Mark Abernethy: Golden Serpent

Manny held the snake’s head and neck in his hand, then he chucked it aside, and put his Ka-bar back in its webbing scabbard.

Mac gave thumbs-up and turned, his breathing still fast and his heart racing.

He was way, way too old for this shit.

The sentry was down, but no one was coming out of the camp for a nosey-poke. Lucky break.

Mac checked his G-Shock – three minutes and twenty seconds to sentry deadline.

The two crawled across the ground to the sentry, whose eyes were still open. He lay on his side gasping for air, blood erupting from his mouth spasmodically and splashing on his MP5. Mac pushed his face into the dirt and tapped him behind the ear.

Manny bent over the sentry, pulled his jacket collar back, looking for something. Mac reloaded the Heckler, panting with adrenaline.

Took the M16 off his back, checked for load and slung it. Then he moved towards the camp in a crouch, Manny at his four o’clock.

They got to the building and squatted in the shadows. Manny pushed a tarp aside and they looked in: there was a solid wall under it. A prefab building covered in tarps.

Mac grabbed a tag from the right breast pocket of his ovies.

Peeling the adhesive protector off its back, he stuck it to the plastic wall, pushing the button in the middle of it. A tiny red LED blinked.

Armed.

They moved south, along the wall and inside the canvas covering.

The hum of the generators grew louder. They got to the south end of the camp, the generator now screeching in their ears. Manny tested the door, it opened and they moved inside to a strong smell of diesel. The engineer’s night-light bathed the warm room in a soft red glow.

There was a large yellow engine, mounted on skids on the concrete slab, the black letters CAT painted on it. Otherwise the room was deserted.

Manny pointed to another door.

The next room was three times larger. Filled with barrels, stores, boxes. Mac and Manny moved among them: there was food and water, guns and ammo. There was avgas and there was a stack of wooden boxes with MALAYSIAN OPTICAL COMPANY stamped on their sides.

Mac lifted the lid on one, saw three Stinger SAM rocket launchers sitting inside, cradled in wood shavings.

Sweat ran down Mac’s neck, soaked the back of his ovies. At the north end of the storage area was a door to what looked like a cool room. There was a digital combination lock on the handle.

Manny pulled a strip of wax paper from his front pocket, peeling the paper apart to reveal a line of dark red putty. Pushing the red putty around the door handle in a horseshoe shape, Manny squeezed it to make sure it was properly stuck against the lock, then pulled a mini detonator from another pocket. He looked at Mac, fl ashed both hands three times. A thirty-second fuse.

Mac moved back into the power room. Manny joined him fi ve seconds later. The din of the generator room made the explosion sound more like a pop.

The cool room door was now hanging open, artifi cial coldness mixing with the acrid stench of plastic explosive. It was inky black inside. Manny cracked a light bar and the scene lit up dull green. This was the acid test: either Mac’s snitches had it right or the whole thing had been a fuck-up.

The far wall of the cool room was stacked with green plastic suitcases with built-in handles. His snitches had been spot-on. Cases like that only held one thing: HMX, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosives ever produced. It was made in tiny, government-controlled quantities in Germany and the United States, for military use only. Every batch was numbered, every case was signed for. It very rarely left a military base once it had been escorted there. You couldn’t buy it.

Each of the cases contained fi ve small bricks of HMX, and a single brick was powerful enough to do more than just put a hole in an aircraft carrier – it could break its back. Governments around the world had a hard enough time dealing with the effects of C4, the plastique favoured by suicide bombers. HMX had fi ve times the expansion rate of C4. A piece the size of a fi ve-cent coin was enough to split a bus like a watermelon.

And Mac was looking at twelve cases of the stuff, stacked against the wall of a terrorist camp in the middle of the Queensland outback.

What a pretty mess that would make at Port of Brisbane container terminal.

He had an idea – it would only take a couple of minutes.

Mac and Manny moved to the north end of the structure where the camp management would be dormed.

Mac had briefed Manny on the target: a thirty-eight-year-old Javanese male, average build, average height, no facial hair, good teeth.

Manny had said, ‘Thanks for narrowing it down, champ.’

The north end of the camp had what Mac assumed was a guardhouse. It stuck out from the main structure like a nose. He’d have preferred that the SAS take it from here, since they were the storming experts. Mac preferred stealthing. But the target had to be right fi rst time. He didn’t want the troopers hauling arse out of the camp with the wrong bloke. They might not get a second bite.

Manny stuck his head around the north end of the camp, made a hand gesture to the other SAS troopers who had taken out their sentries and were now waiting on the other side of the camp.

All clear.

Then Mac stood back, let Manny do his thing on the guardhouse door. The trooper slung his M4 and pulled out his suppressed handgun.

He walked into the darkness of the canvas canopy and knocked on the door. Mac’s heart thumped, his ears roared with adrenaline, his breath rasped.

Manny said something conversational in Bahasa. Now Mac realised what Manny had been looking for on the sentry – a name-tag.

The door opened, everything relaxed and comfortable, revealing dim light and laughter coming from an Indonesian game show on satellite TV. Manny walked forward, head still, shoulders relaxed. His handgun spat seven times. A matter-of-fact professional. Mac took his four o’clock, less relaxed. He held his Heckler ready as he entered the guardhouse, but Manny had done the job. Three young Indons slumped in white plastic chairs. A fourth lay dead on the ground, dressed only in a white singlet and boxers.

Mac swung right, Manny swung left. Area secured.

The TV blasted raucous laughter, it was good cover. The corridor leading from the guardhouse remained silent. Mac waited for a couple of seconds to be sure. Nothing.

They moved into the right-hand leg of the corridor. It was dark and smelled of sweat. The fl oor swayed under their feet as they moved down the narrow enclosure. It was fl imsy, a cheap hire out of Darwin to Arafura Explorations Pty Ltd. Mac had seen the invoice.

His breathing was in the panic range again and he could feel his baseball cap getting wet around the edges. A drop of sweat hit his eyelid.

There was a door on the right but Mac ignored it. They walked further into darkness and away from the light of the TV. Manny moved like a cat behind him and Mac liked that. He hated working with mouth-breathers and leadfoots. You want to walk like a klutz? Join the fi re brigade.

Mac kept going till he reached the fi nal door. It faced north. He was guessing an important visitor would be closest to Mecca. He stood at the door, listened. Manny pulled out a steel tube the length of a small fl ashlight. It was a stunner, a sort of mini cattle prod. Mac pulled his own out from his side leg pocket, put his gloved hand on the aluminium door handle, pushed down real slow, then pushed it open. There was one steel-frame bed against a wall, beneath a window.

One person in it, snoring.

He pushed his head in further, saw another bed, someone in it.

The room was dark. Mac knew he didn’t have long. People sense things and wake up.