Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 45

Mac opened the patio doors. The bloke called Sri looked him up and down, exhaled smoke and fl icked the butt over the edge without looking where it would land. Mac hated that.

‘She needs sleep, guys. Get her down to MMC,’ said Mac.

The blokes glanced at one another. All Poms, but looking like a spectrum of Asia: Paul Filipino-Mex, the other bloke Chinese and Sri with his southern Indian fi zzog.

Sri was obviously in charge and seemed like the guy who looked after the pliers and crocodile clip department. Mac clocked his big wrists and forearms, had a fl ash of what he’d do to Diane.

Mac may have just been played by a beautiful woman, but he also felt disgust at what Sri might be planning to do next. Maybe his lust and love for Diane were still there. Couldn’t work that one out. What he knew was that torture and bashing were the lazy spook’s way of doing his job.

Sri and Mac stared at one another and Paul stood, grabbed Mac by the arm. They walked back into the kitchen.

‘Watch it, mate,’ said Paul.

‘What? That wanker?’

‘Not in the Marines now, tough guy. I’m telling ya, friendly like, don’t fuck with Sri.’

‘Diane’s lost it, mate. Drug-fucked. Detox her and let it come back. Do it natural,’ said Mac.

Paul nodded, smiled.

‘What?’ said Mac.

‘Oh, nothing.’

Mac felt a blush start. ‘You’ve got a fi lthy mind, know that?’

‘Oh, come on, mate.’

‘Me come on? Would Sri be so keen for the wet work if Diane was a bloke?’

They stared at each other.

Paul looked away fi rst. ‘So what did you get?’

Mac thought about it. ‘Well she had no idea they’d taken nerve agent off Golden Serpent.’

‘Okay.’

‘And that white ro-ro ship on Brani? They did steal it. And it’s loaded with gold.’

‘Fuck me!’ said Paul. ‘How much?’

‘A lot, she reckons. Starting to see a motive?’

Paul shook his head. ‘The greedy cunts!’

‘Not what I’d write in my report, but you’re getting there.’

Mac noticed something. Looked down at Paul’s chest. ‘What the hell’s that?’

Paul looked down, pulled apart the dome fasteners on his new grey ovies. There was a massive black and blue bruise on the right pectoral. An egg yolk was developing in the middle.

‘Christ, mate!’ said Mac.

‘Yeah, imagine it without the kevlar.’

‘Spaghetti bolognaise,’ said Mac.

‘Fucking paella with Tabasco.’

Mac saw the oven clock. ‘Mate, gotta be somewhere at noon.’

‘Where you going?’

‘Man about a dog,’ said Mac.

‘You too, huh?’

They got out of the Humvee, into the intense heat and humidity of a late morning at Halim Air Base. Mac had it at thirty-seven degrees.

The MP got out of the driver’s seat, came around and gave Paul his SIG and Mac his Heckler.

A bunch of Army guys toted bergens to a Black Hawk and John Sawtell appeared out of a hangar behind them. Back in his BDUs and wearing a boonie hat and sunnies, Sawtell greeted the spooks. Mac wondered if he’d been drinking last night, trying to erase the memory of the kids in the container.

Mac kicked it off. ‘Mate, need a detour to Brani Island. Can do?’

‘Can do, my man. Didn’t DIA tell you? You guys are calling the shots.’

They hugged the coast back up to Singers, Sawtell sitting behind the pilot. The other six sat in webbing hammock seats in the back.

Mac keyed the mic and asked Sawtell why they appeared to be going a slower return route. They’d come straight over the sea on the way into Jakkers.

‘Asymmetric routes,’ Sawtell shouted above the din. ‘Never fl y an exact return route. Never know who’s down there with a SAM, waiting for you to come back the way you went.’

The fl ight would take an hour and a half. Mac relaxed, trying to put pieces of the puzzle together. See how it worked out.

It looked like Garrison and Sabaya had planned the Golden Serpent to heist a shipload of gold. It seemed like a lot of trouble to pull a heist.

Maybe it worked if you saw it through locals’ eyes? If Mac took the Edi approach – that Sabaya and Garrison were carrying out an inciting incident to give the Chinese naval base more leverage – and added that to the Cookie theory that wherever Sabaya and Garrison went, there was loot, then what you had was a unifi ed theory. Sort of.

Mac wasn’t going to buy it just yet. If it was that simple, then where did the stolen VX bomb fi t in? Just a decoy to keep the port closed down a bit longer, to get the Americans and British and Singaporeans searching for WMDs rather than a shipload of gold?

Maybe.

Other things pulled at Mac’s mind. Who did the gold belong to?

What was it doing on Brani? How did they heist the whole thing?

An inside job? Pretty big inside job – Diane had said there was thousands of tons of the stuff. He wondered what that looked like.

Mac joined the hook-up to Don as Brani Island came into sight. Don had satellites, AWACS, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and the US Navy sweeping for the stolen ship, but fi nding it was not proving easy.

They couldn’t get a proper ID on the thing and the Singaporeans were proving cagey about why it was unmarked, who owned it and who was operating it. Basic stuff but no response.

‘Can you get the State Department to insist?’ asked Mac.

‘Already asked,’ said Don.

‘Have you told the Singaporeans that it’s transporting a stolen cache of VX nerve agent?’

‘Sorry, McQueen. That’s classifi ed. It’s not the kind of thing we discuss.’

‘Well, around in circles we go again. Just like nine-eleven, huh?’

‘Oh, come on, McQueen.’

‘Looks like it to me. The Singaporeans won’t tell you about the ship.

You won’t tell about the VX. Same old same old. Just like the Agency and the Bureau.’

There was a pause. Mac leaned over, pointed out the southern point of Brani where he wanted to land.

‘Look, I’m about to talk with them again,’ said Don.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Mac. ‘Tell this Singers bloke, tell him from me that that’s the last time I show my arse on global television to save his crummy container port.’

Don laughed, wearily. ‘Think it’ll work?’

‘Chinese sense of humour, mate. Might do the trick.’

Mac felt the Black Hawk descending. To the right, Golden Serpent was still in port, bio-hazards swarming her like an army of white ants.

The portainers removed containers – probably to work out what else was on the ship. It’s what the Twentieth were known for. They’d take that thing apart like they were watchmakers, and the delay would be driving the Singaporeans nuts.

Mac had been thinking more and more about how and where the Chinese fi tted into this. He was leaning towards the Indonesian interpretation and decided to twig Don to a possible Chinese angle.

‘Don, mate, have a good think about this: is there an alternative you can talk to in the Singapore government?’ asked Mac.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you may be dealing with someone who’s stonewalling, perhaps on behalf of the Chinese.’

‘What, you mean that whole conspiracy about whether CIA or MSS is running Singapore?’ said Don.

‘Well, yeah,’ said Mac. ‘The Singapore power structure is split between being generally pro-China on security grounds, and totally anti-China on Commie grounds. When it comes to this ship, I’d be trying to speak with someone who doesn’t trust the PLA as far as you could spit them. Reading me?’

‘Copy that. I know just the man.’

The security building was partially sunk into the ground, like a bunker

– as if the thirty metres it rose into the air had been pushed up out of the surrounding quay apron.

Mac, Paul and Sawtell walked the perimeter while the troopers stayed by the Black Hawk. After one full circuit Sawtell stopped at the front, said, ‘Well that’s it, ladies. Two entry points: security vehicular roller door – high-tensile steel, custom fabricated by the looks of it.

And a security pedestrian entry which looks like one of those Austrian vault doors.’

‘Security building,’ said Paul.

‘Locked down tighter than a Q-store,’ added Sawtell, smiling.

Mac looked at the concrete driveway, saw faint dirty tyre marks in a line between the roller door and the rear of where the roll-on/roll-off ship had berthed. He looked at Sawtell. ‘Gotta get in there, John.

Can do?’

Sawtell shrugged, called to Jansen, said he wanted guys on the roof too, checking any entries through the air-con or a ceiling window.

All around the island the thromping sound of helos fi lled the air. The DIA and Twentieth were still looking for their VX in the most obvious places: in a line between Golden Serpent and Brani Island.

They dangled huge alloy pods below the aircraft and fl ew at about ten miles per hour along the top of the water. They’d be picking up every old anchor and car wheel that had ever gone to the bottom, but that was going to have to be part of the process.

Jansen and his sidekick started on the pedestrian door. Spikey made quick work of getting onto the roof and came back almost immediately, looked over the roof line, and said, ‘Ducted air-con.

Send up the jockey.’

Special forces spent a lot of their time training to get into places they weren’t supposed to be in. For that reason, most units had their unoffi cial ‘jockey’ – a smaller man who could pull the kind of break and enters someone like John Sawtell was not built for.

A sinewy little bloke Mac recognised as Fitzy ratted up the rappel rope in three strides and hauled himself over the edge sideways like he was on a pommel horse.

Sawtell looked up. ‘Make it fast, Spikey. I’m running a watch on ya.’

The other troopers abandoned the security door, tied Spikey’s canvas gear bag to the rappel rope and it was pulled up to the roof.

Almost immediately the sounds of renovations fi lled the air.

After nine minutes there was a clunk, and a jerk. And then the roller door was rising. It went up very slow, obviously heavier than your average warehouse door. As it came up, Fitzy was exposed, standing with one hand on the door control knobs, wearing nothing but undies and axle grease.

Paul and Mac pulled their guns and checked for load as Sawtell beckoned Fitzy out and stationed one of the troopers with the Black Hawk. Then they moved forward into the building.

It was eerie and warm inside. The air-con had been off for a while and the heat and lack of air made for a musty smell.

Mac looked up and saw Fitzy’s rope dangling from a duct in the ceiling. Someone was hauling it back out.

Stretched out in front of them was a standard concrete-slab warehouse. In the middle was a down-ramp to a sub-level. To their left was an admin offi ce. The offi ce closest to the in-door was a controller’s desk. Then there were three other offi ces behind it. And behind those offi ces was a large white demountable.

They moved along the demountable, passing tubs and gas cookers and underwear hanging out to air. People lived here.

Sawtell pushed the door to the demountable with his M4 carbine, leaned back and poked his head round. He leaned back again, and motioned with his head for Paul and Mac to take a look.

Paul walked in fi rst. Hit the light. Froze. Mac looked over his shoulder. There were four cot beds down each side of the demountable.

Wood-veneer fi nish on the inside. You could see clothes trunks fi tted beneath each bed. On the beds were fi ve men in various states of dress.

Dead. Pools of dark blood, set and dried.

Paul stepped forward, making a show of avoiding the blood.

Stowing his SIG, he knelt beside one of the men, who looked about twenty-one. Chinese, probably southern coastal provinces, his eyes open, tongue slack and face still lively, except where the slug had exited below the right cheekbone. Paul pushed the man’s face back, twisted it slightly, found what he was looking for. The entry hole was just behind the left ear.

Paul gently parted the dead man’s hair around the entry wound.

There was a dark charcoal-like marking on the scalp around the hole.

Paul scratched at it and the dark stuff came straight off.

‘Executions,’ said Paul, standing. ‘They used suppressors – don’t scorch but they leave a sooty residue. Shot at close range. Maybe knew the killers?’

Mac looked from corpse to corpse. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

They fanned out. Sawtell’s boys heading down the right side of the top warehouse level, Mac, Paul and Sawtell taking the left side.

The containers were mostly open. Sawtell pointed the M4 into them, the Maglite on the bottom of the barrel illuminating the interiors.

Lots of wood shavings and polystyrene balls. In one container they found Ming vases still in their wooden cases. In another there were racks of paintings – maybe two hundred of them.

Before they went downstairs, Mac found a locked forty-foot green container. Sawtell held up his hand and they walked the box, tapping on the steel, asking if there was anyone in there. Asked Paul what hello was in Tagalog.

Without kids to worry about, the Berets had the doors off in twenty seconds. Mac poked his head in. It looked like two large objects arranged end to end, covered in tarps. Mac asked for a Ka-bar and slashed the fi rst tarp off, peeled it back. A red car with a black horse on a yellow badge. A Ferrari.

He slashed the second tarp back. A white sports car with a sky blue stripe over it, end to end. Mac, Paul and Sawtell looked at one another. Shrugged.

‘Must be fl ash, I guess,’ said Paul.

‘I guess,’ said Sawtell.

Sawtell yelled at Spikey and Spikey jogged over.

‘You know about cars,’ said Sawtell. ‘What’s this?’

Spikey’s face lit up. ‘Oh man! You are freaking kidding! This red one here is a Ferrari Enzo. Worth over a million bucks. Hard to tell because every time one sells, the price goes up. Only four hundred made.’

Sawtell asked about the white one.

‘That is the fi nest grain-fed all-American sports racer ever built.’

‘Oh really?’ said Sawtell.

‘That’s a Ford GT40. Won Le Mans three years in a row.

Kicked Ferrari’s ass.’ He nodded at it. ‘Looks original. I’d say a ‘68 prototype.’

Sawtell asked if it had a price on it.

‘Hard to say,’ said Spikey, like he was a medical specialist giving an opinion. ‘You can’t buy ‘em. They swap hands privately. God knows what this is doing in a container in Singapore.’

Mac was starting to get the picture. Diane had told him that Sabaya and Garrison had taken off with thousands of tons of gold. What they were looking at was the stuff left behind.

Mac was getting the creeps. He wanted to search the sub-level and do it quick.

Going down the ramp Sawtell asked if Mac was all right. ‘Yeah, mate. Just got the willies.’

‘Why?’

‘Those dead blokes.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Clock the haircuts?’

‘Aah, yeah…?’

‘Worse than a para’s, mate.’

Paul laughed.

‘I’m serious,’ said Mac, his breath coming faster. ‘And did you see those beds?’

Paul nodded, knowing what Mac was getting at. Mac turned to Sawtell as they got to the sub-level. ‘See those beds, John?’

‘Sure did, my man.’

‘Only one place in the world where a man has such a bad haircut, and a perfect bed,’ said Mac, checking for load.

‘And I don’t need to tell either of you shit-kickers where that might be, now do I?’