Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

Then he started on the carpets and before he got far he found something under the driver’s seat. He fi shed out a key and shone the fl ashlight in again to see if there was anything else. He quickly went over the rest of the car’s interior.

  Coming up empty-handed, he turned his attention back to the key. Hard-on asked what it was. The other soldiers groaned as one, as if to say, What does it look like, lame?

  It had a diamond-shaped, black plastic key ring with the letters MPS stamped on it in silver. The key was big, German, expensive and made of forged alloys suggesting a serious lock. The number was 46. Someone had lost a key. He wondered if they would come back for it.

  Mac trousered it.

  He turned back to the owner of the place, who was looking unsettled about what Mac had done to the Accord.

  ‘Don’t worry, sport,’ he said to the bloke. ‘I bet it’s overinsured.’

  The owner didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Ask him about Sabulu,’ Mac said to Spikey. ‘I want to know what we’re looking for.’

  The road to Sabulu was even worse than the general store guy had warned. From Tenteno, the road rose up into the highlands in steep, muddy switchbacks. It had been a bad, tropical road to start with and the logging traffi c after the afternoon monsoon showers had torn it apart.

  Mac asked Limo to drive. He was good, which was a change.

  Most Yanks couldn’t handle that sort of terrain. At one point the Patrol slid across the track and threatened to slide off into a thousand-foot ravine. Limo kept his foot on the gas, counter-intuitively, and the Patrol came right.

  ‘Not from South-Central, are you?’ said Mac.

  Limo smiled. ‘Costa Rica.’

  It was drizzling and everyone remained quiet as the Patrol’s turbo squealed and cried its way up one ridge after another. The dark of the tropical night pressed in. The only universe was the one that the headlights illuminated, occasionally fl ashing on macaques at the side of the track, which had obviously seen a similar vehicle across several hours before. Mac could see off-road tyre tracks in the mud.

  They were looking for a ‘depot’, which the store owner said was about seventy miles into the interior. Depots were sometimes shacks, sometimes compounds. Loggers and miners lived in them and the natives - the Toraja - collected weekly or monthly deliveries from them. The store owner reckoned they should be on the lookout for a depot called ‘thirteen’.

  They pressed on, the Patrol rolling and sliding. They got higher, past the mist-line where it was clearer and colder. Limo hit the heat.

  They glugged water from bottles and ate the fruit that Mac had known the soldiers would stash. They got to the top of a switchback and Mac asked for a toilet stop.

  The stars shone huge and plush in the blackness above. A monkey argued with a bird somewhere in the rainforest canopy. It crossed Mac’s mind that the next time he came through here it might all be felled. Instead it would be sitting in a backyard in Perth or Melbourne as garden furniture. He started pissing and Sawtell came alongside.

  ‘You know that dude with the store is as good as dead?’ said Sawtell, not pissing but staring.

  ‘Hopefully we get to the bad guys fi rst, huh?’ said Mac.

  Mac shook off early. Didn’t like where Sawtell was standing. If Mac was going to poleaxe someone, that’s where he would stand. At a bloke’s four o’clock while he had his hands full.

  Sawtell must have sensed the vibe. He moved around in front. They both felt the cold. Plumes of mist came out of their mouths.

  ‘My boys weren’t happy about the Bani thing.’

  ‘I wasn’t over the moon myself. But it’s a good school,’

  said Mac.

  ‘That was nice. What does he say to his folks?’

  Mac didn’t want to go into all the details. He’d had a chat with Bani’s dad that morning before they went down to the dry-cleaners.

  The dad had thanked Mac profusely for the opportunity. Education in Sulawesi was not like it was in the United States. Wasn’t a birthright, wasn’t an entitlement. Parents with the smartest kids watched all that potential go to waste most of the time. But there was no point in telling that to Sawtell. He was a good man, but he was an American good man.

  Mac changed the subject. ‘Mate, I don’t know what to expect up here. Can we tool up now?’

  Sawtell gave him a disappointed look. He stepped back, tapped on the roof of the Patrol, and the boys spilled out.

  It was almost daybreak when they fi nally hit Depot 13. They were high enough to watch the sun come up over the Pacifi c. An amazing sight. The primordial rainforest started up like a soundtrack. In the space of twenty minutes it was deafening.

  The depot was signalled by a couple of lamp posts dug into the ground, thirty feet apart. A track ran between them with a sign with the number thirteen strung above. They killed the lights. Mac handed off to Sawtell, who ordered Hard-on and Spikey to run a point. Then Sawtell got out of the Patrol and took a stance behind the rear fender; Limo did the same thing behind the front hood. Mac sat in the back seat with the Beretta on his lap, yawning, dreaming of some nosebag.

  They waited for the all-clear and Mac asked Sawtell if Enduring Freedom was a success yet.

  ‘Ha!’ Sawtell snorted.

  ‘I take that as a no,’ said Mac.

  ‘Holy shit! Oh man!’ Sawtell seemed genuinely amused. So did Limo, who smiled his way.

  ‘It’s the wrong mission, in the wrong part of the world, for the wrong reasons with the wrong tactics,’ drawled Sawtell. ‘Oh, and the wrong leadership - political and brass.’

  ‘We got Sabaya, didn’t we?’ asked Mac.

  Sawtell was out of view, behind the Patrol. He didn’t answer.

  Half an hour later, Hard-on fl ashed three times through the trees in the dawn gloom. Limo drove the Patrol through the gates, Sawtell walked behind on the verge of the track. They drove like that for fi ve minutes and came out into a clearing. There were six or seven mid-sized wooden buildings that looked like they’d been built a decade ago and then abandoned. Hard-on put his fi nger to his lips and beckoned Mac and Limo out of the vehicle. They walked behind him, guns ready, heading between two of the buildings and coming into another clearing, a courtyard with three accommodation-style buildings around it. It was a barracks of sorts. The place looked deserted, except for the white LandCruiser that dominated the courtyard.

  Sawtell looked at Hard-on, who said, ‘All clear, sir, far as we can tell.’

  Sawtell looked around. Pointed at the LandCruiser. Hard-on shook his head. ‘Haven’t checked it. Waiting for you, sir.’

  Sawtell nodded. Hard-on went to work on debugging the LandCruiser. Spikey jogged back into the courtyard to give him a hand.

  Sawtell was distracted. He looked off into the distance and looked around very, very slowly, his face completely impassive. Mac had seen career soldiers do this before, and it usually meant the shit was on the doorstep. They just knew something was up.

  Mac realised they were standing in the middle of a natural ambush.

  Surrounded by buildings, surrounded by jungle.

  Sawtell slowly put his fi nger in the air. ‘Hear that?’

  ‘Helo,’ said Limo.

  They looked at each other and tried to fi nd the source. Mac couldn’t hear a thing.

  ‘Ain’t military,’ mumbled Limo. ‘That Euro piece of shit?’

  One of the fi rst things special forces soldiers learned to do was identify aircraft and vehicles by their sound. Much of what they did they did in the dark, without fl ashlights or open comms. The tales of tired soldiers piling onto the enemy’s helo or onto the bad guys’ boat were as legion as they were apocryphal. But the lesson was the same: know your hardware.

  Sawtell indicated its position with his fi nger. Then shook his head. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Probably a logging scout,’ said Mac.

  They ignored him.

  Hard-on and Spikey cleared the LandCruiser of booby traps.

  Ma
c found a map in the glove box, and more Bartook Special Mint wrappers. Torn thin.

  The map was in relief, of the highlands. It showed broken lines in red, which meant dirt roads. And it had another series of thin blue lines, which Mac assumed were horse tracks, or whatever they used up here.

  It wasn’t that much use. Mac threw it back in the LandCruiser, slammed the door, moved to the rear. Then he had another idea. In the Royal Marines there had been an absolute ban on touching any map with a pen or a pencil. Anything that could possibly mark it. You put a map in a plastic sleeve, you pointed at it, you used bearings and you used coordinates so that everyone knew what everyone else was talking about. But if you marked a map in the British military someone was going to get in your face and accuse you of defacing Her Majesty’s personal property. It was a ‘back to base’ offence.

  Mac went back to the front seat, unfolded the map and had a good look. If these guys did not have that basic training, they might have absent-mindedly drawn on the thing. Even just touched it. Which was the universal human instinct.

  He found what he was looking for on one of the central panels. A defi nite depression with a blue ballpoint at the end of one of the blue lines. A slight blue squiggle a couple of centimetres away - someone trying to navigate with the thing on his lap.

  He called Sawtell over, showed him. Sawtell picked up the map and, without hesitating, turned due north, pointed into thick jungle and said, ‘That way, nine or ten clicks.’

  They tooled up. Sawtell was serious about this one, just like Mac had seen him in the Sibuco take-down; a bit nervy and controlling it with glacial calm. The lads sensed it. They checked guns and cammed their faces without saying a thing. When the Old Man went like that, it was time to get serious.

  The boys took US Army fatigues out of Cordura bags. The guns were M4s - short, black assault rifl es favoured by the US Army Special Forces.

  They pilfered the rat packs and the stashed fruit. Ate up large.

  Then they headed into the jungle, Hard-on walking point.

  The heat came up fast. The noise of the forest was thunderous and screeching at the same time, crowding in on the senses, enveloping the party with humidity, bugs and noise. They tabbed for an hour.

  The horse track they were on was a steep climb. It was agony.

  Mac made a mental note: more running to balance the gym and boxing fi tness.

  Sawtell was a conservative campaigner. Mac wanted to stride out, get some blood going. But Sawtell stopped, peered, backtracked and did all the special forces hand-signal stuff. He was the jungle version of how Mac moved around a city: with total paranoia.

  They maintained silence and walked Mac in the middle of their set-up. The tension was heavy. Every time Mac looked at Sawtell, he saw more concern. Concern that the American would not share. John Sawtell may have been a bleeding-heart boy scout but he kept it tight when the shit was hovering. There was a maelstrom of worry and contingency-mongering going on in that square head, but Mac knew he wouldn’t spook his boys. Not a squeak.

  Five clicks into the hike, they took a rest in a clearing. Limo produced water bottles from his pack. Mac checked a moss-covered log for snakes and spiders, and lowered himself.

  There was a crack, a soft warm feeling in his head.

  Then it all went black.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mac came to with the kind of head pain he’d experienced once during a bout of malaria. A sensation so powerful that you hit your head against a wall to make it go away.

  He could hear something. People’s voices. Then something else, humming like a machine. He took his time opening his eyes, let his right eyelid go up slightly. The rush of light was like an explosion in his brain. He groaned. His mouth was dry, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He could barely think straight. Was he drugged? Drunk?

  More voices. He tried again to crack an eyelid but the light shut him down just as quick. Sparklers behind his eyes. The noise got louder and he felt hands under his armpits. Hands on his feet. Then he was going up, like when he was a kid and his dad picked him up off the sofa where he’d fallen asleep watching television.

  The noise got louder. It thromped and whacked and whined.

  It was fucking with his mind.

  Mac thought: a helo.

  Then he blacked out.

  The patch was wet. Very wet. Mac shifted his head slightly and felt it cold and damp on his cheek. He must have been dribbling something chronic.

  He opened his eyes. No pain in the eyeballs but a ton of it behind his right ear. He was lying on his side. There was a white sheet on him. A white pillow, white mosquito net over him that smelled of pyrethrum. He was naked except for his red briefs. He rolled over so he was looking at the white ceiling, fan turning.

  He breathed, wiggled his toes, fl exed his fi sts. The right hand was still swollen and painful. But he was alive and in one piece - for the moment.

  He wondered who it was. Garrison’s thugs? The Chinese? He prayed it wasn’t the boys from Beijing. When intel hacks got gossiping they inevitably came to the Chinese torture scenarios: the drugs, the hypno, the implants, the beatings, the surgery.

  There were no restraints. Whoever it was, they didn’t see him as a threat.

  He sensed movement. A face looked down on him. Large, round, male.

  Maori. Fuck!

  ‘How’s the head, chalks?’

  The guy smiled. A big, confi dent smile. Mac didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Sonny?’

  The big Maori laughed, a high-pitched chortling giggle. ‘You remember me, eh Chalks?’

  Mac was a stunned mullet. He was looking at a ghost from his past: Sonny Makatoa.

  Mac carried something on his CV that he reckoned he shouldn’t. He was a veteran of Desert Shield/Storm. Technically. Straight from the Royal Marines he’d rotated into Basra in ‘91. The fi rst Iraq war was winding down, the wells were burning, Bush Senior was pulling the boys out and novices like Mac were being sent into a war zone to see how intelligence worked in the shit. It was the only way to get that experience. The only way for the spy masters to know if this was your thing.

  It was Mac’s thing.

  He deployed with a couple of older Australians, one of whom was Rod Scott. They were doing lots of sweeps for hidden missile silos and bio-warfare factories. There were loads of snitches and turncoats coming out of the woodwork in those fi nal days. Saddam military wanting US dollars. Saddam military wanting Australian visas. Saddam military planted by his intel people as doubles and provocateurs.

  Mac worked the ‘show-me’ detail, as in, So this is the Brucellosis weaponisation program you were telling us about? Show me!

  The Australian SAS was in demand elsewhere, so in one of the last factory-checks the spooks were doing for bio-warfare manufacture, the New Zealand SAS stepped in as the escort. It was scary work: mines in walls, snipers on the peaks, everything booby trapped. They were into the cave systems of southern Iraq where the turncoat colonels reckoned the bio-labs were.

  That’s where Mac had met Sonny Makatoa. Sonny was only six years older than Mac but already leading his own unit. Senior ranks deferred to him, lesser ranks were shit-scared. His boys loved him.

  He stood fi ve-eleven and was built like a tree stump. It was hard to imagine who or what could intimidate him. Sonny was tough in the strangest way. Tough like he was born to be in a war zone. Careful and professional but not nervous. Almost as if he liked it.

  He remembered Sonny because on his fi rst day Mac had turned up with a different kind of hat to the rest of the spooks and soldiers.

  They all wore khaki boonies while somehow Mac had ended up with a blue one.

  Sonny had thrown him a spare hat at breakfast. Told him to put it on. Mac had hesitated. Sonny eyeballed him. Mac put it on.

  It wasn’t till late morning when they were waiting - and for some reason, war is all about waiting - that Mac had got talking to one of the Kiwi SAS. Asked him about the hat.

/>   ‘Corporal’s saving your lily-white,’ said the Kiwi. ‘Snipers round here fi x on anything out of the pattern. Assume it’s a commanding offi cer, or someone important. He likes you.’

  So Mac had remembered Sonny. And Sonny had remembered too, probably for other reasons.

  Mac swung his feet to the fl oor. He was in a demountable and from the decor and size of the room, he assumed it was the sick bay. The room was air-conned but that wasn’t helping with his head. He had a dizzy spell, thought he would chuck. Put his hand to his mouth.

  ‘Hem - fucking get in here, now!’

  It was the same old Sonny. Barking, yelling, expecting everyone around him to be on the ball. A large Maori man in a black T-shirt and olive fatigue shorts scooted into the sick bay. Barefoot, tucking in his shirt. Sonny nodded at the bloke and they got on either side of Mac and helped him up. The headache subsided slightly as they walked him out the door.

  ‘Put on some weight, Chalks?’ said Sonny. ‘You were a skinny little runt when I knew ya.’

  The sick bay opened into a communal area with loads of natural light. Mac winced and squinted. There was a kitchen down one side, bench tables and chairs in the middle, and an area with sofas and a La-Z-Boy in front of a big plasma-screen TV at the end of the room.

  Barcelona was playing Liverpool. Mac took one guess who got to sit in the La-Z-Boy.

  They sat him on the sofa and he saw rainforest through a window.

  He nodded to the offer of tea and the big guy called Hem moved to the kitchen. Mac had him at one hundred and eighteen kilos, about six-two, all muscle and moving like a cat.

  Sonny grabbed a chair, sat on it, leaned forward with forearms on his fatigues. His black T-shirt had a white crest on the left breast, the words TOKOROA RFC printed in white.

  ‘That’s Hemi,’ Sonny pointed. ‘Played reserve grade for Canterbury-Bankstown. Couldn’t control the temper, though, eh?’

  Sonny chuckled, then whistled low, shook his head slowly. Sombre.

  ‘Big, strong cunt that Hemi. Good soldier, great fi ghter. Tough as.’

  Sonny looked back at Mac, smiling. ‘Just can’t let him drink, eh Chalks?’