Counter Attack

Chapter 59

Lying face down on the hospital bed, Mac flinched as the doctor took the hot compress off the bullet wound in his calf and pushed stainless-steel forceps into the hole.

‘You get choice,’ said the doctor, in clear English. ‘Fast and painful, or slow and painful?’

‘Just do it,’ said Mac, not in the mood for medical humour.

Besides the pain, Mac was dreading having to speak with Jenny. Some husbands’ burden was to explain their way out of a game of golf that turned into an all-nighter at the nineteenth, or a business lunch that had ended up at a nightclub. Mac would have to explain how he came to be shooting at his wife in a highway rest stop in central Cambodia.

There was a glugging sound and the nurse leaned in, and then there were strong hands wrapped around his knee and ankle as the doctor grunted and cursed under his breath. After a final sucking sound like a plunger in a blocked lav, the doctor was standing beside Mac’s face showing him a small, dark slug in the grip of the bloody forceps.

‘That been in you forty-eight hours?’ said the doctor, a young man who claimed to have been educated in Perth. ‘Amazing that you walking around.’

‘I wasn’t,’ said Mac. ‘I was kissing dirt by the side of the road.’

The nurse moved in with a trolley filled with bandages and immediately started on a bed bath for the wounded leg.

‘Yeah, well, you should have been to hospital when you are shot, Mr Davis,’ said the doctor. ‘Can die from the infection — especially you swimming in the river.’

‘I’ll be using mouthwash the rest of my life,’ said Mac, still tasting that foul river-swill in his mouth. ‘Where’re the kids?’

‘Kids are fine,’ said Jenny, moving into the curtained area as the nurse dried off the wound.

‘Great,’ said Mac. ‘What are you doing up here, anyway?’

‘Dodging bullets from the father of my child,’ said Jen, dark ponytail sitting on her right shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ said Mac, hoping the nurse didn’t speak English. ‘I had a big night. And you?’

‘Captain Loan is following a lead in Stung Treng,’ said Jenny, all her weight on her left hip, arms crossed. ‘I’m interested. You might be too.’

Pausing to assess the hidden trap, Mac proceeded carefully. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah — we searched Quirk’s apartment in the old BP com- pound in Saigon and came up with a laundry receipt from a place called the Water Dragon Guest House. It’s on the east side of Stung Treng.’

‘So it’s “we” now?’

‘Observing,’ said Jenny. ‘Chanthe spoke with the owner of the Water Dragon and she said she remembered a regular Australian visitor — called himself John Black but John Black looks just like the photograph we showed her of Jim Quirk.’

‘Jim — in Cambodia?’

‘He used to stay at the guest house every second weekend. He’d take a suite but would be in and out of the suite rented by what she called Turks.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. She later found out the Turks used to stay in a place out of town, across the Srepok, but had stopped going there after a room was blown up and some other Turks were assassinated.’

‘So why would I be interested?’ said Mac, as the bandages went on his leg.

‘Because I called Maggs, asked him about it,’ said Jenny.

‘Harley?’ said Mac.

‘I was wondering if he’d seen any Turks through Phnom and he tells me they’re probably Israelis — retired Mossad guys.’

‘Well, that’s interesting.’

‘He told me he’d seen you, Macca,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you had a drink with Maggs and didn’t talk about the Mossad guys — that’s precisely what people like you talk about.’

‘Steady, my sweet,’ said Mac, trying to work out how many people were listening. The annoying thing about cops was how open they were.

‘Well?’

The nurse finished and left the curtained cubicle.

‘Yeah, he told me there was a bunch of ex-Mossad hard-ons charging around the place,’ said Mac. ‘So what?’

‘Maggs noted the ex-Mossad vehicle in Phnom — it matches the Turks’ LandCruiser at the Water Dragon Guest House,’ said Jenny.

‘Okay.’

‘This Israeli vehicle is a green LandCruiser Prado. A similar vehicle departed the scene of Jim Quirk’s murder in Saigon.’

‘Common car,’ said Mac.

‘Patrons at the Mekong Saloon saw a team of Turkish or Israeli men go up the mezzanine stairs that night,’ said Jenny. ‘They also saw a blond off-duty soldier — Aussie bloke. Know who that might be?’

The curtain was pulled back and Captain Loan walked in. ‘Mr Richard, so nice to see you.’

‘Thanks for the ride, Captain.’

‘I saw what the doctor pulled out of your leg,’ said Loan, smirking. ‘The bookselling must be tough — anything you’d like to talk about?’

‘It’s a Cambodian matter,’ said Mac, rolling over to sit upright on the edge of the bed. His leg was heavily bandaged, his head spinning with the airless hospital atmosphere and the new round of painkillers.

‘Agent Toohey, I really wanted to talk with you,’ said Loan.

‘Yes?’ said Jenny.

‘The children — I asked them where their village is and they say it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Jen.

Loan nodded. ‘They were rounded up from their village in Chamkar forest two days ago.’

‘By who?’ said Jenny.

‘Slavers,’ said Loan. ‘Mr Richard got these kids off the ship, but there’s a hundred more in the hold.’

Mac’s backpack was waiting at the Palace Guest House reception when he wandered in. Picking it up, he saw the clock behind the desk — almost midnight.

Leading the way, Mac showed Lance and Urquhart up to his suite and told them they could share the second bedroom.

‘Bathroom’s down the hall, boys,’ said Mac, ducking out.

He’d seen the lights in Scotty’s room, and he knocked gently on the wooden door in case he woke him and gave him a fright.

‘Who?’ came the slurred question.

‘Davis — Southern Scholastic.’

The door swung inwards and Scotty peered out, his Glock along his leg, a cigarette in his mouth.

Taking a seat in the spacious living room, Mac accepted the beer Scotty dug out of the fridge.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ said Scotty, cracking a new beer for himself and chaining a new smoke with a trembling hand. ‘Christ, I thought we’d lost you.’

‘That you with the flash-bang?’ said Mac, enjoying the cold beer but not in the mood for drinking.

‘Nah, Li threw that,’ said Scotty, ciggie hand shaking as he gulped at the bottle of Tiger. ‘I was too busy shooting the sky and shitting my pants.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ said Mac.

‘What happened back there?’ asked Scotty, sucking too hard on the smoke. ‘We could see Urquhart and Lance crawling up the bank — where were you?’

‘Found a couple of kids on board,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t seem right to leave them.’

‘They can’t have been in more danger than you,’ said Scotty, polishing off the beer and standing to get another.

‘They were in bed,’ said Mac, fatigue pushing down on his eyelids.

‘Should have left them,’ said Scotty.

‘In bed with a grown-up,’ said Mac.

Shaking his head slowly, Scotty resumed his seat and gulped the beer. ‘What was the first thing I taught you, Macca, when you arrived in Basrah at the end of the war?’

‘You told me to make myself priority number one because no other bastard was going to do it for me.’

‘Not bad advice, right?’

‘It’s my eleventh commandment,’ said Mac.

‘So what the fuck are you doing putting your life at risk for a couple of kids you meet on a ship?’ demanded Scotty, stress tightening his lips. ‘You don’t think you’ve bitten off enough already?’

‘Well,’ said Mac, shrugging, ‘no other bastard was looking out for them.’

‘Don’t get old and sloppy, Macca,’ said Scotty, pointing with his ciggie hand. ‘Priority number one, okay?’

Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw it had just hit midnight — there was an appointment he wasn’t going to make. Taking the Nokia from his backpack, he found a received-call number and pressed it.

‘Just a sec, mate,’ said Mac.

A satellite phone connection would normally take twenty seconds to start ringing, but Mac’s call connected immediately. Then the distinctive Hungarian-Israeli voice came on the line.

‘Joel, it’s your favourite Australian,’ said Mac.

‘Ah, Mr McQueen — such a surprise.’

‘Where the bloody hell are ya?’ said Mac. ‘We had a date, remember?’

‘Um, yes,’ said Dozsa.

Mac noted the hesitation. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I’m at the Stung Treng wharf and I’ve got your memory card.’

Dozsa laughed. ‘Have you really, Mr McQueen?’

‘So where are you?’

‘I’m precisely where I need to be, my friend,’ said Dozsa. ‘I hope you didn’t swallow the river water — there’s cholera about right now.’

The line went dead, and Mac stared at the phone.

‘Dozsa?’ said Scotty, exhaling a plume.

‘Yeah,’ said Mac.

‘Knows he’s lost the hostages?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac.

‘If we have the hostages and Sandy’s got the memory card,’ said Scotty, ‘I’m ready to fold the tent.’

‘What about McHugh?’

‘I’m debriefing tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know then. It might be a matter for the federal cops.’

‘Okay, boss,’ said Mac, gasping slightly as he stood and stretched. ‘Time to inspect the back of my eyelids.’

‘Don’t want another beer?’

‘Nah, mate,’ said Mac as he reached the door. ‘You’re doing the job of two men.’

The nightmare pushed him up and up, faster and faster, towards the light at the top of the mine shaft and then he was exploding out into the daylight and he yelled slightly as he realised his Nokia’s screen was blasting out an orange light, the phone buzzing around on the bedside table.

Feeling his heart thump against his sternum, Mac lay back on the pillows as he grabbed the phone.

‘Yep?’ he said, throat dry. His G-Shock on the table said 4.12 am.

‘Hi, honey, it’s me,’ said his wife. ‘I need your help on that ship.’

‘Ah, yeah,’ said Mac, rubbing sore eyes. ‘I’ll talk to you in the morning.’

‘What was the name of the ship?’ said Jenny.

‘No name,’ said Mac, disoriented. ‘A number.’

‘What was it?’ said Jenny.

He hated it when she was like this.

‘Um, I think it was… K 4217, or 4217 K. Something like that.’ Mac gently massaged his temples. Being pestered for small details took him back to his military days when special forces people were forced to recall every detail, from a hotel room and cell phone number to a map coordinate and an aircraft rego. Ninety per cent of special ops were for reconnaissance and an operator who couldn’t make a detailed report was virtually useless.

‘Macca, what was the number?’

‘Shit, mate,’ said Mac, lured into a fight. ‘It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m tanked on Percodan.’

‘Sorry, hon,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

‘Right,’ said Mac. ‘It was K 4217. Where are you?’

‘Don’t worry — get back to sleep.’

‘You’re not going after them?’ said Mac, sitting up. ‘Who’s with you?’

‘Got given two local cops,’ said Jen, voice cracking up.

‘What?’ asked Mac, the connection dying.

‘Local cops,’ said Jen through the static.

‘There’s soldiers on board that ship,’ said Mac, but the connection had been lost.

Limping into the kitchen of the suite, Mac grabbed a bottle of Vittel. Drinking it down, he looked out the window over the sink, saw the insects flying around the streetlight. They circled so fast that they ended up chasing themselves.

He didn’t think he would ever be able to tame his wife. She got something in her head and she moved like a locomotive. Mac had first met her in the Aussie embassy colony in Manila, where she was the ice queen of the group; good-looking, funny, smart and confident, but aloof and distrusting. She worked in the federal police intelligence taskforces but her specialty was tracking Australian paedophiles into South-East Asia and busting the brothels and trafficking rackets that supported the child-molesting industry. Jenny was relentless and she wasn’t scared of men, didn’t back down from them, and, being a country girl, was better at blokes’ humour and fast retorts than most men.

Certain kinds of men didn’t like her lack of respect and she constantly clashed with the police and consular hierarchies, accusing them of being soft on sex slavery. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the Indonesian-American-Australian teams chasing the sex slavers were mostly female, which had Jenny and her crew known as the ‘Dyke Squad’ among men in the embassy colonies.

Mac had fallen in love and then married her. He hadn’t taken the easy way by being with Jen, but he had followed his heart.

Letting himself breathe, Mac focused on the swirling insects as he tried to put Jenny out of his mind. He realised what had annoyed him about Dozsa’s attitude on the phone. He showed no interest in the card; didn’t demand it, didn’t try to threaten or renegotiate.

Why not?

The insects chased themselves around and around and he realised that he, Grimshaw and Sandy had been doing the same thing.

Moving out into the hallway, Mac knocked on Scotty’s door.

He waited forty seconds before the slurred voice asked what the fuck he wanted.

‘Scotty, it’s me — open up.’ Pushing into the smoky room, Mac shut the door and turned to his old mentor. ‘Mate, it’s still on — we’re not going anywhere.’

‘What?’ said Scotty, half asleep but fully annoyed.

‘It doesn’t matter if Sandy or Grimshaw has a card that can gain them access to the North Korean C and C systems,’ said Mac. ‘Dozsa has a backup copy sitting somewhere.’

‘What?’ asked Scotty again. ‘Then why have we been chasing this fucking thing?’

‘Quirk had accessed it through his Top Secret clearance, and downloaded it onto an SD card,’ said Mac. ‘We assumed there was one copy, one chip.’

‘Yeah?’

‘But when I rang Dozsa tonight, it didn’t worry him that we’d retrieved Lance and Urquhart, that he wasn’t going to get the card,’ said Mac. ‘In fact, the hostages weren’t at the Stung Treng wharf — they were nowhere near it.’

‘Dozsa never intended to do a swap?’

‘No,’ said Mac, trying to work it out. ‘He did what we’d do — created a diversion and let the good guys chase that.’

‘That’s a very Mossad trick,’ said Scotty.

‘By way of deception — one of the craft skills you develop when you want your neighbourhood enemies hating each other, not you.’

Scotty focused. ‘You’re saying Dozsa wanted you to steal the chip from Grimshaw, and he probably knew Sandy Beech was around?’

‘That’s it,’ said Mac. ‘Or he thought Grimshaw would bust me and there’d be a big blue between the Yanks and Aussies.’

‘Which there sort of is,’ said Scotty.

‘While we fight among ourselves for the memory card, Dozsa is somewhere else and getting another copy, or even the original. And if we think it’s over, and there’s no more UAVs in the air or tracks on mobile phones, Dozsa disappears off the map.’

‘So where’s Dozsa?’ said Scotty, puffing beer fumes.

‘That’s the other thing about the call,’ said Mac. ‘Dozsa’s on a satellite phone, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When you call a sat phone from a cell phone, it takes about twenty seconds to get a connection.’

‘It’s going through the satellite system as well as the ground stations,’ said Scotty. ‘And there’s a propagation delay.’

‘But when you call a sat phone that’s in your local area, what happens?’

‘It connects straight through,’ said Scotty. ‘Sat-phone accounts link to local cell towers and charge back to your account — that’s why they’re so expensive.’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘So Dozsa’s phone connected immediately.’

‘That’s interesting,’ said Scotty. ‘Local call?’

‘I think Captain Loan and Jen are on the right track,’ said Mac.

‘They’re heading for Stung Treng aren’t they?’ said Scotty, smiling in the dark.

‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘But it’d be a pity to let a couple of cops scare off our mate Joel.’

‘Joel deserves better,’ said Scotty. ‘Let me have a shower.’