Rogue Element

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 are 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.