Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac leapt back, yelped. The trapdoor dropped and bounced on its wrong side. Mac tried to get his M16 around as fast he could.

Flustered, jerky, he pointed it at the hole in the fl oor.

‘Shit!’

He struggled to control his breathing as Billy and Cookie came through, guns ready.

Mac put a hand out. ‘Watch it – someone’s in there.’ He nodded at the trap hole, breathing fast.

‘Who?’ asked Cookie.

‘A kid. Looks like a kid.’

He swallowed hard, the adrenaline bursting through him from the fright. Cookie spoke to Billy without looking at him. ‘Cover the escape will you, mate?’

Billy scooted out while Cookie and Mac trained their guns on the hole. Cookie started talking. Low, smooth, cooing. Mac couldn’t make out all of what he was saying but it sounded good. He talked and talked, then sang something.

Mac was getting sweaty palms on the M16 – Sulawesi in summer was so hot. There was movement around the trap hole. First one hand and then another came out. Two slender hands up in the air – international sign of surrender. A mop of black hair came up. It was a boy, maybe seventeen, eighteen. He turned to Cookie, pleaded for his life. Mac didn’t need a degree in Bahasa to get that.

Cookie snapped something at him and the boy stood totally still.

He asked the boy something. The boy answered. Cookie cocked the M16, aimed up. The boy pleaded. Without taking his eyes off the boy, Cookie yelled, ‘Billy, get under the building – see if this kid’s standing on anything.’

Mac looked sideways. Cookie said, ‘Could be standing on a mine or a grenade. That’s what these pricks do, make a kid stand on a mine and then piss off. The kid has to wait till the cavalry arrives. Boom. We all go up.’

Billy’s voice came back. ‘He looks okay, Mr B.’

Cookie motioned the boy to come out. He stood, skinny and scared.

The boy’s name was Setiawan, but friends called him Seti. He’d come along with his cousin because there was work up at the mine. He didn’t know it would involve working with thugs. He’d been given a gun but when the shooting started he’d become scared and hid in the remotest building. This one.

Cookie was good. He kept the guy going, offered him cigarettes, then got Billy to get some water for the guy. Classic enlistment technique – the hard stuff could always come later.

Seti had no names. Yes, there were two white men – one of them a tall Yankee. And there was a broader Aussie. There was another man too. Asian, maybe southern Philippines, maybe Polynesian even.

After half an hour of the smiling act, Cookie turned to Mac.

‘I reckon he’s spilled. But I’ll shake him down if you want.’

Mac looked at the kid, winked. The kid smiled big. Mac wished he had some rupiah to sling around. But it wouldn’t have helped.

‘Ask him about the Aussie.’

Cookie asked him and turned to Mac. ‘Didn’t see him – only heard. He only came up here once.’

‘Ask him if there was a place called “Eighty” mentioned. Or maybe a person?’

Cookie asked and the kid became animated. Yes, the Asian dude was called Eighty. Mac asked through Cookie and got the answers.

Eighty was about fi ve-nine, good-looking, clean shaven, happy, well dressed in black T-shirts and Aussie board shorts. Had some business in the mine.

Then, said Seti, the other guys had said there was a white girl in the camp. They wanted to have their turn but Seti was brought up right, didn’t want any of that.

Mac looked at the kid. Boy averted his eyes. Fucking liar.

Mac turned to Cookie. ‘Does he have any idea what Eighty is, what it means?’

The kid shook his head.

‘That’s it,’ said Mac. ‘I’m done. That’s good stuff.’

Cookie gave him a suspicious look.

‘He’s going to be helpful, Mr B. Honest.’

Mac shouldn’t have said that last bit. Cookie laughed. ‘I wasn’t going to whack him. Honest! ‘

The buzzards rose like angels as the helo came down. The clearing where Limo had bought it was the size of a tennis court – just large enough for the Euro to land. Billy didn’t like it but Cookie wanted it.

So they landed.

Limo’s eyes and tongue were gone and the buzzards had started on his rear end, but Mac reckoned Sawtell and his boys would be happy to have something pretty much intact to ship back to Limo’s mum.

Mac must have been getting better – he was sad watching this kid’s face disappear into darkness as Billy zipped the navy blue body bag, but he wasn’t as emotional as he’d been the last day or so. He was tight again, and it felt good.

Billy and Mac lifted Limo into the Euro, strapped him to the cargo cleats behind the last row of seats.

Billy moved to the cockpit. Mac looked out and saw Cookie sitting on the same log where he’d been butted a day earlier. Cookie beckoned him and offered him one of his smokes as he sat. Mac declined. Cookie took a swig of water, offered it. Mac took the bottle and fi nished it.

Sulawesi was a steam room.

Mac had been waiting for this chat. The chances of Cookie Banderjong being this helpful and this involved without wanting something in return were between nothing and zilch.

Cookie looked down at his legs, fl icked a piece of ash off the ovies. ‘You run a database on Garrison lately?’

Mac hadn’t, only read the fi le that Garvey gave him that night in Jakkers. Big oversight.

‘Let’s work it backwards,’ said Cookie. ‘Garrison’s trade is drugs for guns for gold, right?’

Mac nodded. Cookie sucked on his smoke.

‘He’s good at it – making someone a shitload of money. He’s doing his thing in northern Pakistan, right? He goes too far, bombs the police compound, and rather than being kicked out or dragged back to DC, he’s suddenly in northern Burma.’ Cookie turned his palms to the sky. ‘And ‘cos it’s Burma, we’re straight back into drugs, guns and gold.’

Mac kept nodding. One part of his mind wanted to get to Cookie’s insights, while the other was on high alert for where Cookie felt Mac fi tted.

Cookie continued, a man used to having the fl oor. ‘So who benefi ts?’

Mac thought it was a trick question. It was obvious to anyone who had worked this area for any length of time. ‘The Chinese.’

‘Right – they’ve got the weapons, they want the gold. Burmese have the drugs, they want the Silkworms and radar arrays. All the good shit.’

Mac nodded. ‘All they need is the middle guy who can turn drugs into weapons and gold.’

‘Garrison,’ said Cookie.

‘Too right.’

Cookie paused, fl icked the butt of his smoke into the forest, brushed ash from the leg of his ovies. ‘So Garrison snatches your girl.

Why?’

Mac’s professional life rarely worked with this level of discussion.

He had to keep his paramilitary missions secret from his colleagues, most of whom had no idea he was an S-2 operative. It didn’t make him feel elite – it isolated him, put him in a position of being unable to swap information and talk things through with workmates. In a world of cellular information, Mac was usually in a cell of two or three people. So he was warming to the openness of Cookie’s conversation.

‘Dunno. An affair that went wrong?’ Mac guessed.

Cookie shook his head. ‘Garrisons don’t think with the little head. Ever.’

Mac tried again. ‘She was on to something – Garrison wanted that info.’

‘I think that’s more like it,’ said Cookie, and changed tack again.

‘Judith Hannah was a regular visitor to Sulawesi, did you know that?’

Mac didn’t.

‘Know her expertise?’

‘China,’ sighed Mac, the pieces slowly tumbling into place.

‘Know what she was doing in Sulawesi?’ Cookie was taunting, smiling. He didn’t wait for Mac to shake his head. ‘Counter-surveillance.’