Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent Read online

  He chewed gum, drank bottled water, plotted scenarios, babbled to himself, sang Beatles songs. The air-conditioning was rooted so he stank up the car with BO as he sweltered in the safari suit pants and shirt. Mostly, he lived in the rear-vision mirror. There was a silver Accord out there somewhere and he knew they wouldn’t stop looking.

  By midnight his right wrist was puffi ng like a stonefi sh and ached something chronic. He was getting to the point where he wouldn’t be able to hold a weapon, let alone be effi cient with it, and although Mac didn’t much like guns, he disliked even more being injured in his gun hand. Especially when he was in the backblocks of Sulawesi with a hit squad on his tail.

  That assumed he could get another weapon. He felt vulnerable without the Heckler, but it was lying in a rest stop garbage bin for the most practical of reasons. White men sweeping into town and killing the locals meant the police were going to be coming at you. All that rubbish about South-East Asian cops not caring was bullshit. Mac knew Indonesian detectives who would do anything to bag a pale-eye, particularly on something legit. The last thing he needed was to be picked up for questioning and have a warm gun sitting in the back seat. It would mean the local lock-up for two weeks while some fruit salad-endowed chief tried to work out how rich an Australian textbook executive might be. The dream that there was some all-knowing super-spook from Canberra who could appear in a Sulawesi police cell, fl ash a badge and get someone like Mac cut loose never came true. People like Mac were what they called an ‘undeclared’ - they had no diplomatic status and if they were caught doing something illegal, their fate was that of the criminal.

  Having wiped and dumped the Heckler, Mac felt the POLRI were going to have a tough time nailing him for the Minky murder.

  But he still had work to do with the Americans. In his experience, soldiers hated being pushed around on mad missions by intel types. And this was going to be a doozy: the main contact - a CIA contractor - was dead. There were Javanese thugs in pursuit and they didn’t look like amateurs. And Mac hadn’t even got the drum on Hannah.

  It was a complete fuck-up. Worst of all, the dry-cleaner’s ticket pointed towards Palopo. It signalled a shift into central and northern Sulawesi. Southern Sulawesi had a cosmopolitan city like Makassar, as big as Brisbane. The north had a whole galaxy of shit-holes and pirate haunts. It could even mean dealing with the chief pirate and strongman of the north, Cookie Banderjong.

  Cookie could be highly problematic, and Mac was not looking forward to selling that proposition to Captain John Sawtell.

  The sun was just hitting the horizon as Mac pulled into the Motel Davi, near the ocean side of Ralla. Kids stood by a stand of trees, fl ying kites in the early morning half-light. There were fi sh hooks on the tails of the kites and they were trying to hook fruit bats. Get Mum to cook it up for lunch.

  The town was a fi shing village with pretensions to being a tourist trap. But it wasn’t making it. It had a few restaurants, a wharf and a Pertamina gas station. It also had a motel where the management was discreet, or as discreet as you’d ever get in the archipelago.

  Mac parked the Vienta, walked the line of thirty rooms arranged in a horseshoe, dragging his wheelie case across red dirt. He was looking for a marker, like a playing card or restaurant menu sticking out from under a door. It would mark the RV.

  He didn’t have to worry. The door to room 17 opened quietly and John Sawtell beckoned him in.

  ‘You look like shit,’ said the American as Mac entered.

  Sawtell was showered and shaved, dressed in Levis and a black T-shirt, black Hi-Tec Magnums on his feet. The right-hand bed had been slept in, but it was perfectly made. There was one Cordura bag.

  Packed. One set of toiletries in a perfect line on the bag.

  Mac threw his bag on the unused bed. He wanted to lie on that thing for seven hundred hours but it wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘There’s an alteration,’ said Mac as he undid his stinking business shirt. He kicked his shoes off, dropped his trousers, picked up the threadbare white towel on his bed. Wrapping it around him he pulled his toilet bag from the wheelie.

  ‘Like what?’ said Sawtell, eyeballing him, hands on hips like he was hearing some lame excuse from a private.

  Mac didn’t want the military-intel thing to start. Not here, not when he could barely think straight from fatigue.

  ‘Like we’re going north. Girl’s up north.’

  Sawtell didn’t move. ‘That the mission?’

  ‘Is now.’

  A big pause gaped between them.

  ‘Snitch told you that?’ said Sawtell, referring to Minky.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘Near as.’

  ‘The mission is south.’

  ‘Mission is the girl, John.’

  ‘Mission is don’t die, McQueen.’

  The whole thing happened in low tones. Mac knew that Sawtell put the safety of his guys above all else and that going north represented new risk. After the Abu Sabaya thing in Sibuco, Sawtell and Mac had sunk a few cold beers and they’d been frank about the tension between soldier and spook. The intel guy would get the senior rank, but the military bloke really ran the show. It was what special forces soldiers called a ‘bullshit rank’, when you seconded an Agency geek into a military mission and ranked him as a major so he could trump a captain like Sawtell.

  Mac turned to the bed and pulled a handful of Nokias from the bag. ‘We need those charged,’ said Mac as he headed off to fi nd the communal shower block.

  Sawtell sighed, looked at the carpet and shook his head in resignation.

  Mac took Sawtell and his three men to breakfast at a place on stilts over the river. Just along the bank from the restaurant there was a young male macaque monkey chained to a spike in the river bank.

  They ordered omelettes and coffee. Mac asked for a fruit bowl and the owner’s daughter brought out a basket of mangos and pineapples. He asked her if there was a laundry in the town and she shook her head, but took Mac’s clothes bag anyway, held up two fi ngers, like ‘peace’.

  Mac liked the initiative, asked the girl her name. ‘Arti,’ she said.

  The boys hoed in when the omelettes arrived. One thing Mac had noticed working with military blokes was that they were incredibly focused on food. Never knowing when they’d be left hungry for days, they ate like maniacs when the eating was good. Some of this fruit would no doubt be produced tomorrow as an informal rat pack.

  Mac felt better for his shower and shave. He was comfortable in his blue ovies, which he preferred to the salesman get-up. The lads hadn’t done too badly on the civvies front, wearing an assortment of chinos and polo shirts. The comms expert they called Limo - a large Latino bloke with a shaved head - wore a Metallica shirt which was a no-no in the intel world. You never wore anything that the human eye picked up subconsciously: no tattoos, no piercings, no hair colour, no jewellery and no message T-shirts. Too easy to remember. Mac made a note to get him something plainer.

  Then there was Hard-on, a slow-talking black American with a boxer’s body, who had gone for the preppy look of chinos and polo shirt. He would be the athlete of the crew, the guy who could climb any wall, make any jump, beat anyone in a fi ght. His sidekick was a paler and taller black American called Spikey. He couldn’t keep his eye off the monkey on the river bank, and fi nally asked what the animal was doing.

  ‘Local shit - don’t worry,’ said Mac, smiling.

  The four Americans had that special forces thing about them; not arrogant, but totally self-confi dent. People who liked to get a job done. Mac recognised Hard-on from the Sibuco thing four years ago.

  The others were new and he hoped they were as good as the Green Berets crew were that night.

  Mac spelled out the mission: go to Palopo, snatch the girl, call in the helo from Watampone, do the Harold Holt.

  ‘The Harold who?’ said Hard-on.

  Mac smiled. ‘You know, like the ice hockey
player?’

  Hard-on winced with concentration, but Limo nodded slowly with a smile. Mac gave Limo a wink. Hard-on sifted the sands.

  The monkey started snivelling. Then it was screaming. It was only thirty metres away and its eyes were pleading while it yanked at the chain around its neck. The air fi lled with the sounds of its terror.

  Spikey shook his head, looked at Mac. ‘You gotta tell me, man.

  What’s with this ape?’

  Arti poured water, smiling at Mac.

  ‘Maybe that’ll explain itself,’ said Mac.

  Spikey nodded at him slowly, not satisfi ed.

  The monkey screamed again. Spikey shrugged, went back to his food.

  Suddenly there was a cacophony of noises. Water splashed, something roared and a monkey screeched.

  Mac looked over. A large crocodile had launched itself out of the river and had the monkey in its smiling mouth. Flipped it. Rolled it.

  Disappeared back into the river. Monkey’s arm waving.

  Spikey fell backwards out of his chair with fright. Fumbled for his Beretta. Which wasn’t there. Eyes wide, panting breath.

  Sawtell laughed at him.

  Limo slapped his leg, pointing at Spikey. ‘Look at chu, man. Like your girlfriend just told you she got the clap.’

  Spikey’s mouth hung open, his eyes glued to the river bank where there was nothing left but a spike and a chain. And a collar.

  ‘That!’ sputtered Spikey. ‘What the fuck was that shit?’

  Arti came back to the table. Smiled. ‘Croc catchee monkey. No catchee family.’

  The Americans’ cover was bodyguarding the Australian forest products executive, Richard Davis. Mac had his cards ready to go: RICHARD DAVIS

  GOANNA FOREST PRODUCTS LTD.

  It had a Brisbane address but the phone numbers all diverted to the Southern Scholastic offi ce in Sydney. The bodyguard cover was totally natural in South-East Asia, as were the side arms. And there would be no reason for the hired goons to know anything about the business venture, which meant four less people requiring background and cover.

  Mac and Sawtell had discussed the need to avoid telling the lads that there was a rogue CIA component in the picture and keep it basic damsel-in-distress stuff for now. Sawtell’s aversion to Palopo and Sulawesi’s north was pure professionalism. He was based out of the southern Philippines and knew all about Cookie Banderjong, the strongman who ran northern Sulawesi. A former BAKIN operative who had been educated at an exclusive Melbourne boarding school, Banderjong was a rich kid with family ties to Suharto who got to play spy-versus-spy in places like Paris and DC.

  When the Suharto regime fell in ‘99, Cookie had gone back to the last real asset he could put his hands on: the family’s old clove plantations and logging concessions in northern Sulawesi. He expanded his power, made millions from Japanese and Malaysian loggers, brought Western managers into the plantations, bought out small-time competitors and seeped backed into the political wheel-and-spoke structure. As it turned out, many Suharto cronies were rebirthed in the new Jakarta, and many of them were Cookie’s former BAKIN colleagues.

  Cookie had built a private army to protect the foreign logging companies. He organised the pirates and bandits on operating concessions and he dealt with the jihadists with brutality. He ran the north of Sulawesi like a medieval fi efdom - so much so that Westerners who had had any dealings with the man referred to northern Sulawesi as Cookie Country. And Mac and Sawtell’s men were driving to the very edges of it.

  Sawtell had told Mac: ‘Any freaky stuff up there, and I’m pulling my boys out. Got it?’ His tone had been uncompromising. Mac didn’t take it personally; he didn’t have a choice.

  They hit the road before lunch. The Berets had picked up a blue Nissan Patrol from the base in Watampone. It was the big turbo diesel version.

  Comfortable as a car and would go anywhere. It had no special comms gear or plating. Mac had been clear about that. He wanted to move around like a party from a logging company, not in a ‘civvie’ Hummer with comms aerials sticking out of it like a game-fi shing boat.

  It was stinking hot outside, air-conned in the cabin. The boot was fi lled with guns. Limo drove like a soldier, slightly over the limit but controlled. At Mac’s behest he’d changed into a plain black shirt. All the lads wore baseball caps Mac had bought from the Pertamina. It was beyond him why the American military retained those ridiculous hairstyles that set them apart wherever they went in the world. No way was he going to have kids racing out onto the streets of Palopo pointing at the Yanks like the 101st had just landed at the wharf.

  Mac took the front passenger seat but there was a tension in the air. The lads mumbled, weren’t relaxed. It built for ten minutes then Mac turned to the back seat, looked Spikey in the eye. ‘Okay, play the fucking thing. But if I hear the word “nigger” or “ho”, it’s coming off. Right?’

  The lads whooped. Spikey high-fi ved Hard-on. Limo put his hand back like he was carrying a fi sh platter. The lads gave him skin and a CD appeared from somewhere; gold-coloured, black texta on it.

  ‘Enjoy it while you can, guys,’ said Sawtell. ‘Won’t get played on my watch.’

  Mac turned back to the windscreen and heard Hard-on say, ‘That’s my Pizza Man!’ Mac laughed quietly. They were kids. Fucking kids!

  Winding his seat back, he pulled his black Adidas cap down over his face to grab some Zs as the R&B ramped up.

  CHAPTER 8

  There was only one dry-cleaner in Palopo and it was the Sunda Laundry. They drove past it once and came back for another sweep.

  Mac saw cases of Bintang in a stack at the entrance of a roadhouse.

  They stopped, bought a case.

  After fi nding a rundown Dutch Colonial guesthouse near the southern approaches to the small fi shing town, they hunkered down for the evening and ordered in food.

  Mac went through a long tale with the guesthouse owner about not sourcing the meal from a place that would make his friends sick.

  Though Mac had grown used to the food in South-East Asia, the Americans ate steaks from Texas and corn from Iowa, all fl own into Camp Enduring Freedom in Zam. The last thing Mac needed was an extended case of the trots from these elite special forces. It didn’t mean the owner would listen to a single word. Indonesians nodded and smiled at every request. Whether they did anything about it depended on if they could. Or wanted to.

  Mac realised there were a few kids around the place. Kids were expensive and demanding in any part of the world, so he tipped the bloke large. Gave him the wink and a slap on the bicep. He seemed to get that Mac wanted some privacy from the bloke and his family.

  The owner’s teenage son delivered the food. Mac looked him in the eye. Couldn’t see fear. Asked him his name.

  Kid said, ‘Bani.’ Quite tall, good-looking, athletic and cocky in that globally fi fteen-year-old way. He wore a white singlet and Mac clocked a crucifi x through the fabric. Mac walked with Bani down to where the Patrol was parked. The boy was still at school, learning English and science, playing soccer. He wanted to stay in school but by the way he shrugged and looked around him Mac could tell that education wasn’t part of his future.

  Mac dragged the Bintangs out of the boot, hauled them up to the room. They ate and drank. The food tasted good, clean.

  Forty-fi ve minutes later, when they’d all kept it down, Mac knew for sure. Hunger satisfi ed, they sat around, dished out guns and loads from the Cordura bags. Sawtell let Mac have his own Beretta M9, but not before he made Mac spill on how and why he was without a gun.

  Mac told the lads most of the truth but stopped short of the Minky details. He didn’t want to admit that he’d panicked and shot the intel source - the only intel source.

  Sawtell eyed him. Flexed through his wide neck. ‘Just so you know

  - that piece ain’t goin’ nowhere near no garbage can. Reading me?’

  ‘Crystal,’ said Mac.

  They fi red up their mobiles and program
med each other’s numbers into their address books.

  At nine-thirty pm local, Mac slipped out into the night to have a butcher’s. It had been a year since he was last in Palopo. For a small town with barely any profi le, it was the crossroads for a lot of travel in Sulawesi. From Palopo you drove north towards the major port city of Manado, to the south was Makassar, to the immediate west was the remote highland areas with their weird architecture reminiscent of boat prows, and further west was the airport hub of Palu.

  Palopo itself had changed. There was more neon, more people on the streets after dark and some real restaurants, not just the goreng and fi sh shops that populate rural Indonesia.

  Mac moved towards the centre of town, keeping to the shadows.

  His cap was low, his ovies covering his body shape and the chunky Beretta handgun in its webbing rig.

  Sunda Laundry was down a side street off the shabby main plaza area. Mac walked past it on the opposite side of the street and then came back right in front. It was a double-wide joint and through the glass doors Mac could see a few washing machines and tubs, some dryers too, and a large folding table. A small pilot light was on in a back room.

  Mac did another circuit, sweat trickling down his back, and couldn’t see any surveillance. Ducking into the laneway running adjacent to the back of Sunda Laundry, he pulled the Beretta out from under the ovies. He hated Berettas. They had been OK’d and rejected several times by the US military in the 1980s before going into service. They were prone to jamming, the trigger was too far from the grip and, especially annoying for Mac, they had double-stack fi fteen-round magazines. That was fi ne for a soldier or cop, where simply showing a nice big gun was a bonus in itself, but no good for a spook.

  A handgun with fi fteen rounds in the handle was like carrying a small shoe box around with you. Who the hell needed fi fteen rounds?