Fat, Fifty & F<li><li><li>ed!

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  ‘And he’s working for Barton! Well, this is not good. Not good,’ Jack repeated. ‘Barton was the one who originally suggested this whole operation. One of his companies was doing civil construction in Vietnam and he got in real tight with the CIA spooks.’

  Jack suddenly stared at Biggles with new understanding. ‘And that’s why they needed to kill you, pup,’ he said quietly. He scooped the dog up and sprinted to the kitchen stairs.

  ‘Move it!’ he yelled. ‘Everybody downstairs now. We may be in some very serious shit!’

  Faith and Martin followed at a run. In the garage Jack put the dog down and said, ‘Find, Biggles, find.’

  Biggles wagged his tail and began sniffing. He made straight for the campervan, circling it twice before sitting down by the back wheel. Jack patted him enthusiastically.

  ‘Good boy! Good boy!’

  ‘We’re pretty sure the bikies used the van to run drugs,’ Martin said. ‘Maybe Biggles can smell some residue?’

  ‘He’s not a drug dog, Martin,’ Jack said, shaking his head. ‘He’s a bomb dog – explosives sniffer. Top in his class but he got pensioned off. They built the footpaths too close to his arse.’

  Martin looked baffled. Jack was running for the roller door.

  ‘His legs were a bit too short for him to search bigger aircraft effectively,’ he yelled back over his shoulder. He punched a button, waited a moment, and then rolled under the slowly rising door, pulling the walkie-talkie from his pocket. He keyed SEND and spoke calmly. ‘We got some big problems here, amigo. Crank her up.’

  Martin heard a single click, which he guessed was confirmation, and Jack ran to the back of the van and slid underneath. Martin joined him. Jack searched with his hands and stopped at a square metal plate.

  ‘What’s above here?’ he asked.

  Martin studied the van’s underside, trying to get his bearings. ‘Toilet, I think. Or maybe the shower.’

  Jack grunted. ‘Sounds reasonable. Faith,’ he yelled, ‘we need an electric screwdriver with a Phillips head. Pronto!’

  ‘Travelling,’ she replied, and suddenly she was there with them, handing the screwdriver to Jack and pulling in a plastic inspection lamp on a long cable.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ Jack said.

  The light showed that the metal plate was a recent, though well-disguised, addition.

  ‘Hold her in the middle, Martin,’ Jack ordered as he attacked the retaining screws. He had the plate off in sixty seconds. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this looks particularly ugly.’

  There were relays and electrical wiring running in all directions up into the body of the campervan.

  ‘Is it a bomb?’ Faith asked.

  Jack nodded. ‘Triggering circuitry for one, anyway. They’ve probably packed the van’s side panels with C4 for a serious wallop.’

  ‘C4?’ Martin asked.

  ‘Plastique,’ Faith said. ‘Plastic explosive, Martin. Military issue originally. Mostly black-market stuff from eastern Europe these days.’

  ‘Biggles would have sniffed this lot out in a second, which is why they plugged him before you arrived. Albris probably did it, it’s the kind of thing he’d enjoy.’

  ‘There enough in the van sides to make a serious bang, you reckon?’ Martin asked.

  Jack looked at the rows of grey and red drums lining the garage walls. ‘Yep, more than enough. And I parked the van right where the blast would do the greatest amount of damage. Nice one, Jackie boy.’

  ‘Maybe we could push it outside?’ Martin suggested.

  ‘Can’t risk it,’ Jack said. ‘Probably got a delayed-action mercury switch set to kick in after several days without movement. Give her a serious nudge and she blows. That’s how I’d do it anyway, and I was trained with Albris.’

  ‘Can you disarm it?’ Faith asked.

  ‘Too many wires. Some will be dummies, some will be booby traps. Albris may be a total prick but he knows how to rig a bomb.’

  There was a sudden click and a panel lit up.

  ‘I didn’t touch anything,’ Martin said quickly.

  Jack smiled grimly. ‘It wasn’t you, mate. They’ve armed it by radio. Probably from that boat Max saw. One of Len’s many expensive toys.’

  ‘How long do we have?’ Faith asked.

  ‘If I know Len, he’ll want to ring me and gloat before he pushes the button.’

  Jack’s mobile rang.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said and slid out from under the van. He scooped up the dog. ‘On the bikes! Follow me! Move it!’

  Jack dumped Biggles into a milk crate fastened behind a red trail bike and Faith grabbed the one next to it. Starters whirred and Martin climbed on behind Faith. They shot out the door and headed down the hillside, Jack’s mobile still ringing.

  A couple of k’s down the hill, Jack dumped his bike near a large clump of vegetation. Faith followed suit. Jack was running now with Biggles under his arm. Martin and Faith ran too, urged on by Jack yelling back over his shoulder. There was something strange about the thicket of jungle ahead, and Martin could hear a mechanical whining noise.

  Jack pulled an axe from some bushes and hacked savagely at a large rope tied to a tree trunk. ‘Keep moving!’ he yelled, and then the rope gave way and there was a whoosh, followed by the rattling noise of ropes moving through pulleys.

  Off to his left, Martin saw a massive tree trunk wrapped in cables tumble out of the treetops as the centre of the thicket was torn away. He realised it was a huge green camouflage net and that the falling trunk was a counterweight that had pulled it clear. With the netting gone, Martin could see the helicopter. It was sitting on a concrete slab with its rotor blades slowly turning, and he recognised it as a Huey – from movies on Vietnam. The chopper’s matt-green paint was faded and the aircraft looked to be in less than showroom condition.

  VT was frantically beckoning to them from the pilot’s seat and they scrambled aboard. Jack clambered into the co-pilot’s seat, dropped Biggles at his feet, and tugged on a flight helmet. Martin and Faith pulled at lap belts on the bench seat at the rear of the open cargo compartment, their legs awkwardly propped up on a layer of boxes and crates covered by a tarpaulin. The rotor blades were spinning faster now, with a thwop thwop thwop sound. Jack indicated several headsets hanging from the roof of the rear cabin. Faith and Martin put them on and could hear Jack and VT talking.

  Jack looked back at them. ‘Can you hear okay?’

  Faith nodded and Martin yelled, ‘Loud and clear!’

  ‘No good,’ Jack said with a shake of his head. ‘You’ve only got audio back there, no mikes. Now buckle up and hold on.’

  Jack pointed upwards with his thumb and VT studied the instrument panel for a moment before nodding. Jack lifted up his mobile and pressed ANSWER. ‘Do your worst, Len, you evil fuck!’

  Suddenly Martin was aware of a slow, powerful rumble and the helicopter began vibrating wildly. The mountain seemed to be bulging out beneath them and he couldn’t make sense of the motion. He was leaning forward in his harness and they were moving, but somehow the chopper appeared to be still firmly on the ground. The rotor blades were making a thwopa thwopa thwopa noise, thrashing the air in desperation. He made a ‘What’s going on?’ gesture to Faith. She made a downwards sliding motion and he realised that the helicopter was tobogganing down the hillside, still sitting on its concrete slab.

  VT was pulling up on the control column with all his might. A warning horn started blaring in the cockpit. With a reluctant shudder, the aircraft wrenched itself free of the sliding concrete slab. Martin saw earth and rocks and pieces of wood falling all about them and then something smashed hard into the plexiglass window on VT’s side. He winced and put his hand to his upper arm. When he took it away his fingers had blood on them.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ Jack yelled.

  VT nodded. ‘Nothing serious!’

  Then the helicopter was in clear air. As it banked they saw that the whole top of the mountain was an inferno. The house had disap
peared.

  ‘Pity about your cash back there, mate.’ Jack’s voice was suddenly loud in Martin’s ear.

  Martin spread his hands and shrugged, squinting as the racing air pulled at his face. Jack rummaged under his seat and came up with two pairs of goggles. Martin found a black crumbly substance on his hands. Jack’s voice was in his ear again.

  ‘Sorry, the rubber’s a bit perished,’ he said, ‘but it’s the best we can do. They’re quite old. Standard issue to pilots on World War II goony birds.’

  Faith and Martin looked at Jack blankly.

  He grinned and indicated the tarp under their legs. Lifting his feet, Martin rolled back a corner of the canvas to reveal a layer of old wooden packing crates. The faded stencilling on the top of one box read: PROPERTY OF THE TREASURY OF THE PHILIPPINES.

  Jack roared with laughter at Martin’s expression. Then his smile froze at a loud bang from the engine compartment. The helicopter dipped suddenly. The warning klaxon blared again as VT wrestled with the control column. ‘Grab hold of something and hang on tight!’ he yelled.

  The engine noise turned from a roar to a high-pitched whine and the whole body of the helicopter started to shudder. A series of loud bangs were quickly followed by a rapid loss in altitude. Both Jack and VT were pulling on the twin control columns with all their strength. Martin looked at Faith and mouthed, ‘I love you.’ She clutched his hand tightly and mouthed, ‘I love you too.’

  twenty-eight

  ‘Well, this is my idea of heaven,’ Faith said as she sipped her pina colada.

  Martin looked up from his magazine and smiled. Their sun lounges were shaded by a large, dark-green umbrella, which contrasted nicely with the terracotta tiles on their private terrace. Below the terrace, holiday-makers sunned themselves beside the pool or on the sandy beach. Laughing teenagers cruised a man-made lagoon, pedalling in big, plastic-wheeled aqua bikes.

  Biggles, nestled under Faith’s lounge, gave a soft, throaty yelp and wagged his tail as Jack and VT walked up the steps from the pool. Both wore swimming trunks and sunglasses, and VT had a thick white bandage around his upper arm. They pulled over a couple of deckchairs and sat down.

  ‘Excellent planning, Jack,’ Faith said. ‘They blow up your luxurious mountaintop hideaway, so you move to a five-star coastal resort. I have to say I like your style.’

  Jack looked up from his drinks menu and grinned. ‘I told you it doesn’t hurt to be too paranoid in this business. You always have to have a fall-back position.’

  ‘And one with 24-hour room service, no less,’ Faith said.

  ‘Bloke who runs the joint owes me a favour or two,’ Jack explained. ‘He’s always got a bed for me and my friends, plus a handy little box of tricks stored away down the back of the left-luggage room. Like I said, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.’

  ‘Having a getaway Huey behind the back shed was a nice bit of planning too,’ Martin chuckled.

  ‘Ex-Philippines army,’ VT explained. ‘We found her hauling coffee in New Guinea and flew her back under the radar a few years ago. It’s the only machine to be in if you’ve got to pull off a manoeuvre like that.’

  ‘I think it might have had as much to do with the pilot as the machine, VT.’ Faith raised her glass in a toast.

  Jack put his hand on VT’s. ‘You’re right there, Faith, I don’t know any other pilot who could have done it.’

  When the helicopter engine had started malfunctioning earlier that day, Jack had yelled to VT, ‘High or low?’

  VT pointed downwards and took the shuddering aircraft towards the surf. Jack turned to Faith and Martin. ‘If we go high, Len might pick us up on his radar,’ he said through the intercom. ‘Which gives the game away. If we go low and the engine packs up altogether, we may not be able to autorotate, which is the only way down without power. But if VT reckons we go low, then it’s the right thing to do.’

  They headed north with the nose down, almost at wave height, and after several minutes the shuddering turbine suddenly coughed, misfired once and settled into a steady, smooth whine. VT checked the instruments, smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

  Twenty minutes later, they were on the ground in a clearing near a white-sand beach. Martin and Faith helped VT pull a large camouflage net over the chopper while Jack made a call on a mobile he took from a pocket on the co-pilot’s door. They walked for five minutes to a dirt track where an old, cut-down Land Rover was waiting. The sign on the door featured a palm tree, a golden sun and the words ‘St Tropez South’. The driver greeted Jack and VT warmly, and within fifteen minutes Faith was ordering her first pina colada of the day.

  ‘Nice swimsuit, Faith,’ Jack said, taking his tequila sunrise from the waiter’s tray.

  ‘Why, thank you,’ she smiled. ‘The resort boutique does an excellent line in ’50s styles, which suit me, and being able to sign for things is very handy now that my main squeeze and I are officially skint.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all on me.’

  ‘And too bloody right,’ Martin chimed in, ‘considering what’s taking up all the leg room in the Huey.’

  ‘So exactly how did you come across all that lovely gold bullion anyway?’ Faith asked.

  ‘It was that bomb from the F-111,’ Jack explained, sipping on his cocktail. ‘When we started shaping the crater for our swimming pool, we turned up a wing tip. Bloody miracle the contractor who built all the tunnels under the house didn’t find her.’

  ‘Those crates looked in pretty good nick for having gone through a plane crash,’ Faith said.

  ‘Not uncommon, really. Quite a few aircraft disappeared like that in England during World War II. Apparently if you hit at the right speed, on the right angle, and the ground is soft enough, you can get swallowed up without a trace. It’s a bit like punching your fist into a cream sponge. It was the wet season when it happened, and the Met records for that night say it was raining like a bastard. No airborne radar back then, so the poor buggers must have just slammed full tilt into the side of our hill in the dark.’

  ‘And we bought the story about the mythical golden gooney bird along with the legend of the landmines,’ Faith said. ‘You lie so well I’m surprised no-one’s asked you to run for parliament.’

  ‘I’m way out of the government’s league,’ Jack laughed. ‘According to a Defence Department spokesman on TV just now, an unmarked World War II ammo dump in far north Queensland blew up unexpectedly this morning with no loss of life.’

  ‘No mention of a second-hand chopper fanging its way out of the inferno?’ Faith asked. Jack shook his head.

  ‘So we’re all dead then?’ Martin said.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Jack agreed, ‘at least as far as Len’s concerned.’

  ‘That’s the second time this month,’ Martin said. ‘I’m starting to lose track.’

  ‘Okay then, Jack,’ Faith said, ‘what’s the plan?’

  ‘What makes you think I’ve got any kind of a plan?’ Jack asked casually.

  ‘After lunch, you and VT spent an hour with your heads together. You’re definitely organising something, and Martin and I want to help.’

  Jack glanced at VT, who nodded. ‘Okay,’ Jack said, ‘it’s at least a two-man operation, but someone needs to fly the chopper, so VT is out. This could be dangerous, you understand. It’s not really a job for amateurs, but it doesn’t seem that I’ve got much choice.’

  Faith raised her glass in a toast. ‘Here’s to the mission, and to the crew you choose when you don’t have any choice. And please, Jack, don’t think of Martin and me as just amateurs, think of us as enthusiastic amateurs.’

  Jack finished his cocktail in one large gulp.

  ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he said softly.

  *

  The two couples were sharing the resort’s presidential suite. It was the suite President Clinton would have slept in when he visited the Great Barrier Reef, Jack explained, if he hadn’t slept somewhere else. There were thr
ee double bedrooms running off a huge central living and dining room, and a large balcony overlooking the lagoon and the sea. In the middle of the living room sat a large silver trunk and a suitcase taken out of storage in the left-luggage area. Jack was rummaging through the suitcase and throwing garments onto the dining table.

  ‘Grab what you think fits,’ he instructed, ‘and go and try it on. You can have any colour you want as long as it’s black.’

  Five minutes later, Martin, Faith and Jack stood in the living room dressed from head to foot in black. Black windcheaters, black tracksuit pants and black sneakers. Jack looked the other two over carefully.

  ‘Sandshoes fit okay, Faith?’ he asked. ‘Now, just wear those ski masks rolled up like watchcaps for the moment and make sure you don’t lose the gloves. There’s a full moon tonight and white hands will stick out like dog’s balls.’ He glanced across at Biggles, who was sitting near VT. ‘Sorry, pup, didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.’ Biggles wagged his tail.

  Jack opened the trunk and revealed an assortment of pistols and submachine guns. He selected several, checked them thoroughly, placed them into a large black sports bag, and closed the trunk. After zipping up the bag, he sat on the trunk and looked at Martin and Faith.

  ‘Now’s the time to bail if you think this might get a bit hairy for you,’ he said.

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘Albris will be wherever Len is,’ Jack explained, ‘which will be somewhere comfortable. And Albris is the one we have to watch out for.’

  ‘Is Albris really that dangerous, Jack?’ Martin asked.

  ‘He’s a full-blown psychopath.’ Jack stood up and started to pace the room. ‘The most dangerous thing about people like Albris is that they expend about ninety-five per cent of their energy making themselves appear perfectly normal. Then they’ll kill without hesitation or a second thought.’

  ‘And you two have some kind of private vendetta going on?’ Faith asked.

  ‘We trained together and worked together sometimes. Over there. I was better than he was and got promoted faster and he didn’t like it.’