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Authors: David Rollins
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she saw them: two large Super Pumas came in low and lifted the tiles off several roofs, flinging them into the narrow, dank lanes. They cruised unhurriedly overhead at barely a walking pace. A-6 put a hand over her nose and mouth to protect her lungs from the dust picked up by the powerful downwash of the rotor blades, and squinted up at the aircraft through the stinging cones of sandblast. She was just in time to see that the helo was full of Kopassus soldiers before Sergeant Melon pushed the door shut. The aircraft then accelerated quickly into a climb.
The thump of the Super Pumas faded to a distant beat before A-6 started up her trike. Something of interest was happening somewhere if two Super Pumas full of Indonesia’s crack soldiers were hurriedly being airlifted to . . . where? She would try to find out, but didn’t like her chances. The Kopassus weren’t the most talkative people and asking direct questions could prove unhealthy.
Exmouth Gulf, 0455 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
The Joint US-Australian Facility at Exmouth Gulf in the far north of Australia received the transmission from A-6.The report from the asset was brief and processed by one of the US Air Force Security Services Signals Intelligence personnel.
The report read: ‘A-6 Stat. 39. 29040440/29040453/TM VS-K UN/S 20-30 H2 B360 ENQ/D U.’ It came off the printer and the corporal looked at it blankly. The sequence was decoded, but it still might as well have been Latin for the Sig Op had no ‘need to know’, therefore the significance of the string of numbers and letters was opaque to him.
It had to be one of the most boring jobs in the world, he told himself. Right up there with working on an assembly line, sticking widgets in boxes all day long. From morning till night he looked at shit that meant nothing to him. Then, at the end of the day, he went home to fuck-all nothing out here in the desert. No bitches except for really ugly ones, but at least there was plenty of beer to improve their looks. Lots of flies, though. Sticky motherfuckers that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The corporal took another look at the sequence on his screen. The one thing he did know was that Stat. 39 meant Station 39, or ‘somewhere in Indonesia’. Another godforsaken shithole, no doubt, he told himself.
So much for ‘join the air force and see the world’. If he was outside, he would have spat.
He sent on the slip – the coded sequence – via sealed hardline intranet to NSA, Hawaii, and copied the information to the local intelligence services as per the standard operational bullshit.
NSA, Helemanu, Oahu, Hawaii, 0457 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
Ruth was now on the lookout for anything from Indonesia and had coded her etray accordingly. The slip popped into the box and launched a flashing red exclamation mark on her desktop. She read it. The message didn’t clarify anything for her but it certainly added to her disquiet. Something was definitely going on down there, she thought. Ruth pondered the significance of the information for a minute before snapping out of the trance. She dragged and dropped it into the box she’d created especially for Bob Gioco. Ruth shook her head. That inner voice was screaming at her, but she couldn’t make out what it was saying.
NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, 0500 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
Bob Gioco, NSA Group Analyst for South-East Asia, was gazing sleepily at his computer screen when the slip arrived. One in the morning. It was time to go home and he was dead on his feet. It had been a shit of a day, and he had a headache squeezing his head like a tight helmet. The icon popped up yet again telling him something had arrived for his attention. He clicked on it and the slip came up in a box: ‘A-6 Stat. 39. 29040440/29040453/TM VS-K UN/S 20-30 H2 B360 ENQ/D U.’ It got his attention. Indonesia. Anything from that part of the world did at thatmoment. There was that Qantas plane down in the area. Perhaps it had been
The thump of the Super Pumas faded to a distant beat before A-6 started up her trike. Something of interest was happening somewhere if two Super Pumas full of Indonesia’s crack soldiers were hurriedly being airlifted to . . . where? She would try to find out, but didn’t like her chances. The Kopassus weren’t the most talkative people and asking direct questions could prove unhealthy.
Exmouth Gulf, 0455 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
The Joint US-Australian Facility at Exmouth Gulf in the far north of Australia received the transmission from A-6.The report from the asset was brief and processed by one of the US Air Force Security Services Signals Intelligence personnel.
The report read: ‘A-6 Stat. 39. 29040440/29040453/TM VS-K UN/S 20-30 H2 B360 ENQ/D U.’ It came off the printer and the corporal looked at it blankly. The sequence was decoded, but it still might as well have been Latin for the Sig Op had no ‘need to know’, therefore the significance of the string of numbers and letters was opaque to him.
It had to be one of the most boring jobs in the world, he told himself. Right up there with working on an assembly line, sticking widgets in boxes all day long. From morning till night he looked at shit that meant nothing to him. Then, at the end of the day, he went home to fuck-all nothing out here in the desert. No bitches except for really ugly ones, but at least there was plenty of beer to improve their looks. Lots of flies, though. Sticky motherfuckers that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The corporal took another look at the sequence on his screen. The one thing he did know was that Stat. 39 meant Station 39, or ‘somewhere in Indonesia’. Another godforsaken shithole, no doubt, he told himself.
So much for ‘join the air force and see the world’. If he was outside, he would have spat.
He sent on the slip – the coded sequence – via sealed hardline intranet to NSA, Hawaii, and copied the information to the local intelligence services as per the standard operational bullshit.
NSA, Helemanu, Oahu, Hawaii, 0457 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
Ruth was now on the lookout for anything from Indonesia and had coded her etray accordingly. The slip popped into the box and launched a flashing red exclamation mark on her desktop. She read it. The message didn’t clarify anything for her but it certainly added to her disquiet. Something was definitely going on down there, she thought. Ruth pondered the significance of the information for a minute before snapping out of the trance. She dragged and dropped it into the box she’d created especially for Bob Gioco. Ruth shook her head. That inner voice was screaming at her, but she couldn’t make out what it was saying.
NSA Headquarters, Fort Meade, 0500 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April
Bob Gioco, NSA Group Analyst for South-East Asia, was gazing sleepily at his computer screen when the slip arrived. One in the morning. It was time to go home and he was dead on his feet. It had been a shit of a day, and he had a headache squeezing his head like a tight helmet. The icon popped up yet again telling him something had arrived for his attention. He clicked on it and the slip came up in a box: ‘A-6 Stat. 39. 29040440/29040453/TM VS-K UN/S 20-30 H2 B360 ENQ/D U.’ It got his attention. Indonesia. Anything from that part of the world did at thatmoment. There was that Qantas plane down in the area. Perhaps it had been
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