Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  Mac wasn’t sure they had a plan to retrieve Lance and Urquhart, but if they could get the memory card they’d at least be able to bargain.

  ‘Here, thanks,’ said Mac, opening the rear door before the car stopped.

  ‘Take it easy, Macca,’ said Beech. ‘Don’t mess with this guy.’

  Easing into the darkness of the roadside banyans, Mac stayed still as the Nissan slipped away.

  ‘Red Rover to Blue Dog – copy this?’ came Scotty’s voice on the earpiece.

  ‘Gotcha, Red Rover,’ said Mac. ‘Call you when I need a ride.’

  Walking back towards the guest house, Mac wanted to be in and out, and no heroes.

  There were four cars in the dirt forecourt and Mac saw Grimshaw’s dark green Toyota, one back from the manager’s office at the entrance. Removing the keyring of jiggers, wafers and bump keys from his pocket, Mac walked to the rear of the Toyota and released the boot lid on the second try. Letting it ride up a few inches, Mac pulled off his cap, bounced up the front steps and pushed into the yellow glow of the office, which consisted of a counter looking over a chess-board marble parquetry floor in what had been in the 1870s the grand foyer of a mansion.

  A man sat at a desk behind the counter, watching a Thai game show where money was poured from the ceiling onto hysterical contestants.

  ‘Hey, champ,’ said Mac, smiling at the manager. ‘Davis, from room four – remember?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the manager, nodding his head.

  ‘You seen those thieves out there?’

  ‘What, mister?’ said the fellow, putting on his glasses and hitting mute on the TV. ‘What is it, the thief?’

  ‘Yeah, two of them, hanging around that American’s car. Green Toyota?’

  Following Mac into the forecourt, the manager turned on his flashlight – a black Maglite that could be used as a truncheon.

  ‘They were messing around with the door handles,’ said Mac, cupping his hands and peering through the driver’s window like a concerned citizen.

  The manager circled behind Mac, shining the flashlight into the interior of the car.

  ‘Here, mister,’ said the manager, raising the boot lid.

  ‘Better tell the American, eh, boss?’ said Mac.

  Standing in the darkness of the baggage room adjacent to the foyer, Mac waited as Grimshaw stalked downstairs, his voice suspicious.

  As the voices trailed into the forecourt, Mac opened the door, checked for eyes and sprinted up the mahogany stairs three at a time. Rounding the first-floor landing, he walked past a hall desk with a Lalique vase, along the runners of Thai silk carpets, and found room 3.

  The management had installed new German deadlocks in the old doors and, casing the hallway, he pulled out his keyring and sorted through the Schlage section until he found one that looked the money – a Schlage five-pin.

  Inserting it, Mac held his breath and listened for any movement from the other side of the door, his temples pounding. Hearing nothing, he pulled back slowly on the bump key until he felt the slight vibration of the key allowing the last pin to slip back into place. The next part would tell him if he’d used the right bump key. He jiggled the key side to side in a quick but light action, the lock made a sound like a mouse scuttling and the key turned.

  Pushing into the fully lit suite, Mac let the door close behind him.

  ‘Red Rover, I’m in,’ said Mac into the radio mouthpiece dangling in front of his throat.

  ‘Copy that, Blue Dog,’ said Scotty. ‘Target’s taking his time with the car – doing a total inspection.’

  Through the open window at the front of the living area, the voices of Grimshaw and the manager could be heard.

  Mac moved quickly around the suite, looking for bags and backpacks. The credenza along the wall of the living area held a briefcase, a satellite phone and two cell phones – none of them Tranh’s red Nokia.

  Opening the briefcase, Mac found a Harris military radio, laid flat in the bottom of the case and covered with documents. No cell phone.

  Searching quickly through drawers and along surfaces, Mac moved around the corner and into the kitchen, where he found a laptop computer, open and running. Looking at it, Mac saw the NSA corporate logo and the security email system embedded within it. Under normal circumstances, he’d stay and have a read, but he was in a hurry.

  The kitchen featured a bowl of bananas, the fridge contained half a six-pack of 333 cans and the bathroom – a tiled wonder of the colonial era – held only a toothbrush, shaving cream and a razor.

  Taking the SIG from his waistband, Mac moved into the first bedroom where he saw a perfectly made double bed and a carry-on wheelie bag sitting on the luggage rack. Fossicking through it as carefully as he could, the crackles of Scotty’s voice erupted in his right ear.

  ‘Blue Dog – target’s locked the vehicle and is talking with the manager.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, Red Rover – copy that,’ said Mac, adrenaline rising the longer his search came up empty.

  ‘Blue Dog, Blue Dog – target re-entering the building. Repeat – he’s on his way up,’ said Scotty.

  ‘Gotcha, Red Rover,’ said Mac, panting slightly as he turned from the wheelie bag and looked under the bed. Nothing. The wardrobe held one Oxford shirt and a pair of slate-grey chinos. No phone.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mac, entering the hallway, SIG in cup-and-saucer as he moved through the gloom. Pushing on the second bedroom door, the wooden four-panel swung open with a squeak as the radio earpiece came to life again.

  ‘Blue Dog, Blue Dog – target speaking with manager in foyer. Time to ride, Blue Dog.’

  ‘Okay, Red Rover,’ he said with a breathless snap. ‘I’m outta here.’

  Sammy’s black Samsonite wheelie bag sat on the spare bed. Moving to it, Mac sorted through the clothes.

  ‘Blue Dog, hope you’re out of there,’ came Scotty’s voice.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, plunging into a yellow plastic bag and coming up with a house key, a small black wallet and a red Nokia.

  Grabbing the plastic bag as he moved back to the hallway, Mac tried the first sash window above the sink but could only get it to rise six inches before it was stopped by a set of locked security bolts.

  ‘Christ,’ said Mac, seeing the rest of windows had the same bolts.

  Mac heard the door to the suite open as Scotty’s voice came over the earpiece, repeating, ‘Move, Blue Dog.’

  Retreating from the kitchen as slowly as he could, SIG raised, Mac glanced over the NSA email system and saw the subject field of the email Grimshaw had been reading. It said Op Lampoon – Critical.

  The email featured the word HARPAC.

  Moving carefully back to the hallway fronting the bathroom and two bedrooms, Mac listened to footfalls clipping on the other side of the internal wall: Grimshaw striding to the kitchen.

  Wondering how he was going to do this without shooting his way out, Mac listened as the footfalls reversed and strode back to the suite’s door, which then opened and closed.

  Putting his head around the corner into the living area, Mac found the place deserted. The footfalls echoed down the main hallway, and then stopped; a door was opened, the door was shut and Mac could hear two men talking. Moving back to Sammy’s room, Mac put his ear to the thin wall and heard the conversation; muffled, but urgent. One of the voices was Grimshaw.

  ‘Blue Dog, Blue Dog – where the fuck are you?’ came Scotty’s voice over the radio.

  ‘Standing by, Red Rover,’ mumbled Mac, straining to hear Grimshaw.

  ‘Get out now!’

  Mac made for the kitchen to have another look: what was Operation Lampoon? The laptop was gone, and Mac walked to the door and eased into the hallway.

  ‘Red Rover – time for a ride,’ said Mac into his radio as
he waved to the manager and skipped down the front steps.

  The car pulled up and Mac got in, barely shutting the door as Scotty accelerated away.

  ‘Stop here,’ said Mac when they were fifty metres away. ‘I want to check something. Anyone got binos?’

  ‘You got the chip?’ said Scotty.

  Pulling out the red Nokia, Mac peeled off the back cover, removed the battery and saw the white SD card gleaming right where Dozsa had said it would be.

  Handing it to Sandy Beech, Mac received in exchange a battered set of folding Swarovskis. Opening the door, he pulled on his black cap and slipped out of the car.

  ‘Give me five, boys.’

  Walking through the shadows back to the guest house, Mac smiled as a bunch of teenagers went past on their pushbikes, chattering at each other. It didn’t matter the language, you could always tell when teenagers were cracking on to one another.

  Pausing by the entrance to the guest house, Mac looked up to the first floor where Grimshaw’s and the neighbouring room faced the parking lot. The shutters over Grimshaw’s room had been closed, but the hook for the shutters over the neighbouring windows wasn’t fully closed and Mac reckoned if he got the right angle he’d be able to have a nosey-poke into that room, see who Grimshaw was speaking to.

  Tucking the binos in the back pocket of his chinos, he noticed a car parked on the other side of a large banyan tree. Climbing onto the roof of the car, Mac reached up and hauled himself up onto a branch, staying close to the trunk.

  A monkey mumbled in its sleep and put its arm back over its forehead as Mac found a vantage point level with the room. Peering through the Swarovskis, he adjusted for range and focus and could see movement through the shutter opening. It looked like a slashing movement and as Mac got the field-glasses on a better depth of focus, he could see an arm swinging, and then a man walking. Holding the binos on the best angle, Mac watched the man go back and forth across the narrow window of view, before he finally stopped and turned into the light: Charles Grimshaw, bending over, snarling at someone.

  Why couldn’t he see the other person? Above him, the foliage was thicker – not a good vantage point for a recce, but Mac wanted to see the person in the chair.

  Scrabbling and slipping to another level, his calf muscle burning with pain, he disturbed two fruit bats that whacked their wings against the tropical night air, leaving the top of the tree shaking. Holding his breath, Mac waited to see if the noise brought Grimshaw to the window, but he looked to be making too much noise of his own and Mac could hear the odd word drifting into the still night air.

  Clearing a bunch of twigs in front of his face, Mac raised the field-glasses and found his field of focus, the magnification of the keyhole scene a strange effect that threatened to make him lose balance.

  Grimshaw slapped the object of his wrath and Mac could see there was a black pistol in his hand.

  ‘Get out of the way, Charles,’ said Mac to himself.

  Grimshaw’s bulk swayed back and forth menacingly. Then the American moved out of the line of vision and Mac gasped slightly.

  ‘Holy crap,’ he said, breath rasping in his throat.

  Charles Grimshaw was interrogating Sammy Chan, and there was blood everywhere.

  ‘There’s two hundred billion dollars worth of bad currency sitting somewhere in the Mekong Delta tonight,’ said Mac, brooding in the back seat of the Nissan. ‘And Grimshaw is in Kratie, interrogating his senior operator. What’s that about?’

  ‘Sammy’s gone rogue, I guess,’ said Scotty, sucking on a smoke and looking over Sandy Beech’s shoulder at the mini notebook that was running the SD memory card.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Mac opened a water bottle. ‘These guys were total believers – you should have seen their set-up outside Phnom Penh, the way they approached this gig. Something’s wrong with what I saw back there – something’s wrong with Grimshaw being in Kratie when so much US currency is about to be dumped around this region.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Beech as his screen opened hundreds of lines of code.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Mac.

  ‘So am I, Macca,’ said Beech, turning to face him. ‘There’s no way we can give this to Dozsa.’

  Chapter 54

  The Nokia buzzed in Mac’s breast pocket as he maintained eye contact with Sandy Beech.

  ‘Wanna get that?’ said the military spook.

  ‘I want the card back,’ said Mac. ‘It’s buying two Aussies.’

  Turning to Scotty, Beech gave him a look that Mac didn’t like.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac, answering the phone before looking at Scotty and mouthing, ‘Dozsa.’

  ‘Listen, my Aussie friend,’ came the monotone straight out of Budapest via Tel Aviv. ‘You be at the main wharf in Stung Treng, at midnight.’

  ‘I haven’t got it yet,’ said Mac.

  ‘That’s why you have till midnight,’ said Dozsa. ‘And no eyes in the sky.’

  The line went dead and Mac looked up from the phone. ‘Stung Treng – main wharf, midnight. No UAVs.’

  The discomfort was obvious and Scotty cleared his throat.

  ‘What?’ said Mac.

  ‘Mate, we’re standing down on this one, okay?’ said Mac’s mentor.

  ‘This one?’ said Mac.

  ‘It’s not ours anymore,’ said Scotty. ‘It’s with Defence now.’

  Mac couldn’t grasp it. ‘Hang on, Scotty – what’s now with Defence? The card? The wellbeing of Lance and Dave?’

  Scotty’s throat bobbed. ‘Whole bit.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ said Mac, reaching for his waistband as Scotty’s hand slapped down on his wrist. Pulling back from Scotty, Mac heard the tapping of steel on the window beside his head. Freezing, he raised his hands – he knew that sound. Turning, he saw a set of eyes looking down the barrel of a Browning Hi-Power pistol. On the other side of the car, a blond soldier was also aiming at Mac.

  ‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ said Beech, eyes flicking to the soldiers who simultaneously opened the rear doors of the Nissan and relieved Mac of the SIG Sauer. ‘I wish there was another way of doing this.’

  Emerging from the car, Mac looked around and saw four soldiers dressed in the kind of civvies CIA paramilitaries wore: fatigue pants tailored like chinos, military shirts that passed for adventure travel wear and military boots made to look like yuppie hikers’ shoes.

  ‘You okay, Macca?’ said the soldier closest to him.

  ‘Couldn’t get any better if you paid me in beer,’ said Mac. ‘How you been, Maddo?’

  Doug Madden was a team leader in a unit called CDT 4, a navy commando unit based out of Perth. Looking around the car, Mac saw faces he knew and greeted them.

  ‘Macca,’ they all mumbled, giving him a nod. During some of Mac’s assignments over the years, the boys from Team Four had inserted and extracted him, protected him from bad guys and made him look good. Now they were following orders – it wasn’t personal.

  ‘Thanks, guys,’ said Beech, closing the mini notebook as he stood beside the car.

  ‘You’re calling this wrong, Sandy,’ said Mac.

  ‘I’m following orders, Macca.’ Beech nodded at Maddo, who stripped the clip out of Mac’s handgun and threw it in the dirt.

  ‘Whose orders?’ said Mac, stowing the emptied SIG.

  ‘Ask Scotty,’ said Beech. ‘We got the same message.’

  Beech moved with the commandos to a metallic blue Nissan Patrol parked behind Scotty’s car, touching his eyebrow briefly as they accelerated away.

  Making it around to Scotty’s side of the car in three strides, Mac tore open the door where his mentor had his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘You’re a fucking wanker, Scott,’ said Mac, nostrils flaring in anger. ‘Know that? You’re un-fuc
king-believable.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Scotty, calm.

  ‘Why, so you can shaft me again?’ said Mac, knowing he was losing it.

  After three seconds glaring at each other, the two men broke from the intensity and started laughing. Slowly at first and then uncontrollably, until Scotty’s eyes ran with tears.

  ‘Wanker?’ said Scotty as he recovered. ‘You cheeky bastard.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Mac, sitting on the car’s bonnet, wiping his eyes. ‘Working without notes.’

  ‘By the way . . .’ said Scotty, getting out of the car and offering Mac a water bottle.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Mac, closing his eyes and trying to relax.

  ‘I said we were standing down,’ said Scotty, lighting a smoke. ‘I didn’t say it was over.’

  Grabbing the water bottle from Scotty, Mac gulped at it as they watched the window of Grimshaw’s room.

  ‘So, explanation time.’

  ‘Don’t know how much help I’ll be,’ said Scotty.

  Mac was sick of being fobbed off. ‘What’s Operation Lampoon?’

  ‘I don’t know. Defence spooks have been keeping an eye on this Joel Dozsa for a while, and when I let slip that you were on the trail of an ex-Mossad guy, the next day Sandy turns up.’

  ‘And wants what?’

  ‘I think tonight about sums it up. That memory card is the last piece in a puzzle that Pao Peng’s people have been building for three years.’

  ‘What’s on it?’

  Scotty looked around the backpacker bar. ‘You know much about routers?’

  ‘Puts a groove in wood?’ said Mac.

  ‘No, mate,’ said Scotty. ‘The other one – the junction box that digital signals go through, decides where the signal is going.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac.

  ‘Apparently General Pao Peng employed Joel Dozsa to find a way to read the Americans’ global traffic in emails, phone calls and signals.’

  ‘What? All of it?’ asked Mac.