Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent Read online

  The guard dragged on a cigarette and let out another plume of smoke. A light breeze carried it south.

  ‘Got him?’ asked Mac.

  ‘Roger that,’ said Ward. ‘See that round his neck?’

  Mac looked again. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Night vision,’ said Ward. ‘They’ve got some toys.’

  The camp was fi fty metres behind the sentry, built in a channel with tarps running for about eighty metres north-south, and cammo webbing over the tarps. No way to see it from the air, unless someone was looking for it. It was a terrorist training camp, the kind of structure usually found in Libya or Afghanistan.

  It appeared that food and power were at one end of the camp, sleeping at the other, operations and stores in the centre. There were a couple of rough timber latrines to the east of the camp, not far from where the sentry was sitting.

  Mac reckoned the camp would hold up to thirty men, and if his snitch in Jakarta wasn’t telling him pork pies, one of them was Ali Samrazi - an Indonesian double agent who had dropped from the radar eigtheen months ago and had reappeared with a mob called Moro Jihad. Moro Jihad was a middle-class outfi t that focused its activities on economic and maritime terror. If you could drive up the price of shipping through the Malacca Straits and South China Sea by even fi ve per cent, you were eating into the Western world’s profi t margins. The modern tangos could read spreadsheets as well as al-Qaeda propaganda.

  ‘Wardie, can you fi nd the other sentries? I need to know where they are,’ said Mac.

  Ward had already found them; they were in a triangle arrangement around the camp.

  ‘Any ideas?’ asked Mac.

  Ward took his eyes away from the binos. ‘No worries. There’s three sentries but they’re not overlapped. We take out Mr Ashtray and the others won’t know about it. It’s a free run to the try line.’

  The group slid down through the spinifex, gathering behind a rock at the base of the dune. Mac’s adrenaline was pumping, his breath short.

  He looked back up the dune to where Foxy was hidden in the scrub.

  Ward tapped his G-Shock and held up both hands.

  Mac nodded. Ten minutes to knock the sentries out, then the mission would begin.

  Ward gave thumbs-up and went south with one man while a trooper named Jones took two troopers north. Manistas - a tough western Sydney kid they called Manny - remained with Mac. Manny was about fi ve-nine and powerful but lithe. Like a stuntman or a gymnast.

  As an added bonus, he spoke Farsi, Bahasa Indonesian and some other languages favoured by tangos. That’s why he was with Mac.

  They got on their bellies and crawled. The advance was slow and painful. The earth of the Australian outback looks like red talc from a distance, but get amongst it and it’s fi lled with gravel, rocks and insects.

  Mac followed the SAS trooper into a channel where they could stand in a crouch and they followed the dry bed slightly to the north and around a bend for forty metres. That brought them north-east of the sentry. Manny stopped as they heard the low hum of what was probably a power generator in the camp.

  Manny leaned on the wall of the channel, stuck his scarfed head up slowly, pulled back, nodded at Mac. Then he checked his M4, looked down the sights at the ground.

  Mac unholstered the Heckler, checked for load, checked for safety.

  With the suppressor screwed on, the handgun was more than twice its normal length. He found a smaller creek bed that fed into the channel and crawled into it on his elbows, the Heckler in his right hand. The creek bed was perfect: shallow enough to be able to keep eyes on Mr Ashtray but deep enough to move undetected through the dark. He moved quickly, his breath coming dry and shallow.

  Mac was just about to take another look at the countdown on his watch when he realised he was face to face with what looked like an eastern brown snake. He froze, watching as the diamond head and darting tongue came out from behind the scrub which was half a foot from his face. The snake moved out into the creek bed, its black eyes like onyx, its body glistening in the moonlight.

  Mac backed up across the sand, gulping hard. The venom from a brown snake wouldn’t necessarily kill you, but twelve hours of delirium was not Mac’s ideal platform for a mission. The snake’s gaze was steady, the tongue glowing as it fl icked. Mac kept reversing through the dust, trying not to breathe on the thing for fear of annoying it.

  As the snake focused on him, Mac fought the panic urge.

  The snake raised its head, lifted a whole section of itself off the ground.

  Mac back-pedalled like a politician.

  The snake pulled its head back on its body, ready to strike. Mac had no choice but to roll sideways out of the shallow depression, into the open. He rolled onto his stomach, looked up at the sentry who was now only twenty metres away. Mac was close enough to smell his Marlboros.

  The snake kept coming, Mac could see it slithering fast across the ground. He rolled again and the sentry raised his head. Panicking now, Mac steadied himself on the rocky ground, took a cup-and-saucer grip on the Heckler, aimed it at the sentry and squeezed. The gun spat - the round missed.

  Now the sentry was off his perch, MP5 in his hands. Clueless, but alert. The snake didn’t stop. Mac looked down and fi red at the animal, but only grazed it. The snake was as confused as the guard who was now walking towards him.

  The snake fi nally made a move, came in fast and struck at Mac’s Hi-Tec boot. As the fangs sank into the black rubber sole, Mac prayed they wouldn’t hit fl esh.

  The sentry was fi fteen metres away and carrying a weapon that could cut a man to ribbons. A couple more steps and he would see Mac. The sentry put his free hand to the night vision goggles and lifted them.

  Shit!

  Mac had to drop the guy.

  He forced his eyes away from the snake and aimed again: two shots in succession. They sounded like a man spitting grapefruit pips.

  One shot hit the sentry in the chest. His eyes went wide, his legs folded. Mac should have been on his feet and halfway to the sentry by now, but he turned back immediately to the snake, kicking his legs like a child. He muttered, a clear sign he was on the verge of doing something really stupid.

  Pointing the elongated Heckler at the snake on his foot, Mac heard a voice in his head say he’d probably shoot his foot, and what a joke that would make him in Townsville’s SAS barracks for the next six months.

  Before he could do it, a knife glinted in the moonlight and the snake’s head was severed.

  Manny held the snake’s head and neck in his hand, then he chucked it aside, and put his Ka-bar back in its webbing scabbard.

  Mac gave thumbs-up and turned, his breathing still fast and his heart racing.

  He was way, way too old for this shit.

  The sentry was down, but no one was coming out of the camp for a nosey-poke. Lucky break.

  Mac checked his G-Shock - three minutes and twenty seconds to sentry deadline.

  The two crawled across the ground to the sentry, whose eyes were still open. He lay on his side gasping for air, blood erupting from his mouth spasmodically and splashing on his MP5. Mac pushed his face into the dirt and tapped him behind the ear.

  Manny bent over the sentry, pulled his jacket collar back, looking for something. Mac reloaded the Heckler, panting with adrenaline.

  Took the M16 off his back, checked for load and slung it. Then he moved towards the camp in a crouch, Manny at his four o’clock.

  They got to the building and squatted in the shadows. Manny pushed a tarp aside and they looked in: there was a solid wall under it. A prefab building covered in tarps.

  Mac grabbed a tag from the right breast pocket of his ovies.

  Peeling the adhesive protector off its back, he stuck it to the plastic wall, pushing the button in the middle of it. A tiny red LED blinked.

  Armed.

  They moved south, along the wall and inside the canvas covering.

  The hum of the generators grew louder. They got to the south en
d of the camp, the generator now screeching in their ears. Manny tested the door, it opened and they moved inside to a strong smell of diesel. The engineer’s night-light bathed the warm room in a soft red glow.

  There was a large yellow engine, mounted on skids on the concrete slab, the black letters CAT painted on it. Otherwise the room was deserted.

  Manny pointed to another door.

  The next room was three times larger. Filled with barrels, stores, boxes. Mac and Manny moved among them: there was food and water, guns and ammo. There was avgas and there was a stack of wooden boxes with MALAYSIAN OPTICAL COMPANY stamped on their sides.

  Mac lifted the lid on one, saw three Stinger SAM rocket launchers sitting inside, cradled in wood shavings.

  Sweat ran down Mac’s neck, soaked the back of his ovies. At the north end of the storage area was a door to what looked like a cool room. There was a digital combination lock on the handle.

  Manny pulled a strip of wax paper from his front pocket, peeling the paper apart to reveal a line of dark red putty. Pushing the red putty around the door handle in a horseshoe shape, Manny squeezed it to make sure it was properly stuck against the lock, then pulled a mini detonator from another pocket. He looked at Mac, fl ashed both hands three times. A thirty-second fuse.

  Mac moved back into the power room. Manny joined him fi ve seconds later. The din of the generator room made the explosion sound more like a pop.

  The cool room door was now hanging open, artifi cial coldness mixing with the acrid stench of plastic explosive. It was inky black inside. Manny cracked a light bar and the scene lit up dull green. This was the acid test: either Mac’s snitches had it right or the whole thing had been a fuck-up.

  The far wall of the cool room was stacked with green plastic suitcases with built-in handles. His snitches had been spot-on. Cases like that only held one thing: HMX, one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosives ever produced. It was made in tiny, government-controlled quantities in Germany and the United States, for military use only. Every batch was numbered, every case was signed for. It very rarely left a military base once it had been escorted there. You couldn’t buy it.

  Each of the cases contained fi ve small bricks of HMX, and a single brick was powerful enough to do more than just put a hole in an aircraft carrier - it could break its back. Governments around the world had a hard enough time dealing with the effects of C4, the plastique favoured by suicide bombers. HMX had fi ve times the expansion rate of C4. A piece the size of a fi ve-cent coin was enough to split a bus like a watermelon.

  And Mac was looking at twelve cases of the stuff, stacked against the wall of a terrorist camp in the middle of the Queensland outback.

  What a pretty mess that would make at Port of Brisbane container terminal.

  He had an idea - it would only take a couple of minutes.

  Mac and Manny moved to the north end of the structure where the camp management would be dormed.

  Mac had briefed Manny on the target: a thirty-eight-year-old Javanese male, average build, average height, no facial hair, good teeth.

  Manny had said, ‘Thanks for narrowing it down, champ.’

  The north end of the camp had what Mac assumed was a guardhouse. It stuck out from the main structure like a nose. He’d have preferred that the SAS take it from here, since they were the storming experts. Mac preferred stealthing. But the target had to be right fi rst time. He didn’t want the troopers hauling arse out of the camp with the wrong bloke. They might not get a second bite.

  Manny stuck his head around the north end of the camp, made a hand gesture to the other SAS troopers who had taken out their sentries and were now waiting on the other side of the camp.

  All clear.

  Then Mac stood back, let Manny do his thing on the guardhouse door. The trooper slung his M4 and pulled out his suppressed handgun.

  He walked into the darkness of the canvas canopy and knocked on the door. Mac’s heart thumped, his ears roared with adrenaline, his breath rasped.

  Manny said something conversational in Bahasa. Now Mac realised what Manny had been looking for on the sentry - a name-tag.

  The door opened, everything relaxed and comfortable, revealing dim light and laughter coming from an Indonesian game show on satellite TV. Manny walked forward, head still, shoulders relaxed. His handgun spat seven times. A matter-of-fact professional. Mac took his four o’clock, less relaxed. He held his Heckler ready as he entered the guardhouse, but Manny had done the job. Three young Indons slumped in white plastic chairs. A fourth lay dead on the ground, dressed only in a white singlet and boxers.

  Mac swung right, Manny swung left. Area secured.

  The TV blasted raucous laughter, it was good cover. The corridor leading from the guardhouse remained silent. Mac waited for a couple of seconds to be sure. Nothing.

  They moved into the right-hand leg of the corridor. It was dark and smelled of sweat. The fl oor swayed under their feet as they moved down the narrow enclosure. It was fl imsy, a cheap hire out of Darwin to Arafura Explorations Pty Ltd. Mac had seen the invoice.

  His breathing was in the panic range again and he could feel his baseball cap getting wet around the edges. A drop of sweat hit his eyelid.

  There was a door on the right but Mac ignored it. They walked further into darkness and away from the light of the TV. Manny moved like a cat behind him and Mac liked that. He hated working with mouth-breathers and leadfoots. You want to walk like a klutz? Join the fi re brigade.

  Mac kept going till he reached the fi nal door. It faced north. He was guessing an important visitor would be closest to Mecca. He stood at the door, listened. Manny pulled out a steel tube the length of a small fl ashlight. It was a stunner, a sort of mini cattle prod. Mac pulled his own out from his side leg pocket, put his gloved hand on the aluminium door handle, pushed down real slow, then pushed it open. There was one steel-frame bed against a wall, beneath a window.

  One person in it, snoring.

  He pushed his head in further, saw another bed, someone in it.

  The room was dark. Mac knew he didn’t have long. People sense things and wake up.

  He lingered just long enough to see what he was looking for. The snorer had a moustache. That meant the other guy was Ali Samrazi.

  This was confi rmed almost immediately when the bloke sat up in bed, looking at Mac like he’d seen a ghost. Mac moved forward, Heckler levelled. He sensed Manny move in behind him.

  ‘Ali - it’s me, mate. Richard. Richard Davis.’

  Ali Samrazi’s eyes were wide with fear. He scrabbled for something on the bedside table. Mac got there just as Samrazi put his hand on a Beretta handgun. As Mac broke the little guy’s wrist, Samrazi fi red the gun.

  The shot cracked like a cannon. Ali screamed and his gun fell to the fl oor.

  Fuck!

  Two seconds of silence, then the sound of voices started up and down the camp. Mac stabbed his stunner into Samrazi’s chest and pressed the switch. Samrazi’s chest heaved like a horse had kicked him. Eyes rolled, he went limp. Behind Mac, Manny had pacifi ed the other sleeper.

  Mac duct-taped Samrazi’s wrists and ankles, broke a couple of caps of Xanax into the Indon’s mouth. Manny came over, threw Samrazi into a fi reman’s lift.

  Mac pulled down his M16, checked for load - a nervous habit.

  Exchanges of fi re had started up outside the camp. Ward’s men laying down diversionary fi re, hopefully pulling the camp’s inmates away from the north dorm.

  He looked through the door. The lights were on down the length of the corridor. Doors were opening, young Indons or Malays appear-ing. Some were armed. They were confused, even comical, in three am hair styles.

  Mac pulled his head back in.

  Manny already had his M4 slung at hip height and Samrazi over his left shoulder. He nodded at Mac.

  As they pushed into the corridor, Mac kept left and started fi ring.

  The tangos didn’t know what was happening. Most were dead before t
hey hit the fl oor. Manny was on Mac’s four o’clock, more accurate with one hand than Mac was on a range.

  They moved towards the guardhouse, squinting hard as their eyes adjusted to the lights.

  Gunfi re continued from the western side of the camp. They raised the pace, moved past the game show host and jogged out into the desert.

  ‘Mate, get this bloke to Foxy,’ said Mac. ‘Keep him alive. I’ll give the guys a hand.’

  Manny gave thumbs-up and march-jogged the way the special forces do.

  The radio silence had broken and bursts of adrenaline-powered commands fl ew across the airwaves.

  Mac circled around the north end of the camp building, his ovies drenched in sweat. He poked his head round the corner, watched it unfold: four SAS blokes in a half-moon, three in the classic kneeling marksman pose, the other in the prone position. They laid down three-shot bursts of fi re at the trainees who were fi ring wildly into the desert. Tracer rounds glowed white, but tangos kept falling. An RPG came whistling out of the canvas but fl ew over the SAS boys and into the great beyond. They were wankers, thought Mac, but well-equipped wankers. Their basic issue seemed to be MP5s; he could hear their signature sound.

  One group of tangos, still in their underwear, had got in behind a white LandCruiser parked between the camp and the SAS. Three of the boys fi red around the truck. One bought it in the shoulder, a hideous thwack that twisted the kid into a standing contortion before he dropped to the dust, staring at the clear night sky. The others looked at him briefl y, then one of the tangos opened the rear door of the Cruiser and pulled out a box while the windows and tyres were being shot out. He threw the box on the ground, pulled out an RPG. The air whistled with lead. He took a shot in the ankle. He leaned against the Cruiser, his foot dangling by skin. Mac watched him pull the RPG onto his shoulder, and then turn on one leg. One tough kid. He moved along the bonnet of the Cruiser, prepping to fi re. Mac aimed up, shot him in the fl oating ribs with a three-shot burst.