Mark Abernethy - Golden Serpent

Mac rolled to his right. Garrison got a better shoulder. But assault rifl e fi re sounded close behind him and Garrison turned, tried to run back to his cohorts. Mac squeezed off, hitting what he thought was the American’s right calf. Garrison staggered a bit, but veered to his right, fi ring back into the sub-level as he went.

Mac limped down the ramp, his knee agony, breathing at thirteen to the dozen. Coming down to the fl at level, he saw Garrison and two other men with assault rifl es get to a stairwell against the far wall. Mac took a stance, squeezed off two rounds. They kept running. That was the trouble with a short-barrel handgun: no range.

He ran towards the stairs, fi ve shots left and three men ahead of him, all armed with the latest assault rifl es.

To his left he saw Paul, lying face down, blood around him on the concrete.

Mac’s blood drummed in his ears as he got to the stairs. Standing to the side, he looked up quickly, pulled back, looked up again and threw himself fl at against the other wall at the foot of the stairs, Heckler pointing up in a cup-and-saucer. His breathing was out of control, his eyes blurring with sweat. There was no air in the sub-level, and with the humidity it was making him gasp for oxygen.

He made up the stairs. Slow. In the movies, people giving chase always ran up stairs after the bad guys. In Mac’s world, the stairwell was where people were shot.

He got to the double-back in the middle of the stairs, suddenly realising the stairs went back to the street-level warehouse.

Sticking his face around quickly, he pulled back, stuck it out again and kept it there. Heard something, a rumbling sound. Moving up, he came to the top, stayed low, looking for the shooter. He came out of the stairwell, homing on the rumbling sound. Across the warehouse, the roller door was going up.

A roar sounded as an engine fi red. Mac started running. Coming around the last stack of containers, he aimed up. Forty metres away the last guy was shutting the rear passenger door of a blue BMW

5-series. As the engine gunned, the roller door went up further.

A back-seat passenger pointed his M4 at Mac, the fi re coming in three-shot bursts. Mac ducked behind the container as paint chips fl ew. More carbine gunfi re chewed up the steel he was hiding behind.

The BMW accelerated through the doorway and Mac came out of hiding, squeezed off, took out the rear window.

He ran to the door, caught the last part of the rego – 452.

Struggling to get his breath, he bent over, hands on knees. He felt so old – way, way past his prime for this shit.

Voices sounded behind him and he swung around and went to his knee in one motion, ready to squeeze off.

Sawtell, jogging, yelled, ‘Don’t shoot.’

Mac sat down on his arse. Resting arms on knees, he looked at the ceiling.

He wished he hadn’t seen it. But he had. The driver – a blonde woman – had looked him in the eye.

‘You okay, Mac?’ asked Sawtell.

Mac tried to respond, but vomited between his legs.

They found Paul leaning against a large blue plastic dumpster bin clutching at his left side. The blood trail from where Mac had seen him lying was thick and dark.

‘Shit, Mac,’ he grinned. ‘What is it with Aussies and trouble?’

‘Follows us round like a bad smell. Didn’t I warn you?’

Sawtell knelt and lifted the left wing away from Paul’s body. Paul winced, gasped.

Sawtell whispered low, looked under there. Dark blood oozed through layers of clothing and kevlar.

Sawtell keyed the mic, ordered his medic guy to come immediately, then had another thought. ‘POLRI there yet?’

Sawtell listened, then said, ‘Negative. Stay with the hostages until POLRI get there. Secure the area. Over.’

The Green Berets had rescued the hostages with no injuries.

Sawtell unzipped the top of Paul’s ovies and looked at Mac, who came around behind Paul, held him up and forward while Sawtell stripped down the top of the grey ovies. Unclipping the fasteners on the kevlar vest, Sawtell pulled it over from the right-hand side then peeled it downward along the left arm.

The slug had grazed straight down the left side of Paul’s ribs in the area where there was no kevlar, only an adjustable gusset. There was another slug embedded in the kevlar, folded back on itself like a rosette. The fl esh wound looked like Paul had leaned against an iron someone had forgotten to turn off. There was bone showing and a lot of blood – fi ve-inch wet scar peeled back like a madman’s laugh.

Paul was trying to keep his breathing under control, but the shock and the pain were pushing him towards hyperventilation.

Mac stripped down and handed over his white undershirt to Sawtell, who used it to stem the blood in Paul’s ribs.

Sawtell looked up at Mac. ‘Get ‘em?’

Mac shook. ‘Nope. M4s versus a pea-shooter.’

‘Gotta get you something with a bit more authority.’

‘They’re in a pale blue 5-series Beemer. Last numbers on the rego are 452,’ said Mac.

Sawtell shook his head. ‘This Garrison is starting to irritate me. A bad advertisement for Americans.’

‘What?’ deadpanned Mac. ‘They’re not all like that?’

Paul laughed.

Sawtell eyeballed Paul. ‘What are you laughing at? The dude just shot you!’

‘He’ll keep, mate,’ said Mac.

The adrenaline slowly washed off them as they spoke. Even whispers sounded like screams when you were coming down from the kind of adrenaline squirt you got from a gunfi ght.

Mac kept a close watch on Sawtell. Watched the way he talked soft, drew Paul back into the game, not wanting him to lose consciousness but also not scaring him.

The blood kept coming and Paul needed a fresh staunch.

‘Here, take this,’ Sawtell said to Mac.

Mac held the bloodied shirt as Sawtell tore down his own ovies, unfastened the bullet-proof vest and used his undershirt on the wound. Got Paul to hold it in place by relaxing his left arm on it.

The smell of cordite was still fresh in their nostrils. It hung around in the sub-level.

‘Sabaya here? Anyone see him?’ asked Mac.

‘He wasn’t in the offi ce section,’ said Sawtell. ‘Thought he might be in the warehouse.’

Mac shook his head.

‘He wasn’t down here,’ said Mac.

Sawtell stood, fi ddled with the radio and couldn’t get a signal.

He pulled it apart, blew on every connection, then slammed the transmitter box between his hands a couple of times. Turned the thing on again and gave thumbs-up.

‘Roger that. Copy,’ he said, after a pause.

Sawtell demanded to know if anyone had a handle on Garrison and the girl.

The reply wasn’t what he wanted.

‘Listen, McQueen chased them to a blue 5-series BMW. Registration includes the numbers four, fi ver, two. Four fi ver two. Got that? Blue BMW, 5-series.’

By the sounds of it, the troop had lost their trail. Sawtell snapped like someone who was way over the whole thing.

‘Okay, okay. Manz and Spikey get down here now. We’re on the sub-level of the warehouse. Bring the medic pack, okay?’ he ordered, and signed off.

He looked at Mac, who was taking in their surroundings. There were forty or fi fty shipping containers around them that by Mac’s reckoning would be stuffed with books, furniture and ceramics from all over Asia. Amongst them would be gold, drugs, counterfeit US dollars, cigarettes and whisky, maybe even some bunkered crude oil. Who knew what was in these things? He was quietly amazed that customs and the cops ever found a damned thing in such a secret yet ubiquitous form of moving goods.

Sawtell came over, asked if Mac was okay.

‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, thinking about how Garrison had been cropping up in chatter, briefi ngs and intel gossip for years. He wondered what role he really played and who protected him. Was it someone actually in the Agency, or was it political? Someone from State or the Oval Offi ce?