Mark Abernethy: Golden Serpent

He lingered just long enough to see what he was looking for. The snorer had a moustache. That meant the other guy was Ali Samrazi.

This was confi rmed almost immediately when the bloke sat up in bed, looking at Mac like he’d seen a ghost. Mac moved forward, Heckler levelled. He sensed Manny move in behind him.

‘Ali – it’s me, mate. Richard. Richard Davis.’

Ali Samrazi’s eyes were wide with fear. He scrabbled for something on the bedside table. Mac got there just as Samrazi put his hand on a Beretta handgun. As Mac broke the little guy’s wrist, Samrazi fi red the gun.

The shot cracked like a cannon. Ali screamed and his gun fell to the fl oor.

Fuck!

Two seconds of silence, then the sound of voices started up and down the camp. Mac stabbed his stunner into Samrazi’s chest and pressed the switch. Samrazi’s chest heaved like a horse had kicked him. Eyes rolled, he went limp. Behind Mac, Manny had pacifi ed the other sleeper.

Mac duct-taped Samrazi’s wrists and ankles, broke a couple of caps of Xanax into the Indon’s mouth. Manny came over, threw Samrazi into a fi reman’s lift.

Mac pulled down his M16, checked for load – a nervous habit.

Exchanges of fi re had started up outside the camp. Ward’s men laying down diversionary fi re, hopefully pulling the camp’s inmates away from the north dorm.

He looked through the door. The lights were on down the length of the corridor. Doors were opening, young Indons or Malays appear-ing. Some were armed. They were confused, even comical, in three am hair styles.

Mac pulled his head back in.

Manny already had his M4 slung at hip height and Samrazi over his left shoulder. He nodded at Mac.

As they pushed into the corridor, Mac kept left and started fi ring.

The tangos didn’t know what was happening. Most were dead before they hit the fl oor. Manny was on Mac’s four o’clock, more accurate with one hand than Mac was on a range.

They moved towards the guardhouse, squinting hard as their eyes adjusted to the lights.

Gunfi re continued from the western side of the camp. They raised the pace, moved past the game show host and jogged out into the desert.

‘Mate, get this bloke to Foxy,’ said Mac. ‘Keep him alive. I’ll give the guys a hand.’

Manny gave thumbs-up and march-jogged the way the special forces do.

The radio silence had broken and bursts of adrenaline-powered commands fl ew across the airwaves.

Mac circled around the north end of the camp building, his ovies drenched in sweat. He poked his head round the corner, watched it unfold: four SAS blokes in a half-moon, three in the classic kneeling marksman pose, the other in the prone position. They laid down three-shot bursts of fi re at the trainees who were fi ring wildly into the desert. Tracer rounds glowed white, but tangos kept falling. An RPG came whistling out of the canvas but fl ew over the SAS boys and into the great beyond. They were wankers, thought Mac, but well-equipped wankers. Their basic issue seemed to be MP5s; he could hear their signature sound.

One group of tangos, still in their underwear, had got in behind a white LandCruiser parked between the camp and the SAS. Three of the boys fi red around the truck. One bought it in the shoulder, a hideous thwack that twisted the kid into a standing contortion before he dropped to the dust, staring at the clear night sky. The others looked at him briefl y, then one of the tangos opened the rear door of the Cruiser and pulled out a box while the windows and tyres were being shot out. He threw the box on the ground, pulled out an RPG. The air whistled with lead. He took a shot in the ankle. He leaned against the Cruiser, his foot dangling by skin. Mac watched him pull the RPG onto his shoulder, and then turn on one leg. One tough kid. He moved along the bonnet of the Cruiser, prepping to fi re. Mac aimed up, shot him in the fl oating ribs with a three-shot burst.

The other two shooters turned and Mac took them down.

Mac’s new fi ring angle allowed the SAS boys to race in. They took the western side of the LandCruiser, keeping the fi re-rate constant.

One of them lobbed a fl ash grenade at whoever was left.

The dust and smoke cleared as insults and shouts came from inside the building. Mac sparked the radio mic. ‘Wardie, let’s get out while the going’s good.’

Ward didn’t want to know. ‘We’ve still got tangos in there, Mac – I reckon fi fteen, twenty of the bastards.’

Ward was talking into his mic but hadn’t taken his eyes from the sights of his M4. ‘Gimme fi ve, Macca – we’ve got these cunts.’

Mac didn’t want to hang around. ‘Snatch completed, mate, time to roll.’

There was a pause. The kind of thing that always happened when the soldiers realised the intel dude was pulling rank. Again. Joint missions required loads of trust between military and spooks. But when it came down to it, the soldiers – SAS, SEALs, Green Berets

– found it almost impossible to walk away from a bunch of tangos who were shooting. It wasn’t in their nature or their training.

‘Roger that… sir,’ replied Wardie. Almost snide.

The clear-out proceeded without trouble. They RV’d at the top of the dune where Manny had already hogtied Samrazi and bundled him onto the carrier rack of his bike.

The camp was silent but, looking back, Mac could see fi gures stalking around the north end. He watched as Ward switched frequency.

Saw him morse something with the manual radio trigger.

They moved down the dune, packed their stuff, got on their bikes. The adrenaline eased and Mac vomited quietly into the dirt. His overalls were wet down the back. He put on a fi eld jacket and helmet.

The SAS lads did the same.

Foxy led them out. Seven minutes later Mac heard the F-111s roar in from RAAF Base Darwin. They stopped their bikes and behind them, over the horizon, the air boiled up twenty or thirty storeys into the sky, fl ashing orange, white, red and then orange again. The ground shook slightly, and the group turned east again for the helo pick-up.

Samrazi would sing, Mac was sure of that, and the Australian government would own a pile of free HMX that Mac and Manny had buried in the desert.

Mac watched the Dean of History and wondered how much of this chat was Davidson’s doing, how much a testament to his own genius.

The fact that the dean referred to him as being from Foreign Affairs put the odds heavily in favour of it being a gift from Tony Davidson, Mac’s recently retired boss.

Mac had fl own in from Townsville that morning on an Air Force fl ight after a day sleeping and debriefi ng. Today’s mission: fi nd a solid civilian job, ease himself into the straight world without anyone noticing, and have a legitimate life to offer Diane.

Going civvie was harder than throwing on a tweed jacket and pulling the degree out of a drawer. It meant decisions about things he hadn’t had to consider before during his adult life. Things like getting a mortgage, selecting a phone company, getting the gas turned on.

Things you learn by living straight. Things a woman expected from a man if she was going to get even halfway serious with him.

Mac hadn’t owned a car since university but he’d owned six or seven identities. There was going to be a learning curve.

He exhaled, made his shoulders go soft.

The dean loaded a briar pipe. ‘Old habit,’ he chuckled.

‘Go for your life,’ said Mac.

The view from the dean’s offi ce in the old Quadrangle building of the University of Sydney looked over a sloping lawn, across one-hundred-and-fi fty-year-old fi g trees and down on to the city. It felt like a stronghold.

The dean smiled, pushed a stapled set of papers across the wooden desk. ‘An adjunct position isn’t much. Sort of a contracted attachment.