Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike

by Mark Abernethy

  Joe’s running of Mac started to make sense. He’d let Mac build a fantasy scenario about leaking word to the tango community that Akbar had turned traitor, but was Joe really running a nuclear counter-espionage operation?

  Mac controlled his voice, and decided to give it a go. ‘Joe - why me?’

  Joe sighed. ‘ McQueen! ‘

  ‘Come on, Joe.’

  ‘You’re taping this, aren’t you?’

  ‘This is the clean Nokia. And you called me.’

  ‘Look, mate, this is turning into a shit-fi ght - best you can do is help the Indonesians put these people away, okay?’ said Joe, sounding frazzled.

  ‘I need more,’ Mac insisted.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like, I haven’t been a part of the Nuke Desk since the INVO shit

  - but I’m chasing Hassan.’

  ‘Jesus, mate. You honestly think Canberra would send their pipe-biters after Hassan and Samir?’

  Mac laughed. The Nuke Desk was overloaded with highly educated theorists, a couple of whom liked to munch on non-loaded, unlit briar pipes while they held forth.

  ‘But why me? You guys have Jamieson in New Delhi and that bloke, what’s his name - Morrison - at the IAEA.’

  ‘I told you, I’m using my best guy for Indonesia.’

  ‘I need more, Joe. People are shooting at me.’

  Mac heard Joe fi nding a new way to hold his chin.

  ‘Okay,’ conceded Joe. ‘Since late last year, the Americans have been raiding unsecured nuclear labs and enrichment facilities in the former Soviet Union, okay? The southern states, the central Asian republics.’

  ‘Who’s been doing it?’

  ‘Special forces under the Twentieth Support Command, US Army.

  Know these guys? DIA operation, basically.’

  Mac said, ‘Yep.’ The Twentieth was a global CBRNE strike force with its own Presidential fi nding, which meant it could do just about anything it wanted. Invading countries and stealing their unsecured plutonium cores sounded pretty much like the Twentieth at work.

  ‘Suddenly we have Hassan selling devices to terrorist organisations,’

  said Joe, ‘and the Russians are saying the Americans supplied them to the Pakistanis. Now we have some of these players together in Indonesia and it’s time to move on them.’

  Mac could hear Ari moving about in the next room but before he signed off he remembered something he wanted to ask Joe.

  ‘Mate, who was that other tango you were referring to on the phone yesterday? Might be useful.’

  There was a pause. ‘Sure this is clean?’

  ‘Scouts,’ said Mac.

  ‘It’s not a person, McQueen.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘One version of events says Hassan landed in Indonesia with two devices.’

  CHAPTER 19

  They were halfway to Belawan - the port city of Medan - when Mac’s clean Nokia rang. ‘Yeah,’ he murmured, keeping his eyes on Purni and Freddi to see if they were listening.

  It was Viktor, ready to talk.

  Mac didn’t like sharing too much with other spooks but under the circumstances it didn’t look like he’d be adding to BAIS’s knowledge about Hassan and what his crew had detonated in Kuta. He tried the normal etiquette among spies and made a long umm, yeah sound.

  Freddi leaned forward, turned on the radio - Indonesia’s answer to Britney Spears - and gave it some volume.

  ‘Vik, mini-nukes,’ whispered Mac, jimmying down as low as he could into the back seat of the LandCruiser and cupping his hand over his face. ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘We are talking about Kuta, yes, Mac?’

  ‘Shit, Viktor!’

  ‘Well,’ said the Ukrainian, rolling the word into three syllables,

  ‘we watch the CNN and there is this hole in road.’

  ‘Mate, I was hoping you’d tell me it’s rubbish,’ said Mac, wanting an expert to quash the nuke thing quick-smart. He wanted a reason not to believe it.

  ‘Well, maybe and maybe no, yes?’

  ‘What are the engineers saying?’

  ‘They are looking at image and wondering what device make this.’

  Mac felt squeezed. He was being shot at way too often and now he found himself seconded to Indonesian BAIS again, while being tailed by the Russians. The confi rmation that the Sari Club might be a nuke was too much.

  ‘What would be the give-away?’ asked Mac. ‘What would tell the investigators in Kuta that the Sari explosion was a mini-nuke?’

  There was a pause while Viktor thought, then, ‘Okay, so there would be very small traces of a material called tritium. This is easily removed with water, but then it becomes triated water.’

  ‘No radiation?’

  ‘This depends,’ said Viktor. ‘The Israelis and the Americans have a mini-nuclear device called MRR or Minimal Residual Radioactivity.

  This is basically a clean explosion.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Fission reactions have different results. Big A-bomb releases many radiations; small plutonium cores, for local area blasts, not so dirty.’

  ‘So, an American or Israeli mini-nuke has no radiation?’

  ‘No. It has some, but very low levels.’

  ‘So, Vik,’ Mac breathed out, ‘could a mini-nuke make that hole in front of the Sari?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Shit, mate. Help me here.’

  Viktor’s voice jumped an octave. ‘I am telling truth, McQueen.’

  Through the windscreen, the security gates of the Belawan Port Authority loomed. It was Indonesia’s largest port outside of Java and was the originating point for much of the world’s rubber, coffee and palm oil, so it was heavily guarded.

  ‘Viktor, how do you think we got that crater in Kuta?’

  ‘Either very powerful device tamped on road, or under road.’

  ‘But not anfo?’

  ‘Anfo probably not powerful enough, unless there was whole truck. But anfo leaves traces that are easy to read so forensic tell us soon, yes?’

  ***

  The Port Authority Prado led them across the concrete apron to a section of warehouses. They spilled out of the LandCruiser at a pale blue building with the huge painted letters, SUNDA LOGISTICS 31 across the loading bays. Two of the loading bays were in use, with large trucks offl oading containers, fl ashing orange lights everywhere and sirens beeping every time a forklift backed up.

  It was in the high thirties but a breeze off the Malacca Strait provided some relief. Next to Mac, Freddi pointed to the far end of the large building, where the loading bays were locked up, and said to the Port Authority guy, ‘Let’s start down there.’

  As they walked down the apron, Mac got in Freddi’s ear. ‘I thought we were working together on this, Fred - joint op, all that shit?’

  ‘Well it looked like you were working with Ari,’ said Freddi, inscrutable behind dark sunnies.

  ‘Oh, come on, Fred!’ Mac couldn’t believe the way spooks got with each other sometimes. ‘He’s down one guy - Samir’s people whacked his partner in Java the other night. And he’s on our side, right? I’m talking about BAIS failing to reveal that Hassan is probably in possession of a second device,’ said Mac.

  Freddi stopped, gestured for Purni and the PA guy to walk ahead, then fronted Mac. ‘Can I get you a loudspeaker? Could you tell the whole world?’

  ‘Sorry, Fred,’ said Mac, scratching the back of his head. ‘I’m a little tired, confused. I can’t get my head around this thing.’

  ‘For a record,’ said Freddi, ‘the Samir shooter - that guy in the tree? - he started spilling this morning, about fi ve am.’

  ‘He talked?’

  ‘He screamed. That’s the fi rst time I could confi rm a second device, but yes, I suspected that yesterday.’

  ‘Are we chasing a nuke?’

  Freddi laughed, white teeth fl ashing at the sky. ‘You been in this country too long, McQueen - you even started thinking like us.’r />
  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a possibility but it could be experimental explosive.’

  ‘CIA?’

  Freddi stared. ‘I don’t want that getting around, understand?’

  ‘Orders?’

  ‘No, McQueen. I don’t want my guys making up stories about the Big Bad Yankee - that won’t help me.’

  They watched Purni and the PA guy get to the inset door on the front of one of the loading bays. The PA guy used a master key and they went in.

  ‘So,’ said Mac, ‘is Hassan travelling with the second device, or is it stored?’

  Freddi pointed at the warehouse. ‘Tree Guy says there were two large pale-green security cases in that storage a week ago. They delivered one three days ago, but they didn’t meet the buyers.’

  ‘Cellular?’

  ‘Totally,’ said Freddi. ‘The soldiers are separate links in the chain.

  They don’t know the full picture or the whole set-up.’

  ‘Figures,’ said Mac.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Freddi, ‘that’s why they shot Akbar - he knew all the links.’

  They were making for the warehouse when Purni sped out the door and jogged towards them. ‘You gotta smell this,’ he yelled.

  ‘Anfo fumes.’

  Freddi lifted his radio handset but Purni put out a hand before Mac could. Radio waves and microwaves from a mobile phone could trigger unstable explosive vapours. The next step was to shut down the apron and get the army and fi re services to deal with it.

  The PA bloke stepped out of the building and even from one hundred metres away the three of them all heard his mobile ring.

  They screamed at him not to take the call, in different languages, but almost in slow motion his hand went to his hip, picked up the phone and pressed a button - the knee-jerk of modern life. As he put the phone to his ear the steel-clad walls of the warehouse bulged and split before expanding outward in a rush of air that sent the PA guy across the apron in pieces.

  Freddi, Purni and Mac dropped to the ground as the shock wave swept along the container port, taking pieces of building and port worker with it. Mac got his head down, covered his ears and head, and prayed. The blast boomed, and then roared, the air shaking along with the concrete apron. Then came the tinkling, banging, scraping and smashing of thousands of pieces of material coming to earth and hitting other buildings, like the devil’s rain.

  They lay like that for thirty seconds, lifting their heads only as the noise of shouts and sirens took over from where the explosion’s roar left off. When Mac sat up, he spat something that felt like hair from his lip and ran his hands over his head, checking for injuries.

  Freddi stood, hitting at dust from his pants and looking around like a marooned man trying to work out where he’d landed. Purni sat with his arms on his knees, shaking his head between his legs and coughing at something stuck in his throat.

  Dust and paper circulated like a confetti parade. Dead birds fell like a biblical curse.

  Mac and Freddi stared at where the southern end of Sunda Logistics had stood thirty seconds ago. It now looked like a skeleton, like an industrial version of a carcass in an elephant graveyard. Blue-black smoke drifted upwards on the breeze and the smell of fuel and ammonia was strong enough to settle on Mac’s lips.

  Mac saw something move. ‘Fred, over here.’

  They started towards what looked like a body about fi fty metres away from the blast site. As they got closer it looked less hopeful.

  Walking the fi nal few metres, Mac gagged on fi nding the PA guy, who was missing both legs and most of the bladder and bowel areas. With his one remaining arm he was trying to hold his entrails in while looking at the sky and mouthing something.

  ‘ Ambulan! Ambulan! Sekerang-sekerang! Ambulan! ‘ cried Freddi, screaming himself hoarse as he waved his arms at the rescue people wandering onto the apron.

  Finally a port worker started their way, and Freddi screamed at him to get over to them, now!

  When the worker arrived he visibly freaked at the sight of his co-worker. Freddi slapped the bloke, made him look into his eyes, gave him some orders. And when the worker tried to make a call on his mobile, Freddi grabbed it and threw it away, grabbed the worker by the shirt and remonstrated with him.

  The bloke ran off, yelling something at other workers coming into the blast area, some of whom already had mobile phones to their ears.

  CHAPTER 20

  Freddi gave a statement to the Criminal Investigations offi cers while Purni, Mac and Ari waited by the emergency vehicles inside the port security gates. Ari chain-smoked and stared at the ground, chewing on his gum, gingerly trying to keep his weight off the leg with the bullet wound. Purni was green and Mac slurped on bottled water, still feeling stunned.

  The medics wheeled the Port Authority guy past on a gurney and Mac noticed they’d found a leg and some bits that might have been an arm, which they’d placed on the end of the gurney. There was a dark blanket over the guy’s face. Freddi went over and said something to the ambulance guys, who shook their heads - the international sign for The guy didn’t make it.

  Mac noticed that on the salvaged leg was a pair of red brief underwear, same as his own.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking skywards. When he looked down again he instinctively crossed himself and said a little prayer. Beside him, Freddi - who was Catholic - did the same thing, then Ari joined them.

  Unable to believe what he’d just seen, Mac’s facial muscles froze into a mask of anger. Then he got a fl ash of red in his brain, like he was back at Nudgee College, in the dorms, blueing with the Lenihan brothers. Hissing through gritted teeth he stepped up to Ari, threw a left-hook body-rip to the bloke’s right kidney and then followed it with a left hook to his right jaw.

  Ari fell sideways, his legs buckling at the knees as he tried for balance, a spray of pink saliva squirting from the other side of his mouth. The Indonesian cops and Port Authority people reacted by going for their guns but Mac didn’t care. Standing over Ari he lifted his polo shirt and rested his hand on his Heckler. Ari pushed himself onto his left elbow and shook his head gingerly, trying to focus his eyes. He looked up at Mac, confused as a child. ‘I got it wrong?’

  Mac nodded, his nostrils fl aring. ‘Don’t tell me, all Christians look the same, right? Just some dumb shit about making a cross - how hard can it be?’

  Ari nodded, gently touching his right jaw. ‘I get it wrong sometimes,’ he shrugged. ‘Which one this time?’

  ‘You’re wearing an Orthodox crucifi x, so you cross yourself with three fi ngers,’ growled Mac as Freddi came over.

  ‘Everything okay, McQueen?’ asked Freddi.

  ‘Bloke pretends to be an Orthodox, then crosses himself with an open hand, touches his left shoulder fi rst,’ he spat, kicking at Ari’s boot. ‘That’s the Catholic way, you fucking ponce!’

  ‘Sorry, McQueen,’ said Ari.

  Mac breathed out long and hard, tried for some composure. ‘So what are you?’

  Ari looked away, spat blood out of his mouth.

  ‘He’s Israeli,’ said Freddi, sounding a bit confused. ‘He didn’t tell you this?’

  ‘No. I thought he was Russian.’

  Freddi chuckled. ‘He is - he was. But now he’s Ari Scharansky, our local Mossad guy.’

  Mac sulked in the front seat of the BAIS LandCruiser, humiliated, furious with Ari, angry with himself for his outburst, annoyed with Freddi for letting the issue just drift along.

  ‘Could happen to anyone, McQueen,’ smiled Freddi, driving instead of Purni.

  ‘Oh, this is funny?’

  ‘Well,’ said Freddi, ‘just a bit.’

  ‘If I pulled that on you in Australia, it would be all about the uppity Anglos and their superiority complex, Freddi. We’d never hear the end of it.’

  ‘Sorry, maate. We just get used to our foreign spooks and their covers. You know what Jakarta’s like.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘I hone
stly didn’t think to tell you. In fact, I thought you guys knew each other.’

  Burning with adolescent rage, Mac shot him a look that could kill and Freddi spluttered, turned away laughing.

  Collecting himself, Freddi got serious. ‘Anyway, McQueen, that was nice work on the Orthodox thing. Gonna tell my guys that one.’

  Mac relaxed a little. It actually was funny and he’d be loading on the jokes with a shovel if it had happened to someone else. When you fi rst started in the fi rm, the overarching rule was: Assumption is the gateway to disaster. It sounded plodding when you were young and had huge faith in your own infallibility. But it was great advice. Mac had made a huge assumption about Ari, probably because he’d been tired and in shock at the state of Kuta when he’d fi rst arrived. But in the spy game, all assumptions had to be discarded on meeting someone new. Just because it looked like a duck and sounded like a duck, didn’t mean it wasn’t a goose.

  Israeli intelligence had always had problems getting traction in Indonesia; not just because it wasn’t possible to enter the Republic on an Israeli passport, but because there were severe cultural differences between the Indons and the Israelis that made it hard for Israeli-born Mossad agents to blend in. They were too intense, for starters. The Javanese used a lot of humour in their communications, which made it easy for Australians to get along in the Archipelago, but Israelis tended to stare too long and too seriously into another man’s eyes, which instantly triggered the Javanese social defences. The Israelis also had a basic personality clash in the region. Even when a Javanese wanted to say no, he would nod, smile, make a joke, slap you on the back, equivocate - do whatever had to be done to say no without actually saying the word. The Israelis - in Mac’s experience - saw this face-saving mechanism as weakness or uncertainty, and even the most highly trained of them found it hard not to press their advantage. They just didn’t get it. Mac had tried to point this out to Mossad agents he’d known in the past but mostly they argued with his assessment, so he’d smile, slap them on the back, buy them a drink.