Counter Attack

Chapter 57

Pulling on the boonie hat, Mac holstered the SIG handgun and climbed the rudder — a job made easy by the bands of iron wrapped horizontally around it. Lifting his eyes carefully over the transom he cased a dimly lit lower deck which would house a galley, the captain’s state room and probably a guest state room. He’d had this chat with Li: the crew’s cabins would be below decks and the holds and cargo decks were always forward of the wheelhouse. When locals travelled between towns on these ships, they sat cross-legged on the top decks and on the poop deck at the stern.

The soldiers talked on the upper decks, hidden from Mac’s view. He simply wanted to search the cabins and state rooms. If he was discovered, he’d remove the threat.

Climbing over the railing, Mac eased himself to the warm wooden decking and froze, listening for sounds as the water dripped off him. Tearing the condom off the SIG, he reached to a pocket on the back of the webbing belt and extracted a suppressor.

Moving along the port side of the covered deck, he stepped through an open hatch into a passage that led from one side of the ship to the other with a companionway dropping to the below decks.

Two doors faced the corridor. The state rooms, guessed Mac. Opening the first, he pushed his face in and saw the captain’s suite. A low-watt bulb cast a yellow glow over a functional cabin with a single cot, a wardrobe and a desk.

Shutting it quietly, Mac checked his watch. Forty-one seconds until Li pulled alongside.

Opening the second door, Mac eased into a similar cabin, no lights this time. In the darkness he saw a movement and heard some noises. From the cot in the corner, a man’s voice expressed confusion and then Mac saw him as he turned his face. Pulling the Ka-bar knife from his webbing, Mac jammed his right knee into the man’s chest, slapped his left hand across his mouth and nose and brought the Ka-bar across his throat. Feeling the air leave the dying man, Mac whipped around as he noticed there was someone else in the bed. Aiming his blade at the other face, just inches away, Mac stopped his attack as he looked into big, dark eyes. Adjusting to the darkness, he saw a naked child in the sheets on the other side of the corpse, and as he stood back, realised there was another in the bed — neither of them more than seven or eight years old.

Placing his finger on his lips, Mac made the international sign for silence as he backed towards the door, the white sheets turning black. Pulling the key from the inside lock, he locked the door from the outside, gasping for air as he looked at his watch: eighteen seconds.

Sliding down the companionway to the below decks, he moved through a smaller passageway which opened into a large aft cabin with a central table and double bunks built around it: a stinking rat-hole with white T-shirts and undies hanging from the ceiling, also known as the crew’s wardroom.

A bulb glowed in the upper bunk to Mac’s right, and pushing the laundry out of the way with the SIG’s suppressor, he found himself looking at a young Chinese man lying on his back, reading a PlayStation magazine. Mac shot him once in the forehead and followed with a shot to the temple. The suppressor reduced the noise to not much more than the sound of a Coke can being opened.

Sound came from the other side of the wardroom, and Mac moved carefully through the hanging underwear and around the central table, finding a Chinese man who’d rolled over to get some sleep.

Kneeling softly on the cot behind him, Mac withdrew his Ka-bar and sliced quickly through the carotid artery, clasping a hand over the man’s mouth and nose as he did so. The man’s head jerked slightly and a muffled yelp came from his lungs before he went slack in Mac’s hands.

Above decks, the conversation had started with Li, and Mac could hear the throb of the two Evinrudes against the hull. He reset his G-Shock to a one-hundred-and-twenty-second mission clock and left the room.

Outside the wardroom, another hatch led down a shorter companionway to the engine room — a dark, cramped space stinking of diesel and bilge and containing an old engine that had been cut to idle: Li’s story was working.

Pulling the hatch shut, realising he still had the rest of the ship to search, Mac paused. Was there someone behind that condenser? Pushing back into the engine room, he pulled the SIG to a cup-and-saucer stance and, peering into the darkness, he saw it again: between the old engine and the equally ancient condenser there was a foot.

‘Hello,’ he said, weaving the SIG through a jungle of pipes, analogue dials and jerry-rigged wiring.

‘What?’ came a confused male voice. In Aussie English.

Moving forwards Mac saw bilge slopping beneath the rotting duckboards, and as he eased around the engine block between the condenser, a face peered at him out of the gloom.

‘That you, McQueen?’ said Lance Kendrick, ankles bound and hands tied behind his back, Dave Urquhart sleeping against him.

‘No, it’s the tooth fairy,’ said Mac, kneeling and using the Ka-bar to snip the plastic ties.

Murmuring something, Urquhart woke with a start and yelped on seeing Mac’s tiger-striped face. They had seventy-six seconds before Li stood off and this ship returned to normal.

Freeing the two men, Mac shrugged off the M4, ripped the condom off the muzzle and gave it to Lance, whose injuries were obvious but not maiming. ‘You two okay to walk?’

‘Just,’ said Lance.

‘What about a swim?’ said Mac, checking the SIG for load and safety. He had fifteen shots.

‘Not if I have to dress like that,’ said Lance, nodding at Mac’s wet undies, and then examining the M4.

‘It’s just an M16,’ said Mac. ‘All you do is point and fire. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Lance, looking scared but resolved.

‘And get a good shoulder on this thing,’ said Mac, punching Lance in the right collarbone. ‘We want dead Chinamen, not holes in the ceiling.’

They moved slowly up the companionways to the first deck. Voices came from the port side so Mac led Urquhart and Lance across the first deck hallway to the starboard side.

Crouching in the shadows beside the railings, Mac looked at his G-Shock. They had under a minute to get to safety.

‘It’s very simple,’ said Mac. ‘You slip over the side, make no noise, and breaststroke or swim underwater to the banks. No flailing, no talking, no looking back.’

Looking through the steel railings, Urquhart was hyperventilating. ‘’Bout fifty metres?’

‘Less,’ said Mac. ‘You keep swimming, keep your head down and when you hit land you keep going — don’t stop and look around, especially if these pricks are shooting at you. Okay?’

The two men nodded but Urquhart had a thousand-yard stare.

‘Keep walking till you hit the highway,’ said Mac. ‘Wait beside the road — that’s the RV.’

Looking around, Mac felt something change — the engines were revving and then the screw churned the water behind the rudder. Taking the M4 from Lance, Mac offered his forearm and lowered the youngster over the side until they were both stretched out. Lance looked up and let go, disappearing into the slow-moving river.

Mac turned for Urquhart, who was frozen.

‘Remember the swimming carnivals?’ said his old dorm mate as he stole a scared look at the water. ‘Remember how I wasn’t in them?’

‘You needed a lawyer’s letter,’ said Mac, not wanting to hear this. Nudgee College had a very simple policy: everyone competed in the athletics carnival; everyone swam at least one event in the swimming carnival. The only exemption was Len Cromie, the pupil with cerebral palsy who defied his parents’ instructions one year and swam the fifty metres freestyle. He took five minutes to do it and half the school was in the pool with him by the end, urging him on and making sure he didn’t drown. The only other exemption in Mac’s memory was Dave Urquhart, who with a High Court judge for a grandfather and a father on the board of trustees somehow managed to get himself excused from the swimming.

‘We’re grown-ups now, mate,’ said Mac, watching Lance’s head bob up for air and then duck down and head for the river bank.

‘I can’t, Macca, I can’t —’

Mac stared at him. ‘Can’t?’

‘I never learned — I–I’m phobic,’ said Urquhart, with the same nervous stammer he had when the Lenihan brothers came around to see what was in his lock-box. ‘It’s a medical condition.’

‘No,’ said Mac, annoyed. ‘Len Cromie had a medical condition.’

‘That’s not fair,’ said Urquhart. ‘Don’t use Cromie against me.’

‘You know what Len would say to you?’ said Mac, growling. ‘He’d say, “You wanna be a piker — go to fucking Churchie.”’

‘You’re a wanker, McQueen,’ said Urquhart, straddling the railing and holding his nostrils shut.

‘And you’re a Nudgee boy,’ said Mac, lowering him. ‘So get in the fucking river.’

Watching Urquhart panic and strike out for the river bank, Mac hesitated as he swung his legs over to follow him. There were fifteen seconds on his mission clock, more than enough time to drop into the water and escape.

Pulling his legs back over and onto the wooden planks of the deck, Mac cursed himself for what he was about to do. Checking the M4 for load and safety, he padded across the open space to the passageway that would take him back to the state room he’d locked the kids in. He felt foolish — he could hear the shouted conversation between Li and the ship’s captain coming to an end, and he knew the next step was going to be soldiers wandering around, finding their comrades dead and sounding the alarm.

Turning the key in the lock, fumbling in haste, Mac pushed in the door and beckoned to the kids. They huddled in the corner, behind the dead paedophile, refusing to move. Crossing the room, he held out his hand and realised that they were both naked — and modest.

Reaching for the girl — who looked the older of the two — Mac grabbed at her arm as she pulled it back. She was protective, pulling the sheet over both of the kids, and hiding the boy behind her.

‘In the sap,’ said Mac, using the Khmer word for river. ‘We swim in the sap.’

The girl shook her head — she was scared but brave and Mac had a flash of a choice: he could do the Harold, not tell anyone he’d left the kids on Dozsa’s boat and leave them out of the report entirely. But he let the weak man’s mind take over and started thinking like a father — wouldn’t want someone to walk away from his own daughters if they were in danger.

Boots thumped on the upper deck. Grabbing the girl by the arm, Mac pulled back, dragging her over the bloody sheets and the corpse, till she flopped onto the floor. She stood and opened her arms to the boy, who scrabbled over the dead rock spider to the safety of what Mac assumed was his sister.

The door almost hit Mac in the forehead as it flung open, and then Mac was looking into a soldier’s eyes.