and trucking companies and the extent to which they were really Saddam’s corporate fronts. John and Mac had become friends, especially when they worked out that their fathers had been in the Vietnam War together.
John brewed tea and they chatted about the old days. As they relaxed, a very large middle-aged Maori man walked into the offi ce and looked through Mac like he was a pane of glass.
‘Dad, this is Alan McQueen,’ said Johnny.
The big man put his paw out, his eyes steady on Mac’s. ‘You Frank’s boy?’
Mac nodded, shook the man’s hand. ‘Sure am.’
‘Name’s Tom, but my friends call me Huck.’
‘People call me Macca.’
‘So Macca – what’s up?’ asked Tom, as he sat behind his desk.
Mac spelled it out as best he could. There was an old airfi eld somewhere inland from Binjai but before the actual Sumatran highlands.
‘The Palau fi eld,’ said Tom, with a nod. ‘What are we doing up there?’
‘Just having a nosey-poke.’
Tom looked at his son. Johnny raised his eyebrows slightly, and Tom looked back at Mac. ‘So let’s go.’
They got to the airfi eld at half past two, the red Sunshine Tours LandCruiser bursting out of the dimness of a Sumatran jungle track and onto an open space that was almost a mile long. It ran north-south and, as they drove across it towards some dilapidated buildings on the far side, Mac realised they were driving on slabs of concrete.
‘Japs built this in ‘41 and ‘42,’ said Tom. ‘There’re fi elds like this all over Sumatra and Java – they were supposed to form a defence of the new territories. Guess it didn’t work.’
The area was huge and Mac was quietly amazed at such a piece of infrastructure going to waste. ‘So it’s not used – I mean for anything ?’
Tom chuckled. ‘Mate, Sumatra has a pretty basic economy. If you can’t grow rice on it, fi sh in it, or graze livestock on it, then it’s useless, right?’
Mac wasn’t sure what he was looking for but there’d been something odd about the night and morning’s events. The Indonesian military had deterred a plane coming in to exfi ltrate the Hassan-Samir team, but as far as Mac could gauge, the Hassan-Samir team seemed to be doubling back. Maybe they’d left something at the airfi eld, something worth going back for, worth killing for.
They stopped in front of the old buildings and Johnny pulled a couple of M16 assault rifl es from the luggage compartment of the Cruiser. Johnny was a slightly smaller, more athletic version of his father, about six-one, one hundred and ten kilos, very built and yet strangely careful on his feet – the one unifying hallmark of special forces operators.
They started with the main building, a medium-sized Quonset-style hangar. Some of the curved iron roofi ng had fallen in under the weight of vines and creepers over the years, but the frame was intact. Inside, it was fi lled with foliage and clearly no one had been in there for years.
The next building was a two-storey wooden barracks that sagged in the middle. Johnny crouched down at the entrance and inspected it for pressure pads, trip wires, hooks and any other booby traps. There wasn’t much in the barracks either except vines and the smell of bird shit.
They came out into the heat of the afternoon and Mac regretted having worn his civvie clothes. He was already sweating through them heavily.
‘Seeing anything, Mac?’ asked Tom.
Shaking his head, Mac admitted there wasn’t much to see but now he was smelling something. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Burnt wood,’ said Johnny. ‘This way.’
They walked north along the edges of the runway, the wreck of a once-operational military air base now lost to the jungle. There were water towers, fuel storage tanks, an ablutions block and assorted dilapidated buildings which Mac guessed were the offi cers’ club, air-traffi c control tower and chow sheds. Halfway up the side of the runway, between other rundown structures, was a patch of scorched, still-smoking ground about twenty metres square. It was freshly burned, whatever it had been, and amidst the heat and tendrils of blue smoke Mac caught a distinct whiff of gasoline.
Johnny got them to stand back as he inspected the place for booby traps and IEDs. After giving the ‘clear’ sign, they moved into the area.
Apart from a few struts and beams that were still recognisable, the rest had been burned to the ground. Mac’s mind was going through all the possibilities but he couldn’t think what the Hassan team would fi nd so important that they would risk capture to circle back and do this. The fi re must have been set no more than two hours ago, judging by the smell and lingering heat of it.
‘Want to search it?’ asked Johnny, already scanning.
‘Just looking for anything out of the pattern,’ said Mac.
They fanned out and walked back and forth over the fi re ground.
It was still hot and there was nothing to see. Mac was about to fl ag it away when he saw Tom and Johnny conferring.
‘There’s a steel door in the ashes at the back,’ said Tom, turning to Mac. ‘Might be worth a look.’
Mac and Johnny pulled off their tops and put them on either side of the door that was lying fl at in the ashes, then lifted it away. The door must have been one of the fi rst parts of the building to drop, suggesting it had been on or near the seat of the fi re. It had fallen on some papers, the destruction of which was probably one of the purposes of the blaze. Mac imagined a bunch of soldiers in a rush, not knowing what to take or leave, so they’d just doused the place in petrol and thrown a match on it.
A small pile of A4 sheets had survived the fi re with some blackening. Mac picked up what looked like scientifi c papers: some in Arabic, others in English. It didn’t mean much to him but he rolled them carefully and was about to put them in his back pocket when he saw a handwritten note in blue ballpoint just below the burn-line on one of the pieces of paper.
Mac inspected it: the scrawl looked as if it said N W. He showed the other two. Was it just referring to north-west or did N W mean something special in Sumatra? Johnny and Tom didn’t think so, but said they’d ask around.
They walked the rest of the runway perimeter until they were back at the LandCruiser. Johnny lined himself up at the north end of the runway, knelt down, and by looking down the weeds and grasses that had grown through the concrete over the years determined that no aircraft had recently landed on this fi eld.
They left just after four o’clock and Mac asked how long before they were in cellular range; he wanted to speak with Joe again and Viktor would be calling back.
Moving back into the green tube of the track, Mac felt a little sheepish about coming so far out on a whim for nothing. Johnny drove and his father opened a sports bag, doling out sandwiches and small local oranges that were almost red.
Mac knew from his experience with his own father to steer clear of war-talk with Tom. He and Johnny wanted to know what their fathers had done in Vietnam but Johnny had confi rmed that, like Frank, Tom got annoyed when asked. Very annoyed. So they spoke about the guiding business and the intensity of the industry. When the gold and gem merchants made their buying trips into some very dangerous places they needed hired muscle and Sunshine provided that.
‘You know, these guys are middle-aged dudes, grand-daddies.
They’re totally hard-case,’ laughed Johnny. ‘I thought some of my old regiment mates were tough, but the merchants…’ He whistled low, shaking his head. ‘They trust no one and we’re taking them into places where there is no law. Pakistan’s north-west, Hindu Kush, inland Kalimantan – no places for a jeweller, mate, but they still go, eh Dad?’
Tom grimaced. ‘Yeah, they’re crazy but at least they know where there’s risk. Some of these oil guys we escort around Sumatra have no idea what’s out there; no concept of a teenage bandit who’d kill for a watch.’
Coming around a tight corner, there were two young boys walking on the road, carrying a jungle pig between them. Johnny swerved to avoid them, the LandCruiser slid to the other side of the track and, before he could correct it, the heavy vehicle had dropped into the rocky culvert and come to a smashing halt.
It took fi fty-fi ve minutes to get the stricken Cruiser out of the ditch and Mac could feel his momentum
