Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 27
The LandCruiser’s brake lights flared red as the 4x4 hissed to a stop on the concrete.
Reaching into the Mazda’s boot, Mac grabbed the Remington – from memory they were five-shooters, and he hoped Sam and Phil weren’t the conscientious types who unloaded their shotties before stashing them.
The front passenger door of the LandCruiser opened as Mac primed the Remington with a back-and-forth motion on the pump-grip and brought the shotgun to his shoulder.
Walking around the back of the car, Mac took aim and watched those creepy dark eyes withdraw on seeing the shotgun.
As the LandCruiser lurched away, Mac squeezed the Remington’s trigger. The click echoed around the quayside.
The LandCruiser’s doors opened as it slid to a stop beside one of the floating piers.
‘Fuck,’ said Mac, fumbling for the Mazda’s boot, realising he’d shut the thing.
Crawling along the car as the Israelis took position fifty metres away behind the LandCruiser, Mac ducked and pulled the boot release lever as the window above him exploded. Running in a crouch to the back of the car, he dived into the lee of the vehicle as five shots slammed into the Mazda, smashing windows and pinging steel.
Pushing the boot lid up, Mac wished his knee was up to this. He could barely straighten it.
Pulling two belts of shells from the boot as the left rear tail-lights exploded in plastic fragments, Mac knelt behind the right rear tyre, his sweaty, panicked fingers fumbling to load the Remington.
‘Shit,’ he said as he tried to get his fingernails under the brass head of a shell that didn’t want to leave its loop.
Getting two shells into the side-loading chamber, Mac stood up behind the Mazda’s boot lid, shouldering the shottie as he did so. A coughing burst of automatic fire rang out and Mac instinctively ducked while keeping eyes on the LandCruiser; the shooters were bunched behind the 4x4, but they were no longer shooting at him.
Turning to his right, Mac watched a flare of orange and blue burst out of the darkness on the far side of the warehouse as Sam and Phil unloaded into the LandCruiser, which seemed to drop a foot in height.
One of the Israelis sagged and grabbed at his shin as the rounds flew and Mac could see the man he knew as Red Shirt scrabbling into the 4x4, pulling something out of the rear cargo area.
Pointing towards the river, Red Shirt pushed the injured Israeli towards a moored boat.
The limping gunman tried to jog along the concrete causeway to the floating pier and Mac took two useless shots at him, ducking back as the return fire came in hot.
Looking up, Mac saw Phil running from his hide behind the warehouse to the lee of a flatbed truck parked between the LandCruiser and the warehouse.
Peeking over the lid of the boot, Mac watched Red Shirt pull a dark weapon from the LandCruiser. Assessing the ground, Mac realised that the warehouse was out of range of the Israeli guns, but by running to the truck, Phil had put himself in range.
As Phil laid down fire on the 4x4 – cover for Sam to come forwards – Mac reloaded the pump-action while trying to get Sam’s attention.
He screamed as loud as he could, ‘Stay there!’ Mac didn’t know what Red Shirt had pulled out of that vehicle but Phil was looking like an easy target.
Sam’s head poked out behind the warehouse corner and Mac became frantic to get his attention and stop him crossing the apron to join Phil. ‘Don’t move! For fuck’s sake – stay put!’
Sam was suddenly into the open and the air was torn apart with the sound of a gunfight jammed on full auto. Mac joined in, loosing four shots at the LandCruiser, but they did no damage except to the paintwork.
Sam was into his fourteenth stride when he took a shot in the thigh. As he sprawled, his rifle clattering free in front of him, a small rocket whooshed through the night air, leaving a blue-grey trail before slamming into the truck’s gas tank. The tank contained gasoline rather than diesel, because the orange-red fireball that instantly erupted was caused by nothing else, except perhaps propane.
Flinching away from the shock wave and then the blast of incinerating heat, Mac held up his hand to deflect fire from his eyes and saw Phil under the truck, burning like a monk.
Bile rising in his throat, Mac realised Sam was writhing on the concrete, his chinos on fire.
To his left, two of the Israelis were on the causeway, making for a speedboat that the injured shooter had throttled up and was readying to get underway.
Breaking his cover, Mac sprinted for the warehouse where a red wooden box was bolted to the wall. Smashing the padlock with the Remington’s stock, Mac tore the doors open and pulled the red canvas bag off its hooks, racing towards the flaming truck where Sam writhed as the gasoline flames burned through his cotton pants and into his leg.
Throwing the shotgun to the concrete, Mac pulled the fire blanket out as he reached the American, launching himself onto the panicking man with the blanket in front of him. In his military days, they were taught that the point of the exercise was to smother the flame – you couldn’t do that by waving the blanket and you couldn’t smother a flame when the victim was rolling around. You had to wrap the flame up like you were hugging it to death, which was what Mac did as he landed on Sam’s leg: put all of his weight and strength into holding Sam in one place and wrapping the blanket around the American’s legs and waist for fifteen seconds.
Sam eventually stopped struggling: he whimpered and heaved for breath as Mac pushed himself off and looked for remaining flame.
The speedboat revved hard and Mac looked to his left, watching the Israeli crew accelerate up the river and into the darkness as more gunfire sounded. Ducking into one another, Mac and Sam waited for the volley of rifle rounds but none came.
Mac peeled back the fire blanket and found the left leg of Sam’s chinos was charred and there was a blistered, purple mess up his thigh.
‘You’ll live,’ said Mac, panting.
Sam, grimaced, his lips white in the way that signalled he had about thirty seconds before he passed out from shock and pain.
‘Let’s get you in the car, trooper,’ said Mac, picking up Sam’s rifle and groaning as he stood and put full weight on his knee.
‘Phil?’ said Sam, looking at the truck’s gutted chassis.
‘Didn’t make it,’ said Mac, holding out his hand. ‘Can you walk?’
Sam reached out his own hand, coughing as the hot gasoline soot started descending. Pulling him to his feet, Mac put an arm under the other man’s armpits and wrapped it around the shoulder blades.
As the American put weight on his injured leg, he heaved with the pain. ‘Holy
Christ
!’
Two steps short of the Mazda, Sam slumped unconscious and Mac dragged him to the back door and fireman-lifted him inside, laying him across the back seat.
The ride to Calmette Hospital took four minutes but it felt like an hour as Mac dodged the cyclos and motorbikes on the dark streets, trying to make out their shapes through the cracked windscreen. The soft tropical air flowed through the Mazda, entering via the side windows that no longer existed, and Mac blinked hard, hoping for tears as the gasoline soot worked its way into his eyeballs.
The emergency room took Sam immediately. Awake but groggy, Sam gave Mac an open-palmed shake.
‘Thanks,
mate
,’ he said, doing a croaking rendition of an Aussie accent.
‘No dramas,’ said Mac, and the American had a drip spiked into him before being wheeled away on a gurney.
Pulling his Nokia from his pants, Mac realised it was switched off – the damn thing had run out of battery.
At the nurses’ station he asked about a recharger, but when none was forthcoming, he wandered outside, got in the Mazda and made for the Cambodiana.
The streets were thinning out as he pulled into the parking lot of the Cambodiana. After a three-minute recce he walked down a service alley that led to the loading bay behind the kitchens and laundry. Taking a right turn into an alcove just before the lobby, he found himself in the security room. A local man in a Cambodiana shirt looked up from his desk, above which the surveillance cameras displayed their black and white shots of hallways, bars and poolside areas.
‘Hi, Richard Davis, with the Tranh party in rooms 303 and 305,’ said Mac, smiling and holding out his hand, seeing the name tag identifying the man as ‘Poh Khoy – Security Manager’.
Poh rose, took his hand and made a small bow. ‘Yes, Mr Richard.’
‘Just want to bring you in on something, Poh,’ said Mac, lowering his voice and making a show of looking back over his shoulder.
Poh walked past Mac and shut the door.
‘Earlier this evening I got a letter under my door. It contained some threats against me and my family.’
‘Mr Richard, this hotel is not –’
‘I know, I know, mate,’ said Mac, showing his palms to the security man. ‘This is a great hotel and security is always very good. I just need to see the surveillance tapes for this evening, see who was posting us nasty notes.’
‘Rooms 303 and 305, you say, Mr Richard?’ said Poh, tapping on his keyboard. A box came up onscreen and he selected ‘third floor west’ from a drop-down menu then entered a time field, starting at six pm and ending at ten pm.
Mac looked at his watch – 10.06 pm.
‘Okay, so here is the hallway,’ said the security man. ‘Your rooms on right side of hall. Fast-forward now.’
Taking a seat, Mac watched the footage rocket along: room-service people pushed trolleys; a manager carried a big bucket of ice to 307; porters collected the spent room-service trays; two Asian children chased each other up and down the hall until their mother leaned out of a door on the left side of the picture and ordered them inside.
Mac had lost interest and was about to head up to the suite when the high-speed tape showed two men walk past the door to 305 – Mac and Tranh’s suite – and then walk back to it.
‘Here – right here,’ said Mac, clicking his fingers at the screen as he sat upright.
It slowed to real time and Mac read the time code: 21.14 – quarter past nine.
The two men wore black baseball caps pulled low and shirt collars flipped up. Mac identified them immediately: one was Red Shirt, and the other the injured speedboat driver. They crowded the door and then they were inside.
‘Fuck,’ said Mac.
It was brazen – they were either taking the piss or they were desperate for something. In general, if you operated covertly and a gunfight had brought you into the open, you didn’t double back into enemy territory such as a hotel room or house. You stayed hidden, surveyed subsequent movements and decided whether you were blown or if you could proceed.
Making himself breathe in and out slowly as he watched the men disappear into the room, Mac watched the time code. At 21.15, they emerged again and headed away from the camera, walked past the elevator and exited through the fire door.
Mac had performed more covert nosey-pokes than most people had had sex. And he knew there was only one way you could make a search in under a minute: you had to know what you were looking for, and exactly where to find it.
Chapter 28
‘You know those people?’ said Poh, pointing at the screen.
‘No,’ said Mac.
‘I’m coming up with you.’ Poh stood and grabbed a cop’s flashlight and a ring of master keys. He was out the door before Mac could argue.
They pushed through the fire door marked ‘3’ and walked up the hallway to 305. Poh drew his Beretta 9mm and gave the key to Mac, nodded at it as he took a shooting stance.
This was not turning out the way he wanted it – the last thing he needed was to be storming a room with a rentacop when there could be Mossad-trained professionals inside. Mac didn’t like drawing civilians into the world he inhabited, his basic rule being that anyone in civvie shoes got the benefit of the doubt; anyone in boots was a warrior. Poh wore manager’s shoes, but Mac also needed to check that room and grab his case. So, turning the key, he pushed the door back with his arm, allowing Poh to walk inside with the gun held in front of him with two hands.
Mac saw why the search had been so fast. His backpack was sitting on the dining table, where he’d left it. Exactly. If someone was ransacking the entire suite, the pack would have been left open, contents on the table.
Carefully unzipping it, Mac went through the layers and the pockets, looking for the trail. The contents – right down to pieces of paper and airline tickets – had been systematically unfolded and searched before being put back where they came from. It was something professionals were trained to do but which professionals like Mac could also pick up very quickly.
Poh went into one of the bedrooms and made a show of searching it.
‘This was the room they wanted,’ he yelled and Mac padded over to the door of Tranh’s room. Someone had made a big production of trashing the room and Tranh’s bag, and Mac wasn’t even going to look at it. It was a veil for the search of Mac’s pack – one of the Israelis would have searched his bag and replaced everything, while the other trashed Tranh’s stuff.
If it was supposed to distract Mac, it merely focused him. As he returned to his pack, he wondered what they were looking for, and he assumed from the speed of their search that they’d found it.
Turning the pack on its side and trying some of the pockets, Mac heard Poh go into the kitchen area and then the other bedroom.
Standing the bag upright, Mac noticed something wrong with the outside pocket. He always brought both zips together at the top of that pocket, giving him one-handed access when he needed something in an airport or for a hotel check-in.
Now the pocket had been zipped over so both zippers were jammed together on the far left-hand side. As he slowly opened the pocket he remembered what he’d put in there.
Then there was movement across the living area of the suite and Poh was standing in the doorway of the bathroom.
‘Not much to search in here, right, Mr Richard?’ said Poh, loving being part of something more important than telling Aussie backpackers to stop having sex in the pool.
Mac opened his mouth to scream ‘
No!
’, but just like in the worst dreams, no sound came out.
Poh hit the lights and the bathroom remained dark for one second. Then the room flashed white and bellowed, throwing Poh across the living area and launching him through the curtains. Millions of porcelain chips and a cloud of plasterboard dust surged out of the bathroom, stripping an armchair, buckling the ceiling and pushing the entire window assembly out of the wall and into the night.
Diving behind a sofa, Mac put his hands over his ears and tucked up as the blast of debris waved through the suite and then receded, leaving the fire alarms repeating the honking ‘evacuate’ sound. The lights had blown out in the explosion, and as Mac raised his head into the cloud of dust he saw the ceiling outside the bathroom hanging by a thread, the wiring sparking and a flood of water spreading into the living area, the faucets obviously sheared by the blast.
Standing, Mac grabbed his bag and moved to the door, thankful for the clean air as he emerged from the maelstrom of dust and debris, his inner ears screaming.
The exit lights flashed as Mac made for the fire stairs, joining the other guests as they chattered about the bang and the shaking of the building. Mac nodded and smiled at a New Zealand couple as they moved down the stairs, only hearing every third word.
Spilling out into the parking lot, Mac could hear sirens and decided to be absent when the police made their appearance. He found the Mazda, removed Sam and Phil’s backpacks and pulled out the Hertz rental papers and Samuel Chan’s driver’s licence. He was going to leave the cell phone tracker, but then decided it could be useful and he grabbed that too.
Finding the van they’d brought from Saigon, Mac threw the bags inside and drove out of the Cambodiana, past the crowd standing around Poh, who lay amid the building debris, looking like a man who’d fallen asleep in a tornado.
His watch said 10.26, which gave him an hour and a half before he made the Red Fallback with Lance and got him to safety. Mac was scared and uncertain of what he’d got himself into but his main worry was what Lance might do. When you went up against a foreign intelligence crew, and they wanted you dead, you only had a very small margin of error to work within, and Mac prayed that Lance didn’t get too nervous and make a phone call he shouldn’t.
Parking in the guest area of the Holiday International Hotel, just around the corner from Calmette Hospital, Mac changed his clothes and walked to reception. He made the transaction a very simple Indochinese settlement: he booked a room in the name of Sam Chan, put a pile of US dollars on the counter and then put the California licence beside the money. He allowed the night clerk to count the money himself and then took the registration form and filled it out, using the Mazda’s rego in the ‘vehicle’ section. The clerk handed over the room card and didn’t even look at the registration.
Standing against the wall of his room in the darkness, Mac looked through the window at the entry driveway. He stood that way for eleven minutes before moving away from the window and sitting in the dark beside a power point.
Plugging his recharger into the wall, he powered up his Nokia and waited for the envelope icon to tell him if there was voicemail. Three came up: two from Urquhart, one from a Singapore number, probably Benny Haskell.
The first call, from 4.43 pm, was just Urquhart wanting a reminder about whether Mac was back in Saigon that evening.
The second was agitated: Urquhart demanding to know what the fuck was going on. What was this about Boo Bray and why was Lance left alone?
Seething, Mac dialled Urquhart’s number. One of the hardest things to teach a new field guy was the need to hold radio silence when a gig went bad, and adhere to the fallbacks as agreed. Once you started picking up phones and telling tales to your higher-ups, you put other people at risk, not just yourself. Having that discipline was the big delineator between the naturals for field intelligence and the people who should be writing research at head office.
‘Urquhart – Davis,’ said Mac as the call was connected. ‘You called?’
‘Fucking hell, mate,’ said Dave Urquhart, losing his oily finish. ‘Do you ever check your phone?’
‘Why would I do that when your snitch can do all the phone-ins for me?’
Urquhart almost hissed. ‘For God’s sake, he’s a newbie, all right? He’s been in for eighteen months and here he is in Cam-fucking-bodia, fending off detectives in the hospital while he watches Boo Bray die. And where the fuck are
you
?’
‘He knew the gig,’ said Mac. ‘He had his orders – no phone calls. The people tracking us have probably hacked our phones and calling you has not just endangered Lance, it’s probably made life more difficult for you and me too.’
Urquhart sighed and took a breath. ‘No doubt. But we have one of ours running around out there not knowing what to do.’
Mac could barely believe what he was hearing. ‘What? Having a beer and staying out of bed with stray women? That’s so hard?’
‘Of course not,’ said Urquhart. ‘But we’re not all like you. Not all of us
like
this stuff.’
‘Well, that just shows how little you know about me, mate,’ said Mac, more disappointed than angry.
At Nudgee College in Brisbane, Mac had once gone down to Pat Lenihan’s cube and tried to get back the fifty-dollar note he’d stolen from a young Dave Urquhart. Pat Lenihan was the dorm bully and his older brother, Jim, was in the cube with him that evening. Mac had to fight them both for the money.
He’d brought the fifty back to Dave with some bark missing, but he’d done it because it was the right thing to do, not because he liked it. Even in adulthood Mac was often surprised at how the back-office guys justified their own lack of activity by labelling anyone who endured hardship as a different class of human. And then they wondered why people like Mac felt more comfortable with their counterparts from rival agencies than they did with the lunchers in Canberra.
‘Sorry,’ said Urquhart. ‘But I want you back at base camp by midday, okay?’
‘What about Bray? What about Tranh?’
‘Bray’s got an embassy girl assigned,’ said Urquhart. ‘Tranh? You mean that Vietnamese boy? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘He’s thirty-one,’ said Mac, massaging his temples to stop the stress driving him mad. ‘And he’s either dead or they’ve got him.’
‘They? What are you talking about?’
‘I can’t talk on these lines,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll call tomorrow morning from the embassy.’
‘Look, I don’t care what’s going on with the local kid,’ said Urquhart, a whole new tone in his voice. ‘Lance is the priority – retrieve him and get back to Saigon.’
The line went dead. Listening to the third message, Mac heard Benny’s nasal growl: ‘Mate, some more on that matter we’d been negotiating. Something very, very interesting. Call me when secure. Cheers, mate.’
Grabbing a Tiger beer and a bag of nuts, Mac ate and drank seated on the floor, thinking about what had started with the simple tail-and-report of a wayward trade commissioner.
His jaw muscles were setting like concrete and his growing headache was an official splitter; his knee ached and his eyeballs, after the trauma, had settled into a throb of pain which alternated between sandpaper-dry and watery.
Eyeing his backpack, he pulled it towards him. Putting his hand into the outside pocket, there was no sign of the SD memory card that he’d picked up at the Mekong Saloon; the same card that Mac had asked Lance’s opinion of as they’d raced eastwards across Vietnam.
Staring into the empty pocket he tried to put the pieces into place. What was on the card? What did it have to do with Jim Quirk and Geraldine McHugh? They’d killed Quirk – done it in front of Mac. They had McHugh, didn’t they? What was on the SD card that it warranted so much carnage?
Sipping on the beer and chewing the peanuts, Mac looked for a thread but couldn’t see it.
Checking his watch, he rose and resumed his surveillance of the hotel driveway, cursing his knee as he struggled to find a comfortable stance. After ten minutes he decided there were no watchers and, finding Boo Bray’s Colt Defender in Sam’s bag, shoved it into his waistband and put on a black baseball cap.
The evening was warm and alive with bats and crickets as he walked the street from the Holiday International. He ignored fourteen cyclos until he found one resting and not looking for work. They went south along the riverfront road of Sisowath and stopped a block beyond the boat-hire area.
Mac paid and walked through the trees lining Sisowath and onto the parallel docklands road that – if he kept walking north – would bring him to the burnt-out truck and Phil’s charred corpse. Moving through the trees and undergrowth, he found a hide from which he could observe Red Fallback while also getting a line of sight up and down the dock road.
Sitting in silence, Mac smelled the fish curries wafting on the breeze and listened while a monkey spoke to itself above him. There were a few cars parked on the dirt road, but most didn’t seem occupied; those that did probably contained horny salarymen with their mistresses, thought Mac.
At 11.58 a white man in casual clothes skipped across Sisowath and walked directly into the meeting area. It was Lance, on time and with a gait far cockier than his apparently anxious state should have allowed. Had Urquhart exaggerated about Lance’s nerves, or had Lance talked it up to his mentor?
Deciding to keep the telling-off for the following morning, Mac took a last look down the lane and wandered into the meeting.
‘You’re early,’ said Mac, walking up to the youngster.
Lance stopped. ‘So are you.’
Mac saw something in his eyes as he got to him, and then realised Lance was wearing long sleeves despite the heat. It was all wrong but before he could get his hand on the Colt, Mac was looking at a seven-shooter Glock with a suppressor attached – the standard issue to Australian intel operators with an S-2 classification. An S-2 was a licence from the relevant minister to carry firearms.
Raising his hands slowly, Mac stayed calm. ‘Didn’t know you were armed, Lance.’
‘Drop it,’ said Lance, nodding at Mac’s belt. ‘It’s in your waistband.’
Behind Lance, a car moved towards them, the lights firing up. Wincing into the high beams, Mac turned side on, removed the Colt and let it drop on the dirt road.
‘Wanna talk about it?’ he asked, adrenaline pumping.
‘Talk about it?’ said Lance with a snigger. ‘You’re not need-to-know, believe me,
champion
.’
‘Need to know what?’ Mac squinted into the headlights which were now directly behind Lance.
‘Shit, you’re a dumb-arse, McQueen,’ said Lance. ‘Haircut – fucking
hair
cut! Are you high? Where does some dumb-shit assassin get off telling
me
to cut my hair?’
‘Is this a father thing?’ said Mac.
The gunshot rang at his feet and Mac did his best not to flinch.
‘Where is it?’ said Lance.
Mac’s reservoirs of concrete dust and gasoline soot were igniting under the strength of the vehicle’s headlamps. ‘What?’