the three shooters making their way down the cliff to the beach, and fired off a few rounds, hitting one in the leg.
Feeling a knock on his arm, Mac looked where Jim was pointing and saw a large black power boat surging into sight. The size of a twelve-metre power cruiser, it was painted drab black and had a rotating radar dish mounted over the open cockpit. Mac could see it also had a gunner’s pit on the long bow decks holding a Mark 38 machine-gun system – a one-inch naval machine-gun.
‘That a Mark 38?’ asked Mac, feeling nauseous from the gasoline fumes spewing from the car’s shredded fuel tank.
Jim didn’t hear, his attention divided between the sat phone and the shooters as the US Navy power boat leapt across the swell doing about fifty knots.
‘Got a bead?’ asked Jim into the phone. ‘Okay, yeah, we’re getting down,’ he replied as one of the snipers ducked from behind a rock with an RPG on his shoulder. He launched the grenade, a great trail of smoke gushing across the beach as it accelerated towards the power boat.
An unearthly screaming, like a thousand hound-dogs crying, sounded across the water, rising to a shrieking crescendo that had Mac and Jim simultaneously putting their hands to their ears. Transfixed, they watched the Mark 38 bellow fire as it churned out its one-inch bullets at almost three rounds per second.
The RPG disintegrated in a ball of fire, and a glorious silence followed as the Mark 38 was shut down while debris scattered on the beach.
The snipers ran among the rocks, clambering back to the big boulder.
As the snipers made their goal, the awesome firepower focused on the large rock and turned it to rubble as the rounds found their mark. The air shook, the sand vibrated and the sound was incredible – the concussion of such enormous fire-rate shaking Mac’s body.
One of the shooters tried to run from behind the disappearing rock and got caught in the bullet hail, an arm sailing upwards and onto the road and the rest of him vanishing.
The rock now completely obliterated, Mac could see bits of clothing and body parts exploding out of the coastal cliff with the dust and stones from where the rock used to be.
Finally, there was silence again.
‘Guess that’s gunboat diplomacy?’ said Mac, his ears ringing.
‘Nice work, guys,’ said Jim into the sat phone. ‘Can we get a ride?’
They made the north side of Alor in under an hour, the boat coasting along at sixty knots, its turbocharged Cummins diesels singing at a constant pitch.
Sitting under a blanket in his soaked clothes, Mac accepted a coffee from a sailor who – like the officer in charge – was in civvies.
‘Thanks for the help,’ said Mac to the sailor.
‘Thank Mark,’ said the sailor with a smile, nodding at the gun in the bow.
‘That, mate,’ said Mac, ‘is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever! ’
‘Yeah, my brother,’ laughed the sailor. ‘And just so long as the bad guys are feeling that too – know what I’m sayin’?’
An unmarked Black Hawk helo was waiting on the beach when they arrived. It flew them into Denpasar, dropping them at the military annexe of Ngurah Rai, where Jim’s sidekicks had a Voyager van waiting on the tarmac. As Mac was making to get in the van, a white Holden Commodore screeched to a stop beside the van.
Hesitating beside the DIA van, Mac saw two hulking shapes emerge from the Commodore. As they paced towards him, Mac realised one was his old mate and colleague, Garvs. The other was Barry Bray, the leader of the Australian Commonwealth’s I-team, a crew of ex-cops and soldiers who retrieved wayward Commonwealth employees from foreign service.
Garvs showing up with Bray made Mac feel vaguely insulted.
‘Hey, champ,’ said Garvs, big hands resting on his hips as he chewed gum. ‘Time for a chat, yeah?’
Shaking hands with Garvs, Mac greeted Bray with a handshake too. ‘Barry – how’s it going?’
‘Not bad, Macca,’ he replied, grinning. ‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids.’
The ride into town was silent, Mac reading the order that brought his Operation Totem secondment to an end. Handing it back to Garvs in the front seat, Mac looked at the outskirts of Denpasar flashing by, dusty and heat-bleached in the warmth of early afternoon.
‘So, secondment’s over – guess that means Davidson’s left town,’ said Mac.
‘Yep,’ said Garvs, turning to look at Mac. ‘Flew out for Auckland this morning.’
‘APEC?’ asked Mac, talking about the systems and agents that the firm liked to plant at the APEC summits before they began.
‘Yeah – should be fun this year. Got that Integration of Women project, so we might have some of those Mexican and Chilean feminists down there.’
‘Sorry?’ said Mac, missing the point.
‘You know, mate,’ said Garvs, excited. ‘Those Latin American feminists still like sex, mate. It’s a proven fact.’
‘But, with you?’ said Mac, laughing.
‘Well,’ said Garvs, embarrassed as Barry Bray started laughing too, ‘they could do worse.’
‘Could do better, too, mate,’ said Mac.
Garvs turned back to the windscreen, sulking.
Mac sat in the ASIS briefing room, his damp clothes gripping his legs. Marty Atkins sipped his coffee and leaned back, while Garvs sat at Mac’s ten o’clock playing with a pen.
‘So, looks like you’re back in the firm’s camp,’ said Atkins, smiling.
‘Tony leaves and you overturn his secondment, right, Marty?’
‘Wasn’t like that, Macca,’ said Atkins. ‘Just that we have some gigs to get on with.’
‘Like?’ asked Mac.
‘Like this Banda Sea situation. Dutch are testing for gas beds and we don’t like it.’
Sighing, Mac could feel himself being drawn into a meaningless gig. ‘For the final time, Marty – those Dutchies are looking for another Tang Treasure, mate,’ he said, referring to the Arab shipwreck discovered in the Java Sea by a German crew. ‘It’s got nothing to do with gas beds. The Yanks and the Poms have been all over this area and it’s uneconomic.’
‘Well, sometimes we have to get the product for ourselves, right, Macca?’ said Atkins, going for an avuncular tone despite being barely a year older than Mac. ‘Besides, that Totem business was turning into a dead-end, eh?’
‘Totem isn’t a dead-end, Marty,’ said Mac, determined not to let it slip into the past tense.
‘Really, what did you get?’ asked Atkins, quite aware that a debriefing about Totem was DIA’s prerogative, not Mac’s. ‘Besides a whole bunch of US dollars that you haven’t declared yet?’
Mac teetered on the edge of telling Marty Atkins to go fuck himself, but he kept it tight. ‘It’s worse than what I told you in this room a few days ago.’
‘Worse than what?’ asked Atkins, actually enjoying this.
‘Under cover of Operation Extermination, Kopassus could be trying to infect a large swathe of the East Timor population with a fatal disease.’
‘A disease?’ said Atkins, sitting up.
‘A powerful pneumonia, SARS.’
‘And I suppose you have some evidence?’ said Atkins, supercilious.
‘Actually, no, Marty – thanks to you.’
‘What’s that mean?’ asked Atkins, eyes narrowing.
‘Augusto Da Silva was told by Cedar Rail where the Boa file was hidden – when we got there ourselves, the Boa file was gone.’
‘Well, that’s quite a story, Macca,’ chuckled Atkins, encouraging Garvey to join him.
‘It’s the truth is what it is, Marty,’ said Mac, holding back on the burning of Boa in the hope that Atkins would
