Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 33

Mac sat in the back of a civilian-marked Gazelle helo as it fl ew in to Singapore at one hundred and eighty miles per hour. It was 9.16 am.

Clear skies, medium humidity.

Next to him was an MI6 contractor called Weenie. Despite the crap name, Weenie was the comms version of a safe-cracker. Between them sat two cases with the capacity to lock on to restricted or scrambled frequencies such as those used by the Port Authority, the Singaporean Police or the armed forces. Weenie couldn’t promise he’d be able to jam into the Americans’ bandwidths, but he’d try.

The other, smaller case – the size of a laptop bag – allowed Weenie to fi nd the location of cell phones.

Mac told Paul all he could remember about where the VX might be and what, precisely, had been in Sabaya’s message to Hatfi eld. However, his mind was so exhausted he was having trouble focusing. Paul wasn’t in great shape either. When they pulled him out of MMC, he’d had a shot of morphine just an hour earlier. They were a right pair.

‘The thing we have to remember is that Garrison or Sabaya – whoever’s running the show – asked for Hatfi eld by name,’ said Mac.

‘Clever,’ said Paul.

‘Well, yeah. Ensure confl ict and confusion in the other camp before you make a single demand.’

They fl ew over the Pasir Panjang terminal, the western-most of the four major terminals at the south end of Singers. To their right, more than twenty large container ships sat at their berths in the other three terminals: Brani, Keppel and Tanjong Pajar. Keppel and Pajar clung to the main island but Brani was a small island in the Singapore Strait, just in front of the larger island of Sentosa.

Paul trained his binos on the ships below, picked out a name plate.

‘Second away from us on the mainland quay,’ said Paul into the mic. ‘That’s our Golden Serpent.’

Activity around Keppel Terminal seemed to have stopped. The rubber tyre gantries and portainers were stationary.

‘The MPA has fi nally gone to Em-Con. Or the cops have done it for them,’ said Mac.

‘Em-Con?’

‘Emergency contingency.’

The pilot crackled into their two-way radio chat, ‘I’m being asked to divert. It’s controlled air space.’

‘Circle back, mate – go to Plan B,’ said Mac.

The Gazelle banked hard, dipped and accelerated downward before tearing back along the path it had come. Diving to a very low fl ight path, they zapped back into the Malacca Strait for two miles and then banked hard left at ninety degrees. Mac was convinced the rotor was going to hit the sea and the pilot was not backing off in the speed department.

Mac swivelled to his right and checked out the two eastern terminals. ‘They’ve shut down Brani and Pajar too. The media will be on it soon.’

They fl ew low behind Sentosa Island, the peak of the island’s hill hiding the Gazelle from anyone on Golden Serpent.

The pilot dropped to the beach behind the plush greenery of the Sentosa Golf Club. Paul and Mac checked radios, watches, weapons and cell phones. They threw two black Cordura gear bags onto the sand and jumped out. The pilot and Weenie gave thumbs-up as the Gazelle lifted away, and Mac realised it had dropped a large webbed sling on the beach from a release-hook beneath the fuselage.

Mac walked over, grabbed the sling and dragged it up the beach beneath a stand of trees and undergrowth. Then went back for the black bags.

Paul checked radio contact. Ran some tests and redundancies with Weenie.

Mac got the three gear bags to the undergrowth, unharnessed the four points of the sling, let it fall open and saw a bunch of equipment.

In its own light canvas bag he saw a folding kayak, known as a Klep.

There were black nylon webbing sacks which contained goggles, fi ns, weight belts, snorkels and rebreathers. Two of everything.

Mac exhaled, stared. He knew this stuff from the Royal Marines.

The thirty-two-week basic commando course had given way to another six months of what they called the ‘canoeists swimmer’ program, the selection course for the Special Boat Service, or SBS.

It was hell, especially the nocturnal frogman sections. He had learned how to be very scared yet put the fear aside by focusing on a mission. But it didn’t mean he was comfortable having a frogging exercise foisted on him with no warning.

‘We okay, mate?’ asked Paul, who had moved up to the stand of trees.

‘You ran a database, found my military listings, didn’t you?’ said Mac. ‘And then you dreamed up this shit!’ Mac kicked the Klep.

‘Mate, watch the boat,’ said Paul.

Mac saw confusion and he pulled himself together. The guy was just trying to do his job, and picking another bloke with a military background was the smart thing to do.

‘Sorry, champ,’ said Mac, smiling. ‘I walked up, saw that rebreather, and woah!’

‘I see.’

‘It’s okay. I just have to get psyched into the frogman bit. No more surprises, okay?’

Paul laughed. Shook his head at the joke of it all. ‘Mate. Glad I’m not the only one.’

‘You what?’

Paul eyeballed him. ‘Let’s just say that if we can do this during daylight, that’d be out-fucking-standing. Know what I mean?’