the metallic smell of human plasma, diesel and tropical salt water biting into the back of his throat.
Mac had to ask Sawtell to stop the fi ring. Arroy overheard the request on the headset, shut it down himself. Then the whoops started up.
Mac grabbed the CIA guy they called Pencil Neck and tried to get him onto the pump-boat. ‘Come on, champ, time to go to work,’ he’d urged, but Pencil Neck couldn’t move. He was vomiting, crying. A bit of human scalp had stuck to the sleeve of his pressed battle fatigues.
Mac fl icked it off, ruffl ed the guy’s hair. But Pencil Neck was frozen to the seat.
Mac, Sawtell and a couple of Yank troopers went instead, slipping on the blood-covered decks of the listing pump-boat. They turned over bodies, Mac insisting that a semi-submerged corpse be brought to the surface.
Mac photographed faces, some of them torn off by gunfi re. One had lost an arm. He found it near the prow, fake gold Rolex glinting under the SWAGs’ spotties. They found a black backpack fl oating, black sunnies inside.
He remembered getting increasingly agitated. Mac had two corpses on the foredeck of the pump-boat, but neither of them was Abu Sabaya. They searched the area for an hour. Mac asked the SWAGs commander, Mig Arroy, to get a frogman down there. He sent down two with their marine spotlights. Sawtell wanted to know what they were looking for.
‘I told you – a body,’ said Mac.
‘We got ‘em, ain’t we?’
‘How many were we shooting at?’ asked Mac.
Sawtell called Arroy to his boat where they confabbed. Pencil Neck joined them.
Mac said, ‘I’ve got two bodies.’
‘There were fi ve on the pump-boat,’ said Sawtell.
‘I saw four,’ countered Arroy.
‘There’s a couple of bodies down there,’ said Sawtell. ‘They’re just not fl oaters. One of them’s Sabaya.’
‘You know this?’ asked Mac.
Sawtell nodded, unsure.
Arroy said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to retrieve all the bodies out here. No way.’
One of Sawtell’s guys leaned out of the pump-boat’s wheelhouse, waved a blood-splattered pizza box. ‘Mmm – Hawaiian Surprise. My favourite.’
Pencil Neck vomited again.
Mac leaned back in his seat as the 737 dipped slightly and headed into Makassar. He churned over the Abu Sabaya story. It had been the turning point of his career in more ways than one. He’d done more positive work in East Timor, but the Abu Sabaya thing had got him a name among the Americans and British as well as the Filipinos and Indons. It had given him an aura he hadn’t wanted, a reputation he’d never asked for. He hadn’t killed a major terrorist – he’d stood there and watched a bunch of soldiers cut a bunch of bandits to ribbons.
He wasn’t ashamed, but he wasn’t proud. To Mac’s mind, if you wanted to wage war on terror you had to stand for something a bit better.
It didn’t mean that Catholicism should win out, or that Islam should lose. His mother used to say that being Catholic didn’t mean you were always right – just that you’d always try to do the right thing.
The offi cial US-Philippines statement said Sabaya had been killed in a gunfi ght along with two others, and that four people had been captured. Actually, no one had been captured. It hadn’t been that kind of mission. It was the kind of rubbish intel people leaked into the media to make other terrorists nervous, to fl ush out traitorous types who might be ready to squeal before the supposed prisoners started to sing.
Mac was debriefed but not asked for a report. It wasn’t going to be logged, at least not as an assassination. Davidson phoned, congratulated him on the whole thing, laughing at the pizza delivery aspect. Then he’d asked Mac for an informal report.
Mac’s report was written on a piece of white printer paper, with a blue ballpoint. It had been pouched to Canberra. It was short. It said, We killed two Abu Sayyaf people. Abu Sabaya was not among them. He planted a black backpack containing a pair of sunglasses – he wanted me to fi nd it. His death is a hoax.
As the Lion Air fl ight descended, Mac wondered back to his paranoia about there being a mole in the Service. He mulled, making connections and wondering who else in the Service had seen that note.
CHAPTER 22
The passengers from the Lion Air fl ight moved from the heat of the tarmac into the cool of the Hasanuddin terminal. Mac stayed mid pack, looking for eyes.
He passed through the terminal and out into the heat again. It was a minute past eight am and just another day in the Sulawesi steam bath. The cabs were lined up, about twenty of them. People milled, still no eyes.
Mac took the third cab. He gave an address in the south of the city.
Taking the seat directly behind the driver, Mac dug the cheapo cellular phone out of his pocket, hit redial and patched through to Camp Enduring Freedom in Zam. Asked for Captain John Sawtell. Sorry, said the bloke, he’s in the mess.
Military types never seemed to stop eating.
He sat back, thought about his day. He needed to know what was in the stolen container out of Manila, he needed to know what was in the MPS warehouse. Were they linked? He needed a gun. And he needed to know who was following him right at that minute.
In the driver’s rear-vision mirror Mac saw a red Subaru Liberty, staying back two cars. He had asked the driver to go south into the city rather than use the main westward route. The red Liberty was following.
They drove with traffi c along a two-way stretch of secondary road, dodging trucks and buses. The old Dutch-built bollards of the bridge loomed and they slowed. Mac turned and watched the Liberty, three cars back now, edging out, looking for a way to get closer.
They made it off the bridge and took a right at the next traffi c lights and drove north, the Liberty now only two cars away. They pulled up to an intersection which turned right into the major road into Makassar. It was rush hour in Makassar – eight-thirty and it was jammed up, everyone sounding their horns, trying to get onto that bridge.
Mac paid the bloke with rupiah, tipped big. ‘Thanks, champ. One more thing you can do for me.’
They got so they were almost at the front of the queue to get onto the main artery into Makassar. The lights changed to amber. They went red. Mac said ‘Now.’
They fl ew into the intersection, the driver veering to his left slightly to get in behind the last right-turning car. They made it as the main north-south traffi c started grinding through the intersection again. The red Liberty had pulled out too, into the wrong lane of the feeder road, but couldn’t get out into the inter section. The north- south traffi c started moving. Mac’s cab moved with it. He looked back, saw the driver of the Liberty with his arm across the back seat, having to reverse. The driver stopped, looked over at Mac’s cab. He was Ray-Bans – the thug in the silver Accord behind Minky’s. Mac knew that face from another time, too – but where?
There was another guy in the front seat with him. Turquoise shirt, Javanese.
The cab moved onto the bridge that would take them into Makassar and Mac asked the cabbie to get into the left lane heading north. Mac looked back and saw that the Liberty had thrown itself into traffi c to the sounds of even more horns. It was now eight cars back.
The line slowed again and stopped. Mac took a deep breath, controlled the fear, and slipped out the rear left door. He jogged along the bridge in a crouch as close beside the left of the stationary cars as he could. He was betting Ray-Bans had his car right on the centre line trying to see where the cab was. He wouldn’t trust his sidekick.
He’d be giving himself the eyes.
The bridge was three hundred metres long and Mac kept a solid pace. The only way Ray-Bans and his mate could catch him would be to get out and run, or hope the rush-hour traffi c abated. If that happened, Mac would slip back into the cab.
The traffi c stayed snarled and Mac made it onto ground again with what he reckoned was a forty-car lead on
