Counter Attack

Chapter 2

Three short knocks sounded on the suite’s door and Isla Dunford moved into the room. She’d just left her post at the hotel’s entry as Bailey had followed Kava into the lobby and assumed the surveillance.

‘Looking good,’ she said, pulling up a chair beside Johnson and peering at the laptop screen. ‘Kava’s in the hubcap.’

Among Aussie intel types, a meeting at the hubcap meant the Pan Pac’s lobby lounge, which had a huge round mezzanine ceiling floating above it.

‘We okay?’ said Mac. ‘You followed?’

‘We’re sweet,’ said Dunford, grimacing slightly as she pulled her Colt handgun from the holster at the small of her back and placed it on Johnson’s desk.

Isla Dunford was just starting her career with SIS and the fact she was actively in the field owed a lot to Mac championing her over the policy that women didn’t work on gigs involving firearms. Mac had noticed her at a field-craft module he’d given in Canberra two years earlier. Dunford was a smart, calm, good-looking woman and he’d fought for her not only because she spoke Cantonese, but because female officers broke up the male pattern and made it harder for counter-surveillance.

The chaps in Canberra had a sense of humour, and the first operation Mac had scored after his return from retirement featured Isla Dunford on the surveillance team. Now, seeing the bright-eyed youngster place her gun on the desk, the responsibility of his position came into focus. Mac could no longer just do the gig and go victory-drinking with the troops. When you ran the operation, the most important part was bringing everyone home with their fingernails intact.

All of Mac’s team in the lobby of the hotel were now stripped of radio gear. It wasn’t an ideal situation and it made Mac nervous to be off the air, but the Chinese comms-intercepts were so good that even the Americans and Israelis couldn’t rely on encryptions and scrambles when they knew the MSS was about. The next-door suite they’d wired for sound had no radio transmissions — it was wired directly into their own suite.

‘How’s the set-up in 1502?’ said Mac.

‘Good,’ said Johnson.

‘Check it again,’ said Mac, grabbing the field-glasses and having another look at the SingTel van on Raffles. It hadn’t been moved by the cops and the tradesmen were standing at a junction box, the door flapping open.

The suite’s door shut behind Dunford as Mac focused on one of the SingTel guys: his red overalls looked clean.

A voice crackled out of the speakers on the desk — Dunford speaking in Cantonese from 1502, next door.

‘What’s she saying?’ said Mac.

‘Here I am in the lounge, here I am in the bedroom, that loo needs a clean, and…’

‘Well?’

‘She’s saying, “When this is over, Macca shouts the beers.”’

‘Cheeky bugger,’ said Mac, lifting the field-glasses back to his eyes.

Once Lao was in room 1502 with Ray Hu, the meeting proceeded as expected, every word being downloaded onto the laptop’s hard drive. Johnson adjusted the speaker volume and translated as Ray Hu coaxed the Raytheon documents from Dr Lao’s attaché case and then kept the traitor talking about progress on the SEA 4000 upgrades: the key scientists, the names of the managers, the main difficulties and the testing that had taken place.

As the talk got more technical, Mac asked Dunford to grab the glasses and keep an eye on the SingTel van, tell him if there was any change.

Lao opened up about the AESA-defeat project at Raytheon which was going to form a major plank of SEA 4000. Lao explained that he was trying to get assigned to AESA-defeat but security was being run by the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the project was above his clearance.

Mac pricked up his ears at the mention of AESA, a high-tech radar that could take millions of snapshots around the plane it was mounted on, in such short bursts that it was almost impossible for detectors on the ground to pick up the radar emissions — one of the main ways that defence systems detected enemy aircraft.

An AESA-type system was probably the only hope the Chinese had to make their ballistic anti-ship missile — the DF 21 — operate properly. The DF 21 was being developed to fly between one and a half and two and a half thousand kilometres from China’s coast as a deterrent against US Navy carrier strike groups. A ballistic missile was a rocket that flew out of the atmosphere and on its downward trajectory took its warhead at great speeds onto the target below. To be accurate against a moving target such as a ship, it needed an AESA system onboard to steer it as it re-entered the atmosphere at speeds approaching mach 10. An onboard AESA system was about the only way that ballistic missiles could be controlled by terminal guidance — that is, the missile could be made to fly into its target rather than simply being aimed accurately at take-off or tweaked in its mid-course trajectory.

Raytheon was the AESA pioneer for the American military and it stood to reason that the same company would be working on a weapon that defeated AESA. So Mac wasn’t surprised that the Pentagon’s spooks were overseeing who did and did not work on the project.

Ray Hu’s interest had been aroused too. ‘You got your name down to work for Raytheon in the United States on AESA-defeat?’

Mac listened as Dr Lao stumbled. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘He’s saying, “No, you got it wrong — I don’t have to go to the US. I’ve been waiting to tell someone this”,’ said Matt, concentrating. ‘He’s giggling, proud of himself. Says he’s got good stuff.’

‘Yeah?’ said Mac.

‘Yeah, wait,’ said Matt, holding his hand up as the Cantonese bubbled out of the speakers. ‘He’s saying that he found out two days ago that an AESA-defeat prototype system is being brought to Queensland for beta testing — Raytheon and US Department of Defense are going to test it in the Aussie desert. Totally top secret: USEO.’

‘Shit!’ said Mac. When a project was stamped ‘US Eyes Only’, the problem became political.

‘It gets better,’ said Johnson.

‘Tell me,’ said Mac, his dream of doubling Dr Lao all but gone. There was no way they could put a Chinese spy with that sort of information back into circulation in the hope that he wouldn’t blab to his Beijing masters. It wasn’t worth the risk — not to Australian military security and certainly not to the US — Australian alliance.

‘Ray’s asked him how come the Australian outback. Why not Alaska, New Mexico?’

‘And?’ said Mac as the sound of laughter roared out of the speakers.

‘He says, “Nah — America full of Chinese spies.”’

‘Funny guy,’ said Mac, grabbing his handgun from under the sofa cushion.

Matt held up his hand. ‘He’s saying, “Aussie intel is only interested in beer and girls — we can be using the beta telemetry even before the Pentagon sees it.”’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Mac, checking his Heckler & Koch P9s for load and safety. ‘I’ll let ASIO know they have a fan club. Matt, get on the phone, tell Doug at the embassy to fast-track an extradition order for Xiang Lao. Make sure he gets the address and date of birth correct, okay?’

Johnson reached for the phone.

‘Isla, we need an AFP agent here now.’

‘We going to arrest him?’ said Dunford.

‘We need to formally arrest Lao for terrorism financing and conspiracy, and then we’ll trigger the transnational crime MOU with Singers,’ said Mac, trying to stay one step ahead of the game. ‘Don’t use Doug for that one — go straight to Tommy in legal. The Memorandum of Understanding needs to be cited and acknowledged by Singapore Police within twelve hours of the arrest, so shake a leg.’

‘Sure, boss,’ said Isla, standing and holstering her handgun.

‘This is now about containment,’ said Mac, moving towards the door as he shoved the Heckler into his waistband. ‘I don’t want that little weasel telling his secrets to some Chinese consular lawyer. If we do our job, the tests go ahead in the desert without any Chinese nosey-pokes.’

Looking back as he opened the suite’s door, Mac saw Dunford looking down through the window. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yeah, the SingTel van’s gone. One less thing, huh?’

Mac stepped into the corridor of the fifteenth floor, approached 1502 and slowed, readying to go through that door and shut down Kava.

As he paused, he sensed movement from his right and then someone grabbed him by the hair. Knocked off balance, Mac tried to turn but his head was smashed hard against the hotel wall. Bouncing off the wallpaper, stunned, he was kicked hard in the solar plexus — so hard he doubled over. The hand grabbed his hair again and pushed him upright into the hessian-covered wall and a suppressed handgun was jammed into the back of his mouth.

Unblinking eyes stared out of a black ski-mask as a second man disarmed him and took the door card from his hand. The silencer drove further into the back of Mac’s throat, choking him and pinning him to the wall, making his eyes water. Lifting his knee reflexively, Mac thought about lashing out but his captor cocked the action on the 9mm handgun and pushed harder.

Mac watched in mute horror as the second shooter pushed the door card into 1502 and entered with the elongated handgun held down his thigh. Half a second later there were four popping sounds that Mac recognised as suppressed small-arms fire. Then the shooter was back in the corridor, walking up to Mac as he shoved a handful of casings into his left pocket.

Thinking he was about to be executed, Mac started his prayers as he panted for breath. But the second shooter didn’t level his gun — he raised it quickly and brought it down hard above Mac’s left ear.

Mac’s last thought before he blacked out was: Red overalls — red SingTel overalls.