Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Paul took it, turned to go, said, ‘I owe ya.’

‘No worries, champ.’

Paul looked down at Mac’s wrist and nodded. ‘Got a girlfriend for that?’

‘Go on,’ said Mac, gesturing with the Browning. ‘Fuck off.’

Defi nitely paras.

Mac headed through the military checkpoint of Hasanuddin in the HiAce and drove into the hinterlands behind the airport thinking back to his conversation with Cookie. Cookie had called VX nasty shit. But it was way beyond nasty. A substance that attacked the central nervous system, VX was something the most depraved scientists had concocted and yet even the most psycho generals and politicians could never fi nd an excuse to deploy. Death started with a runny nose and a headache. Before you knew it, your bladder and bowels were doing their own thing. Then your lungs wouldn’t work. If you inhaled it, you died in about fi fteen minutes. If it landed on your skin in very small doses, you’d die in four to ten hours. If you ingested it by way of drinking or eating, you might have two or three days up your sleeve.

The scientists had a measurement called a Threshold Limit Value for how much an average adult man could be in contact with the agent for an eight-hour day in a forty-hour week. The TLV of VX nerve agent was 0.00001 milligrams per cubic metre of water, an infi nitesimal amount – essentially a bit of vapour in the air. It was odourless and colourless.

VX had been developed to do one thing: wipe out entire urban populations while leaving the buildings and other infrastructure in place.

The big weakness of VX was the way it had to be used. If Mac remembered correctly, the optimum usage of VX entailed it being turned into trillions of microbe-sized droplets so it was suspended in the air which then had to drift with air currents over the unlucky populations. To make VX as deadly as it could be, you needed it to be sprayed like fertiliser. The technical term for this state was an aerosol.

Aerosol was easy to say, diffi cult to achieve. Perhaps not so hard with a container of VX wrapped in CL-20.

He found a lay-by and parked by a river under the trees, out of the heat of the afternoon. Then he got in the back of the van, laid his head on his backpack and felt himself going under.

Mac awoke with a start, panicked by the ring-tone of his Nokia. It was dark and hot, he was drenched in sweat and his right arm was useless from pins and needles. An eerie yellowish light illuminated the HiAce. He fumbled, got the glowing phone, croaked, ‘Yep.’

‘McQueen. Sawtell. You called.’

Mac tried to clear his head. What’s the time? Where am I?

‘Ah, yeah John. ‘Zit going?’ said Mac, trying to push his hair back with his bad hand. He couldn’t make a comb.

‘Good, my man. Uh, you okay?’

Mac could have cried. It seemed like forever since anyone had asked him that. ‘Mate, I’m all over the shop. I need… I mean…

Look, where are you?’

‘Come on, McQueen.’

‘Okay, if there’s a guy from the Twentieth nearby, tell him this. Tell him Abu Sabaya is on a ship with a container of VX and twenty cases of CL-20.’

‘Sabaya? Alive?! ‘ said Sawtell.

‘What I said,’ replied Mac.

‘Well, how? When? Um, I…’ Sawtell paused.

‘Do this for me, champ, and I won’t bother you again. Swear to God,’ said Mac, his head clearing.

Mac heard Sawtell exhale. Probably tired too. Mac looked at his G-Shock: 1.07 am. There was background noise behind Sawtell. Mac bet he was in a situation room with the Twentieth, DIA, the SEALs and Green Berets, and nowhere to deploy.

‘Shit, McQueen. Sabaya?! ‘ said Sawtell, still reeling from the revelation.

‘He’s with Garrison,’ said Mac. ‘They left Makassar this morning with a bunch of cases of CL-20. I reckon they’ll RV with a container ship carrying some lost goods from the US Army.’

Sawtell’s breath hissed over his teeth. ‘Gimme a second, okay?’

Mac heard a raised voice. A big pause. Some murmured questions.

Bigger pause, then a Southerner’s voice came on the line: ‘Hatfi eld.

Twentieth support command. Who’s this?’

‘Call me Mac.’

‘Don’t jerk me around, son, I said who is this?’

‘Ask Sawtell.’ Mac wasn’t going to get into a game of proving who he was. He’d let Sawtell vouch for him.

Hatfi eld turned away from the receiver and Mac could tell from the bloke’s tone that Sawtell was giving a decent rendition of who Mac was.

Just as well Sawtell had no idea what the Commonwealth of Australia thought about Alan McQueen at that minute.

Mac heard Hatfi eld say, ‘This is it, last chance, Captain. You quite sure?’

Pause. Mac could envisage a bunch of special forces jocks, CBNRE propeller heads and a team of poker-faced DIA spooks all looking at Captain John Sawtell, thinking: There goes the oak leaves.

Hatfi eld came back on the line. ‘Okay, tell me, Mr McQueen. What have we got?’

Mac told him about Abu Sabaya being alive. ‘You remember the Sabaya slaying in ‘02?’

‘Yes, saw the news,’ said Hatfi eld.

‘Captain Sawtell was there.’

‘You?’

‘That’s not important,’ said Mac. ‘Thing is, sir, I developed a lot of the HumInt on Sabaya. I met him once, brokered deals with him.’

‘Yes?’

‘He always had a much bigger commercial operation than he did a terrorist one. Terrorism was his calling card, but everything he did, he did for money.’

‘Ransoms, wasn’t it?’

‘Sure, and protection rackets for the miners, oil companies, what have you. But his biggest moneymaker was piracy, though not piracy of the bluewater kind. What he did was much smarter. He infi ltrated the stevedores and freight forwarders and had some Philippine Customs people on his side too. He’d switch containers before they even got on a ship.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah. So there’d be a container of DVD players shipping out of MICT for Long Beach -‘

‘I’m sorry?’

‘MICT, sir. Manila International Container Terminal.’

‘Go on.’

‘So the container would ship, and it would be a legitimate box with the right weights and scans. But it would be fi lled with logs or old TV sets. The freight forwarders and importers wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until the containers were opened in Anaheim.

Sabaya wouldn’t even touch the containers. They’d be on another boat, shipping for Singapore or Brisbane, the consignment sold already.’

‘Smart guy.’

‘Very smart. His best trick is the microdot tracking. I bet you can’t get a signal, right?’

‘Damned right.’

‘Sabaya worked out early how to nullify that whole microdot thing. I think he did it by degaussing the containers with a cheap electromagnet. That make sense?’

Mac heard a sigh of annoyance. ‘Yes, Mr McQueen. That makes sense.’

‘If it’s any consolation, sir, MICT is one of the most secure dock facilities in the world. Can’t take anything in or out without it being weighed, photographed, scanned and logged.’

‘I know. That’s why it was cleared to ship our stuff.’

‘Sir, Sabaya’s the best. He knows he can’t get the containers through the security gates so he fi nds what he wants on the docks and onships them instead.’

Hatfi eld was enlisted. Mac could feel it. He’d fl own in from Guam to fi nd a lost load of VX and fi nally someone was telling him something he didn’t know. The Twentieth support command had enormous powers in the United States and beyond. Hatfi eld could shut down ports, impound 747s, close down entire trucking hubs if he had reasonable grounds. But right now he had nothing. Mac wanted Hatfi eld to need him on one of those Army helos.

‘So where’s my container?’ said Hatfi eld.