Second Strike am-2

by Mark Abernethy

  The screams got louder and he saw a hotel employee coming out of her offi ce in the tennis pagoda, her hands up to her face. Mac sprinted past a middle-aged Anglo couple in tennis whites who were clinging together, shouting, ‘Get down, both of you!’

  The screaming hotel employee was standing over the face-down form of Alex Grant, blood pooling around his face. A pitcher of water, some glasses and a silver tray were scattered around him, his white legs a pathetic tangle.

  ‘Get in the offi ce, call security,’ said Mac to the hysterical woman.

  ‘And hurry!’

  Removing his backpack, Mac carefully surveyed the scene. He hadn’t seen anyone leaving the area and they could still be around.

  He assumed there’d been at least two shooters by the sounds and their frequency. It was very hard to put so many single shots together so quickly when you had to aim and move about at the same time.

  He moved past the clubhouse cottage and looked around the corner, head out, head in. At the end of the fi rst tennis court – where Grant, Vitogiannis and probably Diane had been playing – he could see a collapsed male body.

  ‘Fuck!’ he hissed to himself as he realised it was Vitogiannis. Mac wasn’t armed and it looked like he was dealing with at least two hit men.

  Stealthing onto the tennis court, Mac’s heart lurched as he saw Diane lying on her side, her white shorts bloody. Taking another look around for shooters, Mac ran across the court, ducking down on the other side as he got to Diane. She was slumped on her right hip and Mac gently pulled her over to face him. She was alive, saliva running out of her mouth.

  ‘Diane, Diane!’ he breathed, sitting down so he could get his knees under her and hold her up straight. ‘Shit! Fuck!’ he muttered as he scanned for threats, then checked her wrist for a pulse. There was a weak one. She groaned, her head lolling. A dark stain soaked her tank top.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, Diane. I’m here. We’re going to get you to hospital, you’re strong, you’re going to make it.’

  He pulled up her tank top and saw a hole in her stomach oozing blood at a rate that would see her dead within fi fteen minutes. There was another gory mess in her right shoulder. Her eyes rolled back and her hands gripped him momentarily, then she went limp.

  ‘Where’s that fucking ambulance? Ambulan! Mari! ‘ he screamed.

  Scanning refl exively for the shooters, Mac saw Diane’s chromed Colt Defender on the court surface behind her. Palming it, he checked the spout and the mag and shoved it into his belt at the small of his back. Standing, he pulled Diane up into a fi reman’s lift and started across the tennis court for the hotel. Employees were running across the grassed area around the lagoon pools and the girl from the tennis clubhouse watched mutely as he jogged past the middle-aged couple.

  ‘Can we do anything?’ asked the bloke in a reedy American accent.

  ‘Pray,’ mumbled Mac.

  During his time in the British military they had to do their two-up drills at least once a week. Most of the guys hated them, never saw the point. Now he was tabbing two-up and wondering if there were enough minutes left to let Diane survive. Wasn’t supposed to be how it worked.

  He raced to the side entrance of the hotel as the conference goers moved tentatively out into the sun, eyes agog as he ran at them.

  ‘Freddi!’ yelled Mac, his voice verging on the hysterical. ‘Freddi Gardjito! Freddi!’ he screamed, the crowds parting in front of him.

  Then suddenly Freddi was there, SIG Sauer in his right hand.

  ‘McQueen, what happened?’

  ‘Two shot, dead. We’ve got to get this one to the hospital. Please, mate – please! ‘

  Freddi spun around and led them through the lobby into the hotel’s underground car park, yelling into his lapel. Another BAIS guy appeared and Freddi issued an order before the bloke ran off.

  Mac sat in the back of the LandCruiser with Diane, laying her down to stop the blood pumping out and talking her through it as her eyes rolled back in her head and her lips turned white.

  ‘It’s okay, mate. You’re going to make it, Diane,’ said Mac, cradling her head on his lap.

  In front of them a POLRI Jeep Cherokee and a POLRI motorcycle led them to MMC, the big Western hospital on Rasuma Said, next to the Aussie Embassy.

  The emergency crew at the ambulance dock seized on Diane immediately, dragging her onto a gurney and slapping a breathing mask on her even before the LandCruiser had fully stopped. Freddi and Mac jogged behind the gurney as it was taken through to the emergency ward and into an operating theatre.

  Sitting outside with Freddi, Mac looked down at his feet, things suddenly seeming hopeless. The tears came and he put his hands over his face, embarrassed. Freddi’s hand touched his right shoulder and Mac took his hands from his face.

  ‘ Shit, Freddi,’ he said through his tears. ‘I mean – shit.’ He sniffl ed and felt Freddi’s hand grip him harder, give him a shake.

  ‘I know, mite. I know.’

  It was 9.21 pm when the nurse came out of the recovery room and said, ‘The patient would like to see Mr Richard.’

  Mac got up like he had three tonnes on his shoulders and turned to Freddi, who just shrugged. ‘I’ll be here, McQueen. Take as long as you want.’

  Mac walked like a robot behind the nurse and stood at the end of Diane’s bed. Her face was so pale it had fl ushed out her tan, a tube went into her nose, a machine bellowed in and out beside her and another tube was connected to her arm.

  After a while, her eyes fl uttered open and Mac went to her left side. She saw him, and her face screwed up as she started crying.

  She put her hand out and Mac held it as he perched on the edge of the bed and felt her weak sobs. Her grip was strong and desperate and she pulled him down to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Yeah, I love you too, mate,’ Mac whispered. ‘You got a shot at the bastards?’

  Diane nodded. ‘Out-fucking-standing,’ said Mac.

  ‘Handbag from the hotel,’ she rasped, really faint. ‘Bring Filofax, need to talk.’

  Mac nodded, glad he was all cried out. He wanted to at least appear strong for her. ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘Just bring it.’

  Nodding, he stood. ‘Back soon, Diane. You’ve been so brave but please rest now?’

  She nodded, her eyes closing again as Mac left.

  Mac and Freddi talked through the scenario in the LandCruiser on the way back to the Lar. Mac didn’t want to hand over everything he knew, but Freddi had a personal stake in this thing too – he’d also been badly affected by what’d happened out at that old airfi eld in Sumatra all those years ago. Freddi had taken administration duties at BAIS for six months afterwards and Mac had gone back to Manila with a lot of pain inside. He had blamed himself for Merpati being shot to pieces and her brother, Santo, being snatched. He had promised them safety if they just did what he said. They were good kids, they did as they were asked, but they’d been let down badly.

  Mac had hit the booze back in the Philippines, but after a six-week binge he sobered up and did something he’d vowed never to do in his life. He found a shrink in Mataki, off the beaten track for expats and embassy colony types, and went twice a week for eleven weeks. Her name was Lydia Weiss, a Canadian psychotherapist who was about ten years older than Mac and bore a striking resemblance to Barbra Streisand. She was smart and funny and on their fi rst meeting Mac, who was a bit vague with the world, had called her Barbra by mistake.

  She laughed and asked him if he’d like singing as part of the service.

  ‘As long as I can be Barry Gibb,’ he’d said.

  She asked him to start with what set him apart as a person, what made him different. And he didn’t know what to say, so he said, ‘I’m not an atheist.’

  She smiled and said, ‘At last, a live one!’

  They got along well and she got him talking about a lot of things.

&nb
sp; He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do or how honest he was supposed to be. His main criterion was that she was discreet. Jen had used counselling from time to time, when she felt she needed it, but she was a woman and it was expected among female cops. Amongst male spooks, they’d prefer you were on the piss, depressed and going brothel-hopping every night than openly seeing a shrink. You were either admitting you couldn’t handle it, or you were breaking open the entire psychological secret of covert fi eldwork – the secret being that no one could really handle it as well as they pretended, and all it took was a shock of violence or pain caused to a child or some other innocent party and you were in emotional la-la land.

  Lydia had been quite clear about that. ‘Richard, if you knew how many cops, spies and soldiers I see in these rooms, you might relax a bit. It’s okay to need to talk,’ she’d said.

  That was fi ne with Mac, but he still used a cover and paid in cash.

  At the last session, she’d asked him to sum up a few things for himself. He hadn’t understood, so Lydia asked him to describe as honestly as he could what he was feeling when he sat there in the Sumatran jungle with a broken, bleeding girl in his arms.

  Mac had shrugged.

  ‘Let’s try that another way,’ smiled Lydia. ‘You didn’t cry, did you.

  Why not?’

  They had sat in silence for three or four minutes.

  ‘Because,’ he said, like he was in a dream, ‘I was scared. And that made me ashamed.’

  Mac collected Diane’s girlie things from the bathroom – the combs and brushes and little bottles. He looked under the bed and found knickers and a sock, checked the bedside table, the bathroom and her suitcase. He found two mobile phones in her handbag, but no Filofax.

  Stripping, Mac threw his bloody clothes into the corner and had a long shower. He had the shakes in his hands and in his facial muscles.

  Freddi was waiting in the living area of the suite, which made him feel safe, but there were things coming to the surface he thought he’d beaten.

  Getting out of the shower, he grabbed some clean clothes from his bag and got dressed in Diane’s room. As he made to leave, he looked in one last place – under her pillow. It was there: a dark blue twenty-year-old Filofax diary. He opened it to make sure it was all there, and found that all the entries were in acronyms or about grocery lists, that sort of thing. He was snapping it shut, about to throw it in her leather handbag, when something caught his eye. In the front inside sleeve, a corner of something poked out. He pulled at it and out slid a photo. It showed Diane smiling at the camera, looking a little tired, in hospital blues and holding a baby to her breast.

  ‘Shit,’ he mumbled.

  He turned it over and in Diane’s hand, in black ballpoint, was written Sarah, one day old.

  He turned it back over and looked at the picture again. You could see from the foreground of the bed that the nurse or doctor had put down their clipboard on the bed in front of Diane before taking the photo. Mac put the Filofax in the handbag and found a duty-free carry bag and put Diane’s clean undies, bras and socks into it – she might appreciate them as she recovered.

  As he moved through to the living area, Freddi looked up.

  ‘Thanks for that, Fred,’ he smiled. ‘Mate, you wouldn’t have an imaging guy downstairs would you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Images were a big deal at conferences. You spent all your time grabbing pictures of people, running them through the software to enhance them and run matches in the databases. They ducked into the back offi ce of the front desk and Freddi introduced Fanshaw, the junior intel guy, to Mac.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Mac. ‘Just want to check what this clipboard says in the photo.’

  The bloke put the pic in a scanner, pulled it up on his laptop screen, used the cursor to defi ne an area and then double-clicked several times. He made adjustments in an enhancement box at the side of the screen, repixelating the image digitally, and within thirty seconds the German software had brought the top of that clipboard alive. Fanshaw pointed and Mac leaned in.

  The girl’s surname was ELLISON. But it was her fi rst names, in smaller text, that shocked Mac to the core. Sarah McQueen.

  CHAPTER 35

  Freddi peeled away to the gents as they closed on Diane’s room. Mac came around a corner, his mind racing, trying to get the timeline right for Diane’s – their – daughter, and walked into two men loitering outside the door.

  One was the heavily muscled shape of a soldier Mac recognised from two years ago in Jakarta. Carl had been present when Mac and Diane had gone out for their last dinner together. He hadn’t changed much: his usual Levis and Hi-Tecs, a black leather holster-bag around his middle that Mac knew contained a SIG Sauer 9 mm and probably a fancy military micro-radio.

  Beside Carl was a tall dark-haired MI6 operative by the name of Danny Fitzgibbon. Danny seemed out of place in the fi eld. In an early rotation in Singapore, Mac, Dave Urquhart and Danny were all stationed together. Urquhart and Danny had become friends whose conversation centred on the ministerial end of the job. Urquhart now worked liaison with the Prime Minister’s offi ce and Mac had assumed Danny was doing something similar in London.

  ‘Danny,’ he said, nodding.

  Then, winking at the soldier, Mac said, ‘How’s it going, Carl?’

  Carl smiled and nodded but Danny put his hands on his hips and made no attempt to get out of the way. ‘I was hoping you’d turn up, McQueen.’

  ‘It’s nice to be loved, Danny.’

  ‘Still a smartarse, I see,’ Danny sneered. ‘But that didn’t help her, did it?’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Mate, I’m tired, okay?’ said Mac, not wanting this. ‘I’ve got some things Diane asked for -‘

  ‘Like what?’ Danny challenged, his beady eyes dropping to the handbag.

  Mac turned to Carl, smiled. ‘You’ll come for the looks, stay for the personality, eh Carl?’

  Carl tried to suppress a laugh, but couldn’t. The British diplomat bodyguards were smart, experienced guys plucked out of special forces and the metro police. They could be just as confused by the wankers from Six as anyone.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, McQueen,’ snarled Danny, moving forward and trying to get all the height he could out of his lanky frame. ‘The main game’s over here, mate.’

  ‘Okay, Danny, nice talking to you, I’ll be going in now.’ He moved half a step and Danny fronted him, did it so they touched chests, did it in such a way that if he was in Mount Isa or Kalgoorlie he’d be crawling around on the fl oor by now, looking for his teeth.

  ‘Where you think you’re going, McQueen?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Mac, wondering where he could hit him and not be reprimanded by the fi rm.

  ‘I asked you what’s in the bag.’

  ‘Just a few selected pictures of me with your mother.’

  Danny’s pupils dilated and his lips went white as Carl expelled a snort of laughter. Mac was prepared to take one shot so he could give fi fteen and still claim in his report that he’d been attacked. Danny tensed and a voice came from behind Mac.

  ‘What’s up, Fitzgibbon?’

  Danny’s nostrils fl ared as he stared into Mac’s eyes, his gaze fl ickering over Mac’s shoulder. ‘Freddi – how’s things?’ Danny croaked, his throat striated with wire-like tendons.

  Freddi moved up to Mac’s left shoulder and got in close to Danny.

  ‘Like I said, Fitzgibbon, what’s up?’

  Mac sensed a new coldness in Freddi’s voice.

  ‘Lass is the daughter of one of ours, mate,’ said Danny, fl icking his head. ‘He’s fl ying in from Ottawa but for now she’s under our protection.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Freddi.

  ‘Carl’s diplomatic. I’m just down here to ask McQueen what happened.’

  ‘POLRI will ask him that, Fitzgibbon. For now, he’s seeing the girl.’

  Danny didn’t move, so Freddi moved closer
, did his own fronting.

  ‘Tell you what, Fitzgibbon, if I’m ever in London, you can tell me what door I can walk through, okay? But in my town you get out of my way.’

  ‘The girl’s diplomatic too, Freddi. Don’t want an incident, do we?’ said Danny.

  ‘You’re lending yourself – girl’s working for the Aussies,’ snarled Freddi. ‘So move!’

  Danny stood back from the door, raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Wouldn’t want to cause offence, Fred.’

  Freddi moved to the door and Carl cleared his throat. ‘Mr McQueen, sir,’ he said, pointing at Diane’s bags. ‘Wouldn’t mind, would you, sir?’

  Mac gave him the large leather handbag and Carl knelt down on the fl oor and went through it expertly, then quickly dealt with the duty-free bag containing Diane’s clothes. After he’d fi nished Carl stood and returned the bags and Mac pulled the Defender from his belt, gave it to him. Carl looked sheepish so Mac said, ‘Come on, mate

  – get it over with,’ and Carl patted him for concealeds.

  Inside the room, Carl and Freddi stood at the back while Mac moved to Diane’s side. She was sleeping, her breaths slow and shallow.

  Mac watched her and decided he’d pick things up in the morning. But as he stood to go, she opened her eyes and he sat again.

  ‘The photo?’ she whispered.

  Mac just nodded, too choked up to say anything.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you but when I went to see you – on the Gold Coast – you were… It was all gone, I’d lost you and I couldn’t see -‘ She started crying again and Mac pulled blue tissues from a box, wiped her cheeks.

  ‘So, she’d be?’

  ‘Almost eighteen months,’ Diane smiled. ‘And beautiful.’

  ‘So she looks like you?’

  ‘No – she’s a McQueen. Very stubborn.’

  ‘So, she’s running around?’

  Diane nodded, gulped. ‘Dad says she’ll be a famous sports star