‘Executions,’ said Paul, standing. ‘They used suppressors – don’t scorch but they leave a sooty residue. Shot at close range. Maybe knew the killers?’
Mac looked from corpse to corpse. ‘What the fuck happened here?’
They fanned out. Sawtell’s boys heading down the right side of the top warehouse level, Mac, Paul and Sawtell taking the left side.
The containers were mostly open. Sawtell pointed the M4 into them, the Maglite on the bottom of the barrel illuminating the interiors.
Lots of wood shavings and polystyrene balls. In one container they found Ming vases still in their wooden cases. In another there were racks of paintings – maybe two hundred of them.
Before they went downstairs, Mac found a locked forty-foot green container. Sawtell held up his hand and they walked the box, tapping on the steel, asking if there was anyone in there. Asked Paul what hello was in Tagalog.
Without kids to worry about, the Berets had the doors off in twenty seconds. Mac poked his head in. It looked like two large objects arranged end to end, covered in tarps. Mac asked for a Ka-bar and slashed the fi rst tarp off, peeled it back. A red car with a black horse on a yellow badge. A Ferrari.
He slashed the second tarp back. A white sports car with a sky blue stripe over it, end to end. Mac, Paul and Sawtell looked at one another. Shrugged.
‘Must be fl ash, I guess,’ said Paul.
‘I guess,’ said Sawtell.
Sawtell yelled at Spikey and Spikey jogged over.
‘You know about cars,’ said Sawtell. ‘What’s this?’
Spikey’s face lit up. ‘Oh man! You are freaking kidding! This red one here is a Ferrari Enzo. Worth over a million bucks. Hard to tell because every time one sells, the price goes up. Only four hundred made.’
Sawtell asked about the white one.
‘That is the fi nest grain-fed all-American sports racer ever built.’
‘Oh really?’ said Sawtell.
‘That’s a Ford GT40. Won Le Mans three years in a row.
Kicked Ferrari’s ass.’ He nodded at it. ‘Looks original. I’d say a ‘68 prototype.’
Sawtell asked if it had a price on it.
‘Hard to say,’ said Spikey, like he was a medical specialist giving an opinion. ‘You can’t buy ‘em. They swap hands privately. God knows what this is doing in a container in Singapore.’
Mac was starting to get the picture. Diane had told him that Sabaya and Garrison had taken off with thousands of tons of gold. What they were looking at was the stuff left behind.
Mac was getting the creeps. He wanted to search the sub-level and do it quick.
Going down the ramp Sawtell asked if Mac was all right. ‘Yeah, mate. Just got the willies.’
‘Why?’
‘Those dead blokes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Clock the haircuts?’
‘Aah, yeah…?’
‘Worse than a para’s, mate.’
Paul laughed.
‘I’m serious,’ said Mac, his breath coming faster. ‘And did you see those beds?’
Paul nodded, knowing what Mac was getting at. Mac turned to Sawtell as they got to the sub-level. ‘See those beds, John?’
‘Sure did, my man.’
‘Only one place in the world where a man has such a bad haircut, and a perfect bed,’ said Mac, checking for load.
‘And I don’t need to tell either of you shit-kickers where that might be, now do I?’
CHAPTER 46
They found the other Chinese soldiers in the far corner of the sub-level. All three of them had been shot in the head with suppressed handguns. Paul reckoned standard 9 mm loads – NATO Nines. Mac knelt, had a look at the assault rifl es that were on them or scattered around: Type 95s, the standard PLA assault rifl e. They were standing in a People’s Liberation Army facility.
There were no containers on this level and Mac could see this was where most of the recent vehicular movement had come from. There were tyre tracks around the sub-level and up the ramp and a diesel tug sat where it had been turned off. Big steel trolleys were in various states of use. They had collapsible sides and large-diameter rubber tyres. In other places there were steel pallets designed for forklifts.
The troopers ambled around as if in a trance. On a dozen or so of the pallets that had been left abandoned there were stacks of gold bars. Huge bricks of the stuff. The four hundred troy ounce monsters that alone were worth about US$160,000 a piece. Spikey tried to pick one up with one hand and failed.
On one of the transport trolleys there were at least eighty of the bricks. As if they’d been loaded up but then they couldn’t quite fi t them in the ship.
Mac was getting very, very paranoid. The amount of wealth that had walked out of this facility in one go was beginning to feel like an astronomical number that would have to be countered. One of those cosmic actions that needed a reaction. And the Chinese military was a big enough pendulum to swing back and create the counter- force.
Based simply on what he was looking at, there was US$50 million in leftovers. What had Cookie Banderjong asked him in Sulawesi?
Where did the gold always go? The Chinese! Well done, Mr Macca!
Looking over at Paul, Mac could see fear there too.
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Mac.
‘I’m thinking that this is a PLA facility,’ said Paul. ‘I’m thinking someone stole a shitload from here. And I’m thinking that the last thing any of us need in our lives is to have the PLA believe that we are the thieves.’
‘Bingo.’
Paul shook his head. ‘How much is here?’
‘I reckon about fi fty million, US.’
‘If they left fi fty million as the crumbs, what the fuck did they take?’ said Sawtell, joining them.
They all looked at each other. Enormity dawning.
‘Well?’ said Sawtell.
Mac didn’t want to exaggerate the haul. ‘Well if they took twenty bars for every one they left…’
‘You saying Garrison and Sabaya are fl oating around out there with a billion dollars in the hold?’ interrupted Paul, clearly alarmed.
Mac shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What I do know is I don’t want to be standing here when the Chinese generals turn up.’
Sawtell and Paul nodded at each other.
‘I need my teeth pulled,’ said Mac, ‘I’ll see my dentist.’
The headsets crackled with urgent yells from topside. They ran up the ramp, troopers leading the way, emerging with M4s at the shoulder, covering one another.
Swivelling to the left they saw three Asian men in suits with their hands up in front of the Black Hawk. The Green Beret who’d been left to guard the helo was yelling at them to get to their knees. The pilot had an M4 at his shoulder too. The guys in suits were reluctant to drop.
Mac and Paul jogged behind, nervous, breathless. The troopers went straight up to the suits. Spikey butted the fi rst one he saw, swinging and landing the black rifl e butt square behind the fi rst guy’s left ear. The guy dropped like a sand bag.
