Authors: Mark Abernethy
Chapter 44
The Friendship made good time through the clear skies out of Phnom Penh. Luc turned to Mac and shouted that they were passing over a small town and from here they’d be flying over the Chamkar Leu district of Cambodia, a vast forest wilderness that stretched from north-east Cambodia into Laos and northern Thailand. Under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, Chamkar Leu was part of the infamous ‘region 42’ of the Central Zone – a part of Kampuchea that even Pol Pot did not entirely control.
Mac craned his head between the pilot and engineer and looked down on the expanse. To his right the glossy brown snake of the Mekong flowed north–south and extended as far as he could see, not crossed by a road until the Pakse Bridge, a hundred miles north in Laos.
It had been to these forests that Pol Pot’s cadres had originally fled in the days when they were just a bunch of Maoist revolutionaries who executed anyone who couldn’t recite the doctrines. After the Vietnamese Army invasions of 1979–80, it was into the Chamkar Leu that the cadres loyal to Brother No. 1 withdrew, turning the entire area into a KR haven of child prostitution, opium production and slave-trading; it had taken the United Nations more than a decade to bring it under central governance.
As they flew over the last vestiges of civilisation, Mac stared into the forest racing past below and remembered the night he’d got drunk at that cadre compound in the forests north of Meanchey with the KR strongman called the Duck: the kids in those cages, some as young as four; the pretty young women; the young mothers with kids; the oddities, such as twins, amputees and dwarves. The smell of warm skin and dry concrete.
He remembered the small details, like the Duck playing Wham’s greatest hits on a Sony portable cassette player; like the bar set up along one wall of the main building and the small stage in front of it. The Duck had dragged a fourteen-year-old boy named Ran out of a cage and made him dance sexy, pistol-whipping him until he swivelled his hips. The song was ‘Wake Me Up’ and the Duck wanted Ran gyrating when the band sang
before you go-go
.
Maggs had alibied him out of the ensuing murder investigation. But Mac’s conscience was clear. When the Duck had stepped out the door to take a satellite phone call, Mac had looked that scared, humiliated fourteen-year-old boy in the eye. Something had flashed between them, and – as if in a dream – Mac had walked to the bar, grabbed the Duck’s Beretta 9mm automatic, and given it to Ran.
The boy had walked outside and used one shot, before replacing the gun on the bar. Together they’d hauled the Duck into a dumpster where he’d lain with a perfect third eye until discovered by his soldiers.
Mac had been raised Catholic and he’d always used the church’s rule for his behaviour in the field. That yardstick said that while you could do good deeds knowing that there might be some bad consequences, you could never do a bad thing, hoping that good would come of it. He’d wrestled with his decision to give Ran the gun – had nightmares and internal debates about it for years. He’d decided, after becoming a father, that his initial argument was correct: that giving a weapon to a slave was a good thing which might have bad consequences; that it wasn’t just his ego that was happy when those people had wandered out of their cages, bowing pathetically to Mac like he was a god, holding their kids up to him and touching him on the forehead.
Knowing he was right didn’t stop him thinking about it, but he no longer pronounced himself guilty.
A static burst echoed in the cockpit and Luc pointed to a headset hooked to the bulkhead beside Mac’s right ear. He put it on and Sammy’s voice came through.
‘Orion Two, Orion Two, this is Orion One. Copy?’
‘I’m here, mate,’ said Mac.
‘We’re an hour away from destination. Any visuals yet, Orion Two?’
‘No, mate – we’re yet to fly over.’
‘Still on ETA?’
‘Affirmative, Orion One.’
Signing off, Mac kept his headset on as Luc spoke.
‘We twelve, thirteen minutes out,’ said Luc, a more confident man when sitting behind the controls of a plane. ‘You want fly over or loop around?’
‘Loop around,’ said Mac, thinking that Dozsa could easily have surface-to-air missiles defending his lair. ‘I’d like to plot it and then fly back down the roads, get an idea how we’re going to travel in here.’
‘Roads?’ said Luc, his mouth turning down at the corners.
‘Yes,’ said Mac.
‘Don’t know about no road, Mr Richard,’ said Luc. ‘That why Mr Smith fly here.’
Eleven minutes later the Friendship banked to the west and flattened out at about four thousand feet as it flew across the wide mouth of a valley.
‘There,’ said Luc, pointing in front of the engineer’s face. ‘That the airfield where we fly Mr Smith.’
Bringing binoculars to his eyes, Mac scanned the greenery and quickly found the stretch of tawny bare earth on the river flats. It was small and it was immediately evident why it wasn’t on any map: it was in the middle of a wilderness, not linked to any towns, not served by any roads that Mac could see.
‘What happens when you land there?’ said Mac, looking for activity at the airstrip.
‘Vehicles come down, they load onto the plane, we fly back to Phnom and Saigon.’
‘Where do the vehicles come from?’ said Mac.
‘Look up the hill from airfield,’ said Luc over the roar of the engines. ‘There are buildings, but they camouflage.’
Running the binos further up the sides of the valley from the airfield, Mac clocked a large complex of buildings among the trees, shaded by netting and painted in swirling designs of drab olive and lime green.
‘What’s in the buildings?’ said Mac, stunned by the size of the operation.
‘I not know,’ said Luc, shrugging. ‘We never allowed off the plane.’
‘Okay, Luc,’ said Mac, handing the pilot a USGS topographical map. ‘Mark this location and then let’s do a wide circle, around the back of the valley, see if there’s some kind of track to the river.’
Passing the map to the engineer, Luc banked the aircraft with a turn of the wheel and some rudder and they hooked north again, ducking behind a ridge.
Passing over the top of the river valley, Luc brought the F-27 to the level of the saddle hills, and Mac looked down the valley with the binos. The buildings could now be seen clearly, as could men milling around in the shade of the trees.
‘Seen enough,’ said Mac. ‘Let’s find a track.’
After thirty seconds of flying eastwards, away from the Israeli compound, Luc pointed down and Mac saw a narrow track, occasionally becoming clear when the forest was thin or as it forded a river.
‘Let’s follow it,’ said Mac. ‘Mark the route on the map.’
His confidence was evaporating by the second. If they were going to successfully infiltrate that compound, they’d need to surprise the occupants, and arriving via that track was not going to create a surprise.
After sixteen minutes of following the track, Mac saw a structure sitting slightly back from it, in the trees. Using the binos, he focused on it, his heart rate rising.
The track became more substantial and Mac could see farmers, carts and motorbikes moving both ways.
Looking up, he saw the Mekong and the town of Stung Treng on the other side – but no bridge.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, and asked Luc to patch him through to Sammy.
‘Mate, we’ll meet you in Kratie, okay?’ said Mac as the American answered.
‘We left there half an hour ago,’ said Sammy. ‘You okay, Orion Two?’
‘Yeah, we’re good – need to confab.’
‘Copy that, Orion Two,’ said Sammy. ‘Kratie it is.’
While the gear was secured at a small guest house in a secondary street of Kratie, Sammy grabbed Mac and they crossed a dusty street, through crowds of German backpackers and local hawkers, to a dark bar.
‘What’s up?’ said Sammy, as he returned to their table with a can of 333 in each hand.
‘I didn’t like Stung Treng for a base,’ said Mac.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s the only town near the Israeli compound, and it’s the town where the Mossad hit team was killed – Dozsa probably has informants working for him there. It’s poor, and the hotel owners and cops like a few US dollars thrown their way.’
‘Okay, so we base ourselves in Kratie,’ said Sammy. ‘Tell me about the compound.’
‘It’s in the middle of the jungle,’ said Mac, sipping at the cold beer.
‘Approaches?’
‘A track,’ said Mac. ‘And I mean a bloody goat track.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, McQueen, and it’s out of the question,’ said Sammy, watching from the corner of his eye a table of British tourists who were playing back their video footage of freshwater dolphins on the Mekong.
‘A small SF insertion, six-man unit, could drop in there with chutes and shut that place down very quickly,’ said Mac.
‘And it’s out of the question,’ said Sammy. ‘This operation only succeeds if the least number of people know what it’s about and even fewer know what’s in that compound.’
‘What’s in that compound?’ said Mac.
‘The gig is very simple, McQueen.’ Sammy ignored Mac’s question. ‘Get the memory card and retrieve the girl. We call in special forces and we’re up to our necks in Pentagon and Agency, and that brings media.’
‘Leaky?’
‘Like a sieve.’ Sammy lowered his voice. ‘Remember the hunt for Saddam?’
‘How could I forget?’ said Mac. ‘It was reality TV.’
‘Precisely. We let Defense or CIA into this gig and we’ll have every back-seat driver in DC appearing on Fox or CNN, surmising what the Chinese are up to and how the world economy is about to go down the toilet. The markets get nervous, the dollar slides and then the whole deal is in the shitter.’
‘Didn’t know it was that bad.’
‘So this compound can’t be impossible,’ said Sammy. ‘You haven’t spent your career behind a desk.’
‘I don’t know what’s on my file,’ said Mac, ‘but the Royal Marines have a very simple rule for this sort of thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t go in if you can’t get out.’
‘You’d be pleased to know the US Marines don’t train kamikazes either,’ said Sammy. ‘What did you see?’
‘I saw two approaches – a goat track and an airfield – and I saw a ferry crossing from Stung Treng: there’s no bridge. I saw a town full of Dozsa informers and on the west bank I saw country so poor that a farmer’s loyalty could be bought for what you or I would lose down the back of the sofa.’
Mac took another swig of beer, eavesdropping on the back- packers, who were competing over who was staying in the cheapest guest house.
‘Pao Peng’s plan is underway,’ said Sammy, avoiding Mac’s eyes. ‘We need to be in that compound asap.’
‘How do you know about Pao Peng?’
‘I’ve spent the last seven weeks in Indochina, chasing these pricks – believe me, McQueen: the Pao Peng plan is happening.’
‘It would help if I knew the details.’
‘Here’re the details, McQueen,’ said Sammy, anxiety creeping through his growl. ‘There’s an Australian national – a high-level Commonwealth employee – being held in that compound by an ex-Mossad sociopath. How’s that for details?’
Mac eyeballed him. ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t going.’
‘I’ve told you everything I can tell you,’ said Sammy. ‘A power- ful general in the PLA is plotting to bring down the Chinese economy by also attacking the US economy. He’s using an Israeli crew – we can stop them once we retrieve that memory card and McHugh.’
The two men drank in silence for thirty seconds.
‘So what do we need?’ said Sammy.
‘We need unobserved aerial reconnaissance,’ said Mac. ‘And we need motorbikes.’
‘I can order up a Hawk,’ said Sammy; the US Navy’s high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance plane was called the RQ-4 Global Hawk. ‘They’d send one in without too many questions.’
‘Okay – can we have that in place before we go in?’
‘I’ll do it this afternoon,’ said Sammy. ‘What’s this about motorbikes?’
‘That country is hard on big vehicles,’ said Mac. ‘Your big Chevs are great on American country roads, but there’s no county ploughs in Indochina – no one’s dropping gravel and levelling it with a scraper.’
‘Okay,’ said Sammy.
‘Let’s have two blokes in the Chev, and two bikes.’
‘Why the split?’
‘Because the bike team might have to go around a certain point in the track,’ said Mac.
‘Certain point?’ said Sammy.
‘There’s a checkpoint,’ said Mac. ‘About ten miles west of the river, there’s a shack on the side of the road.’
‘Could be a farmer’s shed.’
‘So those poor farmers have invested every penny they have to run a telephone line to their shack?’
‘An Asia Development Bank loan?’
‘The line runs inland, Sammy,’ said Mac, finishing his beer. ‘It runs from the shack to guess where?’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Sammy. ‘I’ll get you motorbikes.’
‘You do that,’ said Mac, banging his empty can on the table.
Chapter 45
The streets of Kratie were crowded with busy locals and backpackers from Europe, and Mac sauntered among them, looking for unwanted attention and eyes that lingered.
Kratie was a favourite for travellers who liked places that were off the beaten track, but only if they’d already been overrun by people just like them.
Regardless of what tourists thought of it, Kratie was an important market town in north-east Cambodia. The peasant farmers loaded their boats and their carts at five in the morning and headed for the town’s markets to sell their six chickens, four ducks or three baskets of rice. The fishermen brought their catch into the market and the world of subsistence yeomanry began another day of trying to eke out a living.
‘Gets hot in the afternoon, Kratie,’ said the man’s voice beside him as he looked for a chance to cross the road and walk to the river. ‘Faces west.’
Turning, Mac came face to face with Bongo, the big face impassive beneath the dark sunnies and the Elvis haircut.
‘You following me, Bongo?’ said Mac, a little annoyed that he hadn’t picked him up.
‘Just wandered out of the post office,’ said Bongo, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Thirsty yet, McQueen?’
‘It’s an afternoon in Kratie,’ said Mac. ‘I could hit the waterhole like a lizard drinking.’
They sat at a cafe table nursing their beers while Bongo finished a cell phone call.
‘Life as a managing director,’ said Bongo as he put the phone down. ‘Phone never stops.’
‘How’s that going?’ Mac asked.
‘Busy, brother,’ Bongo replied, emptying his beer glass and gesturing for two more. ‘Friend of mine from the old days, we were talking a few years ago and he says to me, “Bongo, you make yourself into a security firm and then the mining company, the law firm, the foreign government, they use your service.” ’
‘So you’re not a mercenary anymore,’ laughed Mac. ‘You’re a company director?’
‘My accountant says I’m a security consultant; I’m a services provider,’ said Bongo, taking his fresh beer and raising it. ‘To services.’
‘To services,’ said Mac, clinking glasses and shaking his head slightly. ‘You looking after Didge?’
‘Sure – he’s a top operator: very hard, very trained and I’m paying him twice what he made in the Aussie army. Talking of money, you get that cash?’
‘Cash?’
‘Yeah, brother – I dropped it at Saba’s, in Jakarta. You forgot about that?’
‘Shit,’ said Mac. ‘The cash. Yeah, it was there – thanks.’
During their gig in East Timor a decade earlier, Mac had retrieved a few bags of cash from a Korean middleman who supplied feed stock for biological weapons. He’d let Bongo have all the dough, but Bongo had insisted that he would put some in Mac’s safe-deposit box at Saba’s Lager Haus. Following that gig, Mac had checked his box and there were pillows of cash.
‘So how we going to do this?’ said Mac.
‘Do what?’ Bongo scanned, the cafe and street like a cyborg.
‘You’re contracted to the Americans, but you’ve been hired to retrieve Geraldine McHugh by her family.’
Bongo chewed gum and stared at Mac through his sunglasses. ‘What I like about you, McQueen – you always in someone else’s business.’
‘You can get the girl, collect your fee from the lawyers – I don’t care,’ said Mac. ‘But I can’t be competing with you when I’m stealthing into that compound.’
‘So don’t compete,’ said Bongo.
‘I’m retrieving McHugh,’ said Mac. ‘That’s the gig.’
Bongo drank. ‘We can both do it.’
‘I’ll deliver her back to Oz, you’ll get a big mention in my report.’
‘If I find the girl, no one touches her – that’s when there’s a misunderstanding.’
Mac paused: ‘misunderstanding’, in Bongo’s world, was a euphemism for a dispute ending in at least one homicide.
‘I can see your position, mate,’ said Mac. ‘But if we find McHugh, the Americans must be able to debrief.’
Bongo paused, gave Mac the evil eye. ‘You told the Yankees?’
‘Told them what?’
‘That I’m working for the McHugh lawyers?’ said Bongo, stiffening as the cafe owner came from behind the counter and walked to another table.
‘No,’ said Mac.
‘Okay – you keep it that way, and if I find the girl, they can debrief.’
‘It’s not only that,’ said Mac, trying to be delicate. ‘The Australian government may not want your name associated with her rescue.’
‘That’s their problem, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘You gotta know your friends, McQueen, and they’re not in Canberra.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Means I was late for the airport this morning ’cos I got eyes on something.’
‘What?’
‘White Toyota, followed us from the hotel.’
‘Followed you?’
‘Yeah, McQueen. The driver was that one you know, with the funny skin – Eckhart?’
‘Urquhart,’ said Mac, the beer threatening to reflux.
‘Yeah, him.’
‘What happened?’
‘Stopped at the lights – Didge got out, went back there and asked the passenger if he knows the way to Bangkok.’
‘And?’ said Mac.
‘And this guy’s sliding down in his seat – young Aussie, look like Adam Ant with that bad hair.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Pointed, said, “That way.” Just having some fun with them but I wonder why Urquhart and the lady-man following.’
‘They know you’ve been hired to find Geraldine McHugh,’ said Mac.
‘Of course,’ said Bongo, smiling. ‘So why they following me when they know you doing the gig?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Mac, looking away from Bongo’s taunting eyes.
‘Neither do I.’ Bongo gulped his beer. ‘Anyway, you know the Yank who was killed in Phnom Penh?’
‘No,’ said Mac.
‘He worked with Sammy. His name’s Phil Brown – Secret Service guy.’
‘Okay, so?’ said Mac.
‘So I picked up the phone, talked to my guy – see about Phil Brown.’
‘And?’
‘And he’s operating as a currency investigator, with the C-note Squad. You heard of it?’
Mac recalled the US hundred-dollar bills in the back of Sam and Phil’s car. ‘No.’
‘You want to?’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘Here’s the deal, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘If I find the girl, I’m flying her back to Australia.’
Staring at the Filipino, Mac wondered how he ever put his life in this man’s hands. ‘Okay – you got it.’
‘The Secret Service’s C-note Squad is on a sweep through Asia, clearing up any counterfeiting problems with the current US hundred-dollar bills, before they’re changed to the new format.’
‘Problems?’
Bongo chewed gum. ‘There’s some illegal protocols in the wrong hands – come from Beep or BP or –’
‘BEP,’ said Mac. BEP was the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing – the federal agency that created US currency.
‘That’s it,’ said Bongo. ‘BEP protocols.’
Mac didn’t see the news flash. ‘The fact the Yanks protect their currency isn’t entirely surprising.’
‘No,’ said Bongo. ‘But my guy’s been dealing with the real C-note Squad, and Phil Brown ain’t on it.’
Back at the guest house, Mac ran up the outside stairs of the former colonial mansion as Grimshaw arrived in the car park in his green Camry. Letting himself into the second door on the left, he made a quick search of the tiny room and decided he was alone. Putting his wheelie bag on the single bed, Mac tried to remember where he’d left it or if he’d even kept it: the piece of paper he’d grabbed from the top of that box of US dollars in the back of Sammy’s car.
Rummaging through the pockets of the bag, he came up empty. Then he took his clothes from the bag and checked under the lining and in the ASIS-issued bag’s three secret hides.
He wondered if he’d even grabbed that paper – he’d been under enormous stress that night and he may have confused his desire to take it with having actually done so.
Standing to the side of the sash window, he looked down on the street and thought about what Bongo had said: Phil wasn’t from the Secret Service. So what was he doing?
Looking at his clothes on the bed, he saw the cheap market-bought chinos he’d been wearing on the night Phil Brown was killed. They had an inside coin pocket on the right hip and out of it Mac pulled a folded piece of paper.
Unfolding it, he saw a handwritten note in cursive script.
Intercepted Stung Treng Province. October 12, 2009 – P, I, D, SF, SN = genuine.
It still meant nothing to Mac but he decided to hang onto it anyway.
The sound of a revving motorbike sounded and Mac left his room, walked to the rear balcony of the guest house.
Below, in the parking area, Sammy flipped the stand of one Yamaha 250cc trail bike, while a local dismounted from another and put his hand out for the money.
Descending, Mac had a look.
‘Not bad – about three years old,’ said Mac, checking the tyres and chains. ‘How does yours ride?’
‘Rides okay, but it’s not mine,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m running the radio from the truck.’
‘That leaves Didge,’ said Mac, looking at the odo.
‘Not Bongo?’ said Sammy.
‘No – Didge spent a lifetime on these things in Aussie special forces,’ said Mac. ‘Besides, you’ll feel safer with Bongo, believe me.’
‘I hope so,’ said Sammy. ‘I met with Charles half an hour ago.’
‘Yeah?’
‘We can’t delay this any longer.’
‘We start early enough, we’ll have a recce of Dozsa’s compound by lunch,’ said Mac.
‘I mean, no delay,’ said Sammy.
‘What delay?’ said Mac, not getting it.
‘Waiting is the delay,’ said Sammy. ‘We’re going this evening.’