Counter Attack

Chapter 69

‘No, Sammy,’ said Mac, not believing what he was seeing. ‘Not this.’

‘Why not?’ said Sammy. ‘There’s only one way to deal with North Korea and that’s to have the Chinese do it.’

‘A missile bearing down on Beijing?’ said Mac. ‘The Chinese won’t deal with North Korea, they’ll turn it into a car park.’

‘I agree,’ said a voice, and looking up, Mac saw Joel Dozsa at a small observation window looking down on the control room. A shot cracked from Dozsa’s rifle and as Mac turned to dive under a desk, he saw Sammy collapsing on the floor, a bloody cavity in his chest.

Three more shots thwacked into the lino floor, spraying Mac with blood and concrete dust. It was obvious Dozsa didn’t want to put holes in his control room, and looking across the floor Mac saw Sammy was bleeding out over his M4.

Putting his foot out, Mac dragged at Sammy’s body, trying to retrieve the rifle, but Dozsa shot at him.

The harsh screech of Korean filled the hallways as Dozsa yelled a command, unable to leave his window to walk around and enter the control room.

One of the technicians walked behind the console, bending to pick up Mac’s discarded rifle. Seeing a limited opportunity, Mac accelerated in a running crouch from behind the desk, hitting the Korean in a ball-and-all tackle as a bullet pinged off the floor from Dozsa’s rifle. Taking the Korean in a twisting grapple tackle, Mac hid behind the man’s profile as they sailed through the air.

Landing as the Heckler bounced free, Mac realised the Korean was dead, two shots in his chest intended for Mac. Grabbing at the rifle’s stock, Mac managed to pull it back without getting one of Dozsa’s bullets in his hand.

Checking for load and safety, the lino now slick with blood and stinking of cordite and burnt circuitry, Mac took two deep breaths and turned, firing at the mezzanine window with the Heckler. Panes of glass splintered and the bullets peppered the walls around it. But Dozsa was gone.

Keying the radio, Mac saw it was not responding in the sealed room. Outside, the gunfight raged on, getting closer now.

Looking at his watch, he saw it was 4.42 pm — in eight minutes the real control room in North Korea would lock in its final settings, giving telemetry commands to several hundred different aspects of a ballistic missile launch. At ten minutes before launch, the general in charge of the program would turn his key and the mission controller would turn his, and the final countdown to ignition and firing would begin.

In this case, however, the final countdown wouldn’t commence on North Korea’s terms — it would prepare to launch according to the override coming from this control room. The systems in the North Korean control room wouldn’t register the change; their system would be simply operating in a vacuum while Dozsa’s control room gave the real commands. The North Koreans would be unable to change the launch until they looked out the window and saw their T2 missile arcing due west towards China rather than east, into the Pacific.

Standing, Mac looked at the map on the big screen. Waving at it, he tried to tell the Koreans to change the target but the two surviving technicians were hiding, not wanting to come out.

Checking the upstairs window and the door for signs of Dozsa or his soldiers, Mac pulled the C4 charges from his backpack and eyed the framework on which the mainframes and junction boxes were built. Crawling under the frames — essentially heavy-duty Meccano scaffolds — Mac planted a charge on the side of the server stacks and set the timer for five minutes.

Turning, he crawled back to the control room, noticing a hollow clap under his knees as he passed over, and slapped the other charge on a metal upright and set the timer for five minutes. Standing as he picked up the Heckler, he saw a commotion at the door.

Levelling the rifle, he readied to fight it out — whatever happened from here, Mac wanted those charges detonating.

Lance stumbled in, wide-eyed, and Mac lowered his rifle.

‘Lance,’ said Mac, thinking there was now some hope of finding the file before he blew the control room. He was going to blow it regardless, but he’d like to tell Canberra that he’d retrieved the file.

Lance stumbled forwards, holding his arm awkwardly, and Dozsa slithered in behind him, blood running down from a cut on his tanned bald head.

‘McQueen, drop the gun and listen to me,’ said Dozsa, pointing his rifle at the back of Lance’s head. ‘That missile can’t land in Beijing.’

‘You’re telling me,’ said Mac, letting his rifle slip to the floor.

‘Yes, you, McQueen. You brought that crazy American in here.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Mac.

‘Chan,’ said Dozsa, locking the door behind him. ‘You don’t know who he is?’

‘DIA or Agency,’ said Mac. ‘Ex-Marines forecon.’

‘Emphasis on “ex”,’ said Dozsa, moving to the Korean technicians while he covered Mac and Lance.

Barking orders in Korean, Dozsa kept his eyes on Mac while the small white cross was changed again, this time to Tokyo.

Dozsa stole a quick look at his watch and Mac looked at the screen: in forty-five seconds the North Koreans would lock the Taepodong-2 into its ten-minute launch sequence, not knowing where it was really heading.

‘Why emphasis on ex?’ said Mac, noticing blood dripping from Lance’s crippled arm.

‘Sammy’s private,’ said Dozsa. ‘He’s as official as I am, but he’s sanctioned.’

‘By whom?’ said Mac, calculating whether to tell Dozsa about the charges or try an escape.

‘Heard of the Syracuse Unit?’ said Dozsa. ‘Bunch of Pentagon brass, intel parasites and defence contractors who met in Sicily in the late nineties.’

‘I’ve heard conspiracy wackos talk about these guys,’ said Mac, glancing at his watch — three minutes till the charges blew.

‘It’s not a theory,’ said Dozsa. ‘With the impending election of George W Bush, they met to discuss how the defence and intelligence budgets could be kept at Cold War levels under George W, and they decided that North Asia tearing itself apart was the logical choice.’

‘Sounds like Mossad bullshit to me, Joel — no offence,’ said Mac. ‘Sounds like the kind of thing your secret service keeps telling the politicians so everyone seems worse than the Mossad.’

‘We were inside,’ said Dozsa, smiling. ‘We had eyes.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Mac. ‘Grimshaw is old school — a true believer. He’s ex-Phoenix, for Christ’s sake.’

Dozsa gestured for Lance to approach. ‘Not Grimshaw, he’s been stalking me for two years. He wants my head on a plate.’

‘So?’

‘So, Sammy Chan — planted by the Syracuse Unit — has been courting me while pretending to work for Grimshaw.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Why d’you think Sammy went running down that hill and tried to assassinate Geraldine McHugh that night?’

‘He said he was stopping her being debriefed by Canberra — blamed it on Grimshaw.’

‘And now it is you bullshitting, McQueen,’ said Dozsa, dark eyes glinting like a shark’s. ‘Sammy was cleaning up the mess: Phil, then McHugh — they knew too much, and people knowing too much disturbs the Syracuse gang.’

‘What?’ asked Mac.

‘They tried to turn me, McQueen,’ said Dozsa, reaching for a keyboard. ‘When I wouldn’t, they had to wipe the slate before they took over my little operation.’

‘Phil?’ said Mac, head roaring. ‘What’re you talking about?’

‘That night on the docks in Phnom Penh, you see where the RPG came from?’

‘You,’ said Mac.

‘Think again, my Aussie friend,’ said Dozsa, mouth hardening. ‘It came from the river. My guy on the boat was shot and then there’s an RPG sailing over our heads into that truck.’

‘You’re grasping, Dozsa,’ said Mac.

‘I’m winning, not grasping,’ said Dozsa, in that irritating Hungarian accent. ‘Phil had been with Sammy when they tried to turn me — he knew too much, so Sammy killed him in a way that was plausible to Grimshaw.’

Shaking his head, Mac watched Lance being lured to the PC below the screen banks.

‘Run a test on the HARPAC file,’ said Dozsa to Lance, but not taking his eyes off Mac. ‘I want to make sure we don’t lose comms at the crucial point.’

Lance was stiff with fear, his face white with shock and blood loss. The youngster wasn’t going to be much good in the next ninety seconds.

‘And don’t screw around with it, okay, boy?’ Dozsa held the barrel of his rifle to Lance’s temple.

A faint beeping sound started in the control room, and looking up at the display monitors Mac could see a red panel blinking in the top right-hand corner of each monitor. ‘That’s the ignition phase,’ said Dozsa. The North Korean missile launch was locked in.

Watching Lance’s shaking hand go to the PC, Mac winced. He had only one way to go, and that was to make a run for it — which meant leaving Lance.

The PC screen opened what looked like thousands of lines of code and Lance’s fingers danced lightly over the keyboard.

‘What?’ said Dozsa, distracted by something on the screen. ‘What the hell are you doing?!’

The PC screen was scrolling up at a hundred miles an hour, a box flashing over the data. Mac couldn’t see what the box said, but it blinked yellow. Shit — was Lance deleting the HARPAC file?

Pushing Lance from the PC, Dozsa moved to the keyboard and Lance lunged at the Israeli, pulling the rifle around in Dozsa’s grip and pushing it upwards.

As Mac moved on the two, Dozsa swung the stock of the gun at Lance and crushed his nose, making the Australian stagger backwards in a bloody mess. Mac got to Dozsa as the gun came around and a shot passed his head as he threw a flying elbow at Dozsa’s mouth.

Staggering backwards from the blow, Dozsa lost his balance over the back of a chair; the Koreans scattered out of his way, Dozsa’s gun firing into the ceiling as he fell on his head.

Retrieving his rifle, Mac let two shots go as Dozsa clambered under the computer monitor desks. Boots kicked at the control room door and faces stared through the security glass — Israeli faces.

‘Let’s go,’ said Mac, grabbing Lance, throwing him under the computer frames as automatic weapons tore into the security door.

Crawling under the load of hard drives and monitors, Mac grabbed Lance by the ankle as they moved over the hollow-sounding floor.

‘Here,’ said Mac. ‘You okay?’

‘No.’ Lance was hyperventilating. ‘But I can move.’

Feeling around the hollow area, Mac found the trapdoor with his fingers. Opening it, he stuck his head under and saw a service tunnel that contained a thick rope of wires and fibre-optic cables, carried six feet above the concrete into the middle distance.

The door caved in and boots tattooed across the room as Mac pushed Lance into the hole and watched him drop to the floor below. Mac followed as automatic gunfire rattled under the frames, causing one to collapse. Looking to his right as he ducked down, Mac saw Joel Dozsa, also under the framework and aiming at Mac’s head.

‘You’re dead, McQueen,’ said Dozsa as the gun spat fire.

Mac dropped into the tunnel, his right forearm spewing blood from a bullet nick. ‘This way,’ he said, limping along the dimly lit tunnel, dragging Lance by the arm.

The tunnel ended in a door. Pushing on it, they descended into a loading bay. Gunfire sounded sporadically, and Mac turned, raising the Heckler. An Israeli head popped down through the trapdoor and Mac opened fire at it until the gun seized — no more loads.

‘Red Dog, Red Dog,’ said Mac into the radio mouthpiece as he looked around the deserted loading area. ‘Red Dog, this is Blue Boy — need a ride.’

Bongo’s voice crackled a few seconds later. ‘Gotcha, Blue Boy — meet me at the driveway.’

Emerging into the first light of dawn, Mac jumped to the ground from the loading bay and gasped at the pain in his calf. Lance jogged behind him as they skirted the house for the driveway, Mac feeling naked without firearms.

There were dead bodies at the main entrance to the house and it looked as though Bongo had blown a hole in the main entrance. An eerie silence enveloped the area, broken by the thump of helo rotors. Like a giant black beast, the Little Bird rose out of the valley in front of Dozsa’s house, Tranh’s head lolling unnaturally in the co-pilot seat and Bongo’s gum-chewing face expressionless behind the tinted visor on his helmet.

‘Let’s make this quick, Blue Boy,’ said Bongo over the headset. ‘The Chinese accounted for — Dozsa and some Israelis still active.’

Staggering to the place where Bongo was landing the helo, Mac felt the nausea of pain blurring inwards from the periphery of his vision. He panted his encouragement to Lance as he limped down the driveway.

A loud noise erupted and the Little Bird’s cockpit dome turned to stars. Dropping to the driveway Mac saw Dozsa and the other Israeli emerge at the main entrance, Dozsa holding the .50-cal and the other man shooting an M4.

Trying to bury his head in the gravel as they were caught in the crossfire, Mac heard the helo’s Gatling gun spin and then it was spitting death.

The Israeli soldier was torn apart instantly, leaving Dozsa facing the Gatling gun.

It hardly mattered. As Dozsa got a better grip on the heavy belt-fed gun, the house expanded in a fireball of orange and red, the roof blowing off and the main tunnel doors flying fifty feet into the bush as the C4 was detonated. The noise sounded like a massive train crash, forcing hot air out like a hurricane and spewing thousands of pieces of computer, monitor, concrete and steel into the air and across the driveway like high-tech tumbleweeds. A piece of computer flew at Mac’s elbow and Lance was hit on the head by a lump of concrete the size of a cricket ball, knocking him out.

Debris rained for another twenty seconds as Mac tried to sit up.

‘Watch it, McQueen,’ said Bongo, getting out of the helo and pointing.

Turning, Mac saw Dozsa, about thirty feet from where he’d last been standing, his chinos hanging in tatters, flaps of skin hanging off him like bloody gills.

Looking around for his machine-gun, the ex-Mossad man realised it was back on the front veranda and instead he faced Mac and pulled a mini Ka-bar from his ankle sheath.

‘I told you to steal the SD chip, McQueen,’ said Dozsa, looking drunk with the shock of the explosion. ‘Your job was to take the chip and go home to Kangaroo-land, you fucking imbecile.’

‘Nice idea, Joel, but why would an Israeli psycho let me go?’ said Mac, moving forwards to meet Dozsa. ‘And why would he tempt me to take the chip and leave the hostages? It felt like a Mossad deception.’

‘You think too much, my Aussie friend,’ said Dozsa. ‘You could have taken the chip, flown home and got a medal — we could have avoided this.’

As much as he wanted to take Dozsa to the ground and choke him out or break his neck, Mac knew it was impossible with his leg virtually useless.

‘We’d never avoid this,’ said Mac, getting to within ten feet of Dozsa’s battered body. ‘You’d fly back to Malta or the Seychelles — wherever you’re based — and count the money in your numbered accounts while the people of this region would have China kicking the shit out of anything that moved.’

Dozsa shrugged.

‘And why?’ said Mac. ‘So some passed-over general can dissolve the Central Committee and run China as a military dictatorship?’

‘Stability is what he calls it,’ said Dozsa, moving the knife to his other hand.

‘We don’t need that kind of stability in this region, Dozsa.’

Mac heard the crunch of gravel behind him. Turning, he saw Tranh and Bongo.

‘Philippines need Pao Peng stirring up the shit?’ said Mac to Bongo.

‘We got enough fighting, thanks, Dozsa,’ said Bongo.

‘What about Vietnam?’ said Mac.

‘Had our war,’ said Tranh.

‘My heart bleeds,’ said Dozsa, lunging at Mac.

Dancing back, Mac tore off his shirt and bundled it in his left hand as Dozsa regained balance and prepared for another strike. Struggling for grip on the gravel, Mac’s leg finally gave way and he hopped on his good leg, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Dozsa, seeing his opportunity, leapt at Mac’s solar plexus with the knife, slicing through soft skin. Mac hit down on the knife hand with his shirt bundle as the blade passed across his midriff, taking the Israeli off balance. Simultaneously he threw a hard punch with his right hand at the hinge of Dozsa’s exposed right jaw and then collapsed on the gravel.

Mac lay on his side, and his mouth sagged open as he tried to move. His body had taken too much punishment and he could no longer stand.

‘You fuck,’ said Dozsa, looming over him and cradling his broken jaw. ‘You moron.’

The Ka-bar’s blade glinted in the morning sun and Mac accepted his fate. He couldn’t go on — he could barely breathe. A shadow crossed his face and he looked up at Bongo.

‘So,’ Dozsa spoke from the side of his mouth as he squared off on the Filipino, ‘the Aussie hard man needs his big brother?’

‘McQueen didn’t ask,’ said Bongo, circling with the Israeli. ‘I offered.’

‘Still, it doesn’t look good,’ said Dozsa, sneering. ‘You sure he wants this?’

‘Man’s got a bullet in his leg, Dozsa,’ said Bongo, empty-handed and focused on the ex-Mossad man. ‘Not like he’s giving up.’

The Israeli crouched like a dancer, his legs and feet light on the gravel as he shifted his weight. Bongo stood upright, mouth slowly chewing on gum. As the two men circled, Mac could feel the bullet hole in his leg running with blood.

‘So, how does this work?’ said Dozsa, the busted jaw pushing a faint trickle of blood down his bottom lip. ‘I come at you, and you pull a gun?’

‘Don’t need no gun,’ said Bongo.

‘Get rid of it, Morales,’ said Dozsa, ‘and let’s finish this.’

Bongo’s face was implacable behind the dark shades but very slowly he dropped his left hand and raised the bottom hem of his black trop shirt until the grip of a Desert Eagle handgun appeared above his waistband.

‘This what you’re worried about?’ said Bongo, a picture of stillness.

‘Drop it.’

‘Don’t,’ said Mac, as his blood ran freely from the bullet wound into the gravel. ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction.’

Bongo’s right hand slowly fell to the Browning. Putting two fingers and a thumb on the butt, Bongo extracted it millimetre by millimetre until he held the weapon in front of him.

The pace of the big man’s movements was mesmerising and Mac held his breath. Then Lance sat up and looked around in a daze, catching Dozsa’s attention.

Bongo said, ‘Catch’ and the Browning was arcing through the air at Dozsa, the Israeli hesitating between looking at the gun and focusing on Bongo.

Accelerating like a big cat, Bongo moved across the gap to the Israeli and got a Korean wrist lock on Dozsa’s knife hand while the Browning was still in the air.

Realising he was caught, Dozsa lashed out with a finger strike into Bongo’s eyes as he lost his balance and fell backwards, his right hand bent forwards onto the inside of his forearm.

Leaning his face away from the digging fingernails, Bongo used his strength to jerk upwards with the two-handed wrist lock, which almost raised Dozsa’s feet from the ground. Then, pulling down with all his weight, Bongo drove the Israeli’s right elbow towards the ground, destroying the carpal structure of the wrist, snapping the two forearm bones and dislocating the elbow.

In the still morning air it sounded like a child had been smacked and as Dozsa dropped to his knees and fell sideways — right arm now looking like a Picasso painting — his mouth opened in a scream that made the buzzards rise from the treetops.

As the Israeli roared with pain and sobbed in the gravel, Bongo picked up the Ka-bar and offered it to Mac.

‘Honours are yours, McQueen,’ said Bongo.

Sitting up in the pool of his own blood, Mac took the knife. It felt good in his hand. But trying to crawl to Dozsa, who’d passed out, Mac felt something else overwhelming him and he leaned on his hands, staring at the small dark spots as his tears dropped into the dust.

His back heaved and his face screwed up and before he could control it, Mac was weeping. His face wet, Mac shook his head.

‘Shit, Bongo,’ he said, trying to get the words out without blubbering. ‘I mean, shit — Ray was my friend, you know?’

‘I know, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘Ray was good people.’

‘He was,’ said Mac, sniffing. ‘He was a thousand per cent.’

Dozsa moaned and moved as he regained consciousness.

Looking down at the knife in his hand, Mac discarded it in the gravel.

‘Screw this job,’ he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I didn’t even go to Ray’s funeral, know that, Bongo?’

Bongo looked away, probably with his own list of funerals, marriages and christenings not attended because of security concerns — every one of them a source of gnawing regret.

‘I’m not going to kill this wanker,’ said Mac, suddenly feeling very clear. ‘He’s going to stand in a courtroom, in fricking Saigon, and he’s going to answer for what he did.’

Bongo rubbed his chin. ‘This is Malaysia.’

‘Then we take the jet to Saigon,’ said Tranh, walking to Dozsa and standing over him. ‘The pilots are waiting.’

Sitting in the co-pilot’s seat of the Little Bird helicopter, Mac felt shivers of shock running through his body as he waited for Bongo and Tranh to secure Dozsa in the rear of the aircraft. Lance was concussed and had lost a lot of blood, but he was alive and talking.

Bongo finally buckled in and started the helo, and Mac realised he couldn’t stretch his le gs because of a large postal sack in the cockpit’s footwell.

‘What’s this?’ he said, putting on the ear cans as the revs built.

‘Dozsa’s boys were making off with it,’ said Bongo as the helo screamed. ‘Trying to reach the jungle.’

Mac saw blood on one side of the sack. ‘So you relieved them?’

‘Lightened their load,’ said Bongo, easing the helo skywards.

‘They were abandoning Dozsa?’

‘They had their reasons,’ said Bongo, banking the helo to the south. ‘About one point three million of them.’

‘This whole story just gets classier.’

‘So, we do the same deal, right, brother?’ said Bongo.

‘Same?’

‘Same as Dili. I’ll stash your cut,’ said Bongo.

Looking out on the lush jungle of the Cameron Highlands, Mac thought about it. He’d never joined the Firm to take money from people, but he could make an exception for Joel Dozsa.

‘Nice of you, Bongo,’ said Mac. ‘I’ll give you an address.’