had all turned to MI6 for guidance during their set-up phase.
‘SAS, paras?’ asked Mac.
‘You’re quick.’
‘The looks and the accent…’
Paul shrugged. ‘Mexican father, Filipina mother. Grew up in Manila, high school in London. Usual shit.’
‘Spanish, Tagalog, good Yankee accent?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Useful guy.’
‘The expendable ones usually are.’
‘Tell me about Garrison,’ asked Mac.
‘The American?’
Mac nodded.
‘Don’t know much. He’s apparently Agency but a bit unortho dox.
Likes money.’
‘Weren’t briefed on Garrison?’
‘Basic fi le. I know he was in Burma doing stuff with the junta and the Chinese. But my entry point was Sabaya. He’d been off the map since you fi nished him.’
‘Wasn’t me.’
‘That’s not what they say.’
‘What do they say?’ said Mac.
‘Then I’d have to kill you.’
They looked at each other for two seconds.
‘Sabaya came back on the map again in ‘05,’ said Paul. ‘He’d been lying low down in Sulu for a couple of years. Been into Burma, somehow hooked up with Garrison. But Garrison was never my end.
Sabaya was my end.’
‘Where does the girl, Judith Hannah, fi t in?’
‘We met them at the airport ten days ago,’ said Paul, pointing out the window. ‘Garrison was shooting her up with something, so I hear.
He wanted something from her.’
‘What were they using?’
‘Don’t know – scopolamine, I guess. That’s the Agency thing, isn’t it? But I wasn’t around. I was chasing you round the manor, remember that?’
‘What did they want from her?’
‘Don’t know. I never got to Sabaya’s inner circle. He thought I was a mercenary, hired muscle.’
Mac suspected the guy was stonewalling, but he pushed on. ‘What about the other girl?’
‘I tried to stop that, believe me. I’m Army, mate – got a policy about kids.’
‘No, not Minky’s girl. Adult, blonde, English. Calls herself Diane.’
Paul shrugged. ‘Who’s she with?’
‘Garrison, as far as I know.’
Paul made a face. ‘Just ‘cos she sounds English, mate, doesn’t mean she works for the English. Know what I mean?’
‘It’s important.’
‘Sorry, mate. Don’t know about an English girl.’
Mac thought about it. ‘So what are these blokes up to?’
‘You can’t ask that in the Sabaya camp,’ said Paul. ‘They’ll drop you for that.’
‘What’s in that old mine?’
‘Nothing. Fucking beats me.’
‘Nothing?’
‘I had a quick look a week ago – empty. They’ve laid track in there, but there’s nothing in it.’
Mac was exhausted, close to passing out. He stood to a crouch, pulled the sliding side door back, got out backwards and gestured for Paul to follow.
They walked to the hangar door. Mac reached into his chino pockets, came out with about four hundred US dollars. Handed it over.
Paul took it, turned to go, said, ‘I owe ya.’
‘No worries, champ.’
Paul looked down at Mac’s wrist and nodded. ‘Got a girlfriend for that?’
‘Go on,’ said Mac, gesturing with the Browning. ‘Fuck off.’
Defi nitely paras.
Mac headed through the military checkpoint of Hasanuddin in the HiAce and drove into the hinterlands behind the airport thinking back to his conversation with Cookie. Cookie had called VX nasty shit. But it was way beyond nasty. A substance that attacked the central nervous system, VX was something the most depraved scientists had concocted and yet even the most psycho generals and politicians could never fi nd an excuse to deploy. Death started with a runny nose and a headache. Before you knew it, your bladder and bowels were doing their own thing. Then your lungs wouldn’t work. If you inhaled it, you died in about fi fteen minutes. If it landed on your skin in very small doses, you’d die in four to ten hours. If you ingested it by way of drinking or eating, you might have two or three days up your sleeve.
The scientists had a measurement called a Threshold Limit Value for how much an average adult man could be in contact with the agent for an eight-hour day in a forty-hour week. The TLV of VX nerve agent was 0.00001 milligrams per cubic metre of water, an infi nitesimal amount – essentially a bit of vapour in the air. It was odourless and colourless.
VX had been developed to do one thing: wipe out entire urban populations while leaving the buildings and other infrastructure in place.
The big weakness of VX was the way it had to be used. If Mac remembered correctly, the optimum usage of VX entailed it being turned into trillions of microbe-sized droplets so it was suspended in the air which then had to drift with air currents over the unlucky populations. To make VX as deadly as it could be, you needed it to be sprayed like fertiliser. The technical term for this state was an aerosol.
Aerosol was easy to say, diffi cult to achieve. Perhaps not so hard with a container of VX wrapped in CL- 20.
He found a lay-by and parked by a river under the trees, out of the heat of the afternoon. Then he got in the back of the van, laid his head on his backpack and felt himself going under.
Mac awoke with a start, panicked by the ring-tone of his Nokia. It was dark and hot, he was drenched in sweat and his right arm was useless from pins and needles. An eerie yellowish light illuminated the HiAce. He fumbled, got the glowing phone, croaked, ‘Yep.’
‘McQueen. Sawtell. You called.’
Mac tried to clear his head. What’s the time? Where am I?
‘Ah, yeah John. ‘Zit going?’ said Mac, trying to push his hair back with his bad hand. He couldn’t make a comb.
‘Good, my man. Uh, you okay?’
Mac could have cried. It seemed like forever since anyone had asked him that. ‘Mate, I’m all over the shop. I need… I mean…
Look, where are you?’
‘Come on, McQueen.’
‘Okay, if there’s a guy from the Twentieth nearby, tell him this. Tell him Abu Sabaya is on a ship with a container of VX and twenty cases of CL-20.’
‘Sabaya? Alive?! ‘ said Sawtell.
‘What I said,’ replied Mac.
‘Well, how? When? Um, I…’ Sawtell paused.
‘Do this for me, champ, and I won’t bother you again. Swear to God,’ said Mac, his head clearing.
Mac heard Sawtell exhale. Probably tired too. Mac looked at his G-Shock: 1.07 am. There was background
