Mac raised a hand as Gorilla’s fi rst kick came in and caught him in the bottom teeth, just above the point of the chin. His face lurched back, a tooth bending into the gum. The second strike came from a fi st, accompanied by a heavy grunt. Mac blocked it with his right hand, stood up straight and threw a left elbow into the Pakistani’s face.
Gorilla reeled back, and Mac used the momentum to throw a straight right into the bloke’s face, breaking the Pakistani’s nose and making him stagger down the hall. This time Gorilla caught his balance and stamp-kicked at Mac, hitting him in the groin. As Mac bent over from the strike, Gorilla was on him in a half nelson.
Losing his centre of balance, Mac was shoved backwards at speed until he hit the wall and mirror above the hall table, Gorilla’s huge arms locked perfectly across his throat, putting pressure on his carotids and lifting him off his feet as mirror glass shattered on the tile fl oor. Mac knew he only had seven or eight seconds before he fell asleep. He pushed his hand down, took an industrial grip on Gorilla’s modest testicles and twisted like he was opening a jar lid. The Pakistani’s eyes went wide and his grip slackened just long enough for Mac to wriggle downwards and to the side, ducking as the big man lunged again. Getting under the attempted bear hug, Mac hit the bloke on the left cheekbone with a fast, hard right hand that opened up the bloke’s face and made Gorilla raise his left hand. So Mac hit him in the kidneys and then the right side of the face with a low-high left-hook combination that made blood and snot fl y out the left side of Gorilla’s face.
The Pakistani staggered for balance and threw a hand out, grabbing Mac’s face with a single paw and digging in with his huge fi ngers.
As Mac’s hands went up to get the fi ngernails out of his eyes, the bomber moved in for a bear hug – an assured killer for anyone with the weight and power advantage that Gorilla had on Mac. As Gorilla squeezed the hold into place, the only thing Mac had going for him was his body position – with one shoulder over the hold and one arm pointing down Gorilla’s body. He looked into the Pakistani’s eyes, seeing yellowish orbs of evil.
‘Ready to die, McQueen?’ said Gorilla, as he squeezed and dug his fi st into the small of Mac’s back, making it almost impossible to breathe. Mac felt the warmth of the bloke’s bulging pectorals against his sideways-turned face, and he had an idea. Gorilla’s shirt had fallen open with the fi ght and Mac turned his face slightly into the big hairy chest and saw the nipple. Biting down into the generous areola, Mac clamped his jaws shut like a vice. The bear hug slackened as the Pakistani screamed like a woman in a horror movie. Mac kept his choppers going until blood was pouring into his mouth. The screaming became worse and Gorilla tried to push away but Mac twisted his face until his opposite teeth met and then he pulled back and tore off the Pakistani’s nipple, which hung out of his mouth like a hairy piece of sushi.
The two men stared at each other, Gorilla’s face changing from terror to anger as he charged. As he did he was knocked sideways when Didge appeared, a blade fl ashing. The Aussie grabbed a handful of the Pakistani’s hair with his left hand and brought the blade down across the Pakistani’s throat with the other. Gorilla stopped moving, his eyes staring at the ceiling.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mac, spitting chest hairs out of his mouth and wiping his chin.
Didge looked him up and down, chewing gum as he wiped his blade. ‘Didn’t know your mob were cannibals.’
They searched the rest of the townhouse but there was no one there.
Limping out onto the street, Mac asked where Lempo had gone.
‘Your Russian friend got Lempo, but he was shot in the leg for his troubles. The wound’s pretty bad.’
‘And Hassan?’ asked Mac, his mind spinning.
‘Don’t know.’
Mac heaved for breath and thought it through. Someone had taken off with his family, someone who could fake it long enough to get close enough to kill the Federal cops. Probably the same someone who’d worked out how to wheedle Vi’s maiden name out of an ASIS or ASIO operative; someone who had connections that were good enough to track down Mac’s family home.
Someone charged with retrieving two stolen nukes from Hassan Ali, but who couldn’t say no to the money and ended up in league with him.
Someone from MI6.
Didge worked on Mac’s face with Dettol and a wet fl annel. Mac’s left eye was already closing up and his mouth was bleeding.
Eying Jenny’s mobile phone on the living-room table, Mac picked it up and tried Johnny.
‘Where are you, Macca?’
‘At the house,’ said Mac, almost weeping. ‘Jenny and Rachel are gone.’
‘Mate, Mari came here but we couldn’t get over to Broadbeach
– they’d closed the road.’
‘I think Hassan’s got them. We have to fi nd them.’
‘I’m coming over,’ said Johnny, and hung up.
Panting with stress, Mac took the SIM out of his zapped phone, loaded it into Jenny’s phone and tried it. He opened the ‘contacts’ fi le which was now fi lled with the contacts from John Short’s phone, and found a landline number with a 75 prefi x, meaning the Gold Coast.
He wrote it down, and then dialled a number in Canberra. The female operator answered and Mac said, ‘Sentinel.’
He was asked another question, and said, ‘Limelight.’
Mac asked for an address search and he gave her the number from Short’s phone. She got back to him twenty seconds later, the whirring of the listening posts and security measures creating a weird time/ space disequilibrium.
He wrote down the address and his adrenaline surged back in buckets. He knew the Surf Largo Apartments – they were just around the corner.
The address he’d been supplied with was the fi rst fl oor of the Surf Largo and there was a stairwell at each end. They split up – Mac with the two-shot Heckler and Didge carrying the spare Beretta from the hall table.
Mac was feeling better now. Didge hadn’t just cleaned him up
– he’d also lifted him back into the game, made him think that these bastards were there for the taking.
His heart pounding in his head and his left eye closed up, Mac pushed into the stairwell, which was empty and well lit. He took his time up the steps, crowding in on each switchback to give himself the best angle, and his enemy the worst.
At the fi rst-fl oor landing, Mac eyed the spring-loaded fi re door that pulled back towards him. There was no safe way to go through it, he just had to take a breath and step through, hoping he’d create more surprise for the other guy. He breathed in, breathed out, then pulled the door back and stepped into the hallway. It was carpeted in chocolate brown, the walls were taupe. The hall was empty and he moved down it, looking for number fi fteen.
Mac watched as the fi re door at the far end of the hallway opened and Didge stepped in with the Beretta. Mac jogged towards him and as the commando looked up from under his helmet, a handgun extended out of the door closest to Didge. The handgun popped and lifted, fl inging the Aussie commando against the wall, blood spraying up the taupe paint.
Yelling, ‘ No! ‘, Mac ran for the shooter, who’d stepped into the hall. Surprised by Mac’s presence, the shooter turned. Mac stopped and shot twice, missing with the fi rst but hitting the bloke in the face with the second, from fi fteen metres away. The shooter’s head sprang back and the man Mac knew as John Short was dead before he hit the ground. Mac was now out of rounds. Hearing a sound, he looked up and saw Jen, with Rachel in her arms. Relief fl ooding his body, Mac stood and made for them, but he froze as a man’s face stared over Jenny’s shoulder with a smile, a SIG Sauer resting in her ear.
‘Come in, eh McQueen?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac, looking into the sneering face of Danny Fitzgibbon.
CHAPTER 64
Jen and Danny walked backwards very slowly and Mac followed them, forcing himself to stay calm, focused, alert. The door sprang closed behind them and they stood in the living area of a two-bedroom apartment.
Danny pushed Jenny and Rachel towards Mac and he held both of them. Rachel’s eyes were huge and dark and Mac made himself give her a smile. If they had to go down they’d do it as a family, like Australians, telling the bad guys to go fuck themselves while the water rose around their ankles.
‘Well, let me see, Fitzgibbon,’ said Mac. ‘Gave up on the spying game and started picking on women and children, huh?’
‘Spare me the snide asides, McQueen.’
‘I guess it’s much easier than having to deal with people like me or Freddi or Ari, right? I guess water always fi nds its own level.’
A shot whistled past Mac’s head and buried itself in the plasterboard.
‘So what do you want, Danny?’ asked Mac.
‘Well,’ sniggered the tall Pom, ‘I’m glad you asked that, old man.’
Mac looked him in the eye, felt Jenny move in closer with Rachel.
‘You see, this has all worked out rather badly, thanks to you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes – fuck you!’ snapped Danny, momentarily losing his composure before collecting himself. ‘Why?’
‘Why what, Danny?’ asked Mac, trying to keep him talking. The guy was upset and might just make a mistake.
‘I don’t understand the Australians. They sideline their best spy, and then, when they bring him back into the game, he’s a due diligence guy for their export fi nance program?’ said Danny, shaking his head.
‘I couldn’t believe it when you turned up, McQueen. As soon as I knew you were at the Shangri-La, I’m thinking, This is going to turn to shit – McQueen just won’t let this go.’
‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘that was the gig. There were questions.’
‘It was an NIA, for God’s sake!’ screamed Fitzgibbon. ‘It’s a lay-down – the politicians want it and the fi eld guys are supposed to sign off. That was your role.’
‘It was a handover of uranium-enrichment codes -‘
‘Oh shut up! I mean, for Christ’s sake, McQueen. Sumatra? Singapore? Noosa? Are you out of your mind?’
‘What was I supposed to do, Danny?’
‘You were supposed to spend two weeks at the Lar, making ten or fi fteen thousand a week – whatever they were paying you – and put everything back on expenses. No one would ever have asked about it, and we wouldn’t be here.’
‘There’d still be a blast in Surfers, killing thousands of people.’
‘Oh dear, you’re breaking my heart.’
‘Where’s Hassan?’ asked Mac, expecting the ringleader to be there.
‘Getting the transport, old chap. That’s why we camped across from the park,’ he said, nodding at the foreshore grassed area just behind the Broadbeach sand dunes. ‘Just keeping some insurance, make sure I’m allowed to get my taxi, know what I mean?’
Shaking his head at what a dickhead this bloke was, Mac asked,
‘So what about Diane?’
‘Ha!’ laughed Fitzgibbon cruelly. ‘Oh boy – when I found out it was one of our own doing the wife role, I had a small chat with our English Rose.’
Mac felt his pulse rising. ‘And?’
‘I thought she might want to stay out of prison, given her role in the Golden Serpent affair, stealing all that gold from the Chinese.’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘And she told me to fuck off.’
Mac laughed at that and Jenny pushed closer to him.
‘She said,’ continued Danny, in a cruel mimic of how English women of a certain class speak, ‘ I’d rather go to prison than owe you anything. ‘
‘She had to die for that?’ asked Mac.
‘But she didn’t, did she? That afternoon at the hospital? She kicked me out after you left. Told Carl to keep me away and then her old man arrived from Ottawa – and, well, you know how the toffs are, right, McQueen? They’ve had her locked up tight in the compound ever since.’
‘You like that feeling, Danny? You like that you had two women shot?’
‘Well, it would have suited me if Vi hadn’t been there, but -‘ he did the shit happens shrug, ‘what can you do?’
‘You can start by not being a traitor for a bunch of bombers.’
‘You know, McQueen – it started off the other way.’ He turned slightly to the window behind him, looking for a helo, and then turned back. ‘We helped Hassan’s crew heist the bombs bound for South Africa to stop them falling into the hands of those Marxists, right? I mean, shit, can you imagine a bunch of Bantus running around with their own nuclear capability?’
‘But?’
‘But it became so lucrative to keep the Pakistanis out of trouble, I mean how can you say no to all that money, right? So one thing led to -‘
‘Money?!’ challenged Jenny, now turning to Fitzgibbon. ‘Tony and Vi were our friends, they were top people. And you had them killed for money? Screw you, mate!’
‘Hey, watch it, squaw!’
‘ Watch it? You’re nothing better than a corrupt cop, that’s what you are. A person who’s no good at his job so he takes the easy money to undermine the whole show. Screw you!’
Fitzgibbon lost his jauntiness, raised the SIG at Jenny while Rachel looked at Mac. ‘Well, well, McQueen, you had a bird like Diane on a string, and you go for this – what do Australians call it? – this piece of work?’
‘Like she said, Danny.’ He put his arm around Jenny.
‘How do you think that happened, eh Jenny?’ laughed Danny. ‘He walks away from Diane and gets you?’
‘He got lucky!’ snarled Jenny.
‘So,’ said Mac, still wanting more. ‘How did you fi nd us?’
Fitzgibbon laughed. ‘That would be telling, eh, old man? Let’s just say that all bureaucracies leak simple information -‘
‘You already knew Jen’s maiden name.’
‘Yes,’ sniggered the Englishman, ‘but it took someone with a brain to let me know that Jenny’s old cop friend now had a law fi rm on the Gold Coast.’
Mac sighed. The family trust that owned their home had Sian’s fi rm as the registered address.
‘Atkins?’ asked Mac, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
Fitzgibbon laughed. ‘Yep, you can thank Marty, but he was unwitting. Poor fellow had no idea what was going on.’
There was a tapping on the window and the Englishman turned to see a shape against the night sky. Mac grabbed Jenny and Rachel and pulled them down and to the side as the window exploded inwards, glass shards bouncing off his back. When he raised his head, the window was gone and Danny Fitzgibbon was a lump of meat on the rapidly discolouring carpet, part of his head now missing.
Sitting up, the glass fell off Mac as he looked out the jagged window frame, where the large form of Johnny Hukapa hung upside down like a bat, a sawn-off shottie in his hand.
‘Gizza lift, willya, bro?’
Getting to his feet, Mac lifted Jen and Rachel up from the ground, shielding them from the sight of Danny Fitzgibbon as they moved to Johnny, whose right ankle was strapped to the railings of the apartment above.
‘How’d you fi nd us?’ asked Jenny.
‘There was an address on your kitchen table. That was for me, wasn’t it?’
Didge had lost his left ear, a chunk of his neck and a lot of blood.
Johnny and Mac got him onto one of the beds in the apartment and wrapped his head in a sheet, laid him down and hoped he’d regain consciousness. Jenny hit the phone and persuaded the air ambulance to come. When it landed in the park three and a half minutes later, Johnny and Mac carried Didge out to the helo on a litter made of a bedspread. Jenny wanted to be with Mac before she went back into the house, so Johnny said he’d accompany Didge on the fl ight.
They said goodbye and Mac felt so embarrassed that when he tried to thank his friend, no words came out.
‘Take it easy, bro,’ said Johnny, giving him a thumb shake and then touching chests. ‘You’re a warrior, mate.’
And then he climbed into the helo.
CHAPTER 65
> Sarah worked in well with her cousins and her sister, and Johnny’s son James. There was a TV and a DVD player in the Chevron Island house, and Pat and Felicity took turns bringing the kids cordial drinks and biscuits while they watched The Wiggles. There was a real Christmas tree in the corner with presents under it, and Mac was busy wrapping up more in the spare bedroom with Pat McQueen.
‘You’re lucky with Jenny,’ said his mother quietly, not looking at him. ‘She’s going to be fi ne with Sarah.’
‘I know, Mum. She’s amazing.’
‘So are you, darling,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’m proud of you.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘A girl needs a dad. And Sarah and Rachel are going to enjoy having each other in their lives.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Mac.
They fi nished the last present – Mac doing the wrapping, Pat tying the ribbon – put them all under the tree and walked outside to where the extended clan was sitting down to eat in the back garden under the frangipani trees. Mac took a seat between Jenny and Pat and marvelled at the set-up. An old cop buddy of Frank’s called Bobby Seavers had inherited a house on Chevron Island behind Surfers Paradise but never used it. On hearing that Frank’s kids were living in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, Bobby had put out an open invitation to his old friends to use it.
Frank came over from the barbecue with the plate of meat. He’d hardly changed since Mac was a kid in Rockie. Still wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt with a pair of teal slacks. Still had those boxy wrists and piercing pale blue eyes that missed nothing. The receding, thinning blond hair was greying and swept back straight off the face, and Mac could see what he’d look like himself in twenty-fi ve years.
Second Strike am-2 Page 41
