Divine Madness (32 page)

As the chopper moved within ten metres of the ground, an orange streak roared out of the church and hit it from point blank range. The blast knocked three men out of the open doorway, as a blaze erupted inside the cockpit.

‘Back up,’ James yelled.

He knew the window would shatter if the helicopter exploded, so he wrapped an arm over his face and dived under the nearest desk. Lauren and Rat did the same, but nothing happened. James braved a glance. The flames were out and clouds of fire-extinguishing powder billowed out of the helicopter’s doorways.

Apparently the helicopter had been saved by its fire protection system, but the pilot was flying blind and had no option but to pull up. That left three bodies on the ground below. Two were engulfed in flames and didn’t seem to be moving, but the third rolled frantically in the dirt trying to extinguish his burning uniform.

The other three helicopters were now in plain sight, trying to land in the courtyard but coming under heavy fire. Another streak – James guessed it was a rocket-propelled grenade – ripped from inside the church. It deflected off the side of a descending helicopter, before spiralling up in a wild trajectory and exploding close to the perimeter wall.

The next shot was a direct hit on the tail rotor of the helicopter closest to touchdown. It twisted violently, its blades centimetres shy of a fatal collision with the side of the church.

As the pilot battled to control his ship without a tail rotor, the other two helicopters pulled up and backed away from the compound, apparently under orders to withdraw. Unfortunately, this left the chopper with the damaged tail as the only target in the sky. Two more rockets slammed home as it tried to pull up, one from the church and one from inside a turret.

This last was a direct hit on the fuel tank. James buried his face against the classroom floor and felt a wave of heat as the sky lit up in orange. A deafening slam was followed by a shockwave that blew out hundreds of panes of glass across the Ark.

Deadly shards sprayed the room around James, as the sudden change of air pressure made his ears pop. If he hadn’t been shielded under the table, he would have been sliced to pieces.

Although his eyes stung from the smoke and fuel vapour, he forced them open and looked around desperately for his sister. ‘Lauren?’

‘We’re OK,’ Lauren yelled back, though James could hardly hear over the ringing in his ears. ‘You?’

‘Yeah … I think.’

James stood up carefully, avoiding the broken glass. He dashed over to join Rat and Lauren, who’d huddled together in fright.

‘I think they’ve pulled back, for now,’ James said.

Lauren rubbed her eye. ‘That poor man burning on the ground,’ she said, sniffing and looking completely stunned. ‘There must have been loads more in the one that blew up.’

James grabbed his radio and shouted, ‘Chloe?’

‘Where are you?’ she asked, audibly shocked. ‘Did I see what I think I just saw?’

‘We didn’t have time to get underground, we’re still in the education building, and yes you did see a chopper go down.’

‘I
 
told
 
them,’ Chloe screamed. ‘I bloody told them. Are you guys OK?’

‘Lauren’s shaken up, but we’re all in one piece.’

‘The other three choppers are touching down in the desert near me,’ Chloe said. ‘I’ve got nursing qualifications. They’re bound to have injuries up there and I’m sure I can help out.’

*

The high-speed catamaran had been built as a rich man’s plaything, or at least Dana couldn’t imagine any woman splurging millions on such an absurd toy. Yet, in another way, she couldn’t help admiring it, from its immaculately chromed toilet basin to the soft leather sofas and the compact kitchen with more gadgets and flashing lights than a space shuttle.

Most impressive was the sense of isolation. They might have been skimming towards Indonesia at a hundred kph, with two jet turbines hurling a wall of water ten metres into the air behind them, but when you closed the triple-glazed door leading on to the rear deck, the only sense of motion was an occasional violent jolt when they punched through a big wave.

It was 8:40 now and Dana was certain that ASIS had no idea where she was. That left her with three and a bit hours to overpower her crewmates and take control of the boat.

She made every step count: glancing in kitchen drawers, opening up cupboards in search of weapons, carefully studying the internal layout of the boat to see which doors led where and working out the best places to isolate people so that she could take her companions out one at a time. She didn’t think Eve and Nina would present major problems, as long as she retained the element of surprise. Barry was in a different league: he was huge, strong; he’d clearly been through advanced military training and had proved himself capable of killing with the pistol he kept tucked in his shorts.

‘Are you with us down there?’ Nina asked.

Dana had been thinking and was startled by the remark. She looked up from her leather seat and faked a yawn. ‘Sorry … Just a bit tired.’

Nina nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s been a long day. You girls can go into one of the cabins and get some rest once we’ve had our briefing.’

‘I could use that,’ Dana said. ‘Are you doing it now?’

‘Might as well get it over with,’ Nina nodded.

Dana got up and took five paces towards a circular table in the galley. Eve was already sitting there and Dana joined her as Nina unzipped a backpack and pulled out a rolled-up diagram.

‘Hold the corners,’ Nina said, as she unfurled it.

The drawing was to scale and showed only basic outlines. There was a jagged coast, with the shapes of giant LNG cylinders and the gas liquefaction terminal behind them. A long jetty led out into the sea and there were the outlines of two identically shaped supertanker hulls at the end.

‘This is pretty self explanatory,’ Nina said. ‘The positioning and timing of the explosions is critical to the success of the operation. We’ll take the dinghy in to about two hundred metres shy of the tankers. For the sake of quiet, we’ll cut the engines and row the last stretch, ending up here, hidden beneath the jetty with a tanker docked on either side of us.

‘You’ll deal with one tanker each. You’ll position two magnetic charges in the bow area of each boat, two metres below water level and spaced eighteen metres apart. The devices are designed to puncture the outer hull and inject explosive gas into the watertight space between the tankers’ twin hulls a few seconds before detonation. The explosion should be enough to rip the front end off both ships and fracture the outer casing of the pressurised LNG cylinders on board.

‘Once the devices are fitted to the tankers, we’ll attach two much larger explosives to the jetty itself. The first will be by the refuelling gantry that leads out to each boat. The other will be positioned at the opposite end, close to shore. Our aim is to have the devices put in place within fifteen minutes. All six will be timed to explode simultaneously, approximately fifteen minutes after we’ve cleared the area.

‘The terminal is designed so that LNG can be safely vented in the event of a minor accident. However, if our calculations are correct, simultaneous explosions between the front of the boats and along the length of the jetty should completely overwhelm the capability of the terminal’s failsafe systems. The explosion should destroy not only the jetty and the two tankers, but also gas storage facilities on dry land and a significant section of the liquefaction plant itself.

‘In order to make accurate positioning of the explosives, you’ll each wear a GPS receiver on your wrist. It will be pre-programmed with the exact co-ordinates for the four explosions.’

‘Piece of cake,’ Dana said, doing her Survivor grin.

‘Not if you take that kind of casual attitude it won’t be,’ Nina said sharply. ‘
Please
 
listen. We’ll be working in complete darkness with oil company workers a few metres away from us. We’ve got to keep our movements quiet and speech to an absolute minimum.

‘Now that I’ve given you the basic outline of the raid, I’m going to talk you through each step in detail. If you have questions, ask them
 
now
, not during the operation.

‘The equipment needed for the raid has already been loaded into the dinghy. It will be launched off the back of this vessel with an electronic winch. Obviously, the engines have to be switched off before we can do this safely …’

Dana stifled a yawn as her brain struggled to absorb the stream of facts.

James had underestimated the Survivors’ ability to fend off the TAG units. He’d expected things to get hairy when he’d seen the Survivors’ arsenal, but not in his wildest dreams did he think the commandos would lose a ship and be forced to back off before getting a man on the ground.

With hindsight, he realised that the Survivors would have had little trouble getting hold of grenades, mortars and other heavy weapons. A smuggler could choose from thousands of kilometres of deserted Australian coastline on which to land a boatload of weapons that could be purchased in dozens of war-torn countries around the world.

Twenty minutes after the crash, smoke still poured out of the helicopter’s mangled chassis. The surviving soldier, who’d fallen from the first helicopter and extinguished his flaming clothes, had been peeled off the ground and dragged inside as a hostage.

There was much less smoke around now and the air inside the education block had completely cleared. Lauren and Rat had tipped one of the desks on to its side and pushed it around like a snowplough, sweeping all the broken glass to one side of the room.

James peered through a shattered window. After the explosion there had been people running everywhere, but now the Survivors and their weapons seemed to have retreated into buildings and tunnels.

‘What do you reckon?’ James asked. ‘Looks pretty calm out there now, shall we risk a move?’

‘Are you sure we’re not better off here?’ Lauren asked. ‘We’ve got no idea what’s going on in the tunnels.’

James shrugged. ‘I can only see this ending one of two ways: either the Survivors are going to surrender and we all walk merrily out of the front gate – which seems unlikely – or those bad-assed soldiers who just lost twenty of their colleagues are gonna wait until they’ve got reinforcements and some armoured vehicles and then they’re gonna storm this place.

‘Whether that happens tonight, tomorrow or at the end of a long siege, I don’t want to be sitting in a building made from wood and plasterboard.’

Lauren nodded reluctantly. ‘I guess you’re right. But Rat, you know this joint, are you
 
sure
 
there’s not a secret passage or some other way out of here?’

Rat shook his head. ‘This whole place is built for a siege. The turrets are the only way in or out.’

‘So we’re agreed,’ James said. ‘Let’s move.’

James led the way down a short corridor between two classrooms. He cautiously opened the door on to an outdoor landing and studied the shadows below before setting off down the metal steps.

An ammunition cartridge inside the burning helicopter chose that moment to pop and the three kids raced down and hit the ground at the bottom. It sounded exactly like they were being shot at.

‘False alarm, I think,’ James said warily.

‘I
 
hate
 
this,’ Lauren whispered, holding a clammy hand over her heart.

Rat knew the way, so he took the lead on the thirty-metre dash, crunching across a path strewn with broken glass before heading down a flight of metal steps cut into the ground. When they reached the thick metal door at the bottom, Rat rested both hands on the rubber handle and pushed down. The mechanism clanked, but he shoved hard and it wouldn’t move.

‘You want me to try?’ James asked. ‘I’m stronger than you.’

Rat shook his head. ‘You won’t do it. The bolts must have been put on inside.’

Lauren tutted. ‘Isn’t there another way in?’

‘I doubt it,’ Rat said. ‘Every second or third building’s got a door out back that leads down into the tunnels, but if this one’s been locked I’d guess that they all have.’

‘So now what?’ Lauren asked, looking at James.

‘We could try a couple more doors,’ said James. ‘If not, we’ll have to go back to the classroom. Maybe we can pile up the tables and make some sort of shelter, or something.’

Lauren looked at her brother like he was an idiot. ‘Yeah, desks are notorious for their bullet-stopping ability.’

‘Well sis, if you’ve got any better ideas my ears are
 
wide
open.’

‘Shut it,’ Rat gasped. ‘Something’s up there.’

A torch lit up their faces as a shout came from the top of the staircase. ‘Turn around, put your hands on your heads.’

James recognised the voice and smiled with relief. ‘Ernie, thank god it’s you.’

He felt confident until he heard the safety catch of an automatic rifle being removed.

‘Hands on heads,’ Ernie repeated stiffly. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you three, but Miss Regan’s had a dozen people out searching for you. Now, come up them steps nice and
 
sloooow
. No sudden moves.’