Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 25
The service lane was muddy but relatively garbage-free. Numbering off the rear entries they stopped just past a floodlit compound surrounded by cyclone fencing and containing the large black garbage wheelie bins signifying a Western apartment building.
Tranh and Mac had barely hit the pavement when the cabbie accelerated away. Moving to the fence, they cased the area. No obvious security cameras but there was razor wire along the top of an eleven-foot fence. They could see a security door against a cinder-block wall that would lead into a communal area, the elevators and stairwells.
Mac found a length of old carpet rolled beside a garbage bin. Hauling it back to the fence with Tranh, they threw it over the razor wire and Mac clambered up on Tranh’s cupped hands, then straddled the wire and reached down for the other man.
As they landed on the concrete pad, Mac pulled the carpet down and hid it behind the bins. They paused, waiting for a burglar alarm or a woman calling for her husband. Walking to the security door, they heard voices on the other side and a shuffling sound. Tranh made to flee but Mac held him by the bicep and gave him the wink as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the hotel key.
‘So, I’m saying to this bloke, I’m like, “Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding, mate?” and this prick is right up in my face,’ said Mac theatrically, pulling Tranh along for the ride.
The security door opened and a well-groomed Anglo woman pushed through with a big bag of rubbish.
‘Hi, love,’ said Mac with a smile and wink. ‘Need a hand with that?’
‘I’m okay, but thanks,’ said the woman in an American accent.
Turning to Tranh, Mac continued the charade: ‘So, I’m sick of this prick by now, right?’
Holding the door open, Mac jabbered away to Tranh while the woman dumped her bag and hurried back to the held door.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled at Mac as they all moved into the courtyard, a leafy area of about twenty square metres with a central pond and high shrubs and lighting in the undergrowth. Apart- ment balconies looked down on the garden and Mac moved to the shadows in the lee of the south wall. The glass door slowly moved back towards a locked position as the American woman disappeared into the foyer and around the corner to what was probably the elevators. As she moved out of sight Mac lunged at the slow-motion door and stuck the toe of his sandal in the gap before it could shut.
Pushing into the light of the foyer, Mac looked back to check that Tranh had his Ruger out.
Moving to the stairwell door marked ‘G’, Mac drew the Colt, clicked off the safety and took a deep breath. He pushed down on the door handle as Tranh leaned in close, the handgun held cup-and-saucer behind Mac’s head. Upstairs, a door slammed; moving further in, the light was strong and the stairwell was empty. Mac scoped the stairwell with his Colt by making a box with his aim. Nothing – the stairwell looked clean.
The elevator dinged and light flooded into the foyer as the lift doors opened.
Turning to his left Mac saw only Tranh’s widening eyes and watched the pupils flash dark as the Vietnamese pulled the Ruger down and let a shot go, roaring in Mac’s ear.
There was movement from the elevator and instantaneously the foyer was filled with the flash of automatic gunfire.
Throwing himself into the stairwell, Mac rolled on the concrete, his ear screaming from Tranh’s gunshot at such close range. The bullets flew behind the door and Mac leapt off the ground and smashed the stairwell light bulb with the Colt, plunging the space into blackness.
Opening the door two inches, Mac took shelter around the corner and shot left-handed in the direction of the elevator, using four shots. The foyer floor was covered in glass and Mac couldn’t see Tranh through the darkness and gun smoke.
‘Tranh!’ he yelled, but fell back as rifle fire chewed the doorframe, blasting a cloud of concrete shrapnel into his face.
Pulling back into the darkness of the stairwell, almost dropping his gun in the process, Mac’s hands came up to his face. He couldn’t see. He was sure he hadn’t taken a bullet but the concrete dust had penetrated his eyeballs with such force that he felt like they were on fire.
‘Faaaark!’ he screamed as the gunfight raged on the other side of the door.
Feeling with his hands Mac climbed the stairs with no vision, in a blind panic. Turning at the first landing, he pushed too hard and slipped on his bad knee, dragged himself to his feet and kept climbing as his eyes burned deeper, creating swirling patterns of red and orange and bursts of pain behind his forehead.
Panting as he crawled and clawed his way up the stairs, Mac worried that the tears flooding down his cheeks was blood – what if the exploding cinder block had taken out his eyes?
The gunfire had stopped by the time Mac had ascended to what he estimated was the fifth-floor landing. He got to his knees and clawed for a door handle, but the stairwell doors required security keys to open them.
Pushing himself back on his arse into the corner of the stairwell landing, Mac coughed a chunk of concrete out of his throat and tried to control his breathing as he checked the Colt by feel.
Listening for approaching boots, he considered his options: they had assault rifles, they’d already killed Jim Quirk and Tranh, and now they were coming for him. Mac had three shots of .45-calibre loads left in the Colt and he was going to wait for them to come, take three random shots and let God decide.
His face ran with tears and his eyes hurt so much that all he could do was whimper as he awaited execution. He was vaguely aware that he was sitting under a light bulb but he still couldn’t see.
And then the door at the base of the stairwell opened and he could hear a low whisper – more than one of them. They were coming – the fight he should have settled back in Saigon when he had the chance had come back to haunt him. He thought of those dark, piercing eyes, goading him as Jim Quirk was executed.
Gulping down his panic, Mac held the Colt at a point where he thought they’d come from, blinking as high and hard as he could to regain some sort of vision. He thought about Jenny and he thought of his beautiful girls, Sarah and Rachel. He thought about a life doing others’ dirty work and he decided it wasn’t too bad – if all he could go out with was one more kill on the bad guys, he’d take it. They could write what they wanted in his obituary; he’d take payback right now.
He heard another whisper and a boot sliding on concrete – still two floors below. A woman screamed. Mac gasped for air and waited, and then suddenly there was a hand on his gun wrist and a steel object pushed against his cheek. The click that accompanied it was unmistakable.
His throat dry, Mac waited for death. But what came was a male American voice.
‘Drop it, McQueen, and you might live.’
The waterworks were running out of control down his face as Mac dropped the Colt, which clattered on concrete.
‘Stand,’ said the voice.
Sliding himself up the wall, Mac was led up the stairs to the top floor. More light flooded into a faint glow behind his marred vision as a door was opened and Mac was pushed along what sounded like a corridor. Then another door opened and he was shoved through it so hard he lost his feet and sprawled onto carpet.
A muttered conversation occurred close by, and then he was being rolled onto his back and his head was placed on a cushion.
‘Keep ’em open,’ came another American voice, and Mac felt a warm liquid wash across his eyeballs, making his eyelids flutter up and down.
‘The fuck’s that?’ said Mac, croaking as the briny fluid ran down his tear ducts and into his throat.
‘Saline solution,’ said the voice. ‘Just relax and we’ll get you cleaned up.’
‘Cleaned up?’ said Mac, blubbering through the fluid, not knowing if he was laughing or crying. The absurdity of it caught him by surprise and he laughed. ‘You’re cleaning me up?’
Heaving for air as he giggled like a pot-smoking undergraduate, Mac began to cough concrete dust from his bronchial tubes. The fit got worse and worse until he was dry-retching in agony.
As his sight slowly returned, Mac’s wrists were cuffed behind his back and he was seated on a comfortable sofa. He could make out two men in the room; they looked Chinese. The stocky one – Mac realised it was the Chinese agent they’d been tailing – stood in front of him and moved a finger back and forth.
‘I see it,’ said Mac.
‘Good,’ said the Chinese agent in his Midwestern accent. ‘Let’s start with the basics: when did you start working with the Israelis?’
‘Israelis?!’ said Mac, surprised.
‘Drop the games, McQueen,’ said the stocky guy. ‘Tell us where the girl is and this can end with smiles all round.’
‘The girl?’ said Mac. ‘Which girl?’
‘McHugh,’ said Stocky. ‘Hand her back and you can go home.’
‘
Geraldine
McHugh?’
‘I need her address, smart-ass,’ said Stocky. ‘Not her fucking name.’
Chapter 26
The tall Chinese stood at the side of the street-facing window and scoped the action outside. The eerie wash of red and blue lights illuminated the ceiling of the apartment.
In front of Mac’s perch on the sofa, the stocky Chinese lifted his cell phone and dialled. The mumbled conversation wasn’t pleasing to Stocky: ‘Okay, so you lost them – what I want to know is, can you find them?’
Mac assumed the Chinese driver who’d waited out the front had lost the trail of the gunmen.
‘Keep looking, keep me informed,’ said Stocky, snapping the phone shut.
Voices rose from the street and the flexi-cuffs around Mac’s wrists dug in.
‘Cops are here,’ said Tall, in a Texan accent. ‘An ambulance too.’
Stocky sipped on bottled water, not dropping the stare he had on Mac.
‘How many cops?’
‘Three cars – uniforms and Ds,’ said Tall, his back flat to the wall adjacent to the window.
‘Time to go,’ said Stocky. ‘Just have to decide what we do with Mr McQueen.’
‘Leave him here,’ said the tall one. ‘See if he’s got problems talking when the local cops drag him into the basement.’
‘He’s not going to the basement,’ said Stocky. ‘He’s probably consular. Cambodians won’t touch him.’
Mac gulped; he knew that whatever or whoever these Chinese-Americans were, they had to interrogate him, kill him or let him go. Either way, they didn’t want to spend an evening talking to the police and explaining why their apartment was filled with guns. Mac hoped he represented some value alive – that the same connections Urquhart liked so much might buy his life.
As Stocky mulled it over, a cell phone trilled. Stocky looked down towards the sound coming from the sofa, then stepped forwards and pushed Mac onto his side so he could pull the pre-paid Nokia from Mac’s back pocket.
‘Number unknown,’ said Stocky, reading the screen and inclining his head towards a black briefcase on the kitchen bar. The phone kept ringing as Tall opened the briefcase and extended a thick black aerial out of it. Stocky sat beside Mac on the sofa and held the phone between their ears so they could both hear.
‘Be nice, okay, McQueen?’
Mac shrugged and Stocky hit the green button.
‘Hello,’ said Mac, croaking.
‘Hi – perhaps I have the wrong number? Who’s this?’ came a heavily accented voice. It sounded like the man who’d killed Jim Quirk.
‘No, you got precisely the right number,’ smiled Mac. ‘Why else would I be answering? Who can I say is calling?’
‘I was looking for Mr Davis. Richard Davis, of Southern Scholastic Books?’
‘He’s not here right now, Mr . . .?’
‘No, that’s okay,’ said the man, gentle but in control.
‘He has an answering service,’ said Mac.
A pause opened and Mac thought he heard a sigh. Then the thick accent started again but with a nasty edge. ‘Okay, my friend. Tell Mr Davis that the delivery from Saigon was not to my liking. Tell Mr Davis that he has no involvement with my business interests, but if he wishes to be involved, I will resolve that situation very quickly.’
‘Situation?’ said Mac. ‘What situation?’
‘Tell Mr Davis that when we all stick to our own business, we can all prosper – but I will not tolerate interference.’
The connection ended and Stocky looked at the display, where a blinking phone icon informed that 00.58 seconds had elapsed.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, flopping back on the sofa.
‘Get it?’ said Stocky, moving to the briefcase.
‘Yep,’ said Tall. ‘MobiTel roaming charge to VinaPhone – made the call from a cell zone called “Royal Palace”.’
Stocky made to leave. ‘Ring Eagle, let him know.’
Royal Palace was on the Tonle Sap, across town and half a dozen blocks north of the Australian Embassy. The Israelis were moving fast, but to where? Mac thought quickly about what he could do to stay in this game. Two minutes ago his every instinct had been to get away from these two, but now he wasn’t so sure.
‘Are we locked on?’ said Stocky, collecting his phone and gun from the kitchen bar and shoving them into a backpack.
Tall got off the phone to the driver. ‘We’ve got a lock but I doubt they’ll use that cell phone again.’
‘It’s in the ditch as we speak,’ said Mac, deciding to involve himself.
‘You talkin’ all of a sudden?’ said Stocky.
‘If you’re gonna catch these pricks, sure,’ said Mac.
‘No, tough guy,’ said Tall from the other side of the room. He’d closed the briefcase and was stowing his own backpack. ‘You’ll talk because you want to live.’
‘Oh really?’ said Mac, smiling now that he’d split their team. ‘So how will you explain Captain Loan’s investigation into McHugh?’
‘Captain?’ said Tall as he moved on Mac, fists clenched. ‘The fuck you talking about?’
‘See, you don’t know where the Cong An fits into this story, but I do, and I’m sure Jim here prefers me alive and talking to dead and making the maggots fat.’
Stocky held up a hand to silence his partner as he eyeballed Mac. ‘What’s your deal? And make it fast, McQueen.’
‘Get me out of here. I’m no use to you if the Cambodians get involved.’
‘And what do you get?’ said Stocky, shouldering his pack.
‘I get enough to track down the pricks who just called me,’ said Mac, hoping he could see interest in Stocky’s eyes.
Stocky looked at Tall quickly. He had a round Chinese face, with slab cheekbones and a nose that had been broken at least once. His hair was groomed to look civvie but it cried out to be military. Mac was hoping he was right and this bloke was ex-military – at least he’d understand why these Israelis had to be hunted down.
‘Your partner?’ he said, not taking his eyes off Mac. ‘He Vietnamese? Slim build, hard-on with a gun?’
Mac smiled. ‘Sounds like him. Did he make it?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Stocky. ‘I’m Sam – that’s Phil.’
‘What do you need, Sam?’ said Mac.
‘You answer one question honestly, and you’re out of here. Lie to me and I feed you to the cops, maybe plant a gun on you.’
‘Hit me,’ said Mac, wanting to speed this up.
‘Why were you following us?’
‘Actually, it was you who followed a mate of mine to the Ozzie Bar,’ said Mac, his eyes feeling like raw meat. ‘When he was run down I assumed you guys were involved – the green LandCruiser was gone but I saw you getting out of a tuc-tuc and into a Camry. We followed you to this building, someone shot at us, I got a face full of concrete. That’s it.’
Sam swapped a look with Phil.
‘Sounds about right,’ said Sam as he pulled out a pen knife and turned Mac to get at the flexi-cuffs. ‘Think you can act like a normal human long enough to walk out of here?’
‘I can shave off a few IQ points, hide the movie-star good looks,’ said Mac. ‘That what you mean?’
Sam smirked as he headed for the door, but Phil fronted Mac and gave him the look. It was the kind of gesture that if it happened in Rockhampton would have triggered a brawl. But as he slid around Phil to follow Sam into the hallway, Mac gave him a wink.
Phil now hated him, which meant he was just where Mac wanted him.
* * *
The Phnom Penh streetscape flashed past, Mac in the front passenger seat wondering how this was going to end. Phil sat in the back of the silver Mazda retrieved from the apartment building, a SIG on his lap aimed at Mac, the cell phone tracking device sitting beside him. The submachine gun was now looped over Phil’s shoulder.
The location of the mystery cell phone had frozen on Wat Phnom, a religious landmark on the river about fifteen blocks north of the last lock.
Mac needed more information. ‘So, you going to tell me who you are?’
‘Sam and Phil.’
‘Good American names,’ said Mac. ‘So tell me about these Israelis.’
‘They’re up to no good,’ said Sam.
‘Private?’
‘You plug us in to what you know, and maybe we’ll talk,’ said Sam.
They pulled into the leafy surrounds of Wat Phnom about twenty minutes later. The big roundabout that encircled the seven-hundred-year-old temple-hill was crowded with cyclos, taxis and tuc-tucs – Phnom Penh was still backwards enough for a near-new green LandCruiser to stand out, especially if the occupants were hammering along.
Sam pulled to the inside of the circle and leaned out the window, waving a US one-dollar note. The beggar crouching behind a park bench with his family came forwards and eyed the cash.
Spewing out a stream of Cambodian, Sam kept the money out of the beggar’s reach. Mac recognised good field craft – engaging the man, getting him talking but staying in control.
Finally Sam gave the man the dollar and then gave him another, and they were screeching for the road that connected Wat Phnom with the Sisowath Quay road.
‘Saw them go past only five minutes ago,’ said Sam as they hurtled past the Electricity Cambodia building towards the river. ‘Said he saw them go across Sisowath and into the docks area.’
‘Think they’re there now?’ said Phil from the rear.
‘Well, they didn’t turn north and get out of town,’ said Sam, threading through the traffic.
‘So they’ve got a boat?’ asked Mac, now caught up in the chase.
‘Wouldn’t bet against it,’ said Sam, as they paused at the Sisowath Quay main road and saw the lane into the river docks area on the other side. Edging across the traffic, the silver Mazda slipped into the courtyard in front of a depot building and Sam paused while he looked left and right.
The darkness created by the overhead trees and the generally deserted nature of the riverfront made Mac nervous. A bat jostled in a tree and screeched, and in the car they all jumped slightly.
‘Could be time to hand back that Colt, eh boys?’ said Mac as Sam took the right-hand turn and they slipped further into the darkness.
The quay apron opened up on the other side of the trees, partially floodlit. A selection of old vessels were tied up at the quayside and two large floating piers were sitting in the river, connected to the quay by concrete walkways. Sam brought the Mazda to a halt.
‘You’re not getting the Colt back,’ he said. ‘But you can make yourself useful and drive.’
Mac got out of the car and walked around it, his stomach grinding with anxiety, while Sam pushed himself across the centre console.
Getting in, Mac thought he saw movement at the end of a building at the rear of the concrete quay. Putting the car in gear, he eased forwards. ‘There’s something at the end of the building.’
‘I saw it,’ said Sam and Mac killed the lights. Behind him, the sound of Phil’s SIG being cocked broke the tense silence and Sam reached out and touched Mac’s arm.
Stopping the car, Mac switched off the engine and they watched the old warehouse on the quay, bathed in dim light.
‘You’re the driver,’ said Sam as he checked his own SIG for load and safety. ‘Stay here – be ready for anything. Now hit the trunk.’
Mac pulled the boot release and held his hand over the interior light as the two men eased silently from the car. They moved to the back of the Mazda, rummaged softly in the boot and then moved to the right of the car, towards the tree line that ran behind the warehouse. Mac could make out assault rifles in their hands, M4s by the look of them: the cut-down, souped-up M16s used by US Special Forces.
Disappearing into the shadows of the trees the two men moved towards the warehouse.
Mac reached over to the back seat, searching Sam’s backpack for his Colt, but came up empty. ‘Shit.’
Beyond the warehouse a light went out and Mac could now see the noses of a line of vehicles. One of them could have been the grille of a LandCruiser, but he couldn’t tell in the darkness. The warehouse was the commercial base for the boats that plied the river and activity in the car park on the other side of the building was hardly suspicious.
Mac searched the centre console for a weapon – even a knife would be better than nothing. The ambush at the apartment building and his temporary blindness had produced a mild shock and Mac noticed his right hand was shaking as he pulled it out of the console.
Checking the glove box, Mac found a sheaf of Hertz rental papers. A ‘Samuel Chan’ had rented the Mazda in Saigon a week ago; the papers contained lots of good stuff, such as a US address and a credit card imprint. As he put the papers back, he realised there was a California driver’s licence sitting in the glove box.
Watching the Americans move behind the warehouse, Mac could feel his adrenaline coming up. In the Royal Marines they’d said adrenaline could give you extra speed and strength, or paralyse you. It was always up to the soldier to harness the fear, not be strangled by it.
Beside his left hip, his fidgety fingers touched the boot release lever and he had an idea.
Mac pulled up the lever then eased out of the Mazda and walked to the popped boot. Looking around, he raised it, dipped his head inside to stop too much light escaping. In front of him was a Remington pump-action shotgun of the type used by American police departments, with four belts of replacement shells. That was reassuring, but there were also two grocer’s boxes, and from the opened flaps on one of them, they seemed to contain US hundred-dollar notes – perhaps a million dollars’ worth in each box. Mac grabbed a handwritten note from the top of a box, but couldn’t decipher the writing. He trousered the piece of paper.
As he stared at the cash, light filled the boot. Standing and turning, he watched a vehicle approaching down the same leafy laneway they’d just come down in the Mazda.
Blinded by the headlights, Mac lifted his arm. It wasn’t until the vehicle passed by that the passenger in the front seat locked eyes with Mac.
Those dark eyes struck him at the same time as he realised the vehicle was a late-model LandCruiser Prado. Green.