Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  He peeled back the fl ap to reveal morphine vials, bandages, needles, scalpels, hypodermic syringes, horsehair sutures and much more.

  He found a thick bandage then pulled a squirty bottle fi lled with pure grain spirit from the bag and tore open a packet of fi ve sterile pads. Ripping away Hard-on’s sleeve, he had a closer look. The bullet had passed on the inside of the bicep and out the other side. It had probably nicked an artery and chipped the bone.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Hard-on in a small voice.

  ‘A fucking mess,’ said Mac, already working on the wound.

  Hard-on’s body spasmed at the pain of it, but he was a good soldier.

  Tears ran down his cheeks, he gasped, moaned and swore through gritted teeth as Mac cleaned the gaping thing out with spirit and the pads. Finally Mac squirted spirit on the last pad, placed it on the wound and strapped the bandage around the bicep.

  By now Hard-on was full into shock: pale lips, chattering teeth and eyes rolling back. Mac kept him talking, asked if he wanted a shot and Hard-on shook his head.

  ‘Just say no.’

  They both chuckled, but Mac couldn’t do anything more for now.

  He got on the radio. ‘Billy, I got a man down. At the RV. Repeat, man down.’

  ‘Got that, Blue team. There soon, over.’

  Mac turned to Judith Hannah. Not much change. He still had no clothes for her so he took off his webbing, dropped his ovies and put them on her.

  Fishing in the medic pack he came out with a cap of smelling salts. Tried them under her nose. She reacted slightly but was still in some kind of coma.

  He grabbed Hard-on’s M4. Checked for load, checked for safety and then barrelled down the hill in his briefs and Hi-Tecs.

  The fi ght was still going and the building was now completely enveloped in fl ame. Mac felt sadness about Minky’s girl. He gulped it back and moved to the end of the building where the shooting was still happening. Sawtell leaned out of another building, called him in. Mac raced around, ducked in a side entrance and joined Sawtell, Sonny and Billy in the room. Across a small fi eld, a posse of thugs fi red intermittently from building fi ve. Sonny, Sawtell and Billy fi red back.

  ‘Well that went to shit in a handcart real quick,’ said Sawtell as Mac joined them.

  ‘Cunts were waiting for us,’ said Sonny. ‘Had a whole backup team in number fi ve.’

  They looked Mac up and down, taking in his briefs. Didn’t say anything.

  Through the window they watched Hemi, behind a long-abandoned bulldozer, enthusiastically hammering away with a belt-fed .50 cal machine gun. Every time he loosed a burst, whole sections of building fi ve fell away, as if someone were poking pieces out of a jigsaw puzzle from the inside.

  ‘I’ll give him ten more seconds,’ said Sonny, ‘then we roll, eh?’

  Mac nodded. ‘Hannah’s okay. Local girl didn’t make it.’

  Sonny nodded.

  ‘I tried,’ said Mac.

  ‘I know,’ said Sonny.

  Sawtell asked, ‘How’s Hard-on?’

  ‘Not good. Needs a doctor.’

  Sawtell looked at the blood on Mac’s hands, then looked away, sad.

  ‘You use the morphine?’ asked Billy, getting ready to go.

  ‘No,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t know how.’

  ‘Good,’ said Billy, and he left.

  ‘Where’s Moses? Where’s Spikey?’ asked Mac.

  A pause.

  ‘Didn’t make it - got caught in there.’ Sonny gestured at the inferno, shook his head. ‘Fuck that for a game of cards. I’d rather be shot.’

  Sawtell nodded.

  The evacuation went smoothly. Hemi carried Hard-on, Billy took Hannah. Sonny took point duty, Sawtell ran the sweep.

  They got to the helo as fast as you could carrying two people.

  They put Hard-on in a stretcher. Wrapped Hannah in a blanket and harnessed her into the back seat of the Euro. Her head lolled and Mac jammed a folded blanket under her left ear. He found a pair of orange ovies in the tool bay, put them on.

  Billy got on the fl ight deck, made ready to fi re her up. The whole crew was defl ated, exhausted, sad, drained by the adrenaline come-down.

  Sawtell suddenly pulled back from talking to a zonked-out Hardon. There was a commotion outside and voices raised, slides clicking and the sound of a rifl e being manhandled.

  Mac grabbed the SIG from between his feet, poked his head out of the helo. Beneath him Sonny had his arms around Moses and Spikey.

  They all looked down, smiling and crying at the little girl lying in Mosie’s arms.

  Spikey’s left hand was held to his ear, blood was crusted down his neck. He was saying to Sonny, ‘Damned if Mosie don’t just pick up that wall like it was litter.’

  They got back to the compound at sun-up. Sonny and Sawtell went drinking in the mess, played Stevie Wonder, Rolling Stones and Grand Funk Railroad. Played it loud, talked loud, tried to sing along - a couple of boys with some pipes to clear.

  Everyone else hit the hay.

  Mac lay awake, remembering one night his father had got home late. Mac had been ten years old at the time. It was hot, the middle of summer in Rockie, and Mac had got up after midnight to get a glass of water. Frank was sitting in the darkness of the kitchen, sipping Johnnie Walker and sucking back Pall Mall Plains, an ashtray fi lled with white butts in front of him. The dark red pack was going end over end on the formica table between Frank’s fi ngers. Mac got his water, and as he was going back to his bed Frank said, ‘You’ve gotta promise me, mate. Never mix alcohol and fi rearms - got it?’

  Mac had nodded, freaked at his father’s slurred and bloodshot state.

  In the morning the Bulletin‘s front page was dominated by the story of a local girl killed while asleep in her bed. Her father had shot her. He was a wife-basher and a violent drunk who’d regularly threatened his wife with a Smith & Wesson .38. On this night, he tried to scare his wife and shot at a wall beside her. The slug went through the wall and hit his nine-year-old in the head.

  Mac remembered his mother telling Frank that he should have locked that bullying prick up years ago.

  Frank didn’t tell her to shut up. Just wore it.

  Mac thought about it.

  Then he breathed again. It felt like the fi rst time in days.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mac woke later in the morning in the air-conned men’s quarters.

  He dressed in his blue ovies, which had already been washed, dried, folded and left on a tallboy in his room. On the ovies was the black diamond key ring with the MPS logo and the big German key.

  He looked at it again. Put it in his breast pocket and moved down to the mess.

  After he’d fi nished eating, Hemi came over with a mug of coffee.

  ‘Some shit last night, huh?’

  Mac nodded. He’d never been shot at that much for that long.

  He was still a little jangled and deafened by the experience.

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t want to go to a party up there,’ said Mac. ‘If that’s what they’re like on a week night, imagine them on a Saturday when they’re really on the piss.’

  Hemi laughed. ‘Like some of the pubs back home, eh?’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Fucking Gisborne. Heard of it?’

  Mac shook his head.

  ‘Fucking hard case.’ Hemi shook his head.

  Mac asked him about the girls.

  ‘They’re doing all right,’ said Hemi. ‘The little one is fi ne but the Aussie girl’s still asleep. Don’t know what they were feeding her.’

  Mac’s job had been to snatch Judith Hannah, but not interrogate her. That had been made plain by Garvey back in Jakkers. They’d given him nothing to go on, no reason to talk with her. Even in his initial briefi ng with Sawtell back in Jakarta, the whole emphasis had been on Garrison, not Hannah.

  But Mac didn’t give a shit now about what he was supposed to do.

  Minky was dead, Limo was dead, H
ard-on had half his arm shot off, Hannah was in some kind of coma - probably drug-induced - and there was a little girl, now without a dad, who might or might not have been subject to unwanted sexual attention.

  So Mac didn’t give a rats about what Jakarta wanted.

  He poured another cup of tea from the silver pot. ‘Hem, tell me, who was doing the shooting last night?’

  Hemi shrugged. ‘Dunno, really. Looked like locals, I suppose.

  Organised though. Trained, I reckon. All kitted-up. No sarungs - that what you mean?’

  Mac nodded. ‘Well, yeah. Any Anglos in there?’

  Hemi did the theatrical frown. Shook his head. ‘Mate, it was dark, eh? All I know is they knew what they were doing - didn’t run, kept fi ghting. Not a bad outfi t really.’

  Mac thanked him and got up to go. Then turned and asked if there were any special handshakes he needed to know in order to get in and see Cookie. Hemi said he’d handle it. He went to a wall-mounted phone, spoke briefl y. Put his fi nger on the hook, let it go, called someone else. Came back.

  ‘Mosie will meet you at the gate.’

  Mac breathed the steamy equatorial air as he wound his way up the drive to the mansion. He had this place as Dutch-built. It was elevated and Sonny was right, it had been built precisely in the right rise of the valley to get both the breeze from the west off the Macassar Strait and the southerly that came up from the Sunda Sea and Flores. The rainforest came right to the edge of the driveway. Amazingly coloured hornbills strained the breaking point of branches as they gnawed at the fruit. There were also piping crows and cicadabirds, and the racket they made, along with all the insects, made the air vibrate.

  By the time he got to the gate, the back of his ovies were wet with sweat. The black iron-work gate was at least two storeys high and wide enough for three trucks to pass through abreast. Those Dutch must have been a paranoid bunch. A bored-looking local made no attempt to leave the glassed-in guardhouse. Probably orders from Sonny. Moses appeared on the other side of the gate, said something to the guard, and the small walkway gate next to the guardhouse swung open silently. Mac walked through and the two men greeted each other with a thumb-grip handshake.

  ‘Set, brother. Nice work last night,’ said Mac.

  Moses grinned big. ‘Set, brother. Set.’

  Moses wore olive fatigue shorts, Hi-Tec Magnums and a black polo shirt. He’d dumped the webbing and the SIG and now had on a hip rig with a large handgun in it.

  Behind Moses three children were playing on a groomed and irrigated lawn. It extended all the way to the swimming pool area and the four-storey white mansion.

  He recognised one of the kids as Minky’s girl. She ran with the other kids, laughing. She wore a new white linen dress. She and another girl about her age teased a younger boy with a ball. Piggy-in-the-middle stuff, and the boy was about to lose it.

  Moses turned and snapped something. The girls gave him a cheeky look. Minky’s girl held the ball out to the boy, and when he went to grab it, she pulled it back. The girls ran up the lawn, shrieking with delight.

  The boy lost it.

  Moses rolled his eyes and they walked across the lawn. He put a friendly hand on the crying boy’s shoulder and the boy leaned into the Fijian, walked alongside muttering something, probably about girls.

  In the wealthy Indonesian families, they had a word for people like Moses that translated loosely as ‘house boy’. Moses’ job was to ensure that the family was safe from bandits, kidnappers, slavers, thieves and assassins. He was a hell of a thing to look at: about six-four, one hundred and twenty-fi ve kilos and all muscle. According to Hemi, Moses was part of the same clan that included General Sitiveni Rabuka, the military strongman of Fiji. Mac remembered a bunch of journalists once asking Rabuka about his boxing and football prowess, and the general had laughingly remarked that he was the small one of the tribe.

  Moses kind of explained that.

  When Mac asked about Hannah, Moses led him behind the mansion to a modern annexe that at fi rst glance looked like a guest wing. But when they walked into the air-con comfort, Mac realised it was a small hospital the size of a large vet clinic.

  They got to a door. Moses knocked, opened it and Mac saw a nurse - a young local woman - wiping Judith Hannah’s forehead with a wet towel, talking low and sweet to the girl. Hannah had a drip in her arm and her eyes were still shut. Pale, sickly.

  ‘Billy don’t want her talking,’ said Moses. ‘She gotta rest, brother.’

  Mac looked at Mosie, thought about arguing. Thought again. Mac had a good idea what was wrong with Judith Hannah. A fast and clumsy way to get people talking was to hit them up with overdoses of scopolamine, which was a truth serum of sorts. Trouble was, it was derived from the Datura family of plants which also had hallucino-genic properties. It was a dangerous way to mess with someone’s biochemistry. When you’d got the story you wanted, you administered a ‘hot shot’ of scopolamine and morphine which induced amnesia in the short term. Secret police used it more than spooks.

  They headed for the house, running into Hard-on and Billy, who were on the way out. Hard-on’s arm was now totally strapped and in a sling.

  Mac gave a wink. ”Zit going, boys?’

  They went through the tradies’ entrance into the mansion and both men kicked off their boots. Mrs Cookie demanded it and Sonny had warned Mac that ‘the missus of the house is a real piece of work’.

  Mac had grown up in a house where the missus was a piece of work and he knew the secret was to do it her way.

  Moses took them through. Cookie stood from the desk, asked how the girl was going. Moses said, ‘Real good, Mr B. She a happy one, that one.’

  ‘All that screaming?’

  ‘That lil’ Santo, Mr B. Girls gang up. Two on one, not fair.’

  Cookie put his hand up, like Yeah, yeah.

  Moses was dismissed. He gave Mac the wink as he shut the door behind him.

  Mac and Cookie sat on the white leather sofas. A housemaid came in with green tea and left. Cookie lit a smoke and they did small talk about Australia and big boarding schools. Cookie had been schooled at Xavier College in Melbourne, where he’d acquired the accent and the ockerisms. ‘The culture of that place was “fi t in or fuck off”, so I went local.’

  They talked about Australian politics, the problems with Melbourne Football Club and Aussie-Indon relations. Cookie was well read, smart.

  ‘You did the right thing, telling Sonny about Lastri,’ said Cookie, changing tack.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Minky’s girl. Her name’s Lastri.’

  Mac looked away. He hadn’t fi gured he’d have to do this conversation again.

  ‘Look, Mr B …’

  ‘Cookie. Call me Cookie.’

  Mac paused. He wasn’t going to rush in with the racism disclaimer again. ‘Um, it’s been quite a few days, you know …’

  Cookie leaned forward, poured the tea. ‘You don’t have to explain. The important thing is you told Sonny and that American before they went in. That’s the part that counts. That’s why Sonny let it go. Can you imagine if Mosie was running around with this girl he pulled out of the fi re, and you’re going, “Oh, yeah - her“?

  You think Sonny would let that go?’

  Mac had always backed his ability in the blueing stakes, but Sonny and Sawtell deciding to teach him a lesson at the same time? That wouldn’t work well for Mac.

  Cookie chuckled. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mac. Thing is …’

  Cookie exhaled, looked at his smoke. ‘Her mother’s dead too. Made some calls this morning. Makassar cops all over it.’

  ‘Shit, sorry.’

  Cookie waved him away again. ‘Problem’s gone. You’ll be allowed to leave Sulawesi, then the investigation will start again. For now, guess we have a new girl in the family.’

  In Indonesia, families took in orphans. It was informal; it was the culture.

  Cookie fi xed him with a look. ‘This business is hard en
ough on you already without beating yourself up. You know, I once did things the other way round from you. I mean, I really fucked it up.’

  Cookie moved forward on the sofa, fl icked his smoke at the ashtray.

  ‘We’d lost this computer programmer guy from our air defence program. There was all this evidence left around that he’d gone on holiday, but we tracked him down in a house at Kuta. The fucking Koreans had him. It was a tough one. We didn’t want him dead - we needed to debrief him - but we didn’t want him explaining launch algorithms and all that shit to the Koreans.’

  Mac nodded.

  ‘So it was like your one last night. We fl ew in the Kopassus boys, and they pulled an early am raid. Went great, everyone happy.

  Except the eleven-year-old daughter of our scientist who got shot in the leg.’

  ‘What was she doing there?’

  Cookie shrugged. ‘Koreans had snatched the bloke’s two girls as well. So there I am in the debrief and this intel idiot from Jakarta has turned up with the full fi le!’

  Mac looked at him. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Deadset.’

  ‘Where’d they fi nd that genius?’

  ‘Dunno where they scraped him up from, but he’s working presidential liaison now - briefs SBY on intel matters.’

  They both laughed. There had never been any military commander of any rank who’d ever been given the full fi le on anything from intel.

  Soldiers were considered to be the ‘operational’ end of the gig; spooks saw themselves as the brains.

  ‘So there I am sinking further under the table. I’m not kidding.

  I’ve got this Kopassus colonel, this damned gorilla, right beside me and he’s reading my comms logs.’

  Mac made the eek face. The comms logs were all the minutes made from phone calls and recorded meetings. They’d include all of the internal BAKIN briefi ngs that Cookie had been giving his own controller, all the requests for Kopassus involvement and the reasons.

  They’d include the full rundown of who was in the house.

  ‘So this Kopassus gorilla is looking at dates and times and my comments and who else is present - he’s never seen anything like it.