Counter Attack

Chapter 30

Lying on his back, Mac squirted saline into each eyeball, blinking it out again. As his eyes slowly cleaned themselves, he tried to work out what parts of this gig to lie about and what to come clean on.

Lance and Urquhart had obviously tailed him after the Singapore fiasco and it would have been within Urquhart’s power in Australian intelligence to have Mac assigned to the Jim Quirk tail. Mac was inclined to believe Urquhart: he’d genuinely wanted Mac to help him weed out the potential traitor who set up Ray Hu. And Mac had genuinely turned him down, at which point Urquhart opted for having Mac assigned to Saigon.

But the routine tail-and-report of Quirk had turned nasty and suddenly Lance was in a van with Mac, seeing the memory card. Lance must have felt the ends coming together quite easily. But then Boo Bray was run over and before Lance could double back to the Cambodiana and grab the memory card, the Israelis had intercepted Lance’s ill-advised call and grabbed it, leaving Lance and Urquhart looking like a couple of dilettantes.

Mac could only surmise what was on that card. What worried him was a series of violent attacks from the Israelis, culminat- ing in a light-bulb bomb at the Cambodiana; that is, a light bulb filled with a fuel-oil accelerant such as ammonia nitrate and a small flash-detonator in place of the filament. You didn’t need a huge amount of explosive in a small area like a bathroom — there was nowhere for the blast to go except out the door, where the victim should be standing at the light switch.

Someone from Israeli intelligence would know how to make such a bomb. One of the best technical rotations Mac had ever done was with the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal spy agency. Most field operators in the Shin Bet became proficient in making IEDs, so they knew a bomb factory when they saw one, and in many cases could smell a bomb-maker if they were standing beside him.

What Mac didn’t understand was how Ray Hu came into it.

For now, Mac needed to get out of the safe house before Urquhart or Lance came back with questions about the shootout at the docks the night before. Mac had his own questions about that incident and he had two main priorities that had nothing to do with the memory card: he wanted to find Tranh, and to do that he might need Sam’s help. And then he had some payback planned for that Israeli hit man with the mad eyes.

Mac had one thing going for him: Lance had failed to find Mac’s backpack or the van. Mac reckoned the backpacks and cell phone tracker were safe in the room registered under the name of Sam Chan until Phnom Penh police reported to the Australian Embassy that they’d found the ‘lost’ van. Mac had given his vehicle rego as the Mazda’s. The van wouldn’t be found immediately, but before it was Mac needed to get out of the house.

His black baseball cap was hooked over the back of the chair near the door, and he had an idea.

Eighteen minutes later the deadlock rattled and Marlon brought Mac’s lunch into the room, dragged the stool over with his foot and put down the sandwich and a can of Tiger.

‘I’m liking your taste in food, Marlon,’ said Mac, eyeing the sandwich. ‘Ham, cheese and tomato — perfect with a cold beer.’

Smiling, Marlon turned to go. ‘By the way, I was at the embassy this morning and I bumped into Alex Beech.’

‘How’s Sandy?’ said Mac.

Marlon’s face burst into a big, toothy smile. ‘Sandy Beech — you cheeky bugger.’

‘He loves it,’ said Mac. ‘Try calling him “Bondi” and watch him come alive. What’s he in town for?’

‘Didn’t say,’ said Marlon, taking a seat on the chair and looking mischievous. ‘But I got some info on you.’

‘From Sandy?’

‘Yeah. I asked him why someone from the military would claim to have been a truck driver when they obviously weren’t.’

‘And he laughed and said the military runs on logistics,’ said Mac.

‘How’d you know that?’ said Marlon.

‘Because Sandy shovelled chow — an army marches on its stomach.’

Marlon gave Mac a suspicious look; he’d been a police detective in Brisbane before joining I-team five years earlier and still liked to get to the bottom of people. ‘Well, that’s as clear as mud.’

‘Hey, Marlon,’ said Mac, taking a swig of the beer as he swallowed his first bite of the sandwich. ‘My eyes are still hurting — can you chuck me that hat to keep the glare off my eyeballs?’

‘Sure.’ Marlon spun the cap through the air onto Mac’s lap.

‘So was Sandy with anyone?’ said Mac, sure that Beech’s appearance was not coincidental.

‘He was alone.’

‘Who was he meeting with?’ said Mac, smiling.

‘What you really want to know is if he was asking after you, right, McQueen?’

‘The thought did occur.’

‘He didn’t, but I wouldn’t tell him anything — I’m employed by DFAT, not Defence.’

Mac pushed. ‘How was he dressed?’

‘Relax, cuz,’ said Marlon, standing and stretching. ‘Your best bet is to tell this Lance fool what he wants to hear so we can all move on. I was due in Honkers yesterday.’

Gnawing at the right side of the cap where the peak met the cap proper, Mac tore a hole in the canvas and exposed the thin steel rim that ran in a semicircle around the edge of the peak.

He drew out the steel rim until he held a flat wire of the type commonly associated with a woman’s bra. The wire slipped easily into the keyhole of the cuffs and Mac twisted and needled at the tumbler until he felt it turn. Within ten seconds his wrist was free.

Standing, Mac cat-walked to the door and listened to Lance and Urquhart arguing somewhere in the house. They were classic intelligence dabblers: smart enough to ensure that people got hurt, but not experienced enough to fix their mistakes. If they followed the script used by most of Canberra’s whiteboard warriors, they were currently tearing each other apart over the memory card, but by the time they got off the flight into Sydney they’d have shifted culpability onto Mac or maybe even Boo Bray, who had the added attraction of being unable to speak up in his own defence.

Lance and Urquhart would be blameless. Not only would they write the report, but they would be protected by the truism that he who stands closest to the Prime Minister is never hit by the shit.

Moving to the window, Mac checked the latches: they were the old-fashioned horizontal-twist type, but with locked bolts in the sashes.

Slipping the flat wire from the cap into the first bolt lock, Mac worked at it until he felt the wire twisting and losing shape. He gave up on that one and moved to the second, where the wire went in more readily. He had it unlocked in six seconds.

Lifting the window, Mac looked into the garden. He was on the first floor, with a fifteen-foot drop to the vegetable patch. Grabbing his sandals, he walked back to the window and was preparing to throw his leg over when the door opened. Turning, he saw Marlon at the same time Marlon saw him and they locked eyes for a split second, in an exchange of men asking one another, Are we really going to do this?

With a stamp kick at Marlon’s left kneecap, Mac threw a swinging elbow at the big man’s right temple.

Leaning back slightly, Marlon took the blow on his nose and blood spurted across the white door like a Pro Hart stroke. Whipping a right-hand uppercut at that big jaw, Mac instead hit Marlon’s thick left forearm coming down with a strong block that threw Mac off balance.

Marlon was about a hundred and fifteen to Mac’s hundred and five, but his right hand leapt out like a cobra at Mac’s throat, wrapping almost totally around his neck. Mac felt his spine straighten and his feet almost leave the ground as Marlon applied the power with that enormous arm, making Mac feel like a passenger.

Twisting his face away from Marlon’s, Mac threw a finger strike at his assailant’s eyes. Marlon slackened his grip and smashed the arm off his throat with a right-arm block and lashed a fast low — high left hook combination to Marlon’s kidney and then his jaw, sending the bigger man lurching back and sideways into the door.

‘Marlon, are you okay?’ Urquhart called from downstairs as the door almost came off its hinges.

Marlon’s eyes rolled back and he attempted a left-hand punch which glanced across Mac’s right cheekbone. Keeping his eyes locked on Marlon’s, Mac dropped to his knee and threw a fast groin punch straight into the Samoan’s pubic bone.

Air expelled in a whoosh from the bigger man’s lungs and Mac was on him as he collapsed to the polished wooden floor. Grabbing the fifteen-shot Glock from Marlon’s hip rig, Mac panted for breath and heard someone running up the stairs.

Turning for the window again, Mac looked down on Marlon, whose mouth was open in surprise, still unable to get air in.

‘Legs up, under the chin,’ said Mac, making for the window and launching himself at the vegetable patch. Throwing himself out so he’d land sideways with his right hip falling first, Mac hoped he could save his left knee. It was a trick he’d learned in the Parachute Regiment’s P-company years ago, and the landing worked okay, if getting a face full of cabbage counted as a success.

Standing, he ran for the garden wall and clambered up it, straining at the top of the bricks as Urquhart got to the window.

Urquhart yelled, ‘Macca! You’re making a mistake!’

But Mac was over the wall and running, the stolen Glock now jammed in his waistband. The humidity was terrible on the street and Mac could feel another monsoonal downpour building. Deciding not to work any fancy patterns or routes, he headed directly towards the Holiday International, keeping his black baseball cap pulled low.

Going in the back way, through the laundry and the trade entrances, Mac emerged at the lobby and held back by the newspaper racks until he’d surveyed the reception desk. Looking down briefly, something caught his eye and he shook his head to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Breathing out, he dragged his eyes away from the newspaper and got back to the immediate job.

At the reception desk he was queried when his blue eyes didn’t match what they expected ‘Chan’ to look like. Reciting the California address he’d memorised from Sam’s licence, he asked for the room key and was given it as he slapped twenty US dollars on the counter.

The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign was where he’d left it and he couldn’t see any evidence of someone having been in his room. Panting, Mac walked to the wall beside the windows and cased the hotel driveway, looking for overly enthusiastic walking or driving.

Having seen nothing after five minutes, he unscrewed a light bulb from a wall light, entered the bathroom and replaced the main bathroom light bulb. Placing Marlon’s Glock on the bathroom counter where he could grab it from the shower cubicle, he stripped and stood under the hot shower, his hands shaking slightly as the muscles in his face spasmed. He was back in the game, but he didn’t know if he could do it anymore. Dealing with the violence was not as easy as he remembered — the Israelis’ ambush at the apartment building and the rocket attack at the docks, and then the light-bulb bomb at the Cambodiana. Poh being thrown into the night like a piece of garbage, by a bomb intended for Tranh or Mac. He felt vulnerable, exposed and confused — he was in the middle of something he didn’t understand and now his own side had turned on him.

Yet that wasn’t what had him shaking. It was what he’d seen on the front page of the Saigon Times that had thrown him into a spin. The headline read, aussie cops arrive for nightclub murder, and below he’d seen the photo of a tall brunette in a black trouser suit and white blouse being let into a white Holden Caprice as she spoke into a mobile phone.

He knew that face and knew the way that mouth worked when it was telling some dumb-arse to pull his finger out and get busy. The caption read, Agent Jennifer Toohey of the Australian Federal Police arrives at Tan Son Nhat yesterday to assist Saigon detectives with the Jim Quirk homicide investigation in Cholon.

She was coming into an environment where people were trying to kill him. Mac had always promised not to cross into her professional life, but he didn’t know if he could hold back in this case. When the bullets started flying, Jenny wasn’t a cop — she was his wife.