Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

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.