Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  Behind him, someone groaned. A long, animal-like exhalation of pain.

  ‘Mr B, the secret cache at Clark - what was it?’ demanded Mac.

  ‘Oh that. About four thousand tons of VX gas,’ said Cookie. ‘Nerve agent. Nasty shit.’

  CHAPTER 27

  Mac tore the grey duct tape off Ray-Bans’ mouth, sliced the white fl exi cuffs from his wrists, and watched him slump to the carpeted fl oor of the HiAce van. It was late afternoon, the temperature was low thirties, and dust seemed to fl oat on the heat. Wafts of kerosene and scorched rubber came from the helos and military air-lifters around Hasanuddin Air Base and the F-111s from the Indonesian Air Force’s Eastern Command screamed as they took off.

  The HiAce sat beside Cookie’s LandCruiser in a private hangar that looked over the whole spread of Hasanuddin Air Base and the airport.

  A security bloke strolled with a German shepherd about eighty metres away near the huge sliding doors.

  Mac put a bottle of water in front of Ray-Bans. Watched the guy squirm and wriggle to get comfortable. Blood was smeared down his dark red polo shirt and across the thighs of his cream chinos, and his right eye was puffed, dark purple and about to get a nice yellow yolk in the middle. Struggling onto his right elbow, he pushed himself up against the wall of the HiAce with his boat shoes. He put his hand out for the water, revealing a heavily muscled arm. Couldn’t reach it, so Mac opened the top and gave it to him.

  Mac stayed at arm’s length. The guy was an athlete and Mac was in no shape to go close-range with him.

  Ray-Bans drank, convulsed slightly, then wiped his mouth and spat. A tooth bounced on the black nylon carpet.

  ‘This when I die?’ he asked, in a London accent.

  ‘That depends on both of us,’ said Mac.

  Mac had developed paranoid ideas about Ray-Bans for the last couple of days. It wasn’t just that the bloke was put together and looked like he knew what he was doing. It wasn’t just that from Minky’s place and all the way up Sulawesi and into the highlands the two had been playing cat and mouse. It wasn’t even that Mac had fi nally clicked and realised that the bloke was part of the Sabaya retinue during the Mindanao Forest Products infi ltration. The big thing Mac had been overlooking, and which hadn’t occurred to him during this totally out-of-control mission, was that Ray-Bans might be a lot more like him than he was comfortable with. He had the same aura Mac drew around himself in the fi eld: the unknown quantity, the person who could be from anywhere, doing anything. About the only people who noticed the kind of blandness Mac affected were other spooks.

  ‘Smoke?’ asked Mac.

  Ray-Bans nodded.

  ‘Bad luck, I don’t,’ said Mac.

  They both laughed, Ray-Bans through a busted-up mouth. He stopped himself quick.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Call me Paul. Yours?’

  ‘Then I’d have to kill ya,’ said Mac.

  Paul snorted, looked out the HiAce window, still casing his surrounds. He was a good-looking man up close, even with the facial he’d got from Hemi. He could have starred in General Hospital, sort of an Asian Rick Springfi eld.

  ‘You knew during the Mindanao Forest thing that I wasn’t a forestry consultant,’ said Mac.

  Paul looked at the fl oor. ‘Didn’t know what the fuck you were, tell the truth. You were a pretty good deal-maker for an impostor.’

  ‘You liked that?’

  Paul looked at him with one eye, nodded. ‘Chinese liked it too.’

  ‘And Sabaya?’

  Paul grinned, looked away. ‘Embarrassed him, getting a pale-eye to broker something between a Filipino and the Chinese. Didn’t really live up to some of his ethnic ideas …’

  ‘But you let it go.’

  Paul shrugged, slugged at the water, winced slightly.

  ‘You NICA, one of Garcia’s boys?’ asked Mac, referring to Philippines intel.

  Paul shrugged.

  Mac waved the Browning. ‘I’m the one with the gun. In the movies, that’s good for me, bad for you.’

  Paul smiled, looked Mac in the eye. ‘I’m not NICA.’

  ‘Agency?’

  Paul shook his head.

  The van was getting stuffy and Mac got up, pulled the sliding side window back. Let some air in, sat down.

  ‘Paul, there’s something worth knowing. I’m really tired, really stressed. I’m even a bit emotional,’ he said, looking down at the Browning on his lap. ‘I’m not going to sit here all day asking questions like I’m on a date with a diffi cult bird. I’m sure you’d like to get on your bike too, huh?’

  Paul nodded, said, ‘Mate, I’m Old School.’

  Mac looked at him. Old School was intel-speak for MI6 - the oldest intelligence organisation in the Western world and the one that most others were in some way modelled on. ASIS, the CIA, Mossad and the Canadian SIS had all turned to MI6 for guidance during their set-up phase.

  ‘SAS, paras?’ asked Mac.

  ‘You’re quick.’

  ‘The looks and the accent …’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Mexican father, Filipina mother. Grew up in Manila, high school in London. Usual shit.’

  ‘Spanish, Tagalog, good Yankee accent?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Useful guy.’

  ‘The expendable ones usually are.’

  ‘Tell me about Garrison,’ asked Mac.

  ‘The American?’

  Mac nodded.

  ‘Don’t know much. He’s apparently Agency but a bit unortho dox.

  Likes money.’

  ‘Weren’t briefed on Garrison?’

  ‘Basic fi le. I know he was in Burma doing stuff with the junta and the Chinese. But my entry point was Sabaya. He’d been off the map since you fi nished him.’

  ‘Wasn’t me.’

  ‘That’s not what they say.’

  ‘What do they say?’ said Mac.

  ‘Then I’d have to kill you.’

  They looked at each other for two seconds.

  ‘Sabaya came back on the map again in ‘05,’ said Paul. ‘He’d been lying low down in Sulu for a couple of years. Been into Burma, somehow hooked up with Garrison. But Garrison was never my end.

  Sabaya was my end.’

  ‘Where does the girl, Judith Hannah, fi t in?’

  ‘We met them at the airport ten days ago,’ said Paul, pointing out the window. ‘Garrison was shooting her up with something, so I hear.

  He wanted something from her.’

  ‘What were they using?’

  ‘Don’t know - scopolamine, I guess. That’s the Agency thing, isn’t it? But I wasn’t around. I was chasing you round the manor, remember that?’

  ‘What did they want from her?’

  ‘Don’t know. I never got to Sabaya’s inner circle. He thought I was a mercenary, hired muscle.’

  Mac suspected the guy was stonewalling, but he pushed on. ‘What about the other girl?’

  ‘I tried to stop that, believe me. I’m Army, mate - got a policy about kids.’

  ‘No, not Minky’s girl. Adult, blonde, English. Calls herself Diane.’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Who’s she with?’

  ‘Garrison, as far as I know.’

  Paul made a face. ‘Just ‘cos she sounds English, mate, doesn’t mean she works for the English. Know what I mean?’

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘Sorry, mate. Don’t know about an English girl.’

  Mac thought about it. ‘So what are these blokes up to?’

  ‘You can’t ask that in the Sabaya camp,’ said Paul. ‘They’ll drop you for that.’

  ‘What’s in that old mine?’

  ‘Nothing. Fucking beats me.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I had a quick look a week ago - empty. They’ve laid track in there, but there’s nothing in it.’

  Mac was exhausted, close to passing out. He stood to a crouch, pulled the sliding side door back, got out backwards and gestured f
or Paul to follow.

  They walked to the hangar door. Mac reached into his chino pockets, came out with about four hundred US dollars. Handed it over.

  Paul took it, turned to go, said, ‘I owe ya.’

  ‘No worries, champ.’

  Paul looked down at Mac’s wrist and nodded. ‘Got a girlfriend for that?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Mac, gesturing with the Browning. ‘Fuck off.’

  Defi nitely paras.

  Mac headed through the military checkpoint of Hasanuddin in the HiAce and drove into the hinterlands behind the airport thinking back to his conversation with Cookie. Cookie had called VX nasty shit. But it was way beyond nasty. A substance that attacked the central nervous system, VX was something the most depraved scientists had concocted and yet even the most psycho generals and politicians could never fi nd an excuse to deploy. Death started with a runny nose and a headache. Before you knew it, your bladder and bowels were doing their own thing. Then your lungs wouldn’t work. If you inhaled it, you died in about fi fteen minutes. If it landed on your skin in very small doses, you’d die in four to ten hours. If you ingested it by way of drinking or eating, you might have two or three days up your sleeve.

  The scientists had a measurement called a Threshold Limit Value for how much an average adult man could be in contact with the agent for an eight-hour day in a forty-hour week. The TLV of VX nerve agent was 0.00001 milligrams per cubic metre of water, an infi nitesimal amount - essentially a bit of vapour in the air. It was odourless and colourless.

  VX had been developed to do one thing: wipe out entire urban populations while leaving the buildings and other infrastructure in place.

  The big weakness of VX was the way it had to be used. If Mac remembered correctly, the optimum usage of VX entailed it being turned into trillions of microbe-sized droplets so it was suspended in the air which then had to drift with air currents over the unlucky populations. To make VX as deadly as it could be, you needed it to be sprayed like fertiliser. The technical term for this state was an aerosol.

  Aerosol was easy to say, diffi cult to achieve. Perhaps not so hard with a container of VX wrapped in CL-20.

  He found a lay-by and parked by a river under the trees, out of the heat of the afternoon. Then he got in the back of the van, laid his head on his backpack and felt himself going under.

  Mac awoke with a start, panicked by the ring-tone of his Nokia. It was dark and hot, he was drenched in sweat and his right arm was useless from pins and needles. An eerie yellowish light illuminated the HiAce. He fumbled, got the glowing phone, croaked, ‘Yep.’

  ‘McQueen. Sawtell. You called.’

  Mac tried to clear his head. What’s the time? Where am I?

  ‘Ah, yeah John. ‘Zit going?’ said Mac, trying to push his hair back with his bad hand. He couldn’t make a comb.

  ‘Good, my man. Uh, you okay?’

  Mac could have cried. It seemed like forever since anyone had asked him that. ‘Mate, I’m all over the shop. I need … I mean …

  Look, where are you?’

  ‘Come on, McQueen.’

  ‘Okay, if there’s a guy from the Twentieth nearby, tell him this. Tell him Abu Sabaya is on a ship with a container of VX and twenty cases of CL-20.’

  ‘Sabaya? Alive?! ‘ said Sawtell.

  ‘What I said,’ replied Mac.

  ‘Well, how? When? Um, I …’ Sawtell paused.

  ‘Do this for me, champ, and I won’t bother you again. Swear to God,’ said Mac, his head clearing.

  Mac heard Sawtell exhale. Probably tired too. Mac looked at his G-Shock: 1.07 am. There was background noise behind Sawtell. Mac bet he was in a situation room with the Twentieth, DIA, the SEALs and Green Berets, and nowhere to deploy.

  ‘Shit, McQueen. Sabaya?! ‘ said Sawtell, still reeling from the revelation.

  ‘He’s with Garrison,’ said Mac. ‘They left Makassar this morning with a bunch of cases of CL-20. I reckon they’ll RV with a container ship carrying some lost goods from the US Army.’

  Sawtell’s breath hissed over his teeth. ‘Gimme a second, okay?’

  Mac heard a raised voice. A big pause. Some murmured questions.

  Bigger pause, then a Southerner’s voice came on the line: ‘Hatfi eld.

  Twentieth support command. Who’s this?’

  ‘Call me Mac.’

  ‘Don’t jerk me around, son, I said who is this?’

  ‘Ask Sawtell.’ Mac wasn’t going to get into a game of proving who he was. He’d let Sawtell vouch for him.

  Hatfi eld turned away from the receiver and Mac could tell from the bloke’s tone that Sawtell was giving a decent rendition of who Mac was.

  Just as well Sawtell had no idea what the Commonwealth of Australia thought about Alan McQueen at that minute.

  Mac heard Hatfi eld say, ‘This is it, last chance, Captain. You quite sure?’

  Pause. Mac could envisage a bunch of special forces jocks, CBNRE

  propeller heads and a team of poker-faced DIA spooks all looking at Captain John Sawtell, thinking: There goes the oak leaves.

  Hatfi eld came back on the line. ‘Okay, tell me, Mr McQueen. What have we got?’

  Mac told him about Abu Sabaya being alive. ‘You remember the Sabaya slaying in ‘02?’

  ‘Yes, saw the news,’ said Hatfi eld.

  ‘Captain Sawtell was there.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘That’s not important,’ said Mac. ‘Thing is, sir, I developed a lot of the HumInt on Sabaya. I met him once, brokered deals with him.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He always had a much bigger commercial operation than he did a terrorist one. Terrorism was his calling card, but everything he did, he did for money.’

  ‘Ransoms, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Sure, and protection rackets for the miners, oil companies, what have you. But his biggest moneymaker was piracy, though not piracy of the bluewater kind. What he did was much smarter. He infi ltrated the stevedores and freight forwarders and had some Philippine Customs people on his side too. He’d switch containers before they even got on a ship.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Yeah. So there’d be a container of DVD players shipping out of MICT for Long Beach -‘

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘MICT, sir. Manila International Container Terminal.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So the container would ship, and it would be a legitimate box with the right weights and scans. But it would be fi lled with logs or old TV sets. The freight forwarders and importers wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until the containers were opened in Anaheim.

  Sabaya wouldn’t even touch the containers. They’d be on another boat, shipping for Singapore or Brisbane, the consignment sold already.’

  ‘Smart guy.’

  ‘Very smart. His best trick is the microdot tracking. I bet you can’t get a signal, right?’

  ‘Damned right.’

  ‘Sabaya worked out early how to nullify that whole microdot thing. I think he did it by degaussing the containers with a cheap electromagnet. That make sense?’

  Mac heard a sigh of annoyance. ‘Yes, Mr McQueen. That makes sense.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, sir, MICT is one of the most secure dock facilities in the world. Can’t take anything in or out without it being weighed, photographed, scanned and logged.’

  ‘I know. That’s why it was cleared to ship our stuff.’

  ‘Sir, Sabaya’s the best. He knows he can’t get the containers through the security gates so he fi nds what he wants on the docks and onships them instead.’

  Hatfi eld was enlisted. Mac could feel it. He’d fl own in from Guam to fi nd a lost load of VX and fi nally someone was telling him something he didn’t know. The Twentieth support command had enormous powers in the United States and beyond. Hatfi eld could shut down ports, impound 747s, close down entire trucking hubs if he had reasonable grounds. But right now he had nothing. Mac wanted Hatfi eld to need him on one of those Army
helos.

  ‘So where’s my container?’ said Hatfi eld.

  Bingo! thought Mac. ‘My guess is it was on a ship in the Macassar Strait this morning. It was met by Sabaya and Garrison.’

  Mac sensed eyes, looked up: saw a face peering in the van window.

  He freaked, grabbed the Browning, loosed three rounds. The glass imploded and the noise woke the forest. Mac rose, Browning in a cup-and-saucer, his wrist aching from making a grip. He opened the side door and switched off the interior light. It was pitch-black outside and, changing the Browning to his left hand, he dropped to the ground. He walked a few paces away from the van, ears rushing, heart palpitating and unable to see a thing. Then he tripped on something.

  Looking down he saw it and let his gun arm drop. It was a macaque, minus a head and right arm.

  ‘Sorry, champ. Not your night.’

  He’d always liked the macaque for its intelligence and soulfulness and the way it could wink. It saddened him to know that the animal was the preferred test-bed for the type of people who had created VX nerve agent. Didn’t seem right: bunch of psychos in lab coats standing around, seeing how fast one of the magnifi cent animals lost bowel control. His sister Virginia had always teased him about liking animals more than people. Didn’t seem so strange to Mac.

  He wandered back to the van, sat down and heard the phone going haywire. Grabbed it, said, ‘Yep?’

  ‘That you, McQueen?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Holy shit, son, you okay?’

  Mac tried to say something, but it wouldn’t come. ‘Umm, yeah,’

  he said eventually.

  ‘Talk to me, son,’ said Hatfi eld.

  ‘Yeah. Fuck. Just killed a monkey.’ There was something in the air choking him up. Fucking pollen.

  Hatfi eld talked him back into the game, talking about long nights, tough missions and the need to focus to overcome disappointment.

  ‘Gotcha. I’m good. Yep, good to go,’ said Mac.

  Hatfi eld had more questions. ‘Captain Sawtell said something about CL-20?’

  ‘They have about twenty cases of the stuff,’ said Mac.

  ‘Twenty cases!’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘That’s a lot of ordnance for something that was supposed to be experimental.’

  ‘That’s Sabaya for you. He’s a piece of work.’