Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent

by Mark Abernethy

  ‘Actually,’ said Don, ‘we’ve been using smart boxes on those shipments. We’d get a tip-off if they were being tampered with.’

  Mac nibbled on his bottom lip. Looked at Sawtell as if to say sorry.

  The smart boxes were an American attempt to stop container heists and terrorist infi ltrations via container. They combined RFID tags and seals, GPS location beacons, and anti-tamper sensors, all built into a single anti-tamper box bolted to the container. They were the new wave in maritime security.

  But they had a simple weakness.

  ‘I’m here without prejudice, right?’ said Mac to Hatfi eld.

  ‘My personal guarantee.’

  Don turned his hands up, looking to the other Yanks for help. His look said, Who is this guy?

  ‘Well, smart boxes are driven by a boxful of C-size batteries,’

  said Mac.

  ‘Are they?’ said Hatfi eld.

  ‘Um, yeah, and it doesn’t take much to shut down a bunch of C-size batteries. Decent magnet will do it.’

  Hatfi eld looked at Don, aghast. ‘That could be why we’ve lost Box 138 off the screens, hey fellas?’

  Sawtell gave Mac a look. Mac shrugged. Yanks might as well know this stuff.

  CHAPTER 29

  The group tore south out of the Macassar Strait and into the stretch of ocean separating Java from Borneo. If you were ever going to be accosted on the high seas by smiling looters with sarungs and AK-47s, the scimitar-shaped body of water where the Macassar Strait turned west into the Java Sea was where it was most likely to happen.

  The CH-47D Chinooks fl ew line astern; the four Black Hawks fl ying abreast in a stagger, creating an arrow-head effect. The sea was only fi fty feet below the Chinook Mac was in, pitch-black except for the intermittent fl ash of red aviation lights. The Chinook thromped, its turbine exhausts whining. Mac sat around the situation table with Don and Hatfi eld, having briefed them on the CL-20. They were still amazed that so much of the stuff was in one place, astonished it was being hauled around in gear bags in a speedboat.

  ‘I’d love to know where all that CL-20 came from,’ said Don as if Mac might have the answer, just like he knew how to kill battery power in the smart boxes. Mac wasn’t going to hurt Don’s image even more by admitting that most of his shipping knowledge came from a female Aussie cop.

  Behind them, the guy called Brown was working on screens and liaising with Manila over his headset. Brown’s subordinate had a big real-time screen with a bunch of white cigars on it. The major shipping companies had GPS locators on them and each of the white cigars had a small legend beside it which identifi ed the vessel with a series of letters and numbers.

  Mac had suggested they work back, get Manila International to fi nd the orphan container left somewhere on the docks, the one with no RFID tag. Maybe also stripped of markings, maybe not. Then see what ship it was supposed to be on. It wouldn’t be able to leave the MICT

  apron because the security gate would impound a container that was supposed to have an RFID tag, but didn’t.

  It was going to be a long search. MICT turned over about four thousand containers each day. The unions and management were on performance markers for their pay and, given that Manila had already had their hassles with the Americans, they were probably not going to drop everything and go looking for one untagged container in a seventy-fi ve-hectare storage area. Not when it was the Americans’

  own fault. Mac reckoned if Sabaya’s team had done their job, it would take a week to fi nd that container, which was an unmarked red forty-footer. Just about the most common sight you’d see on a dock or container ship.

  The guys on Hatfi eld’s Chinook worked forwards too. Hatfi eld and Don had the sailing schedules of eight ships that had left Manila in the last eighteen hours, south-bound through the Sulu Sea to Surabaya or Lombok. There was a list of the vessels sitting in front of Hatfi eld. Mac was still betting it would be Surabaya. Lombok was busy but it still largely serviced ‘feeder’ container ships which also carried loose freight. Surabaya was more likely to service a large container ship from MICT.

  Hatfi eld worked the main phone on the situation table. He was not in good shape. People from DC to Honolulu to Manila and Jakarta had questions. And Hatfi eld ate crow, said things like, ‘We’re working on it, sir. I have no idea, sir, but we’re getting there, sir.’

  From the odd cold stare Hatfi eld gave him, Don must have been silently churning with fear. Though the Twentieth’s Technical Escort people had arranged the transportation of the VX to Johnston Atoll, Mac suspected the command responsibility had been DIA’s. Another one of those soldier versus spook things. Intelligence people were not supposed to make mistakes. Ever.

  Brown kept turning back from his heated conversations with MICT and Surabaya, cursing to himself, getting ratty. ‘I can’t believe this.’

  While intra-Asian trade was the busiest in the world, they hadn’t developed an advance-manifest system of the type used by the West.

  In the US, Canada and Australia each ship had to forward its electronic manifest - collected from all the RFID tags - to the destination port authority twenty-four hours before berthing. But in most of the Asian ports, the only way the port authority knew what was coming in was through the freight forwarders and shipping companies.

  Mac knew from Jenny Toohey that fi nding the containers criminals didn’t want you to fi nd was uniquely frustrating, especially when, like Jen, you were looking for container loads of women and children. She could spend two or three days without sleep, going out of her mind, while port security, customs and operations managers at the terminals shrugged, said things like, ‘Show me the box, I’ll get someone to open it.’ Jen always took that personally. It was probably why she was so good at it.

  Hatfi eld was waiting for a confi rmation from CINCPAC in Manila that he was going to get cooperation from the Indonesian Navy. These were Indonesian waters and its navy was overworked and under-resourced for a military force expected to cover seventeen thousand islands. Back in the late 1990s, when Western powers wanted Indonesia to get tough on Malacca pirates, their navy had only twenty operable vessels.

  Hatfi eld was starting to get cranky, acutely aware that time was ticking away. The atmosphere at the Chinook’s situation table was becoming smelly with fear and stress. The cigars on the screen were getting closer to the landmass of eastern Java. Mac couldn’t add anything more.

  Hatfi eld looked at his G-Shock. Pushed his hand through his white hair. The Chinook they were on had a direct patch to the most powerful comms and signals-intelligence apparatus ever developed.

  The Americans had keyhole satellites that could take images of a ten-inch object from one hundred and fi fty miles aloft. If it was cloudy or dark, they’d use their Onyx satellites, which could only distinguish objects of ten feet and over. They could point a directional mic from space and listen to conversations, pick up keystrokes on a keyboard or hear a number being dialled on a mobile phone. The United States had the computing capacity to simultaneously intercept thousands of emails and mobile phone calls and have those communications translated and logged in real time.

  All of this infrastructure was buzzing and whirring in the background. Brown and his sidekick brought up screens, ran numbers, yelled at Manila, yelled at Surabaya, yelled at CINCPAC and pleaded with the propeller heads at the satellite imaging agency called NIMA.

  But nothing. A cagey terrorist from Mindanao and his CIA mate had managed to have a US Army shipment of the second-most toxic substance known to science simply disappear off the screens.

  Hatfi eld breathed out. Looked away from the table. Composed himself, then asked Don for options.

  ‘Pick the most likely ship on our list,’ said Don. ‘The one with the closest time-correlation to the VX going missing, and board her.’ He cleared his throat. ‘General.’

  Hatfi eld looked at Mac, who said, ‘I agree. We have to stop one of these ships and have a look. Otherwise we’re going to hav
e to shut down the whole shipping lane and I don’t know if the Indons will buy that. If we get into that discussion we could spend more time arguing than searching.’

  After a silence, Hatfi eld breathed out, said, ‘Okay, let’s hear it.’

  Mac grabbed the list of south-bound container ships from MICT.

  Put it in front of Don. ‘We can strike out Golden Ram and Star of Bengal because one’s stopping in Cebu and the other is in Makassar as we speak, right? We know Sabaya and Garrison were motoring out into the Strait around eight o’clock yesterday morning, so we’re looking for a ship that left MICT around ten pm the night before.’

  ‘Which is a rough overlap with the time we realised the material was missing,’ said Don.

  ‘Right.’

  Don ran his pen through a group of names: the ones on the top, too early. The ones on the bottom, too late.

  Of the eight vessels, two were left: the RSL Puget Sound and the Hokkaido Spirit. Mac ticked two names, turned the list, slid it over to Hatfi eld.

  Mac and Don held their breaths.

  ‘Which one, boys? And make it quick,’ snapped Hatfi eld.

  Mac looked at Don, who wasn’t game to say it.

  Mac turned back. ‘Both, General.’

  Hatfi eld chuckled, almost laughed, until he realised Mac was serious. It was four in the morning and he was looking for a container of VX somewhere on the Java Sea. He had the most powerful military machine at his fi ngertips. And no one knew what the fuck was going on.

  He shook his head, eyes looking tired, mumbled, ‘Fuck me sideways.’

  Then he picked up the phone with a grunt, hit a speed dial.

  ‘Admiral? Hatfi eld. Twentieth. We have a target.’

  Mac watched the boys from the Twentieth suit-up in their OSHA Level-A bio-hazard uniform, the only suit you could wear around nerve gas spills and what they called ‘unknowns’.

  The soldiers on the Chinook were all sergeants and above. Working with CBNRE was a delicate and exact business and you couldn’t have some young dickhead wandering around deciding he knew best, especially when you were going to try to board a vessel at sea.

  Mac watched the preparations. As machines were pulled out from the cargo area behind the airline seats, he recognised the percussion disrupter, an angular device that used shotgun blanks to stun detonation devices out of commission. He thought he saw a portable X-ray machine too.

  Gantries were swung into place as Hatfi eld briefed a captain who was getting into his Level-A. Unlike the general-issue JSLIST suits that the world had seen on television during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Level-A didn’t have a canister that cleaned air from the outside. Level-As had their own forty-fi ve-minute supply.

  Brown yelled over his shoulder, ‘General. CINCPAC on two.’

  Hatfi eld picked up the receiver, hit a button. ‘Hatfi eld. Twentieth …

  Got that, Admiral … Good to go, sir.’

  The general put down the phone. ‘Brown! Sawtell takes Hokkaido and Myers takes Puget Sound. Tell ‘em stand-by for ten minutes and counting.’

  Hatfi eld raised his G-Shock, squeezed two buttons and pushed another fi ve or six times. Others around him did the same. He picked up the phone again, hit a button, waited. ‘General Hatfi eld, Twentieth Support Command, United States Army. I’m -‘

  He was interrupted. He waited, tapping a pen on the situation table, sweat marks under his armpits. He nodded, dragged a hand across his brow. Scratched it. The rest of them looked on. Big tension.

  Hatfi eld blinked long, said, ‘Thank you, Commander. Appreciate your cooperation. Hope we can meet some time under better circumstances.’

  ‘Gentlemen, The Hokkaido Spirit and Puget Sound have been ordered by the Indonesian Navy to shut down power and stand-by to be searched. They’re giving us an hour. Let’s go,’ said Hatfi eld, clapping his hands.

  The soldiers leapt to it. Through the gap behind the airliner seats, the guys in their Level-A kit were having what looked like white, plastic car-vacuum cleaners slung over their shoulders. Mac knew they weren’t vacuum cleaners. He’d spent enough time on the docks with customs guys to know he was looking at explosives detectors.

  Mac thought he’d make a small point to Hatfi eld.

  ‘General, I thought the point of CL-20 was that it’s very hard to detect. Could be impossible through a steel container wall.’

  Hatfi eld had the phone to his ear again and was distracted. ‘Didn’t I tell you, son?’

  Don could sense something awry and he cleared his throat too loud.

  Hatfi eld ploughed on. ‘We’ll be detecting the VX shipment.’

  Looking away, he mumbled ‘Thank you’ into the phone.

  Don was now a little pained, trying to physically get between Mac and Hatfi eld.

  ‘But, General, VX is odourless. We can’t detect it,’ said Mac.

  ‘I know,’ said Hatfi eld with a smile as he looked back from the handset. ‘But the bomb casements they’re in have a nice big signature, believe me.’

  CHAPTER 30

  Hokkaido Spirit was a ten-year-old container ship with a capacity of four thousand containers. A mid-sized carrier working a line from Yokohama to Kaohsiung, to Manila, Surabaya and Fremantle, and then back again, once a week.

  Sawtell’s Black Hawk hovered over the starboard side of the ship while men in bio-hazard suits roped to the decks.

  In the Chinook, the soldiers fi nished zipping Mac into a white OSHA Level-A, velcroed the collars and the ankle-ties and handed him a hard hat. Underneath he wore long woollen underwear, chemical-resistant overalls and a supplied-air NIOSH respirator with a full-face glass breathing mask. He felt totally uncomfortable and tried again to get Hatfi eld to see it his way.

  ‘Know what, General, I could be more use up here in the helo.

  More of an advisory role,’ he said.

  Hatfi eld laughed. ‘You’re in good hands, son. Captain Alden here will walk you through it. Just no sudden movements, okay?’

  The loadmaster threw back the large sliding doors on the side of the Chinook, and Alden and Mac stepped up.

  Mac came down the winch lift onto the fo’c’sle deck, the Chinook’s downwash so strong that the men could barely stand up under the pressure.

  Brine smashed into the bow of the ship fi ve storeys below, and the ship slopped around, swayed side to side. Sawtell’s boys met him, unhitched him, told Alden to come on down. They were wired but the din of the Chinook’s tandem rotors was so loud that communication was done with hand signals.

  Alden landed and the Chinook moved away. They joined the fi ve Special Forces troopers and Mac saw Sawtell smiling behind his mask.

  ‘Let’s go to work,’ said Alden into the radio system.

  Mac’s breath rasped and wheezed into the respirator. The entire Level-A suit added ten degrees of temperature and about fi fteen kilos of weight. The boots alone - chemical-resistant, steel-toe jobs - must have weighed as much as a medium-sized dog.

  Alden asked Mac to join him to question the skipper, and then ordered Sawtell’s boys to fan out.

  ‘Mate, if they’re on this ship, then at least some of the crew is on their side. See what I mean? This is Abu Sabaya we’re talking about.

  Major league terrorist,’ said Mac.

  ‘Any ideas?’ asked the captain.

  Mac suggested the Green Berets and Mac go to the bridge, search the quarters and communal areas for people and make their move on any VX nerve agent from there. ‘If the captain’s not kosher, we’ll know pretty quick.’

  He recommended that Alden get moving on the detection systems with his guys. Hatfi eld had been ahead of Mac on that one.

  Had already determined that since you couldn’t remotely detect for VX agent, they’d have to test for high explosive.

  Fucking great!

  Mac had assumed the VX was in forty-gallon drums or sealed canisters. But they had to store the stuff in warheads bolted to the front of one-hundred-pound bombs. The whol
e thing clicked into place: the secrecy when the stuff was discovered at Clark, the involvement of DIA, Don’s shit-scared paranoia, the sight of an experienced army general gulping down the stress.

  Sabaya had picked well. Those VX devices had been designed in the 1960s to spread the VX nerve agent as far as possible and the CL-20 was going to give that a boost. The scenario had got even uglier.

  He forced himself to stay calm and focused. The captain had his blokes with their explosive detectors. Problem was you had to be virtually on top of the stuff to get a signal. Through the high-tensile steel of a shipping container, it could be pushing shit uphill. And looking up at the mountain of containers rising fi fty feet in the air like a multicoloured Mayan temple, it seemed ridiculous.

  The party split. Four went with Sawtell and Mac down the starboard inspection gantry. The captain and two guys from the Twentieth went down the port side.

  They got to the deckhouse. It was the high-rise of the container ship that had the engine room at its base, the accommodation quarters and communal areas in the middle levels, and the bridge and comms rooms at the top.

  A Japanese man called Tokada met them. He wore a white shirt with merchant marine pips on the shoulder. He greeted Sawtell in good English and then took a look at the rest of the suited-up crew.

  Got green around the gills, wide-eyed, like Holy shit!

  His look of fright, complete lack of comprehension, told Mac this guy wasn’t part of anything.

  Mac and Sawtell got into the elevator with Tokada; all that could fi t.

  As the lift got going, Mac reached his breaking point, whipped off the hood and respirator mask and took a deep breath. Everything around him was white: white lino, white formica walls, white ceiling.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Tokada.

  ‘We’ll tell you if we fi nd it,’ said Mac.

  Sawtell took off his head gear too, said to Tokada, ‘This is Mac.

  Don’t worry about his manners. He’s Australian.’

  Mac sat in the bridge and Captain Nagai helped him operate the computerised stowage system. You could run down the containers on board by any number of searches: port of offl oad, port of loading, twenty-foot containers, thirty-foot containers, and reefers that kept goods cool.