Authors: Mark Abernethy
Leaping back as viscera flew, Mac recovered his shooter’s stance but Red Shirt was out the door, the security bolts locking as it settled back into place.
‘You’ll keep, you bastard,’ said Mac, grabbing the memory card and moving to the immovable security door as Jim Quirk’s body collapsed on the floor. ‘You’ll bloody keep!’
Chapter 16
Covering the hallway in what felt like three strides, Mac burst through the door into the mezzanine area.
The stunned thug was sitting up, resting back on his arms, and Mac kicked him in the jaw as he ran for the stairs, bounding down them into a sea of faces looking up, confused about the gunfire.
Mac crossed the club floor and ran headlong into the Filipino bouncer, who shouldered him into a wall in the entrance hall. Presenting the SIG, Mac shrugged: the doorman smiled and stood back. A girl waiting at the door rope started screaming as Mac emerged into the heat of the evening.
Tranh revved the bike directly beneath the marquee bulbs and Mac leapt onto the back, telling Tranh to circle behind the club.
Accelerating, they took the first left and motored through a darker side street, the motorbike seeming very loud among the smaller scooters and cyclos.
‘There,’ said Mac, pointing to a service alley at the club’s rear. Dropping a gear, Tranh leaned the bike over and plunged between two oncoming cars into the inky blackness of the laneway, the headlight barely penetrating the obstacle course of old fruit boxes, dumpsters and rotting garbage.
‘Slow it, mate,’ said Mac into Tranh’s ear as they neared the fenced compound behind the Mekong Saloon. Moving into the spill of the floodlights, Mac saw the open gate in the fence and three men standing on the concrete parking area. The European among them pointed at Mac, holding his jaw as he did so. Beside him, a solid Chinese man in a blue Mambo T-shirt reached for the small of his back.
‘Go!’ said Mac, and the motorbike surged down the alley. ‘Kill the lights.’
Plunging them into blackness, Tranh kept the bike in second as slugs slammed into a dumpster and bounced off the bricks.
Two red tail-lights flashed at the end of the alley as a vehicle braked. Next thing they were accelerating right, revealing a dark SUV shape.
‘That’s the one,’ yelled Tranh as he wound the power on, almost making Mac fall off the back of the bike as it picked up.
Hitting the headlights again, they narrowly missed a cat and ploughed through a puddle of sewage as they reached the end of the alley. Putting his left arm around Tranh’s waist, Mac leaned into the turn as they inserted themselves into Cholon’s traffic and leapt like a salmon into a Saturday night in Chinatown.
‘That them?’ yelled Mac, pointing the SIG at a dark green LandCruiser Prado two cars in front of them in the inside lane.
‘That’s them,’ yelled Tranh, finding fourth and swerving in front of a van as he kept the momentum building straight down the double yellows, South-East Asia’s ‘third lane’.
Worrying about how many shooters might be in the LandCruiser, Mac motioned for Tranh to get alongside the vehicle. Moving over a lane, they got behind a small car which was going too slow. Stepping down a gear, Tranh swerved into the inside lane and poured on the power, accelerating past the small car and swerving in front of it, allowing them to ease adjacent to the LandCruiser.
Keeping the SIG behind his back, Mac waited until the bike was alongside the 4x4 before slowly turning to look at the driver. Through the open window Mac saw a Mediterranean heavy – Italian or Croatian – with a mo and earring.
Thinking they might have the wrong vehicle, Mac looked away momentarily and then looked back. The driver’s lips had been moving, meaning someone was in there with him. The driver sneaked a quick look at the motorbike and then the passenger was leaning forwards and Mac was suddenly locking gazes with those dark eyes.
‘Fuck,’ said Mac, as Red Shirt’s handgun came up in front of the driver’s face and the bike surged ahead with such a blast that Mac’s knees lifted up under Tranh’s armpits.
‘Sorry, boss,’ said Tranh, who’d obviously seen the gun too.
The tail-light of the car in front of them exploded with a burst of red plastic and someone on the footpath screamed as Tranh screwed on the revs. It was almost nine o’clock and Cholon’s entertainment district was just getting busy.
Now they were in front of the LandCruiser and another shot sounded as the bike careened down the crowded boulevard, its big engine thumping. Mac tightened his left arm around Tranh as they swerved out of their pursuers’ headlights and into the third lane. The back-lit speedometer read ninety-five kph and Mac looked over his shoulder, saw the LandCruiser falling back in the traffic.
Ahead, a major set of lights had turned red and Mac realised they must be travelling eastbound, about to cross the major intersection which signalled the end of Cholon.
‘Duck down there,’ said Mac, pointing to the right side of the intersection.
Riding slowly in first gear, they moved with the pedestrians into the cross street, where they stopped and waited for the main boulevard traffic to go again.
‘You can leave if you want,’ said Mac, dismounting and checking the borrowed SIG. ‘But I’ll need the bike.’
‘I’m driving,’ said Tranh, no emotion.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, finding an empty clip and one round left in the spout.
‘You want to follow them?’ said Tranh, oblivious to their lack of firepower.
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac. ‘Wait there.’
Pushing the SIG under his sweaty trop shirt, Mac walked to the corner. Peeking around the brick building, he saw the green LandCruiser in the middle lane of the boulevard.
‘They’re moving straight through,’ said Mac, breathless as he got back on the bike. ‘Let’s see where they’re going. I’m betting they’ll change that vehicle.’
After one more block in the mainstream traffic, the LandCruiser turned right and moved into the dark colonial streets that led to the river. Intermittently killing the headlight to disguise their whereabouts, and drawing on a local’s knowledge of which parallel streets would meet up, Tranh managed to stand off while also keeping contact with the 4x4.
Mac’s mind raced. Who were this crew? What was Quirk involved in? What was familiar about Red Shirt? What
was
it about that guy?
Stopping behind a parked minivan, Tranh killed the engine and they watched the LandCruiser pull into an old-fashioned parking garage.
‘Parking,’ said Tranh, pointing. ‘If they want new car, maybe from here.’
‘Are there any other exits?’ asked Mac, looking up the four levels of the building’s glass and concrete sides.
‘Don’t know,’ shrugged Tranh. ‘Usually come in, go out the same way.’
Lights shone through the frosted-wire glass on level two as a large engine revved.
Mac readied himself. ‘Think we’re in business, mate.’
Twenty seconds later a white Ford Explorer bounced out of the garage, turned away from Mac and Tranh’s position and accelerated, its V8 engine screaming in the quiet street.
‘Gotta be them,’ said Mac, making a mental note of the whereabouts of the garage.
Losing the Explorer as it disappeared down a secondary street, Tranh accelerated to the point where they’d last seen it. As they leaned into the corner to follow the Explorer, a set of full-beam headlights were switched on directly in their path, blinding them. As Tranh straightened to go around the obstacle, the driver’s door of the white vehicle flung open, knocking Tranh and Mac to the tarmac.
Bouncing on his right shoulder, feeling his shirt tear loose, Mac gained his feet as the bike slid along the street on its foot pegs.
Pulling the stolen SIG from the small of his back, Mac stood, his left knee almost giving way as he straightened.
The driver raised his handgun and Mac fired instinctively. The shot missed, but the driver reflexively looked away, allowing Mac to race in with a kick to the bloke’s groin, which the driver easily deflected and countered with an open-handed strike to Mac’s face.
Finding himself stunned and sitting on his arse, Mac looked up in time to see Tranh throw a perfectly balanced roundhouse kick to the driver’s gun hand, and as the weapon landed on the hood of the still-ticking SUV, Tranh threw a kick to the bloke’s kidneys followed by a brutal kick to the face off the same leg.
Looking for Red Shirt, Mac realised he’d been tricked. The driver was the only person in the Explorer.
Standing, Mac watched the driver launch a flying headbutt at Tranh, who ducked slightly and took the shot above his left ear. Limping over to the driver’s handgun, which had slid across the hood and landed in front of the Explorer, Mac picked it up and turned to use it as Tranh threw a fast elbow into the driver’s teeth and followed it with a whippy left hook.
‘Okay, that’s it, champ,’ said Mac, levelling the handgun at the driver as he fell to the asphalt.
‘No, this is it,’ came a voice, and Mac saw the gleam of those dark eyes in the back seat of the Explorer. Throwing himself to his right, Mac hit the road as the glass of the driver’s side rear window exploded.
‘Get the bike!’ said Mac as Tranh crouched in panic, wondering where the shot had come from.
Duck-walking across the street, Tranh picked up the fallen bike as Mac slowly stood, holding the pistol in a cup-and-saucer grip. He peered over the level of the shot-out window, but the back seat was empty, as was the load space in the rear. There was movement from the front and Mac swung the borrowed handgun and aimed past the windscreen pillars and front seats to where Red Shirt stood on the other side of the hood. They eyeballed one another as a siren sounded, the red lights of the Cong An flashing behind the grille of an approaching car, about a block away.
Tranh kicked the motorbike into life and revved it impatiently. Looking from Red Shirt to the Cong An and back again, Mac considered a shootout, but decided to live another day. Swapping a final look of mutual loathing with Quirk’s killer, Mac jogged for the bike. Hopping on, they blasted away, into the path of the approaching cop car.
Looking over his right shoulder as they swerved into an alley with no lights on, Mac saw the Explorer accelerating in the opposite direction, the rear tyre bouncing over the former driver’s head.
The last thing Mac saw before they plunged into the alley was the cop car flashing past. A totally focused face stared over the wheel of the white Camry: a focused female face.
Chapter 17
Tranh pulled over at the public park, beside where the canal cut westward from the Saigon River into the southern interior of the city.
‘How you shaping up, mate?’ said Mac, sitting at a park bench and checking his knee.
A freighter slid downriver, its lights making it look like a Christmas tree lying on its side. The humidity pressed in on them, crickets noisy in the night air.
‘Bleeding on my thigh,’ said Tranh, pulling back the torn flap of his wrecked chinos and exposing his grazed leg, the white pocket liner stuck to the drying blood.
‘That’s nasty. I’m going to need an ice bag,’ said Mac, only just managing to straighten his left knee to a full extension. ‘In a couple of hours I won’t be able to walk.’
Holding his leg, Mac felt a shape in one of the pockets. Pulling it out, he examined the memory card he’d retrieved at the Mekong Saloon – the card that had fallen off the computer table as the man in the red shirt had taken off. The card was a standard SD, but white. Trousering it again as Tranh lit a cigarette, Mac pulled the recovered handgun from his waistband. Unlike the flat, seven-shot SIG, this was a bulky fifteen-shot Ruger 9mm. It looked the same as the one Tranh had secured for him at the boat.
‘Rugers popular in Saigon?’ asked Mac, checking it for load and safety before placing it on the seat between them.
‘For Cong An and army,’ said Tranh. ‘So lots around – easy for fixing.’
Thinking it through, Mac decided he had to go on alone. If things got really bad, he had a consulate, he had a government and he had the financial capacity to buy his way out of Vietnam. Tranh lived here.
And it wasn’t just the Cong An. Whoever’d executed Jim Quirk was serious. What he initially thought was familiar about Red Shirt was not his face, Mac had decided, but his style: the man was an intelligence professional and if Red Shirt continued the killing Mac didn’t want Tranh on his conscience.
Mac’s watch said it was 9.56 pm.
‘I’m going to cut you loose, mate,’ he said, watching the freighter. ‘You were just the driver and the cut-out, remember?’
Looking away, Tranh said nothing.
‘I mean it, Tranh – you’re proving too useful to me. I can’t draw you any further into this.’
‘I am in this,’ said Tranh, drawing on his cigarette.
Mac smiled at the enthusiasm. ‘No, mate. You drive me, you handle messages, you give me a local’s lay of the land. You’re not paid to do what you did tonight.’
‘I drove you,’ said Tranh.
‘Sure, but –’
‘I gave you message when Apricot was coming.’
Mac wanted to head this off. ‘Nice work.’
‘And I do lay of land with that ape,’ he said, with no hint of machismo.
Looking away, Mac felt strangely emotional. All his life, he’d been the one looked to for the rough stuff, the one to escalate a situation and get in the blue. He was feeling quite touched that a skinny contractor he’d only known for twenty-four hours was prepared to walk up to a bigger man and start kicking him in the teeth. And that was only the physical side of it – Mac hated riding pillion on a motorbike, thanks largely to his mother being a senior nurse at Rockie Base Hospital who’d seen too many young men brought into the emergency ward in meat buckets. But he liked Tranh’s driving. And when he’d dropped the comment about collaborating with Captain Loan, Tranh’s instant response had been openness. Mac trusted this guy.
‘Yep,’ said Mac, trying to stand. ‘You gave that ape a decent slap. So I have one last job for the night, then it’s beddy-byes, all right?’
‘What it is?’ said Tranh, confused, as Mac limped back to the motorbike. ‘You want better bike?’
‘No,’ said Mac. ‘Beddy-byes – you know, a kip?’
‘Umm,’ said Tranh as he flipped up the bike stand, not getting it. ‘So we going to find Mr Apricot?’
Looking at Tranh, Mac realised the local didn’t know about the murder.
‘No, mate,’ said Mac. ‘We’re gonna find the pricks who did.’
Seventeen minutes later, dressed in new clothes from a market by the river, they glided with the light traffic past the garage where Red Shirt had dumped the LandCruiser. Mac was in pain and he was scared. He had no idea how he was going to tell Scotty about Jim Quirk, but he wasn’t going to walk away from a search of that LandCruiser.
Walking into a side entrance of the garage building, they jogged up four flights of dimly lit stairs until they stood in front of the door with the ‘
hai
’ sign on it. Pushing through into level two, they waited for signs of security and looked at the ceiling for cameras. It looked clean.
The LandCruiser was parked in the area where Mac thought the Explorer had been started – pointing over the street. After waiting for a Tamil family to get in their car and leave, Tranh got to work on the LandCruiser and found an entry through the rear hatch, then unlocked the doors. They sat in the vehicle; Mac in the front, Tranh in the back.
‘What am I looking for?’ asked Tranh.
‘Anything,’ said Mac, his hopes fading as he said it. The interior had been cleaned out.
The glove box was empty – not even a manual or a map. The door pockets were wiped, as was the centre console and the clips behind the sunshades. There was a faint smell of tobacco, and pulling out the ashtray Mac found a single butt, scrunched up against the end of the tray, a cardboard match jammed beneath it.
Peering closer, Mac saw why he’d smelled strong tobacco: the butt was a Camel.
Pushing the tray back just as he’d found it, he released the driver’s door and stepped onto the concrete, leaning back into the vehicle to search under the seats.
‘How you going back there?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, Mr Richard.’
Running his hand across black nylon carpet under the driver’s seat, Mac came up with a small plastic envelope.
‘Know what that is?’ said Mac, passing it to Tranh.
Pulling his hand from under the driver’s seat, Mac’s hand hit something else. Undoing a wire twist tie, he pulled out the spare Toyota LandCruiser keys – by the look of them, they’d never been touched.
‘Well, well,’ said Mac.
The red plastic tag had the rego and the colour written in ballpoint on a card slipped into a clear window on one side; flipping it over, the red tag advertised in silver letters:
Cameron Toyota – Kuala Lumpur
.
‘That’s a sheath for an SD memory card,’ said Tranh, returning the plastic envelope.
‘For a computer?’ said Mac, losing interest as he walked around and lifted the bonnet to record the VIN on the engine bulkhead.
‘Yep,’ said Tranh. ‘You have something?’
‘At the very least,’ said Mac, jiggling the keys, ‘we now have a backup car.’
Having sent his second update on Operation Dragon, Mac checked that Tranh was focused on the satellite TV service in the next office: a Fox News reporter screaming a piece-to-camera as his helo flew over the Japan Sea, telling viewers how this storied sea lane that separated Japan, Korea and China was about to become the most tracked and satellite-surveilled patch on Earth as North Korea announced its missile-testing schedule for next week.
Mac snorted; the news media had to do its location reporting early for the missile tests because for the seventy-two hours while North Korea fired its Taepodong rockets over Japan, the most powerful electronic eavesdropping devices attempted to vacuum every piece of telemetry out of the sky and out of North Korea’s computers and comms links. The wall of electronic measures and counter-measures – some coming from US satellites in space and others from Chinese listening posts mounted on the sea floor – were so intense that shipping and commercial airlines stayed out of the area during the tests as communications became virtually impossible in the wall of white noise.
Easing his office door shut, Mac dialled Canberra. After establish- ing his bona fides, he was patched through to Scotty on a secure line. By Mac’s estimation, it was about one-thirty in the morning in Australia’s capital.
‘Macca,’ said Scotty, croaking himself awake. ‘How we doing?’
‘I filed one minute ago,’ said Mac. ‘It’s in the system.’
Like a lot of military and intel people, Scotty could become alert in a hurry. ‘You okay?’
‘Look,’ said Mac, grabbing a water bottle, his hand unsteady. ‘Umm . . . Jim Quirk’s dead.’
‘What?!’
‘Yeah – haven’t told Chester yet. Looks like the Cong An’s working on it as we speak.’
‘
Dead?
’ said Scotty. ‘What did you . . . ? I mean, how?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Mac.
‘So, suicide? Run over by a bus? What the hell’s going on?’
Stress was settling in Mac’s clenched jaw. ‘He was shot.’
The trademark sound of Scotty’s cigarette lighter flashed in the background. ‘Where?’
‘At the nightclub,’ said Mac.
‘The Saloon?’ said Scotty.
‘Quirk was being roughed up by these thugs, Eastern European, I think . . .’
‘You were there? This was a surveillance gig, mate.’
‘We already knew about the Mekong Saloon,’ said Mac. ‘I needed to see what was in there. I was having a quick look around, and suddenly Quirk’s there, being forced into a computer room by these standover blokes.’
‘And?’
‘And I followed them in, saw Quirk at this computer terminal, being made to do something.’
‘Yeah?’ said Scotty, sucking on the cigarette.
‘Yeah – looked like a bunch of code.’
Scotty paused. ‘But Jim died?’
‘I tried to help and this bloke shot Jim in the head.’
‘Like that?’
‘Five metres from where I was standing,’ said Mac. ‘I couldn’t do anything.’
‘Fuck, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘I told you – passive surveillance, get me a report and then we’ll decide. Remember?’
‘Yeah. Sorry, Scotty,’ said Mac.
‘Well, are you okay?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, looking at his leg.
‘Don’t lie to me, Macca – are you okay?’
‘We had a small bingle, but we’re good.’
‘Bingle?’ said Scotty. ‘Sorry, can I have the non-Queensland translation for that?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Did you beat up anyone?’
‘Yep,’ said Mac.
‘Get in a gunfight?’
‘Ah, yeah.’
‘A car chase?’
‘We were on a bike.’
There was a new tone in Scotty’s voice. ‘Shit, Macca!’
‘Everything okay down there?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ said Scotty.
‘Look, I want to work on this.’
Scotty’s voice rose in intensity. ‘No, mate – you’re not working on anything.’
‘You sure everything’s okay?’
‘I’m sure you’re a fucking headache,’ said Scotty. ‘Here’s my direct order: no more operations. You pick up the new recruit tomorrow and then we talk again after I read your report. Fuck’s sake.’
‘Okay, Scotty.’
‘Stay out of trouble – that’s an order,’ said Scotty and the line went dead.
Getting Tranh to drop him around the corner from the Grand Hotel, Mac hobbled the half-block to the double doors.
As he limped through the tiled lobby, the night manager called out, ‘Mr Richard?’
‘Yeah, squire,’ said Mac, his left knee not wanting to bear weight.
The bloke handed over an envelope. ‘Message for you, sir.’
‘Thanks. Can you send up a bucket of ice,
cam on
?’
Pushing off his shoes in the living area of his suite, Mac cracked the tab on a can of 333 from his fridge and looked at the envelope. The porter came in with an old-fashioned ice bucket and Mac tipped him with dong.
Pouring the ice into a plastic laundry bag, he fashioned it into an ice pack and eased it onto his knee, which was stretched out on the coffee table.
Opening the envelope, he saw Captain Loan’s business card. On the reverse side it said,
Please call asap
.
‘Jesus wept,’ he said, shutting his eyes and slumping back into the sofa as the ice took some of the pain out of his knee.
Regardless of how spies were portrayed in books and movies, the central factor in their success was the ability to move within and between countries without attracting the attention of the local gendarmes. It was one of those boring requirements of the job and Mac should have been able to operate in a foreign city for thirty-six hours without a police captain – a detective, for Christ’s sake – asking him to call.
He felt stupid, amateurish. And he felt exposed: the death of Jim Quirk was just sinking in. He couldn’t get the eyes of the killer out of his head and at the same time he knew the shooting was going to make him a person of interest to Captain Loan. She had him where she wanted him; so long as he was in Saigon, she was going to watch him like a rat in a maze . . .
Keying his phone, Mac waited for Tranh to answer.
‘Tranh,’ said Mac, ‘sorry to bother you, but I was thinking about our chat about Captain Loan.’
‘Yes, Mr Richard,’ he said. ‘I thought I tell her we were in Vung Tau tonight.’
Mac smiled. ‘Great minds, mate.’
‘It will be easy for her, and for you.’
‘Okay,’ said Mac, liking this guy. ‘Where did we stay?’
‘Didn’t, Mr Richard. We drove back, arrived few minute ago.’
‘Who saw us in Vung Tau?’
‘My cousin, he has noodle bar – he serve us at quarter past nine, right? No way we can be in Vung Tau and at Mekong Saloon.’
‘Thanks, Tranh,’ said Mac. ‘And you’re picking up Lance tomorrow morning at the airport. He’s staying at the Rex, okay?’
‘I’ll call you when I get him,’ said Tranh.
Tapping the phone on his teeth, Mac thought about it. He needed to call Canberra, have a quick chat.
Dialling the number for the Saigon consulate-general, Mac was put through to the duty guy, who called himself Justin.
‘I need a secure patch to the Casey building, thanks, Justin,’ said Mac, meaning the Aussie SIS headquarters in Canberra. Most Asian intelligence services monitored phone calls out of their country, so Mac liked a secure line for offshore chats.
‘Um,’ said the bloke, flipping through his manual, ‘I haven’t done this . . . I . . .’
‘Just give me the connection,’ said Mac, friendly. ‘If they think I’m a fruitcake, they’ll cut me off, trust me on that.’