Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac turned. ‘Of what?’

‘The Chinese maritime security team.’

Cookie laughed at the look on Mac’s face, then said, ‘Your girl is one of the world’s experts on how the Chinese military intend to secure their shipping lanes for the next twenty years.’

Cookie smiled like the cat who got the cream, put his hand on the back of Mac’s neck. Massaged it. ‘Cut off from Canberra, mate?’

‘Maybe,’ rasped Mac.

Cookie laughed. Then paused. ‘Let’s work on this together, huh?’

Mac let a long slow breath out. It hissed between his lips. He looked back at Cookie, looked down at Cookie’s extended hand, looked into Cookie’s eyes. Cookie had guessed, correctly, that Mac wanted to know the truth behind the Judith Hannah rescue, and that the truth would bring Mac back to Sulawesi. Cookie was saying We can all help each other, or I can make life unbearable for you in Sulawesi. Mac didn’t really have a choice.

Cookie winked.

Mac shook his hand and looked away.

Sawtell’s boys and Mac fl ew direct from Cookie’s compound to Hasanuddin military base in Makassar in an unmarked Black Hawk.

There they refuelled and ate, and then helo’d into Halim Air Base on the outskirts of Jakarta just after seven pm.

Mac was rooted. His back didn’t agree with the Black Hawk seating systems, which basically entailed a canvas hammock that folded down from the rear and centre bulwarks. Judith Hannah slept lengthwise in a medic’s litter, still zonked out. Hard-on and Mac sat with Sawtell and Spikey in the load space. Limo was strapped to the outside of the aircraft.

The Black Hawk was the loudest and most uncomfortable way to travel in the US military. When it had come into sight at Cookie’s compound, Hard-on had groaned. ‘Fuck that – just once you’d think they could send a Chinook out, huh? Would it kill them?’

Mac said his farewells under the tarmac fl oodlights, in the stinking heat. He clapped hands with the men, thumb-grip style. Sawtell was last. His eyes were rheumy and Mac could smell the booze on him.

‘Well mate,’ the American joked, trying to ape the Strine accent.

‘Mission completed. We got the girl.’

‘Nah, mate. We got both girls.’

Sawtell looked at the tarmac, shook his head, kicked at something that wasn’t there. Embarrassed. ‘Sorry ‘bout all that. It got a bit loose out there, huh?’

Mac watched another American crew in black ovies pull Limo’s body bag from the Black Hawk’s external cargo rack and carry it off to a Dodge Voyager with no side windows.

‘Sorry ‘bout Limo. I liked the guy,’ said Mac.

Sawtell nodded. ‘He was good people.’ Then he looked up with a slight smile. ‘By the way, the boys have a new name for you.’

‘Well I guess old Sonny had to be good for something,’ said Mac, smiling.

Sawtell laughed. They shook.

The Americans stowed their Cordura bags and walked towards an unmarked Hino minibus where a couple of CIA guys waited. The way the US Army worked, Sawtell was going to be piloting a laptop for the next two days.

Mac’s own debrief was leaning against a white Holden Commodore, which had turned orange under the glare of the fl oodies.

Garvey.

Beside the Commodore was a white Mercedes-Benz ambulance, a local behind the wheel. Three Anglo men – two of them from the Service, the other the chief medical offi cer of the Australian diplomatic mission – hurried into the Black Hawk as the rotors came to a standstill. The driver got out slower, walked round the back, grabbed a gurney. By the time the most self-important Anglo realised he needed a gurney, the local ambo was right behind him. The others raced to get Judith Hannah onto the gurney, but the ambo had to stop them because they were messing it up. Within fi ve seconds the ambo was running the show.

Mac snorted. He turned back and Garvs was beside him. His tanned bald head glistening in the lights. The big tanned forearms stuck out from his hips like wings.

‘Buy you a drink?’ asked Garvey.

‘Buy me ten and I’ll let you get into my pants.’

Garvs pointed at Mac’s strapped wrist. ‘Got a girlfriend for that?’

Mac deadpanned him. ‘I’m ambidextrous.’

Mac showered, shaved and got dressed in chinos and a short-sleeved business shirt before heading for the Lagerhaus with Garvey for a feed. Around them Anglos were getting pissed and yelling at the big screens. Mac saw a highlights package that featured Victoria smashing New South Wales in the cricket. Someone yelled out, ‘You fucking bee-utey!’

Garvs, through a mouthful of tuna, yelled back, ‘Yeah, yeah – put it away, ya fucking poof.’

When they drank together, it was always the same. Garvs was the loud one who started the fi ghts. Mac made the peace.

The cricket fan stopped, wandered over, big stein of Becks in his hand.

Mac caught the bloke’s eye, winked. ”Zit going, champ?’

He was Mac’s size but dark haired with dark features and a cop haircut. About six foot, big in the shoulders and arms, thick in the legs.

‘Not bad, not bad,’ the bloke was sizing up Garvs, steaming. He had a group of four blokes behind him looking on. One called, ‘Leave it, Keith, fuck’s sake.’

Garvs looked Keith up and down. Snorted.

Mac came in fast. ‘That was some shit you guys pulled in KL, huh, champ?’

Keith tore his eyes off Garvs to look at Mac.

‘Don’t know how you keep doing it.’ Mac shook his head pensively.

‘Resources they give you guys, yet you come up with something like that. Make the FBI look like a bunch of amateurs.’

Keith eyeballed him, looked into his stein, looked up. Mac saw unhappy drinking. He knew from Jenny Toohey that the federal cops posted in South-East Asia were overworked, stressed out and disillusioned about how much of a dent they were making in the slaving and drugs rackets. They were lonely, tired and constantly in danger of being assassinated. All for $71,000 a year plus allowance.

So this bloke probably thought he deserved to have a few quiet ones with other cops and customs people without a countryman calling him a pony’s hoof.

‘You know,’ continued Mac, ‘you go through all that shit to break one bunch of slavers, and you think you’re not getting anywhere, right? Well you’ve probably made thirty or forty parents real happy, huh? Gotta take the positives, mate.’

Keith was looking in his stein again. Slumped.

‘So don’t worry ‘bout this prick…’ Mac pointed his steak knife at Garvs. ‘He’ll get slapped, don’t you worry ‘bout that.’

Keith laughed. ‘Thanks for that.’

Mac gave him the wink as he went back to his mates, then turned back to Garvs, who was making a face like Who’s the fucking boy scout?

Mac swigged his beer, pointed at Garvs with the knife. ‘You behave yourself.’

Mac had never fi gured out how it worked, the whole organisational thing. Garvs and Mac had started in the Service about the same time, trained together, always been deployed in similar areas and with similar goals. But right from the get-go Garvs had been pegged as management, while Mac was always going to be the operations guy.

Garvs had an offi ce and a team. Mac had assignments – Mac was the team.

He’d been so busy, for so long, that he had barely noticed the transformation in their friendship. One moment he and Garvs were bullshitting their heads off to get to the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix for a weekend on the piss courtesy of a Tommi Suharto company. Next thing, Garvs is sitting there shovelling him manure about Judith Hannah, shrugging too hard, giving the old gee-whiz look while knowing full well that Mac looked straight through all that shit for a living.