O'Leary, JI Terrorist Hunter

By Steve Tolbert

Michael O’Leary’s life as a ‘weird and wacky’ word-fixated student changes after his mother is killed and his father badly wounded in a Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terrorist attack. In the company of his alter ego, Bounty Hunter Clint, Michael travels to Bali and Central Java intent on confronting JI operatives. At each stage of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ginninderra Press
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760412142

Book preview

Chapter One

Jimbaran Bay, Bali, Indonesia

He dismounted from the back of the motorbike and handed over the fare. Kalau mau saya tunggu – I can wait if you want me to, the motorbike driver said to him.

Saya tidak kembali lagi – I won’t be returning, he answered, pressing his sunglasses closer to his face and checking his watch. Fourteen minutes to go.

Western tourists wearing hats and sunglasses, their skin shining pink between sandals and shorts and above their skimpy shirts, filled the footpath in both directions. Their voices boomed. Loud laughter followed.

Kurang ajar – bad-mannered, he muttered to himself, his distaste for Westerners stronger than ever. He avoided them by stepping into a clothes shop. Once they were gone, he stepped out again and walked towards a line of open restaurants, searching.

Minutes later a voice behind him muttered, Gabriel.

He kept his gaze on the footpath and answered, Gunung Wira, 610.

Ikutlah, the contact man said, sweeping past him and claiming his space on the footpath from more approaching tourists.

The man code-named Gabriel followed a metre behind, catching the tourists’ smells – their sweat, lotions, perfume – and glancing at them ever so briefly.

On they went past cafés and shops before the contact man slowed. He looked at a sand-filled opening between two restaurants. Restoran Menega. Di sebelah kanan – To the right, he said quietly, not looking back. Ada banyak bule* – There are many Westerners. Allahu akbar – God is great. Alhamdulillah – Praise be to God." The contact man picked up his pace, crossed the street and disappeared.

Gabriel turned towards the bay and stepped down, his feet sinking into the sand. He picked some up and sifted it through his fingers, marvelling at its feel. Six minutes to go. He walked out on to the open beach and gazed at the endless stretch of bright white sand topped in white plastic tables and chairs, Westerners occupying them, their plates clattering, their voices echoing and laughing as hawkers with wood carvings and kites circled trying to attract their attention.

In front of him, two old fishermen waded in the shallows tossing out nets. Beyond, the sun turned gold, pink then blood-red before sliding into the sea. That last colour he took as an omen, delivered by Allah, especially for him. He smiled and gave thanks.

One minute to go. His heart beat faster. He stared out at the bay.

To calm himself, he whispered, Allah is our objective. The prophet is our leader, the Koran our law, jihad our way, dying in the way of Allah our highest hope.

He looked around. Sitting at the closest table was a man wearing sandals, shorts and a T-shirt and next to him, a woman in a white, sleeveless, one-piece garment, the tops of her breasts showing for all to see. What had to be a bottle of alcohol drink and two half-empty glasses occupied the space between them. He watched as the man stood and, under the woman’s direction, took photos of the fishermen and sunset.

It was time. He walked towards the woman. From the corner of his eye he saw a figure approaching.

Ke mana? – Where are you going? the figure asked.

He reached under his shirt. Ke firdaus – To paradise.

His explosives detonated.

Chapter Two

One month later: Clifton Beach, Tasmania

Go on, Michael, do it, do it, do it, I tell myself. Your fashion statement for Jemaah Islamiah land, rainbow-splashed clothes to augment (big word magnet that I am) your Irish clover Paddy cap, bird’s nest hair, bandido fuzz moustache and Rev 215 sunnies. The idea energises me like nothing else has done lately, except Indonesian.

Still, no easy decision this one – whether to blend in or stand out up there in Java – and no issue better illustrates my current behaviour pattern of hating attention then seeking it than this blend-in, stand-out bizzo. Just ask Tiffany and team, their heads pulled back, their bulging eyes backside-focused until the southerly gale threatened frostbite damage on my private parts, dangling out there so cold-weather traumatised. And Father Frank, I swear, it’s the first time those parts have been out in public, and I have no idea why it happened. Ten Hail Marys and a head-in-hands confession promising you and all the saints in heaven it will never happen again, okay?

I scrap recent history and focus on my clothes again, calling on my anterior cingulated gyrus to decide. Dumb call. I mean, I want to grab JI’s attention, don’t I? I want them to know who I am, why I’m up there in Java about to sort them out. No decision needed, then. It’s automatic – go the rainbow, stand out.

I toss the lot in the washing machine – red daypack, sand shoes, neon green and purple T-shirts, faded jeans, pongy week-long underpants and socks. As Mum’s horrified voice wails away inside my head, the phone rings. I power-walk from the laundry thinking it’s got to be Flight Centre.

Hello, I answer.

This is Rasheed from Telstra calling. How are you today? It’s like he’s auditioning for a happy voice competition, asking about the weather then saying there should be a law against staying indoors on such boo-tiful day as today, as though he’s here in Tasmania instead of half a world away. This is Patrick O’Leary I’m speaking to?

No. Hold on a minute.

Dad – grown old and bent, pyjamas buttoned up the wrong way, a turban of surgical bandage around his skull – is in his armchair watching Clint in High Plains Drifter. Clint’s hard stare and fast gun draw are about to sort out three gunslingers terrorising a tinhorn town.

I hold out the phone. It’s Telstra, Dad.

He ignores it.

Earth to Dad, come in please. I go and turn the DVD down. Telstra, Dad.

He looks up as if he hardly knows me and shakes his head.

Dad’s really busy right now. Maybe you can ring back tomorrow.

Happy voice gets serious. It is what you say to me yesterday.

My skin goes hot. Piss off, you pointy-ear button thumper, I brain-talk. Who asked you to ring up in the first place? Sorry, is what I say. Maybe next week would be better. It won’t be.

As Rasheed’s decibel level rises, I hang up and sit down next to Dad’s feet.

Still early, true, but Rasheed has caused my anger to surge – anger riddled with frustration from Dad’s lobotomy lock-down (or near enough to it) and my inability to coo, smile naturally and stroke his brow like my sister can. As showdown time for Clint and the gunslingers nears, I look up into Dad’s face – burned, scarred, vacant as the moon – though some signs of life still remain. He’s breathing (not that watching Clint requires much) and stubble has lengthened on his face and skull. His finger nails seem longer.

My Indonesian exam is on today, Dad. I’ll have to leave soon.

Okay. Be careful. He speaks so softly I have to lip-read.

I’ll be back this afternoon, I say, my guilt gland swelling. Anger about feeling guilty will come next, then guilt about feeling anger about feeling guilty. What about curried vegies for tea? I ask. "I made it in cooking class yesterday, remember?

Guns blaze, bullets fly. Clint’s the only one left standing.

Remember, Dad?

The wall clock tick-tocks.

Okay.

No, he doesn’t remember. His memory’s fixed on one program, and it’s got nothing to do with where his eyes are pointed.

I go and round up my school things before reading our share of the world’s forty billion spam messages for the day – Rolex specials, African investment opportunities and genital enlargement strategies mostly. I look forward to reading spam. It keeps me in touch with the outside world.

When I pass through the lounge room again Dad’s lips are moving, forming silent words. Little doubt whose ear they’re aimed at.

So curried vegies tonight then? I re-ask.

Okay.

Poetry. I mean, I could offer him up pig’s scrotum and the answer would stay the same. It’s like he’s been replaced by a half-dead version of himself.

Outside hits me like a nuclear explosion. After a night of rain, the paddock sparkles, each blade of grass a diamond reflecting atomic sunlight. Or most likely, with me so ultra explosion-sensitive, it’s not really that bright. My cosmic imagination – free of our rammed earth and truck tyre house – has just escaped its brain cavity again. Anyway, it’s at least Rev 215 sunnies bright, so I put them on and gaze out, filling up my lungs from the increased oxygen supply. The usual spring scenes out there – butterflies flitting about, chooks pecking, the goat and horse gorging on grass. The only sound is waves breaking from across the dunes. That’s where I want to be, but the Rosneath exam schedule has other ideas. Last exam, though, last day I have to absorb all those What rotten luck, Michael looks and airhead comments that follow.

The T team’s got me again. Between classes, I’m closing in on them. They don’t see me. Hear what happened to the weirdo’s parents? Tiffany’s appendage asks her on full volume, still texting, preening and posing. Like it’s just sooo tragic. She goes on, her words taking on wings and flitting from one passing student to another.

Just one more day until I’m invisible again and surfing myself sillier, if Dad’s settled, that is, and I can loosen the grip my imagination has on me. Yeah, my imagination – in near-constant Bali and Java mind play mode the past few weeks. I’ve even given the mind play a title – O’Leary, JI Terrorist Hunter, like I’m a modern-day Clint about to ride off on a mission, a mission of revenge. I power-walk to the bus stop, mind plays of Mr Hawky and Mum taking me away again.

Mr Hawky is shouting at Peter Walker for finger snapping Ying Soon’s ear – "The last part of the brain to develop, Mr Walker, is that which assesses risks and controls impulses like having to constantly torment people. Brain development usually finishes in late adolescence. In your case, I doubt it ever will. See me after class.’

Mum on the beach, me next to her steeling myself to surf the monster break. Yaw know what yair granda used say when I was scared a somethin as a wee girl?"

I do know. It’s hardly the first time she’s mentioned this. What?

Fear’s best conquered by divin’ straight inta it.

What a mum! I store all that. Besides a half-formed brain and a courage injection to dive straight inta it, there’s also the matter of Jessie’s working hours. She’s got to be here for Dad at night, his prime sound effects and flashback nightmare time. Everything else is right for lift-off, though. I’ve got three thousand dollars stashed compliments of my kitchen-hand job and the Foreshore Tavern will give me the time off if I give them enough notice. I’ve tossed my hair gel and eyebrow rings, de-spiked my hair and dyed it back to its almost normal colour. I have a passport (Fiji, 2004-stamped). I have emails written to myself that I’ve sent to my mate, Sam, up in Port Macquarie. He’s ready to send them back to me, along with two blank picture postcards, as soon as I give him the word. I’ve scoured about fifty thousand internet sites getting information about holidaying on the central New South Wales coast. A three-page letter, inviting me up and signed by Sam and his parents, is the result. It’s mostly a day-to-day itinerary about all the things we’ll be doing there. I’ll use it to help me write the postcards Sam will send to Dad while I’m up in JI territory. I reckon I really will get to Port Macquarie one day and do all those things with Sam, but not this year. I’ve also read Dad’s Lonely Planet book on Indonesia until my eyes bubbled.

Money won’t be a problem. A thousand dollars up there is like four times that down here. Like you can get what they call a de luxe bus in Bali and go all the way across Java for about twenty dollars. Though, from the latest sighting report on Noordin Top – JI’s CEO of terrorist operations – I think I’ll only have to go halfway across. Depends. I’ll just keep watching the news and reading articles on the possible whereabouts of Noordin Top and his A-grade hit man, Azahari bin Husin. Here one moment, back in our lounge room the next.

Today Tonight, a gangland murder story, the four of us its lounge room audience. Mum – It’s got ta be enshrined in law that a crime victim’s family has the right ta meet the person who committed the crime and explain the sufferin they’ve caused and ta ask, Why?’

Old enough to remember the Belfast bombings, her father being shot stepping out the front door and the protest marches of her childhood, Mum used words – lots of them – on placards, leaflets, in emails and letters to the newspaper to continually confront injustice, her experience-based idea of it, anyway.

So yeah, mind plays – life staged in my head so clearly it’s like the rest of me is missing. My brain packed with facts and memories, images and voices entering, mingling, exiting and returning, only fading for a recharge during my few hours of blackout sleep time at night. Over the past month, DMB hasn’t let go, and I’ve learned that given a strong enough incentive, mind plays can take me anywhere, be staged in micro-detail in places I’ve never been before, like Java. Result – exit attention-deficit Rosneath students, enter Jemaah Islamiah office-bearers, and me, O’Leary, JI Terrorist Hunter.

In response, I’ve learned more Indonesian in four weeks than I did in the previous two years I sort of studied the language. I’ve thrown myself into it. I reckon I’m short-odds to ace the Indonesian exam, eighty per cent plus the Physics, Sociology and Environmental Science ones and, with apologies to Leonardo DiCaprio, no score Drama Theory.

Jessie reckons her nursing roster for the next month will be out tomorrow. She’s told me if I want to go up and stay with Sam, then do it, if she’s been successful in getting a block of day shifts, which she’s pretty confident she has been. Not unusual for my sister to take on a second nursing shift for the day, while I saddle up and head off in search of JI outlaw hangouts.

So, the backpack’s packed, O’Leary’s set to roll. The only question is will it happen outside my brain? Like, will solitary, seventeen-year-old me maintain enough anger and half-brained courage to ignore the travel warnings and go up there, and once in Bali and Java, say to people, Saya mencari anggota JI – I’m looking for JI members. Saya mau berbicara dengan mereka – I want to speak to them.

Chapter Three

Must admit, Rosneath students are spot-on about my brain: how it works is weird. Can’t be many like it in kangaroo-land. Sometimes I wish I could swap it like people do houses, boats and cars for one permanently programmed to the here-and-now. At a Brain Exchange – Google search for the one nearest you. Like at home it spent all that time in mind play mode scripting what I’d do when I got up here. Now that I’m in Bali, patrolling main road Kuta – the traffic a river of glinting metal and noise, Aussie bar signs