Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘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 ad
here 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 haircut! 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?’

  ‘The memory card, dumb-shit – what do you think this is about?’ said Lance.

  ‘I should ask you,’ said Mac as the car doors opened behind Lance and shapes moved up to him.

  ‘I’m asking you, McQueen,’ said Lance. ‘Last seen in your backpack. I would have grabbed it myself but your room at the Cambodiana no longer exists.’

  ‘The memory card? I don’t have it.’ Mac’s mind was
spinning.

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘Mind reader as well as anilinguist – I’m impressed.’

  Lance breathed out as he sneered, controlling his urge to shoot. ‘Let’s go to your hotel and discuss it like pros, eh, champ?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Mac.

  ‘I think we’re way beyond that, don’t you, Macca?’ came the voice from beside the fullbeams.

  A figure stepped forwards, and Mac raised his hand against the glare, deflating slightly as he saw who it was.

  ‘Fuck – Davo?’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Dave Urquhart, standing beside Lance. ‘I hate this field stuff. So let’s grab that memory card, mate, and push on like nothing ever happened.’

  ‘Nothing happened?’ said Mac. ‘You’ve pulled a gun on a senior guy from the Firm.’

  Urquhart smirked. ‘Like I said in Canberra, there doesn’t need to be any blow-back on this – play it smart and your career might be the winner.’

  Chapter 29

  The smell of coffee was strong as Mac opened his eyes and took in the surrounds: a high-ceilinged bedroom in a French-colonial house.

  Trying to stretch and yawn, Mac was constrained by the chromed handcuffs that held his right arm to the iron bedhead. Wiggling his fingers and toes, he confirmed he was in one piece and, judging by his cognition, he hadn’t been drugged – it was old-fashioned fatigue that had triggered the deep sleep. His only worry was his left eye, which seemed to have become glued shut with mucus. He needed another saline wash.

  The smell of coffee was joined by grilled bacon and he felt his stomach grumble with anticipation as he sat up and scoped the overgrown back garden evident through the large sash windows beside his bed. He was most interested in finding a feature that could tell him where he was. In the British military they trained recruits to be able to pinpoint their whereabouts at all times. Whether by compass, sun, stars, landmarks, water flow, bird life or simply asking a civilian, your first job was to be able to state your position. The Royal Marines had no use for a commando who didn’t know where he was, and candidates who couldn’t get the hang of it were called ‘tits’ by the non-coms – as in ‘tits on a bull’.