Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 39

Mac and Paul came off the gangway, onto the quay, holding newspapers over their faces to stop any unfriendlies identifying them on TV. Don and his sidekick from the Chinook swooped on them and another pair of men in bio-hazards walked past them towards Wylie and Jeremy.

They made straight for Hatfi eld’s Chinook and sat in the aft freight area. Hatfi eld’s voice boomed clearly through the bulkhead.

Don thanked Mac and Paul for the work, and Paul asked if he could use the Chinook’s radio-telephone. He called Weenie and requested the Gazelle.

Mac briefed Don. ‘Mate, you can get this to your guys: the container’s at twelve eleven eight six. It’s about halfway between deckhouse and bow, on our side – starboard – and it’s high up. The eighty-six position is two or three from the top of the stack.’

Don touched his throat mic. Relayed the information exactly.

‘Was anyone exposed?’ asked Don.

Mac shook his head. ‘Not that we know of.’

‘Did these guys remove any of the VX?’

‘Couldn’t tell you, mate,’ said Mac.

Don mulled it over. ‘Where are Garrison and Sabaya now?’

‘We’ve got an idea. Might need some of your special forces,’ said Paul.

Don looked sideways at Paul. Clocked the muscles, the broken nose, the steady eyes. Looked back at Mac. ‘Worked with Sawtell’s unit before?’

Mac nodded. ‘Good outfi t.’

‘They’re not needed here. But we’d like a chat with the thieves.

Understand?’

Mac nodded at that. ‘We get access to the comms stuff?’

‘Depends what it is, McQueen, you know that.’

‘How about a lock on a satellite phone?’

‘Can do.’

‘What do you need, Don?’

‘I need Garrison and Sabaya. Can do?’

‘We’ll try.’

They swept south-east at one hundred and seventy miles per hour, Gazelle in the lead, US Army Black Hawk taking the sweep. Mac and Paul spoke with Sawtell over the radio system as they headed for Jakarta.

Sawtell wasn’t buying it. ‘I don’t get this – must be some mistake, Mac.’

‘You saw the lock. It came from your guys,’ said Mac.

When they’d been jogging across Brani Island that morning, Mac had wondered if the bank account number he’d retrieved from Mister Turquoise in Makassar wasn’t in fact a sat phone number. A sat phone belonging to Garrison. Back at the EOC Mac had phoned the number stored in his Nokia – just given it a blip – and that had been long enough for Brown to get a lock on it from space.

Mac had the coordinates of the phone on a sheet on his lap. They pointed to a part of north Jakarta, near the port and Soekarno-Hatta airport. It was home to warehouses, industrial parks and huge freight forwarding depots.

Sawtell crackled in again. ‘Why would they head back to Jakarta?

What’s there?’

Paul cut over. ‘Could be where they’re hiding the hostages.’

Paul was now running the op. Whatever he’d been in a previous life, he sure knew his stuff on the basics of hostage rescue, what people like Mac called a snatch. Paul had also made sure POLRI were in the loop. The British had a liaison bloke clearing the way and the Indons were offering backup.

Sawtell and Paul had decided that the way to approach the Garrison clubhouse was from the Java Sea end of Jakarta, coming in via the reservoirs, water retention tanks and canals that criss-cross that part of the city. Staying low would keep them hidden and would confuse any noise.

They’d picked a spot, a wooded area on the banks of a large reservoir. The reservoir was joined to the sea by a canal. About ten blocks south of the wooded area was the last lock on Garrison’s position: a warehouse complex.

Mac looked at the map on his lap, directed the pilot into the land ing zone. They dipped, found the canal and hovered along the water way between one-and two-level warehouses. Lifting slightly over a lock, they came down again and then they were hovering over the wooded area. It was four pm, humidity building, skies becoming overcast.

Picnickers stood up, held onto hats and scarpered as the down draught from the helos tore leaves off trees.

They hovered to the park between the trees, touched down.

De-powered.

Sawtell’s four-man unit spilled out of the Black Hawk in their in-country clothing: olive drab overalls, bullet-proof vests underneath.

Mac saw Spikey. They greeted, thumb shake.

”Zit going, champ?’

‘Man! That you in the window?’ asked Spikey.

‘That’s me.’

‘Man! No wonder you’re called Chalks.’

Paul walked over from the Gazelle with two white kevlar vests.

Pulling down their ovies, they strapped the vests in place.

Crouched beneath a banyan tree, they peered at Mac’s map. Paul put down the pictures of Rachel, Fiona and Karen, made sure he said their names. The Special Forces guys soaked up the images like they were drinking. Mac knew the kind of exercises these boys would be doing day after day on their base: rego numbers, photos, phone numbers, website addresses, email addresses, log-ons, PINs. Seven photos of the same person in different disguises over a fi fteen-year period. Information fed to you in fl ashes, information that in the fi eld could be the difference between life and death. Exercises under extreme pressure where you had to force your mind to resemble a photographic memory.

Sawtell and Paul talked in military acronyms and short cuts.

Mac was relieved they wanted to take a stealth approach rather than a ‘dynamic’. Dynamics could work when you had intelligence, via thermo sensors, listening posts and fi bre optic eyes, but if you didn’t have that intel, and you were rushing, the dynamic approach was riskier for the hostages than the hostage-takers.

The two agreed on everything except the closing scene. Sawtell’s mission was to render Garrison and Sabaya. Paul made it clear that if something made him jumpy, he’d shoot it. ‘I’ll give myself plenty of time to fi gure out which way to point his arse.’

Sawtell eyeballed him, laughed. ‘They teach you that shit too?’

‘Bear jerk off in the woods?’

They jogged the nine blocks to the target carrying Beretta handguns, no rifl es. With the bullet-proofs, they all sweated heavily.

The warehouse covered half a block. Perched on a corner hidden from the warehouse’s view, they could see across the road that the Arrow freight depot and warehouse had two entrances: one from the cross street and the other from the main street. A three-level administration block fronted the building, set back from a forty-metre apron. To the right of the offi ce section was a large dark-red roller door. Closed. A pedestrian door was set in the main door. Also closed. Behind the door, the warehouse roof stretched one hundred and twenty metres.

Down the cross street side of the structure, there was another large roller door and an open parking lot.

Sawtell double-checked the location. Wouldn’t pay to be stealthing around the wrong building.

Sawtell turned to Paul. ‘Looks to me like two sections to this; that offi ce section and the warehouse section. We’ll take the offi ce. You two take the warehouse. Copy?’

Paul nodded.

‘Right, ladies. Check radios,’ said Sawtell.

Hands went up to earpieces while Sawtell rattled off the alphabet in Alpha Bravo Charlies. Got six thumbs-up.

‘Check clocks: on my marks…’

Everyone started their mission clocks.

‘Check weapons.’

Slides slid, mags dropped out and eyes looked down spouts. One of the Green Berets pulled the zip on his ovies down and checked the smoke grenades on his webbing.

Sawtell checked his own Beretta, took a breath, said, ‘Ladies, you never get a second chance to make a fi rst impression.’

‘Fucking eh,’ came an American voice in reply.

Mac checked for cameras, saw a dome protruding from the wall above the side entrance. Looked to the main entrance. Saw a dome there too.

He pointed them out to Paul.

‘If we go through the offi cial entries someone’s going to know about it,’ said Mac.

‘Ideas?’

‘Just the oldest one in the book.’

‘Rough but effective,’ said Paul, keying the mic and asking Sawtell if their fi rst stop might be downstairs in the fuse box room.

‘Found cameras?’ said Sawtell.

‘One over each entrance.’

‘How long you need?’

Paul looked at Mac, who said, ‘Twenty seconds.’

‘Stand-by,’ said Sawtell.

Mac and Paul started down the cross street, hands in pockets, eyeing the warehouse door from across the road as they walked. In his pocket Mac felt the two thin wire jiggers from Spikey’s bag of tricks.

They crossed the road, catching glimpses of the warehouse door through mid-sized trees. The pedestrian entrance was locked with a standard Lockwood device and if it was the type Mac had trained on, he’d only need ten seconds. If he sweated, slipped and screwed it up, he’d need the twenty. Twenty seconds was an optimum time to pull the power down in Jakkers. It was long enough that when you started it up again the bad guys might assume it was the unreliable power supply on the blink.

Sawtell sit-repped: Spikey had walked straight in the front entrance, and dipped down to the basement.

Mac and Paul veered left and walked towards the side entry door fi fty metres away, their eyes locked on the fl uoro lights under the awning over the side entrance. Their breathing was ragged now, their hands sweaty in the afternoon humidity. It had to be thirty-fi ve degrees. They closed on the door, waiting for the power to be killed.

The lights went down and Mac and Paul ran the last fi ve strides to the door, Mac dragging out the jiggers. First one in, holding the barrel where you want it. His fi ngers slid on the wire. He jigged the second piece of wire over the top of the fi rst, twisted and pushed upward from the front to the back of the lock. The second part of the mechanism turned and Paul’s pressure on the door made it click inwards.

Paul held his SIG in his right hand, pushed through with his left.

Mac followed. The fl uoros fl ashed on again. Paul shut the door gently as Mac moved into the interior.

The lights in the warehouse were fl ickering back to life too.

They swept with their guns. It looked like they had the place to themselves. There was a large empty indoor space in front of them, obviously where traffi c passed through. To the right were lanes of stacked containers.

Suddenly they heard voices and slid to the right four paces, crouching behind red containers stacked two-up.

Indonesian voices echoed around the warehouse, coming closer.

Paul stuck his head around, pulled back. ‘They’re just checking the place with a fl ashlight. What the fuck you need a fl ashlight for when the lights have gone back on?’

Paul looked again. ‘Okay, so now they’re looking at the ceiling.

And wouldn’t you know it – lights!’

Paul turned and looked down the narrow alleyway where the containers didn’t quite touch the steel side of the warehouse. It ran to the end of the building. ‘Better recce, eh mate?’

Mac nodded. If there was an offi ce or a van at the other end of the structure, they’d better fi nd it. The girls and the woman were not going to come to them.

They jogged fast, jumping old brooms, Coke cans, dead spiders and porn mags: the detritus of warehouse life. At the end of the container row, Mac poked his head round the corner. There was another roller door entrance at this end of the building. Blood pumped in Mac’s ears, his kevlar vest swimming on a layer of sweat.

There was an offi ce perched up on a mezzanine at the far corner, set up so it could look down on the warehouse. There was also a ramp leading down to a sub-level.

Paul gestured. He’d go into the sub-level. Mac should check the other side of this level and the raised offi ce.

Mac made across the rear roller door area, veering left in an arc to avoid the static camera over the inside of the door area. Heading for the raised offi ce he looked down the corridors between the container stacks. His stance was perfect but there was no one to aim at. There seemed to be tons of freight in the joint, but no work being done.

The stairs to the offi ce were single helix. He stopped for two seconds, caught his breath. Paul crackled on the receiver. ‘Okay, Mac?’

‘Right as rain.’

He took it easy up the stairwell. It was open so he could see straight to the top. It also left him exposed should anyone walk into the warehouse.

The door to the offi ce had a glass panel in it. Mac peeked through: couldn’t see anyone. Pushed through the door. Walked across the fl oor area to what looked like a storage area.

A bang.

Mac froze. Lifted the Heckler.

More bangs, different tones. A gunfi ght. Mac ran down the stairs, trying to get his breath, not panic. It took an effort to run towards a gunfi ght rather than away from it.

The gunshots were coming from the other end, up in the offi ce area. Sawtell’s boys getting stuck in. Mac sprinted down the central corridor of the containers, an area large enough to get two trucks past at once.

Then the noises started coming from below him, the concrete almost shaking with the blasts. There were shouts, adrenaline-soaked male voices, crazed with anger or fear. Hard to tell.

Radio crackled. Paul, panting, ‘Mac. Get here now!’

Mac doubled back at a sprint, fl ying right into the curved downward ramp to the sub-level, face to face with Peter Garrison, fi fty metres away at the bottom of the ramp. They stared at each other, mouths open, panting, confused. Garrison raised his M4 with both hands. Mac was about to squeeze off when his leg gave out from under him. He spilled forward, lost his sights. His groin made a tearing sensation, his inside left knee hit concrete. Garrison fi red over the top of him, chipping concrete all the way up the ramp.

He hadn’t shouldered the M4 properly and it recoiled upwards and away to the right.

Mac rolled to his right. Garrison got a better shoulder. But assault rifl e fi re sounded close behind him and Garrison turned, tried to run back to his cohorts. Mac squeezed off, hitting what he thought was the American’s right calf. Garrison staggered a bit, but veered to his right, fi ring back into the sub-level as he went.

Mac limped down the ramp, his knee agony, breathing at thirteen to the dozen. Coming down to the fl at level, he saw Garrison and two other men with assault rifl es get to a stairwell against the far wall. Mac took a stance, squeezed off two rounds. They kept running. That was the trouble with a short-barrel handgun: no range.

He ran towards the stairs, fi ve shots left and three men ahead of him, all armed with the latest assault rifl es.

To his left he saw Paul, lying face down, blood around him on the concrete.

Mac’s blood drummed in his ears as he got to the stairs. Standing to the side, he looked up quickly, pulled back, looked up again and threw himself fl at against the other wall at the foot of the stairs, Heckler pointing up in a cup-and-saucer. His breathing was out of control, his eyes blurring with sweat. There was no air in the sub-level, and with the humidity it was making him gasp for oxygen.

He made up the stairs. Slow. In the movies, people giving chase always ran up stairs after the bad guys. In Mac’s world, the stairwell was where people were shot.

He got to the double-back in the middle of the stairs, suddenly realising the stairs went back to the street-level warehouse.

Sticking his face around quickly, he pulled back, stuck it out again and kept it there. Heard something, a rumbling sound. Moving up, he came to the top, stayed low, looking for the shooter. He came out of the stairwell, homing on the rumbling sound. Across the warehouse, the roller door was going up.

A roar sounded as an engine fi red. Mac started running. Coming around the last stack of containers, he aimed up. Forty metres away the last guy was shutting the rear passenger door of a blue BMW

5-series. As the engine gunned, the roller door went up further.

A back-seat passenger pointed his M4 at Mac, the fi re coming in three-shot bursts. Mac ducked behind the container as paint chips fl ew. More carbine gunfi re chewed up the steel he was hiding behind.

The BMW accelerated through the doorway and Mac came out of hiding, squeezed off, took out the rear window.

He ran to the door, caught the last part of the rego – 452.

Struggling to get his breath, he bent over, hands on knees. He felt so old – way, way past his prime for this shit.

Voices sounded behind him and he swung around and went to his knee in one motion, ready to squeeze off.

Sawtell, jogging, yelled, ‘Don’t shoot.’

Mac sat down on his arse. Resting arms on knees, he looked at the ceiling.

He wished he hadn’t seen it. But he had. The driver – a blonde woman – had looked him in the eye.

‘You okay, Mac?’ asked Sawtell.

Mac tried to respond, but vomited between his legs.