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Brognola nodded, adding, “Or maybe the ambush is just the beginning.”
2
Banda Aceh, Indonesia
“Of course we had nothing to do with it!” Noordin Zailik snapped into his speakerphone. The provincial governor, an obese man in his late fifties with dyed black hair, leaned forward in his chair and slammed his fist hard on a large oak desk where the phone rested alongside a stack of paperwork and a few objets d’art accumulated during his term in office. “The ministry agents were there because poachers had been reported in the area. For no other reason!”
“What was that noise?” a man with a calm, sonorous voice asked over the phone’s speaker. Ambassador Robert Gardner was on the line from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.
“This noise?” Zailik bellowed, thumping the desk a second time. “It’s me cracking heads trying to find out who was behind those killings! I’m being framed and you know it!”
“I’m looking over the intel,” Gardner responded, his voice taking on the tone of a school teacher whose patience was being tested by a problem student, “and I have to say, all the evidence seems to point to—”
“I don’t care where the evidence points!” Zailik interrupted. “Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to place a hit on some low-level GAM lackeys? You think I don’t know how something like that would backfire on me at the polls?”
The governor glared at the speakerphone, waiting for an answer. He could imagine Gardner smirking back in his office, taking pleasure in riling him. It’d been like this from the moment Gardner had taken over as ambassador. Always so smug and condescending, just like his predecessor.
Zailik was still waiting for Gardner to respond when his personal secretary appeared in the doorway, holding a clipboard, an urgent expression on her face. The governor signaled for her to wait a moment, then leaned toward the speakerphone.
“I have an important meeting to get to,” he told Gardner coldly. “Think what you want, but I’m telling you I had no hand in this and when I prove it I’ll be expecting an apology!”
Zailik pressed a button on the phone’s console, abruptly ending the call. He glanced back at his secretary. Ti Vohn was an attractive woman in her early thirties, conservatively dressed with her dark hair pulled back from the high cheekbones that adorned her oval face. Zailik’s wife had raised a fuss when he’d hired the woman, but he’d refused to let her go. There were days, like this, when he wished his wife’s jealousy had some foundation.
“What is it, Ti?” he asked, trying his best to offer the woman an inviting smile. “Good news, I hope.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Vohn responded.
Zailik slumped in his chair as the woman explained that investigators combing the rain-soaked Gunung Leuser ambush sites had yet to find any evidence to refute the prevalent theory that Interior Ministry agents had carried out the GAM killings before dying when their Jeep had subsequently gone off the road as they were leaving the scene. The placement of logs across the mountain road seemed to be the work of illegal loggers who had been attempting to slide fallen trees down to the river for transport away from the park. It appeared merely coincidental that the ministry troops had crashed into the inadvertent barricade before the loggers could move the trees off the road. The investigators were still looking for the loggers but suspected they had fled the area once they realized what had happened. The rain had washed away any tracks that might have provided clues as to the direction they might have taken.
Preliminary autopsies showed that the victims had died of blunt trauma injuries likely incurred when the Jeep had plummeted into the ravine. And, as Zailik feared, little headway had been made regarding the logistical nightmare of rounding up the area’s population of thousand-pound crocodiles so they could be x-rayed for any trace of those ministry agents still reported missing.
As he absorbed the news, Zailik stared dully out his window. A storm front had long passed, and morning sunlight shimmered on the black domes rising from Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, located a short walk from the governor’s residence in downtown Banda Aceh. Why was Allah testing him like this? Zailik wondered fleetingly. First the tsunami, then having to deal with scandal-plagued reconstruction efforts. And now this. Whatever had happened to the dream of his governorship being a stepping stone to the presidency of all Indonesia? As it was, Zailik knew he’d be lucky to win another term as head of this godforsaken province.
Ti Vohn was eyeing Zailik expectantly when he turned back to her. He told the woman to line up a call so that he could arrange to allocate more manpower to the investigation. Somewhere out in that overgrown wilderness there had to be proof that would vindicate him, and he needed to find it as quickly as possible.
“Before I do that, there’s one more thing,” his secretary told him. There was a tinge of reluctance in her voice.
“More bad news, I trust,” Zailik groused.
“There’s a demonstration at the mosque.”
Zailik shook his head miserably. “Let me guess,” he ventured. “They’re waving placards calling me ‘GAM butcher’.”
“I’m not sure of the wording, but they’re holding you responsible,” the secretary replied. “Word is they plan to march through town to gather more supporters, then continue the demonstration here.”
“And burn me in effigy, no doubt.”
Zailik eyed the clock on the wall next to him. In a couple of hours he was scheduled to fly to Takengon for a fund-raising dinner. In light of events, he’d planned to cancel the appearance, but now the idea of pandering for campaign contributions seemed less burdensome than having to contend with an angry throng of GAM sympathizers.
“Round up the motorcade,” he told his secretary. “I want to leave early for the airport.”
“I’ll make the arrangements,” Vohn responded. Almost as an afterthought, she mentioned, “They’re still doing repairs on the main road, so traffic might be a problem.”
Without hesitation, Zailik responded, “Then we’ll take the back way.”
AS SHE LEFT the governor’s office, Ti Vohn almost felt sorry for Zailik. The man was clearly so obsessed with proving his innocence that he wasn’t thinking straight. Send more men out into the jungle? Chase after crocodiles the size of small dinosaurs hoping to find clues tucked away in their bellies? It all seemed so foolish. Why couldn’t he see that his resources would be put to better use investigating likely suspects instead of going over the same ground again and again? And then there was the matter of moving up his departure time for the airport. It would be one thing if he were merely some business executive looking for his chauffeur to show up an hour earlier. But as governor there were security protocols, and given the logistics and manpower involved, to suddenly create a mad scramble to make certain the motorcade route was properly screened and readied at a moment’s notice, especially under the circumstances, was foolhardy. And taking the back way was an even greater invitation to disaster. Vohn would have pointed out as much, save for the fact that she not only anticipated Zailik’s desire to go to any means to avoid the demonstrators, but she had also been banking on it.
Before returning to her workstation, Vohn detoured into the ladies’ room. She was the only woman working in this side of the building, but she locked the door behind her nonetheless. She retreated to one of the stalls farthest from the outer window. From her dress pocket she took a cheap prepaid cell phone and thumb-punched a memorized number. Someone answered on the seventh ring. She recognized the man’s voice.
“He took the bait,” she whispered. “He’ll be heading for the airport within the hour.”
“And you convinced him to take the back way?”
“He didn’t need much convincing,” Vohn said.
“Excellent,” the other caller responded. “We’ll be ready for him…”
Sulawesi, Indonesia
AGMED HASEM nodded approvingly as the latest group of recruits finished their training drills and fell into line before him. There were sixteen in all, ranging in age from their late teens to a couple, like Hasem, in their early thirties. They’d been worked hard and were all perspiring in the late-morning sun that beat down on the isolated camp, located five miles north of Makassar on the site of a water-treatment plant shut down years earlier when an upgraded facility had been completed closer to the city.
“Well done, praise Allah,” he told them. “Jemaah Islamiyah is blessed to have men of such caliber ready to devote themselves to our noble cause.”
In truth, Hasem was somewhat disappointed in the effort he’d seen. Most of the recruits were clumsy and far more winded from their exertions than he would have liked. But he’d found over the years that it was better to stroke the egos of those looking to join his fold than to play drill sergeant. Fill them with pride, food and constant indoctrination about the glory of martyrdom and there was a better chance they would be ready to lay down their lives on the suicide missions that were Hasem’s preferred modus operandi.
And, too, there was the matter of replenishing the ranks following a month when JI had seen more than a dozen men killed or imprisoned in raids on camps across the Java Sea in Larantuka and Maumere. The raids, carried out by Densus 88 antiterror squads, had, like countless other sweeps over the past five years, been widely publicized in the media, giving the impression that Jemaah Islamiyah was on the ropes and facing eradication. Hasem took issue with the assessment but there was no denying that bad press had taken its toll on recruitment. Gone were the days when JI routinely turned away fringe candidates for the organization. Now, Hasem and other field commanders had been forced to become more solicitous and less discriminating.
Things would change soon, though, Hasem reasoned. Even as he was exhorting the recruits, the charismatic leader knew that JI teams in Banda Aceh were preparing to launch what would be the first in a series of counterstrikes against Densus 88. If all went well, when the dust settled, JI’s reputation would be such that once again they would be able to pick and choose from the swelling ranks of those eager to join the cause. For now, however, Hasem would make do with what he had.
Hasem lectured his minions a few minutes longer, giving the men a well-practiced spiel heavy on references to Allah and laden with vitriol demonizing the United States as the Great Satan. Much was made, too, of the threat posed by secular leaders throughout the islands—men like Governor Zailik of Aceh Province—who took a hardline stance against Islamic fundamentalists. Those local politicians, to Hasem’s way of thinking, were every bit a hindrance to what JI stood for as the Americans and their European counterparts. Indonesia, after all, contained the highest Muslim concentration in the world. What better place for Islam to flourish and lay the groundwork for a long-overdue return to global prominence?
A breeze rustled through the camp, and as the recruits detected the smell of fried rice and roast goat coming from the kitchens set up inside the former treatment plant, Hasem could see the men’s attention beginning to waver. He quickly wrapped up his remarks, then sent the men to eat.
A truck had pulled up to the site, parking near Hasem’s quarters, a rusting Quonset hut set back at the edge of the clearing. Hasem went to check on things, catching up with the driver as he was circling around the truck.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
“See for yourself,” the driver told him. He opened the rear doors of the truck, revealing an oblong wooden crate the size of a small coffin. The lid was unfastened, and when Hasem raised it, he smiled. Laid out in neat rows within the crate where thin slabs of Semtec. Once placed in the lining of snug vests worn beneath loose clothing, the plastic explosives would be difficult to detect to the visible eye. As such, they would be a far better choice for suicide missions than dynamite sticks or the other, bulkier explosive materials JI had been forced to rely on, thanks to Densus 88’s clampdown on the black market.
“Excellent,” Hasem said, placing the lid back on the crate. He told the driver to wait while he went for his payment, then headed toward the nearby hut. He was met in the doorway by one of his lieutenants, Guikin Daeng, a sallow, sneering man in his late twenties.
“I was just coming to track you down,” Daeng told Hasem. “We just received word from our team in Banda Aceh. Governor Zailik is setting out early for the airport, just as we hoped.”
“Our little demonstration scared him out of his cozy little nest?” Hasem asked.
Daeng nodded, then squawked like a chicken and laughed.
“Out of the frying pan,” Hasem intoned. “Into the fire…”
3
Nearly twenty-one hours after its departure from a private airfield in Washington D.C., the Cessna Citation X jet carrying Mack Bolan dropped through the cloud cover veiling the Strait of Malacca, giving the Executioner a glimpse of Banda Aceh. He was seated in the lavishly appointed eight-seat passenger cabin, his view out the right window only partially obstructed by the jet’s sub-mounted wing. The jet was RICCO booty recently claimed by the government after the arrest and conviction of a high-rolling Chicago drug dealer.
The Executioner wasn’t the only passenger aboard the jet.
“Y’know, I could get used to this,” John “Cowboy” Kissinger drawled from the seat next to Bolan. Legs stretched out, the Stony Man weaponsmith had his feet propped on a foldout table that also held the remains of a gourmet breakfast he’d put together in the jet’s galley after sleeping most of the trip with his leather-and-suede chair fully reclined. “Only thing missing was some foxy stewardess ready to initiate me into the Mile-High Club.”
“Maybe next time,” Bolan deadpanned.
Some years back, Kissinger had left his career as a DEA field agent to join the covert ops team at Stony Man Farm. The original plan had been for him to stay on-site and oversee the acquisition and maintenance of the vast arsenal stockpiled in an outbuilding near the main quarters, and he’d excelled at both functions while finding time to tinker with new prototypes and modify existing weapons to improve performance and reliability in the battlefield. In time, though, he’d come to miss taking on the enemy firsthand, and whenever Hal Brognola or Barbara Price found themselves shorthanded when doling out assignments, Kissinger was usually the first to volunteer. Conversely, whenever Bolan felt the need for backup going into a mission, he invariably turned to Cowboy, as well as the pilot currently minding the Citation’s controls.
“Okay, boys and girls,” Jack Grimaldi called out over the intercom as the jet continued its descent toward the airport located six miles inland from Banda Aceh. “You know the drill. Seats up, belts on, and stash away anything you don’t want pinballing around the compartment should I suddenly forget what the hell I’m doing and wind up dribbling this sucker across the landing strip.”
Kissinger got up long enough to take his and Bolan’s breakfast trays back to the galley, then strapped himself in for landing. He saw the Executioner still staring out the portal beside him.
“Already looking for that needle in the haystack, eh?”
“Something like that,” Bolan replied.
In truth, though, the Executioner’s attention was focused on a flurry of activity around one of the far hangars, where a handful of armed men in combat fatigues were crossing the tarmac toward where crews were hastily fuelling what looked to be a vintage Vietnam-era Huey. A pair of military Jeeps had pulled up alongside the combat chopper as well, ready to take on a few more passengers. Kissinger finally glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of the pandemonium.
“That’s our hangar, isn’t it?” he asked Bolan.
Bolan nodded as he continued to monitor the activity. “I have a feeling they’re up to something besides rolling out the red carpet….”
“NICE TIMING, MATE,” Shelby Ferstera told Bolan ten minutes later as the Executioner deplaned. “You want to hit the ground running, you’ve come to the right place.”
Ferstera was a tall, broad-shouldered Australian in his early forties. A former member of that country’s elite Special Forces, Ferstera now served as field commander for Densus 88, eighty-eight being the number of Australians killed during the deadly 2002 bombings in downtown Bali. Ferstera had lost a sister in that bloodbath, so he’d been among the first to volunteer for the counterterrorist unit, joining forces with several U.S. Delta Force veterans and a handful of CIA operatives, who, with the help of well-trained Indonesian nationals, had been instrumental in thwarting Jemaah Islamiyah’s efforts to surpass the carnage wreaked in the Balinese incident. Their tactics over the years had been as effective as they had been controversial, resulting in the arrest of several thousand JI conspirators and the deaths of several hundred others.
Still, Ferstera knew the enemy was far from defeated, and he was not the sort of man to let pride get in the way of welcoming another ally in the fight. He’d been given the standard cover story that Bolan, under the alias of Matt Cooper, and his crew were special agents for the Justice Department, but the Aussie knew better. When told by his CIA colleagues not to pry into Cooper’s background, Ferstera felt certain that by sending these men to help with the situation in the islands, the U.S. had decided to play an ace stashed up its sleeve.
For his part, Bolan at first misinterpreted the commando’s greeting.
“You found Ryan?” the Executioner asked as he shook the Australian’s hand.
“We’ll give you a hand with that in good time,” Ferstera assured Bolan. “Meantime, how about a little warm-up exercise?”
Bolan stared past Ferstera at the Huey and the waiting Jeeps. If Ryan had not yet shown up on their radar, he knew enough about Densus 88 to know who they were preparing to go after. “JI?”
Ferstera nodded. “We’ve got an informant who says they staged a rally in town so they could flush the governor from his quarters. He’s on his way here, and he left without a full security clearance. Worse yet, he’s taking the back way to avoid traffic. My money says he’s heading for trouble.”
The situation seemed far afield from Bolan’s intended mission, but he wasn’t about to back away from Ferstera’s request. Once Grimaldi and Kissinger caught up with him, he quickly relayed the news, then turned back to Ferstera and asked, “Where do you want us?”
DUE TO THE LAST-MINUTE change in the governor’s itinerary, only two of the intended six motorcycle patrol officers were available to escort Noordin Zailik when he prepared to leave his government quarters in a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car. The police helicopter scheduled to provide aerial support at the original departure time was en route from an assignment in nearby Lheue. It was expected to catch up with the governor by the time he reached the back country road serving as his alternate route to the airport. In the meantime, the down-sized motorcade took a circuitous route through the city, taking care to avoid Baiturrahman Grand Mosque as well as main thoroughfares or any other area where protestors were likely to be gathered.
Zailik was too preoccupied with other matters to give much thought to his compromised security. He’d been on the phone since the moment he’d sat down in the car, and now, miles later, as he closed his cell phone after speaking with Provincial Intelligence Director Sinso Dujara, Zailik frowned to himself. Something about Dujara’s demeanor during the call had seemed off. Dujara was, by nature, both contentious and territorial, and Zailik had expected the man to bristle at the suggestion that not enough was being done to ferret out clues regarding the deadly incidents in Gunung Leuser. Instead of being defensive, however, Dujara had gone so far as to apologize for the lack of progress in the investigation and welcomed Zailik’s suggestion to allot more manpower to the task. An apology? A gesture of humility from the most arrogant man in his makeshift cabinet? It just wasn’t like Dujara. Something wasn’t right.
Or maybe I’m just being paranoid, Zailik thought.
He tried to put the matter out of his mind as he fished through his coat pocket, taking out the notes he’d been working on for his upcoming fund-raiser speech in Takengon. He was glad that he’d decided not to cancel the appearance, which he knew could have a strong bearing on the final stretch of the governor’s race.
Takengon, located in the center of the province on the shores of Laut Tawar Lake, had long had aspirations of becoming a tourist mecca, but most travel guides still balked at recommending the area based on years of bloody skirmishes in the vicinity, most of them involving GAM separatists. In truth, there had been no political violence in the area since the tsunami. But the stigma remained, and as such Takengon’s movers and shakers were adamantly opposed to the gubernatorial candidacy of Anhi Hasbrok, who’d commandeered GAM forces in most of the battles waged near the aspiring resort. And since third-party candidate Islamic cleric Nyak Lamm had denounced leisure pursuits such as water-skiing and sunbathing as degenerate Western vices, Zailik was certain he’d be able to replenish his campaign coffers by assuring the locals that he remained a steadfast champion of tourism as well as a foe of clerical involvement in regional politics.
The governor quickly lost himself in his speechwriting, and it wasn’t until his chauffeur cursed under his breath that Zailik took his mind off the task long enough to glimpse out the window. In an instant, he realized it may have been a mistake to take the back way to the airport.
The motorcade was passing along a remote, two-lane stretch of roadway that separated a partially completed low-income housing development from a rolling meadow overrun by tents and clapboard shanties where thousands of displaced residents of Banda Aceh had been living in squalor and discontent as they waited for construction on the new homes to be completed. The development was two years behind schedule, thanks largely to the former U.S. ambassador’s pilfering of tsunami relief funds. However, many of the indigents held Zailik responsible for their dire straits, and it seemed someone had leaked word that he would be passing through the area. Several dozen people had wandered out from the tenement and taken up positions along the road, where they jeered and waved their arms angrily at the approaching motorcade. The crowd was made up primarily of men, though there were a handful of women and several boys in their early teens. As the car drew closer, they collectively drifted out onto the road, forming a human barricade.
“So much for avoiding demonstrators,” Zailik mused as he eyed the throng. The chauffeur slowed the car and the patrolman who’d been riding behind them pulled around to the front, joining his counterpart. They stopped their motorcycles at an angle, forming a protective V behind which the governor’s car eased to a halt twenty yards shy of the protestors. Beyond the demonstrators, Zailik saw two cars approaching from the direction of the airport. Apparently dissuaded by the commotion, both drivers slowed and made quick U-turns, leaving the confrontation behind.
Zailik fumed. He wanted to get out and confront his detractors. What business did they have making him a scapegoat for their miseries? The tsunami hadn’t been his fault, and when Ambassador Ryan’s wholesale embezzlement had come to light, it had been Zailik who’d spearheaded efforts to secure relief funding elsewhere. If not for him, the lot across the road would still be nothing more than a pad of dirt instead of a development where there were at least signs of forward progress.
The governor’s indignation was quickly tempered when a piece of rotten fruit splattered against the tinted windshield he was looking through. Zailik instinctively recoiled, then let out a gasp when the next projectile—a rock the size of a baseball—struck the window. The glass was bulletproof and the rock left only small, weblike cracks, but Zailik suddenly realized he was facing more than a mere inconvenience. Casting aside his speech notes, the governor quickly grabbed his cell phone. Too flustered to dial a number, he instead pressed Redial, putting a call through to Intelligence Director Dujara. The official had little to do with the governor’s security arrangements, but Zailik was desperate.
“There’s a mob on the road to the airport!” he bellowed once Dujara picked up. “They’re after me…!”
4
The two motorcycle officers were brothers. Muhtar Yeilam, the oldest by three years, had joined the Banda Aceh police force straight out of college and distinguished himself as a patrol officer during the tsunami, saving a handful of lives and helping to maintain order in the storm’s traumatic aftermath. Muhtar’s example—along with the ceremony where he’d been decorated for heroism—had inspired his younger brother to follow in his footsteps. In three months Ashar would have his first year under his belt.
Muhtar had pulled strings to get his brother assigned to the governor’s detail, and this was the first time they’d worked together. Escorting Governor Zailik to the airport was a routine, inconsequential assignment. While waiting for the motorcade to get underway less than an hour earlier, the brothers had been joking with one another, enjoying their sibling camaraderie as they argued over who would be the first to get laid after they hit the discos later that night.
Suddenly, everything had changed.
“I thought this was supposed to be a walk in the park,” Ashar said. It was meant to be a wisecrack, but there was an edge in his voice. He idled his motorcycle and planted his boots on the road as he grabbed for the police-issue 9 mm automatic pistol nestled in its holster.
Muhtar had his gun out and was pointing it at the mob. Like Ashar, he remained on his bike, left hand lightly on the clutch, ready to get back in gear at a moment’s notice. He glanced quickly over at his brother. Save for a couple of high-speed chases, this was Ashar’s first true taste of danger since he’d received his badge. Muhtar could sense a glimmer of fear in his brother’s demeanor.
“I guess some parks aren’t as safe as others,” Muhtar quipped, trying to sound nonchalant and put his brother at ease.
The mob before them slowly began to fan out. Most of the protestors had already been unnerved by the sight of the armed policemen. They receded en masse to the shoulder. However, several men and one young boy split off from the group and began to circle around the governor’s car as if hoping to reach the vehicle from behind. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen protestors—many of them women and young boys—held their ground in front of the motorcade, linking arms to form a human chain that stretched across the entire width of the road and out onto the shoulder. Those at the end of the line clutched rocks slightly larger than the one that had already been thrown.
“We want the governor!” one of the women shouted at the two officers.
“Tell him to show his face!” another cried out.
Muhtar lowered his gun slightly and forced himself to remain calm. He ignored their demands but tried to reason with them.
“Please,” he said, trying to make eye contact with as many of the demonstrators as he could, “there’s no sense letting this get out of hand. Just drop the rocks and move away from the road.”
The plea fell on deaf ears. Those blocking the road stayed where they were, arms entwined, and continued to demand an audience with Zailik.
Ashar was less tactful than his brother when he swiveled astride his bike to contend with those making a move toward the car’s unprotected rear flank.
“Don’t even think about it!” he shouted.
When the stray demonstrators ignored him and continued toward the car, Ashar fired a warning shot over their heads. Startled, the group scrambled back. One man stumbled into another, knocking loose a rock the second man had been preparing to throw. Together, they retreated to the shoulder and rejoined the others, content, for the moment at least, to merely hurl insults at the man inside the car.
“The governor drives in a fancy limousine while we have no running water!” one taunted. “When will we have new homes instead of having to live out of tents and boxes?”
