Loose Cannon

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…”