Second Strike am-2

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Shit,’ said Mano.

  Mac turned and saw a white speedboat a quarter of a mile behind them, motoring at high speed by the look of the spray and the attitude of the vessel.

  ‘Drive,’ Mano told Mac, and went to the rear of the boat where he opened one of the white plastic seat-lockers.

  The revs dropped and as Mac took the wheel he saw why: the boat had a dead-man’s brake in the footrest. Mac stepped on it and the revs came up again. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Mano heft and check an M4 assault rifl e of the kind used by special forces.

  Bringing his eyes back forward of the black beauty, Mac saw the red speedboat gunwale-dancing in from their two o’clock, clearly heading straight for them.

  Suddenly, a tapdance of three-shot rifl e bursts came from behind and Mac smelled cordite. Acid rose in his throat, mixing with the fuel fumes and exhaust. He felt sick. The red boat at their two o’clock was closing quickly, now just eighty metres away. Mac could see three locals crammed at the windscreen, one of them holding a rifl e.

  The gunfi re continued from behind and as Mac looked back the white boat was fi fty metres away and closing. As Mac tried to steer away from the red boat’s trajectory, a star of shattered glass appeared in the windscreen in front of him, shards spinning out like gossamer in the sunlight. His fi rst instinct was to duck down, which initiated the dead-man’s brake again and the revs cut to an idle.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Mano as he came forward and clambered onto the bow decking. ‘When I say it, you hit the throttle, okay? Give it everything.’

  Mac came to his feet in a crouch. ‘Sure.’

  Mano made to kneel on the decking – diffi cult as the black beauty rode the swell – but before he could get a shot off, his right leg sagged and a puff of meat bounced out the side of his shorts. Mano took all his weight onto his left leg, tried to get his balance but the shock to his leg was too great and he collapsed sideways off the deck and into the Malacca Straits.

  Swivelling around, Mac saw the speedboats were almost on him and he shut down the throttles, swore to every sea god he could think of and prepared for the boarding. He could have grabbed the Glock from his backpack under the transom seats and involved himself in a shoot-out, but he wasn’t in the hero mood. Mano was out there somewhere and Mac had to get to Idi, had to make that meeting with Freddi.

  The white boat got to him fi rst and two young locals clambered on board, the taller one with a battered AK-47, the other one with what looked like a Soviet Makarov handgun. The third guy stayed at the helm of the white boat, letting the big black Mercury outboard idle.

  Mac held his hands up but the pirates basically ignored him, the short one moving straight to the tiller and taking control while training his Makarov on Mac. The taller one pulled open the hatchway between the pilot’s and passenger seats, and disappeared into the boat’s long below-decks. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. A strange smell wafted up from the hatch door – sweet but musty.

  ‘How’s it going?’ said Mac, hands held high as he smiled at the gunman.

  The red boat pulled up in what North Americans call a ‘hockey stop’ and two thugs in sarungs, plastic sandals and T-shirts leapt onto the black beauty and started yelling at Mac. One walked up and barrel-whipped him across the left side of his forehead with an AK. Mac staggered back but stayed on his feet. As the blood gushed down his face, Mac watched a small Malay man get out of his white Naugahyde seat, jump across to the black boat, and walk up to Mac.

  ‘G’day, how’s it going?’ said Mac, blood dripping off his left jaw and onto his overalls.

  The little man smiled – full lips like a woman and beautiful but crooked teeth.

  ‘Ah, oop-oop!’ he said with a smile.

  They all laughed. In South-East Asia, oop-oop meant an Aussie, thanks to what an Asian thought a kangaroo might sound like as it hopped.

  ‘Yeah, cheers,’ smiled Mac. ‘Sweet as.’

  The little man looked him up and down, though thanks to the height differential it was more up than down. Then he pointed his thumb at his chest and said, ‘Anwar,’ and said it as though he might have been saying President and CEO of Ford Motor Company.

  Mac exhaled and smiled. ‘Mac,’ he said, pointing his thumb at his own chest.

  Anwar turned his mouth down in an attempt at dignity. ‘Anwar

  – the boss.’

  ‘Sure, boss,’ said Mac, his blood now splashing on the wooden decking.

  Anwar smiled and looked at his gang for vindication, and pretty soon they were laughing again, Anwar pointing a thumb at his chest and saying, ‘The boss!’

  The tall pirate stuck his head out of the cargo hatch between the front seats and yelled something to Anwar.

  The boss turned to face Mac slowly, shaking his head with theatrical sadness. ‘No ganja today, eh Mr Mac?’ He looked down at his feet, then looked Mac in the eye. ‘Which mean… you got cash, yeah?’

  Mac shrugged, smiled wanly.

  Anwar shook his head, pursed his lips. ‘No money – no ganja.

  That no good for the boss.’

  Mac cursed more sea gods. Benny had booked him on a frigging drug boat.

  CHAPTER 45

  The pirates soon found the large shopping bag full of things that Benny had insisted Mac buy before he left. Following instructions to the letter, Mac had lugged the thing onto planes, Land Rovers and drug boats. Now, as the boss and his pirates pulled bottles of Johnnie Walker and cartons of Marlboros from the bag, Mac fi nally got it.

  As the tall sidekick made to strip the seal from one of the bottles of Red Label, Mac used the opportunity to score some points. ‘That for the boss,’ he said, winking at Anwar.

  Anwar screamed and the tall one put the whisky back in the bag, snatching his hands away like the thing had got hot. Anwar took a seat in the front passenger seat and another sidekick pulled out a Marlboro and lit it for the boss.

  Ducking his head into a sleeve of his overalls, Mac tried to stem his bleeding. The mix of blood and briny humidity was a potent smell. There was some fear in there too, and Mac didn’t want the boss smelling it.

  Anwar took a huge hit on the smoke and pointed at Mac with his cigarette hand. ‘So, Mr Mac, where you going?’

  ‘Sumatra,’ said Mac, too freaked to bullshit the bloke.

  ‘What in Sumatera?’ said Anwar, a thick cloud of smoke fl owing from his mouth and nostrils.

  Mac shrugged, not wanting to provoke. ‘Meeting a friend.’

  Anwar nodded, serious. ‘Where in Sumatera?’

  ‘Idi. I’m going to Idi,’ said Mac, looking Anwar in the eye.

  Like a line manager listening to some lame excuse for low production outputs, Anwar made a point of thinking through what Mac was telling him. In this part of the world, every social interaction was theatre; people played their parts and participants had to walk away with some kind of respect, even if only small or token. Anwar had demanded to be the boss and because Mac had instantly given him that respect, he was now attempting to show that he was worthy and could return it, as a professional boss of pirates should.

  ‘Okay, Mr Mac – I tell you what,’ said Anwar, sucking on his ciggie like it was Mum’s own breakfast of champions. ‘I gonna look for the cash, right?’

  Mac nodded, wiped his forehead again, feeling the blood smear back into his hairline. His legs were getting sore standing in the one place – at least that was his excuse for why his left thigh had the shakes.

  ‘If there no cash on boat, you go Idi, the boss keep boat, right?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mac, breathing out slow, trying to control the fear.

  ‘If I fi nd cash, you swimming, right?’

  Mac gulped and nodded. Benny Haskell had just made his top-ten list of People Who Must Get Slapped.

  Anwar’s crew spent ten minutes going over every inch of the cockpit area and the engine bays, while Mac shook with nerves, wondering if he’d ever see Rachel or Jenny again. He tried not to feel sorry for
himself, but he pondered the cruelty of discovering a daughter, but never getting to meet her.

  Mac watched the thorough approach to the search and Anwar’s management of his crew. It was a team of professionals. When they got to Mac’s backpack, jammed under the transom seats, the tall pirate with the blue sarung smiled with victory as he found something.

  In went this hand and out came Mac’s folder with the relics of the Kuta bombing and the Hassan chase. And then the folder was fl ying casually over the bloke’s shoulder, the contents fanning out and slowly fl oating to the oily surface of the water.

  ‘Shit!’ muttered Mac and then saw the source of the excitement: the Glock he’d borrowed from Benny.

  Mac thought quickly. ‘Hey, boss?’

  Anwar turned, sucked on a smoke.

  ‘Take the gun, but I need my phone, yeah?’

  Anwar rattled off something and the tall pirate just shrugged, dropped the backpack and showed off his new Glock to the others.

  ‘No cash on boat, Mr Mac,’ said Anwar.

  Mac nodded, trying to quell the shakes.

  ‘So, I leave you two guy, yeah?’ said Anwar. ‘Take you Idi, okay?’

  Mac breathed out long. ‘Okay, boss, thanks.’

  Anwar yelled at the pirates. The driver waiting in the white boat hit the throttle and raced away into the distance. One of the pirates clambered into the red boat with the boss and there was a screaming of outboard motors as the craft surged up out of the water, fl ooding Mac and the remaining pirates with the pungent smell of Evinrude exhaust.

  Anwar’s boat quickly became a speck on the horizon and the tall pirate moved to the front passenger seat, took the boss’s seat.

  An offsider who looked like Anwar’s brother walked straight to the driver’s chair and stepped on the dead-man’s brake.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Mac, pointing at where several sheets of white paper fl oated on the slick swell. ‘I need my fi les.’

  ‘ Oop oop swim?’ asked the tall pirate with a sneer, and Anwar’s brother joined the giggling. Mac looked at the fl oating paper, realised he probably had two or three minutes before they were ruined. ‘Sure,’ he smiled, just some crazy Anglo who’d been in the sun too long.

  The tall one shrugged, and as he did so his head moved sideways in a whiplash movement, his hair fl ying up at an angle, bits of fl esh and bone fl ying at the shattered windscreen, before he sagged to the dashboard. A bullet had been fi red. Instinctively ducking, Mac heard two more shots which hit Anwar’s brother in the face and then in the throat. Blood and skin fl ew and Mac jumped back slightly as the pirate fell into him and hit the teak deck like a bag of cement.

  Hearing a noise, Mac spun around to see Mano climbing over the transom with the Browning Hi-Power in his right hand. He was soaked and blood ran heavily from his right thigh into his Cat boot. Mano looked at Mac with an odd expression. ‘Thought they’d never leave,’ he said, confused, and then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed.

  ***

  The last fi le – the burnt piece of paper with N W on it – was thirty metres from the boat by the time Mac got to it. He carefully folded it into eighths and put it between his teeth with some other papers, and turned for the boat which was now drifting in the current.

  Pulling himself over the transom, Mac hit the deck dressed only in his undies and felt the heat of the dark wood cook his feet. Mano was alive and in shock, lying on his back in the cockpit with a rescue blanket over him, shivering in the middle of the day just one hundred miles north of the Equator.

  There was a green cross on a fold-down door in the cockpit bulkhead. Mac opened it and pulled out the fi rst-aid kit, fumbling slightly from the pumping adrenaline. He pulled out gauze bandages and two packs of QuikClots, one of fi eld dressings and the other of wound sponges. Looking sideways, Mac saw Mano’s lips going white, mumbling something.

  ‘Hold on, mate,’ Mac muttered, tearing at the sponge pack with his teeth. ‘We’re gonna make it.’

  Pulling up the grey blanket, Mac used the fi rst-aid scissors to tear away the right leg of Mano’s shorts. The bullet had gone straight through the outside thigh muscle and missed the bone. But the blood was fl owing freely. He squirted the sterile water on the wound, noticing how the skin around the entry hole had already turned dark. He wiped the wound with the blanket and pushed the fl at QuikClot sponge onto and into the hole as blood started to run again. Mano tensed and shrieked as Mac applied pressure.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said Mac, his throat thick with stress and the taste of plasma. He didn’t smell blood – he tasted it, way back in his throat.

  He repeated the exercise in the exit hole, which was even bigger than the entry. Pushing two QuikClot sponges into the hole, he put a big dressing across the top of it. Then he bandaged the thigh as lightly as he could to keep the sponges and dressings in place without jamming an artery. He didn’t want Mano to lose a leg to some bad triage.

  Making sure the mercenary was comfortable, Mac gave him a bottle of water from his backpack and then spread his rescued papers on the deck, holding them down with bits and pieces from the fi rst-aid kit. He took the helm, stepped on the brake and brought the revs up to a moderate level and they motored at a comfortable thirty-fi ve knots, Mano giving him landmarks to look for through his chat tering teeth.

  He’d sold the idea of reaching Idi, rather than turning back, on the basis of not wanting Anwar to wonder why they were going the wrong way. But it was simpler than that: Mac wanted to join with Freddi and get in front of Hassan Ali.

  The eastern Sumatran coastline was essentially hundreds of miles of beaches and palms, making every section of coast look the same as the next. But landmarks became clearer after twenty minutes and Mano mumbled about the long jetty off the point. Mac saw it, lying low in the humid sea haze, and aimed for it, glancing over his shoulder every thirty seconds to see if Anwar had picked up their trail.

  They pulled in to the Idi jetty at 1.18 pm and Mac hoped it wasn’t so far beyond the appointed hour that Freddi and the BAIS team had pulled out. The jetty was almost a kilometre long and Mac found a mooring close to the beach. He checked on Mano again, made sure he was drinking water, then fi shed his Nokia from the backpack. Holding it up, he checked if he had a signal. The signal was good, impossible as that seemed, and he wondered if he was connected to a TI tower in Sumatra or to another cellular network from across the Straits.

  Freddi’s phone rang twice before it was picked up. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Freddi,’ rasped Mac, still a little scared and not entirely sure of what he was doing. ‘Mac here, mate.’

  ‘McQueen, you late.’

  Gulping, he tried to shift the conversation. ‘Mate, I’ve got a bloke critically injured. Gunshot to the leg.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Come on, Fred,’ said Mac, rubbing his temple and feeling a cast of dried blood. ‘He’s my driver; he got shot trying to protect me.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Jetty.’

  Mac heard muffl ed conversations, and then Freddi was back. ‘Stay there, McQueen. Be with you in fi ve.’

  ‘Did you fi nd the stuff?’ said Mac, hoping that the Indonesians had moved fast enough to get the mini-nuke from wherever it was stored.

  Freddi paused, then said again, ‘See you in fi ve.’

  CHAPTER 46

  Freddi walked away from the old parade ground at the Idi airfi eld.

  Mac followed, slugging on a large bottle of water, while Mano got medical attention from a soldier in one of the Hueys.

  It was humid and hot among the jungle scrub as they strode to the same bunker system they’d checked out fi ve years ago. Birds and monkeys screeched and the insects laid a humming foundation to the whole din. They got to the fi rst concrete pillar box, which had been stripped of its vines and the doors blasted off. Freddi led the way down the tractor ramp, pushing his sunnies into his hair and turning on his Maglite as they descended into the gloom. The Japanese had built un
derground storage bunkers at their forward military bases during the Pacifi c War, to keep their gasoline and food supplies out of the sun and inconspicuous to aerial surveillance.

  Freddi was in a foul mood, and when they stopped in the middle of the large bunker, and he swung the Maglite around him, it became obvious that not only was there nothing down here, but there hadn’t been anything down here more recently than 1944, maybe the mid-1960s if you assumed the Indonesian military used it during the Konfrontasi paratrooper incursions into Malaya. It was fi lled with dust and sand, but no mini-nuke.

  ‘So, McQueen,’ said Freddi as Mac followed the torch beam around the bunker. ‘That what we got, right?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Humphing, Freddi turned off the Maglite and walked back towards the light of the tractor ramp. They came up outside, walking into a wall of humidity and bird noise. Mac was a little hungover from the night with Benny and Suzi, and the early start and the hit on the head hadn’t helped either. He had a buzzing sensation in his head and estimated the temperature at thirty-nine or forty degrees as he walked briskly to keep up with Freddi.

  Mac sped up, and asked if they could talk. Freddi stopped in the shade of a palm and put his hands on his hips, tense in the shoulders and neck. ‘Okay, so?’

  ‘Mate, before we get back to all the listeners, thought we might have a chat,’ said Mac, slugging at a bottle of water.

  ‘Okay,’ nodded Freddi, but looking away.

  ‘So,’ said Mac, ‘the hotel pad had latents, a phone number?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you ran it, found the owner?’ Sweat mingled with Mac’s head wound, stinging beneath the dressing the soldiers had given him.

  ‘Yep.’ Freddi reached for the water.