noise behind Sawtell. Mac bet he was in a situation room with the Twentieth, DIA, the SEALs and Green Berets, and nowhere to deploy.
‘Shit, McQueen. Sabaya?! ‘ said Sawtell, still reeling from the revelation.
‘He’s with Garrison,’ said Mac. ‘They left Makassar this morning with a bunch of cases of CL-20. I reckon they’ll RV with a container ship carrying some lost goods from the US Army.’
Sawtell’s breath hissed over his teeth. ‘Gimme a second, okay?’
Mac heard a raised voice. A big pause. Some murmured questions.
Bigger pause, then a Southerner’s voice came on the line: ‘Hatfi eld.
Twentieth support command. Who’s this?’
‘Call me Mac.’
‘Don’t jerk me around, son, I said who is this?’
‘Ask Sawtell.’ Mac wasn’t going to get into a game of proving who he was. He’d let Sawtell vouch for him.
Hatfi eld turned away from the receiver and Mac could tell from the bloke’s tone that Sawtell was giving a decent rendition of who Mac was.
Just as well Sawtell had no idea what the Commonwealth of Australia thought about Alan McQueen at that minute.
Mac heard Hatfi eld say, ‘This is it, last chance, Captain. You quite sure?’
Pause. Mac could envisage a bunch of special forces jocks, CBNRE propeller heads and a team of poker-faced DIA spooks all looking at Captain John Sawtell, thinking: There goes the oak leaves.
Hatfi eld came back on the line. ‘Okay, tell me, Mr McQueen. What have we got?’
Mac told him about Abu Sabaya being alive. ‘You remember the Sabaya slaying in ‘02?’
‘Yes, saw the news,’ said Hatfi eld.
‘Captain Sawtell was there.’
‘You?’
‘That’s not important,’ said Mac. ‘Thing is, sir, I developed a lot of the HumInt on Sabaya. I met him once, brokered deals with him.’
‘Yes?’
‘He always had a much bigger commercial operation than he did a terrorist one. Terrorism was his calling card, but everything he did, he did for money.’
‘Ransoms, wasn’t it?’
‘Sure, and protection rackets for the miners, oil companies, what have you. But his biggest moneymaker was piracy, though not piracy of the bluewater kind. What he did was much smarter. He infi ltrated the stevedores and freight forwarders and had some Philippine Customs people on his side too. He’d switch containers before they even got on a ship.’
‘Shit!’
‘Yeah. So there’d be a container of DVD players shipping out of MICT for Long Beach -‘
‘I’m sorry?’
‘MICT, sir. Manila International Container Terminal.’
‘Go on.’
‘So the container would ship, and it would be a legitimate box with the right weights and scans. But it would be fi lled with logs or old TV sets. The freight forwarders and importers wouldn’t know they’d been robbed until the containers were opened in Anaheim.
Sabaya wouldn’t even touch the containers. They’d be on another boat, shipping for Singapore or Brisbane, the consignment sold already.’
‘Smart guy.’
‘Very smart. His best trick is the microdot tracking. I bet you can’t get a signal, right?’
‘Damned right.’
‘Sabaya worked out early how to nullify that whole microdot thing. I think he did it by degaussing the containers with a cheap electromagnet. That make sense?’
Mac heard a sigh of annoyance. ‘Yes, Mr McQueen. That makes sense.’
‘If it’s any consolation, sir, MICT is one of the most secure dock facilities in the world. Can’t take anything in or out without it being weighed, photographed, scanned and logged.’
‘I know. That’s why it was cleared to ship our stuff.’
‘Sir, Sabaya’s the best. He knows he can’t get the containers through the security gates so he fi nds what he wants on the docks and onships them instead.’
Hatfi eld was enlisted. Mac could feel it. He’d fl own in from Guam to fi nd a lost load of VX and fi nally someone was telling him something he didn’t know. The Twentieth support command had enormous powers in the United States and beyond. Hatfi eld could shut down ports, impound 747s, close down entire trucking hubs if he had reasonable grounds. But right now he had nothing. Mac wanted Hatfi eld to need him on one of those Army helos.
‘So where’s my container?’ said Hatfi eld.
Bingo! thought Mac. ‘My guess is it was on a ship in the Macassar Strait this morning. It was met by Sabaya and Garrison.’
Mac sensed eyes, looked up: saw a face peering in the van window.
He freaked, grabbed the Browning, loosed three rounds. The glass imploded and the noise woke the forest. Mac rose, Browning in a cup-and-saucer, his wrist aching from making a grip. He opened the side door and switched off the interior light. It was pitch-black outside and, changing the Browning to his left hand, he dropped to the ground. He walked a few paces away from the van, ears rushing, heart palpitating and unable to see a thing. Then he tripped on something.
Looking down he saw it and let his gun arm drop. It was a macaque, minus a head and right arm.
‘Sorry, champ. Not your night.’
He’d always liked the macaque for its intelligence and soulfulness and the way it could wink. It saddened him to know that the animal was the preferred test-bed for the type of people who had created VX nerve agent. Didn’t seem right: bunch of psychos in lab coats standing around, seeing how fast one of the magnifi cent animals lost bowel control. His sister Virginia had always teased him about liking animals more than people. Didn’t seem so strange to Mac.
He wandered back to the van, sat down and heard the phone going haywire. Grabbed it, said, ‘Yep?’
‘That you, McQueen?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Holy shit, son, you okay?’
Mac tried to say something, but it wouldn’t come. ‘Umm, yeah,’ he said eventually.
‘Talk to me, son,’ said Hatfi eld.
‘Yeah. Fuck. Just killed a monkey.’ There was something in the air choking him up. Fucking pollen.
Hatfi eld talked him back into the game, talking about long nights, tough missions and the need to focus to overcome disappointment.
‘Gotcha. I’m good. Yep, good to go,’ said Mac.
Hatfi eld had more questions. ‘Captain Sawtell said something about CL-20?’
‘They have about twenty cases of the stuff,’ said Mac.
‘Twenty cases!’
‘Yep.’
‘That’s a lot of ordnance for something that was supposed to be experimental.’
‘That’s Sabaya for you. He’s a piece of work.’
‘Any ideas?’
Mac thought about it. Didn’t want to throw up a false alarm. ‘If I had to bet on it, I’d say they were heading south, across the Java Sea.
For Surabaya, maybe Fremantle.’
‘You know what that much CL-20 would do to a container load of VX?’ said Hatfi eld, almost whispering.
‘Aerosol effect?’
