Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent (8 page)

- in Makassar, capital of south Sulawesi. With Garrison. Allegedly.

What annoyed Mac was how quickly Garrison had become the focus. Even Sawtell, the Green Beret, had assumed the mission was a hit on Garrison. Then there was Dave Urquhart. Urquhart, the political liaison guy, the fi xer of ulterior motives between the executive arm of government and Australia’s spies. Where there was Urquhart, there was politics. Which meant some poor operational bastard was going to get screwed.

One guess.

Sleep crept up on him and he got a glimpse of the time he’d been wandering around The Rocks in Sydney with Diane. They’d drunk too much at dinner and were snogging under a restaurant awning while they waited for a rain storm to pass. A couple had come past, the bloke in a suit and his woman following behind. They’d obviously been fi ghting because the suit was withholding his umbrella. Diane saw it and reacted immediately. Yelled out, ‘Give her your brollie, you selfi sh wanker!’

The bloke stopped and the woman moved under the brollie.

The woman had turned and mouthed
thank you
at Diane over her shoulder.

That’s what Mac had fallen for. A real piece of work.

There was one person behind the desk. A young Indon with a bum-fl uff mo. He was sleeping.

Mac bird-whistled and the guy woke with a start.

‘Sorry to bother you, champ. Forgot to get something from my security box.’

The desk guy slapped his pockets as he stood, eyed Mac’s bare feet, cap and sunnies.

Mac winked, friendly: ‘
Maaate
. The lights in this place.’

Just another crazy Skippy loose in the tropics.

The desk guy buttoned up his organ-grinder monkey suit, did a quick ID check of Mac’s passport and then led the way through a door behind the reception desk. They walked along a dimly lit corridor, down two fl ights of stairs and into the basement security box area where the desk guy unlocked a thick steel door. Fluorescent lights fl ickered to life overhead as they entered. It was about twenty metres long, fi ve metres wide and lined fl oor to ceiling with heavy brushed-steel lock boxes. There was a footstand at the far end, sitting on the taupe lino, near a table with two chairs.

The hotel was fi nanced with Singapore-Chinese money and one of the fi rst things they must have designed was the safe deposit area.

Mac could feel the surveillance camera on the back of his neck.

The bloke turned, questioning eyes. Mac held up his red plastic key ring with the number 92 on it. The desk guy moved down to 92, looking for a key on his chain. The boxes between 90 and 100 were painted black, the long-term hires that required both the client’s key and the hotel’s master.

They both put their keys into the medium-sized door and turned.

A brushed-steel enclosed tray lay inside. It was the size of four shoe boxes.

The desk guy stared at it.

Mac stared at the desk guy. ‘Thanks, champ - think I’ve got it now.’

The desk guy smiled. Fucked off.

Mac whipped the sheet over his head so it draped over his security box and down to his ankles. He pulled out the tray and opened the lid.

Bundles of US, Australian, Malaysian and Indonesian currency winked back through a seal-lock plastic bag the size of a decent cushion. It was all used notes, perhaps US$40,000 worth in total.

Mac riffl ed the rupiah, peeled off about US$5000. Trousered it, then resealed the money bag and dug around under it. There was a pile of Amex and Visa cards in various names, held together with a rubber band. There were also passports, drivers’ licences, a digital camera, a BlackBerry and a red Nokia that had seen better days. There were two handguns - a Heckler & Koch P9S with a black plastic stock grip, and an American-made Walther PPK .38 - both holstered in navy blue hip rigs. Mac had never used the Walther.

There were four empty clips and several boxes of Winchester .45s and .38s. He couldn’t remember how much ammo each contained.

He grabbed the Heckler, two clips and three boxes of .45s.

Mac slipped the sheet off his shoulders. Turned it into a swag and put his booty in it. Then he left, walking backwards.

Showered and made up like a sales dickhead, Mac ate up large for breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, toast, tea, orange juice and half a rockmelon. He was hunkered down in a corner of the Pantai’s huge tropical-themed restaurant, so he’d get a look at the whole room and everyone in it. He was surrounded by Anglo expats and Malaysians trying to cash in on the boom economy of Sulawesi.

Shortly before eight am Mac was running through his day: he needed extra phones, he needed a car - and maybe a driver - and he needed to get on the Garrison/Hannah trail. The Service didn’t have employees or assets in Sulawesi. But they had Minky Bonuya, a local contractor primarily run by the CIA and a hub of the best intelligence on Sulawesi. His long, vulpine face was a real standout in round-faced Indonesia, and Mac wasn’t a great fan of the bloke. But Minky was allegedly the one with the Garrison drum.

As he left the restaurant, Mac walked past a tourist at a fruit stand.

She smelled of the soap that Diane used. Crabtree and Something.

It annoyed him at fi rst but he fell into daydreaming about perhaps travelling with Diane, when he wasn’t working, when he was a regular university lecturer. When …

He snapped out of it. Gave himself a quick tap on the head with the middle knuckle. Thirty-seven years old, and in love for the fi rst time. He didn’t know how people did it.

Minky’s shoe shop was two blocks inland from the Makassar port area. Mac did a fi gure of eight around it, then did some overruns, double-backs and triangulated patterns, with his black wheelie case in tow. Just an overworked salesman looking for his clients. Only this salesman had a P9S handgun sitting slightly behind the front point of his right hip bone, hidden from sight by a safari suit jacket.

Mac wasn’t big on guns, which was why he hadn’t even practised with the Walther yet. Didn’t read the magazines, didn’t have an emotional attachment to them. He had grown to like the unfashionable Heckler for practical reasons. At four inches, its barrel was nice and short, and it was lighter than the big semi-autos like the Beretta and Glock. Sure, it only had seven shots in the clip, but that meant it used a single-stack mag rather than the jam-prone double stacks. It also made it lighter and thinner, perfect for a hip rig. Banger Jordan had hated the shoulder rigs for their record of accidental shootings. He used to say that if he heard about any of his candidates using shoulder holsters in their careers, he’d come over and personally kick their arses. ‘The most likely victim of the shoulder holster,’ he’d said, ‘is the poor cunt standing behind you - and he’s on
your
side.’

The street looked okay. It was mid tourist season which meant more people to scope but also easier to spot eyes: people who were not relaxing. Some of the cars parked at the kerb - Toyota Vientas and Honda Accords mostly - had men sitting in them, but it wasn’t unlike an Australian shopping district, the missus shopping while blokes read the sports pages. One of the car-bound blokes even looked straight at him: hardly a professional’s technique.

Mac pushed through the door of Minky’s shop into air-con dimness. Minky looked up from behind a glass counter. Smiled like a fox, lips parting to reveal big rodent teeth. Short and middle-aged, his hair was pushed back like an Asian Nosferatu.

‘Aha, Mr Mac - welcome,’ said Minky, coming around the counter in his white dentist’s coat. He shook Mac’s hand.

‘Minky. How’s business?’ said Mac. The smell of leather was good -

a blast of childhood.

‘Oooh, so good, Mr Mac. So good.’

This would go on for a while. It was the Indonesian way. Mac used the interlude to case the place: rows of shoes up and down the sides, glass counter at the end of the shop and a glass door into the back room where Mac knew Minky kept his safes and tricky comms gear, including a military satellite uplink-downlink.

The last time Mac was in Sulawesi, Minky had helped him rescue a mining concession that a large Australian company had paid good bribe money to secure. It was being undermined by a bit of Chinese skulduggery and the resolution saw the Aussie mining company having to pony up more money to get what it had already paid for.

Mac took it as a victory but he was always convinced that Minky had taken a cut of the extra fee. Real meaning: Minky had secretly foiled a number of Service-preferred solutions, such as blackmail, in favour of the cheque. After that gig Mac had promised himself that he wouldn’t return to this beautiful and brutal island. During the operation one of his Indon contacts had been hauled off to the cells at the Makassar POLRI compound and beaten virtually to death. Mac always suspected Minky of informing. He’d have done it to ensure he was the only local asset that the Americans and Australians would use. He’d have done it for money. That was Minky.

Now they talked shit.

‘How
are
you, Mink?’

‘No, how are
you
, Mr Mac?’

And it was going on for just a shade too long. Mac started to get that cold thing in his gut. That thing when you’re fourteen years old and you cross the dance fl oor of the school formal to ask the girl to dance, and you get that block of ice in your solar plexus. About half a second before she says, ‘No thanks.’

That feeling.

He looked Minky in the eye. Rather than feeling warm towards the bloke, he saw him now as quarry. Minky clocked Mac’s eyes changing and stopped blathering. Gulped. Gear change into scared. Pale-eyed people were not universally well regarded in South-East Asia, mostly because pale eyes couldn’t hide their emotions in the manner required by a face-saving society. Especially violent emotions.

There was a slight movement behind Minky. A tiny shift of refl ection in the half-open glass door. Mac whacked Minky in the Adam’s apple with a knife hand, grabbed the stunned mullet by the hair, pulled him backwards into his stomach and held his face still by wrapping his hand around the little guy’s mouth. Then he squeezed his thumb and forefi nger together on each side of Minky’s face, so he was making the sides of his mouth push inwards on his tongue.

Minky’s eyes bulged, his small hands mincing at Mac’s paw and his legs thrashing.

Mac kept the air fi lled with pleasant nothings as he suppressed any noise of resistance, making it sound as if they were still talking.

Mink’s mouth gulped against the palm of his hand as he advanced slowly on the door to the back offi ce. Mac put his hand back, drew the Heckler.

Minky convulsed, French-kissed Mac’s palm. The vibration of stifl ed scream microwaved Mac’s hand and he pinched Minky’s nostrils shut to stop him moaning. Minky spasmed and vomit cascaded through Mac’s fi ngers. It smelled like curried fi sh. With coriander.

‘Yeah,’ said Mac over his shoulder, as they crept forward. ‘So if we went with the sirloins it wouldn’t be the same thing as if it were blue.

I said that to Dave.’

At the door he stared into the refl ection and got a good angle, recognising the goon standing around the corner. He looked solid and fi t: expensive black slacks, white trop shirt with his hand poised under it.

He was one of the sports page readers. He had been in a silver Accord.

Mac whipped around, wanting to secure the front door against any backup. But he couldn’t risk it. He wanted the goon alive and talkative, so he dropped Minky’s semi-conscious head, walked around the corner and snap-kicked the goon under his left patella. The bloke’s mouth fell open but no sound came out. One hundred and six kilos driven through the front foot will do that. The knee hyperextended but the goon stayed on his feet. Mac put his weight onto his front left foot and threw a low-high hook combination off his left hand. The low shot to the right kidney broke the goon; the high shot to the jaw fi nished him.

Dropped. Like a cheating girlfriend.

Still struggling for breath, Mac looked through Minky’s front door to the packed street outside. He fl ipped the closed sign, slid the bolt, pulled the venetians down and walked into the back room with the goon’s Glock in his back pocket and the Heckler in his right hand.

He tried to control his heart rate with deep breaths. His mind raced.

Who was the goon? What was the larger picture?

Minky was struggling to breathe through coughing fi ts, purple in the face and vomiting. The goon lay on his left elbow, eyes rolling back in his head, face slackened by the broken jaw, leg useless.

In shock.

Neither of them said a word. They knew what came next. Minky would squeal straightaway. He was a pro. He didn’t know much and what he did know he would give up fast for a torture-free morning.

The goon was well dressed, probably Javanese - a contractor sent to woop woop to deal with the Skippy troublemaker. If that was the case there’d be at least another person. Mac thought hard but couldn’t recall another man in the silver Accord.

His heart rate normalising slightly, he moved to the back door, bolted it. There was no glass. He moved to his right, along the back wall that was covered with electronics, and found a window high up. He stepped on a chair, peeked through the window. His vision was thwarted. Couldn’t see the door area but could see the dusty Accord fi fteen metres away in the dirt car park area. He clocked the registration plate. A man was in the passenger’s seat: Asian, but he didn’t vibe local. Black polo shirt, Ray-Bans and something familiar about him.

Mac got off the chair. He probably had fi ve minutes before the cavalry tried to burst in. He pieced it as good as he could: the Americans had sent him to Minky to catch another American, a CIA rogue who was still Agency. So who was working for whom? Minky had a couple of Javanese thugs ready for a reception party. Or did he have no choice?