Loose Cannon

Another bellowed, “And what about those GAM workers he had executed the other night? Explain that, Governor!”

“If you have a problem with the governor, take it up at the ballot box!” Ashar snapped. “Not here!”

Muhtar whirled on his bike and shouted at his brother, “Don’t antagonize them! Just do your job!”

Ashar nodded and fell silent. Muhtar could see that his brother’s gun hand was trembling slightly, as were his knees, which were pressed close to the sides of his idling motorcycle. Muhtar knew that Ashar had gone through crowd-control drills during his training at the police academy, but in the heat of the moment his brother had clearly reverted to his hothead instincts.

“Just relax, Ashie,” Muhtar called out. “Don’t rile them up and we’ll get through this.”

Ashar continued to nod, but Muhtar was concerned. If his brother’s uneasiness was as obvious to the mob as it was to him, things could easily go from bad to worse in an instant.

By now a small delivery truck and a minivan were coming up behind the governor’s car. Both vehicles slowed to a stop. The minivan’s driver, like those in the cars that moments ago had been coming from the other direction, quickly assessed the situation and thought better of trying to move past the confrontation. Veering off the road for a moment, the van turned around and doubled back toward Banda Aceh. The driver of the truck was apparently not about to let matters throw him off schedule. After the van had passed him, he drove forward, picking up speed as he moved into the oncoming lane as if intent on passing the governor’s car. However, when a hurled rock smashed through the passenger side of the front windshield, just missing him, the man had second thoughts. He slammed on his brakes, then jammed the truck into Reverse and backed down the road a good thirty yards before making a quick three-point turn. Like the driver of the minivan before him, he retraced his route back to the city.

The motorcycle officers, meanwhile, remained on their bikes and kept a wary vigil over the protestors. Pistols outstretched before them, they fanned the weapons steadily from side to side in an effort to keep the mob at bay. It looked to Muhtar as if he’d gotten through to his brother. Ashar’s visible fidgeting had stopped and he seemed locked in to his police mentality, forearms rigid as he continued to keep his gun trained on the demonstrators. Muhtar was relieved. Though they were clearly outnumbered, he felt certain they would keep the upper hand so long as they gave the sense of being in control.

There was, however, the matter of the human chain that continued to block their way to the airport. No one had moved, and the man on the right end of the chain was still holding the rock Muhtar had told him to drop. The man at the other end of the line had only partially complied with the order; his rock had gone through the windshield of the now-retreating delivery truck.

“Put the rock down and everyone move off the road!” Muhtar told the group again, this time with more authority.

The demonstrators held their ground.

“We want answers!” one of the women shouted, raising her shrill voice to make certain the mob could hear it over the drone of the motorcycles. She pointed past the officers at the car, adding, “Tell that coward to show his face and give him to us!”

As she’d hoped, the woman’s harangue rallied the mob. Once again they began to chant and jeer. Another rock and several ears of corn bounded off the car, and Muhtar grimaced when a small, flat stone struck him squarely on the shoulder.

“Zailik’s a coward!” someone in the crowd howled. Some began to clap their hands in rhythm, as if at a sporting event. “Zailik’s a coward! Zailik’s a coward!”

Drawn by the commotion, more residents of the tent city began to emerge from their dingy quarters and head toward the road. Some had already grabbed tools and makeshift clubs, and several others paused along the way to pick up more rocks.

“Not good,” Muhtar murmured under his breath, refusing to visibly acknowledge the stinging welt on his shoulder.

Concerned the balance would soon shift out of their favor, the two brothers, without taking their eyes off the growing mob, spoke hurriedly to one another, trying to determine the best course of action. There was no way they were going to let Zailik out of the car—it was too dangerous and both brothers doubted there would be anything the governor could say to diffuse the situation. Ashar thought their best chance was to proceed with the motorcade in hopes the demonstrators would scramble out of the way once they realized their bluff was being called. Muhtar, however, was concerned about the possible ramifications if the crowd failed to move and some of them wound up being struck by their motorcycles.

“They put women and children out there for a reason,” Muhtar explained. “We run in to any of them and we’ll have a riot on our hands.”

“If we wait around for this mob to get any larger, all hell is going to break loose anyway,” Ashar countered, allowing his anger and frustration to override his earlier fears. “I say we head out and pick up speed as fast as we can, and whatever happens—”

“Wait!” Muhtar held a hand up to silence his brother. He stole a glance over his shoulder and peered back over the roof of the car. Ashar did the same.

“Finally!” the younger brother called out.

The crowd’s attention had been diverted as well, and the chanting quickly tapered off as they stared down the road. Heading toward them, swooping low as it approached from the city, was the overdue police helicopter.

“Not a moment too soon,” Muhtar intoned.

The sense of an impending riot abated as the chopper drew nearer. Moments later, there were worried murmurs among those in the crowd when they spotted a second, larger helicopter heading toward them from the direction of the airport. Beneath the massive Huey, a pair of Jeeps could also be seen racing along the road, filled with armed commandos. As if to make certain their approach had not gone unnoticed, several men in the lead Jeep fired warning shots with their assault rifles, gouging divots from the road’s shoulder just shy of where the protestors were gathered. The crowd took notice and quickly fell back on itself. Some of the latecomers turned heel and fled back toward the tent city. Even those still out on the roadway were given pause; the chain was broken as they turned to face the armed force that had just sucked the life from their demonstration.

“Densus 88,” Ashar Yeilam exclaimed with an almost reverential sense of wonder. He eyed Shelby Ferstera’s hallowed contingent as if he were some refugee from a comic book greeting the unexpected arrival of superheroes as a sure sign that soon all would be right with the world.

Though to a lesser degree, Muhtar shared his brother’s sentiment. He could barely keep himself from smiling as he kept his gun trained on the now-subdued mob. That was too close, he thought to himself.

SHORTLY AFTER THE FIRST ROCK had struck the windshield, Noordin Zailik’s chauffeur had advised him to lie low in the backseat. The governor had been quick to oblige, to an extent. Zailik had felt that lying across the seat would have only made him feel more helpless and vulnerable, so he’d compromised by half-crouching, half-kneeling between the seats, his attention divided between watching the drama unfold outside and draining his cell phone in an effort to get someone—anyone—to come to his rescue before the situation on the blocked roadway got further out of hand. Intelligence Director Dujara had transferred his initial call to Banda Aceh’s police chief, Irwandi Alkihn, who’d assured Zailik the helicopter assigned to him was on the way and that, furthermore, a Densus 88 unit stationed at the airport was taking action to fill the breach Zailik himself had created by leaving for the airport ahead of schedule.

As the governor had waited for the reinforcements, his anxiety increased with every passing second. After the second barrage of debris struck the car, Zailik had sunk lower between the seats until he was no longer able to peer out the windows. The chauffeur had tried to keep him apprised of what was happening outside the vehicle, but as he listened to the almost surreal play-by-play, Zailik found himself distracted. Over and over, his mind kept playing back the chain of events that had led to his predicament. He’d already come to realize that much of it was his own doing, but he was equally certain there was blame to be laid elsewhere, and as he thought back, he made a mental note of everyone who’d been privy to the alterations in his itinerary. Only a handful of people had known of the route change in time to have been able to forewarn the tent dwellers that he was headed their way. He’d just spoken with two of them, Dujara and Alkihn, but however much he personally disliked both men, Zailik had known them both for years and felt their loyalty was beyond reproach. His suspicions led him elsewhere; to the person who’d prompted his decision to take the back way in the first place.

Zailik wanted to believe there was no way Ti Vohn could have duped him into harm’s way—or that he could have allowed himself to be so easily led, for that matter—but the more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that his personal secretary, whom he’d known for all of eight months, was indeed the culprit.

The realization struck a strange chord inside the governor. Rather than viewing Ti Vohn’s betrayal in terms of the crisis it had gotten him into, Zailik instead found himself fixating on what a field day his wife would have when she learned the news. She’d warned him about the woman, after all, and though it had been for the wrong reasons, Zailik knew she would never let him live this down.

Driven by his wounded pride and ignoring the fact that he might not live long enough to incur his wife’s scorn, Zailik had become obsessed with trying to reach Ti Vohn on his cell phone. He was convinced that once she heard his voice, her startled response would betray her, just as she’d betrayed him. At that moment nothing seemed more important to him than verifying his suspicions.

Zailik had become oblivious to the ebb and flow of the confrontation taking place outside the car. Balled up behind the driver’s seat, all he could hear was the mad pulsing of blood rushing through his temples and the frantic stabbing of his thumb against the cell-phone keypad, followed time and again by a recorded message where his secretary explained that she was unable to answer the phone.

“Pick up, damn you!” Zailik seethed after the fifth time he’d dialed both her work and personal numbers.

He was about to dial yet again when the entire car began to shake and wobble. Zailik could hear a loud thundering outside the vehicle. Forced back to reality, Zailik’s first thought was that the demonstrators had stormed the car and were attempting to overturn it. But as he was unfolding himself from his crouch, he detected motion through the sunroof overhead and glanced up. It was then he realized the police helicopter had arrived and was hovering directly above him, using its intense rotor wash to drive back the demonstrators who’d yet to stray from the road.

Looking out the front windshield, Zailik could see the motorcycle officers hunched low over their bikes, uniforms snapping in the fierce downdraft as the chopper eased past them, then tilted slightly so that the demonstrators caught the full brunt of the whirlwind. Many of the tent dwellers lost their footing and tumbled backward, then found themselves rolling across the tarmac toward the shoulder of the road.

“I think you just lost a few votes,” the chauffeur called out as he prepared to shift the car back into gear. “But at least now we’ll be able to get you to the airport….”

MACK BOLAN WAS RIDING shotgun in the second of the two Jeeps racing down the road from the airport. Jack Grimaldi was behind the wheel and John Kissinger was in the back along with one of the Densus 88 commandos, Daud Umar, a 37-year-old native of Banda Aceh.

“So far, so good,” Grimaldi said as he watched the Huey bank toward the mob. Like the police chopper, the larger aircraft was using its rotor wash to keep the protestors off the road. Clouds of dust rose into the air, providing a protective screen as the motorcade began to inch forward. The lead Jeep had stopped thirty yards ahead of the motorcycle officers. Shelby Ferstera stood in the front seat, gesturing to the motorcycle cops that the Jeep would turn around once the motorcade had passed and would follow as they proceeded to the airport.

Watching things play out, Bolan had a sense that something was wrong. It was all going far too smoothly. Ferstera’s informant, after all, had said that Jemaah Islamiyah had planned to go after the governor, and from what he knew of the terrorist sect, he thought their game plan would have consisted of more than setting loose a rock-throwing mob.

“Keep an eye on the crowd,” he called out over his shoulder.

“On it,” Kissinger replied. He was already putting to use a pair of high-powered binoculars. “It’s a little hard, though, with all that dust.”

Bolan turned his attention to the other side of the road, where the skeletal wooden frames of several hundred homes spread out across a series of unpaved streets. A few of the structures closest to the road were nearer to completion than the others, their inner walls hammered into place with foil-backed insulation strips secured between the studs. A handful of construction vehicles was parked nearby, but there was no sign of activity. Bolan had binoculars, too, and he used them to take a closer look at one of the bulldozers situated between a Dumpster and a large stack of lumber. Half-hidden behind the earthmover’s large front scoop, the Executioner spotted a body sprawled across the dirt.

He was about to pass along his findings when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a thin ribbon of smoke trail out from a second-story window of one of the homes near the road. A split second later, the police helicopter disintegrated in a fireball, showering the road with debris.

“A trap,” Bolan shouted, even as a second missile streaked through the air, broadsiding the Huey. In an instant, Governor Zailik lost his aerial support, and the Executioner knew his instincts had been correct.

5

Once the last fiery remains of the two downed helicopters had crashed onto the roadway between his Jeep and the governor’s motorcade, Shelby Ferstera fought off his shock and cursed. Jemaah Islamiyah had lured him into an ambush and now, in the blink of an eye, more than a dozen of his best men were gone. He could see a few of them scattered amid the flaming shrapnel, lifeless bodies rent and torn by the force of the explosion. Some were engulfed in flames, others spattered with blood, all of them missing limbs so that they looked like the remains of storefront mannequins that had been run through a threshing machine. There was nothing to be done for them other than to see to it that they had not died in vain. And despite the devastating blow to his ranks, Ferstera was determined to carry out Densus 88’s mission and ensure the governor’s safety. To do that, however, he had to make certain the rest of his men were not slaughtered by the enemy.

“Out of the Jeep and take cover!” he commanded, bolting from the vehicle. The surviving commandos followed suit, and not a moment too soon. Even as they were flattening themselves against the roadway, a stream of gunfire strafed over their heads and pelted the Jeep. The shots were coming from the direction of the tent city, so Ferstera crawled around to the far side of the vehicle. His men were right behind him. Three of them made it. A fourth caught a hail of bullets and slumped to the roadway, dead by the time his face struck the asphalt.

“Jackals!” Ferstera shouted.

He glanced quickly behind him. The Americans in the other Jeep had detoured from the road and were headed toward the housing development. They were veering to and fro to make themselves less of a target for the JI snipers firing from the upper floor of one of the uncompleted homes. Smoke and flames from the downed Huey’s charred fuselage blocked Ferstera’s view of those snipers, but he trusted that meant the enemy was similarly unable to take aim his way, allowing his men to focus on the gunners across the road.

Readying his M-16, Ferstera rose to one knee and peered over the Jeep’s hood. Through the rifle’s scope he was able to pinpoint a sniper positioned behind a large boulder on a raised knoll just beyond the tent city. The gunman had spent his ammo and was slamming a fresh cartridge into his rifle. He was a long way off, barely within range of Ferstera’s M-16, but the Aussie was an expert marksman and proved it as he cut loose with a burst that streaked above the rocks and found home in the enemy’s chest, taking the sniper down.