‘Neptune’s hot,’ said Jim to Mac and Bongo, taking his seat and yelling over the engines. ‘But it’s where we’ll find Haryono – we’ll deplane in the adjacent valley, hike back over. Copy?’
Mac and Bongo nodded.
‘Last chance for anyone to get off,’ said Jim as the loadmaster slid home the side door and the revs came up. ‘All I can offer is a damaged career and a lifelong feud with Kopassus. But it might be fun.’
‘Never much liked Indonesia anyhow,’ said Bongo, staring out of his wraparound sunnies.
Smiling and giving thumbs-up, Mac resigned himself to a course of action that owed more to the heart than the mind. He crossed himself briefly, watched Bongo do the same, and then the Hawk was climbing into the clear skies above Alor and their hands were reaching into the gun bags.
The pillars of smoke were flattened over the pale-green hills of East Timor as they chugged into the valley south of Neptune airfield. It looked as though half the province was on fire. Taking turns with Jim’s field-glasses, they saw Indonesian Huey helicopters in the distance and small spotter planes, but no sign of the Singapore- registered Black Hawks carrying spray booms on their undercarriage.
‘Too much breeze?’ shouted Mac, handing the binos to Jim. ‘It’ll be sundown in a couple of hours – we may have a chance to stop this tonight.’
The sat phone rang and Jim held it to his ear, covering the other ear with his cupped hand.
‘Yep?’ said Jim, and then he shook a finger at Tommy, who pulled the laptop from his backpack and opened it.
‘Okay,’ yelled Jim into the phone. ‘I’ll put him on.’
Handing the sat phone to Tommy, who started typing as he hooked it under his chin, Jim smiled at Mac.
‘Thank Christ for the privacy-invading capacity of the US intelligence community,’ he said.
‘What have we got?’ yelled Mac.
‘NSA code-breakers have run the account numbers and name on Simon’s trust account at the Koryo Bank, and they’ve got us in. We now control the money.’
Bongo waited until Tommy had finished with the sat phone, then tried Joao again.
‘No luck,’ he said, shrugging at Mac.
‘Try again,’ said Mac, as the helo pushed on.
Mac wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to stop Operasi Boa. There were only four of them, they would be on foot, in an army base and surrounded by Kopassus special forces. They had to have something up the sleeve, and given that the entire Lombok-Korean-Simon consortium seemed to be about money, he wanted to lever the situation with the moolah.
‘We got company!’ said Jim, eyes now glued to the field-glasses. ‘F-16s, at our nine o’clock.’
Squinting out the window in the port-side door, Mac saw two blue-grey jet fighters streaking low across the sky, about fifteen kilometres north.
‘They interested?’ asked Mac.
Crouching forward, Jim leaned into the cockpit and had a shouted conversation with the pilot before pushing back to sit beside Mac.
‘We just got a “friend or foe” challenge,’ said Jim, bringing the glasses back to his face and peering out the window. ‘Might be time to touch down.’
The co-pilot’s visored face appeared and Jim gave thumbs-up.
‘Shit,’ said Jim, as the helo descended.
‘Better down there than up here,’ shouted Bongo, zipping his gun bag and checking his M4 for load and safety.
The Black Hawk dropped to the tree line as the F-16s banked and turned like a couple of blue sharks.
As the Hawk eased to a clearing in the jungle, the four of them leapt to the forest floor and ran for cover. As fast as it had descended the helo was back in the air, climbing and banking away.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jim, and Bongo moved to point, leading the group down to a small river.
A moment later the whooshing scream of two fighter jets roared over them, driving the birds and monkeys crazy.
Mac clung to a rock face, now sweating in the jungle humidity, and looked skywards as the roar faded.
‘The rules of travelling with me in the jungle,’ said Bongo, addressing the group but scanning the environment. ‘Don’t speak, don’t smoke, obey instructions, okay? It might be the difference between living and dying.’
Without waiting for the reply, Bongo hefted his gun bag’s hand-grips over both shoulders and swung the M4’s strap over his neck.
‘I’ll walk point, then comes Jim and then Tommy,’ said Bongo. ‘McQueen, you can sweep, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Jim, who Mac had noticed was limping. ‘But let’s get it straight, for when we get to Neptune.’
‘Sure,’ said Bongo, looking around.
‘The priority is Simon – we have to snatch him, and I’d rather have him alive.’
‘This is no time for Pentagon politics,’ said Bongo, chewing gum.
‘Not politics, buddy,’ said Jim, lowering his voice. ‘If we can root out Simon, debrief him somewhere, maybe we shut down an entire network.’
‘Mate, the priority has to be Boa,’ said Mac. ‘Let’s stop the spraying, then worry about the network – I agree with Bongo, this isn’t the time for damage control at the Pentagon.’
‘I have to insist,’ said Jim. ‘Sorry guys, but this operation is DIA.’
‘Actually,’ said Bongo, his voice a monotone, ‘when I take a bunch of white boys through the jungle, it’s a Bongo operation.’
‘Okay,’ said Jim. ‘But I -’
‘And by the way, I’m employed by McQueen. And this dude, Simon, he shot me, right? So he comes into the open, he’ll probably have to drop.’
‘Okay, Bongo,’ said Jim, carefully. ‘It’s just that Simon seems to be running Operasi Boa, and if we shoot him, and the money strategy doesn’t work, how do we call it off?’
‘Let’s hope the Simon dude doesn’t want to shoot it out,’ said Bongo, as he turned to go. ‘’Cos that won’t work for anyone, right?’
It was 7.12 pm, just after dusk, when they reached the ridge that looked over the airfield renamed Neptune. Floodlights illuminated the admin section at the east end of the dusty lime runway, and an armada of unmarked helos with large spray booms underneath were lined up in front of the hangars. Some of the soldiers moving towards a long wooden building wore the red beret of Kopassus – Indonesian special forces. But most did not.
‘Two men on the gate,’ said Bongo. ‘And there’s a regiment stationed here and judging by their flag…’ Taking Jim’s field-glasses, Bongo took another look at the dark flags on the parade-ground pole. ‘Two regiments in the barracks,’ said Bongo, a smile on his face. ‘Kopassus and the 1635.’
‘Does that work for us?’ asked Jim, wanting his binos back.
‘Well, from what McQueen tells me, Kopassus is running Operasi Boa, which is a bad thing.’
‘And the 1635?’ asked Jim.
‘That could be good,’ said Bongo, handing back the field-glasses. ‘They’re the local regiment.’
‘Where does Haryono stay?’ asked Jim.
‘See that main administration building?’ asked Mac. ‘The officers’ quarters sit right behind it, with their own guard. Simon will be there, and so will Amir Sudarto – maybe Benni too.’
The sat phone trilled and Jim picked up. ‘For you, Bongo,’ he said, handing it over.
‘Yep?’ said Bongo, and then clicked his fingers at Tommy, who opened the laptop and started typing as Bongo mumbled in his ear.
‘You thought there’d be some mercenaries?’ said Jim to Mac.
‘Those helos belong to a mob called Shareholder Services, Pik Berger’s crew,’ said Mac. ‘They’re very pro – Saffas and Aussies, mostly. But they’re also contractors, so with any luck they won’t fight.’
Mac and Jim swapped a look and then hammered out a plan: infiltrate the Neptune camp, hold Simon and Haryono, and coerce them to shut down the operation.
Signing off on the phone call, Bongo picked up the conversation. ‘We’ll need Haryono as a hostage. No offence, but an American won’t count for Kopassus.’
