Rogue Element Read online

  ‘Sure . . . Hey, what was that thing that came down the tunnel?’ Joe was not keen on meeting another of the animals in the darkness.

  ‘A babirusa.’

  ‘Strange looking thing.’

  ‘Pretty rare.’

  ‘What were those growths on its face?’

  ‘Teeth.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Its canines grow through its snout . . . God, I’m an idiot!’ said Suryei suddenly. ‘That tells us where we are!’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The babirusa is native to Sulawesi.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Part of Indonesia, one of the larger islands.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘I’m a photo-journalist. These days nature stuff, mostly. We’re lucky to have seen one. Wish I’d had my camera.’

  ‘The babirusa probably isn’t feeling too lucky at the moment,’ said Joe, remembering how it had died.

  ‘No, guess not. Anyway, at least we know where we are now. This tunnel was its highway through the jungle. Probably leads to a favourite food or water source. Which reminds me, we’re sweating heaps. We’re going to have to drink three litres each a day at least. If we’re here a while, we’ll need a good, clean supply.’

  Joe was glad she’d cleared up the water consumption question for him, but the thought of being ‘here a while’ filled him with dread.

  Parliament House, Canberra, 0730 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  ‘Come in, you blokes,’ the PM said to Niven, Griffin and Sharpe, who had been waiting outside. ‘I’ve just briefed Hugh Greenway and he’s up to speed.’ The tall, stooped Minister of Defence, nicknamed ‘Lurch’ by the press, nodded at his colleagues as they filed through the door and took their seats in the small auditorium.

  ‘I’ve booked a conference call with Byron Mills, our ambassador in Washington, and I thought it best if we all caught it, to save time and avoid the Chinese whispers.’

  He picked up the handset and pressed a number. ‘Shirl, get Byron on the line, would you, mate?’

  The snow on the television coalesced to become a distinguished-looking, white-haired man.

  ‘G’ day, Byron,’ said the PM.

  ‘Bill, gentlemen,’ began the ambassador in his sonorous baritone. ‘Everyone here?’

  ‘Yep,’ Blight said. ‘We’re it.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ He paused to look down at his notes outside the camera’s field of view. ‘I’ve put our case through the appropriate channels here and, well, we’ve got a problem.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Niven.

  ‘The Americans won’t help us with a satellite.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because basically, they don’t have enough assets to go around. They’re keeping watch over a large part of the earth at the moment – the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Chinese, the Russians, the Korean peninsula, and there’s that unfortunate business going on in East Africa.’

  ‘Terrific,’ Niven said.

  ‘The feeling here is that the plane will turn up anyway before they can re-task a sat and get it on station. The Indonesians say they’re putting a lot of effort into locating it and the Americans believe that. So do we, right?’

  Blight looked at the other men in the room. ‘Yes,’ he said unconvincingly.

  ‘They believe that if the plane crashed in the jungle, the chances of anyone surviving would be next to nil. So . . . look, they’re saying it’s a tragedy, but not one they’re happy to take their eye off other balls to investigate. I reckon they’d probably think differently if terrorists claimed responsibility, and if the prospect of finding people alive was greater, but, well . . .’

  There’d been reluctance to state the chances of survival so emphatically – there was always hope – but there it was: reality. Christ! thought the PM. ‘So where does that leave us, Byron?’ Blight asked, plainly disappointed.

  ‘There is one avenue I’d like to investigate, but I’ll keep that to myself for the moment because it mightn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Fair enough. If something turns up?’

  ‘Sure, get back to you straight away. I’m going to keep at them anyway, Bill. If the plane doesn’t turn up for a couple of days they might change their tune, especially if we’re prepared to do a little horse trading over free-trade issues. Keep you posted.’

  ‘Thanks, Byron.’ The PM’s deflated tone reflected everyone’s disappointment.

  Central Sulawesi, 0730 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  Sergeant Marturak walked towards his men as they appeared at the edge of the jungle. In their camouflage fatigues they were barely silhouettes, shadows on shadows. The corporal made his report quickly and pointed towards the area that had been engulfed by the fireball. He handed his sergeant a plastic bottle found by the creek. Marturak considered his corporal’s view that it had belonged to the man they were hunting. No other wreckage or objects were found in the vicinity, just two very dead men. His men. He unscrewed the top and smelled the contents. Water. He poured it onto the ground before dropping the bottle.

  Marturak didn’t want to report that he was unable to perform to his general’s expectations – that the site was unsecured, that two of his soldiers were dead, and that he was in pursuit of an unknown number of survivors. He decided to abbreviate it to something more innocuous like ‘site unsecured’.

  The operating procedure for this mission was that he would report within two hours of arrival, and give the go-ahead for the experts to come in, clean the area and recover the black boxes – the flight data and flight deck voice recorders. If the site was unsecured then he would have to report every subsequent twelve hours, or until the mission had been accomplished, whichever came first.

  As if on cue, one of his men materialised and produced two metal cases painted a luminous orange, roughly the size of shoeboxes, marked with number sequences and letters. The aircraft’s black boxes must have been exactly where they had been told to search for them because they’d turned up quickly. One of the heavy cases was badly dented. Marturak turned it over. It didn’t appear to have been breached. He congratulated the soldier. Finding the black boxes was something good at least. Marturak told the man to guard them with his life. The soldier saluted, and retreated into the night.

  Back at Maros, Marturak had scoffed at the notion that this operation might last more than a day. He had been given a maximum of three days to resolve the situation – their rations would expire then. Time was crucial on this one. That had been made very clear. He had expected to go in, quickly establish that there were no survivors, then get his men out within a few hours. How many people were likely to have survived a 747 ploughing into the hills? Answer: none. Simple, clean, easy. Marturak hawked up a gob of phlegm from deep in the back of his throat and aimed it at a frog resting on the splintered end of a tree stump. The frog jumped clear just as the spinning oyster plastered its perch.

  He called his men together and laid out a plan. The troops then formed a line abreast, one hundred metres across, and began moving into the jungle. Sergeant Marturak was happy to be leaving the crash site. It smelled disgusting and it was virtually a bio-hazard zone – too much death and too many insects.

  Marturak removed the night vision goggles from his pack, adjusted them to his head and switched on the power source. The NVGs turned the black, shapeless wall of jungle in front of them into clearly visible individual trees and bushes, picked out in various shades of green, the spectrum of visible light human eyes were most sensitive to. His men glowed lime as they moved out of the clearing and into the bush.

  Sydney, 0900 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  News report, ABC radio: ‘The Qantas 747 that crashed in the early hours of this morning has still not been located, despite a massive search. The aircraft, en-route from Sydney to London via Bangkok, was carrying a full complement of passengers. The focus of the search remains the island of Sulawesi, although Indonesian air force authorities ar
e believed to be pushing for a widening of the search to Malaysia and Thailand.

  ‘Experts still refuse to speculate on possible reasons for the crash until the wreckage is found. Qantas has announced that it will not release the passenger manifest until the relatives of all passengers have been located and informed.

  ‘Authorities have become increasingly concerned with the mood of friends and family of the passengers on the doomed flight, who initially gathered at Sydney Airport in a vigil of hope. In the meantime, a hotline has been set up for relatives to contact for further information. The number is 1800 90 . . .’

  Central Sulawesi, 0915 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

  Suryei took the lead. Joe felt a bit uneasy about that. He thought it should have been him out front probing the tunnel, but Suryei just forged ahead and he was too exhausted to argue.

  He’d managed to squeeze out a few more details from the woman, but they’d been given grudgingly. She lived in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne, and she’d had some previous jungle experience. That was as far as he’d managed to get before meeting a wall of silence.

  The going was slow but at least they were making progress. The tunnel walls guided them but it would have been nice to know where. They could be going around in circles for all they knew. It was getting darker by the minute. Occasionally he ran in to Suryei’s backside and she once accidentally kicked him in the face. He sucked in his lip. It was swollen and split.

  His back was now cramped from being doubled over and the skin on his hands was sliced by vegetation impossible to avoid on the tunnel floor. Joe didn’t complain. He’d heard Suryei gasp in pain quite a few times, stop briefly, and then continue, but she wasn’t whining either. Joe imagined her squeezing away the pain of another cut, wincing quietly while she sandwiched her hand under an armpit. She was a cool customer. But for her, Joe knew he’d already be dead.

  Joe’s watch didn’t lie. They hadn’t been in the tunnel long but it seemed like a lifetime. They’d briefly talked about leaving the security of the tunnel and striking off into the jungle, but his enthusiasm for this had been one-sided.

  ‘Why?’ Suryei asked. ‘Neither of us has a compass. There are no landmarks to navigate by. We can’t see any stars because of the cloud. The moon’s not up yet. And we can’t move nearly as freely through the undergrowth, as you’ve already discovered. And believe it or not, this tunnel is probably the safest way to get around. As I said earlier, it’s like a freeway. The other, smaller animals know that too. They stay away.’

  The question on Joe’s lips slipped out before he could stop it. ‘So what do we do then?’ he whispered between short, hoarse breaths. He heard her stop just in time to avoid burying his head in her rear yet again.

  ‘Jesus, how would I know? I’m just going in the opposite direction to the people with guns.’ Joe was worried that they were being herded, and Suryei had just confirmed it.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered, sucking in wet oxygen. ‘You said earlier you didn’t really know where this was taking us. We could be heading back to the plane for all we know. We could just crawl right into those bastards.’ In the almost complete darkness he could make out her shape, head bent, slumped against the side wall of the tunnel. But she was listening, so he continued. ‘Also, just a guess, but I’d say those soldiers are pretty relaxed in the bush.’ Joe took a breath. He felt like he was about to wade into deep, freezing water. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I once reviewed a computer game called Nam. The only way to evade the bad guys was to stay off the trails and yet here we are, heading down jungle main street.’

  Silence.

  Joe pressed on. Suryei was at least listening, keeping an open mind, even if he was talking about tactics featured in a computer game. ‘If you stuck to the trails you’d always lose because there’d be ambushes and booby traps set by the enemy. The point was the enemy expected you to take the easy route, the trails. The only way to win was to stay off them and move through the untracked jungle.’

  There was an unexpected pause. Joe wasn’t sure whether she was about to laugh at him or just leave him behind. Her eventual response took him by surprise. ‘Okay, I accept that,’ she said quietly, intensely. ‘So what do you think we should do?’

  Joe thought, the now almost complete darkness hiding his insecurity. ‘We should have something to eat and drink.’ He rummaged through the rucksack and fetched out the trays of aeroplane food and two bottles of water. His fingers told him there were only three full bottles left amongst the empties. He thought he had six full bottles altogether. Have I dropped one somewhere? He hoped he’d made a mistake counting them in the first place. Joe handed her a tray and one of the bottles. ‘And I don’t know about you, but the other thing I need is sleep. I haven’t slept in over thirty-six hours. Just an hour will do – I don’t usually sleep much anyway.’ He took a bite out of a stale ham and cheese sandwich with the crust cut off. ‘Ugh,’ he said, ‘economy!’

  ‘Sure, no problem. We can just find a nice hotel. I’d like a swim and room service,’ she suggested sarcastically through a mouthful of sandwich.

  Joe knew it sounded stupid. They were being hunted like animals and his big idea was to have a snooze. But the reality was that they were both physically and mentally exhausted.

  ‘I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I’m not thinking about anything other than putting one hand in front of the other here. If we’ve got any chance of getting out of this alive, we’ll need our wits about us. Simple as that.’ Joe’s conviction that he was right grew with every word. Sleep wasn’t a luxury, it was mandatory.

  Suryei surprised him. ‘Okay, but only if you let me choose the hotel.’

  ‘Fine,’ he whispered. ‘After you.’ Then he paused while his tired mind ordered his thoughts. ‘Suryei, any idea what sort of people we’re up against?’

  ‘Not really. All I know is what I learned when I was in East Timor.’

  ‘What, taking wildlife shots?’

  ‘No, back then I was doing hard news, covering the Indonesian military’s handover after the elections in ’99,’ she said quietly. The tunnel reached a small clearing in the bush. She poked her head out tentatively and looked around. There was plenty of chirping from crickets and frogs – a good sign. She felt Joe bump into her. Again.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. Suryei crawled out of the tunnel and stood in the small clearing, stretching, massaging the cramp out of the small of her back with her hands. Joe stood beside her quietly and did the same. They both then crouched, making themselves as small as possible.

  ‘You said you were in East Timor,’ Joe said after a minute of silence. ‘Was it as terrible as the papers reported?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘I never really understood why. I mean, the place was a thorn in Indonesia’s side from the beginning, wasn’t it? Surely they’d have been pleased to be jack of it?’

  Suryei was reluctant to talk. She wanted to save her breath, use it to get away from these people as fast as she could. But at the same time, talking helped them both imagine they were some place a long way from their current nightmare. ‘Back home in Australia, the media went on about how giving up East Timor offended the pride of the TNI, the Indonesian army. That was often suggested as the reason behind the army’s willingness to engage in violence and intimidation, and for arming and inciting the militias to do the same.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’

  Suryei was remembering now too, and vividly. ‘The real motive for the death and destruction in East Timor was financial. There are 200 000 soldiers on the TNI’s books but Indonesia can’t afford that. They pay the soldiers a pittance. So the men are encouraged to augment what little the government pays them.’

  ‘Shoot people in the morning, then sell oranges and lemons to the survivors in the afternoon?’ Joe said.

  ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously then –’

  ‘Sorry. But that’s exactly what you’re saying, isn’t it?’

  Suryei wav
ed her hand dismissively in the darkness. ‘I guess so, if you want to be flippant about it. In the light of that, what happened in East Timor made perfect sense. The army was entrenched in the economy of East Timor, from the bottom up and the top down. There was no way the TNI was ever going to happily turn its back and walk away from the businesses it had built up there over the previous twenty-five years. Once Indonesia lost control of East Timor – in other words, once the army gave up control of the economy of East Timor – all the hard work put in since the invasion in 1975 was for nothing.’

  ‘Jesus, no wonder it got so nasty.’

  ‘The TNI ends up controlling everything. And they drive tanks, so very few local communities argue,’ Suryei said, summarising.

  ‘Sounds like a hell of a recipe for graft and corruption. Are they good soldiers despite all that?’

  Suryei put her hand on Joe’s arm and squeezed gently. He stopped talking. The night creatures had suddenly fallen silent. Joe and Suryei listened hard, trying to discern the reason for the sudden stillness. Then, just as mysteriously, the night chorus chirped up again. After a while, Joe prompted, ‘The Indonesian soldiers?’

  ‘It depends who you ask, and on the unit you’re referring to, and, for that matter, on what the government has sent them to do,’ said Suryei. ‘But, as individuals, there are good soldiers and bad ones, just as there are good people and bad people everywhere and in every walk of life.’

  Suryei paused. ‘There are some pretty awful things going on in Indonesia – Ambon, Aceh, Kalimantan and West Papua. We don’t hear about a lot of it in Australia.’

  ‘Why not, do you think?’

  ‘Your average Australian isn’t interested, for one thing, and for another, Canberra is reluctant to piss Jakarta off. I reckon the relationship between our two countries is shakier than they let on.’

  Suryei suddenly felt nervous and vulnerable standing out in the open having a chat. Perhaps it was the subject matter. ‘Come on. If we’re going to get some rest, we’d better get moving. There are still a few hours left before the moon comes up and I think we should be hunkered down before it does.’