Understand?’
Mac nodded at that. ‘We get access to the comms stuff?’
‘Depends what it is, McQueen, you know that.’
‘How about a lock on a satellite phone?’
‘Can do.’
‘What do you need, Don?’
‘I need Garrison and Sabaya. Can do?’
‘We’ll try.’
They swept south-east at one hundred and seventy miles per hour, Gazelle in the lead, US Army Black Hawk taking the sweep. Mac and Paul spoke with Sawtell over the radio system as they headed for Jakarta.
Sawtell wasn’t buying it. ‘I don’t get this – must be some mistake, Mac.’
‘You saw the lock. It came from your guys,’ said Mac.
When they’d been jogging across Brani Island that morning, Mac had wondered if the bank account number he’d retrieved from Mister Turquoise in Makassar wasn’t in fact a sat phone number. A sat phone belonging to Garrison. Back at the EOC Mac had phoned the number stored in his Nokia – just given it a blip – and that had been long enough for Brown to get a lock on it from space.
Mac had the coordinates of the phone on a sheet on his lap. They pointed to a part of north Jakarta, near the port and Soekarno-Hatta airport. It was home to warehouses, industrial parks and huge freight forwarding depots.
Sawtell crackled in again. ‘Why would they head back to Jakarta?
What’s there?’
Paul cut over. ‘Could be where they’re hiding the hostages.’
Paul was now running the op. Whatever he’d been in a previous life, he sure knew his stuff on the basics of hostage rescue, what people like Mac called a snatch. Paul had also made sure POLRI were in the loop. The British had a liaison bloke clearing the way and the Indons were offering backup.
Sawtell and Paul had decided that the way to approach the Garrison clubhouse was from the Java Sea end of Jakarta, coming in via the reservoirs, water retention tanks and canals that criss-cross that part of the city. Staying low would keep them hidden and would confuse any noise.
They’d picked a spot, a wooded area on the banks of a large reservoir. The reservoir was joined to the sea by a canal. About ten blocks south of the wooded area was the last lock on Garrison’s position: a warehouse complex.
Mac looked at the map on his lap, directed the pilot into the land ing zone. They dipped, found the canal and hovered along the water way between one-and two-level warehouses. Lifting slightly over a lock, they came down again and then they were hovering over the wooded area. It was four pm, humidity building, skies becoming overcast.
Picnickers stood up, held onto hats and scarpered as the down draught from the helos tore leaves off trees.
They hovered to the park between the trees, touched down.
De-powered.
Sawtell’s four-man unit spilled out of the Black Hawk in their in-country clothing: olive drab overalls, bullet- proof vests underneath.
Mac saw Spikey. They greeted, thumb shake.
”Zit going, champ?’
‘Man! That you in the window?’ asked Spikey.
‘That’s me.’
‘Man! No wonder you’re called Chalks.’
Paul walked over from the Gazelle with two white kevlar vests.
Pulling down their ovies, they strapped the vests in place.
Crouched beneath a banyan tree, they peered at Mac’s map. Paul put down the pictures of Rachel, Fiona and Karen, made sure he said their names. The Special Forces guys soaked up the images like they were drinking. Mac knew the kind of exercises these boys would be doing day after day on their base: rego numbers, photos, phone numbers, website addresses, email addresses, log-ons, PINs. Seven photos of the same person in different disguises over a fi fteen-year period. Information fed to you in fl ashes, information that in the fi eld could be the difference between life and death. Exercises under extreme pressure where you had to force your mind to resemble a photographic memory.
Sawtell and Paul talked in military acronyms and short cuts.
Mac was relieved they wanted to take a stealth approach rather than a ‘dynamic’. Dynamics could work when you had intelligence, via thermo sensors, listening posts and fi bre optic eyes, but if you didn’t have that intel, and you were rushing, the dynamic approach was riskier for the hostages than the hostage-takers.
The two agreed on everything except the closing scene. Sawtell’s mission was to render Garrison and Sabaya. Paul made it clear that if something made him jumpy, he’d shoot it. ‘I’ll give myself plenty of time to fi gure out which way to point his arse.’
Sawtell eyeballed him, laughed. ‘They teach you that shit too?’
‘Bear jerk off in the woods?’
They jogged the nine blocks to the target carrying Beretta handguns, no rifl es. With the bullet-proofs, they all sweated heavily.
The warehouse covered half a block. Perched on a corner hidden from the warehouse’s view, they could see across the road that the Arrow freight depot and warehouse had two entrances: one from the cross street and the other from the main street. A three-level administration block fronted the building, set back from a forty-metre apron. To the right of the offi ce section was a large dark-red roller door. Closed. A pedestrian door was set in the main door. Also closed. Behind the door, the warehouse roof stretched one hundred and twenty metres.
Down the cross street side of the structure, there was another large roller door and an open parking lot.
Sawtell double-checked the location. Wouldn’t pay to be stealthing around the wrong building.
Sawtell turned to Paul. ‘Looks to me like two sections to this; that offi ce section and the warehouse section. We’ll take the offi ce. You two take the warehouse. Copy?’
Paul nodded.
‘Right, ladies. Check radios,’ said Sawtell.
Hands went up to earpieces while Sawtell rattled off the alphabet in Alpha Bravo Charlies. Got six thumbs- up.
‘Check clocks: on my marks…’
Everyone started their mission clocks.
‘Check weapons.’
Slides slid, mags dropped out and eyes looked down spouts. One of the Green Berets pulled the zip on his ovies down and checked the smoke grenades on his webbing.
Sawtell checked his own Beretta, took a breath, said, ‘Ladies, you never get a second chance to make a fi rst impression.’
‘Fucking eh,’ came an American voice in reply.
Mac checked for cameras, saw a dome protruding from the wall above the side entrance. Looked to the main entrance. Saw a dome there too.
He pointed them out to Paul.
‘If we go through the offi cial entries someone’s going to know about it,’ said Mac.
‘Ideas?’
‘Just the oldest one in the book.’
‘Rough but effective,’ said Paul, keying the mic and asking Sawtell if their fi rst stop might be downstairs in the fuse box room.
‘Found cameras?’ said Sawtell.
‘One over each entrance.’
‘How long you need?’
Paul looked at Mac, who said, ‘Twenty seconds.’
