Rogue Element

‘Then how would you explain this?’ She pointed to a section of tube that appeared fused to the internals of the turbine. Everything was coated with a film of dirty oil and it was difficult to tell where one part stopped and another began, but the writing was clear enough. ‘What does that say?’ asked Joe again.

‘It’s Indonesian. It says, “secure here”.’

Joe wiped away the film of carbon and oil with the flat of his hand. The section of tube with the writing on it was painted olive drab and had embedded itself in the engine’s tail pipe. Something began to trouble him. There were bits and pieces, fragments that made up a picture, swirling in his mind, trying to take shape. He was standing too close to it, like seeing the dots but not the whole. It didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Joe took a mental step backwards. And then he collapsed, sitting heavily on his backside as if a chair had been whipped unexpectedly from under him.

‘Oh, shit!’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a missile!’

‘What?’ asked Suryei. ‘What did you say?’

Joe didn’t answer. He was sorting things out. He stared at the ground between his feet, his head between bloody, oily hands.

‘Why in God’s name would someone shoot down a passenger plane?’ said Suryei. ‘Joe?’

‘What?’ he asked, lost in his own world. It’s a missile! The Internet connection in the plane. The Indonesian general… Is it possible?

‘Joe, do you hear me?’ she asked.

Joe had frozen, his muscles locked up solid. He didn’t even appear to be breathing.

‘Joe! What’s going on here? Are you okay?’

Could this really be happening? Am I responsible for this? So many people?

‘Suryei… I…’ Joe looked up, horror in his eyes. ‘I think I know what happened.’ His voice was hoarse, constricted. ‘It was… me…’

‘What? What are you saying?’ Suryei sat in front of him, lifting up his head so that she could see his face.

‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘The whole fucking thing.’

‘What? The plane crash?’

‘Yeah. All those people…’

Joe tried to take his mind back to the early hours of Wednesday morning, before the crash, but that wasn’t easy. That world didn’t seem real any more. His existence had become a brutal here-and-now, a life and death struggle that obscured the recent past, making it seem almost as if it was someone else’s.

He closed his eyes. He remembered glancing at the video screen at his elbow. The news… a villager was pulling something out of a well… A town somewhere in West Papua. The memory of it gradually came back stronger, clearer. The man wore a dirty cloth tied around his nose and mouth. A desiccated, ancient woman stood off to one side, tears tracking down the dust on her face. Sobbing children were clutched to their parents in a separate group. Joe recalled pulling the plug from his DVD and jacking into the aircraft’s entertainment system to hear what the story was about.

‘… the separatist violence continues in West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya, in a virtual repeat of East Timor,’ reported the BBC correspondent. ‘In this village, resistance was pointless. The male population was hunted down by local militia, some were hacked to pieces, then thrown down the village well. Some of the younger males were held down and had their teeth pulled by rusty pliers. This woman’s four year old great grandson was just one of the victims, the boy torn from her arms by men she had once called friends from the neighbouring village, who then kicked her for resisting. Their gruesome job done, the marauders melted back into the jungle…’ The vision cut to a high-ranking Indonesian soldier shaking his head. ‘The TNI denies any involvement. More Indonesian troops are due to arrive next week in an effort Jakarta says will help stabilise…’

Joe was surprised by the detail that came back, as if he was watching himself viewing the incident on the video back in first-class. Like all Australians, he’d seen plenty of images of the suffering of the East Timorese, the former twenty-fifth province of Indonesia. He had thought himself immune to them but there was something vividly pathetic about the old lady, standing by the well’s edge, waiting for the body of the little boy to be retrieved. Joe had been deeply affected by it.

Joe hadn’t believed for one moment the Indonesian army’s assertion that they were ignorant of the carnage. He’d heard it all before. The general in the news piece had shiny, sweaty skin, wore old-fashioned Elvis-style sunglasses, and his uniform was so tight that the fabric at his shirt’s buttonholes was scalloping with the strain. Joe took an instant dislike to the man. He wanted to strike a blow, even just a small one, for the old lady and her dead child.

‘I was watching the news in the plane,’ he said, almost whispering. ‘There was a report of a mass grave in West Papua. One of the victims… a four year old child in a well. I wanted to get even, make someone pay. So I hacked into an Indonesian general’s computer, copied a few files and left a virus. Nothing serious.’