Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (53 page)

Wide adrenaline-pumped eyes peered out of cammed faces.

M4s were ready all around Mac. Fitzy fi ddled with the Ka-bar on his webbing and they all looked at Sawtell, waiting for the go sign.

Spikey stowed the B&E gear, wrapping everything in its own piece of thick felt and putting them carefully in the bag. Then he folded the bag on itself, velcroed it.

Spikey stood and Sawtell nodded.

Mac’s breath got shallow and fast. His fi nger rubbed on the safety.

Spikey stepped to the door, held the locking wheel like he was lifting a twenty-fi ve kilo weight onto a bench press. He put pressure on, his muscles fl exing. He put more on but the locking wheel didn’t budge. He put shoulder and bicep into it, trying to be smooth but with power, face grimacing.

Suddenly Mac felt relief fl ow through the soldiers. The locking wheel had turned.

And then Spikey turned to Sawtell.

The wheel had come off in his hands.

They all looked at each other. And then the muffl ed laughter started.

They couldn’t help it, with Spikey standing there holding the wheel in his hands like a fucking river boat captain. Sawtell was laughing so hard from the belly that he had to lean on Spikey for balance.

People spluttered into their hands, laughed through their nostrils, tears pouring down cheeks, chests heaving. Mac could barely control himself.

It sounded like a bunch of kids in a tent after one had farted -

though stifl ed as if they didn’t want to alert an adult that they were awake after lights out.

It took fi ve minutes for everyone to get composed. Then Sawtell put his hands on his hips, wondering what to do with the freaking door. He touched it. And it swung open.

Light fl ooded in to reveal peeling white paint on curved concrete walls. Adrenaline started pumping and the M4s came up again. Sawtell motioned Fitzy who did the old back and forth hoo-ha with his head a couple of times before putting his head out into the main tunnel.

He stepped through. Shouldering the M4, he scanned back and forth and beckoned Sawtell out, who stepped over the bulwark into the light.

When they were all in the tunnel, Spikey pulled the blast door shut and extracted some chewy from his mouth, making enough of a seal to stop it swinging back. Then he reached into his kit bag and came out with the texta, leaving a small red cross over the door.

To their right was a section of tunnel partially closed in, like a room of some sort, with the main tunnel going past it. To their left, the tunnel curved round. Truck tyre marks could be seen on the concrete fl oor. The gold - and hopefully the VX - would be stored further in.

Sawtell motioned for the group to split. He wanted Gordie’s men to go back up to the partitioned areas to clean up, and then catch up.

They looked at their G-Shocks. Sawtell made a cutthroat gesture.

The cut and run time was six o’clock, meaning six o’clock back at this door, giving them about forty-fi ve minutes.

Mac wasn’t expecting to wait that long. It was a tunnel. What had to be decided would be decided pretty quickly.

Mac and Paul jogged ahead with Sawtell’s team, breathing increasingly jagged. The tunnel seemed to go deeper on a huge left-hand spiral. You couldn’t see round the corner more than fi fty metres. They stopped after ten minutes in front of a large blast door on their right. It ran on ceiling-mounted rails and wheels and it was pulled back as far as it could go. Fitzy and Jansen stepped up. Heads out, heads back, heads out. They walked in slow, M4s shouldered.

Sawtell and Mac came in second, Mac’s heart pumping big time, sweat running freely under his bullet-proof vest. All Mac could think of was how this environment lent itself to shoot-outs, not arrests.

The room was large - about forty metres deep and twenty wide -

and fi lled with pallets stacked with four hundred troy ounce gold bricks. One of the soldiers whistled low from behind Mac.

Sawtell ordered a search for the VX bomb. ‘You see it - don’t touch it. Got that?’ he whispered, and stood back while a posse of Maglites moved through the bullion room, the beams bouncing off gold.

Sawtell radioed Gordie’s team that they’d found a storage room.

He asked them to deal silently with the voices they’d heard.

There was no VX in the room. They kept going, rounded a corner and found a crossroad, both arms of it unlit and tyre tracks down the centre.

Sawtell looked at Paul, then Mac. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Let’s duck in here, wait for this vehicle to go past,’ said Mac.

Sawtell deadpanned him, then he heard it too. It was coming from further in the tunnel and was getting closer.

‘Wanna take it out?’ asked Mac.

Sawtell nodded, said to Jansen, ‘You’re up.’

They ducked onto opposite sides of the crossroads, an alloy suppressor about fourteen inches long in Jansen’s hand. Mac had never seen anything like it. Unlike Mac’s suppressor, Jansen’s went on in two twists.

Jansen wrapped the M4 strap around his left wrist, shouldered the rifl e like it was part of him, brought his eye down to the sights and steadied himself like a rock. Perfect standing marksman pose.

The vehicle noise got louder, travelling at some speed. Mac wondered how fast this Jansen was. He was in a trance. A killer’s trance.

Headlights splashed the walls, the noise deafening as the vehicle came into view.

Mac didn’t hear the M4. The LandCruiser tore past, Sawtell and the boys running out of their hiding and sprinting after it. Suddenly the LandCruiser piled into the concrete wall. It ground and twisted, the engine whined, someone’s foot heavy on the gas. Fitzy was fi rst there. He leapt to the footplate, Beretta in hand, leaned in the window, killed the engine. The rest got to the LandCruiser and Sawtell wrenched the driver’s door. A Filipino man in jeans and T-shirt fell out onto the concrete, a single bullet between the eyes.

The lads picked him up and put him on the LandCruiser’s fl atbed.

Spikey got in the driver’s seat, started it up and reversed out. Fitzy opened the passenger door and fi reman-lifted the other body to the fl atbed. Mac couldn’t see a mark on him, then realised the M4’s round had gone through his right eyeball.

Mac and Paul went through pockets, looked at labels, checked out footwear and dental work. Though soldiers found it distasteful, for a spook it was their trained reaction.

Paul found some money and Mac retrieved a wedding ring on a neck chain. The dead men were both heavy-set, early thirties. Southern Filipino was Paul’s verdict.

Mac asked Paul how he knew.

‘Teeth like a Maori or Samoan,’ said Paul, smiling and tapping on his own front teeth. ‘Like all the best-looking blokes.’

They backed up to the crossroad and reversed into the right arm.

Dumped the bodies in the dark.

Sawtell keyed Gordie again. Gordie’s guys had nailed a couple of the thugs, and had three of them bound and gagged in the quarters they’d found them in. Mac hadn’t heard a thing.

Sawtell asked Gordie to secure the tunnel all the way up to the entrance and see if there was a way to open the front gates of the thing. Then he stood on the back of the LandCruiser and said to Mac,

‘Might have to split up if this place divides into different sections.

You’ll take Paul and Fitzy, okay?’

Mac nodded. ‘What’s the VX look like?’

‘Know it when you see it. Olive drab, hundred-pound bomb.

Three fi ns. Oh, and McQueen, no shoot-outs round the nerve agent, huh?’

Mac nodded. He’d prefer no shoot-outs at all.

Sawtell hit the driver’s roof and Spikey gunned the diesel, turning right and accelerating further into the tunnel system. After two minutes they drove up to another large door on the right side of the tunnel and Spikey killed the engine, rolling it to a stop short of the door.

Sawtell hit the concrete, fi nger to his lips. The men followed.

Fitzy circled round behind Sawtell to his left and took point, walking through the door with the M4 shouldered. Advancing like that had the practical advantage of being able to pick off tangos as you walked.

But it was also psychological; any adversary with even basic training would know this was a guy who knew what he was doing.

Fitzy’s gun spat. A three-shot burst at one angle. Then he changed angle like a robot and let blast another three-shot. He leapt back behind the doorframe as a barrage of assault rifl e fi re burst through the door, taking chunks of concrete out of the opposite wall. Sawtell was on his wrong side, left-hand fi ring. He called up Manz, a leftie.

More gunfi re came through the open door, taking out the light hanging from the ceiling. There was still a light on in the gold room.

Manz was now on Mac’s side of the door, Fitzy on the other.

They shouldered weapons then Fitzy counted them in: three, two, one …

They stepped half a pace into the fi ring line, executed what to Mac’s ears was a perfect symphony of three-shot take-outs, their heads rock-steady, their eyes lined up with their sights. Only their M4s moved up and down, with the shoulders and head following as one whole set-piece. It took huge skill to keep perfect form and composure while you did what Manz and Fitzy had just done.

Cordite hung. Silence.

Sawtell and Spikey moved in between the shooters, weapons shouldered, Mac and Paul in behind them. They fanned out. Five Filipinos lay on the concrete, blood on gold, only one still alive. An older bloke, in orange ovies. He dragged himself up, leaned against a pallet of bullion, blood pouring out of his chest, changing the ovies to purple. He didn’t seem to notice.

Magazines were pulled out and pushed in. Breeches cleared, hands checked for load.

Paul walked up. Rattled off something in Tagalog.

‘He’s ex-army,’ Paul said to Sawtell. ‘Heard about this gig through his cousin. Pay’s okay, food’s okay. Could have done without the lead poisoning.’

‘He know where our bomb is?’

Paul asked but the guy shrugged, then spoke.

‘He says the command is down the end. There’s something in a big green tote bag. Takes two men to carry it,’ said Paul. ‘He says the command complex is another quarter of a mile into the mountain.’

A raised voice came from the door. ‘Sir, got company,’ said Fitzy.

Mac was glad for the distraction. From the Vietnam War era, the Green Berets had a reputation for an aggressive interviewing style.

Mac didn’t want Spikey to dip into that kit of his for a whole new set of reasons. Mac had been watching how these guys worked. They were intense and instinctive like a pack of wolves, coalescing round their alpha dog. If Sawtell decided the injured bloke was bullshitting, all it would have taken was a nod from the captain and they’d have torn him up like a two of spades.

They paused at the door, Mac’s fi nger slippery on the safety. Paul’s face had a new glow. Through the nose tape and the black eye Mac could see he liked this stuff. Most blokes with a gunshot wound would have been lying in MMC, goosing the nurses. Mac just liked to achieve his end but real soldiers liked the means too.

Sawtell signalled quiet as they listened to another vehicle approach from inside the mountain. Sawtell keyed the mic and checked on Gordie, who was almost at the mine entry.

Sawtell pointed at the LandCruiser and the men leapt to it. Fitzy pulled the wheel round and the other guys pushed forward, then pushed it backwards into the gold room.

Sawtell pulled most of the men behind the LandCruiser then sent Jansen and Manz - a leftie and an orthodox - to the doorway.

The noise got louder. It was slower than the fi rst vehicle.

Jansen’s M4 spat. Manz’s made more noise. They laid down fi re.

Return fi re came in, louder than God -
thwacker, thwacker
- tearing off chunks of concrete as big as loaves of bread. The noise was deafening and dust and mortar fi lled the air.

Sawtell moved out to support Jansen as someone yelled, ‘Fuck!

Fifty cal!’

Whoever was out there had brought along a heavy machine gun.

Sawtell tried to get beside Jansen but a whole chunk of the sixty-year-old wall just fell away in a cloud of dust. They ducked, covered in grey dust, pebbles and chunks bouncing off their helmets.

The whole troop moved forward and returned fi re. Mac decided to switch to his left. He could fi re off both hands, even though he didn’t like to do it. Kneeling as the concrete burst around him, a chunk fl ew in his eye. He leaned against Manz’s left leg to get the best angle as a beige Ford F100 pick-up appeared about thirty metres away. It had a belt-fed machine gun mounted on a rail over the cab.

A Filipino in dark red ovies held the thing with two hands, his forearms bunched up with intensity. Every tenth round glowed white through the air.

Three other men with assault rifl es sheltered around the side of the truck. Mac aimed under the truck, at the closest one’s legs. He hit a knee on the fi rst three-shot. The guy dropped, but could still shoot.

Mac hit him again, in the ribs, and he fell to the concrete.

The air was now fi lled with gunfi re. The F100 looked like someone was trying to paint it alloy colour, patch by patch. The machine gun on the truck swung away from Manz for a split second and Manz put a bead in the shooter’s face. The body fell back and down on the fl at deck with no fanfare. It wasn’t like in the movies.

Another man tried to get to the machine gun. Sawtell shouted,

‘Alley oop!’ and the would-be machine gun operator got a bullet in his lower leg, then his hip. That stopped him on the fl at deck. Manz moved out and along the wall to get a better shot. Aimed up, put a three-shot in the guy’s chest.

The last of the shooters turned and ran. Manz took three strides forward, took up the standing marksman and yelled, ‘Halt!’

The guy continued and Manz dropped him. It was a small conceit in the military that soldiers never conceded that they had shot someone in the back. It was the fl oating ribs or the kidneys. That’s where Manz hit him. Three times.