Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent Read online

  They jogged fast, jumping old brooms, Coke cans, dead spiders and porn mags: the detritus of warehouse life. At the end of the container row, Mac poked his head round the corner. There was another roller door entrance at this end of the building. Blood pumped in Mac’s ears, his kevlar vest swimming on a layer of sweat.

  There was an offi ce perched up on a mezzanine at the far corner, set up so it could look down on the warehouse. There was also a ramp leading down to a sub-level.

  Paul gestured. He’d go into the sub-level. Mac should check the other side of this level and the raised offi ce.

  Mac made across the rear roller door area, veering left in an arc to avoid the static camera over the inside of the door area. Heading for the raised offi ce he looked down the corridors between the container stacks. His stance was perfect but there was no one to aim at. There seemed to be tons of freight in the joint, but no work being done.

  The stairs to the offi ce were single helix. He stopped for two seconds, caught his breath. Paul crackled on the receiver. ‘Okay, Mac?’

  ‘Right as rain.’

  He took it easy up the stairwell. It was open so he could see straight to the top. It also left him exposed should anyone walk into the warehouse.

  The door to the offi ce had a glass panel in it. Mac peeked through: couldn’t see anyone. Pushed through the door. Walked across the fl oor area to what looked like a storage area.

  A bang.

  Mac froze. Lifted the Heckler.

  More bangs, different tones. A gunfi ght. Mac ran down the stairs, trying to get his breath, not panic. It took an effort to run towards a gunfi ght rather than away from it.

  The gunshots were coming from the other end, up in the offi ce area. Sawtell’s boys getting stuck in. Mac sprinted down the central corridor of the containers, an area large enough to get two trucks past at once.

  Then the noises started coming from below him, the concrete almost shaking with the blasts. There were shouts, adrenaline-soaked male voices, crazed with anger or fear. Hard to tell.

  Radio crackled. Paul, panting, ‘Mac. Get here now!’

  Mac doubled back at a sprint, fl ying right into the curved downward ramp to the sub-level, face to face with Peter Garrison, fi fty metres away at the bottom of the ramp. They stared at each other, mouths open, panting, confused. Garrison raised his M4 with both hands. Mac was about to squeeze off when his leg gave out from under him. He spilled forward, lost his sights. His groin made a tearing sensation, his inside left knee hit concrete. Garrison fi red over the top of him, chipping concrete all the way up the ramp.

  He hadn’t shouldered the M4 properly and it recoiled upwards and away to the right.

  Mac rolled to his right. Garrison got a better shoulder. But assault rifl e fi re sounded close behind him and Garrison turned, tried to run back to his cohorts. Mac squeezed off, hitting what he thought was the American’s right calf. Garrison staggered a bit, but veered to his right, fi ring back into the sub-level as he went.

  Mac limped down the ramp, his knee agony, breathing at thirteen to the dozen. Coming down to the fl at level, he saw Garrison and two other men with assault rifl es get to a stairwell against the far wall. Mac took a stance, squeezed off two rounds. They kept running. That was the trouble with a short-barrel handgun: no range.

  He ran towards the stairs, fi ve shots left and three men ahead of him, all armed with the latest assault rifl es.

  To his left he saw Paul, lying face down, blood around him on the concrete.

  Mac’s blood drummed in his ears as he got to the stairs. Standing to the side, he looked up quickly, pulled back, looked up again and threw himself fl at against the other wall at the foot of the stairs, Heckler pointing up in a cup-and-saucer. His breathing was out of control, his eyes blurring with sweat. There was no air in the sub-level, and with the humidity it was making him gasp for oxygen.

  He made up the stairs. Slow. In the movies, people giving chase always ran up stairs after the bad guys. In Mac’s world, the stairwell was where people were shot.

  He got to the double-back in the middle of the stairs, suddenly realising the stairs went back to the street-level warehouse.

  Sticking his face around quickly, he pulled back, stuck it out again and kept it there. Heard something, a rumbling sound. Moving up, he came to the top, stayed low, looking for the shooter. He came out of the stairwell, homing on the rumbling sound. Across the warehouse, the roller door was going up.

  A roar sounded as an engine fi red. Mac started running. Coming around the last stack of containers, he aimed up. Forty metres away the last guy was shutting the rear passenger door of a blue BMW

  5-series. As the engine gunned, the roller door went up further.

  A back-seat passenger pointed his M4 at Mac, the fi re coming in three-shot bursts. Mac ducked behind the container as paint chips fl ew. More carbine gunfi re chewed up the steel he was hiding behind.

  The BMW accelerated through the doorway and Mac came out of hiding, squeezed off, took out the rear window.

  He ran to the door, caught the last part of the rego - 452.

  Struggling to get his breath, he bent over, hands on knees. He felt so old - way, way past his prime for this shit.

  Voices sounded behind him and he swung around and went to his knee in one motion, ready to squeeze off.

  Sawtell, jogging, yelled, ‘Don’t shoot.’

  Mac sat down on his arse. Resting arms on knees, he looked at the ceiling.

  He wished he hadn’t seen it. But he had. The driver - a blonde woman - had looked him in the eye.

  ‘You okay, Mac?’ asked Sawtell.

  Mac tried to respond, but vomited between his legs.

  CHAPTER 40

  They found Paul leaning against a large blue plastic dumpster bin clutching at his left side. The blood trail from where Mac had seen him lying was thick and dark.

  ‘Shit, Mac,’ he grinned. ‘What is it with Aussies and trouble?’

  ‘Follows us round like a bad smell. Didn’t I warn you?’

  Sawtell knelt and lifted the left wing away from Paul’s body. Paul winced, gasped.

  Sawtell whispered low, looked under there. Dark blood oozed through layers of clothing and kevlar.

  Sawtell keyed the mic, ordered his medic guy to come immediately, then had another thought. ‘POLRI there yet?’

  Sawtell listened, then said, ‘Negative. Stay with the hostages until POLRI get there. Secure the area. Over.’

  The Green Berets had rescued the hostages with no injuries.

  Sawtell unzipped the top of Paul’s ovies and looked at Mac, who came around behind Paul, held him up and forward while Sawtell stripped down the top of the grey ovies. Unclipping the fasteners on the kevlar vest, Sawtell pulled it over from the right-hand side then peeled it downward along the left arm.

  The slug had grazed straight down the left side of Paul’s ribs in the area where there was no kevlar, only an adjustable gusset. There was another slug embedded in the kevlar, folded back on itself like a rosette. The fl esh wound looked like Paul had leaned against an iron someone had forgotten to turn off. There was bone showing and a lot of blood - fi ve-inch wet scar peeled back like a madman’s laugh.

  Paul was trying to keep his breathing under control, but the shock and the pain were pushing him towards hyperventilation.

  Mac stripped down and handed over his white undershirt to Sawtell, who used it to stem the blood in Paul’s ribs.

  Sawtell looked up at Mac. ‘Get ‘em?’

  Mac shook. ‘Nope. M4s versus a pea-shooter.’

  ‘Gotta get you something with a bit more authority.’

  ‘They’re in a pale blue 5-series Beemer. Last numbers on the rego are 452,’ said Mac.

  Sawtell shook his head. ‘This Garrison is starting to irritate me. A bad advertisement for Americans.’

  ‘What?’ deadpanned Mac. ‘They’re not all like that?’

  Paul laughed.

  Sawtell eyeballed Paul.
‘What are you laughing at? The dude just shot you!’

  ‘He’ll keep, mate,’ said Mac.

  The adrenaline slowly washed off them as they spoke. Even whispers sounded like screams when you were coming down from the kind of adrenaline squirt you got from a gunfi ght.

  Mac kept a close watch on Sawtell. Watched the way he talked soft, drew Paul back into the game, not wanting him to lose consciousness but also not scaring him.

  The blood kept coming and Paul needed a fresh staunch.

  ‘Here, take this,’ Sawtell said to Mac.

  Mac held the bloodied shirt as Sawtell tore down his own ovies, unfastened the bullet-proof vest and used his undershirt on the wound. Got Paul to hold it in place by relaxing his left arm on it.

  The smell of cordite was still fresh in their nostrils. It hung around in the sub-level.

  ‘Sabaya here? Anyone see him?’ asked Mac.

  ‘He wasn’t in the offi ce section,’ said Sawtell. ‘Thought he might be in the warehouse.’

  Mac shook his head.

  ‘He wasn’t down here,’ said Mac.

  Sawtell stood, fi ddled with the radio and couldn’t get a signal.

  He pulled it apart, blew on every connection, then slammed the transmitter box between his hands a couple of times. Turned the thing on again and gave thumbs-up.

  ‘Roger that. Copy,’ he said, after a pause.

  Sawtell demanded to know if anyone had a handle on Garrison and the girl.

  The reply wasn’t what he wanted.

  ‘Listen, McQueen chased them to a blue 5-series BMW. Registration includes the numbers four, fi ver, two. Four fi ver two. Got that? Blue BMW, 5-series.’

  By the sounds of it, the troop had lost their trail. Sawtell snapped like someone who was way over the whole thing.

  ‘Okay, okay. Manz and Spikey get down here now. We’re on the sub-level of the warehouse. Bring the medic pack, okay?’ he ordered, and signed off.

  He looked at Mac, who was taking in their surroundings. There were forty or fi fty shipping containers around them that by Mac’s reckoning would be stuffed with books, furniture and ceramics from all over Asia. Amongst them would be gold, drugs, counterfeit US dollars, cigarettes and whisky, maybe even some bunkered crude oil. Who knew what was in these things? He was quietly amazed that customs and the cops ever found a damned thing in such a secret yet ubiquitous form of moving goods.

  Sawtell came over, asked if Mac was okay.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ said Mac, thinking about how Garrison had been cropping up in chatter, briefi ngs and intel gossip for years. He wondered what role he really played and who protected him. Was it someone actually in the Agency, or was it political? Someone from State or the Oval Offi ce?

  Sawtell took another blast on the radio. This time it sounded like POLRI. ‘Captain John Sawtell. US Army. We got one down, offi cer.

  Need an ambulance down here. The fugitives are driving a blue BMW, 5-series …’ said Sawtell.

  Sawtell never seemed to get tired, thought Mac. He operated like a machine and it was pretty obvious why the US Army had tagged him for leadership. Mac liked that he never identifi ed himself as being Special Forces. You could always tell the genuine article in the US

  military because they’d tell you they drove a truck, shovelled chow.

  The cordite smell wasn’t getting any better. Mac wondered if Garrison was using experimental rounds. It wasn’t like any kind of fi rearm discharge he’d ever smelled.

  Behind him, Sawtell signed off.

  ‘Smell that? That cordite?’ asked Mac.

  Sawtell chuckled. ‘Shitty loads. Not yours, are they? That pea-shooter powder?’

  Paul laughed too.

  Mac walked forwards, sniffi ng. Something wasn’t right. One of the few things he could remember from his trips to Aberdeen Proving Grounds was to do with the smell of bitter almonds and freshly mown green grass. He couldn’t remember what they corresponded to, but they were listed as the two biggest giveaways that there was some biochem nasty lurking around the shop.

  He walked along the containers: forty-footers, white and red mostly. The smell got worse. It was like he could taste it. His Hi-Tecs squeaked on shiny concrete, echoing around the sub-level. Sweat trickled down his back. It wasn’t bitter almond, it wasn’t mown grass.

  It was putrid and sweet. It was human and chemical.

  Most of what Mac knew about containers, he knew from Jenny Toohey. And the vivid memory he had of the work she did was the telltale sign that there was a container of slaves in the vicinity. Jenny once told him, It’s a smell you never forget. I smell it in my nightmares.

  Mac froze to the spot, gulped, stomach churning. Couldn’t deny what he was smelling.

  Shit and bleach.

  CHAPTER 41

  Sensing something was wrong, Sawtell joined Mac. Paul rose from his sitting position, awkward but silent, checked for load in the SIG.

  Sawtell pulled the slide back on his Beretta, the noise fi lling the sub-level space.

  Mac shook his head.

  They crept forward silently, Mac’s breathing ragged.

  The smell got stronger.

  They moved down a corridor between pods of containers, the dark intensifying the atmosphere.

  Mac stopped, his ears rushing with his breathing and pulse.

  He tried to remember Jenny’s conversations about a particular case: holes hidden high up in the box, right under the top beam; holes in the fl oor of the container. He’d found her work fairly distasteful, always tried to change the subject.

  Sawtell’s eyes were wide now, troubled by the smell. ‘You sure this is okay, McQueen?’

  Mac nodded, gulped. Wished he had a neckerchief.

  ‘Don’t smell okay,’ said Sawtell.

  They turned into another avenue created by containers where it was darker and tighter. The smell was so intense that the three men could taste it in their mouths.

  ‘Holy shit!’ muttered Paul, then retched.

  They stopped beside a red forty-foot container with white ID

  markings but no shipping company logo. Mac tried to control his breathing, put the back of his hand to his mouth not knowing whether to retch or cry.

  Sawtell and Mac looked at each other. Neither wanted to be the fi rst to puke.

  ‘ Fuck! ‘ complained Paul, wiping dribble from the side of his mouth.

  Sawtell squinted at Mac. ‘That the smell of … of people?’ he said.

  Mac unholstered the Heckler out of its rig, his legs shaking and sweat running down his face from under his cap. His feet swam in his Hi-Tecs as he stepped forward and tapped on the steel side with the Heckler.

  Nothing.

  They looked at each other, their breathing crashing like Bondi surf.

  Mac was about to go to another container. Then they heard what sounded like a squawk.

  They waited a few seconds. Then came some murmurs. Muffl ed.

  Indistinct.

  Sawtell grabbed Mac’s bicep.

  Then screams, cries.

  ‘Hello,’ Mac shouted, tapping on the steel side again.

  Voices were now obvious. Young voices.

  Sawtell almost wrenched Mac’s arm off, his face aghast. ‘That’s -

  That’s … That’s kids. Fucking children!’

  Mac tapped the side again. Shouted, ‘You okay?’

  The noise rose to the sound of a playground of yelling kids from a block away.

  Sawtell ran down the side of the box, bare-chested, panicked, sweat pouring down his back. He took the corner around the container so fast he had to grip on the pillar to stay upright. Mac was behind him. Sawtell stopped, fumbled with a huge padlock on the locking handles of the door and then shook at it like a madman, gripping on it so hard it looked like his fi ngers could knit into the padlock hook.

  Sounds from inside the box got louder.

  Mac yelled, ‘It’s okay - we’re getting there.’

  Then he stepped back, pulled out h
is Nokia and dialled Jenny, who was having lunch with her crew. Mac gave her the address, asked,

  ‘Could you give us a hand?’

  Sawtell keyed the radio, yelled for someone to get the angle grinder from the helo and bring it.

  The sounds of screaming and pleading from the container were now joined by a drumming sound - scores of tiny hands banging on a steel box.

  Sawtell was losing it. He stood back, levelled his Beretta at the locks on the door until Mac stepped in, stopped him. Not such a good idea.

  Sawtell looked at Mac, shaking his head slowly like This is not happening. ‘Kids! What the fuck is a bunch of kids doing in a fucking container?!’ he shouted, slapping on the container door with a big open hand.

  Little hands banged back from the inside. Tiny voices screaming Maa, Maa, Maa.

  Sawtell was crying as he zeroed in on Mac. ‘Well?’

  ‘Mate, they’re … um.’

  ‘ Yes? ‘ yelled Sawtell.

  ‘They’re, probably, you know, sex slaves. I can’t be sure …’

  ‘ What? ‘

  ‘They’re probably being shipped to, you know …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Umm, paedophile brothels, private clients - or owners, whatever they’re called.’

  The din of children got worse. Crying, pleading.

  The smell and sound warped the air.

  Sawtell seemed to look straight through him and for a split second Mac thought he was going to have his head torn off.

  Suddenly shouting echoed in the sub-level.

  ‘Over here, guys,’ yelled Mac.

  The Green Berets arrived with a big green canvas gear bag and pinch bars.

  Sawtell pointed at the container. ‘Open it. Now!’ he ordered, beyond fury.

  The two forced-entry guys set up their stuff. One ran to fi nd power, the other guy set up the angle grinder.

  The medic team arrived too, got to work on Paul.

  Sawtell stood over Jansen, the angle-grinder guy, whispering like a maniac. ‘This is going to be the fastest forced entry you ever pull, Jansen. You hear me? They’ll give you a goddamned gold medal for this.’

  Jansen nodded, put on his protective visor and gloves then busied himself with the machine, ensuring that nothing could go wrong.