Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 6

Showered and made up like a sales dickhead, Mac ate up large for breakfast: bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, toast, tea, orange juice and half a rockmelon. He was hunkered down in a corner of the Pantai’s huge tropical-themed restaurant, so he’d get a look at the whole room and everyone in it. He was surrounded by Anglo expats and Malaysians trying to cash in on the boom economy of Sulawesi.

Shortly before eight am Mac was running through his day: he needed extra phones, he needed a car – and maybe a driver – and he needed to get on the Garrison/Hannah trail. The Service didn’t have employees or assets in Sulawesi. But they had Minky Bonuya, a local contractor primarily run by the CIA and a hub of the best intelligence on Sulawesi. His long, vulpine face was a real standout in round-faced Indonesia, and Mac wasn’t a great fan of the bloke. But Minky was allegedly the one with the Garrison drum.

As he left the restaurant, Mac walked past a tourist at a fruit stand.

She smelled of the soap that Diane used. Crabtree and Something.

It annoyed him at fi rst but he fell into daydreaming about perhaps travelling with Diane, when he wasn’t working, when he was a regular university lecturer. When…

He snapped out of it. Gave himself a quick tap on the head with the middle knuckle. Thirty-seven years old, and in love for the fi rst time. He didn’t know how people did it.

Minky’s shoe shop was two blocks inland from the Makassar port area. Mac did a fi gure of eight around it, then did some overruns, double-backs and triangulated patterns, with his black wheelie case in tow. Just an overworked salesman looking for his clients. Only this salesman had a P9S handgun sitting slightly behind the front point of his right hip bone, hidden from sight by a safari suit jacket.

Mac wasn’t big on guns, which was why he hadn’t even practised with the Walther yet. Didn’t read the magazines, didn’t have an emotional attachment to them. He had grown to like the unfashionable Heckler for practical reasons. At four inches, its barrel was nice and short, and it was lighter than the big semi-autos like the Beretta and Glock. Sure, it only had seven shots in the clip, but that meant it used a single-stack mag rather than the jam-prone double stacks. It also made it lighter and thinner, perfect for a hip rig. Banger Jordan had hated the shoulder rigs for their record of accidental shootings. He used to say that if he heard about any of his candidates using shoulder holsters in their careers, he’d come over and personally kick their arses. ‘The most likely victim of the shoulder holster,’ he’d said, ‘is the poor cunt standing behind you – and he’s on your side.’

The street looked okay. It was mid tourist season which meant more people to scope but also easier to spot eyes: people who were not relaxing. Some of the cars parked at the kerb – Toyota Vientas and Honda Accords mostly – had men sitting in them, but it wasn’t unlike an Australian shopping district, the missus shopping while blokes read the sports pages. One of the car-bound blokes even looked straight at him: hardly a professional’s technique.

Mac pushed through the door of Minky’s shop into air-con dimness. Minky looked up from behind a glass counter. Smiled like a fox, lips parting to reveal big rodent teeth. Short and middle-aged, his hair was pushed back like an Asian Nosferatu.

‘Aha, Mr Mac – welcome,’ said Minky, coming around the counter in his white dentist’s coat. He shook Mac’s hand.

‘Minky. How’s business?’ said Mac. The smell of leather was good – a blast of childhood.

‘Oooh, so good, Mr Mac. So good.’

This would go on for a while. It was the Indonesian way. Mac used the interlude to case the place: rows of shoes up and down the sides, glass counter at the end of the shop and a glass door into the back room where Mac knew Minky kept his safes and tricky comms gear, including a military satellite uplink-downlink.

The last time Mac was in Sulawesi, Minky had helped him rescue a mining concession that a large Australian company had paid good bribe money to secure. It was being undermined by a bit of Chinese skulduggery and the resolution saw the Aussie mining company having to pony up more money to get what it had already paid for.

Mac took it as a victory but he was always convinced that Minky had taken a cut of the extra fee. Real meaning: Minky had secretly foiled a number of Service-preferred solutions, such as blackmail, in favour of the cheque. After that gig Mac had promised himself that he wouldn’t return to this beautiful and brutal island. During the operation one of his Indon contacts had been hauled off to the cells at the Makassar POLRI compound and beaten virtually to death. Mac always suspected Minky of informing. He’d have done it to ensure he was the only local asset that the Americans and Australians would use. He’d have done it for money. That was Minky.

Now they talked shit.

‘How are you, Mink?’

‘No, how are you, Mr Mac?’

And it was going on for just a shade too long. Mac started to get that cold thing in his gut. That thing when you’re fourteen years old and you cross the dance fl oor of the school formal to ask the girl to dance, and you get that block of ice in your solar plexus. About half a second before she says, ‘No thanks.’

That feeling.

He looked Minky in the eye. Rather than feeling warm towards the bloke, he saw him now as quarry. Minky clocked Mac’s eyes changing and stopped blathering. Gulped. Gear change into scared. Pale-eyed people were not universally well regarded in South-East Asia, mostly because pale eyes couldn’t hide their emotions in the manner required by a face-saving society. Especially violent emotions.

There was a slight movement behind Minky. A tiny shift of refl ection in the half-open glass door. Mac whacked Minky in the Adam’s apple with a knife hand, grabbed the stunned mullet by the hair, pulled him backwards into his stomach and held his face still by wrapping his hand around the little guy’s mouth. Then he squeezed his thumb and forefi nger together on each side of Minky’s face, so he was making the sides of his mouth push inwards on his tongue.

Minky’s eyes bulged, his small hands mincing at Mac’s paw and his legs thrashing.

Mac kept the air fi lled with pleasant nothings as he suppressed any noise of resistance, making it sound as if they were still talking.

Mink’s mouth gulped against the palm of his hand as he advanced slowly on the door to the back offi ce. Mac put his hand back, drew the Heckler.

Minky convulsed, French-kissed Mac’s palm. The vibration of stifl ed scream microwaved Mac’s hand and he pinched Minky’s nostrils shut to stop him moaning. Minky spasmed and vomit cascaded through Mac’s fi ngers. It smelled like curried fi sh. With coriander.

‘Yeah,’ said Mac over his shoulder, as they crept forward. ‘So if we went with the sirloins it wouldn’t be the same thing as if it were blue.

I said that to Dave.’

At the door he stared into the refl ection and got a good angle, recognising the goon standing around the corner. He looked solid and fi t: expensive black slacks, white trop shirt with his hand poised under it.

He was one of the sports page readers. He had been in a silver Accord.

Mac whipped around, wanting to secure the front door against any backup. But he couldn’t risk it. He wanted the goon alive and talkative, so he dropped Minky’s semi-conscious head, walked around the corner and snap-kicked the goon under his left patella. The bloke’s mouth fell open but no sound came out. One hundred and six kilos driven through the front foot will do that. The knee hyperextended but the goon stayed on his feet. Mac put his weight onto his front left foot and threw a low-high hook combination off his left hand. The low shot to the right kidney broke the goon; the high shot to the jaw fi nished him.

Dropped. Like a cheating girlfriend.

Still struggling for breath, Mac looked through Minky’s front door to the packed street outside. He fl ipped the closed sign, slid the bolt, pulled the venetians down and walked into the back room with the goon’s Glock in his back pocket and the Heckler in his right hand.

He tried to control his heart rate with deep breaths. His mind raced.

Who was the goon? What was the larger picture?

Minky was struggling to breathe through coughing fi ts, purple in the face and vomiting. The goon lay on his left elbow, eyes rolling back in his head, face slackened by the broken jaw, leg useless.

In shock.

Neither of them said a word. They knew what came next. Minky would squeal straightaway. He was a pro. He didn’t know much and what he did know he would give up fast for a torture-free morning.

The goon was well dressed, probably Javanese – a contractor sent to woop woop to deal with the Skippy troublemaker. If that was the case there’d be at least another person. Mac thought hard but couldn’t recall another man in the silver Accord.

His heart rate normalising slightly, he moved to the back door, bolted it. There was no glass. He moved to his right, along the back wall that was covered with electronics, and found a window high up. He stepped on a chair, peeked through the window. His vision was thwarted. Couldn’t see the door area but could see the dusty Accord fi fteen metres away in the dirt car park area. He clocked the registration plate. A man was in the passenger’s seat: Asian, but he didn’t vibe local. Black polo shirt, Ray-Bans and something familiar about him.

Mac got off the chair. He probably had fi ve minutes before the cavalry tried to burst in. He pieced it as good as he could: the Americans had sent him to Minky to catch another American, a CIA rogue who was still Agency. So who was working for whom? Minky had a couple of Javanese thugs ready for a reception party. Or did he have no choice?

Only one of the thugs went in. They didn’t look bumpkin enough for Sulawesi, they looked very Jakarta. The goon gasping on the fl oor wore fl ash slacks and even smelled of Old Spice. That made him either American-or Australian-trained, which pointed to ex-BIN or maybe Indonesian Army special forces, the Aussie-trained Kopassus. However it worked, Mac was feeling fear.

Mac moved to Minky fi rst. He didn’t need prompting. ‘I sorry, Mr Mac. So sorry, please.’

Sorry? They always were.

‘Who’s this, Mink?’ asked Mac, waving the Heckler at the goon.

Minky shook his head.

Mac shot him in the bladder. Knelt on his chest so he couldn’t scream.

Minky’s face went purple.

‘Who’s this, Mink?’ Mac pointed the gun at the other side of the bladder, intimating a second shot. Minky convulsed, groaned deep and vomited on Mac’s safari suit pants.

The goon started moving. Mac stood, looked down on him. The goon wouldn’t meet his eye.

‘This a Garrison job?’

The goon looked at him, surprised.

‘Where’s Garrison?’

Now the goon went back to his studied nonchalance. He tried to shake his head but the jaw situation made him wince.

‘Where’s the girl?’ This time Mac raised the Heckler, pointed it at the goon.

Minky sobbed, puked again. Blood soaked into his dentist get-up.

Mac didn’t want to leave without having at least one part of the puzzle. And he didn’t know where he was supposed to be looking.

The goon looked back at the gun. Mac looked at the back door, expecting a charge-in at some point. The goon lashed out with his right leg, caught Mac on the inside of the right wrist. The Heckler tumbled, bounced and slid along the white lino fl oor.

Mistake one: Mac’s eyes followed the gun.

Mistake two: the goon had his hand on the Glock in Mac’s back pocket before the Heckler had stopped sliding.

Mistake three: the goon didn’t fi re immediately.

Mac swung an arc with his left hand, grabbed the goon’s gun hand, twisted it slightly away from pointing at his stomach. Grabbed the gun-hand elbow with his right hand and snapped the goon’s forearm across his knee. The goon was built in the arms but Mac’s adrenaline and speed broke the forearm bones as if he was about to start a camp fi re.

The goon screamed. The cavalry would be coming.

Mac pulled the Glock from the goon’s limp hand and hit him in the temple. Hard. The goon sagged back to the lino, blood running out of his head.

Mac frisked him for a wallet. There was none. He scooped the Heckler, checked for load. An unnecessary yet robotic habit from the Royal Marines.

A kick sounded at the door.

Mac breathed fast and shallow.

Another kick. A man yelling in Bahasa.

He knelt beside Minky, looked at him hard. Saw the bloke’s eyes, saw a deeper fear. The penny dropped. ‘They got your wife, Mink?’

Minky shook his head. The shock was making his teeth chatter.

‘Daughter?’

Minky nodded, tears starting.

‘I’ll get her, Mink, but you have to tell me where.’

Minky was on his way out. His eyeballs were rolling back.

A shot fi red outside the door. No splinters. Minky’s back door was steel.

Mac slapped Minky. A bladder shot usually gives you ten minutes, but Mac’s slug might have bounced into the leg’s main artery.

‘In Makassar? Is that where she is, Minky?’

Another head shake.

‘Is she with Garrison? Tell me, Mink.’

Minky vomited again. This time green and red. It dribbled rather than poured. A bloke about to cark it.

Minky looked up, said, ‘Eighty.’

Mac slapped Minky as his head lolled. ‘What’s that, Mink – you say “eighty”?’ He didn’t get it.

Minky nodded almost imperceptibly, his face pale.

Then he was dead.

Collapsed like a rag.

More gunshots. The sound of lead pinging around in the door.

Mac stood, raced to the front door, then had another thought and went back to the Javanese goon. He pulled back the guy’s trop shirt collar. No luck. Then unzipped the bloke’s pants, pulled them down.

‘If we don’t tell, then it never happened, hey butch?’

He grabbed the waistband, pulled it round. Bingo! A pink piece of paper stapled to the tailor’s label. Mac tore the dry-cleaner’s ticket off the pants, grabbed his black wheelie bag.

He prepared for the worst as he exited. It didn’t come. He walked straight into tourist crowds. Malaysian lawyers and dentists with their kids all kitted out in genuine Sulawesi tribal headdresses.

He fl owed with them, adrenaline bursting like fi reworks behind his eyes. His vision darted everywhere at once, breathing shallow and raspy. His brain was working so fast he could barely think of anything else except silver Honda, black polo shirt; silver Honda, black polo shirt. Silver. Black. Black. Silver…

He walked for fi ve minutes like that before he took his hand entirely off his right hip. There didn’t seem to be a tail. Not from the silver Accord, at least. The two Western-style Javanese hit men probably hadn’t wanted to take their business into the street.

Mac had got lucky.

He lurched to a stand of hibiscus behind a bus stop shelter. Vomited.

For all his reputation as a tough customer, he hated shooting, hated guns and loathed seeing someone die. But no amount of training or experience could stop a trapped and scared animal behaving like a trapped and scared animal. Mac hadn’t shot Minky because he was tough; he’d shot him because he was scared and wanted to control the situation by making the other guy more scared than him. It was a mistake. He’d known that as soon as he pulled the trigger.

He walked and walked. He backtracked, overlapped and did the oldest trick in the game: turned on his heel suddenly and walked straight back from where he came. It looked natural if you pretended you’d forgotten something. He walked past the markets, down to the waterfront, a thriving fi shing town for a thousand years and now concentrating on netting South-East Asia’s holidaying middle classes.

The local jihadists were trying to reverse that with the aid of their old friend, potassium chlorate.

Midday turned into two-thirty real fast.

He dipped into a series of dime stores of the type that blanket Asia: the ones that sell cigarettes, incense and cigarette lighters where the girl’s bikini drops when you turn it upside down. They sell the local rags as well as Tempo, the Straits Times and the Jakarta Post. Mac bought plain Nokias and pre-paid cellular network cards for a Philippines telco called EastCall. He ducked in, he ducked out. He bought phones from different shops and bought a packet of wet-wipes. He ate goreng at a street stand, sitting back in the shadows where Grandma wrapped spring rolls. He didn’t let his eyes leave the street or his hand leave his right hip, and he cleaned Minky’s vomit off his pants.

He did numbers: six shots left in the Heckler, but it would have to be dumped. He didn’t want to go back to the Pantai for the Walther – too risky now. He should have taken the goon’s Glock with him, but now he’d have to pick up a gun when he RV’d with Sawtell.

Would they have a spare? How many more did Garrison have coming for him? And who or what was Minky talking about when he said

‘Eighty’?

He walked some more, looking for a car hire place that wasn’t a big American brand – the CIA data-tapped those franchises quick-smart. And the Americans were starting to look like being part of the problem rather than the solution. Minky was an Agency contractor and the hit squad was probably the same. But whether the ambush was American or Australian, Mac felt relieved that he’d changed the RV with Sawtell from Makassar to Ralla, up the coast. Mac hadn’t been thinking about double-crossings when he’d done that at the last minute. He’d just wanted to keep a posse of highly conspicuous special forces soldiers out of town until he needed them. Now it might give him a day’s head start on whoever was after him.

He asked around and headed inland to a place called Paradise Holiday Hire Cars. A couple of locals had said it was cheap and reliable.

And they took cash.

He passed by the Golden Hotel on the waterfront and watched a bunch of Anglo and Asian junketeers milling around, waiting to get on a tour bus. They looked like IT consultants or telecom engineers.

Local police lolly-gagged with their assault rifl es. Mac slid in amongst the junketeers, smiling and making quippish non sequiturs to no one in particular.

Hoo-fucking-rah!

The junket-lovers were putting their day luggage into a pile to be loaded into the luxury coach. Mac wandered among them with his wheelie case. No one challenged him, probably because he was Anglo. One of the great weaknesses of the coalition of the willing’s War on Terror was its inherent ethnic bias. Something was wrong when a pale-eyed white man could wander through the world’s largest Muslim country and receive less attention than a local.

Mac bent down, pulled his blue Service Nokia from his wheelie and put it in the side pocket of a carry-all. The name tag on the bag said Richard Taylor, accompanied by a Melbourne address. The ASIS listening post would track the junketeers for hours, maybe days, before it sounded all wrong.

Mac walked another three blocks, found his rental car place and hired a white Toyota Vienta. He paid in cash for ten days and coughed up for an insurance policy which was worth more as emergency bog paper in Sulawesi than as something that would save him from being sued.

Driving to the outskirts of Makassar, he pulled over into an elevated tourist lookout and tried to collect himself. Rummaging in his safari suit pocket Mac gasped a little at his right wrist as it caught on the fabric. The wrist was now swelling from the kick he’d taken from the goon. He fi shed out the pink dry-cleaner label. It had a serial number under the name SUNDA LAUNDRY – PALOPO. Palopo was a mid-sized coastal town a day’s drive north. If those fl ash slacks had been recently pressed, then Mac was prepared to bet that Garrison – probably Judith Hannah and Minky’s daughter too – were somewhere in the vicinity.

It was all he had to go on. With Minky dead, it would have to do.

Mac grabbed a set of spare socks from the wheelie bag, tied them together in a knot and pulled the lever to open the gas tank fl ap. He found a stick on the ground, about three feet long, and moved to the back of the Vienta. Pushing the socks into the gas tank with the stick, he held the other end and waited for a few seconds before pulling the petrol-soaked socks out. Unclipping the entire hip rig and Heckler from his belt he knelt and wiped down the gun until the whole thing was shiny with gasoline. He dumped it in a rest area bin and went back to the Toyota, grabbed the Winchester loads and the spare mag, wiped them down with the socks and then dumped them too, along with the socks.

Then he got on the road for Ralla, where he was meeting Sawtell the following morning.

He was exhausted. Adrenaline does that to you.

As he drove he thought back to what he had done with that Service phone. It was only the second time in his career that he’d deliberately slipped Canberra’s internal bugging and tracking.

And that time he had also suspected the Service had a mole.