Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (51 page)

‘Got a match,’ said Brownie, clearly proud of his work.

‘They the same?
Hainan Star
?’ asked Mac.

‘No name coming up. But, yes sir, the computers say it’s a match,’

said Brownie.

‘Where’s this one?’ Mac pointed at the second image.

‘Don’s double-checking, but the grid says the Sulu Islands.’

Paul and Mac looked at one another. Behind them Don was rousing resources from wherever he could fi nd them. The satellite imagery was being shared from Guam to DC to Manila.

Mac pointed at the time coding on the bottom right of the second screen. ‘Is that real time?’

‘Sure is,’ said Brownie, ‘we’re live.’

‘Holy crap,’ said Mac.

‘Back into Mindanao. Same old same old,’ said Sawtell.

The Black Hawks pulled out before the Chinooks, Sawtell right behind the pilot. ‘Buckle in, ladies. It’s going to be a long fl ight.’

The two Army Black Hawks lifted off. The Navy SEALs were still getting their divers out of the water. As the helo pulled away Mac saw Hatfi eld standing outside his Chinook, dressed in T-shirt and BDU

pants. Tired, stressed.

Mac sat back, taking occasional sit-reps from Sawtell as it was relayed to him from Brownie. There was a special Marines recon team out of Zamboanga being saddled up to get into the Sulu Islands quick-smart. But they’d been rostered on base duties and hadn’t been prepped for quick-reaction so half of them were in the gym or at the movies in town. The two QR forces - SEALs and Green Berets - were in Singapore.

The Black Hawk chugged on over the Java Sea. Their fi rst stop would be Balikpapan on the east coast of Borneo. Then they’d hop straight into Sulu, the chain of islands joining the south of the Philippines archipelago to the top of Indonesia. Zamboanga City poked south-west into the Sulu Islands. It was darkly familiar to all of them.

The Sulu Islands had been a haven for pirates and bandits for hundreds of years. It was to this remote and inaccessible chain that Abu Sabaya had always withdrawn when there was too much heat on Mindanao. One of the biggest battles Sawtell’s Alpha team had fought was on the Sulu island of Basilan. Other sorties had taken US Special Forces and their Filipino counterparts down to Jolo, another pirate stronghold island in the chain. It was tough countryside with dense jungle and locals loyal to Sabaya. Just getting helos onto some of the Sulu Islands was perilous in itself. Locals with SAMs and belt-fed

.50 cal machine guns were not afraid of a bit of target practice at Yankee birds.

Mac leaned back, thought about how things went in circles.

Thought about that night in Sibuco Bay, just around the point from Zam. Thought about the hoaxed death of Sabaya, how he must have been laughing somewhere on Jolo or further down the islands at Balimbing, biding his time, counting his money, until that chance meeting with Peter Garrison. He could just imagine Garrison: ‘Boy, have I got a deal for you!’

Now they were going back in. The coordinates translated to an island between Jolo and Cabucan. The area was so isolated that Filipino legend had it that the Japanese generals hid a lot of their Yamashita Gold in the highlands.

Mac caught Paul’s eye. Held it. Both of them thinking,
Two helos of
special forces will not be enough
.

Mac looked out over the Macassar Strait while the Black Hawks were refuelled at Balikpapan Air Base. He’d done as much mental prepping for their assignment as he could for the moment, and now his mind wandered to how things had ended with Diane, which still rankled with him.
Wrong girl, wrong number
? What was that about?

Giving it up as a distraction, Mac refocused.

It was late afternoon, clouds built high in the sky. They’d release in about three hours, but in the meantime there was a breeze that worked on the humidity.

In an hour they’d be in the Sulu Islands, and Mac was dreading it. Sawtell had tried to remain calm as they landed in Balikpapan. The early reports from the Marines recon guys was a big zero. No one on
Hainan Star
, no trace of gold. No VX bomb. The US Navy was getting people in there too. But the Marines were being asked to stand-by, not engage.

‘You know, you have to put that gold somewhere, right?’ said Mac to Paul. ‘It’s a physical thing, takes up space. It’s not like electronic money between computers.’

‘Well, yeah. You’d need trucks, need loading gear, need people to do it,’ said Paul.

‘Absolutely. Then you need a safe little hidey-hole to stash it.’

‘Any ideas?’ asked Paul.

Mac turned, looked around. ‘I’ve only got one idea, but it’s pretty far-fetched.’

‘Try me.’

Sawtell wandered over. Tossed them a water bottle each.

‘You know, this is Yamashita country.’

‘The Jap guy. General. Hid all that gold in caves round South-East Asia?’ said Sawtell.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mac. ‘It was stolen from their occupied territories. The OSS came through after the Japs were driven out, grabbed a lot of it.’

Paul laughed. ‘Man, I grew up on that stuff. My mum? Forget it, brother! The Filipinos love stories of hidden caves fi lled with gold.’

‘Yeah, some of it’s bullshit,’ said Mac. ‘But there
were
some caches found.’

‘So what’s it got to do with us?’ asked Sawtell.

‘Yamashita’s engineers found real mines and pretended to be exploiting them. That was cover within cover. Most of the Japanese Army had no idea what they really were.’

‘Yeah?’ said Sawtell.

‘The locals thought they were working in a mine,’ continued Mac.

‘But they were building gold repositories. Had false walls, booby traps, secret tunnels. They’d stash the gold, put in the false wall and drop a part of the old mine in front of it with dynamite. They’d come up with a story that the mine had collapsed, and there was no more tin or copper in there.’

Mac opened his bottle. ‘The idea was they’d go back and dig out the gold when the dust of war had settled.’

Sawtell stared at Mac, thought dawning. ‘So, that mine at Sabulu?

That what we’re talking about?’

Mac nodded. ‘I reckon we blew their Plan A. I think Sabaya and Garrison had prepped that one for the gold but we found it. I think they’ve gone to Plan B.’

Paul scoffed. ‘What, a whole separate set of trucks, forklifts?

A whole new mine prepared?’

‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘If the haul is a billion dollars US, why short-change yourself on an exit plan? When you pull a job, you have a Plan B?’

Paul nodded.

Mac swigged the water. ‘And remember, the Japs have already done your hard work. Some of these storage mines were very well engineered.’

A shout came from the Black Hawks and the whine of the starter motors began.

‘So what are we looking for?’ said Sawtell.

‘I reckon we fl y across the interior, fi nd the mine opening and see where the recently used roads are. Shouldn’t be hard - it’s been raining every arvo.’

Mac paused, looked from Paul to Sawtell. ‘I reckon they’re already inside.’

‘You know where most of that Yamashita Gold came from, right?’

said Paul, chuckling, as they headed for the Black Hawk.

‘No.’

‘Fucking China.’

The Black Hawks swept down into the Sulu Islands - the Wild West of South-East Asia. Sawtell and the SEALs had sit-repped. The SEALs were about to relieve the Marines at the
Hainan Star
, then they were going to work inland to a small township and secure it, ask some questions, see where the bomb might have been left.

Sawtell’s Alpha group was going straight into the highlands. Using map databases, DIA had confi rmed a mine at the top of one of the island’s valleys.

If things turned bad upstream, the SEALs would support. Mac didn’t like it, thought the navy could take the ship, the Marines could move into the small town. He wanted those two other Black Hawks fi lled with SEALs to be right on his wing.

Mac fi red up the mic to Sawtell. ‘Mate, this is Sabaya country.

I’d feel happier if the SEALs were with us.’

‘Negative,’ Sawtell fi red back. ‘It’s a CBNRE mission so we’re tasked for the VX. The Twentieth sets the priorities on this. Sorry.’

Mac sort of understood that you couldn’t go chasing the bad guys when the actual item you were trying to retrieve could be anywhere

- could be on a ship, could be in a town, could be sitting on the side of a road waiting for a farmer to pick it up, take it home in his cart.

The island was very small but it had to be shut down. And that started with the wharf and the ship.

They fl ew over the island with a couple of hours of daylight to play with. About three miles across, it was fi ve miles north-south. Mac’s gut churned when he saw how diffi cult the terrain was - mountainous, heavily jungled with jagged peaks and valleys running down to river deltas at the coast. It looked like the pictures they showed candidates at the Duntroon military academy in Canberra. The pictures they put on the wall when they talked about Vietnam and why foreign powers shouldn’t fi ght a land war in Asia. Mac had a second lesson to add: don’t fi ght an island war in the Pacifi c. The Americans had tried that during the Second World War and suffered casualty rates they were still embarrassed about.

He controlled his breathing. Next to him, Spikey shook his head as he looked out the window. Turning to Mac he said, ‘Looks like Basilan. Holy shit!’

‘That’s enough, Spike,’ came Sawtell’s voice over the headset.

The other soldiers might have heard about Basilan Island -

the Abu Sayyaf fortress - but they hadn’t fought there. They were new to this. Sawtell had told Mac what the Basilan campaign had been like and it had sounded like a cross between hell and purgatory: snipers in trees, Claymore mines strung across water sources, poisoned dams, bear traps, hit-and-run guerrillas, and all of that while fi ghting blind against people who knew every inch of the place.

Now they were back to do it again, with Mac along for the ride.

Acid stirred in his stomach as he sensed Abu Sabaya waiting, smiling.

It was going to be a long, long night.

The
Hainan Star
looked intact and under wraps as they swept over it and aimed up the valley leading away from the wharf. Sawtell spoke with the Marines commander at the ship. They were waiting for the SEALs to come in. Waiting for the Twentieth to start their search.

Mac watched Sawtell point his pilot up the valley, thought he saw a glint of excitement. It was funny the way different people were strong, thought Mac. Sawtell had fallen apart in the face of child slaves. But he was the guy you’d follow into a direct confrontation.

His courage was infectious.

Mac craned his neck around, saw Paul up and about, stretching, looking out the window in the sliding door, looking down at the terrain. Then he walked to the cockpit bulkhead, shoved his head between the pilot and co-pilot, turned to speak with Sawtell and came back to Mac, kneeling in front of him.

‘Only one road up here, mate,’ shouted Paul.

Mac gave thumbs-up, and the sweat came down cold and sticky from his forehead. There wasn’t going to be any screwing about. One road, one valley, one mine entrance and one Green Berets captain with a glint in his eye.

Sawtell had a set of binos at his eyes as he mouthed something to the pilot, or maybe to Don back in the Chinook. The soldiers around Mac were tuned in to their leader, legs jiggling up and down, thumb-shakes starting along with small whoops, little regimental chants.

Mac concentrated on his breathing.

The Black Hawk gained height as they got closer to the head of the valley. Remembering the thing about SAMs and heavy machine gun fi re, Mac realised if there was an anticipated hot zone on this island, Sawtell and the pilot thought they were pretty close to it.

Mac burned inside, desperate to be on the ground - to stand, get running, get his bearings.

The Black Hawk suddenly banked away in a massive loop, like a dipper on a roller coaster. They fl ew up the other side of the loop by banking in the opposite direction, moving around the peak of the valley to another valley.

Finally they set down. Sawtell roused the troops, checking lists, giving orders, yelling instructions into his mouthpiece to the Black Hawk behind them.

The door slid open to reveal a clearing with jungle rising wherever he looked. Everything around them was fl attened by the helo’s downwash. Mac hauled his lightweight Army bergen on, tightened it as Paul slapped him on the shoulder and leapt out onto the grass.

The noise was deafening as Mac raced behind Paul to an RV by the ringing trees, keeping his head bowed and stowing his M4 with both hands, his US Army helmet bouncing slightly on his head.

The troopers assembled and Spikey counted heads. Sawtell was the last across, arriving as the two Black Hawks rose into the afternoon sky.

Spikey gave the head-count to Sawtell, then the troopers checked guns, grenade launchers, grenades, rat packs, water and radios. They cammed-up, pissed, took a shit. Some vomited and some prayed. Did what they had to do.

Sawtell pulled the team into a huddle, kneeling in the middle and spelling it out. He looked into faces, zapped people with courage, reminded his boys they were professionals.

He caught Mac’s eye, winked, and then said to everyone, ‘No heroes on my watch. Okay, ladies?’

The team walked in two groups to create a less-concentrated target.

Mac walked with Sawtell in the middle of the fi rst group. The ‘jockey’

they called Fitzy took point, Spikey swept. Mac felt in good hands.

Sawtell’s boys had been one of the fi rst special forces outfi ts into Kandahar in ‘02, but their real specialty was jungles like Mindanao and Basilan. Tough environments where tiny mistakes were the difference between everyone living and everyone dying.

They moved quickly around the spur towards the head of the valley and the mine entry. Sawtell wanted to do the jungle transit during daylight. Mac liked that, and he liked the way Sawtell’s boys maintained total silence while moving really fast. Not quite a jog but more than a march.