Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

‘Let’s go,’ he said, already dialling the Queensland cops.

They screamed through one set of lights and up to the second set

– which were on red – on Gold Coast Highway. After a quick check he gunned the Commodore through the red lights and sped past Pacifi c Fair, the V6 screaming.

‘Couldn’t use those cops outside your house?’ asked Ari, made nervous by Mac’s driving style.

‘They’re there for my daughter,’ Mac said as he took the wrong side of the road going across Rio Vista and fl ashed across Bermuda before screeching into the old mixed section out the back of Broadbeach Waters, where a small warehouse estate sat amidst housing.

Decelerating, they turned a hard left into a side street and quietly slid to a halt where Johnny was sitting in his silver Falcon.

‘Where did she go?’ asked Mac, in a low tone, checking his Heckler.

‘Down here on the side,’ whispered Johnny as they stealthed down. ‘There’s no doors unlocked, there’s no handles on the doors.

It’s a freaky place – and there’s some strange sounds in there.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like – like it’s a chicken farm or something – lots of rustling like a barn.’

They checked the doors and Ari shone a small Maglite on the entrances. ‘No entry here. Maybe none from inside too, yes?’

Stepping back, Mac saw a long ventilation roof running along the roofl ine.

‘You two,’ he gestured, pointing upwards. They pushed an industrial dumpster over and stood on the lid of it. Mac put the Heckler in the band of his pants and put a hand on either of their shoulders.

Then, stepping into the platform of their hands, he muttered Three, two, one, go! and they catapulted him up. Mac just managed to catch the lip of the building, and he swung there for a couple of seconds on the heavy-duty guttering. Then he got a good swing happening, higher and higher, until he swung his left leg up and grabbed the guttering with his foot and rolled onto the gentle slope of the iron roof.

Mac was panting hard as he leaned back over the guttering.

Johnny catapulted off Ari’s hands and then shoulder and grabbed Mac’s forearm with one hand and the guttering with the other. He swung himself up and joined Mac on the roof.

Staying silent, they moved up the sloped iron to the ventilation roof which stood three feet over the real apex and was clad in glass slat windows. Looking down, they saw a dimly lit warehouse space crowded with children and young women pushed together like battery hens, with sewing machines, tables and overhead spindles forming virtual cages. It looked like a United Nations of Asian women and kids: Cambodians, Thais, Indonesians, Malays and Laotians. There were at least two thousand of them, and by the look of the set-up they all slept and ate there too.

‘Holy shit,’ Johnny mouthed beside him. ‘What the fuck?’

‘Sweatshop,’ said Mac.

‘That’s a sweatshop?’ whispered Johnny.

Mac nodded. ‘When you buy these cheap pants? Comes from a place like this, courtesy of the Khmer Rouge.’

As Johnny muttered homicidal solutions, Mac’s heart leapt up in his throat as he watched an Indo-Chinese thug pushing Jenny along in front of him on the shop fl oor below. The pulse raced in his temples as Mac clocked the thug’s face: it was George Bartolo’s Cambodian mate. The thug had a handgun jammed into the back of Jen’s T-shirt and his right forearm was in a cast from elbow to knuckles.

Grabbing the glass slats in front of them, Johnny pulled back and the whole thing swivelled upwards on a horizontal axle. Pushing their heads through, they looked down at a drop of two storeys to the concrete fl oor, or what you had to do to get your wings in the Regiment and the Royal Marines Commandos.

Johnny crawled through and quietly got his feet over the axle and onto a tiny inside ledge beside the window. Then, as the Cambodian walked past below with Jenny in front of him, Johnny muttered a countdown and simply dropped like a stone, accelerating through the air until his feet connected with the back of the Cambodian’s neck. Both men hit the ground and Johnny rolled away. Mac watched Jenny pick up the Cambodian’s handgun and then check on the fallen thug. Dead.

Johnny pointed to the ventilation roof and Jenny quickly looked up to Mac.

The children who had been sleeping under desks and chairs were waking up while other kids and young women were standing, wondering what was happening. The sound started and grew into a crescendo as the crowded sea of humanity, in appalling states of dress and health, started to ask what the hell was going on.

Mac kept his eyes on a mezzanine offi ce that looked over the sweatshop fl oor. He didn’t want a crossfi re set up that endangered the kids and he trained the Heckler on the window. But he was looking in the wrong direction. A shooter came out of a side door and instantly reached for a gun under his shirt. Mac shot twice, missing on the fi rst then hitting him in the left thigh. The shooter went down as Jen and Johnny ducked in behind a huge box of white fi nished shirts.

Two shooters came to the mezzanine offi ce window, slid it back and started shooting. The children screamed and threw themselves down as Mac tried to even it up. His Heckler was too small to get the range but it forced the shooters back from the window.

In the distance Mac could hear sirens but they were going to be too late, so he stuck his head out and yelled, ‘Ari!’

Mac had two shots left. The shooters came back to the offi ce window and this time Johnny was ready and put one of the blokes on the ground. The other shooter took fl ight down the stairs. At the foot of the offi ce stairs the thug with a bullet in his leg fi red at Jenny, and when she fi red back the thug was joined by a shooter from the offi ce and another from the side entrance. As bullets fl ew through the shirt boxes, Jenny popped up and dropped the shooter still in the offi ce as a thumping sound came from one of the sealed doors until it caved in.

Ari moved into the warehouse, tiptoeing over prone children without looking down with a perfect cup-and-saucer stance and keeping his sight line down the barrel of the Beretta. When the last of the standing shooters saw him and aimed up, Ari dropped him with two shots to the throat. The injured thug on the ground threw down the gun and put his hands up as Jen moved forward, shouting, ‘Hold your fi re! Police!’

As she did, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, in a black T-shirt and yellow boardies, leapt from behind a stack of cloth bolts, grabbed Jenny around the throat and put a gun to her head. Johnny and Ari moved in slowly but stopped when they saw the youngster was upset.

Teenagers could do anything when they were excited. Mac’s mind raced, wondering how he could distract the kid and let Johnny or Ari drop him, but Jenny took the initiative, dropping her gun and letting herself be taken out the side entrance. As the boy turned his face momentarily, Mac noticed a triangular birthmark that moved from the left shoulder and up into the boy’s hair.

Sprinting across the iron roofi ng, Mac slid the last few metres, off the roof, through the air and onto the ground, where he rolled and came to his feet.

The teenager stopped on the clay and grass siding and pushed his gun further into Jenny’s head. Her lips were white, though she looked determined rather than scared.

‘I kill her!’ screamed the kid.

Mac dropped the Heckler and put his hands out to the side, showing the boy his wrists.

‘You the boss now, Santo.’

‘How you know my name?’ challenged the boy.

‘I know Merpati too,’ said Mac, short of breath.

‘You lie! You lie!’ the boy screamed, and shot at Mac’s feet. ‘Merpati is dead! I see!’