Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

He tried to control his heart rate with deep breaths. His mind raced.

Who was the goon? What was the larger picture?

Minky was struggling to breathe through coughing fi ts, purple in the face and vomiting. The goon lay on his left elbow, eyes rolling back in his head, face slackened by the broken jaw, leg useless.

In shock.

Neither of them said a word. They knew what came next. Minky would squeal straightaway. He was a pro. He didn’t know much and what he did know he would give up fast for a torture-free morning.

The goon was well dressed, probably Javanese – a contractor sent to woop woop to deal with the Skippy troublemaker. If that was the case there’d be at least another person. Mac thought hard but couldn’t recall another man in the silver Accord.

His heart rate normalising slightly, he moved to the back door, bolted it. There was no glass. He moved to his right, along the back wall that was covered with electronics, and found a window high up. He stepped on a chair, peeked through the window. His vision was thwarted. Couldn’t see the door area but could see the dusty Accord fi fteen metres away in the dirt car park area. He clocked the registration plate. A man was in the passenger’s seat: Asian, but he didn’t vibe local. Black polo shirt, Ray-Bans and something familiar about him.

Mac got off the chair. He probably had fi ve minutes before the cavalry tried to burst in. He pieced it as good as he could: the Americans had sent him to Minky to catch another American, a CIA rogue who was still Agency. So who was working for whom? Minky had a couple of Javanese thugs ready for a reception party. Or did he have no choice?

Only one of the thugs went in. They didn’t look bumpkin enough for Sulawesi, they looked very Jakarta. The goon gasping on the fl oor wore fl ash slacks and even smelled of Old Spice. That made him either American-or Australian-trained, which pointed to ex-BIN or maybe Indonesian Army special forces, the Aussie-trained Kopassus. However it worked, Mac was feeling fear.

Mac moved to Minky fi rst. He didn’t need prompting. ‘I sorry, Mr Mac. So sorry, please.’

Sorry? They always were.

‘Who’s this, Mink?’ asked Mac, waving the Heckler at the goon.

Minky shook his head.

Mac shot him in the bladder. Knelt on his chest so he couldn’t scream.

Minky’s face went purple.

‘Who’s this, Mink?’ Mac pointed the gun at the other side of the bladder, intimating a second shot. Minky convulsed, groaned deep and vomited on Mac’s safari suit pants.

The goon started moving. Mac stood, looked down on him. The goon wouldn’t meet his eye.

‘This a Garrison job?’

The goon looked at him, surprised.

‘Where’s Garrison?’

Now the goon went back to his studied nonchalance. He tried to shake his head but the jaw situation made him wince.

‘Where’s the girl?’ This time Mac raised the Heckler, pointed it at the goon.

Minky sobbed, puked again. Blood soaked into his dentist get-up.

Mac didn’t want to leave without having at least one part of the puzzle. And he didn’t know where he was supposed to be looking.

The goon looked back at the gun. Mac looked at the back door, expecting a charge-in at some point. The goon lashed out with his right leg, caught Mac on the inside of the right wrist. The Heckler tumbled, bounced and slid along the white lino fl oor.

Mistake one: Mac’s eyes followed the gun.

Mistake two: the goon had his hand on the Glock in Mac’s back pocket before the Heckler had stopped sliding.

Mistake three: the goon didn’t fi re immediately.

Mac swung an arc with his left hand, grabbed the goon’s gun hand, twisted it slightly away from pointing at his stomach. Grabbed the gun-hand elbow with his right hand and snapped the goon’s forearm across his knee. The goon was built in the arms but Mac’s adrenaline and speed broke the forearm bones as if he was about to start a camp fi re.

The goon screamed. The cavalry would be coming.

Mac pulled the Glock from the goon’s limp hand and hit him in the temple. Hard. The goon sagged back to the lino, blood running out of his head.

Mac frisked him for a wallet. There was none. He scooped the Heckler, checked for load. An unnecessary yet robotic habit from the Royal Marines.

A kick sounded at the door.

Mac breathed fast and shallow.

Another kick. A man yelling in Bahasa.

He knelt beside Minky, looked at him hard. Saw the bloke’s eyes, saw a deeper fear. The penny dropped. ‘They got your wife, Mink?’

Minky shook his head. The shock was making his teeth chatter.

‘Daughter?’

Minky nodded, tears starting.

‘I’ll get her, Mink, but you have to tell me where.’

Minky was on his way out. His eyeballs were rolling back.

A shot fi red outside the door. No splinters. Minky’s back door was steel.

Mac slapped Minky. A bladder shot usually gives you ten minutes, but Mac’s slug might have bounced into the leg’s main artery.

‘In Makassar? Is that where she is, Minky?’

Another head shake.

‘Is she with Garrison? Tell me, Mink.’

Minky vomited again. This time green and red. It dribbled rather than poured. A bloke about to cark it.

Minky looked up, said, ‘Eighty.’

Mac slapped Minky as his head lolled. ‘What’s that, Mink – you say “eighty”?’ He didn’t get it.

Minky nodded almost imperceptibly, his face pale.

Then he was dead.

Collapsed like a rag.

More gunshots. The sound of lead pinging around in the door.

Mac stood, raced to the front door, then had another thought and went back to the Javanese goon. He pulled back the guy’s trop shirt collar. No luck. Then unzipped the bloke’s pants, pulled them down.

‘If we don’t tell, then it never happened, hey butch?’

He grabbed the waistband, pulled it round. Bingo! A pink piece of paper stapled to the tailor’s label. Mac tore the dry-cleaner’s ticket off the pants, grabbed his black wheelie bag.

He prepared for the worst as he exited. It didn’t come. He walked straight into tourist crowds. Malaysian lawyers and dentists with their kids all kitted out in genuine Sulawesi tribal headdresses.

He fl owed with them, adrenaline bursting like fi reworks behind his eyes. His vision darted everywhere at once, breathing shallow and raspy. His brain was working so fast he could barely think of anything else except silver Honda, black polo shirt; silver Honda, black polo shirt. Silver. Black. Black. Silver…

He walked for fi ve minutes like that before he took his hand entirely off his right hip. There didn’t seem to be a tail. Not from the silver Accord, at least. The two Western-style Javanese hit men probably hadn’t wanted to take their business into the street.

Mac had got lucky.

He lurched to a stand of hibiscus behind a bus stop shelter. Vomited.

For all his reputation as a tough customer, he hated shooting, hated guns and loathed seeing someone die. But no amount of training or experience could stop a trapped and scared animal behaving like a trapped and scared animal. Mac hadn’t shot Minky because he was tough; he’d shot him because he was scared and wanted to control the situation by making the other guy more scared than him. It was a mistake. He’d known that as soon as he pulled the trigger.

He walked and walked. He backtracked, overlapped and did the oldest trick in the game: turned on his heel suddenly and walked straight back from where he came. It looked natural if you pretended you’d forgotten something. He walked past the markets, down to the waterfront, a thriving fi shing town for a thousand years and now concentrating on netting South-East Asia’s holidaying middle classes.

The local jihadists were trying to reverse that with the aid of their old friend, potassium chlorate.