Counter Attack

Chapter 43

The van’s air-con made the interior either too cold or too warm — there was no middle setting. Messing with the dial while he waited for Luc to have a shower and say goodbye to his wife, Mac’s phone sounded.

Mac hit the green button. ‘Yep.’

‘McQueen — Sammy,’ said the American. ‘What’s this text mean? A plane and a pilot?’

‘You guys good for it?’ said Mac, observing the early-morning traffic off the main boulevard of Cong Hoa. ‘We charter the plane, we get the pilot.’

‘Remind me,’ said Sammy.

‘The North Star pilot — his name’s Luc,’ said Mac. ‘He doesn’t have the coordinates but he knows how to fly us to Dozsa’s airfield.’

‘Okay,’ said Sammy, covering the phone and talking with someone before coming back on the line. ‘Can do, McQueen.’

‘Demand the Fokker Friendship and ask for Luc by name,’ said Mac. ‘Book it now and with any luck it’ll be ready by the time we’re out there.’

‘This Luc okay?’

‘His wife will decide, but I put a sweetener in there for her.’

‘Sweetener?’ said Sammy.

‘Yeah — told him there’s five thousand US, over and above.’

‘Nice, McQueen. That coming out of your pocket?’

‘We receive unto our needs, give according to our ability, right, Sammy?’

‘I went to church too, tough guy,’ said Sammy. ‘Priest said nothing about giving with another man’s wallet.’

‘Cash works best,’ said Mac as Luc emerged from his French- colonial terrace house.

Banking steeply over Phnom Penh, Luc straightened for the runway and eased the red and white F-27 onto the tarmac, its twin Pratt & Whitneys stirring Mac’s memory. When he was growing up in regional Queensland the Fokker Friendships had been a staple of travel between small cities and towns: Rockhampton — Townsville, Gladstone — Mackay, Barcaldine — Longreach. If you flew those routes, then you sat in those purring Friendships with the harsh light bending through the egg-shaped fuselage windows. The planes were still used across South-East Asia and India as milk-run planes that could take off and land on short runways and carry a surprisingly large payload.

In the passenger section of Mac’s plane were three rows of seats directly behind the cockpit and the rest was a cargo bay, hidden by a dark green canvas quilt hanging off the interior fuselage.

Bringing the F-27 to the hangar with the Aviation Services Inc. sign above the open doors, Luc shut down props, hooked his headset on the wall of the cockpit and came through to Mac while the engineer completed the logs and checks.

‘Okay, Mr Richard,’ said Luc, his face still suffering from Bongo’s beating. ‘Welcome to Cambodia.’

Opening the forward door, Luc released the folded ladder. Easing himself down the narrow gangplank to the tarmac, Mac squinted and pulled down his sunnies as the tropical sun gained intensity. It was 9.38 am and felt like thirty-five degrees.

Sammy Chan leaned against a black Chevrolet Silverado. ‘McQueen — you’re early. I like that.’

Sammy greeted Luc and Mac gave some background as they walked to the reception area of the service hangar.

‘We need to talk,’ said Mac into Sammy’s ear as Luc went over to the coffee machine and poured a cup.

‘Just have to nip upstairs, okay, Luc?’ said Mac, grabbing a coffee.

‘Um, yeah, okay, Mr Richard,’ said the pilot, averting his eyes.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Mac, moving to the stairs with Sammy. ‘I’ll get you the money.’

The first-floor area was filled with sofas and coffee tables, which looked out over Phnom Penh International through tinted floor-to-ceiling windows. At one end, Charles spoke in Vietnamese into a phone, a finger jammed in his ear as he spoke too loud. Sammy raised binoculars and scanned the airport. It was the lifelong curse of people from a military intelligence background to obsessively survey whatever ground lay in front of them. In Sammy’s case, he seemed to be focusing on the large man in grey overalls and baseball cap who was loading the black canvas duffels from the Silverado into the rear door of the F-27. The luggage man was Brian, the tall American who’d greeted Mac as he’d boarded the houseboat two days earlier.

‘Looks like we got some gear,’ said Mac, taking a seat. ‘I thought we might need some more cavalry.’

‘Because?’ said Sammy, not dropping the binos.

‘Because I had a bird whisper in my ear about this prick Dozsa,’ said Mac, sipping on good coffee — Sumatran or Timorese was his guess.

‘And?’ said Sammy.

‘A two-man Mossad hit team passed through Bangers a few months ago, masquerading as Australian forestry guys. Drove up to Stung Treng province — Dozsa’s turf.’

‘Israelis don’t like the jungle, McQueen,’ said Sammy, ‘and the jungle don’t like them. So what was going on?’

‘Dozsa’s operating up there with a Chinese cadre. They look private but probably PLA.’

‘What happened?’ said Sammy.

‘Dozsa waited, let them get close, then he executed them.’

Letting the field-glasses drop, Sammy sipped the coffee. ‘Mossad on Mossad. That’s —’

‘Scary?’ said Mac.

‘Your word,’ said Sammy, looking away.

Mac saw the look on the American’s face. ‘It’s okay to feel queasy about this guy, but four of us, up there? It might be travelling light.’

‘It’ll be six,’ said Sammy. ‘I hired some muscle.’

‘Military?’ said Mac.

Sammy nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘Locals?’

‘Sort of — between these guys and your pilot, the US government might have change left over for lunch.’

‘Speaking of which,’ said Mac.

Turning to his backpack, Sammy pulled out a fat envelope and handed it over. ‘Tell Luc he can at least serve tea and biscuits for that whack.’

‘He might find a few beers for this.’

‘So,’ said Charles, joining them, ‘you two come up with a plan yet?’

‘Do some aerial recon with Luc while the rest come in by vehicle,’ said Sammy. ‘There’s a village north of Stung Treng. I’ve rented the second floor of the local hotel.’

‘Cover?’ said Charles.

‘Forest biodiversity project for the World Bank,’ said Sammy. ‘Verification audit for the Sam Ang forest region — it’s across the river from Stung Treng.’

‘We official?’ said Charles.

Sammy smiled. ‘Got the lanyards in my bag.’

Charles frowned, bit on the arm of his sunnies. ‘I don’t want to storm this place. The Aussie girl’s in there and I don’t want this Mossad maniac blowing the whole thing sky-high.’

‘It’s a stealth assignment, Chuck,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m not racing out of my trench at these bastards, and neither is McQueen.’

Staring at Sammy and then Mac, Charles nodded slowly.

‘Okay, no heroics, no tough-guy scenes,’ he said, looking at Mac. ‘Remember, we answer to bureaucrats and they would rather we fail than create embarrassment.’

Mac maintained a straight face. ‘I turned forty last week, okay, Charles?’

‘Maybe it’s not just you,’ said Charles. ‘Sammy, make sure these mercs get the message, okay?’

A smashing sound came from the stairwell and then Luc was in the room, panting and scared.

‘What’s up?’ said Mac, standing and unhitching the Colt from the back of his waistband.

‘Down there,’ said Luc, trapped between a gulp and a pant.

‘Who?’ Mac cocked the Colt and moved to the stairwell, Sammy behind him.

‘Help me,’ said Luc, turning and running towards the end of the long room.

Turning around the edge of the stairwell, Mac looked down the carpeted stairs and saw no one. Moving down one stair at a time, he listened for sounds and heard men’s voices.

‘Let’s go,’ Sammy whispered over his SIG.

They got to the door at the foot of the stairwell. Mac’s temples were pounding. He didn’t know if he was ready for this after the violence he’d seen recently and his hands were swimming and his breath was shallow as Sammy moved beside him.

Looking through the glass panel in the door, Mac couldn’t see anyone in the ground-level reception area.

‘Shit,’ said Mac, hissing it out. The last time he’d burst through a door, Jim Quirk had been murdered in front of him. Now he had the pilot running for his life. Who was down here? The Israelis? The Chinese?

‘On three,’ said Sammy.

Counting it out, Mac opened the door, put his handgun in a cup-and-saucer grip and strode into the lounge, sweeping the Colt from ten o’clock to two. Sammy joined him as they scanned the empty reception area, wondering what had spooked Luc.

Relaxing slightly, Mac felt his breathing normalise.

‘Where’s —’ Sammy stopped short.

Turning to the American, Mac felt the gun muzzle behind his ear and dropped the Colt, put his hands in the air.

They stood for one second before the man behind them spoke.

‘You don’t remember too good, McQueen,’ said the South-East Asian voice with a faint American twang. ‘I told you — you pull on me, you’d better kill me.’

The sweat felt like ice on Mac’s forehead as the air-con turned the room into a fridge. That voice came from a decade ago — from East Timor, when Mac was being stalked by Kopassus intel and he’d needed a hired gun to protect him.

‘That you, Bongo?’ said Mac, trying to sound confident but squeaking slightly.

‘When I have the gun,’ said Bongo Morales, ‘I ask the questions.’

Moving in front of Mac, Sammy had a huge smile on his face.

‘Didn’t know you two were acquainted,’ he said, retrieving Mac’s Colt and handing it to him. ‘Bongo’s coming north with us.’

A large, dark man in military shorts and a T-shirt moved into the room through the front doors. Mac recognised him immediately: a former Aussie special forces soldier named Didge.

Nodding a greeting at Didge, Mac turned to Bongo. ‘So you’re the muscle?’ said Mac, stashing his gun.

‘Got brains too, McQueen,’ said Bongo, chewing gum. ‘You wanna stare at the pipes, that’s your problem, brother.’