards the left. An R or a T. Max closed his eyes, picturing Clark’s hands on the keyboard. It was a T. Then the number to end. It had been over to the left of the row … 2. It had been a 2. BOVYPT2. It was an odd password, but then many passwords were. Random collections of letters and numbers were often more secure than proper words. Max typed it in. ‘Password Invalid’ flashed up on the screen.

  Max paused to reconsider, annoyed with himself. Which bit had he got wrong? The pattern of letters was definitely correct. Maybe it was the number that was an error. Perhaps Clark had typed 1, not 2. Max gave it a go. BOVYPT1. ‘Password Invalid’ came up again.

  What now? How many failed attempts did the computer allow before it decided that enough was enough? Max didn’t know for sure. Three? Three attempts was normal on many systems – after which the computer would close down, or sometimes activate an alarm. Would Clark’s system be alarmed? Probably. He was a careful man, with a lot of secrets to protect. That meant Max had only one more go. Get it wrong again and the office would be swarming with security men.

  He studied the letters, aware of his pounding heart. This was important. If he could access Clark’s computer records, he could discover exactly what he’d been doing: maybe find evidence of his illegal activities – what his companies had been up to, whom he’d paid off, whom he’d kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming his ‘fifth columnists’. Max had one more attempt. Don’t blow it, he said to himself.

  He adjusted his hands a fraction. What if he’d got the pattern right, but the starting point wrong? What if the first letter hadn’t been a B, but the letter next to it – a V? He spelled out the new sequence, moving one space to the left each time, and got VICTOR1. That made more sense. It fitted Clark’s supreme arrogance, his belief that he couldn’t lose. Go for it. You know it feels right.

  Max typed in the sequence and almost didn’t dare look. ‘Password Accepted’ flashed up. He collapsed back in his chair, smiling with relief and delight, and watched the folder open. He glanced at a few of the files. Some he could read, others appeared to be encrypted. There was no time to read them now. He inserted the memory stick into the USB port and saved all the files. Then he saved all the other folders he could, removed the memory stick, wrapped it in a plastic bag he found in a drawer and stowed it safely away in his pocket.

  He shut down the computer and opened the blind before unlocking the office door and going out, locking both that door and then the main door behind him. He’d done what he’d come for. Now he had to find a way out of the compound.

  One of the barges? he wondered. That was how he’d come in, after all. But he’d hidden inside an empty container then. The containers leaving the compound would all be full of palm oil, which ruled them out as a method of escape. What about waiting for a convoy to leave and swimming out underwater while the harbour gates were open? Max rejected the idea immediately. He wasn’t going back into the harbour while Raja was still about. One encounter with the crocodile was all he could take. So that left the perimeter fence. It was high and topped with razor wire. He couldn’t climb over it, but maybe he could find something with which to cut the metal strands – a hacksaw or some bolt cutters. This was an industrial plant: there had to be a tool store somewhere. But where?

  Max decided to try inside the processing plant first. That was where the machinery was. Maybe the tools would be there too. He looked across the yard that separated the plant from the office blocks. Light from the quayside was seeping out across one end, but the middle of the yard was in darkness. Max dashed across and flattened himself against the wall next to a side door into the building. He eased the door open and peered through the gap. Inside, he saw a vast, high-roofed shed illuminated by fluorescent tubes on the metal rafters. At one end, near the loading bay he had seen earlier, were two huge hoppers the size of houses in which the palm nuts were stored; then came a row of heavy machines which, Max guessed, were the presses for squeezing the oil from the nuts. Running under the presses was a horseshoe-shaped conveyor belt lined with metal containers – empties coming in at one side, the full ones going out at the other. Max could hear the steady throb of machinery, feel the vibrations through his feet, although the conveyor belt wasn’t moving. Maybe it had shut down for the night.

  Pushing the door wider, he slipped inside and paused, feeling very exposed. There was no cover at all here, just the high metal wall of the building, then a four-metre-wide open space next to the production line. Max looked around for something that might be a tool store and caught a glimpse of two men coming out from behind a network of pipes near the pressing machines. He reacted instantly, knowing he would be caught if he remained where he was. Darting across the open space, he scrambled up onto the conveyor belt and was starting to crouch down between two containers when he realized that he could be seen from the side if the men came past. He had to find somewhere better to hide.

  He looked along the production line and saw a container four ahead of him that looked familiar. Climbing swiftly up onto the container next to him, he ran along the line, jumping fro
m one to the next until he reached his target. This was the one – he recognized the shortened logo, SCOM, the two air holes he’d made in the top. The lid was already open. Max dropped down inside the container. Had he been seen? He didn’t think so.

  He waited in the semi-darkness, a circle of light coming in through the hatch. Then he heard the squeak of a cog and felt the container suddenly jerk forward. With a jolt of alarm, he realized that the conveyor belt had started up. He had to get out – get out immediately.

  He poked his head up through the hatch and risked a quick look out, then ducked back down rapidly. The two men, both wearing overalls and yellow hard hats, were standing right beside his container, having a discussion. He was trapped.

  What should he do? Climb out now and be caught, or stay where he was for a moment and hope the two men moved away. He went for the second option – that, at least, gave him some hope of avoiding detection. The container was still moving. Max waited ten more seconds, then decided to chance another look out of the hatch.

  He glanced up and saw the end of a pipe just above the container. Before he could move, the pipe dropped into the opening of the hatch and a gush of liquid knocked him off his feet. It was like being hit by a tidal wave. He was turned upside down and hurled against the side of the container. The liquid was all around him, a viscous, swirling mass of palm oil. It was in his hair and in his eyes. Fortunately he’d had the presence of mind to hold his breath. He picked himself slowly up from the floor, blinded by the sticky oil, and fumbled upwards, trying to find the way out. But the lid had been clamped shut. He tried to push up the hatch unit that he’d cut free earlier, but he couldn’t budge it. Something heavy was pressing down on it from the outside.

  Max’s alarm turned to panic. He was shut in. He was going to drown in palm oil. This was it – the end. Then he remembered the air holes. He reached up desperately, feeling around the roof of the container, and found a tiny hole. Tilting his head back, he put his lips around the hole and exhaled, encountering no resistance as the stale air in his lungs blew out. Then he inhaled and was relieved to feel fresh air rushing between his lips. He could breathe.

  His eyes closed, his hands pressed against the walls of the container to hold himself in position, he took another few breaths, telling himself to relax. He was in control. He was submerged in palm oil, but he was still alive.

  He was aware of the container moving along the conveyor belt. Then he heard a clang on the sides and felt the container rising into the air and then going back down again. It was being loaded onto a barge in the harbour.

  For twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, he stayed there, taking shallow breaths, the palm oil oozing around him, saturating his clothes and seeping into his skin. Then he felt movement again – the barge being towed away from the harbour. He counted the seconds, estimating how long it would be before they were clear of the gates. Two … three minutes. He detached his mouth from the air hole and felt his way across to the hatch. It was like swimming through honey. He pushed up on the hatch and felt it give. The weight above had gone. He pushed harder, lifting the hatch out of the hole.

  He stuck his head through the aperture, opened his eyes, wiping away the palm oil with his fingers, and took a long, deep breath of warm night air. They were on the river, heading downstream. Max waited until the Rescomin plant was out of sight, then hauled himself out of the container. He lay flat on the top for a moment, making sure the tug pilot wasn’t looking back, then slid down to the deck of the barge and dropped over the side.

  It was only a few metres to the riverbank. Max swam with long, slow strokes, trying not to create too many ripples. If there were crocodiles nearby, he didn’t want them to know he was there. As he reached the bank, he sensed a movement above him and glanced up in alarm.

  ‘Is me,’ said Ari, grabbing Max’s hand and pulling him up out of the water. ‘I said I wait for you.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  They went downriver in the ces and moored at the jetty by the Dayak longhouse where they’d spent the night. Ari left Max in the canoe while he ran across to the longhouse with some of Max’s rupiahs, returning twenty minutes later with soap and a fresh set of clothes which he’d bought from one of the local boys.

  Max stripped off his palm-oil-saturated garments and waded out into the shallows, scrubbing his body and hair until he’d got rid of all the sticky goo. Then he put on the new shorts and T-shirt, transferring the memory stick to the pocket. It was still wrapped in its plastic bag and seemed undamaged by the palm oil.

  Ari took the rudder and they continued on down the river. Max was tired. He lay down in the bottom of the canoe and dozed restlessly, preoccupied by anxieties about Consuela and Chris, wondering whether he would be in time to save them. Were they still in custody in Pangkalan Bun, or had Julius Clark carried out his threat to make them ‘disappear’?

  At daybreak, when Ari’s skill was no longer so essential to navigate them through the darkness, Max took a spell at the outboard motor to allow Ari to sleep.

  They kept going throughout the day, taking it in turns to steer while the other rested. There were still provisions on board – rice and vegetables and water – but they didn’t stop to eat. Making a fire and cooking the food would have used up valuable time – time they didn’t have. Max wanted to be back in Pangkalan Bun as soon as possible.

  It was dark when they reached the town. They tied the ces up by a jetty and climbed out. Ari took some money and vanished for ten minutes, coming back with a roti and a bottle of lime juice each, which they wolfed down greedily as they walked to the police station on the outskirts of Pangkalan Bun.

  The station was a one-storey concrete building, set in its own fenced compound. They studied it from a distance, half hidden by some bushes across the road.

  ‘You know anything about it?’ Max asked.

  ‘I been in there one time,’ Ari replied.

  ‘You have? For what?’

  ‘I get in fight in town. Police arrest me, put me in cells for one night.’

  ‘What’s it like inside? Where are the cells?’

  ‘At back.’

  ‘How secure are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. There is one big room like cage and some smaller cells too.’

  ‘Are there guards outside the cells?’

  ‘No, cells are locked. There no need for guards.’

  ‘What about CCTV cameras?’

  ‘What that?’ Ari asked with a puzzled frown.

  ‘Never mind.’ Max reminded himself where they were – a small provincial town in Borneo. The police station was a very basic facility – offices and a few cells. There was no need, and no money, for sophisticated security measures like CCTV cameras. Nor were there any floodlights in the compound, or razor wire on top of the perimeter fence.

  ‘How can I find out whether my friends are still there?’ Max said. ‘Do the cells have windows?’

  ‘Small ones. With bars on them.’

  ‘Can we get round the back?’

  Ari nodded. ‘Is easy.’

  They crossed the road and followed the fence round to the rear of the police station.

  ‘Give me a leg up,’ said Max.

  ‘Is not safe,’ Ari said. ‘What if policemens catch you?’

  ‘They won’t.’

  Ari looked at him doubtfully for a moment, then shrugged and cupped his hands together in front of him, making a stirrup for Max’s foot. He heaved upwards and Max scrambled over the fence. He flitted across the compound to the back of the building. High up on the wall were five small windows with steel bars over them, but no glass. Max stood beneath the first window, then jumped up and grabbed hold of the bars, pulling himself up so that he could peer through the opening.

  He saw a man inside, lying on a low wooden platform, apparently asleep. It wasn’t Chris. Max moved on along the line of windows, checking each cell. In the fourth he found Consuela. She was lying on another wooden platform, but she sat up quickly when Max calle
d out softly to her.

  ‘Consuela, it’s me.’

  ‘Max?’ She got up from the bed and came to the window. ‘Max, thank goodness. Are you all right? Can you get us out of here?’

  ‘I’m going to try. Where’s Chris?’

  ‘In the next cell. Max, there are policemen around. Be careful.’

  ‘I will. I’ll be back soon.’

  Max dropped down to the ground, ran back across the compound and clambered over the fence to rejoin Ari.

  ‘The time you were arrested – who were you fighting?’ Max asked.

  ‘Other boys,’ Ari replied. ‘Was not really fight. We just playing around, making lots of noises. Police didn’t like.’

  ‘And you just spent a night in the cells? Nothing worse?’

  ‘No. We not bad criminals. We get one night and then they let us go.’

  ‘You know your friends – the ones I went swimming with? Can you round them all up for me, as many as you can?’

  ‘Yes, is possible. Why?’

  ‘We’re going to have a party.’

  There were ten of them in total – Max and Ari and eight of Ari’s friends – each clutching a large bottle of fizzy cola that Ari had bought using Max’s money. They walked into the centre of Pangkalan Bun, where the streets were busy, the restaurant terraces crowded with diners; then, on a prearranged signal from Ari, they all suddenly went berserk – chasing each other in circles, yelling and screaming, shaking their bottles of cola and then uncapping them to spray one another with frothy liquid.

  Max had borrowed a cap from one of the boys to hide his blond hair and smeared dirt over his face to darken his skin, so he looked little different from the others. They charged around the pavement, jeering and laughing, dodging in and out of the restaurant tables, creating as much disturbance as they could. A shower of cola landed on one of the diners, who leaped angrily to his feet and tried to catch the boys. But they were too quick for him, darting agilely out of the way and haring off across the road to annoy the customers at another restaurant.