Rogue Element

Getting his mind back into gear took a couple of minutes but the shock of capture passed as he began assessing the situation, sifting through options. He knew he had more men out there in the bush. They would have heard the shooting. They had a radio, and they were in Indonesia. It was their home. He needed time to turn it around on these invaders. These… Australians (he mentally spat the word). In the meantime, he had to stay alive, so he prayed for mercy and tried to squeeze tears out of his eyes.

Wilkes couldn’t speak Bahasa, but he didn’t need to. The man was obviously begging for his life. Wilkes was not a cold-blooded killer. He had not been specifically ordered to slot this man. But he also had absolutely no idea what to do with him. Slotting him seemed his only option. Perhaps an alternative would present itself.

Coombs came up to Wilkes and revealed the contents of a rucksack belonging to one of the dead Indonesian soldiers. ‘Looks like black boxes to me, boss. From the plane.’

That was a find. The people back home would be interested in those, big time.

Marturak walked into the small clearing pushed in front of his captors, head bowed and hands behind his back. The SAS soldiers filed in behind him. Beck and Littlemore stood to meet the advancing party, as did Suryei, while Joe stayed on his back, hypnotised by the canopy swaying high overhead. Marturak saw more of his men laid out next to each other on the ground, their shirts pulled over their heads to hide the gore from view. It took every ounce of willpower not to scream with rage at the sight of his men slaughtered by these fucking Australian pigs. He tried not to look at the bodies. It was important to keep intact the cloak of meekness he’d managed to pull over himself.

Then the woman, one of the survivors he’d failed to hunt down, came up to him and spat in his face and that was the end of his composure. He staggered forward in an attempt to shoulder-charge her, but having his hands tied behind his back upset his balance. Marturak tripped and ploughed head first into the ground, dirt filling his mouth. He struggled to get his feet under his body until a hand grabbed his shirt firmly by the collar and hauled him up.

The woman stared at him defiantly. She appeared to be Indonesian. This was one of the people who’d made him and his men look stupid. Her companion was on the ground, wounded by the look of him. Good.

Suryei feared this man. He’d come to represent for her all the senseless brutality of a nation, the torment of East Timor — the graves, so much destruction. He had pursued them through the jungle in order to kill them. She looked at the bodies being lined up on the ground, and thought about the men who probably lay dead beyond her view in the jungle. It struck Suryei that her and Joe’s survival was nothing more than sheer good luck. The odds of living through the plane crash had been staggering, but then there was the jungle and this bunch of killers to contend with. The soldier didn’t even know her. The soldier’s hate was mindless. He inhabited a brutal world she wanted no part of. With that fresh realisation, she turned her back on the invective streaming from Marturak’s mouth and quietly sat beside Joe.

There were more Indonesian soldiers out there somewhere. Wilkes glanced at his watch. Just on forty-nine minutes till extraction. It would take them a good thirty-five minutes to reach the RV — the place where the felled hardwood had torn a huge gash in the canopy, large enough for the V22 to drop in and lift them out. Better to take it slow and careful. It was time to move. Now. Any Kopassus within cooee would have been drawn to the gunfire at a run.

‘Stu, you ready?’ he asked.

‘When you are, boss.’

‘How about Joe there?’ he said, nodding at Joe, who was staring up at the canopy, smiling.

‘Having a wonderful time, by the looks of things. He’ll be right.’

‘Okay, fuck-knuckles, let’s blow,’ said Wilkes quietly into his boom mike. ‘Stu, stay with the civilians. James, you’ve done bugger-all on this job. Make yourself useful and take the point. Get your machete out and cut us a path. Gary, you and Coombsy ranger for us. Mac, you take the rear. If anyone takes the easy way down our trail, let them know they’re making a big mistake. We don’t want any surprises and we’ve still got quite a few unfriendlies out there.’ Wilkes had no idea where the Indons would be coming from, but if they came across an obvious path cleared through the jungle, they just might follow it. That would be handy, because knowing where the Indonesians were would make dealing with them that much easier.

‘No wukkas, boss,’ said Mac Robson, checking the ammo box on his Minimi and moving off at the trot.

‘What do we do with blubber-mouth here?’ asked Ellis, gesturing at the Indonesian prisoner.