Read Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike for Free Online

and the Chinese said public propaganda was a specialist diplomatic discipline then that’s precisely what it was.
    They landed in the military section behind Denpasar Airport at quarter to fi ve. A young woman from the embassy in Jakarta met Mac and led him to a white Holden Commodore. Julie had honey-blonde hair pulled back and a gold chain-and-bar necklace. Mac had her as a landed Queensland girl who’d gone to a Protestant boarding school and then UQ.
    On the front passenger seat was Mac’s overnight bag from his locker at the Jakarta embassy. Always packed, it contained two sets of chinos, two polo shirts, undies, socks, a tropical sports jacket, a pair of overalls, and two pairs of Hi-Tecs and boat shoes. A set of IDs and Nokias were in the side pocket.
    They drove past the civilian terminal of Ngurah Rai Airport, better known to Westerners as Bali International Airport, where what looked like the entire tourist population of the island was trying to get into the terminal. Buses and taxis stood in long queues on the apron under the shimmering orange fl oodlights as worried-looking Anglos tried to push through the doors into the crowded terminal.
    They accelerated past a long line of traffi c and a phalanx of traffi c cops as they headed towards Kuta Beach. Mac was still trying to adjust to his rude awakening ninety minutes before and he could feel a hunger stirring.
    ‘So what happened here?’ he asked, yawning, as Julie sped past thousands of locals and tourists walking around in a daze.
    ‘Two bomb blasts outside a couple of nightclubs at Kuta, down on Legian Street,’ said Julie mechanically. ‘Aussie tourist places. There’s a lot of dead - maybe in the hundreds. US Consulate had a small one go off too.’
    An ambulance screamed past in the opposite direction as they got closer to the beach. Soon after, they hit a roadblock manned by POLRI and some plainclothes, and Julie stopped, handed over her ID. Mac went for the bag between his legs and immediately felt guns coming up. He raised his hands, opened the door and let the POLRI guy with the M16 see what he was doing with his hands. Mac reached down, pulled his diplomatic passport from the pocket in the black Cordura bag and handed to it the POLRI with the German shepherd.
    The plainclothes came around to Mac’s side, eyeballed him, took the passport and smirked.
    ‘Bit early for you, eh McQueen? You’d be sleeping off the booze this time of the morning, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Bloke’s not a camel, Bongo, you know how it is.’
    Bongo Sitepu, a peer of Mac’s from Indonesian intelligence, snorted, fl icked the passport to the dog-handler without looking at it and walked off.
    Julie spoke with the uniform POLRI. She spoke good Bahasa and Mac picked up that she was saying they were Australian Embassy staff, going straight to the Hard Rock Hotel. They were waved through as Mac watched the police carbines being lifted and aimed at an old pale blue HiAce van pulling up behind them.
    They hit another roadblock forty metres from the Hard Rock.
    Concrete sleds were arranged in an overlap, with a dozen riot squad POLRI inside and outside the perimeter to the hotel. Julie showed the ID and a POLRI bloke with a bum-fl uff mo fl ashed a torch in Mac’s face and then waved them through to the hotel.
    As Mac got out and stretched he was hit by the noise: trucks, fi re appliances, generators powering fl oodies, shouts from panicked men.
    He could see the lights originating from three blocks away. Buses fi lled with locals in white overalls fi led past; morgue trucks and cranes, police rescue, fi re rescue, ambulances - hundreds of people, running around with injured locals, yelling at one another. As he pulled his overnight bag from the Commodore, Julie came round the front and handed Mac a white envelope.
    ‘Room key - and you’re sharing, till all the paying guests are gone.’
    Mac wanted to argue about the sharing thing but Julie was already back in the car,