Duat and Hendra both woke from a sleep filled with horrors, yet some of their strength had returned. They wandered through the encampment by torchlight noticing for the first time the stench of death hanging in the night air. It seemed that many people had died, either from the poison, or from a self-administered bullet when the madness from the VX-induced dreams became too much to bear. The suicide squads had been virtually annihilated. No one remained in any fit state to take Babu Islam’s message beyond the encampment. Hendra’s young protégé, Unang, had also died, but he’d lived long enough to see his whole family perish in the frightening nightmarish way common to VX exposure.
Duat and Hendra returned to Rahim’s quarters to conduct a thorough search in the hope of finding more antidote, but there was none. They turned next to the Internet in a quest for additional supplies but, in an irony that escaped neither himself nor Hendra, all available stocks of atropine appeared to have been cornered by the Indonesian and Australian governments as they waited for the terrorist weapon to burst over their cities.
Duat sat behind a computer terminal and tried to order his mind. If he were to survive, he knew that he must leave the encampment as soon as possible because neither he nor Hendra were aware of the source of the poisoning. More than likely it was in something widely distributed throughout the encampment – the water, the rice, or possibly even the air itself. The drums that contained the VX were stored in Rahim’s quarters. They had examined them and their seals appeared to be intact. It was a mystery. Perhaps Rahim himself had accidentally poisoned the encampment, the white powder having dulled his oncesharp mind.
After several mistakes Duat finally managed to control his fingers well enough to tap the correct Internet address into the bar. The site flashed onto the screen. He keyed in his personal identity code, the number of his favourite Sura from the Qur’an. The screen went blank momentarily before returning. Duat blinked at what he saw. Surely not? He re-entered his code, refreshing the screen in the process, and received the same response. He read the words that flashed red in French, Italian and English across the page: ‘Account terminated. Contact bank administration.’ Duat swallowed as the implications of this dawned on him. The account had been closed, the funds frozen. How could that be? Only one other person knew his account number, the Australian financier. That could only mean one thing: that the infidel had been captured and had talked. Duat realised then how much damage the sickness that had descended on the camp had caused. For almost a week he had lain in his bed, not caring about the world, and that was time he would never win back. If the capture of Kalas was anything to go by, much had probably happened that he should have been aware of. He connected to CNN.com and tapped ‘Kalas’ into the site search engine. The headlines told him the worst: ‘Raid nabs terrorist moneyman’, and then, ‘Terrorist financier cracks’. Duat disconnected from the server, his heart racing. How long did they have? A day? Hours?
‘Duat, good news at last,’ said Hendra, folding a meteorological printout on the bench. ‘Allah has given us a break in the weather.’
‘Then we must launch,’ said Duat. ‘Now.’