At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What’s cookin’?’

  I relaxed now. ‘Gig that I was doing solo – might need some backup.’

  ‘I’m here for you, brother,’ he said. ‘Where you at?’

  ‘Medan,’ I said, knowing that MG’s comms are secure. ‘There’s twenty grand for you, guaranteed – another twenty if we complete and get paid. Fair enough?’

  ‘I’m in,’ he said, and I told him to check in to the Alpha and we’d do a tourist meeting in the breakfast area.

  ‘Before you pack your bags,’ I said. ‘Tell me about Chris McCann.’

  ‘Who?’ said MG.

  ‘Coastal Resources.’

  He paused. ‘We telling tales, Big Unit?’

  I laughed. We didn’t divulge client details in our world. ‘She’s an executive at Coastal – Chris McCann.’

  ‘Good for her,’ said the Texan.

  ‘So, you didn’t refer her to me?’

  ‘No – after the shit I saw in a certain country, I told the dude I worked for that they needed someone like you, not some trigger-happy dick.’

  ‘Okay, so Coastal Resources,’ I pushed, realising that McCann had used a referral from someone on the ground. ‘Thumbs-up? Thumbs-down?’

  ‘Did a job in that toilet bowl they call a country,’ said MG. ‘I got paid. Ain’t no complaints here.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Then we’re good.’

  The rarest people are the ones you can rely on for basic things, like keeping you alive. MG is one of those people. A decorated veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, a US Marines Force Recon operator with basic intelligence skills to go with his special forces training. I could tell you about his heroics and it wouldn’t mean as much as the time I was in a bit of strife with a bunch of Russian mercenaries in northern Burma. I needed some information, and had been sent to a Russian agent to get it, and when I got there it was wall-to-wall Russians, filled with vodka and wanting to fight. I dealt with several of them, but I was hit over the head with something – a tyre iron, maybe – and when I came to, I had MG standing over me, fists clenched, daring the Russians to keep going. Bear in mind, this Texan dynamo is around five-foot-nine – five-ten in his boots. Not huge. But he had enough that when the first Russian came at him, and he broke the guy like a match, the other Russians decided they didn’t want that to be them.

  I had a big meeting the next day. As my head hit the pillow I felt better: MG was on his way and the gig was being evened up again.

  13

  I woke to a text that had come in overnight – MG saying he’d land around 1 pm. I idled the morning with some walking around the old city, and at midday exactly my Nokia trilled.

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘Airport at one,’ said the voice, and they hung up.

  I packed my backpack and headed for the street. Flagged down a cab and we headed for Kualanamu airport, north-west of the city. I got into the terminal early and had a look around. I didn’t know who I was looking for or what the deal was exactly. Lennie had warned me that they’d ask for some money to cover the cost of getting to the armoury, so I was travelling with around US$10,000 in cash. But other than that, I had little idea what was going to happen.

  I took a seat in one of the main departure lounges, where Indonesian politicians yelled at one another on the television news. It looked hectic but Indonesia was actually quite controlled. I was about to check my phone when I looked up and found two people standing in front of me: one man – Anglo, about thirty years old – and a woman, late thirties, who looked Spanish or Italian. ‘You Mike?’ she said, and I realised she was Australian.

  ‘Yep,’ I said, and she cocked her head and walked away. I shared a look with the bloke and we both followed her. There was a glamorous, almost yuppie, thing about these two. I saw people with good taste in clothes who spent time in the gym.

  The woman ducked through a service door, and when I followed her through I saw we were in a semi–open plan office space, where the walls don’t go all the way to the ceiling. There were people coming and going from the different offices and I got a sense that the spaces were shared. The woman ducked into one with a table in the middle and chairs around the sides, and when she had closed the door behind us she pointed at my bag. ‘Please empty that.’

  I poured the contents onto the table – basically clean undies and socks and a fresh polo shirt. Oh, and a manila envelope with a lot of cash in it. She looked through the clothes and looked at the side pockets. Pulling out the Nokia, she made a face, and then she looked inside the envelope without comment. Then she turned to me and gestured for me to turn out my pockets. I did that and out came the latest burner smartphone and one Visa card.

  ‘You won’t be needing any of that,’ she said, pointing at my belongings. She pushed it all into a plastic basket and slid it into a safe that sat in the corner.

  ‘You don’t need the cash?’ I asked.

  ‘We ask for that to make sure you’re serious,’ she said. ‘If you think this is a free ride, you don’t get a meeting.’

  Now she pointed to the man, and he expertly patted me down, doing a very good job on my pockets and the stitching of my boardies. Then he ran a detector over me, and asked me take off my G-shock watch. That went into the safe too.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said the woman, and the three of us walked single file through the office space, and when we burst out into the sunlight, we were on an airport apron. In front of me were two private jets, but we walked along a designated walkway marked by yellow paint, until we reached a dark blue helicopter. The engines were going and the rotors were turning lazily. It looked like a Bell but I was no expert.

  A person with a helmet and flight suit got out of the front door, opened the rear door and gestured for us to get in. We climbed in and as the helmeted person helped me into the harness, the Aussie woman handed me a black hood.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ I said, my voice drowned out by the rising rotor revs. And she read my lips, smiled and just shook her head.

  The hood went on, and as I felt the chopper lifting into the sky, blacked-out and with no idea who these people really were, I was strangely comforted by their professional attitude. That and the fact that my entree was Lennie – a man who could make life hard for arms dealers because of his position.

  The flight lasted not more than half an hour, at which point I could feel the aircraft flaring and slowing, and then we had touched down and the slow whine of a depowering helicopter dominated the cabin.

  The hood was whipped off me and I recoiled from the sunlight. When my sight had adjusted and I looked through the helicopter windows, I saw the superstructure of a ship and then I saw the ocean.

  I stepped out onto the helipad, feeling the salty warm wind of the tropics. Other than flying half an hour from Medan, I had no idea where we were. I followed the man and woman off the helipad and into a companionway. I figured the vessel was maybe forty-five to fifty metres long, and its design was similar to the US Coast Guard ships.

  I was led through the companionways and into a series of staterooms. The Aussie woman stood beside a doorway and gestured me inside. I walked into the largest of them – the cabin – which had been made into an office. There was a desk close to the far side, and decent-sized windows – not portholes – allowing good natural light into the room. A man close to fifty walked through a connecting door and he looked like an accountant, right down to the beige slacks and Lacoste cardie.

  ‘Mike?’ he said, offering his hand. ‘They call me Mr H – welcome.’

  We shook hands and I looked around. ‘Quite a place,’ I said. ‘Looks like a warship.’

  ‘Close,’ he said. ‘Former Royal Navy. Not flash but reliable and comfortable.’

  He offered me a seat, and I noticed that my male companion left but the Aussie woman sat down beside me. Mr H sat in a chair behind his desk and le
aned on it with his elbows. ‘We are a floating armoury, capable of supplying about eight hundred soldiers and operators at any one time, with the latest in assault weapons and tactical equipment. We lease by the day, the week and the month, and we charge for each round that doesn’t come back to us.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, shifting in my seat. My heart was beating a little: eight hundred soldiers and operators!? Holy shit – the Indian government had just pulled out all the stops to shut down a ship caught with just thirty-five undocumented weapons. If he wanted my attention, he had it.

  ‘Our pricing is not cheap, but we maintain strict documentation which includes authentic end-user certificates, from governments with reciprocal agreements.’

  That part was important. I remembered that EUCs depended not only on which government had written them, but which governments would recognise them. For instance, the government of the territory you wished to deploy into. I didn’t want to get into too many details – the size and professionalism of this operation was impressive and I wanted Coastal Resources to deal with the nitty-gritty and just give me the success fee.

  ‘I’m actually introducing a large client – they’ve struck misfortune with their current provider.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mr H, with a kind smile. ‘They send you out to deal with the devil, and then you go back and tell them everything about us?’

  I looked at him, but he wasn’t finished.

  ‘But I don’t get to know who the client is?’

  ‘I guess that’s the deal,’ I said, not feeling there was an enormous problem with it. ‘It suits me to have no details about your operation.’

  ‘In this business it usually works best when everyone’s arse is in the vice,’ he said. ‘I’m sure, Mike, that you know exactly what I mean.’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, Mr H. I know exactly what you mean. Here’s a way forward: you give me terms and a price sheet, and if these people want to go ahead, they can call you directly, and then you can all lift your skirts. Fair?’

  Now it was Mr H’s turn to laugh and I could see the Aussie woman beside me sighing and shaking her head.

  ‘That’s all fair, Mike,’ he said, getting serious again. He was swinging back and forth in his executive chair, his fingertips touching in a cathedral pose. ‘And where does that leave us?’

  ‘Us?’ I said, confused. ‘I don’t need to buy weapons.’

  ‘No, but these people only get to meet me because you and I both know an Australian who has worked in the business,’ he said.

  I caught my breath slightly. I hadn’t been expecting this. ‘So you want me to vouch for them? My clients?’

  ‘If you won’t tell me who they are, then I can hardly vouch for them, now, can I?’

  14

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. I had to make this right, or getting my dough from Coastal was the least of my problems – I could easily end up as shark food.

  ‘How do you usually vet your customers?’ I asked.

  ‘I ask them for a business name and a bank account,’ he said. ‘Then we’re square.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell them that’s the price of having a conversation.’

  He stood. ‘How many people are we arming?’ he said, looking at the Aussie woman.

  She shrugged and looked at me.

  ‘Fifty to sixty,’ I said. ‘They have a number of pick-up trucks with tray-mounted fifty cals, which weren’t stolen, but they still need the rounds. They also need NVGs for their pipeline patrols. Otherwise they’re armed with standard M4s and SIG side-arms, perhaps some pump-actions. I think they like to have grenade-launchers and RPGs ready to go, but maybe not a lot.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mr H, ‘we can cover that. Let’s go have a look.’

  I followed Mr H down a companionway, listening to him talk about the operation. He seemed to be saying that it had grown out of a finance operation in the Seychelles; when arms dealers needed bridging facilities and correct documentation, they’d go to his firm. ‘The day comes when you’re holding all this ordnance as collateral and someone goes to prison and another fellow’s government is overthrown, and before you know it you own all these armaments.’

  He turned and shrugged at me, as if to say, What was I supposed to do?

  I was in another world.

  We walked down a ladder well – Mr H yelling out, ‘Heads!’ – and through a door guarded by an armed thug, and then we were in a hold that was lit with fluoro lights and lined with weapons. Hundreds of assault rifles were racked – three levels high along the sides and along the centre line – and further down the hold I could see stacked boxes.

  ‘This is about a third of it,’ he said, leading me down the walls of M4s, AR-15s, fifty-calibre machine guns and M16s, and racks upon racks of what I would call MP5 submachine guns, but which these days exist in all sorts of variants. ‘We have a sister ship with the balance.’

  When we got to the stacked boxes I realised these were the boxes of rounds. ‘This is always the money-spinner when there’s real trouble,’ he said, pointing at boxes of 5.56 millimetre rounds with various manufacturer stamps on them. ‘You lease rounds from us – but once they’re spent, you buy them.’

  At the other end of the Aladdin’s cave we came to a space that was under the main forward hatch, and this was clearly where the ‘receiving’ accountants worked. It was set up with computers, barcode scanner devices and rubber-topped steel tables.

  ‘All armaments are barcoded – outbound and in – and all rounds are counted.’

  Beyond the receiving area was a small workshop, brightly lit with halogens, where a technician was working on something with a set of magnifiers over his glasses.

  Back on deck, I breathed in the sea air and felt the sun on my back. There was an airless feeling to the arms business that didn’t suit me. Behind the bridge there was a day-room of sorts, where the three of us sat.

  ‘We need coffee,’ said Mr H as he sat down. ‘You drink coffee, Mike?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Black.’

  ‘Same here,’ he said, and stood, shouting to people unseen that we needed three black coffees, immediately.

  When the coffees arrived, Mr H stirred in his sugar and leaned back in a small armchair. ‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ he said. ‘Cynthia will accompany you back to the mainland, and she’ll meet your clients, and she and I will decide if these mystery people want to do business. Fair?’

  ‘Sounds okay to me,’ I said. ‘From what I’ve seen here, this is what they need.’

  I was smiling, and so was he, and now I knew the name of my unnamed minder. But the longer this job dragged on, the more I felt like a patsy who was going to wear most of the consequences.

  15

  I was two beers into a conversation with MG when my Nokia rang: Cynthia had booked in at the Radisson, and was suggesting we go for a bite. It was 6.45 pm, and I was sitting in a bar around the corner from the Alpha, trying to fill in MG on the goings-on to this point. I agreed to meet Cynthia, and got back to my story.

  ‘So,’ said MG. ‘Who does Yellow Shirt work for?’

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t confirm. Joel didn’t seem very close to him, and I couldn’t see who was in the car with Yellow Shirt.’

  ‘You think he’s dead?’

  I shook my head, more from hope than anything. ‘I pushed his head into the ground too hard, but – shit – not hard enough to kill him.’

  MG looked slowly around the bar. In his t-shirt and cargo shorts, with sunnies pushed up into his short brown hair, you’d immediately think he was a tourist. But I knew he was scanning the place.

  ‘Where are you meeting this woman?’

  ‘Main restaurant, at the Radisson,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Might have a look around.’

  I scrubbed up, put on my clean jeans and a new polo shirt
, and walked around the block to the Radisson. I liked Sumatra and I liked Medan – the streets had a civil feeling to them, as if people liked living here and were proud of their city. The smells of thousands of kitchens floated on the soft breeze as I strode carefully along Gelugor Boulevard, and then swerved left and into the Radisson.

  I found Cynthia quickly: the maître d’ asked me for the name of the table booking and I realised I didn’t know her last name.

  ‘Cynthia,’ I said, smiling. ‘Miss Cynthia.’

  The girl led me to Cynthia’s table and I took a seat, asking for a beer – Tiger.

  Cynthia had also changed – she was now wearing a black linen dress. I noticed silver earrings and perfume. I’m no expert, but I suspected Arpège. She’d also slapped on some makeup, and even though I wasn’t in the market, I had to admit this woman was a looker: oval face, high forehead, big dark eyes and pretty features that didn’t drown out her intellect. I wanted to say something like, ‘What’s a girl like you, doing in a . . .’

  She sipped at a glass of white wine. ‘So, that was Mr H’s operation,’ she said, inviting me to be honest.

  ‘Well, it would have been better if someone had warned me the thing was on a ship,’ I said, eyes wide. ‘And the size of the armoury – my God!’

  She laughed. ‘I thought you’d seen it all?’ she said. ‘The background we did on you? Well, let’s just say . . .’ She made a face.

  ‘Don’t believe everything you read,’ I said, thanking the waitress for my beer. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘No one gets a sheet like that by staying home and watching TV.’

  ‘And no one works on a floating armoury by joining the crochet club.’

  ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Touché, Mr Daly.’

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, yourself. Let’s just say that you do a law degree and work for ten years in a trade law practice, and the day comes when you’re sailing around the Indian Ocean selling M4s to clients with something to lose. And you?’