Rogue Element

It was Elizabeth’s job to get close to high-placed military figures, but she’d never expected to land one of the biggest fishes of all. The restaurant she waited at was known to Australian intelligence as one of the haunts of TNI officers. It was also known that the owner was closely related to General Suluang. It had been surprisingly easy to gain employment there, and to catch the general’s eye, and that worried her. Perhaps she’d been the person who’d been set up. No, that was unlikely, she thought, dismissing her suspicions. Very few restaurateurs would turn away such an attractive potential employee. And Suluang was a known ladies’ man. She hadn’t slept with him that first night, or the second or third — he would have thought her a slut. But she’d tantalised him enough to be certain he’d come back.

Elizabeth checked through the room once more, satisfying herself that nothing had been left behind. She then made her way to the lift. Suluang had turned out to be a difficult customer. On military matters, he was a model of discretion. She was angry that her efforts had gone unrewarded, gleaning precisely nothing of interest from Suluang. When the news came through that he was possibly responsible for the disappearance of the Qantas plane, Elizabeth felt she’d been ripped off. Suluang could have been a motor mechanic or an usher at the local cinema for all the worthwhile intelligence he’d divulged.

Elizabeth walked past a couple of hotel guests, a Japanese couple. She didn’t notice the man’s eyes grow large as they devoured her.

Suluang was a good fuck, but not a good talker. For him, women were either sex objects or servants. The assignment was beginning to frustrate her. And then yesterday, she’d received a drop in her etray. Up till now, interest in him back home had been routine. But now he was suddenly big news.

She replayed the previous twelve hours in her mind. He’d been distracted in their lovemaking and he hadn’t slept much, leaving for the barracks early in the morning. As usual, he’d deflected her questions, preferring to talk about the quality of her skin or the shine of her hair. Bloody annoying.

Elizabeth swept past the front desk in the foyer, the morning light making her thin cotton dress vaguely transparent. She had to hurry. She fingered the A4-size envelope, reassuring herself that she hadn’t left it back in the room. The concierge watched her walk through the revolving glass door out into the hot grit of another Jakarta morning and noted that she had no luggage. Whore, he thought, and unconsciously licked his lips as the sun outlined her long straight legs.

Timor Sea, 0605 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

One of the V22’s enormous propellers whirled overhead, hot gases exhausting onto the baking steel deck from the 6100 horsepower Allison turboshafts. Its identical partner on the opposite wingtip began to turn slowly. The AV-8 pilots were back in the saddle, helmets on and heads down, going through their pre-flight checks.

The operation now had an audience. The unusual sight of what were patently foreign special ops troops milling about on deck, fully camouflaged and bristling with firepower, had attracted spectators. The fact that they were about to leave in the United States Marines’ newest toy to an exotic and obviously troubled place fired the collective imagination. The attention made Wilkes uncomfortable. The SAS preferred anonymity.

The LM appeared on the ramp at the back of the V22 and waved the troops in. The Australians shouldered their heavy packs and weapons and, bending forward under the load, walked out of the tropical sun and into the shade of the aircraft’s belly.

Captain McBride put his mouth close to Wilkes’s ear and shouted above the jet whine, ‘We’re set up to fast-rope you in.’ Wilkes nodded his understanding. Where they were going, there were no open grassy hills for the V22 to land on. Most likely they would put down over the treetops. They would have to abseil off the back of the aircraft’s loading ramp, which could be lowered in flight, down into the canopy and the unscouted terrain below it. It was a dangerous way to deploy, but the SAS trained for it. All in a day’s work. It was best, however, to get all the ropes organised now, beforehand. There might, for example, be a firefight going on in the drop zone that required their immediate attention and it would not do to fiddle around in the confined space of the aircraft’s interior at the last minute, organising ropes with bullets flying about.

Inside the V22 there was significantly more room than in the Black Hawk. The LM showed them where to stow and secure their packs and weapons and directed them to the rows of surprisingly comfortable seats, which reminded Wilkes more of a commercial aeroplane than a military one. Now this is luxury. By comparison, the seats in a Herc, their usual mode of transport, were crude benches running down both sides of the aircraft’s fuselage.