Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know you have legal counsel, but without prejudice, it would help me right now if you could give me a clue about where Joel Dozsa might have retreated to.’

  McHugh looked at him. She was shorter than her photos suggested and handsome rather than pretty; Mac could see in her the kind of Canberra career-type who felt they were born to be his boss. She looked away and looked back with a more open face. Then she leaned on her knees.

  ‘I saw you in the compound, Mr McQueen,’ she said. ‘Thank you for risking your life to rescue me – I hope that bullet wound is not too bad.’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘But I need another favour before I tell you this.’

  ‘What’s the favour?’

  ‘Put a bullet in that wanker for me?’

  Mac nodded. ‘That bad?’

  ‘He’s ruined my life,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Lured me into something high-spirited as a uni student, and he turns up a quarter-century later to blackmail me for it. Then he kills my husband.’

  ‘No promises,’ he said.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Joel’s companies are all called Highland something or other. His compound is supposed to be secret, but one of his sidekicks – Marcus – showed me a picture of Joel’s new horse.’

  ‘A horse?’

  ‘Yeah – and in the background of the horse I could clearly see Tanah Rata, a town right up in the Cameron Highlands, off Highway Fifty-nine, I think it is.’

  ‘The picture was looking from the west of Fifty-nine, or the east?’ said Mac.

  ‘From the west.’

  ‘How many ridges were between the camera and Rata?’ said Mac.

  ‘More than two, no more than four,’ said McHugh. ‘I remember thinking that their compound must be near a tourist trail called Track Ten – but don’t quote me.’

  ‘They ever talk about armaments? Defences?’

  ‘No.’

  Mac shook her hand. ‘Thanks, Geraldine.’

  ‘Remember – one from me.’

  Mac paused in front of Bongo as he left the room. ‘Mate, Vincent Loh Han says, Where’s my frigging helo? Thought you might like to know that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was planning on bringing it back today.’

  ‘Yeah, Bongo?’

  ‘Sure, brother – Didge is taking over here.’

  Chapter 67

  The engineers pulled the Little Bird helicopter out of the hangar at Seletar Airport and had it ready in twenty-five minutes. Sitting in the flight office, they went over the map and narrowed down the possible targets in the hills over Rata. Most were old tea plantations and derelict guest houses from the colonial era, when the Anglos took to the cool hills during the summer heat.

  ‘Dozsa will be here,’ said Bongo, planting a big finger on a saddle at the top of a valley. ‘He wants a road in and a road out, and he wants some flat land for a helo or plane.’

  Looking, Mac saw what he was talking about. An unsealed track passed through the valley and there seemed to be flat areas.

  ‘You know this place?’ said Mac.

  ‘It’s the old Sanderton Estate,’ said Bongo. ‘British tea plantation, bought by some foreigner for a lot of money a few years ago.’

  ‘Any easy approaches?’ said Mac.

  ‘No easy approaches,’ said Bongo. ‘This is the Cameron Highlands, brother.’

  Mac tried to reach Scotty by phone but it went straight to voicemail. Watching Bongo do his pre-flight tests as Jon packed the gear bags, he keyed the phone again, trying Greg Tobin in Canberra.

  ‘Greg,’ said Mac. ‘Albion.’

  ‘How are you, old man?’ said the director of operations. ‘We got that prize yet?’

  ‘No, sir. McHugh is under guard in Singapore.’

  ‘You know where?’

  ‘No,’ said Mac. ‘Scotty’s with the police – we got ambushed by Dozsa in Singers. Fentanyl aerosols.’

  Tobin used his tone of genuine concern, knowing that the wrong dose of Fentanyl will kill a man. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re in one piece, but Dozsa got the prize and I want clearance to take it back.’

  ‘Where’s Scotty?’

  ‘In the cells, I think,’ said Mac.

  ‘You have a team? I don’t want you chasing Dozsa without a team, Albion.’

  ‘I have the team – I need the authority.’

  ‘For where?’ said Tobin.

  ‘Malaysia,’ said Mac. ‘Can do?’

  ‘Proceed as if it’s done,’ said Tobin. ‘And don’t muck around – you wouldn’t believe the crowing that Defence is doing because Sandy brought back that file.’

  ‘Well, hurrah for Sandy,’ said Mac. ‘It’s not Defence’s file that matters – it’s Dozsa’s.’

  Lifting the gear bags into the Little Bird, the five of them crammed into the tiny aircraft: Mac and Bongo in the front; Tranh, Lance and Jon in the back.

  Holding an assault rifle across his legs as they left the twinkling lights of Singapore behind and swept over the causeway into Malaysian airspace, Mac examined the weapon. The guns had been stored in the helo when Bongo had taken off in it from the Dozsa compound, and they weren’t conventional US weapons.

  ‘G36,’ yelled Bongo over the noise. ‘Heckler & Koch – nice weapon.’

  Mac noticed its light weight and its NATO 5.56mm ammo.

  He worked through the approaches in his mind as they flew through darkness, over the forests, with the occasional burst of yellow lights from villages and small towns. Only one insertion seemed plausible: four blokes on foot would go into the Sanderton Estate, and then call in the Little Bird. Thanks to Bongo, Mac had another piece of firepower in his backpack: two charges of C4 plastique, a box of military detonators and two digital timer fuses. There were many specialty rotations in the Royal Marine Commandos, but the one thing they all learned was how to reduce the bad guys’ lair to rubble.

  If they could coordinate the attack, it might work. If they walked into a trap, it would be over very quickly.

  Bongo broke the silence as they entered the hills, pointing to truck headlights on the road that wound north through the Cameron Highlands forest and then wove his hand left and around in a loop to indicate that he wanted to hook around the back of the Sanderton Estate.

  After eight minutes of flying west over darkly forested hill country, they hooked north and slowly descended to a sloping piece of open ground that rolled down to a river.

  Depowering, Bongo got out of the helo and joined Mac at the backpacks.

  ‘This is us, right here,’ said Bongo, using a map-light and placing a fingertip on a valley west of the Sanderton Estate’s main buildings, which he’d marked on the map in pencil. ‘The track goes to the top of this saddle,’ he said, breaking from the map and pointing to the ridge overlooking their position. ‘Then there’s a small river, and you climb for a thousand feet to the Sanderton plantation house.’

  ‘An hour to get there?’ said Mac.

  ‘Give yourselves two, and then thirty minutes to assess the ground,’ said Bongo, holding up his G-Shock. ‘You want to do this by radio, or you want to time it?’

  ‘I want radio silence until I give the “go” signal,’ said Mac, looking at his watch and seeing it was just past one in the morning. ‘Once I know the main defences, I’ll want them taken out while we sneak in the back way.’

  ‘Okay, McQueen, but at two hours thirty I’m coming in.’

  * * *

  They made fast time across the saddle and down to the river, aided by a three-quarter moon. The river wasn’t as small as Bongo had promised – a few monsoonal downpours had swollen the watercourse over its banks and they were up to their ankles in water and mud before they reached the main flow.

 
Pausing, Mac thought he heard an aberrant noise over the rush of water, but couldn’t find it. Probably just a monkey breaking a branch. Moving downstream to a fallen tree, Mac led them over the trunk, swinging from a large branch on the end of it and landing knee-deep in marshy water on the other side.

  Wading towards higher ground, Mac felt watched. It was an open field with long grass, and even though they enjoyed the cover of darkness, he wanted to be in the trees. When the others had crossed the river, Mac led them to the base of the hill and they drank from their water bottles.

  ‘Shit,’ said Lance, gasping for breath. ‘This humidity is awful.’

  ‘Mr Dozsa is probably cooking up something slightly worse, but I get your point,’ said Mac.

  Looking around, Mac still felt uneasy. They were almost on a major footpad and Mac wanted something less obvious.

  ‘Tranh and Jon – fan out and find a secondary trail up the hill,’ said Mac, finishing his water. ‘I want us off this freeway.’

  When the two Vietnamese had stalked into the bush, Mac checked his radio and the G36.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Lance, his boyish looks now hardened. ‘You know, back there.’

  ‘It was Bongo’s idea,’ said Mac, stripping out the mag and breaking the German weapon down at the breech.

  Lance pointed at the G36, which Mac was reassembling. ‘How’d you learn all this stuff?’

  ‘Royal Marines,’ said Mac. ‘And just so you know, I don’t think I’m superior because I do the paramilitary gigs, no matter what some of those whiteboard jockeys in Canberra tell you.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lance laughed.

  ‘You feel safe out here?’ said Mac, letting the trigger box’s pushpins click into place as he pushed it into the breech.

  Lance shook his head. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Good start,’ said Mac, slamming home the full mag.

  ‘They say you’re difficult,’ said Lance.

  ‘Difficult is Joel Dozsa or Bongo Morales – people your buddies are never going to meet.’

  Lance nodded in the darkness. ‘I’m sorry, about everything. I should have told you about that memory card.’

  Mac looked at the younger man and saw someone who had been trained by the wrong people at the wrong time of his life. If Mac had been shoved into a Canberra office clique and rewarded for brown-nosing, he’d have turned out the same as Lance.

  ‘You asked me how I know all of this stuff,’ said Mac. ‘I learned it because those warrant officers knew more than me, and they didn’t let me forget it.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Lance.

  Tranh arrived back thirty seconds before Jon. ‘Smaller footpad this way, boss.’

  Halfway up the mountain, Tranh moved back from his position at point.

  ‘Think we have company, boss,’ said Tranh.

  ‘How many?’ said Mac.

  ‘One, I think,’ said Tranh. ‘Right flank.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mac drew Jon in from the sweep. ‘I’ll pull back and get on his tail. You guys go slow and be ready, okay?’

  The troop moved on and Mac held back, padding quietly to the right of the footpad, hoping to come up behind the shadow. After fifty metres of poking through the dappled blackness of the jungle, Mac found a slight trail only evident from cracked twigs and a boot print in the damp soil. Kneeling, Mac looked at the pattern: American, like the boots he was wearing.

  Breathing through his nostrils, Mac eased off the rifle’s safety lever and selected full auto. He advanced in a crouch, his injured leg burning with pain, his fatigue playing tricks on his ears: was that a monkey or a man? A rifle being cocked or a bird?

  The trail was clear and as he adjusted to the darkness, he sped up, hearing the occasional sound of his troop to his left.

  The sweat ran off his face and from under his boonie hat as he paused behind a twist of vines. Across a clearing was a man’s shape, in dark fatigues, crouched behind a tree and focusing at where Tranh and Jon would be walking with Lance.

  The figure moved into the darkness of the trees and Mac skirted the clearing, quickly closing on the tree the soldier had stood behind. Ducking out for a look, Mac swore under his breath: he’d lost the man.

  As he scanned for a trail, Mac’s breathing was laboured. He was exhausted and he could feel the first inklings of heat distress as he started mouth-breathing – a rasping pant that meant the brain was not getting enough oxygen.

  Forcing himself to breathe through his nose, he calmed the cycles and stopped it turning into hyperventilation. Then, moving forwards, he found another boot pattern in the moonlight and moved to his left, squinting to see through the foliage and the dappled light.

  Following the trail through a muddy watercourse, he climbed the other side and lay on the crest, looking over.

  As his head raised over the low ridge, Mac’s quiet world was smashed by the rattle of automatic gunfire. At his eleven o’clock, cordite puffed and foliage snapped as shots were exchanged.

  Running down the small rise, Mac raised his weapon and got a shoulder on it as he came around a larger tree and found the man in the dark fatigues in a hide behind a fallen tree.

  ‘Drop it,’ said Mac, aiming at the back of the shooter’s head.

  The man’s weapon was placed on the log but still within reach.

  ‘Cease fire – cease fire,’ yelled Mac at his own guys. ‘I said drop it, not place it on the log,’ he said, panting for air, and the man hesitated.

  ‘I mean it, Sammy,’ said Mac, stalking forwards and pressing the G36 barrel to Sammy Chan’s head. ‘Just drop it.’

  The M4 was hurled sideways, and Mac stood back as Sammy got to his feet, hands on his head, and turned to Mac.

  ‘You love to fuck it up for me, don’t you, tough guy?’ said the American, as Jon and Tranh arrived.

  ‘And the other one,’ said Mac, gesturing at the canvas rifle bag between Sammy’s shoulder blades.

  Dropping the canvas bag, Sammy put his hands down. ‘Keep the M4 – but I want that one back.’

  ‘Deer season?’ said Mac.

  ‘No, McQueen,’ said Sammy, whose face still showed the results of an evening with Grimshaw. ‘Not deer.’

  A noise erupted above them and they turned. The outline of a helicopter hovered across the forest canopy, a door-gunner peering down into the trees.

  Mac dived for the cover of the log as the air filled with bullets. Trees and vines were turned to splinters as Mac dragged Sammy by the scruff of the neck to join him under the fallen tree.

  ‘Red Dog, Red Dog,’ said Mac into the radio mouthpiece. ‘Red Dog – copy? Over.’

  ‘Blue Boy, this is Red Dog,’ came Bongo’s voice, as a hail of .50-cal slugs hit the log above Mac.

  ‘Red Dog, we need cover. Repeat, need cover from a bird.’

  ‘Got your six, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo calmly. ‘Heads down, brother.’

  Looking across the clearing, Mac saw Tranh and Lance jammed in behind a tree, but he couldn’t see Jon. As Mac used his hand to indicate head down, Tranh nodded and grabbed Lance by the shirt, pulling him down.

  Another strafe painted across the jungle, felling a mid-size tree and making the log above Mac jump.

  Shutting his eyes, feeling stupid for walking into a trap, Mac waited for the bullets to stop.

  The sound changed and then the guns were still firing but not at the ground. The thudda-thudda of the .50-cal was joined by a whistling, screaming crescendo and the sound of steel being torn apart resounded around the jungle as torrents of brass rained into the canopy. Squeezing out of his hide, Mac looked up and watched the attack helo swirling around like a burning hula hoop, its tail rotor shot off by the smaller helo, which had plumes of white fire bursting from its undercarriage.

  The shooting stopped and the attack
helo dropped out of the sky, its engines still screaming at high revs as it crashed into the bush fifty metres away and exploded.

  ‘Blue Boy, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo over the radio. ‘Bandits down – free to proceed.’

  ‘See the house, Red Dog?’ said Mac.

  ‘Just over the ridge, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo. ‘Bandits engaged.’

  Chapter 68

  The smell of burning kerosene wafted through the jungle as Mac led the team to the ridge and looked down. On the other side of a small valley, three hundred metres away, sat the plantation house of the Sanderton Estate, a few lights winking in the dark.

  Lifting his night-glasses, Mac saw a large veranda on the near side of the house, below which was a terrace lawn with a .50-cal machine-gun tripod-mounted behind sandbags. As he watched, a team of seven soldiers ran down the side of the terrace lawn into the gorge between Mac and the house, their bodies leaving faint green trails in the lenses. Two soldiers wandered to the .50-cal, talking.

  ‘Sammy,’ said Mac, not taking his eyes from the glasses. ‘How about taking out the .50-cal nest with that deer rifle of yours?’

  ‘Got a range?’ asked Sammy, unclipping the canvas bag and pulling out the olive-drab rifle with an optical sight the size of a soup can.

  ‘Glasses say two hundred and eighty-three metres,’ said Mac, tapping the button to get a range on where he’d focused. ‘Can do?’

  ‘Can try,’ said Sammy, lying on the carpet of leaves beside Mac and extending the bipod under the barrel.

  One of the soldiers at the .50-cal lit a smoke and grabbed the machine-gun’s handles.

  ‘Got him, Sammy?’ said Mac, as the American twirled a knob on the gun’s sights and settled back into a solid shoulder.

  ‘That smoking is a deadly habit,’ said Sammy, steadying the DMR – a Designated Marksman’s Rifle, usually an M14.

  Refocusing on the machine-gun nest, Mac saw the soldier take a drag on his smoke. The DMR clicked and thumped beside Mac and in his glasses, the gunner’s body fell backwards without a head and the offsider stood, confused, then threw down his cigarette and grabbed the .50-cal’s dual handles.