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
