Jax estimated there would have been a battle group of eight in the wing, operating in bricks, two men for each cell. There would have been another battle group conducting a simultaneous raid in the other block, of a size Jax couldn’t estimate because he didn’t know how the inmates were arranged in their cells. No doubt they had also sent a team into Supermax, Hammad being the ultimate prize.

Jax wondered who had brought them undone.

Was it Bashir, the shady Sheik perhaps talking of the plot while using his contraband mobile phone?

Was it Hammad, as he ordered the cell into action from Supermax?

Was its Khalil, the simpleton maybe shooting his mouth off during a meeting in the Kent brothers’ cell?

Or was it none of them?

Clarke had looked completely frazzled that last time they’d spoken. To the point of recklessness, even. Jax wouldn’t be surprised if the prisoners were being sped towards an abandoned warehouse with hoods over their heads. He really didn’t know what Clarke was capable of.

CHAPTER 39

Punchbowl, NSW, Australia

SAMI and Mav had been watching them for three days. The fitted-out milk van was fully equipped, but not the most comfortable place to hole up. They slept in shifts, but didn’t exit the vehicle – it had an operational fridge and microwave, though the food supplied wasn’t exactly gourmet. The less said about the cassette toilet, the better. It had been a while since Sami had done this kind of gruelling surveillance work himself – he was more used to sitting behind a desk in a bureau. He’d never take the coffee machine in the office for granted again.

The four men who were living in the rented unit they were staking out had done very little in the last seventy-two hours. Aside from a group visit to the local mosque for prayer, only two of them had left the building.

An ASIO agent had followed the first of the suspects to an electronics store, a hidden camera recording the man as he purchased a radio frequency transmitter and its matching receiver. A second ASIO spook picked up the tail and followed him as he drove his rusted Toyota, registered to a construction company owned by the Halims, to a different electronics store in another suburb. There, he bought a roll of speaker wire. A third agent followed him as he made a third stop, at another electronics store, where he bought a soldering iron, fuses, switches and parts.

He could have been making a stereo. But the fact that he travelled to three different stores when all the components were available at the first store suggested he was making something else.

A bomb.

A separate team had followed the second suspect. An agent had sat at the opposite end of the carriage of train, eyes on the target for the entire trip to the city. He remained seated when the suspect got up.