Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  Mac moved down the unlit alley, smooth and slow. He held the Beretta cup-and-saucer, his body pointing two o’clock. He heard his breath rasping and his Hi-Tecs scraping on greasy soil. He moved past garbage bins and mangy cats. It smelled like an open sewer.

  He hesitated as he got to the back of the laundry, looking for that pilot light. Heart pumping, he got closer to the fence, moved along it and paused at the point where the laundry’s backyard started.

  He turned, out of habit, cased his six o’clock. Nothing, except mangy cats getting back on their piles of garbage.

  He looked back at the laundry. The pilot light wasn’t bright, but he could make out the yard. There was no car, certainly no silver Accord. He kept his eyes on the place, checked his G-Shock. Almost ten pm. Sweat ran freely down his back now.

  After an hour, nothing.

  He walked back to the guesthouse, crossed the streets a few times and backtracked. All quiet.

  He hit the mattress at 11.25 and fell asleep wondering if he could call Sydney on his mobile, whether Diane would be sweet with that.

  It was just before eight am when Mac got to the Patrol, showered, shaved and back in his salesman dickhead get-up. As he opened the front passenger door, Limo put the big 4x4 into drive. Mac held up his hand. ‘Just a tick, mate.’

  Bani came out the side door of the guesthouse and Mac signalled he get in the back seat. The kid was excited - his fi rst interpreter work.

  Sawtell shot Mac a look, then got out of the Patrol. Mac caught his eye and followed.

  They moved away from the vehicle as Bani got in the back seat.

  ‘What the fuck’s this?’ said Sawtell, far from friendly.

  ‘We need someone to do the talking. Bani’s keen.’

  ‘Spikey’s the languages guy - that’s why I picked him,’ said Sawtell.

  ‘Shit! That’s a kid! You want that on your conscience?’

  John Sawtell had the kind of eyes that could hand out slaps. He had that way of getting up in a man’s face and talking soft, just like Mac’s father used to.

  ‘Thought about Spikey,’ said Mac. ‘But you know, John, these guys are intimidating to the locals.’

  Sawtell cocked an eyebrow. Disbelief.

  ‘It’s not racist - these are big, scary guys to the Indons.’

  Sawtell gave him a you’re so full of shit look. ‘McQueen, he’s a kid.’

  Mac could smell the Ipana on Sawtell’s breath.

  ‘You’re not going to drag a kid into this shit,’ said Sawtell, lifting a fi nger.

  ‘It’ll be fi ne,’ said Mac.

  Sawtell shook his head. ‘The look on your face when you arrived at Ralla? That wasn’t fi ne, my man - that was fear.’

  Mac looked back at the Patrol, where all eyes were on them. He looked back at Sawtell. ‘John, if I take Spikey into that laundry, and it turns serious, chances are the dry-cleaning guy makes a call. It goes to shit. Spikey doesn’t do what I do, John. He can’t keep it light.’

  Sawtell laughed. Big laugh. ‘Light?! Oh, that’s good. That’s so intel-guy.’

  ‘Back to that, are we?’

  ‘Do we ever leave it?’

  Sawtell was right. That part of things never stopped.

  The American wasn’t letting this go. ‘First time I worked with you, in Sibuco - call that light? My boys talked about nothing but you for days.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mac. ‘But it was the pizza delivery part that we had to fi nesse. It took months - not everything’s about kicking in doors and killing bad guys.’

  Mac didn’t believe that last bit himself. Sawtell didn’t believe what he’d just heard.

  They stared at each other. The audience looked on.

  ‘I guess that’s it, huh?’ said Sawtell.

  Mac deadpanned. Nodded.

  The dry-cleaner episode went fast and well. Mac played the dumb-shit Anglo salesman looking for his local businessman contacts. He described Fancy Pants and Ray-Bans and through Bani he explained that he had lost the piece of paper that said where they were staying.

  The dry-cleaner told Bani where to go. A hotel in the middle of town.

  Bani made one last push, unbidden, asking the dry-cleaner something else. The dry-cleaner answered, giving Bani the name of Fancy Pants. Seems there’d been a delivery to the hotel.

  Bani was beside himself with excitement when they got back to the Patrol. Mac gave him a pat on the back, Bani beamed. Then Mac stopped it dead, told the kid not to get in.

  The boy almost cried. Mac pulled an envelope out of his safari jacket, told Bani he had to make a promise. ‘If you take this, if you accept this gift, then this is the deal: I want you to go home, pack a bag and catch the midday bus to Makassar. Got it?’

  Bani nodded, sniffl ed.

  ‘I want you on that bus. There’s a letter in there for Brother Tom at the Makassar Brothers’ school. Got that? He’s a friend of mine, I’ve called him this morning. He’s expecting you. His pupils go to university, in Surabaya. You want to go to university, Bani?’

  Bani looked up at Mac. Nodded, looked into the envelope. Saw a wad of greenbacks, looked confused.

  ‘That’s the deal, Bani. You did good work here today, but this is the deal, huh?’ Mac shook the boy’s hand. ‘You beauty.’

  Bani hugged him. Mac saw the crucifi x again, through the gap in the boy’s trop shirt. Sadness fl ooded him. ‘ Dominus vobiscum,’ he said, pointing at the cross.

  Bani smiled. ‘ Et cum spiritu tuo. ‘

  They parked by the fi shing wharves, two blocks away from the Grand Hotel. Mac told Sawtell the name of Fancy Pants, then he got out of the Patrol. Grabbing the wheelie bag from the rear luggage compartment, Mac said he’d see them in fi fteen minutes.

  The Grand Hotel was a seven-storey modern place, built for the thriving tourism industry. Mac moved along the drive-through area that led into the lobby. Palms rustled overhead as he doubled back and walked down the side road and into the car park in the back. He did a slow circuit among about fi fty cars and minivans, looking for a silver Accord and anything else that might look out of place. There were no eyes, no silver Accord. He was nervous and the Beretta sitting in the small of his back gave him little comfort.

  He came in the front entrance, amidst a crowd of Japanese businessmen in golf clothes, and had a good nosey-poke at the reception staff as he walked past into the dining and bar areas. They seemed to be the real thing, although most Indonesian hotels had at least one person reporting to POLRI, the military or the intel agencies, depending on which department was protecting the place.

  There was no one untoward or out of place in the eateries. Mac had a very strong sense of those who were professional watchers, and those who were not. All he could see in the Grand Hotel were civilians.

  There was a solid patch of wet down his back when Mac got back to the Patrol. Limo had kept the motor running and the air-con felt icy as Mac got back inside. They confabbed: Mac grabbed the Shell map, sketched the layout on the cardboard cover. Then he handed over the operation to Sawtell.

  ‘I want the girl alive, okay?’

  Sawtell barely heard him. He’d turned deadly serious, muttering, the crew all ears. They transformed from laidback boys to killers in a split second. A special forces hallmark.

  Limo got the Patrol moving, they drove the two blocks and pulled into the car park behind the hotel. Not even nine in the morning and it was already thirty-eight degrees and dripping humid. Mac’s stomach churned, his right wrist ached, the greasy omelette breakfast wanted to come up.

  Limo backed the Patrol up to a hedge and the Berets walked around to the back, opened the doors and got into their weapons cache. Most of the chat was aimed at Hard-on, whose surname was Harding. He seemed to be the key guy. They focused down like Mac wasn’t there.

  Mac had done lots of snatches in his career; he was known for it.

  But he didn’t want to go into these building situations with a military crew. They trained together, they
did this as a job and one loose screw in the unit was going to get Mac shot. Or it would distract one of the military guys and risk him being shot too.

  The lads tooled up and walked across the car park. Casual but menacing. They wore stadium jackets and fi eld jackets concealing M4

  carbines, a sort of shortened M16. Mac was sure there’d be some stun grenades in there too.

  He sat in the driver’s seat with the diesel running. When the Americans were all inside he slowly pulled away from the hedge and rolled towards the lobby area. The place was not busy. One tour bus sat away from the lobby entrance, the driver smoking, reading a newspaper.

  Mac looked in, saw the desk guy being marched to the elevators with Sawtell and Spikey. Hard-on scarpered, probably for the stairwell.

  Limo stood like a rock in the middle of the lobby, big bulge under his stadium jacket.

  Mac had insisted they dispense with fi eld radios on this trip, hence the Nokias. If Garrison was out there with the girl, he was expecting military to come after him and he’d be prepped to pick up the fi eld radio signals.

  Mac parked out on the street in the pre-arranged RV. He thought about Minky’s girl and how he was going to introduce that topic to Sawtell.

  Four minutes later, Mac’s Nokia trilled. It was Sawtell, displayed as JS.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘We’re here. Nothing,’ said Sawtell, panting slightly. ‘Manager says they checked out last night, in a hurry, no idea where they’re headed.’

  ‘Is he lying?’

  ‘Shit, McQueen - that ain’t my thing.’

  Mac thought quickly. He could go in there and break the guy real fast, make him remember. But the whole thing was dragging on and there was no telling who was protecting the hotel. It was a big tourism concern, which meant someone was paying for the staff to turn up and not steal from the Westerners. The call might have been made already and Mac didn’t want to be a sitting duck when the POLRI commander or Kopassus colonel turned up.

  ‘Is there anything there? Anything they’ve left?’

  The sounds of Sawtell snapping at Hard-on and Spikey echoed from the background. Sawtell came back on the air. ‘A few things.’

  ‘Get ‘em,’ said Mac, ‘and ask the manager what they were driving.’

  Sawtell came back, said, ‘Silver Accord.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Mac.

  There was a pause, then, ‘Three. Anything else, McQueen?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘I want the phone logs from that room.’

  ‘Got it. See you soon.’

  The Berets got to the Patrol at a canter. They piled in, Mac pulled out quickly and drove north, out of town. No music now, adrenaline retreating. After twenty minutes they pulled into a bushy wayside area.

  Hard-on pulled out a bed sheet, put it on the ground and opened it.

  First impressions: Mac could smell the Old Spice wafting off the sheet. He saw several empty steel bandage containers and a ripped-up chewing gum wrapper, shredded thin and purposefully, bits of loose foil everywhere. A surviving piece of green paper said BARTOOK

  SPECIAL MINT. There was a paperback book in Tagalog. Not much.

  Sawtell had the phone logs. There were fi fteen outbound calls, made in the last nine days. One number wasn’t like the others.

  Mac looked at it. Couldn’t get the picture. He grabbed his Nokia, dialled a number in Jakarta, Telekom Indonesia.

  No connection.

  Mac swore. He’d forgotten the state of the Indonesian phone system. Telekom Indonesia installed cellular towers where the tourists were starting to come, but the locals had no coverage even a few clicks out of the towns.

  They drove back towards Palopo. Mac used a pay phone on the outskirts. Called an old mate at TI, an engineer called Dougie Foster.

  They swapped greetings, then Mac said, ‘Mate, I’ve got some numbers.

  Can you run them?’

  ‘Shoot.’

  Mac read the numbers. The lone wrong ‘un was a Manila area code. A silent address. Mac asked for as much info as he could get and Dougie told him to hang on. After a few minutes he came back. ‘Got a pen?’

  Mac wrote it down. He had the telecom exchange that the number would have been connected to, and Dougie gave him an area: Intramuros, a suburb on Manila Bay that Mac knew well.

  The other fourteen numbers were closer to home. Dougie said,

  ‘You’re in luck, Mac - there’s only eight numbers on that series.’

  Mac wrote it down. They were heading north again, for Tenteno.

  CHAPTER 9

  They made good time on the road to Tenteno. Limo drove the Patrol, Hard-on rode shotgun. Spikey was in the middle of the back seat, Mac and Sawtell either side. Mac’s wrist was now bandaged and Limo had slipped him some anti-infl ammatories. But he agreed with Mac - a chipped bone in there somewhere, and the only cure was going to be resting the thing, something that was not going to happen on this trip.

  They’d be arriving in Tenteno after dark and Mac wanted to case the place, have a chat to whoever was around. He wasn’t expecting miracles.

  This was Sulawesi, the world’s eleventh largest island and basically unpopulated. Fishing villages dotted the coastline and highland tribes did their thing in the interior. It was all rainforest and mountains, and people trying to win forestry and mining concessions. If the trail went dead in Tenteno, Mac would give the intel guys in Jakarta a chance to come up with some piece of genius. That would set the hounds running.

  If the mole was in Jakarta, he or she would make a move. Which would give Mac a chance to pull a counter-ambush.

  But the trail didn’t go dead.

  Mac and Spikey went into the general store on Tenteno’s main road as soon as they’d driven around the small lakeside town. The store owner was helpful, but didn’t know anything. Spikey kept it calm, doing small talk. Mac watched the owner clench and unclench his left fi st. He only did it once but it betrayed nerves.

  Mac strolled out of the store, motioned to Limo and the others to drive round the back. He walked down an alley between the store and another wooden building, and came out in a rear yard.

  There was a lean-to on his left. Boxes and drums of cooking oil were stacked to obscure what was in the structure. Mac walked around the makeshift wall, saw a tarp covering a large shape and whipped it off, revealing a silver Accord. Same rego as the one behind Minky’s.

  Coming in through the store’s back entrance, Mac took the owner by surprise. The bloke’s eyes widened as Mac said to Spikey, ‘He stays there, he doesn’t move, right?’

  It was near to closing time anyway so Mac fastened the front door and pulled the blinds. ‘Tell him this,’ said Mac to Spikey, not taking his eyes off the owner. ‘Tell him he’s harbouring a vehicle known to have been used in the terror bombings around Tenteno.’

  Spikey rattled it off and the owner gulped, shook his head, gabbled something back at Spikey.

  ‘He says it couldn’t be,’ said Spikey.

  ‘Tell him if I’m wrong I can get my friends at the POLRI or Kopassus to come up here and check it out for us. Might all be a huge mistake,’ said Mac, winking at the store owner.

  The owner shook his head, fear in his eyes.

  Mac pressed for the breaking point. ‘Tell this guy that it might even warrant a visit from the boys from the BIN. And tell him, Spikey, that those boys will get to the bottom of it real fast by getting his wife and kids into the cells and helping him to remember. Memory is a funny thing.’

  When Spikey had translated, the owner went quiet, looked at the fl oor.

  Breaking point.

  Mac started again, Spikey interpreting. Yes, the store owner knew the blokes in the silver Accord. They had been going out on the remote road to Sabulu. They’d made the trip several times and yes, they’d headed out that morning.

  Mac got Spikey to ask what kind of people were travelling. The owner said two Javanese and one pale person.

  ‘Yankee?’ said Mac.
<
br />   The owner nodded, said something to Spikey: a tall American.

  Could be Garrison, thought Mac.

  The three men had been travelling in a white LandCruiser, said the store owner. Mac’s attempts to get deeper information met with shrugs. Yes, there may have been more than three and yes, one may have been a woman. The bloke had been paid to mind his own business, and that’s what he had done. Mac believed him. He sliced the telephone lead with Spikey’s Ka-bar and moved outside.

  It was dark but some light from the back of the shop spilled on to the Accord, a 2002 model. Mac tried the doors. Locked. After putting a rock through the driver’s side, Mac fl ipped the hood, and unplugged the howling alarm. That brought Sawtell and the others to the party.

  ‘This it?’ asked Sawtell.

  Mac nodded, reached for the door handle, pulled on it.

  Sawtell’s mouth fl ew open, wide-eyed, his hand reaching out.

  Limo covered his eyes. Hard-on turned away.

  Spikey stared at him like he was an honest-to-God dumb-ass honky motherfucker.

  ‘Shit, McQueen! Holy fucking shit!’ said Spikey.

  ‘Maybe to you that’s a car, McQueen!’ gasped Sawtell. ‘But to us, that’s a fucking bomb!’

  Mac looked down at the open door, looked back. Limo was peeking from behind his hands. Sawtell looked at the sky. Spikey still stared.

  ‘Sorry, boys,’ said Mac.

  Mac stood back, let Spikey check the vehicle for pressure plates, wires and anything tricky on the ignition column. Then Mac had his turn. He went into the boot, the glove box, the centre console, the spare wheel bay, the centre armrest of the back seat, the tool box, the ashtrays, the radio and the storage compartments. Not much.

  Chewing gum wrapper again, Bartook Special Mint. Someone liked to get close to the ladies without scaring them off. Someone liked to rip it open in really thin strips.

  He asked for a fl ashlight and got under the car. Positioned himself right beneath the windscreen washer reservoir and shone his torch straight up through the transparent plastic. It was a classic place to hide stuff and some people still thought the old places were best.

  Nothing.