Mano's Brief.

Chapter 20.

There was a sense of finality in arriving out by boat at Nusakambangan Island otherwise known as Execution Island. The boat docked at Cilacap.
Indonesia itself was the largest archipelago in the world, straddling important sea lanes and bisecting both the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It has 17,500 islands ranging from a distance of 1,760 kilometres north to south, and 5,120 kilometres from west to east and borders East Timor, Malaysia and Papua, New Guinea. It was a country blessed with natural resources like coal, petroleum and natural gas, timber, copper and lead phosphates, uranium, bauxite, gold, silver, iron, mercury, nickel, and even arable land; and a country cursed with active volcanoes, monsoons, tropical cyclones, tsunamis and everything else the weather could throw at them including mudslides and flooding.
Mano wasn't sure that he liked the death penalty even though he'd just given evidence on Oshira and his accomplices back in America, evidence that had helped to convict and sentence them to the death penalty.
O'Malley had agreed to accompany him and he had also brought along Franklin. He was still smarting from how close Pinyin had come.
What they called Execution Island had a foreboding look about it. There seemed to be a heavy police presence with barbed wire checkpoints everywhere. Mano noticed that the media were out to n force too and he recognized several faces - reporters he knew and had talked to in the past. They couldn't see him because he was in a vehicle with tinted glass.
He had read an article in his in-flight magazine that showed that the island had a Dutch Colonial past and that since that time prison complexes had materialised and some were still in use today. In fact, he was on his way to one now.
Both O'Malley and Franklin had become uncommunicative since landing at Cilacap. It was as though the oppression of the place had seeped into their bones.
It hadn't always been oppressive though, Mano remembered from his article reading. The ancient kings had recalled the dead back to life using what was known as Wijayakusuma, the island being known for its many flowers sent for by the princes of the Sultanate of Materam, the blooms helping them to become kings.
As Mano and his people pulled up at the prison grounds and exited the vehicle, a man approached Mano with an outstretched hand and a smile on his face.
"Fico, didn't know the Feds were going to be here?" Mano greeted.
"I'll show you your quarters," Fico replied, escorting them all. "It's all going down at dawn on Wednesday, about forty-eight hours from now."
Mano caught O'Malley's eyes and gave an imperceptible nod. Armed with the knowledge Fico had provided them with, O'Malley went online and booked their return flights. All too well, he knew his boss. Mano was ill at ease in these surroundings and wanted nothing but to get back to familiar ground - Hawaii.

The prisoners were led out in shackles, bound by hand and by foot. They were singing to help keep their spirits up. There were nine men and one woman.
They were led two guards to a prisoner to the shooting fields of Nirbaya. It reminded Mano of those old films about prison chain gangs like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. Or some of those black and white Cagney movies like White Heat.
The fields were a three-hundred yard walk. Ten firing squads had already formed.

Mano was already turning away before the last echo of the shots had died away. The sky overhead was copper and opaque. There was a sour taste in his mouth.

He was buried on prison grounds.
This time around the earth had truly swallowed him up.