Mark Abernethy: Second Strike

The two men stared at each other, Gorilla’s face changing from terror to anger as he charged. As he did he was knocked sideways when Didge appeared, a blade fl ashing. The Aussie grabbed a handful of the Pakistani’s hair with his left hand and brought the blade down across the Pakistani’s throat with the other. Gorilla stopped moving, his eyes staring at the ceiling.

‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mac, spitting chest hairs out of his mouth and wiping his chin.

Didge looked him up and down, chewing gum as he wiped his blade. ‘Didn’t know your mob were cannibals.’

They searched the rest of the townhouse but there was no one there.

Limping out onto the street, Mac asked where Lempo had gone.

‘Your Russian friend got Lempo, but he was shot in the leg for his troubles. The wound’s pretty bad.’

‘And Hassan?’ asked Mac, his mind spinning.

‘Don’t know.’

Mac heaved for breath and thought it through. Someone had taken off with his family, someone who could fake it long enough to get close enough to kill the Federal cops. Probably the same someone who’d worked out how to wheedle Vi’s maiden name out of an ASIS or ASIO operative; someone who had connections that were good enough to track down Mac’s family home.

Someone charged with retrieving two stolen nukes from Hassan Ali, but who couldn’t say no to the money and ended up in league with him.

Someone from MI6.

Didge worked on Mac’s face with Dettol and a wet fl annel. Mac’s left eye was already closing up and his mouth was bleeding.

Eying Jenny’s mobile phone on the living-room table, Mac picked it up and tried Johnny.

‘Where are you, Macca?’

‘At the house,’ said Mac, almost weeping. ‘Jenny and Rachel are gone.’

‘Mate, Mari came here but we couldn’t get over to Broadbeach

– they’d closed the road.’

‘I think Hassan’s got them. We have to fi nd them.’

‘I’m coming over,’ said Johnny, and hung up.

Panting with stress, Mac took the SIM out of his zapped phone, loaded it into Jenny’s phone and tried it. He opened the ‘contacts’ fi le which was now fi lled with the contacts from John Short’s phone, and found a landline number with a 75 prefi x, meaning the Gold Coast.

He wrote it down, and then dialled a number in Canberra. The female operator answered and Mac said, ‘Sentinel.’

He was asked another question, and said, ‘Limelight.’

Mac asked for an address search and he gave her the number from Short’s phone. She got back to him twenty seconds later, the whirring of the listening posts and security measures creating a weird time/ space disequilibrium.

He wrote down the address and his adrenaline surged back in buckets. He knew the Surf Largo Apartments – they were just around the corner.

The address he’d been supplied with was the fi rst fl oor of the Surf Largo and there was a stairwell at each end. They split up – Mac with the two-shot Heckler and Didge carrying the spare Beretta from the hall table.

Mac was feeling better now. Didge hadn’t just cleaned him up

– he’d also lifted him back into the game, made him think that these bastards were there for the taking.

His heart pounding in his head and his left eye closed up, Mac pushed into the stairwell, which was empty and well lit. He took his time up the steps, crowding in on each switchback to give himself the best angle, and his enemy the worst.

At the fi rst-fl oor landing, Mac eyed the spring-loaded fi re door that pulled back towards him. There was no safe way to go through it, he just had to take a breath and step through, hoping he’d create more surprise for the other guy. He breathed in, breathed out, then pulled the door back and stepped into the hallway. It was carpeted in chocolate brown, the walls were taupe. The hall was empty and he moved down it, looking for number fi fteen.

Mac watched as the fi re door at the far end of the hallway opened and Didge stepped in with the Beretta. Mac jogged towards him and as the commando looked up from under his helmet, a handgun extended out of the door closest to Didge. The handgun popped and lifted, fl inging the Aussie commando against the wall, blood spraying up the taupe paint.

Yelling, ‘ No! ‘, Mac ran for the shooter, who’d stepped into the hall. Surprised by Mac’s presence, the shooter turned. Mac stopped and shot twice, missing with the fi rst but hitting the bloke in the face with the second, from fi fteen metres away. The shooter’s head sprang back and the man Mac knew as John Short was dead before he hit the ground. Mac was now out of rounds. Hearing a sound, he looked up and saw Jen, with Rachel in her arms. Relief fl ooding his body, Mac stood and made for them, but he froze as a man’s face stared over Jenny’s shoulder with a smile, a SIG Sauer resting in her ear.

‘Come in, eh McQueen?’

‘Sure,’ said Mac, looking into the sneering face of Danny Fitzgibbon.

Jen and Danny walked backwards very slowly and Mac followed them, forcing himself to stay calm, focused, alert. The door sprang closed behind them and they stood in the living area of a two-bedroom apartment. Danny pushed Jenny and Rachel towards Mac and he held both of them. Rachel’s eyes were huge and dark and Mac made himself give her a smile. If they had to go down they’d do it as a family, like Australians, telling the bad guys to go fuck themselves while the water rose around their ankles.

‘Well, let me see, Fitzgibbon,’ said Mac. ‘Gave up on the spying game and started picking on women and children, huh?’

‘Spare me the snide asides, McQueen.’

‘I guess it’s much easier than having to deal with people like me or Freddi or Ari, right? I guess water always fi nds its own level.’

A shot whistled past Mac’s head and buried itself in the plasterboard.

‘So what do you want, Danny?’ asked Mac.

‘Well,’ sniggered the tall Pom, ‘I’m glad you asked that, old man.’

Mac looked him in the eye, felt Jenny move in closer with Rachel.

‘You see, this has all worked out rather badly, thanks to you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes – fuck you!’ snapped Danny, momentarily losing his composure before collecting himself. ‘Why?’

‘Why what, Danny?’ asked Mac, trying to keep him talking. The guy was upset and might just make a mistake.

‘I don’t understand the Australians. They sideline their best spy, and then, when they bring him back into the game, he’s a due diligence guy for their export fi nance program?’ said Danny, shaking his head.

‘I couldn’t believe it when you turned up, McQueen. As soon as I knew you were at the Shangri-La, I’m thinking, This is going to turn to shit – McQueen just won’t let this go.’

‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘that was the gig. There were questions.’

‘It was an NIA, for God’s sake!’ screamed Fitzgibbon. ‘It’s a lay-down – the politicians want it and the fi eld guys are supposed to sign off. That was your role.’

‘It was a handover of uranium-enrichment codes -‘

‘Oh shut up! I mean, for Christ’s sake, McQueen. Sumatra? Singapore? Noosa? Are you out of your mind?’

‘What was I supposed to do, Danny?’

‘You were supposed to spend two weeks at the Lar, making ten or fi fteen thousand a week – whatever they were paying you – and put everything back on expenses. No one would ever have asked about it, and we wouldn’t be here.’

‘There’d still be a blast in Surfers, killing thousands of people.’

‘Oh dear, you’re breaking my heart.’

‘Where’s Hassan?’ asked Mac, expecting the ringleader to be there.

‘Getting the transport, old chap. That’s why we camped across from the park,’ he said, nodding at the foreshore grassed area just behind the Broadbeach sand dunes. ‘Just keeping some insurance, make sure I’m allowed to get my taxi, know what I mean?’