‘Okay,’ nodded the guerrilla. ‘But standing there, taking their photo – that was the best you could do?’
The helos’ thromping was coming closer and Mac could see the lights of four of the aircraft heading their way.
‘Could have done much better than that, Joao,’ agreed Mac.
Joao was quiet, thinking, and Mac decided to try another tack. ‘Well, that’s me, mate – what are your guys doing here?’
Joao’s face darkened. ‘Some of the southcoast villages have been losing people – they’ve been disappearing. That camp at Memo was a dead-end, right, but then we got word that they were also being taken here.’
Mac waited, sensing he shouldn’t push any further.
‘You’ve put me in a position,’ snarled Joao. ‘I’ve got an Aussie spy and Aussie soldiers working undercover in the jungle, and by morning half of Falintil is going to be saying that you stood by and took photos of genocide – of our people!’
‘Look, Joao -’
‘And these same people kidnapped a couple of local boys, faked their deaths, made their families think they’d gone.’
‘Okay, so -’
‘And by the time that story has gone around the island, they’re going to be asking one question.’
‘Joao -’
‘They gonna say, Why the priest let those Aussies go? Why they not pig-food? ’
‘Okay, mate,’ said Mac. ‘But let the soldiers go, okay? They’re just an escort and they wanted to open those doors, let the prisoners go free.’
‘Really?’ said Joao.
‘Yes, and I argued it would compromise all of us – no way the Indonesians would allow those people to tell the world what happened. They’d be caught and shot.’
Joao stood silently as the helos flared over the Lombok buildings. Mac could see he was tired and angry. Looking Mac in the eye, Joao stepped forward and held his Browning to Mac’s forehead. Closing his eyes, Mac prepared for death as he decided to try one final option.
‘Does Falintil need money?’ asked Mac, opening one eye. ‘US dollars, cash, tax-free?’
‘US dollars?’ asked Joao, pulling the gun’s muzzle away from Mac’s skin.
‘One hundred thousand now – could be as much as two million later,’ said Mac as he exhaled.
Joao made a face that said Don’t manipulate me you arrogant Australian prick. Lack of funds was always a big issue for Falintil, especially if independence should win the day in the East Timor ballot. It was one thing to have an independent new nation, but without a financial base the Falintil freedom fighters would lose the subsequent political battle to the returning bankers, industrialists and powerful families – all the elites who cleared out in 1975.
‘And let me guess, Mr Richard – you show me how to get this money, and you get to live, right?’
‘Could be a plan,’ said Mac, smiling thinly.
‘Just a pity more Timorese don’t have that kind of cash floating around, eh Mr Richard? Wouldn’t have to sit in a cage, being fed a disease.’
‘Falintil’s going to need cash for East Timor’s new nationhood,’ said Mac, trying not to seem cocky. ‘You don’t win the peace – you buy it.’
‘You think I needed a privileged white man to tell me that?’ asked Joao, shouldering Mac out of the way as he left.
Sitting with the commandos, Mac tried to send his photos while Toolie rechecked Didge’s wound. At the base of the hill, fighting still raged, most of it now underground.
‘At least one transmission is working,’ said Robbo, pointing at the American sat phone which Mac was trying to connect to the Nikon.
‘It was working,’ said Mac, failing to connect the data cable to the mangled jack in the camera. ‘Teach me to go dropping the damn thing on a concrete floor.’
‘So what did the Falintil bloke say?’ asked Robbo, crouching.
‘You mean after he told me he was going to execute me for not letting those people go?’ said Mac, putting the data cable and camera into his rucksack.
‘Yeah,’ said Robbo, with an edge.
‘He decided that two million US dollars into Falintil’s pocket was a good exchange for our lives,’ said Mac, not mentioning that he also wanted the mule line of money heisted to further break the connection between North Korea and the Indonesian military. ‘Rodrigo and Yohannes are going to be helpful on that score.’
‘So he’s out of our hair?’ said Robbo, looking suspicious.
‘Don’t know for certain,’ said Mac truthfully. ‘But he knows we have business in Maliana, and I’m pretty sure his crew will leave us alone.’
‘So, we’re still going in? To Maliana?’ said Robbo.
‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘I’m thinking this mess is as good a distraction as we could have hoped for.’
‘In that case, we’d better move now,’ said Robbo, standing. ‘By the way, about before – I know you don’t dream up these operations, but I need warning -’
‘Would it make the boys any happier?’ asked Mac.
‘Not happier, mate, but you holding back reflects badly on me.’
‘Can you imagine tabbing all the way across Timor when the boys know that the target is a facility that grows a deadly disease?’ said Mac, drinking water. ‘Next thing you know, you have soldiers drawing straws and getting all political with each other, see who gets to suit up and who doesn’t, right?’
Robbo nodded, conceding the truth of what Mac was saying. In general, soldiers did not like going into the environment that existed at Lombok, regardless of their training.
‘I needed to be down there with the best, not with the guy who got the short straw or who’s out of favour with Robbo,’ said Mac. ‘Maybe even the person who was taking a piss when the warning order was made.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Robbo.
‘You simply gave me the best, and we did the gig, mate,’ said Mac, checking his rucksack. ‘I’ll buy you a beer if we nail it – but you know what, Robbo?’
‘What?’
‘I’d do it the same way again,’ said Mac.
Spirits lifted among the troop when Beast and Johnno reappeared, having been cut off from the base by the gunfight. As they regrouped and checked their gear, Robbo told them that the time to hit the Kopassus compound was now, while the distraction at Lombok was active.
As they walked through the darkness, tension high, Mac went over the recent events, trying to piece them together. The Americans at DIA had briefed Mac on the possibility of a secret facility underground at Lombok but, having found it, he wasn’t sure that Lee Wa Dae and Ishy Haryono were making nightclub drugs for Australia and Japan. He’d never heard of a drug lord using inhalation chambers – that sort of terminology was associated with vaccine testing on animals. What had Haryono got himself into at Lombok, wondered Mac. It was either illegal vaccine testing or it was bioweapons. And the scientists packing up to leave? Had they succeeded or failed in their research?
There was one thing that niggled at Mac. The people still alive in one bank of inhalation chambers were all Portuguese and mestizo – straight-haired East Timorese. The bodies that Mac saw loaded onto that Hino truck came from the other bank of inhalation chambers, and they all seemed to have been Maubere – the native Melanesians of East Timor. It was probably nothing, thought Mac.
At a little after 9.30 they entered the farm belt that surrounded Maliana.
Didge halted at a ridge and looked down. ‘That’s it, boss,’ he said, pointing.
Stepping up, Robbo peered through his field-glasses at a large compound with a main group of buildings next to a smaller compound of buildings – the Kopassus camp.
‘Looks quiet,’ whispered Robbo, handing the glasses to Mac. ‘And I never trust quiet. Check the main gate – I
