Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘This way,’ said Mac, pulling up his sagging undies and aiming inland for the highway.

  By the time they hit Highway Seven – the south–north trucking route from Phnom Penh into Laos – Mac could barely walk. He’d told Lance and Urquhart to get to the road and stay put and he hoped that they’d followed his advice because he was in no mood for finding a couple of office guys in the jungle.

  Kai and Chani had found him a branch that Mac tried to use as a crutch but his right leg was creating pain that ignited fire rockets at the periphery of his vision.

  In the military they used to say of problems: ‘fix it or fuck it’. That is, find a solution or shrug it off. So Mac was manning it out, trying to stay conscious, trying to keep going for the kids.

  Looking north and south along the highway, they watched the trucks passing with little chance of flagging one down. In Indochina, hijacking of road, sea and river commerce was a profitable activity among the local gangsters. A Cambodian trucker would as soon stop for an armed man with tiger stripes on his naked body as a media mogul would set up a porn channel on Iranian TV: it simply wouldn’t be worth his while.

  They walked north, keeping to the footpads that fringed the major roads in Cambodia – the modern world had arrived but most country folk still walked or rode ancient bicycles.

  Mac’s small moans of pain had been rising in volume and, after ten minutes of walking, Kai grabbed his left hand. It was functionally useless but as a gesture it meant a lot.

  A branch snapped and Mac pushed Kai to the ground and dived into a shallow ditch. Bringing the SIG up to a shooting position, Mac hissed at the kids to come in behind him, staying low to the ground.

  They scrambled up behind him and Mac peered into the jungle, the sounds he’d picked up getting drowned out for a few seconds as three trucks went past in convoy.

  ‘Macca – that you?’ came a voice from the bush.

  ‘Davo?’

  ‘Yep,’ said the voice.

  Standing, his heart fluttering, Mac limped to the centre of the footpad as three locals slid past silently on their World War II–era pushbikes.

  ‘You told us to stay put,’ said Dave Urquhart, walking into the footpad, Lance behind him. ‘What now?’

  ‘Get to Kratie,’ said Mac, his head swimming.

  ‘Thanks for the swim,’ said Urquhart with a sneer. ‘Thought this was a rescue.’

  ‘Come on, Dave,’ said Lance, his rock-star image not surviving his dip in the Mekong. ‘Be glad we’re out of there.’

  Mac leaned on the branch, trying to get air into his system. ‘You’ve both got shirts – the kids get one each.’

  ‘Fuck off, McQueen,’ said Urquhart, still smarting from the gibes about Len Cromie and Churchie, which was a big Anglican school in Brisbane and Nudgee’s bitter rival. ‘We’ve got more serious things to think about – like where the fuck are we?’

  ‘Kids need clothes,’ said Mac, his words sounding far away, the pain smothering him.

  Lance unbuttoned his expensive adventure-traveller shirt and handed it to Chani.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Urquhart, pulling off his wet polo shirt and handing it to the shivering boy.

  ‘I knew a man lived inside you,’ said Mac.

  ‘Mister,’ said Kai as he slipped into the oversize shirt and pointed to something up the road.

  Mac squinted into the darkness while Kai gabbled at Chani.

  ‘He say, there a well up there, mister,’ said the girl.

  ‘Water?’ said Lance. ‘Christ, I’d die for a drink.’

  Crossing the highway, they entered the open area with a well and trough in the middle of it – a throwback to the days when Highway Seven was a farmer’s donkey track.

  They drank and washed themselves, Lance and Urquhart being particularly dehydrated after their incarceration in the engine room.

  As Mac scooped water into his parched, sewer-filled mouth, a Toyota 4x4 slowed and then skidded to a halt as it overshot the lay-by. The white reverse lights lit up and then the Toyota was reversing at high speed.

  Motioning the team behind the trough, Mac crouched behind the concrete hide and aimed his SIG. Ten shots and a fifty per cent chance of the thing jamming after such a drenching. Against what? A vehicle full of Dozsa’s boys? The Chinese cadre? He didn’t feel up to it.

  Pulse pounding in his temples, Mac cocked the handgun and aimed it at the Toyota’s passenger door as the vehicle stopped in the gravel.

  Standing slightly for a better stance, Mac counted his shots in advance: two in the passenger door, run to the rear of the vehicle, create visual confusion and then drop the driver as he got out of the 4x4 and hope there wasn’t more than one in the back seat.

  The door opened and Mac squeezed the trigger. The shot cracked like a stockwhip as the passenger ducked back into the vehicle, the SIG putting a star in the windshield.

  Through the haze Mac thought someone was screaming Macca but he didn’t know why. Then he was falling, fainting, and his face hit the dust and gravel. He was warm now – he could sleep for a thousand years.

  Chapter 59

  Lying face down on the hospital bed, Mac flinched as the doctor took the hot compress off the bullet wound in his calf and pushed stainless-steel forceps into the hole.

  ‘You get choice,’ said the doctor, in clear English. ‘Fast and painful, or slow and painful?’

  ‘Just do it,’ said Mac, not in the mood for medical humour.

  Besides the pain, Mac was dreading having to speak with Jenny. Some husbands’ burden was to explain their way out of a game of golf that turned into an all-nighter at the nineteenth, or a business lunch that had ended up at a nightclub. Mac would have to explain how he came to be shooting at his wife in a highway rest stop in central Cambodia.

  There was a glugging sound and the nurse leaned in, and then there were strong hands wrapped around his knee and ankle as the doctor grunted and cursed under his breath. After a final sucking sound like a plunger in a blocked lav, the doctor was standing beside Mac’s face showing him a small, dark slug in the grip of the bloody forceps.

  ‘That been in you forty-eight hours?’ said the doctor, a young man who claimed to have been educated in Perth. ‘Amazing that you walking around.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Mac. ‘I was kissing dirt by the side of the road.’

  The nurse moved in with a trolley filled with bandages and immediately started on a bed bath for the wounded leg.

  ‘Yeah, well, you should have been to hospital when you are shot, Mr Davis,’ said the doctor. ‘Can die from the infection – especially you swimming in the river.’

  ‘I’ll be using mouthwash the rest of my life,’ said Mac, still tasting that foul river-swill in his mouth. ‘Where’re the kids?’

  ‘Kids are fine,’ said Jenny, moving into the curtained area as the nurse dried off the wound.

  ‘Great,’ said Mac. ‘What are you doing up here, anyway?’

  ‘Dodging bullets from the father of my child,’ said Jen, dark ponytail sitting on her right shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Mac, hoping the nurse didn’t speak English. ‘I had a big night. And you?’

  ‘Captain Loan is following a lead in Stung Treng,’ said Jenny, all her weight on her left hip, arms crossed. ‘I’m interested. You might be too.’

  Pausing to assess the hidden trap, Mac proceeded carefully. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah – we searched Quirk’s apartment in the old BP com- pound in Saigon and came up with a laundry receipt from a place called the Water Dragon Guest House. It’s on the east side of Stung Treng.’

  ‘So it’s “we” now?’

  ‘Observing,’ said Jenny. ‘Chanthe spoke with the owner of the Water Dragon and she said she remembered a regular Australian visitor – called himse
lf John Black but John Black looks just like the photograph we showed her of Jim Quirk.’

  ‘Jim – in Cambodia?’

  ‘He used to stay at the guest house every second weekend. He’d take a suite but would be in and out of the suite rented by what she called Turks.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. She later found out the Turks used to stay in a place out of town, across the Srepok, but had stopped going there after a room was blown up and some other Turks were assassinated.’

  ‘So why would I be interested?’ said Mac, as the bandages went on his leg.

  ‘Because I called Maggs, asked him about it,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Harley?’ said Mac.

  ‘I was wondering if he’d seen any Turks through Phnom and he tells me they’re probably Israelis – retired Mossad guys.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting.’

  ‘He told me he’d seen you, Macca,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you had a drink with Maggs and didn’t talk about the Mossad guys – that’s precisely what people like you talk about.’

  ‘Steady, my sweet,’ said Mac, trying to work out how many people were listening. The annoying thing about cops was how open they were.

  ‘Well?’

  The nurse finished and left the curtained cubicle.

  ‘Yeah, he told me there was a bunch of ex-Mossad hard-ons charging around the place,’ said Mac. ‘So what?’

  ‘Maggs noted the ex-Mossad vehicle in Phnom – it matches the Turks’ LandCruiser at the Water Dragon Guest House,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘This Israeli vehicle is a green LandCruiser Prado. A similar vehicle departed the scene of Jim Quirk’s murder in Saigon.’

  ‘Common car,’ said Mac.

  ‘Patrons at the Mekong Saloon saw a team of Turkish or Israeli men go up the mezzanine stairs that night,’ said Jenny. ‘They also saw a blond off-duty soldier – Aussie bloke. Know who that might be?’

  The curtain was pulled back and Captain Loan walked in. ‘Mr Richard, so nice to see you.’

  ‘Thanks for the ride, Captain.’

  ‘I saw what the doctor pulled out of your leg,’ said Loan, smirking. ‘The bookselling must be tough – anything you’d like to talk about?’

  ‘It’s a Cambodian matter,’ said Mac, rolling over to sit upright on the edge of the bed. His leg was heavily bandaged, his head spinning with the airless hospital atmosphere and the new round of painkillers.

  ‘Agent Toohey, I really wanted to talk with you,’ said Loan.

  ‘Yes?’ said Jenny.

  ‘The children – I asked them where their village is and they say it’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ said Jen.

  Loan nodded. ‘They were rounded up from their village in Chamkar forest two days ago.’

  ‘By who?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Slavers,’ said Loan. ‘Mr Richard got these kids off the ship, but there’s a hundred more in the hold.’

  Mac’s backpack was waiting at the Palace Guest House reception when he wandered in. Picking it up, he saw the clock behind the desk – almost midnight.

  Leading the way, Mac showed Lance and Urquhart up to his suite and told them they could share the second bedroom.

  ‘Bathroom’s down the hall, boys,’ said Mac, ducking out.

  He’d seen the lights in Scotty’s room, and he knocked gently on the wooden door in case he woke him and gave him a fright.

  ‘Who?’ came the slurred question.

  ‘Davis – Southern Scholastic.’

  The door swung inwards and Scotty peered out, his Glock along his leg, a cigarette in his mouth.

  Taking a seat in the spacious living room, Mac accepted the beer Scotty dug out of the fridge.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ said Scotty, cracking a new beer for himself and chaining a new smoke with a trembling hand. ‘Christ, I thought we’d lost you.’

  ‘That you with the flash-bang?’ said Mac, enjoying the cold beer but not in the mood for drinking.

  ‘Nah, Li threw that,’ said Scotty, ciggie hand shaking as he gulped at the bottle of Tiger. ‘I was too busy shooting the sky and shitting my pants.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ said Mac.

  ‘What happened back there?’ asked Scotty, sucking too hard on the smoke. ‘We could see Urquhart and Lance crawling up the bank – where were you?’

  ‘Found a couple of kids on board,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t seem right to leave them.’

  ‘They can’t have been in more danger than you,’ said Scotty, polishing off the beer and standing to get another.

  ‘They were in bed,’ said Mac, fatigue pushing down on his eyelids.

  ‘Should have left them,’ said Scotty.

  ‘In bed with a grown-up,’ said Mac.

  Shaking his head slowly, Scotty resumed his seat and gulped the beer. ‘What was the first thing I taught you, Macca, when you arrived in Basrah at the end of the war?’

  ‘You told me to make myself priority number one because no other bastard was going to do it for me.’

  ‘Not bad advice, right?’

  ‘It’s my eleventh commandment,’ said Mac.

  ‘So what the fuck are you doing putting your life at risk for a couple of kids you meet on a ship?’ demanded Scotty, stress tightening his lips. ‘You don’t think you’ve bitten off enough already?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mac, shrugging, ‘no other bastard was looking out for them.’

  ‘Don’t get old and sloppy, Macca,’ said Scotty, pointing with his ciggie hand. ‘Priority number one, okay?’

  Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw it had just hit midnight – there was an appointment he wasn’t going to make. Taking the Nokia from his backpack, he found a received-call number and pressed it.

  ‘Just a sec, mate,’ said Mac.

  A satellite phone connection would normally take twenty seconds to start ringing, but Mac’s call connected immediately. Then the distinctive Hungarian-Israeli voice came on the line.

  ‘Joel, it’s your favourite Australian,’ said Mac.

  ‘Ah, Mr McQueen – such a surprise.’

  ‘Where the bloody hell are ya?’ said Mac. ‘We had a date, remember?’

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Dozsa.

  Mac noted the hesitation. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I’m at the Stung Treng wharf and I’ve got your memory card.’

  Dozsa laughed. ‘Have you really, Mr McQueen?’

  ‘So where are you?’

  ‘I’m precisely where I need to be, my friend,’ said Dozsa. ‘I hope you didn’t swallow the river water – there’s cholera about right now.’

  The line went dead, and Mac stared at the phone.

  ‘Dozsa?’ said Scotty, exhaling a plume.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac.

  ‘Knows he’s lost the hostages?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Mac.

  ‘If we have the hostages and Sandy’s got the memory card,’ said Scotty, ‘I’m ready to fold the tent.’

  ‘What about McHugh?’

  ‘I’m debriefing tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know then. It might be a matter for the federal cops.’

  ‘Okay, boss,’ said Mac, gasping slightly as he stood and stretched. ‘Time to inspect the back of my eyelids.’

  ‘Don’t want another beer?’

  ‘Nah, mate,’ said Mac as he reached the door. ‘You’re doing the job of two men.’

  The nightmare pushed him up and up, faster and faster, towards the light at the top of the mine shaft and then he was exploding out into the daylight and he yelled slightly as he realised his Nokia’s screen was blasting out an orange light, the phone buzzing around on the bedside table.

  Feeling his heart thump against his ste
rnum, Mac lay back on the pillows as he grabbed the phone.

  ‘Yep?’ he said, throat dry. His G-Shock on the table said 4.12 am.

  ‘Hi, honey, it’s me,’ said his wife. ‘I need your help on that ship.’

  ‘Ah, yeah,’ said Mac, rubbing sore eyes. ‘I’ll talk to you in the morning.’

  ‘What was the name of the ship?’ said Jenny.

  ‘No name,’ said Mac, disoriented. ‘A number.’

  ‘What was it?’ said Jenny.

  He hated it when she was like this.

  ‘Um, I think it was . . . K 4217, or 4217 K. Something like that.’ Mac gently massaged his temples. Being pestered for small details took him back to his military days when special forces people were forced to recall every detail, from a hotel room and cell phone number to a map coordinate and an aircraft rego. Ninety per cent of special ops were for reconnaissance and an operator who couldn’t make a detailed report was virtually useless.

  ‘Macca, what was the number?’

  ‘Shit, mate,’ said Mac, lured into a fight. ‘It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m tanked on Percodan.’

  ‘Sorry, hon,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mac. ‘It was K 4217. Where are you?’

  ‘Don’t worry – get back to sleep.’

  ‘You’re not going after them?’ said Mac, sitting up. ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Got given two local cops,’ said Jen, voice cracking up.

  ‘What?’ asked Mac, the connection dying.

  ‘Local cops,’ said Jen through the static.

  ‘There’s soldiers on board that ship,’ said Mac, but the connection had been lost.

  Limping into the kitchen of the suite, Mac grabbed a bottle of Vittel. Drinking it down, he looked out the window over the sink, saw the insects flying around the streetlight. They circled so fast that they ended up chasing themselves.

  He didn’t think he would ever be able to tame his wife. She got something in her head and she moved like a locomotive. Mac had first met her in the Aussie embassy colony in Manila, where she was the ice queen of the group; good-looking, funny, smart and confident, but aloof and distrusting. She worked in the federal police intelligence taskforces but her specialty was tracking Australian paedophiles into South-East Asia and busting the brothels and trafficking rackets that supported the child-molesting industry. Jenny was relentless and she wasn’t scared of men, didn’t back down from them, and, being a country girl, was better at blokes’ humour and fast retorts than most men.