Counter Attack

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Hit me,’ said Mac, wanting to speed this up.

  ‘Why were you following us?’

  ‘Actually, it was you who followed a mate of mine to the Ozzie Bar,’ said Mac, his eyes feeling like raw meat. ‘When he was run down I assumed you guys were involved – the green LandCruiser was gone but I saw you getting out of a tuc-tuc and into a Camry. We followed you to this building, someone shot at us, I got a face full of concrete. That’s it.’

  Sam swapped a look with Phil.

  ‘Sounds about right,’ said Sam as he pulled out a pen knife and turned Mac to get at the flexi-cuffs. ‘Think you can act like a normal human long enough to walk out of here?’

  ‘I can shave off a few IQ points, hide the movie-star good looks,’ said Mac. ‘That what you mean?’

  Sam smirked as he headed for the door, but Phil fronted Mac and gave him the look. It was the kind of gesture that if it happened in Rockhampton would have triggered a brawl. But as he slid around Phil to follow Sam into the hallway, Mac gave him a wink.

  Phil now hated him, which meant he was just where Mac wanted him.

  * * *

  The Phnom Penh streetscape flashed past, Mac in the front passenger seat wondering how this was going to end. Phil sat in the back of the silver Mazda retrieved from the apartment building, a SIG on his lap aimed at Mac, the cell phone tracking device sitting beside him. The submachine gun was now looped over Phil’s shoulder.

  The location of the mystery cell phone had frozen on Wat Phnom, a religious landmark on the river about fifteen blocks north of the last lock.

  Mac needed more information. ‘So, you going to tell me who you are?’

  ‘Sam and Phil.’

  ‘Good American names,’ said Mac. ‘So tell me about these Israelis.’

  ‘They’re up to no good,’ said Sam.

  ‘Private?’

  ‘You plug us in to what you know, and maybe we’ll talk,’ said Sam.

  They pulled into the leafy surrounds of Wat Phnom about twenty minutes later. The big roundabout that encircled the seven-hundred-year-old temple-hill was crowded with cyclos, taxis and tuc-tucs – Phnom Penh was still backwards enough for a near-new green LandCruiser to stand out, especially if the occupants were hammering along.

  Sam pulled to the inside of the circle and leaned out the window, waving a US one-dollar note. The beggar crouching behind a park bench with his family came forwards and eyed the cash.

  Spewing out a stream of Cambodian, Sam kept the money out of the beggar’s reach. Mac recognised good field craft – engaging the man, getting him talking but staying in control.

  Finally Sam gave the man the dollar and then gave him another, and they were screeching for the road that connected Wat Phnom with the Sisowath Quay road.

  ‘Saw them go past only five minutes ago,’ said Sam as they hurtled past the Electricity Cambodia building towards the river. ‘Said he saw them go across Sisowath and into the docks area.’

  ‘Think they’re there now?’ said Phil from the rear.

  ‘Well, they didn’t turn north and get out of town,’ said Sam, threading through the traffic.

  ‘So they’ve got a boat?’ asked Mac, now caught up in the chase.

  ‘Wouldn’t bet against it,’ said Sam, as they paused at the Sisowath Quay main road and saw the lane into the river docks area on the other side. Edging across the traffic, the silver Mazda slipped into the courtyard in front of a depot building and Sam paused while he looked left and right.

  The darkness created by the overhead trees and the generally deserted nature of the riverfront made Mac nervous. A bat jostled in a tree and screeched, and in the car they all jumped slightly.

  ‘Could be time to hand back that Colt, eh boys?’ said Mac as Sam took the right-hand turn and they slipped further into the darkness.

  The quay apron opened up on the other side of the trees, partially floodlit. A selection of old vessels were tied up at the quayside and two large floating piers were sitting in the river, connected to the quay by concrete walkways. Sam brought the Mazda to a halt.

  ‘You’re not getting the Colt back,’ he said. ‘But you can make yourself useful and drive.’

  Mac got out of the car and walked around it, his stomach grinding with anxiety, while Sam pushed himself across the centre console.

  Getting in, Mac thought he saw movement at the end of a building at the rear of the concrete quay. Putting the car in gear, he eased forwards. ‘There’s something at the end of the building.’

  ‘I saw it,’ said Sam and Mac killed the lights. Behind him, the sound of Phil’s SIG being cocked broke the tense silence and Sam reached out and touched Mac’s arm.

  Stopping the car, Mac switched off the engine and they watched the old warehouse on the quay, bathed in dim light.

  ‘You’re the driver,’ said Sam as he checked his own SIG for load and safety. ‘Stay here – be ready for anything. Now hit the trunk.’

  Mac pulled the boot release and held his hand over the interior light as the two men eased silently from the car. They moved to the back of the Mazda, rummaged softly in the boot and then moved to the right of the car, towards the tree line that ran behind the warehouse. Mac could make out assault rifles in their hands, M4s by the look of them: the cut-down, souped-up M16s used by US Special Forces.

  Disappearing into the shadows of the trees the two men moved towards the warehouse.

  Mac reached over to the back seat, searching Sam’s backpack for his Colt, but came up empty. ‘Shit.’

  Beyond the warehouse a light went out and Mac could now see the noses of a line of vehicles. One of them could have been the grille of a LandCruiser, but he couldn’t tell in the darkness. The warehouse was the commercial base for the boats that plied the river and activity in the car park on the other side of the building was hardly suspicious.

  Mac searched the centre console for a weapon – even a knife would be better than nothing. The ambush at the apartment building and his temporary blindness had produced a mild shock and Mac noticed his right hand was shaking as he pulled it out of the console.

  Checking the glove box, Mac found a sheaf of Hertz rental papers. A ‘Samuel Chan’ had rented the Mazda in Saigon a week ago; the papers contained lots of good stuff, such as a US address and a credit card imprint. As he put the papers back, he realised there was a California driver’s licence sitting in the glove box.

  Watching the Americans move behind the warehouse, Mac could feel his adrenaline coming up. In the Royal Marines they’d said adrenaline could give you extra speed and strength, or paralyse you. It was always up to the soldier to harness the fear, not be strangled by it.

  Beside his left hip, his fidgety fingers touched the boot release lever and he had an idea.

  Mac pulled up the lever then eased out of the Mazda and walked to the popped boot. Looking around, he raised it, dipped his head inside to stop too much light escaping. In front of him was a Remington pump-action shotgun of the type used by American police departments, with four belts of replacement shells. That was reassuring, but there were also two grocer’s boxes, and from the opened flaps on one of them, they seemed to contain US hundred-dollar notes – perhaps a million dollars’ worth in each box. Mac grabbed a handwritten note from the top of a box, but couldn’t decipher the writing. He trousered the piece of paper.

  As he stared at the cash, light filled the boot. Standing and turning, he watched a vehicle approaching down the same leafy laneway they’d just come down in the Mazda.

  Blinded by the headlights, Mac lifted his arm. It wasn’t until the vehicle passed by that the passenger in the front seat locked eyes with Mac.

  Those dark eyes struck him at the same time as he realised the vehicle was a late-model LandCruiser Prado. Green.

  Chapter 27

  The Lan
dCruiser’s brake lights flared red as the 4x4 hissed to a stop on the concrete.

  Reaching into the Mazda’s boot, Mac grabbed the Remington – from memory they were five-shooters, and he hoped Sam and Phil weren’t the conscientious types who unloaded their shotties before stashing them.

  The front passenger door of the LandCruiser opened as Mac primed the Remington with a back-and-forth motion on the pump-grip and brought the shotgun to his shoulder.

  Walking around the back of the car, Mac took aim and watched those creepy dark eyes withdraw on seeing the shotgun.

  As the LandCruiser lurched away, Mac squeezed the Remington’s trigger. The click echoed around the quayside.

  The LandCruiser’s doors opened as it slid to a stop beside one of the floating piers.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Mac, fumbling for the Mazda’s boot, realising he’d shut the thing.

  Crawling along the car as the Israelis took position fifty metres away behind the LandCruiser, Mac ducked and pulled the boot release lever as the window above him exploded. Running in a crouch to the back of the car, he dived into the lee of the vehicle as five shots slammed into the Mazda, smashing windows and pinging steel.

  Pushing the boot lid up, Mac wished his knee was up to this. He could barely straighten it.

  Pulling two belts of shells from the boot as the left rear tail-lights exploded in plastic fragments, Mac knelt behind the right rear tyre, his sweaty, panicked fingers fumbling to load the Remington.

  ‘Shit,’ he said as he tried to get his fingernails under the brass head of a shell that didn’t want to leave its loop.

  Getting two shells into the side-loading chamber, Mac stood up behind the Mazda’s boot lid, shouldering the shottie as he did so. A coughing burst of automatic fire rang out and Mac instinctively ducked while keeping eyes on the LandCruiser; the shooters were bunched behind the 4x4, but they were no longer shooting at him.

  Turning to his right, Mac watched a flare of orange and blue burst out of the darkness on the far side of the warehouse as Sam and Phil unloaded into the LandCruiser, which seemed to drop a foot in height.

  One of the Israelis sagged and grabbed at his shin as the rounds flew and Mac could see the man he knew as Red Shirt scrabbling into the 4x4, pulling something out of the rear cargo area.

  Pointing towards the river, Red Shirt pushed the injured Israeli towards a moored boat.

  The limping gunman tried to jog along the concrete causeway to the floating pier and Mac took two useless shots at him, ducking back as the return fire came in hot.

  Looking up, Mac saw Phil running from his hide behind the warehouse to the lee of a flatbed truck parked between the LandCruiser and the warehouse.

  Peeking over the lid of the boot, Mac watched Red Shirt pull a dark weapon from the LandCruiser. Assessing the ground, Mac realised that the warehouse was out of range of the Israeli guns, but by running to the truck, Phil had put himself in range.

  As Phil laid down fire on the 4x4 – cover for Sam to come forwards – Mac reloaded the pump-action while trying to get Sam’s attention.

  He screamed as loud as he could, ‘Stay there!’ Mac didn’t know what Red Shirt had pulled out of that vehicle but Phil was looking like an easy target.

  Sam’s head poked out behind the warehouse corner and Mac became frantic to get his attention and stop him crossing the apron to join Phil. ‘Don’t move! For fuck’s sake – stay put!’

  Sam was suddenly into the open and the air was torn apart with the sound of a gunfight jammed on full auto. Mac joined in, loosing four shots at the LandCruiser, but they did no damage except to the paintwork.

  Sam was into his fourteenth stride when he took a shot in the thigh. As he sprawled, his rifle clattering free in front of him, a small rocket whooshed through the night air, leaving a blue-grey trail before slamming into the truck’s gas tank. The tank contained gasoline rather than diesel, because the orange-red fireball that instantly erupted was caused by nothing else, except perhaps propane.

  Flinching away from the shock wave and then the blast of incinerating heat, Mac held up his hand to deflect fire from his eyes and saw Phil under the truck, burning like a monk.

  Bile rising in his throat, Mac realised Sam was writhing on the concrete, his chinos on fire.

  To his left, two of the Israelis were on the causeway, making for a speedboat that the injured shooter had throttled up and was readying to get underway.

  Breaking his cover, Mac sprinted for the warehouse where a red wooden box was bolted to the wall. Smashing the padlock with the Remington’s stock, Mac tore the doors open and pulled the red canvas bag off its hooks, racing towards the flaming truck where Sam writhed as the gasoline flames burned through his cotton pants and into his leg.

  Throwing the shotgun to the concrete, Mac pulled the fire blanket out as he reached the American, launching himself onto the panicking man with the blanket in front of him. In his military days, they were taught that the point of the exercise was to smother the flame – you couldn’t do that by waving the blanket and you couldn’t smother a flame when the victim was rolling around. You had to wrap the flame up like you were hugging it to death, which was what Mac did as he landed on Sam’s leg: put all of his weight and strength into holding Sam in one place and wrapping the blanket around the American’s legs and waist for fifteen seconds.

  Sam eventually stopped struggling: he whimpered and heaved for breath as Mac pushed himself off and looked for remaining flame.

  The speedboat revved hard and Mac looked to his left, watching the Israeli crew accelerate up the river and into the darkness as more gunfire sounded. Ducking into one another, Mac and Sam waited for the volley of rifle rounds but none came.

  Mac peeled back the fire blanket and found the left leg of Sam’s chinos was charred and there was a blistered, purple mess up his thigh.

  ‘You’ll live,’ said Mac, panting.

  Sam, grimaced, his lips white in the way that signalled he had about thirty seconds before he passed out from shock and pain.

  ‘Let’s get you in the car, trooper,’ said Mac, picking up Sam’s rifle and groaning as he stood and put full weight on his knee.

  ‘Phil?’ said Sam, looking at the truck’s gutted chassis.

  ‘Didn’t make it,’ said Mac, holding out his hand. ‘Can you walk?’

  Sam reached out his own hand, coughing as the hot gasoline soot started descending. Pulling him to his feet, Mac put an arm under the other man’s armpits and wrapped it around the shoulder blades.

  As the American put weight on his injured leg, he heaved with the pain. ‘Holy Christ!’

  Two steps short of the Mazda, Sam slumped unconscious and Mac dragged him to the back door and fireman-lifted him inside, laying him across the back seat.

  The ride to Calmette Hospital took four minutes but it felt like an hour as Mac dodged the cyclos and motorbikes on the dark streets, trying to make out their shapes through the cracked windscreen. The soft tropical air flowed through the Mazda, entering via the side windows that no longer existed, and Mac blinked hard, hoping for tears as the gasoline soot worked its way into his eyeballs.

  The emergency room took Sam immediately. Awake but groggy, Sam gave Mac an open-palmed shake.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said, doing a croaking rendition of an Aussie accent.

  ‘No dramas,’ said Mac, and the American had a drip spiked into him before being wheeled away on a gurney.

  Pulling his Nokia from his pants, Mac realised it was switched off – the damn thing had run out of battery.

  At the nurses’ station he asked about a recharger, but when none was forthcoming, he wandered outside, got in the Mazda and made for the Cambodiana.

  The streets were thinning out as he pulled into the parking lot of the Cambodiana. After a three-minute recce he walked down a ser
vice alley that led to the loading bay behind the kitchens and laundry. Taking a right turn into an alcove just before the lobby, he found himself in the security room. A local man in a Cambodiana shirt looked up from his desk, above which the surveillance cameras displayed their black and white shots of hallways, bars and poolside areas.

  ‘Hi, Richard Davis, with the Tranh party in rooms 303 and 305,’ said Mac, smiling and holding out his hand, seeing the name tag identifying the man as ‘Poh Khoy – Security Manager’.

  Poh rose, took his hand and made a small bow. ‘Yes, Mr Richard.’

  ‘Just want to bring you in on something, Poh,’ said Mac, lowering his voice and making a show of looking back over his shoulder.

  Poh walked past Mac and shut the door.

  ‘Earlier this evening I got a letter under my door. It contained some threats against me and my family.’

  ‘Mr Richard, this hotel is not –’

  ‘I know, I know, mate,’ said Mac, showing his palms to the security man. ‘This is a great hotel and security is always very good. I just need to see the surveillance tapes for this evening, see who was posting us nasty notes.’

  ‘Rooms 303 and 305, you say, Mr Richard?’ said Poh, tapping on his keyboard. A box came up onscreen and he selected ‘third floor west’ from a drop-down menu then entered a time field, starting at six pm and ending at ten pm.

  Mac looked at his watch – 10.06 pm.

  ‘Okay, so here is the hallway,’ said the security man. ‘Your rooms on right side of hall. Fast-forward now.’

  Taking a seat, Mac watched the footage rocket along: room-service people pushed trolleys; a manager carried a big bucket of ice to 307; porters collected the spent room-service trays; two Asian children chased each other up and down the hall until their mother leaned out of a door on the left side of the picture and ordered them inside.

  Mac had lost interest and was about to head up to the suite when the high-speed tape showed two men walk past the door to 305 – Mac and Tranh’s suite – and then walk back to it.