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and where the hell she’d had it hidden in the outfit she was wearing.
    The firing picked up – M16s, I reckoned – but nothing inthe form of hot lead seemed to be coming our way, so I stood up. I could see muzzle flashes on the stern of the American cruiser. There was the sound of a helicopter lifting off at full revs, and the firing suddenly stopped. Seconds later, I was surrounded by people yelling into two-way radios. Everyone was looking towards the cruiser, except for the young walloper who was pointing at the top of the LNG tanker and shouting.
    Two men, dressed in black and wearing ski masks, were clambering up a metal stairway on the front dome. It looked like one hell of a tricky climb to the top of that thing, with a bastard of a drop down to the steel deck if you missed your footing.
    Suddenly the wash from a US Navy Seahawk was lifting dust from the ground at our feet, and there was heat and a strong smell of burnt jet fuel. The helicopter went into a hover over the front LNG dome, its massive rotor blades thrashing the air. A masked, black-clad figure in the chopper’s open doorway was pointing an M16 down in our direction. We had absolutely no cover, but luckily no one on our side was stupid enough to point a firearm back.
    The noise from the engines was deafening. Lonergan was shouting into his mobile and Sturdee was yelling in my ear.
    ‘We’ve got police snipers stationed on top of the bridge pylons and on the Opera House,’ he screamed. ‘What do you reckon we should do? It’s your show now, Alby, and you’re bloody welcome to it. I’m sure as hell not about to tellanyone to open fire.’
    Good idea. It would be an almost impossible shot from either position, but bringing down a US Navy Seahawk in a friendly port in front of a CNN live-satellite feed couldn’t possibly be good for US-Australia relations, and would definitely put a serious crimp in the Free Trade Agreement. And a six-tonne aircraft chock-full of fuel dropping onto the fort would put a serious crimp in us.
    ‘Everyone holds their fire until we figure out what’s happening,’ I yelled. Sturdee nodded and put his radio to his ear.
    Above us, the pilot manoeuvered in close to the top of the dome, and the first of the waiting men leapt the narrow gap between the dome and the chopper and scrambled into the cabin. I dropped my pistol into my camera bag, grabbed my Nikon, and rattled off a burst of twenty or so frames of the hovering aircraft. The pilot swung away from the ship momentarily and then eased back in, but the gap was wider this time and the second man jumped too soon. He hit the metal cargo deck of the chopper with a thud you could almost feel, the lower half of his body hanging out the doorway, legs kicking. A black-clad arm grabbed him by the belt and hauled him inside.
    Lonergan stopped shouting into his phone, covered his other ear with his hand to block out the chopper noise, and listened intently. Then, swear to God, he turned as white as a sheet. You think it’s just an expression until you see theblood drain right out of a man’s face like that. Suddenly he was yelling, ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ with an urgency that got everyone’s attention.
    The chopper lifted away from the tanker, and with both engines screaming started a run up the harbour. In sixty seconds the Seahawk was out of sight and it was suddenly very, very quiet. There was only the sound of waves lapping against the fort. Then came the wail of sirens in the distance.
    ‘Peter,’ I yelled, breaking the stunned silence around me. ‘Get the OAT guys on board now ! We need prisoners, information, anything.’
    We could see frantic activity on the Altoona ’s empty chopper deck, and ambulances were screaming onto the wharf.
    ‘You were right on the money, Jules,’ I said. ‘That tanker was an 80 000 tonne distraction. We were set up, and I bloody fell for it.’
    Two Army Blackhawks roared overhead as we jumped aboard the