Flight Risk Read online

  ‘Ted, I know, I know. But take it from me: we haven’t a clue. One second it’s there, the next nothing.’

  I utter the unutterable word: ‘Bomb?’

  ‘It’s certainly one option. It would explain the sudden loss of communication. We had the air force up there in the very spot it went missing at first light, but so far there’s no sign of any debris.’

  ‘Weather?’

  ‘Flying conditions were clear as you would like. There is always the possibility of some freak turbulence event, but that’s highly unlikely. We are not jumping to any conclusions; there could be any number of explanations. None sinister. The Garuda was half an hour off the coast of Western Australia when it went missing. It could have gone in any direction once we lost it, travelling at God knows what speed. It could have covered a lot of sea and there’s a lot of water out there. It’s going to take time to have a proper look.’

  Bob is right. There is a lot of land and water out there. A lot of remoteness.

  ‘Where exactly was it when it went missing?’ I ask.

  Bob rearranges himself in that large chair. Lifts himself partially out of it, reaches over to the large iMac screen on his desk and swivels it in my direction. He shows me a map. In the bottom right-hand corner is the northwest tip of Australia. I can see Darwin and Broome marked on the map. Above that, a lot of empty blue ocean until the scattered islands of the outskirts of Indonesia come into view.

  Bob points to a section of the map a few hundred kilometres off the northwest tip of Australia.

  ‘It was just about here when it vanished,’ he says. ‘As you know, radar doesn’t work like an invisible force field that surrounds Australia. Once off that coast, coverage is patchy. Operators need to be told what to look for, and if a plane does something beyond the bounds of the expected, it can be tough to track.’

  ‘Yes, but what about satellites? What about the bloody Americans and their whizz-bang stuff out at Pine Gap? Nothing’s shown up?’

  ‘Not a thing, Ted. It’s like it never existed,’ he says, raising his right hand to his face, rubbing his thumb into one eye, his forefinger into the other, before sweeping it back over his scalp in a gesture suggesting he is deeply worried about the fate of this aircraft.

  2

  I leave Bob’s office. The plane may have crashed due to pilot error, action or malfunction, may have been hijacked or blown up. May have just taken a wrong turn at some roundabout in the sky. But I’m not the man whose job it is to find debris floating on a lonely wave somewhere in the Indian Ocean. There are other people for that. I’m here for the worst-case scenario. I’m here to find out if there is some badness at work.

  The first question is who? Which means working through the usual train of lunatics to figure out if one of these fuckwits has actually slipped through the net this time. These guys—Al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah, ISIS, whoever—like to present as all-knowing, all-powerful groups of immense cunning and subterfuge. They define themselves this way, just as they define the West as weak, degenerate, incompetent and fearful.

  It suits their world view and their view of themselves. The reality is different. Sure, the odd one gets through, but only because someone like me has made a mistake that has never been picked up. Until it was too late.

  Even 9/11, that great triumph of this kind of statement terrorism, should have been knocked down before it reached its ultimate, terrible conclusion. In 1998, someone in the CIA was writing reports that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack planes in New York and Washington. But then this same someone in the CIA forgets to mention it to their friends in the FBI, and the report slips through the cracks. The next thing you know there are planes heading towards the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and there are a thousand US intelligence guys with their dicks in their hands, wondering where it all went wrong.

  They are competitive buggers, these terrorists. Osama bin Laden sat at the apex for a while because he had pulled off the big one. The moment that made the world go ‘fuck me’. But that wasn’t necessarily a cause for celebration among all the brotherhood. In some, it provoked intense jealousy and a desire to replace bin Laden at the top of the tree.

  Don’t underestimate the narcissistic element in some of these fuckers. They want to be noticed, and they want to be feared by some and loved by others. Islam itself has very little to do with it. Just like everyone in the West, they are chasing their own little bit of fame. They just do it with guns and bombs.

  So, Al-Qaeda begat Al-Shabaab, which begat the spectacularly evil ISIS, and the story goes on, with each new chapter prompting an even bigger bout of brutality as their hackneyed quest for world attention continues. I suspect many of them didn’t get the love they needed as children.

  And now a plane is missing. An aircraft with 245 people on board. They could be dead, they could all be alive, they could be at the bottom of the sea, or floating somewhere, praying to be rescued.

  So far there has been no claim of responsibility. If we are not dealing with an accident, there are some who would be shouting it from the rooftops by now. But there are others who will keep quiet, hope for the fear of the unknown to build and build, for the panic and the chaos to develop. They’re the scary ones. It’s hard to guess at the motives of people you can’t find and won’t tell you who they are.

  But it’s still only a few hours since the plane went missing.

  I make my way from the glass monstrosity. With such little information, finding a place to start is always a challenge, but Bob reckons I may as well head to the centre of the search area. Just to keep an eye on things. To Western Australia it is, then.

  * * *

  I emerge from the office into one of those Sydney days that makes you never want to leave the place. A day when the sun is high, the light is bouncing off the harbour and flinging rays against the Opera House. The water lends the soft wind a salty tang, which this morning is free from the taint of the diesel fumes of the ferries. It’s even a bit early in the day for the usual miasma of eager tourists, looking everywhere except where they are going.

  But today is not a day to stand around and admire God’s handiwork. There is a car waiting. Standard-issue secret service. Black, with black windows, black seats and a white driver. We are heading towards Sydney Airport. I am travelling with nothing, something that seems to happen quite a lot to me. Dressed in my hastily assembled morning outfit, mostly picked from the floor of my bedroom after Bob called. If you didn’t already know me, there’s a fair chance you would assume I’m a single man. And guess what? You’d be right. The air of raffishness I like to tell myself I project is more likely interpreted as carelessness and laziness by those with a more studied view of such things.

  I have my Ray-Bans, my iPhone, my wallet with $67.25 and some credit cards dangerously close to their limits. Happily, there is also my ‘work card’. That one has no limit, although Bob does like to pay particularly close attention to any bills I run up at the taxpayers’ expense. On another of these trips, Buenos Aires, I think, I treated myself to a haircut and a shave on the company card. Because Bob reckoned my hair would have grown whether I was at work or not, he decided I should pay for it myself. So, the taxpayers were reimbursed that $35.

  So that’s me, all tooled up and ready for work. No gun. Not yet. Don’t like them and never carry them with me if I can help it. I expect Bob has arranged for one to be on the plane I’m about to board. That’s another perk of this job. You do get to take guns on planes. They are, I suppose, a workplace necessity.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some New-Age agent who believes I can solve all the world’s problems over a cup of green tea and some gentle persuasion. When you’re facing down some suicidal lunatic armed with an AK-47, you want more than words at your disposal. And while I can shoot well, as more than a few souls have found out over the years, I’m no death-cult fetishist for guns like some in my line of work. I don’t sleep with a gun, or spend hours cleaning and polishing them. I don’t have a pe
t name for my gun. It’s an implement needed in this line of work, nothing more, nothing less. Accountants carry a calculator, special agents usually carry a gun.

  * * *

  Even on a Saturday morning, the traffic around Sydney is something to behold. We crawl out through the city, heading towards Surry Hills and Redfern, and through some of the suburbs I lived in as a kid. Dad drove a truck that would deliver bread all over the inner-western suburbs of Sydney. His day would start at two in the morning and finish about ten, so I never saw him as much as I wanted.

  I remember trying to go with him on his rounds once when I was in primary school. I thought it would be an adventure. I pestered him for weeks. When the time came, he had to drag me out of bed. I slept through most of the delivery run and wasn’t invited back.

  My mum had a part-time job behind the counter in one of the small corner shops where Dad delivered the bread, but mainly she stayed home to look after me. I was an only child. Both my parents were in their early forties when I came along. ‘A miracle,’ according to my mother. ‘An accident,’ according to my father.

  We moved around places like Newtown and Alexandria, places that have acquired a trendy sheen they didn’t have 40 years ago. Cramped houses with tiny backyards where I would climb onto the back fence to see if I could spot planes heading to the airport. That was when inner-city grime was a reality, not polished up as a fashion accessory for the hipsters.

  It wasn’t far from there, in Erskineville, where I later lived with my wife and daughter. Both gone now, but in different ways. As the car bumps slowly up Elizabeth Street, I realise we’re headed towards a spot I have not been back to in more than eight years. It’s where my wife, Melody, died. The corner of Elizabeth and Devonshire Streets in Surry Hills.

  I had been in the pub at 3 a.m. again for no good reason. I was back from Iraq where I had been flying F/A-18s for the last time, telling myself I deserved to blow off a little steam. But one night led to two, then three, then four, then for a while I just stopped coming home.

  That night Melody had come to find me, an act of mercy, while our nine-year-old daughter, Eliza, was strapped in the back seat, when a drunk broker in a four-wheel drive blew a red light and killed my wife. From the window of the pub I saw it all happen. By some miracle, Eliza was unharmed, but she never forgave me. And I can’t blame her for that. She went to live with Melody’s mum when she was thirteen and it’s been six years since I saw or even talked to her. I don’t even know where she is anymore.

  I stare out of the window as we cross the intersection, finding the exact spot where the cars collided and a life ended. A million memories, many more regrets. I think about Eliza and all that we have missed together. I make a vow to try to find her when I get home. To try to make amends.

  3

  After that unhappy trip down memory lane, I try my best to stow away all the pain in a rarely accessed part of my brain, and when we finally arrive at the airport I find the excuse I need to concentrate on the job at hand. Here’s another upside of this gig: you don’t have to go through the front door of the airport. Instead we skirt round the edges, along Joyce Drive until we come to a closed-access road, which in turn leads to a guarded tunnel, and then we’re driving to a hangar tucked away in a disused corner of the field. Waiting inside is one of those gorgeously sleek private jets that usually find their way into the hands of the unworthy. Billionaires, oil sheiks, Russian robber-barons.

  I am greeted by the pilot, Reg Wilson. He’s an old hand at these flights. He has guided to me to more than one trouble spot in the past and, more importantly, he’s got me out again. He’s another I have to trust my life to and I don’t even know whether Reg is really his name.

  ‘Hi, mate,’ I say as I climb the metal stairs into the plane. ‘Good to see you again. Ready for adventure?’

  ‘If you mean am I ready to rescue your sorry arse from whatever mess you find yourself in—again—I suppose I have to be. It’s what they pay me for.’ Reg laughs. ‘Nice to see you too, Ted. Welcome aboard.’

  I don’t want to give the impression this is my personal air force. The crew do ferry others around as well. But they are good people to have on your side in a crisis. Reg picked me up from my ill-fated Burma trip. I was delirious and half-gone from the bullet through the thigh, but he managed to find an old World War II base near the Thai border and took me to safety.

  Reg is ex-Royal Australian Air Force, but today he looks more like Royal Flying Corps circa 1917. He’s wearing heavy cotton khaki pants, a similar coloured top and a sheepskin-lined brown leather jacket that has seen better days. He even has a white silk scarf.

  ‘I see you’re going for the Biggles look today, Reg. Are we taking the Gulfstream or your Sopwith Camel?’

  It turns out to be the Gulfstream. A new one. I assume we have confiscated it from some reprobate or other as it seems unlikely the agency would spring for the $40 million or so it would take to release it from the showroom. The smell of new leather hasn’t even left this one. There are ten seats inside the narrow fuselage, upholstered and padded to within an inch of their lives. Seats that you don’t really sit in but instead descend into on a cushion of air and never want to get up from again. The interior is all-calming beige. You do get the feeling any show of excitement would be frowned on in such an expensive setting.

  Up front with Reg is his co-pilot. I don’t know her name. She has taxied me a few times here and there, but all I have seen is the back of her head. Not that I haven’t tried to sneak a look. But somehow Reg always manages to cut me off at the pass, like a protective father looking after his favourite daughter.

  The last person on board is Liz. Always there to help is our Liz. I’d call her the hostie, but she’d probably kick me in the nuts for applying a label that demeaning. But she is the only one dressed in uniform, an air force one, blue and smartly pressed. I am particularly taken today by the headwear worn at a jaunty angle. Liz is mid-thirties, tall and attractive, short brown hair and brown eyes. A nose that seems too small for her face, but a wide, expressive mouth.

  ‘Ah, Ted,’ she says. ‘Welcome back. You look like you have been keeping bad company again. Have you been getting into trouble?’

  ‘Not so much,’ I reply. ‘I’m steady these days. Each morning I rise clear-headed for some toast and coffee and read the paper. I like to take lunch by the harbour and dinner in the city. Then straight to bed. Very civilised, really.’

  I give her a smile that suggests I am not being overly serious. She knows me well enough to know my habits, the good and the bad.

  ‘All on your own?’ Liz attempts a sad face. ‘That must be lonely for you.’

  ‘No, it’s good. Gives me time for meditation and contemplation. Makes me think of all the bad things I have done in my life and how I can improve myself. Life-affirming, really.’

  ‘All the bad things? That would keep you busy, I suppose.’ The right side of her mouth and her right eyebrow lift in concert as she contemplates this frankly unbelievable claim.

  ‘Thanks, Liz. Lovely to see you again as well.’

  ‘Wheels up in ten, so take a seat. Anything I can get for you?’

  ‘A coffee would be good. And I just realised I haven’t had a thing to eat today. Any chance of a sandwich? Toast? Maybe some caviar and crackers?’

  * * *

  It’s going to take around four hours to get to the search hub in the far reaches of northwest Western Australia. We are heading for RAAF Base Curtin, known as ‘bare base’, which is about as far from civilisation as you can get in Australia. No permanent unit is allocated there, just a few barren buildings and a three-kilometre-long landing strip.

  I contemplate a snooze, but soon reach for the iPad in front of me loaded with the information we have so far on the Garuda. It’s updated in real time so when I land I will have as much information as possible. Whether I will be able to do anything with it is another matter entirely.

  Bob’s mindset was leaning towards
the ‘accident’ category, but my early feeling is that there is a human hand at work here. Something more sinister than a busted rivet.

  The lovely Liz drops off some scrambled eggs on toast, slightly runny, full of Tabasco, perfect. I’m impressed. She gives me a small smile and disappears back to her hiding spot at the back of the Gulfstream.

  I am the only passenger. This is always a slightly disconcerting experience. I find it a bit quiet. All you have for company is the background whine of the jet engines. It also seems a bit self-indulgent. In theory, I could just lie back, call for a beer and flick on Flying High! on the movie channel or something. But, despite the comfort of my surroundings, I am supposed to be at work.

  I give life to the iPad by holding it up about ten centimetres from my face. It scans my eyes, likes what it sees, and switches itself on. It provides me all the usual top-secret guff, warnings about this and that, but after a few judicious swipes and electronic promises not to reveal anything to anybody I am through to the actual useful stuff.

  Most of it reiterates what Bob told me an hour ago. The aircraft just disappeared. There is a replay of the last five minutes of satellite tracking. I see a little green circle with a cross stating designation GIA005. It’s one of hundreds of flights I can see on my screen. Even after all this time, I am surprised by the amount of air traffic happening at any one time. You sometimes wonder how more of the buggers don’t just fall from the sky.

  I perform some finger exercises on the iPad and narrow my focus down to GIA005. There it is. Blinking happily away. I see it cross the Australian coast on its designated path towards Jakarta. It’s flying at 38,000 feet. It’s travelling at 880 kilometres per hour. All so very normal.

  Then it’s gone. Just like that. About on the border of where Australian airspace becomes Indonesian. And I wonder about that … If you wanted to take an aircraft out of circulation, the hazy border between one country’s airspace and another’s is the perfect place to start.