Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike

by Mark Abernethy

  The RAAF girl dropped him two blocks south of the townhouse at Broadbeach. He thanked her and walked slowly, his pack over his shoulder. The lights were on in the house and he waved to the AFP

  duty agents as he opened the door. There was a noise from behind and he swung away, reaching into his pack for the Heckler. As he hit the deck and aimed up, he looked into a set of eyes he knew too well.

  He froze, lowered the Heckler and breathed out.

  ‘ Fuck’s sake, Ari!’

  The Russian-Israeli had his hands up, standing in the fading light of evening, in Levis and a blue trop shirt.

  ‘Sorry, McQueen - there’s no easy way, yes?’

  Gulping as the AFP moved in with guns raised, Mac smiled and said it was okay.

  ‘I know this lunatic,’ he said to the closest AFP cop. ‘He’s taking his meds.’

  Decocking the Heckler, Mac let Ari help him to his feet.

  ‘It’s not a question of if, mate,’ he muttered at Ari as he turned the key. ‘One of these days someone will shoot you for that.’

  Inside, Mac instantly sensed something different. The smell was wrong, the cooking wasn’t burnt. He raised the Heckler and signalled to Ari, who fell quietly into step behind him. Moving slowly down the hallway, Mac checked the fi rst room, then the second, where Rachel snored in her cot.

  A yell came from another room. ‘Is that you, Macca?’

  Recognising the voice, he breathed easy again, got the gun out of the way before she could see it.

  ‘Hi, Mari,’ he said as Mari Hukapa came into the hallway and gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. He’d totally forgotten she was going to be on the Gold Coast for Christmas. She and Jenny had become very close after he’d introduced them in ‘02. Mac extricated himself from her grasp and said, ‘Mari, do you remember Ari?’

  The two looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  ‘It is rhyming, yes?’ said the Russian, a huge grin across his big slab-like face. ‘I think this is good omen.’

  Mari vaguely remembered meeting the Russian at the Hukapa compound six years ago in Sumatra. Ari couldn’t take the smile off his face. ‘I remember I embarrass myself. The tiger, she was so much in pain.’

  They moved into the lounge room where Ke was watching TV.

  Mari explained she was minding the kids while Johnny and Jen looked at some warehouse.

  ‘They say when they’re due back?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Seven-thirty, I think Johnny said.’

  Looking at his watch, Mac pulled his Nokia out of the pack and rang Jen’s number, which went straight to voicemail. He tried Johnny’s and it picked up on the fi rst ring.

  ‘Just about to call you, brother.’ Johnny sounded breathless.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Jen’s missing,’ rasped Johnny.

  ‘Missing? Shit, Johnny!’

  ‘I know. We were just having a poke around and she went down one side of the building and I went down the other and I can’t fi nd her.’

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Mac, adrenaline pumping again.

  Johnny gave the address of a warehouse only ten blocks away. Mac grabbed the car keys and fl ipped the Beretta in the hall table to Ari.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, already dialling the Queensland cops.

  They screamed through one set of lights and up to the second set

  - which were on red - on Gold Coast Highway. After a quick check he gunned the Commodore through the red lights and sped past Pacifi c Fair, the V6 screaming.

  ‘Couldn’t use those cops outside your house?’ asked Ari, made nervous by Mac’s driving style.

  ‘They’re there for my daughter,’ Mac said as he took the wrong side of the road going across Rio Vista and fl ashed across Bermuda before screeching into the old mixed section out the back of Broadbeach Waters, where a small warehouse estate sat amidst housing.

  Decelerating, they turned a hard left into a side street and quietly slid to a halt where Johnny was sitting in his silver Falcon.

  ‘Where did she go?’ asked Mac, in a low tone, checking his Heckler.

  ‘Down here on the side,’ whispered Johnny as they stealthed down. ‘There’s no doors unlocked, there’s no handles on the doors.

  It’s a freaky place - and there’s some strange sounds in there.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like - like it’s a chicken farm or something - lots of rustling like a barn.’

  They checked the doors and Ari shone a small Maglite on the entrances. ‘No entry here. Maybe none from inside too, yes?’

  Stepping back, Mac saw a long ventilation roof running along the roofl ine.

  ‘You two,’ he gestured, pointing upwards. They pushed an industrial dumpster over and stood on the lid of it. Mac put the Heckler in the band of his pants and put a hand on either of their shoulders.

  Then, stepping into the platform of their hands, he muttered Three, two, one, go! and they catapulted him up. Mac just managed to catch the lip of the building, and he swung there for a couple of seconds on the heavy-duty guttering. Then he got a good swing happening, higher and higher, until he swung his left leg up and grabbed the guttering with his foot and rolled onto the gentle slope of the iron roof.

  Mac was panting hard as he leaned back over the guttering.

  Johnny catapulted off Ari’s hands and then shoulder and grabbed Mac’s forearm with one hand and the guttering with the other. He swung himself up and joined Mac on the roof.

  Staying silent, they moved up the sloped iron to the ventilation roof which stood three feet over the real apex and was clad in glass slat windows. Looking down, they saw a dimly lit warehouse space crowded with children and young women pushed together like battery hens, with sewing machines, tables and overhead spindles forming virtual cages. It looked like a United Nations of Asian women and kids: Cambodians, Thais, Indonesians, Malays and Laotians. There were at least two thousand of them, and by the look of the set-up they all slept and ate there too.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Johnny mouthed beside him. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Sweatshop,’ said Mac.

  ‘That’s a sweatshop?’ whispered Johnny.

  Mac nodded. ‘When you buy these cheap pants? Comes from a place like this, courtesy of the Khmer Rouge.’

  As Johnny muttered homicidal solutions, Mac’s heart leapt up in his throat as he watched an Indo-Chinese thug pushing Jenny along in front of him on the shop fl oor below. The pulse raced in his temples as Mac clocked the thug’s face: it was George Bartolo’s Cambodian mate. The thug had a handgun jammed into the back of Jen’s T-shirt and his right forearm was in a cast from elbow to knuckles.

  Grabbing the glass slats in front of them, Johnny pulled back and the whole thing swivelled upwards on a horizontal axle. Pushing their heads through, they looked down at a drop of two storeys to the concrete fl oor, or what you had to do to get your wings in the Regiment and the Royal Marines Commandos.

  Johnny crawled through and quietly got his feet over the axle and onto a tiny inside ledge beside the window. Then, as the Cambodian walked past below with Jenny in front of him, Johnny muttered a countdown and simply dropped like a stone, accelerating through the air until his feet connected with the back of the Cambodian’s neck. Both men hit the ground and Johnny rolled away. Mac watched Jenny pick up the Cambodian’s handgun and then check on the fallen thug. Dead.

  Johnny pointed to the ventilation roof and Jenny quickly looked up to Mac.

  The children who had been sleeping under desks and chairs were waking up while other kids and young women were standing, wondering what was happening. The sound started and grew into a crescendo as the crowded sea of humanity, in appalling states of dress and health, started to ask what the hell was going on.

  Mac kept his eyes on a mezzanine offi ce that looked over the sweatshop fl oor. He didn’t want a crossfi re set up that endangered the kids and he trained the Heckler on the window. But he was looking in the wrong direction. A shooter c
ame out of a side door and instantly reached for a gun under his shirt. Mac shot twice, missing on the fi rst then hitting him in the left thigh. The shooter went down as Jen and Johnny ducked in behind a huge box of white fi nished shirts.

  Two shooters came to the mezzanine offi ce window, slid it back and started shooting. The children screamed and threw themselves down as Mac tried to even it up. His Heckler was too small to get the range but it forced the shooters back from the window.

  In the distance Mac could hear sirens but they were going to be too late, so he stuck his head out and yelled, ‘Ari!’

  Mac had two shots left. The shooters came back to the offi ce window and this time Johnny was ready and put one of the blokes on the ground. The other shooter took fl ight down the stairs. At the foot of the offi ce stairs the thug with a bullet in his leg fi red at Jenny, and when she fi red back the thug was joined by a shooter from the offi ce and another from the side entrance. As bullets fl ew through the shirt boxes, Jenny popped up and dropped the shooter still in the offi ce as a thumping sound came from one of the sealed doors until it caved in.

  Ari moved into the warehouse, tiptoeing over prone children without looking down with a perfect cup-and-saucer stance and keeping his sight line down the barrel of the Beretta. When the last of the standing shooters saw him and aimed up, Ari dropped him with two shots to the throat. The injured thug on the ground threw down the gun and put his hands up as Jen moved forward, shouting, ‘Hold your fi re! Police!’

  As she did, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, in a black T-shirt and yellow boardies, leapt from behind a stack of cloth bolts, grabbed Jenny around the throat and put a gun to her head. Johnny and Ari moved in slowly but stopped when they saw the youngster was upset.

  Teenagers could do anything when they were excited. Mac’s mind raced, wondering how he could distract the kid and let Johnny or Ari drop him, but Jenny took the initiative, dropping her gun and letting herself be taken out the side entrance. As the boy turned his face momentarily, Mac noticed a triangular birthmark that moved from the left shoulder and up into the boy’s hair.

  Sprinting across the iron roofi ng, Mac slid the last few metres, off the roof, through the air and onto the ground, where he rolled and came to his feet.

  The teenager stopped on the clay and grass siding and pushed his gun further into Jenny’s head. Her lips were white, though she looked determined rather than scared.

  ‘I kill her!’ screamed the kid.

  Mac dropped the Heckler and put his hands out to the side, showing the boy his wrists.

  ‘You the boss now, Santo.’

  ‘How you know my name?’ challenged the boy.

  ‘I know Merpati too,’ said Mac, short of breath.

  ‘You lie! You lie!’ the boy screamed, and shot at Mac’s feet. ‘Merpati is dead! I see!’

  ‘I not lie, Santo,’ Mac panted. ‘Merpati is alive. I found her and took her to hospital. She’s alive and she misses you, Santo.’

  Tears ran off the boy’s face and for a second it was six years ago and Mac was holding the nine-year-old boy down, trying to keep them both alive, his face buried in that birthmark.

  Then Santo hardened again. ‘Who send you?’

  ‘I followed my wife,’ he said, pointing at Jenny, ‘and we have a daughter. A beautiful daughter.’

  Santo’s face now ran with tears, his head moving back and forth in denial as he gripped Jen’s throat. ‘I do this job now - I look after business.’

  ‘No, Santo,’ said Mac gently. ‘You were made to do this by evil men. You are a good boy, mate, and I want to take you back to Merpati and to your mum and dad, okay?’

  ‘Cannot go back,’ Santo bawled.

  ‘Yes you can, Santo! Remember I told you that if you did what I asked you, that you’d live?’

  Santo’s eyes went wide and he stopped crying. Speaking like he was in a trance he said, ‘And I was quiet, Mr Mac - I did what you say.’

  He pushed Jenny away and put the handgun in his mouth, Mac screaming No, Santo! as he pulled the trigger.

  They froze in that position as the cop cars fi nally screeched around the corner. Cops fl ew out, radios barking.

  Santo sagged to the ground, but there was no detonation - only a click.

  Mac walked up to the boy, took the jammed Beretta out of his mouth.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked Jenny, as she moved in for a hug.

  ‘Doing better than him,’ she said softly, looking down.

  Santo trembled like a leaf, but he was alive.

  The police interviews went smoothly for Mac and Johnny, but the Broadbeach Ds weren’t buying Ari’s cover of a salesman. Jenny smoothed that over but the detectives wanted to charge Santo with something, even when Jenny insisted she didn’t want to make a complaint against the boy.

  While it was being sorted at the Broadbeach station, Jenny got on the phone to get the infrastructure in place for the slaves, or what some American newspapers had tried to rebadge as involuntary labour.

  The detectives had to take Santo into custody, so Mac had watched the boy go, promising him that he’d take him back to Idi.

  ‘I knew you’d come, Mr Mac,’ said Santo.

  Mac roughed his hair and told him to cooperate with the police.

  CHAPTER 59

  The taxi driver outside Canberra Airport looked at Mac too hard, so he walked to the next cab, asked for St John’s Church.

  It was a scorching morning and the well-wishers stood in the old gardens around the colonial church on Constitution Avenue, looking out over Lake Burley Griffi n. Mac strolled to the church, clocking several APS lookouts with handguns on their hips, and then saw Scotty, fagging by the wooden gate to the main path.

  ‘Macca,’ said Scotty, putting out his hand.

  ‘How’s it going, mate?’ replied Mac.

  Silence sat between them for a couple of seconds, both of them affected by the deaths of Tony and Vi, and neither very good at expressing it. The funerals would be in Perth two days before Christmas, but this was a memorial for the intelligence and diplomatic world.

  ‘Get the bastards?’ asked Scotty, his roundish face red in the heat.

  ‘Not yet, mate,’ said Mac, looking away.

  The name Hassan Ali had worked deeply into his life. Now, thanks to Hassan, he was standing in a churchyard about to farewell a couple of people who had been very dear to him. In the intelligence game there were careerists and employees and all the rest of them, just like in any organisation. And then there were the brothers, the thousand-per centers - people like Davidson and Scotty and Ted, people you could develop more trust with in one hour than you could with an Atkins or an Urquhart in a lifetime.

  Mac tried to calm his fury and collect himself. He wanted this to be a memorial service where he thought about Tony’s toughness and Vi’s humour and charity. Neither of them had been much into pity. But when Mac walked into the beautiful old sandstone church, he saw the garlands, saw the photographs on the easels and heard the soft organ music. And as he sat in the pew he had a momentary problem with the pollen.

  The parishioners put on a tea party in the gardens of St John’s afterwards, and Mac stood under the awning talking with various wives and intel types he’d met over the years. There were British and American spooks and a Japanese diplomat. As the party wound down, Greg Tobin touched him on the elbow and led him out from under the awning and over to the graveyard.

  ‘So, how are we doing with Limelight?’

  ‘I was right about the water-purifi cation canister,’ he said, making sure no one was behind him, ‘but they lost us in the outback.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Hassan, Shareef, a hit man called Lempo. And we might have an Indonesian in there too - intel bloke.’ Mac kicked at grass. ‘So, Greg, any progress on Tony and Vi?’

  ‘Not the cops, mate,’ said Tobin.

  ‘No, I mean, given any thought to how they were tracked down?’

  ‘Look, mate, we’re all a lit
tle upset -‘

  ‘I just want to tick it off,’ snapped Mac. ‘Call it housekeeping.’

  Tobin sighed. ‘I’m waiting for the Queensland cops to do their paperwork, then - if it looks bad from the fi rm’s perspective - I’m sure the DG will want an internal inquiry.’

  ‘Screw the DG, Greg. I mean, really! You’re a director of operations and we look after our own. We should know who leaked Vi’s maiden name because I reckon that’s how they were found,’ he said.

  Tobin looked into his iced water. ‘You’re right. By the way, I was circularised this morning. Limelight’s being joined by a bunch of Americans.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Called the Twentieth, something something -‘

  ‘Twentieth Support Command,’ said Mac. ‘CBRNE experts from the US Army.’

  Tobin crinkled his forehead. ‘Whole bunch of them landed at Amberley about two this morning. Chinooks, Hawks, spooks in overalls. There’s a bloke running them, calls himself Don.’

  The one o’clock fl ight was late and then was delayed in Sydney, which was even hotter than Canberra - the TV said thirty-nine degrees. Mac sat in the Qantas lounge, glad to be in the air-con. The waitress cleared his table and he wandered to the bar, grabbed a beer, saw his tail as he walked back. He was a dark-haired Anglo male, medium height and build, in business clothes. He was bland and his complexion told Mac the guy spent more time indoors than out.

  The Nokia sounded as he resumed his seat. It was Ari, wanting an update.

  ‘Mate, I could ask you the same thing,’ said Mac as he sipped on the Crown Lager. ‘Chased them from Darwin into Queensland and lost them. How’d you go with the cops?’

  ‘Well, my friend, I am salesman, from Russia, and my credentials are good.’

  ‘Don’t tell me - they rang a number in Moscow, right? All a big misunderstanding.’

  Ari laughed. ‘So I am now thinking we looking at where Hassan is heading, yes?’

  ‘That’s the idea, mate. How about the east coast of Australia?’

  ‘That’s a large place.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So,’ said Ari, a little wheedling. ‘No more intel, nothing we can work on?’