Golden Serpent am-1

by Mark Abernethy

  Having worked with many special forces outfi ts over the years, Mac knew they always engaged in gunfi ghts with their assault rifl es set to ‘three-shot’ mode. But that night, Mac didn’t hear the tap-dancing of three-shot. He heard a roar of lead and felt the air shake with full-auto. The Green Berets and the SWAGs put so much lead into the pump-boat that it listed to port, dipping its gunwale into the diesel-slick waters. Mac remembered the heat and the metallic smell of human plasma, diesel and tropical salt water biting into the back of his throat.

  Mac had to ask Sawtell to stop the fi ring. Arroy overheard the request on the headset, shut it down himself. Then the whoops started up.

  Mac grabbed the CIA guy they called Pencil Neck and tried to get him onto the pump-boat. ‘Come on, champ, time to go to work,’ he’d urged, but Pencil Neck couldn’t move. He was vomiting, crying. A bit of human scalp had stuck to the sleeve of his pressed battle fatigues.

  Mac fl icked it off, ruffl ed the guy’s hair. But Pencil Neck was frozen to the seat.

  Mac, Sawtell and a couple of Yank troopers went instead, slipping on the blood-covered decks of the listing pump-boat. They turned over bodies, Mac insisting that a semi-submerged corpse be brought to the surface.

  Mac photographed faces, some of them torn off by gunfi re. One had lost an arm. He found it near the prow, fake gold Rolex glinting under the SWAGs’ spotties. They found a black backpack fl oating, black sunnies inside.

  He remembered getting increasingly agitated. Mac had two corpses on the foredeck of the pump-boat, but neither of them was Abu Sabaya. They searched the area for an hour. Mac asked the SWAGs commander, Mig Arroy, to get a frogman down there. He sent down two with their marine spotlights. Sawtell wanted to know what they were looking for.

  ‘I told you – a body,’ said Mac.

  ‘We got ‘em, ain’t we?’

  ‘How many were we shooting at?’ asked Mac.

  Sawtell called Arroy to his boat where they confabbed. Pencil Neck joined them.

  Mac said, ‘I’ve got two bodies.’

  ‘There were fi ve on the pump-boat,’ said Sawtell.

  ‘I saw four,’ countered Arroy.

  ‘There’s a couple of bodies down there,’ said Sawtell. ‘They’re just not fl oaters. One of them’s Sabaya.’

  ‘You know this?’ asked Mac.

  Sawtell nodded, unsure.

  Arroy said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to retrieve all the bodies out here. No way.’

  One of Sawtell’s guys leaned out of the pump-boat’s wheelhouse, waved a blood-splattered pizza box. ‘Mmm – Hawaiian Surprise. My favourite.’

  Pencil Neck vomited again.

  Mac leaned back in his seat as the 737 dipped slightly and headed into Makassar. He churned over the Abu Sabaya story. It had been the turning point of his career in more ways than one. He’d done more positive work in East Timor, but the Abu Sabaya thing had got him a name among the Americans and British as well as the Filipinos and Indons. It had given him an aura he hadn’t wanted, a reputation he’d never asked for. He hadn’t killed a major terrorist – he’d stood there and watched a bunch of soldiers cut a bunch of bandits to ribbons.

  He wasn’t ashamed, but he wasn’t proud. To Mac’s mind, if you wanted to wage war on terror you had to stand for something a bit better.

  It didn’t mean that Catholicism should win out, or that Islam should lose. His mother used to say that being Catholic didn’t mean you were always right – just that you’d always try to do the right thing.

  The offi cial US-Philippines statement said Sabaya had been killed in a gunfi ght along with two others, and that four people had been captured. Actually, no one had been captured. It hadn’t been that kind of mission. It was the kind of rubbish intel people leaked into the media to make other terrorists nervous, to fl ush out traitorous types who might be ready to squeal before the supposed prisoners started to sing.

  Mac was debriefed but not asked for a report. It wasn’t going to be logged, at least not as an assassination. Davidson phoned, congratulated him on the whole thing, laughing at the pizza delivery aspect. Then he’d asked Mac for an informal report.

  Mac’s report was written on a piece of white printer paper, with a blue ballpoint. It had been pouched to Canberra. It was short. It said, We killed two Abu Sayyaf people. Abu Sabaya was not among them. He planted a black backpack containing a pair of sunglasses – he wanted me to fi nd it. His death is a hoax.

  As the Lion Air fl ight descended, Mac wondered back to his paranoia about there being a mole in the Service. He mulled, making connections and wondering who else in the Service had seen that note.

  CHAPTER 22

  The passengers from the Lion Air fl ight moved from the heat of the tarmac into the cool of the Hasanuddin terminal. Mac stayed mid pack, looking for eyes.

  He passed through the terminal and out into the heat again. It was a minute past eight am and just another day in the Sulawesi steam bath. The cabs were lined up, about twenty of them. People milled, still no eyes.

  Mac took the third cab. He gave an address in the south of the city.

  Taking the seat directly behind the driver, Mac dug the cheapo cellular phone out of his pocket, hit redial and patched through to Camp Enduring Freedom in Zam. Asked for Captain John Sawtell. Sorry, said the bloke, he’s in the mess.

  Military types never seemed to stop eating.

  He sat back, thought about his day. He needed to know what was in the stolen container out of Manila, he needed to know what was in the MPS warehouse. Were they linked? He needed a gun. And he needed to know who was following him right at that minute.

  In the driver’s rear-vision mirror Mac saw a red Subaru Liberty, staying back two cars. He had asked the driver to go south into the city rather than use the main westward route. The red Liberty was following.

  They drove with traffi c along a two-way stretch of secondary road, dodging trucks and buses. The old Dutch-built bollards of the bridge loomed and they slowed. Mac turned and watched the Liberty, three cars back now, edging out, looking for a way to get closer.

  They made it off the bridge and took a right at the next traffi c lights and drove north, the Liberty now only two cars away. They pulled up to an intersection which turned right into the major road into Makassar. It was rush hour in Makassar – eight-thirty and it was jammed up, everyone sounding their horns, trying to get onto that bridge.

  Mac paid the bloke with rupiah, tipped big. ‘Thanks, champ. One more thing you can do for me.’

  They got so they were almost at the front of the queue to get onto the main artery into Makassar. The lights changed to amber. They went red. Mac said ‘Now.’

  They fl ew into the intersection, the driver veering to his left slightly to get in behind the last right-turning car. They made it as the main north-south traffi c started grinding through the intersection again. The red Liberty had pulled out too, into the wrong lane of the feeder road, but couldn’t get out into the inter section. The north-south traffi c started moving. Mac’s cab moved with it. He looked back, saw the driver of the Liberty with his arm across the back seat, having to reverse. The driver stopped, looked over at Mac’s cab. He was Ray-Bans – the thug in the silver Accord behind Minky’s. Mac knew that face from another time, too – but where?

  There was another guy in the front seat with him. Turquoise shirt, Javanese.

  The cab moved onto the bridge that would take them into Makassar and Mac asked the cabbie to get into the left lane heading north. Mac looked back and saw that the Liberty had thrown itself into traffi c to the sounds of even more horns. It was now eight cars back.

  The line slowed again and stopped. Mac took a deep breath, controlled the fear, and slipped out the rear left door. He jogged along the bridge in a crouch as close beside the left of the stationary cars as he could. He was betting Ray-Bans had his car right on the centre line trying to see where the cab was. He wouldn’t trust his sidekick.

  He’d be givin
g himself the eyes.

  The bridge was three hundred metres long and Mac kept a solid pace. The only way Ray-Bans and his mate could catch him would be to get out and run, or hope the rush-hour traffi c abated. If that happened, Mac would slip back into the cab.

  The traffi c stayed snarled and Mac made it onto ground again with what he reckoned was a forty-car lead on the Liberty.

  The intersection on the other side of the bridge was snarled too.

  So Mac ran straight across it, to the amazement of the locals who peered at him like he might be an escaped lunatic. In late November and early December, south Sulawesi had average temperatures not too different to Sydney. What was different was the humidity, and Mac could barely get air into his lungs. He got to the other side of the intersection, stopped, hands on hips, gasping, looking to the sky like he was searching for more air.

  He heard a voice. Looked down. A cabbie was leaning through from his seat, smiling. ‘Hey boss. Where we going?’

  Mac got into the cab. ‘Sedona, thanks, champ. Fast as you like.’

  Mac wasn’t a fan of the Sedona. It was great for tourists and business people, but for someone always thinking about how to leave the place without being snatched or killed, it wasn’t so great. It was a high-rise hotel, for a start, meaning limited escape opportunities. And it fronted a major boulevard, which made it a lot easier for people to put surveillance teams in the area without being picked.

  Mac was looking out over the sea and the historic Fort Rotterdam from his fourth-fl oor room at the Sedona for one reason: the Sedona didn’t always check or photocopy passports. So for now, he was Gary Penfold.

  Mac turned to the paper bag on the room’s letter-writing table, emptying its contents: hair dye, nail polish remover, cotton buds and a bunch of recharge cards for the mobile. He picked up the Schwarzkopf 10N blonder – the most powerful you could get – and had a read of the instructions. Then he set to work on the mo: took his time stripping it with the nail polish remover. Next, he shook out the hair dye pack, mixed the two liquids in the bowl, got into the shower, wet his hair down, and then got out. Stood there in the bathroom painting the 10N onto his dark brown hair with the black brush, latex gloves on both hands. Dark brown, of the type he’d dyed himself with two days earlier, was about the darkest you could use and still reverse it with a chemist product. Anything darker and the only thing he could have used would be a peroxide. If he did that, he’d end up walking around Makassar with his hair all frizzy and screwed up, looking like a punk surfer.

  He sat in a chair at the window, a shower cap on his head and a towel round his waist, watching the pinisi sailing boats coming and going from the old harbour between the new commercial ports. The pinisi boats were ancient working craft that still hauled sandalwood and cloves from the river systems and coastal towns down to Makassar.

  The G-Shock sat on the table counting down twenty minutes. The phone was plugged in and charging. Mac picked it up and hit redial.

  He got through to the switch bloke, who recognised Mac’s voice.

  Bloke did a hissy sigh, so Mac wound him up, said, ‘Hi darling -

  I’m home.’

  Another big sigh. A click and a clunk. Mac thought he might have to have a word in the shell-like, but then suddenly it was a voice he recognised. ‘Hello. Hello!’

  ‘G’day, champ. ‘Zit going?’ said Mac.

  Sawtell laughed. ‘I knew it was you. We had Taylor running around worried about some psycho with an Aussie accent.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse.’

  ‘I bet you have.’

  They had a bit of a chat. Mac wanted to follow through on Limo, wondering if he could contribute to the pension that traditionally accompanies a dead soldier. Sawtell said the envelope had already been sealed and went with Limo’s effects to his mum. But thanks anyway for the thought.

  Then Mac tried to ease Sawtell into things. ‘That’s some shit you guys have got up in Manila, huh, John?’

  ‘Manila? Yeah, we’re on stand-by. SEALs are already up there.’

  ‘Pretty big, huh?’

  ‘It sounds it. Dunno what they have.’

  ‘It’s chemical or bio, isn’t it?’

  Sawtell laughed. ‘You playing me, my man?’

  Mac laughed too. He couldn’t play John Sawtell, as much as he’d like to.

  ‘Where are you, anyway?’

  ‘Lombok,’ said Mac.

  ‘How’s Judith?’

  ‘She’s good. But still wasn’t talking when we got into Jakarta.’

  ‘How’s she now? She remember anything?’

  ‘Mate, it got taken out of my hands. Delivery boy. You know that movie.’

  ‘Sure do, my man. Sure do.’

  ‘Anyway, mate – I’ll let you go. Be careful up there though, eh?

  They’ve shut down the whole port. Got DIA running the show, what I hear.’

  ‘Not for long.’

  Mac said ‘No?’, trying to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

  ‘DIA are just securing the place,’ said Sawtell. ‘Doing the media and government control, what I hear. They’re waiting for the Twentieth to come in from Guam.’

  Mac tried to remember. The Twentieth? What the fuck was the Twentieth?

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘The comms guys?’

  Sawtell sniggered. ‘No, man. CBRNE. The big leagues. All that wacko scientist shit.’

  Mac said, ‘Fuck!’ Couldn’t help himself.

  ‘That too. I’m on need-to-know – can’t tell my boys. You know how the guys get when they know they goin’ to be round that shit.’

  Mac did know. CBRNE stood for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and enhanced Explosive. It was the skunk-works end of warfare and your average soldier would pull any sickie, come up with any kind of excuse, to stay away from anything that had CBRNE attached to it. Which was why people like Sawtell were given orders to stand-by on a need-to-know.

  Mac’s heart was racing. CBRNE! He was getting a really bad feeling about the whole thing. The worst of it was who they were fl ying in – the Navy SEALs and Green Berets, hardly experts in chemical spills.

  You didn’t pull in special forces to man road blocks and write press releases.

  A trickle of Schwarzkopf 10N ran down his temple. ‘John – what have they lost up there?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Sawtell. ‘But Poppa Bear wants it back.’

  Mac stepped out onto the waterfront drive of Somba Opu in front of the Sedona. Palms waved in the breeze that came off the Strait.

  Makassar was one of the oldest ports on the planet. From a time when all trade was maritime, Makassar sat on the crossroads of the most heavily used shipping lanes: north through the Macassar Strait to the Philippines; south across the Java Sea to Lombok, Surabaya, Madura and Bali; west down the Java Sea to Singapore, Jakarta and Penang; east through the Banda to the Pacifi c. It was still strategic.

  Mac wondered where Hannah’s expertise had fi tted with Garrison and Sabaya. Wondered what the MPS warehouse had in it.

  Everything was coming back to maritime.

  He was back in his well-fi tting khaki chinos and dark blue polo shirt. He looked at his refl ection in the hotel’s tinted windows and saw thin blond hair, short and pushed back from his face. He looked all right for someone who was exhausted, cut loose and scared to death.

  He turned south, walked casually, some inoffensive Anglo waiting for his bird-watching tour bus to arrive.

  If it was Mac doing the tail he’d only be looking at four or fi ve hotels, and the Sedona would be one of them. The Pantai Gapura would be another. So Mac wanted Ray-Bans to show himself.

  The oldest trick in the military book also applied to being tailed.

  If you’re smaller with less fi repower, don’t meet your larger adversary on the ground of his choosing. Be moving, be erratic, be nimble.

  Mac knew his adversary was not going to do what he had to do in the street. He didn’t want to languish in a Sulaw
esi lock-up any more than Mac did. So Ray-Bans would set an ambush, do it the easy way.

  And Mac would try to make the bloke show himself.

  Mac ducked into a side street. One of the old Dutch lanes built in the 1700s. It was narrow, fi lled with tourists and local traders. It smelled of cloves, of incense and dirt. He found a fi sh shop, sat back in the shadows and watched American tourists around him.

  The owner approached and Mac pointed at the cook in his bolt-hole, saying, ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’

  The woman bowed, smiled and yelled something at the bloke in the tiny open-sided kitchen. The bloke looked at Mac. Mac gave thumbs-up. The bloke smiled. Nodded.

  Turning his eyes back to the street, he saw what he was looking for. A bloke in a bright turquoise trop shirt with a bulge under the right hip made two passes, looking sideways into the restaurant. The passenger from the red Liberty was late twenties, about fi ve-eight and ninety kilos with a strong upper body but maybe not athletic.

  Mac thought he detected fl at feet. He had a cop haircut and fl at cheekbones.

  The meal came quick. Swordfi sh chunks stir-fried in a coriander and chilli sauce, goreng and an assortment of vegies. He asked the woman for a cold Bintang and hooked into the sword.

  The cook brought the Bintang out himself.

  ‘Thanks, champ. This is some great tucker,’ said Mac.

  The cook was chuffed. He smiled and tried to get through the language barrier. ‘Merry Carn?’ he asked.

  Mac shook his head. ‘Nah, champ. Skippy.’ Mac did his bush-roo impersonation, paws up under his chin.

  The bloke laughed out loud, put his hand on Mac’s shoulder before making his way back to the woks and gas rings. Javanese social interaction had two speeds: serious appraisal verging on suspicion, and outright joyous laughter. Laughter got you closer to the gods, so if you could get a laugh out of a Javanese, they owed you.