‘ Johnny! ‘
‘Okay, okay. So I’ll tell her I won’t ride along.’
Sighing, Mac realised it was beyond that. ‘Mate, the way she’s talking, I’d prefer it if you did ride along. With me?’
‘No worries,’ said Johnny.
Then Mac texted the number to his wife and tried to get his focus back on Hassan and the mini-nuke.
As they rolled to the base security gate, a military guard with a German shepherd walked down the passenger side of the van, while another came out of the glass box and asked for IDs and weapons. The 4RAR boys were cleared for their bags of guns and ammo sitting in the back but the MP with the dog took Mac’s Heckler and followed them across the steaming-hot tarmac to a large hangar, giving it back once they were handed over.
There were some USAF planes sitting around, including a huge C5 Galaxy hunched over like a drab olive monster. Inside the hangar, Mac was greeted by a bloke in a white trop shirt whom Mac knew only as Don.
After shaking hands, Don pulled Mac into an offi ce where a tech sat at a series of screens. Don was DIA, US Defense Intelligence Agency, and had once been tasked to the US Army Twentieth Support Command, the world’s policeman for illegal use and possession of CBRNE weapons. Now he was the DIA’s liaison guy for the American spy assets in northern Australia and Mac was confi dent he could help.
‘So what are we after?’ asked Don, cheery but focused.
‘See that van out there? There’s an exact same model and colour driving around the Northern Territory with at least three mercenaries in it. I need to fi nd that van.’
Don laughed. ‘The NT’s a huge place, McQueen, case you haven’t noticed.’
‘Yeah, massive,’ Mac replied. ‘That’s why I came to the best.’
‘Shit, man. Most Americans wouldn’t have the guts to come asking for this.’
‘Well?’
Don looked at the techie, who shrugged. ‘Looks like a standard Toyota HiAce,’ said the tech guy, an adult with dental braces. ‘Must be thousands on the roads up here, especially when you consider they convert them to campers.’
Calling Robbo over, Mac eyeballed Don. ‘Mate, it’s not the van, it’s what they’ve got in it.’
Robbo gave Don the radio frequencies for the mission and the American humphed, said they’d try. They’d take a top-down image of the Toyota HiAce, make a diagram model of it and feed it into the NSA’s ground systems in Maryland. Then they’d use their satellite surveillance network to take millions of photos of the Northern Territory which would be instantaneously matched or discarded by the computer banks. Within forty minutes, virtually every white Toyota HiAce on NT roads would be photographed, identifi ed and logged for exact location. And once Don and his team had a lock on all of them, Mac was going to ring the luggage label transmitter, at which point the Federal Police would be waiting and monitoring with their cellular tower intercepts. If things worked properly, they might get an ID of the van without the Hassan crew even knowing they’d been made.
‘Cheers, mate,’ said Mac, and peeled away.
‘No worries, buddy,’ said Don. ‘So what’s in the van?’
‘It’s one of the CBRNEs.’
‘Which one?’ Don shouted as Mac walked across the hangar.
‘Put it this way – if you guys’d used it on Hanoi, you wouldn’t have needed Guam.’
At a hangar further north an Australian Army Black Hawk had been wheeled onto the tarmac and a crew sat in the cockpit going over the switches. Didge parked the HiAce in the hangar and they pulled the black gear bags from the rear door of the van as an army bloke in dress greens approached with a clipboard.
Robbo handed Mac a Kevlar vest and a helmet, and an M4 assault rifl e. Mac took it, checked for safety and load then, attaching his Heckler holster, asked Robbo to give the Feds a radio update.
The call came through on Robbo’s radio once they’d been fl ying south for twenty-fi ve minutes: the Yanks were ready to go. They had seventy-one vans outside the Darwin area and ninety-six on the roads of the Northern Territory. Flying for another eight minutes, they landed at Three Ways junction just north of Tennant Creek, where travellers coming south from Darwin could choose to continue south for Alice Springs or turn east for Mt Isa in western Queensland.
Geographically, Three Ways was almost the centre of northern Australia and had the densest non-Darwin population of white Toyota HiAces, according to the NSA computers.
Mac asked for the radio and patched into the AFP command post in Darwin, telling the techie he was about to call the luggage tag number. The techie said, ‘Standing by’. The Hawk depowered, red dust settling like talc around the helo. Mac selected the number he’d input and hit the green button. There was a good chance it wouldn’t even work, since Dr Gough had been confused about whether the luggage tag transmitter was on global roam. Mac listened to the calling tone while Robbo held his radio set to his ear, shaking his head. They held on for forty seconds and the AFP wasn’t detecting a pick-up. Then Robbo suddenly gave the thumbs-up and was tracing his pen across the plastic covering on the map on his lap. Mac watched as Robbo said yes and yes and then out-fucking- standing, his pen circling an area on the map cover. Radioing Don in Darwin, Robbo gave the coordinates for the luggage tag and asked where the vans were in that area. His face turned into a smile a few seconds later, his pen poised on a point about fi ve miles south of Three Ways.
Robbo whooped and Jacko – the sandy-haired bloke who liked cracking jokes – said, ‘Let’s get hunting.’
CHAPTER 57
As they got closer to the point identifi ed on the map, the Hawk’s pilot banked outwards slightly and circled around the white HiAce parked in the scrub about six hundred metres off the Stuart Highway. It was parked on the side of a landing strip, seemingly abandoned.
They set down in front of a battered shed and hangar with the faded words WAUCHOPE AERIAL SERVICES painted in large letters on plain corrugated iron. The red dust rose as they touched down and Mac and Robbo stepped out and ran doubled over to the hangar, M4s held across the body. It was dark and hot inside, and Mac wiped his face on his shirt sleeve but only succeeded in smearing red ochre across his face. To their left were several old Cessna single engines, two of which had been cannibalised to support the third, an old ‘58 model.
The hangar turned into a dustbowl as the helo depowered and, turning to his right, Robbo acknowledged someone. Mac followed his gaze and saw an elderly man in white overalls, white hair and a can of XXXX in his hand, leaning on the mechanic’s counter staring at them.
‘How youse going?’
‘Not bad,’ said Mac. ‘Looking for some people.’
‘They come in about forty minutes ago,’ the old guy estimated,
‘and then this white Skymaster come in, bought some gas from me, paid in cash and then they all fucked off.’ He burped, looking down into his beer. ‘Bunch of fruitcakes, if you ask me.’
Mac felt the sweat making his back wet under the vest. ‘You meet the people in the van?’
‘Nah, mate,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There were four of them, right? And they sat in that fucking van down there till the Skymaster come in.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘Asian, curry-munchers maybe.’
‘Indian, Pakistani?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah, mate.’ He burped again. ‘All that. They run across and got in the plane, and they looked like oil and gas guys. White overalls, work boots, nice haircuts and this big case -‘
‘Case?’ asked Mac.
‘Yeah. Light green – the size of a suitcase, maybe fatter, but it didn’t look too heavy.’
‘What was the ID on the plane?’
‘Let’s see,’ he said, swirling his beer can. ‘VH-CWB? That sound right?’
‘Who was the pilot – ever seen him before?’
‘Nah. Never been around here, mate. I reckon WA, that’s what I reckoned.’
‘Why?’ asked Mac.
