Mark Abernethy: Double back

After buying a watermelon juice in a flimsy plastic cup he strolled into Puputan Square, glancing sideways behind his sunnies as he put the straw in the hole. His tail was a mid-twenties local in black slacks and white trop shirt pretending to browse at a newsstand thirty metres away. The tail’s eyes flicked up momentarily as Mac looked away and kept strolling casually into the square towards the Bali Museum – a sprawling complex of temple-like buildings which doubled as museum pavilions.

Falling in with a party of Dutch and American tourists, Mac wandered across a lawn and through a large temple gate, trying to place the tail. He was a pro, although he didn’t have a military build. Mac made some jokes with the Americans in order to give him sight lines on his six o’clock, but he couldn’t place the bloke’s intention. It wasn’t a hit, which was just as well because Mac wasn’t armed. If the tail wasn’t a shooter, then it remained to be seen if this was about contact or surveillance. Either way, Mac wanted to seize the initiative and panic some answers out of the bloke before he could think too clearly.

Turning to listen to one of the Americans’ jokes, Mac saw the tail merge with a guided tour party which was moving towards Mac’s group. Mac continued walking with his party into the north pavilion which was cool, thanks to the high, vaulted ceilings of the tropical architecture. They walked through the exhibits of giant Balinese dance puppets, demon masks and shadow puppets. Some of them were centuries old and reflected a culture that the Dutch, Catholics, Javanese and Muslims had been unable to dilute. Keeping the jokes going with the Yank couple behind him, Mac was able to slow his group until the guided party were almost merging with the Dutch and Americans.

Up close he now saw that what had passed for boyish at a distance was more like chiselled early thirties. Sighting a lump on the guy’s right hip under his trop shirt, Mac decided to play this carefully.

After half an hour in the Bali theatre pavilion – where Mac heard a commentary from an American about why George Bush’s son should be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee – they moved out into the midday heat, which Mac put at around thirty-six degrees, ninety-five per cent humidity. Moving across another long lawn to a temple gate, Mac saw his chance and abruptly split from his group, then walked towards a smaller gate on the edge of the lawn to his right. Without looking back, he ducked through the temple gate into a serenity garden. Continuing to walk at pace, Mac bounced out of the heat, up some stairs and into a service pavilion which had a large hardwood-lined hall containing a drinking fountain and seats for mothers, with toilet entrances along the far wall.

There was a fair amount of traffic into the gents, and Mac moved with it, guessing correctly that the toilets would also have an external entrance. Then he scythed through the milling tourists and skipped down the steps outside, jogging across a lawn and through another temple gate, throwing himself against the flat of the far wall.

Gulping for air, the burn on his face now throbbing with his pulse, Mac waited for the tail to follow, wondering what he’d do against a gun. Scanning through the trees along the brick and stone fence, he noticed a guard house set-up on the wall between the temple gate and the next pavilion. It looked ornamental but it might give Mac the advantage of higher ground should he need it.

Moving to his right through banyans and ferns, Mac got under the guard house while staying hidden by the foliage. He clambered up one of the mini-banyans, pushing his right foot against the flat bricks and grabbing onto the ledge of the guard house. Throwing himself across from the tree to the guard house, he scrambled into the small structure just as the tail came through the temple gate. From his hide, Mac saw the tail scout the lawn in front of him and then the trees against the wall on either side of him. Clearly thinking there was no way Mac could have got across the lawn without being seen, the tail started walking casually in Mac’s direction, just a relaxed tourist interested in the vegetation.

Controlling his breath and wishing he’d put more analgesic on his burn, Mac ducked down and looked through the filigree masonry of his hide as the tail drew almost level with the guard house. The bloke was about to move on when something caught his eye and he moved closer to the wall in front of Mac, looking at a broken banyan branch.

Shit! thought Mac, as the tail moved closer to the branch. Mac had no choice. Driving upwards with both thighs he jumped clean over the masonry railing of the guard house, between the trees and onto his adversary. The Indonesian didn’t see Mac until the last second, but he managed to lift his right forearm as Mac descended onto his chest. The air expelled from the tail as he was catapulted backwards, Mac on top on him as they rolled onto the lawn. Grabbing for the gun at his hip, the tail was fast to react but Mac grabbed his wrist, threw a right elbow into the bloke’s teeth and then twisted the tail’s right forearm into a wrist-lock before he could recover from the blow. Gasping with the pain, the tail attempted a kick but Mac put more pressure on the wrist-lock and the resistance stopped. It didn’t matter how pro you were, no one wanted a broken wrist.

Reaching for the bloke’s holster, Mac grabbed the small automatic handgun and threw it into the bushes before using the wrist-lock to get the tail on to his feet and into the cover of the trees. The tail’s lips were white with the pain of the wrist-lock as they moved into the shade, and suddenly he went slack. As Mac tried to compensate for the man’s slump, the tail reacted, throwing his right knee into Mac’s groin and then a knife-hand at his throat. Stumbling from the pain in his groin, and taking the throat-shot on the carotid, Mac ducked and weaved to his left as the tail gave himself enough room to launch a roundhouse kick from his right leg. Mac was waiting for it, and was already weaving to his right, leaving the tail open to a right-leg kick. Mac took the opening and connected perfectly with his own roundhouse to the tail’s supporting leg. Taking Mac’s kick directly on the anterior cruciate ligament, the tail collapsed with a groan, his knee a misaligned mess. As Mac dived on the man, looking for a carotid choke-point to end it quickly, there was a familiar feeling of steel pushed against his scalp behind the right ear followed by a hammer cocking. Immediately, Mac removed his hands from the tail and let his quarry roll away as a hand grabbed a fist of his hair and the barrel pressed further into his scalp.

Kneeling in the pale brown banyan leaves, hands in the air and panting, Mac wondered where he’d thrown that handgun. And then, suddenly, it felt like time for a prayer – at least if he was going to die, it would be in a Balinese serenity garden.

‘So, McQueen,’ came an Asian male voice with a faint American accent. ‘You called?’

Panting, Mac slowly turned to his right. The gun in his face was a chrome Desert Eagle. 45, the forearm was massive and the large round face was as serious as anthrax.

‘Hi, Bongo,’ Mac rasped. ‘How’s it going?’

Denpasar’s traffic echoed into the silence between Mac and Bongo. Through the opened ranch sliders on the first-floor balcony overlooking Chinatown, Mac was dimly aware of the tail sitting on a lawn chair smoking a cigarette, a bag of ice strapped around his left knee. Inside, Mac and Bongo sat under a ceiling fan, talking over a low coffee table.

‘Look, Bongo,’ said Mac, gazing down the navel of the Desert Eagle, ‘let’s start this again, okay?’

Bongo looked from his position on the sofa. ‘What, you started for a first time?’