Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Tonight? Dawn? All at once?

His other concern was that last sighting in Makassar. Just because Sabaya, Garrison and Diane were seen speeding westward from the dock, it didn’t mean they intended to board the ship with the VX on it. They could have been planning something totally different. Sabaya’s chosen MO had always been to travel separately from any heisted cargo.

The VX could be going in the opposite direction, up to Shanghai or Yokohama, or across the Pacifi c to Oakland or Long Beach. Garrison might have spotted a tail, decided to put everyone off the track.

That’s what Mac would do.

Intelligence people didn’t work on ‘cases’ like cops. Spooks built a picture, synthesised information, had an area of specialty. The only reason Mac’s specialty had any currency with the US Army’s Twentieth was that his covert work had a regular overlap with Special Forces.

He couldn’t afford to screw this up. He needed some shuteye to deal with it properly. Lying down and using all the meditation tricks he’d been taught in the Royal Marines – as well as being chosen for their ability to deal with extreme pressure they’d been shown a trick or two – he slipped into a restless sleep.

Mac awoke to his phone vibrating in his breast pocket.

‘McQueen, Hatfi eld. Twentieth. How you doing, son?’

Mac croaked something out. He still felt rooted. Could have slept for another day.

‘We’ll touch down in about fi ve. Refuel. I’ll send someone over to the main gate. Still up for this?’

‘Sure am, sir.’

There were a few mis-cues between the men. Mac made to start a sentence a couple of times and then stopped.

‘Everything okay, son?’

‘I was just wondering what Jakarta had to say, sir. About me, I mean.’

‘I have a request in for a secondment of Alan McQueen, aiding the United States Army in a crucial CT operation,’ said Hatfi eld.

‘Yep?’

‘Well I had to go through the proper channels, Mr McQueen.

Through CINCPAC. Which means I haven’t heard back yet.’

‘Gotta love those offi ce guys.’

‘Pride of the Pentagon,’ Hatfi eld chuckled. ‘By the way, McQueen, I don’t have to lecture you on Army SOPs, do I? Helos, comms, appropriate behaviour – that sort of thing?’

‘Right as rain, sir.’

Six minutes later an Indonesian Air Force MP came out of the bullet-proof glass cage and signalled with a fl ashlight into the trees, calling, ‘Queen, queen!’

Mac presented himself for the search and the wand. Another MP stood back with the German shepherd. Mac declared the Walther. The bloke put his hand out and Mac handed it over.

They were halfway across the sprawling area of Hasanuddin in a black LandCruiser Prado when Mac had a sudden pang about Diane.

He’d been dumped before. He’d been told off, passed over and left behind for better things. But he’d never felt such a cold touch. He wondered if she’d known who he was. Odds on. Wondered if she fully knew the reputations of Garrison and Sabaya. His mind circled the past. How far back? That trade fair in Jakarta in May? Was she a plant? Had she just seen me as a target of opportunity? All that bullshit he’d told her about what he did for a living? Was she part of the ‘Paul’ set-up?

There was another feeling, even stronger than his embarrassment.

Diane and Garrison had made a fool of him, but his real instincts were protective. He prayed to God he hadn’t left them a trail to Jenny.

The US Army contingent milled in front of an unmarked hangar at the northern edges of Hasanuddin, the whole place lit up like a Vegas showroom. There was refuelling going on and the air was thick with fumes, humidity and dust. Mac clocked two Chinook CH-57D tandem-rotor helos, four Black Hawks and lots of US military types with their bad haircuts and drab T-shirts.

The MP stopped the Prado, walked Mac over to a group of soldiers and asked for Hatfi eld. One of the soldiers peeled off, escorting them to the second Chinook. The soldier walked up the fold-down stairs, stuck his head in. Came back down. They waited. A middle-aged man in tropical battle dress uniform stuck his head out, full head of white hair. ‘McQueen?’

‘That’s me, sir.’

Hatfi eld came down the stairs, shook Mac’s hand with a soft grip.

‘Pleased to meet you, son. Sorry about all this fuss.’

Mac liked him immediately. In a huge military outfi t like the US

Army, there was a lot of discretion about how much plumage the brass could wear. Hatfi eld wore BDUs of the same pattern and cut as his men. His only identifi er was the word HATFIELD on standard tape over the right breast pocket. His aide sidled up while Mac was being introduced to Hatfi eld’s offsiders. Mac noticed that he and the retinue called him ‘General’. Mac liked that too – they could have said ‘sir’.

Mac sensed an outfi t where there weren’t too many offi ce guys round the shop. He might just fi t in. It was unusual for US Army generals to fl y around in Chinooks. Earning that rank gave you the right to sit in leather armchairs in DC and go to fi ve-star lunches in Manila. Mac only knew of two other generals who fl ew around the world in helos, commanding directly some of the brightest people in any military organisation. They did so because of the decisions that had to be made on the ground in real time. They weren’t the kind of judgements that could be phoned in and they couldn’t be made by a less experienced or qualifi ed person.

The MP handed Mac’s Walther back to him. The seven-shot. 38 felt like a pea-shooter among the special forces gear.

‘Thanks, champ,’ said Mac.

He looked across the US Annex apron, saw Sawtell and his boys stowing extra bags from the back of a Toyota pick-up truck, saw what looked like Navy SEALs in black Nomex doing the same thing at their Black Hawks. The Army Special Forces boys were eyeing off the SEALs, Spikey sneering at one in his biker bandana. The Green Berets might be the hard men of the special forces world, but the SEALs were certainly the rock stars.

Hatfi eld motioned the team, including Mac, into his Chinook.

Four of them fi led in and Hatfi eld waited at the top of the fold-down steps. He shepherd-whistled at Sawtell, waved him inside.

The Chinook was large. Shorter than a 737 but wider. There was a situation room near the front, just behind the cockpit stairs. It consisted of a round map table bolted to the fl oor and fi ve padded swivel stools also bolted down. There was a bank of three computer terminals along the side of the aircraft. One of them was a black SGI screen, the hardware behind the Powerscreen systems that allowed the Americans to take satellite imagery and computer-model them into 3-D, moving images.

Further aft of the situation room, there were eight airline-styled seats with what looked like pillows and blankets on them. Mac felt his eyelids drooping just looking at them.

Two men looked over the table at him, one in Army BDUs with no name tape, the other in grey ovies. Hatfi eld introduced them as DIA and referred to Mac as Australian intelligence. ‘This is Alan. The guy who put that pizza box thing together with Abu Sabaya. Remember that?’

The DIA spooks showed no enthusiasm as they shook hands with Mac. The senior one, in the ovies, called himself Don. He got straight to the point.

‘You know where the shipment is?’

Mac shook his head. ‘Do you?’

‘It’s serious, Mr McQueen,’ said Don.

‘Sure, so why’d you lose it?’

Don narrowed his eyes at Mac, who looked back, unblinking.

The bloke had got all cute with knowing his last name. It was a no-no in the intel world, unless you were desperately trying to prove something.

‘For what it’s worth,’ said Mac, ‘Sabaya’s like a black belt in this stuff. He wrote the manual on it. He’d have had one person, maybe two, in the security annexe – what’s it called?’