Mark Abernethy - Second Strike

Mac nodded, not quite understanding how it worked between cops. All he knew was that Frank had contacts in the Queensland Police and if he’d told Jen to sit tight and let him do the running, then that was probably the way to go.

Jenny said she had to step out, get some things, but Mac had beaten her to it. He threw the smokes and the lighter on the balcony table. Jenny mouthed the word thanks but didn’t look at him.

‘More beers in the fridge,’ he said, the adrenaline still washing out of him.

Jen tore open the soft pack, pulled a cigarette out of the ragged silver paper and lit it. When Jenny was stressed or unhappy, she smoked and drank. And she did it alone. Mac didn’t want her walking around in this state – all it would take would be one young stud getting fresh with the darlin’ or sweetheart and next thing Mac’d be getting a call from the cops.

‘You okay?’ asked Mac.

‘Right as rain,’ said Jenny, staring into the distance.

‘Sure?’

‘Girl’s gotta do, Macca,’ she said, blowing a plume of smoke straight up into the night air. ‘Girl’s gotta do.’

It was 4.48 am when Mac was woken by Rachel’s burblings, her signal that she was ready for a new day. The fi rst hint of dawn streaked the sky over the Pacifi c as Mac lifted her out of the cot and walked her through to the kitchen, changed her nappy and put her in the highchair. Giving his daughter the warmed-through bottle of formula, Mac ate a banana and they watched Fox News together.

Rachel drained the bottle with enthusiasm and when she’d discarded it and her little legs were starting to kick with impatience, Mac switched the menu to a small bowl of mashed pears he’d heated up.

The news anchor said there were problems in Pakistan which were spilling into Afghanistan, and the White House seemed to be distancing itself from General Musharraf, Pakistan’s president. Mac snorted and Rachel stopped chewing and stared at him, big dark eyes trying to work out where Dad was at.

Mac smiled at her and thought about how the Indians, Russians and Israelis – not to mention a few Australian diplomats and spooks

– had been trying for years to get the Americans to stop treating Pakistan like a protected species. Pakistan’s intelligence service had created and funded the Taliban in the early 1980s with the approval of the CIA, ostensibly to create an anti-Soviet counter-invasion force.

But the Taliban, its Pakistani masters and some of the CIA handlers had evolved into what could only be described as a massive heroin syndicate.

Mac had watched some very smart, totally committed men and women walk away from a career in the Agency as it slipped from bad to worse. People didn’t get a fancy degree and choose government service over private wealth to become facilitators to drug dealers, slavers and arms barons. You didn’t go into the spook life to be a guardian angel to the Pinochets, Noriegas and Saddams.

And now that the wheels were falling off Pakistan’s openly corrupt system, the CIA was walking away with a supercilious smile on its face, attentions now focused on getting the State Department to start bringing Burma in from the cold and inoculate its junta against criminal investigations for heroin traffi cking. Mac reckoned within two months there’d be a concerted push via global media outlets to rehabilitate the junta as a necessary ally in the War on Terror. You could forget Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s accurate portrayal of Rangoon being one of the worst regimes in the world, because by the time those speechwriters and ghosters from Langley were fi nished, Burma’s fruit-salad brigade would look like a cross between Clark Kent and Sister Immaculata.

Mac turned off the TV, put a John Fogarty CD in the stereo and started cleaning up while Rachel banged her spoon on her highchair table to the beat of ‘Centerfi eld’. Starting with the outside decking, he emptied Jenny’s ashtray and brought her empties inside before putting the garbage out the front. Then he packed the dishwasher, wiped the benches and did a quick clean of the kitchen and breakfast/dining area lino fl oors. Jenny was many things, but houseproud was not one of them, and since Mac was raised by a working mother, he took cleaning, cooking and laundry as a given. Jenny never mentioned their housework arrangement to anyone, even as a compliment to Mac. Aussie girls seemed to have an instinctive grasp of how the male ego worked.

There was a blue current-model Ford Falcon sitting by the kerb as Mac walked to his silver AirTrain Connect car. The driver was waiting but Mac kept his black leather document satchel rather than handing it over.

‘Morning, Mr Davis,’ said the driver, smiling as he opened the passenger door to the Holden Calais. ‘Getting an early start?’

Mac gave him a wink as he slid in, then held his hand up as the bloke went to shut the door. ‘Just a tick, mate.’

Mac got out and walked to the Falcon, knocked on the driver’s window and waited as the glass came down. There were two male cops in the front seats, in dark suits. The driver was late thirties, had a round face, full head of black hair and a dark cop moustache.

‘Help you, sir?’ he said.

‘Watching out for her?’ said Mac, nodding at the townhouse which looked uninhabited in the dark of early morning.

‘And you’d be Mr McQueen…’ He said it slow, wanting to assert his authority.

‘Correct,’ said Mac, putting out a hand.

The cop looked him up and down and decided to take Mac’s hand. ‘Doug Fletcher. Just keeping an eye on Jen, you know, with that Bartolo prick causing dramas.’

‘Good stuff. What’s their go?’

‘Laying a complaint against the AFP,’ the cop shrugged. ‘Usual shit.’

‘All these brutish women wandering around -‘

‘- streets aren’t safe for hard-working criminals.’

Mac nodded. ‘Who’s the Thai?’

‘He’s Cambodian,’ said Doug, ‘and he’s trouble, that’s who he is.’

The AirTrain Connect car dropped Mac at Robina station and he walked straight onto a carriage containing one person – a middle-aged woman with a large green suitcase in the luggage enclosure. He sat three seats behind her, his back against a bulkhead. On his right the sun was nudging over the Pacifi c, a sight Mac never tired of.

Back in Rockie as a teenager, Mac and his mates would head out for Great Keppel Island during the holidays, sleep on the beach and spend all day snorkelling and spearing fi sh. Waking up at six am as the sun crested the Pacifi c was something you never forgot, and Mac allowed that sun to warm him again as the train stopped at Nerang and a bunch of rowdy Pommie travellers staggered on, drunk. There must have been a win to a footy club overnight because they were talking about a goal, and when one of them grabbed a bloke’s cap and started throwing it to their mates, there was a wrestling match with the bloke who wanted his hat back.

Mac saw the woman in front of him fl inch. He got up, sat beside her, started talking. Her name was Minnie and she was fl ying to London to see her daughter, who’d married a Scottish lawyer and was eight months pregnant. The Poms saw Mac’s move and calmed down. Mac smiled to himself. In about twelve hours’ time they’d just be coming in to land at Changi, wishing to God they’d got some sleep the night before.

Mac got off the train at the domestic airport terminal in Brisbane and paused at the head of the stairs that went down to the terminal entrance. He pretended to check his phone, wanting everyone on that train to be in front of him. When they’d fi led past, he lowered the phone and used the elevation to recce his approach to the airport building. The action was just starting to warm up at the set-down area, with all the business and government types being dropped off for the morning shuttle to Sydney, Canberra and Cairns. Everything looked okay and he strolled down from the raised station and went into the concourse.