guttering. Then he got a good swing happening, higher and higher, until he swung his left leg up and grabbed the guttering with his foot and rolled onto the gentle slope of the iron roof.
Mac was panting hard as he leaned back over the guttering.
Johnny catapulted off Ari’s hands and then shoulder and grabbed Mac’s forearm with one hand and the guttering with the other. He swung himself up and joined Mac on the roof.
Staying silent, they moved up the sloped iron to the ventilation roof which stood three feet over the real apex and was clad in glass slat windows. Looking down, they saw a dimly lit warehouse space crowded with children and young women pushed together like battery hens, with sewing machines, tables and overhead spindles forming virtual cages. It looked like a United Nations of Asian women and kids: Cambodians, Thais, Indonesians, Malays and Laotians. There were at least two thousand of them, and by the look of the set-up they all slept and ate there too.
‘Holy shit,’ Johnny mouthed beside him. ‘What the fuck?’
‘Sweatshop,’ said Mac.
‘That’s a sweatshop?’ whispered Johnny.
Mac nodded. ‘When you buy these cheap pants? Comes from a place like this, courtesy of the Khmer Rouge.’
As Johnny muttered homicidal solutions, Mac’s heart leapt up in his throat as he watched an Indo-Chinese thug pushing Jenny along in front of him on the shop fl oor below. The pulse raced in his temples as Mac clocked the thug’s face: it was George Bartolo’s Cambodian mate. The thug had a handgun jammed into the back of Jen’s T- shirt and his right forearm was in a cast from elbow to knuckles.
Grabbing the glass slats in front of them, Johnny pulled back and the whole thing swivelled upwards on a horizontal axle. Pushing their heads through, they looked down at a drop of two storeys to the concrete fl oor, or what you had to do to get your wings in the Regiment and the Royal Marines Commandos.
Johnny crawled through and quietly got his feet over the axle and onto a tiny inside ledge beside the window. Then, as the Cambodian walked past below with Jenny in front of him, Johnny muttered a countdown and simply dropped like a stone, accelerating through the air until his feet connected with the back of the Cambodian’s neck. Both men hit the ground and Johnny rolled away. Mac watched Jenny pick up the Cambodian’s handgun and then check on the fallen thug. Dead.
Johnny pointed to the ventilation roof and Jenny quickly looked up to Mac.
The children who had been sleeping under desks and chairs were waking up while other kids and young women were standing, wondering what was happening. The sound started and grew into a crescendo as the crowded sea of humanity, in appalling states of dress and health, started to ask what the hell was going on.
Mac kept his eyes on a mezzanine offi ce that looked over the sweatshop fl oor. He didn’t want a crossfi re set up that endangered the kids and he trained the Heckler on the window. But he was looking in the wrong direction. A shooter came out of a side door and instantly reached for a gun under his shirt. Mac shot twice, missing on the fi rst then hitting him in the left thigh. The shooter went down as Jen and Johnny ducked in behind a huge box of white fi nished shirts.
Two shooters came to the mezzanine offi ce window, slid it back and started shooting. The children screamed and threw themselves down as Mac tried to even it up. His Heckler was too small to get the range but it forced the shooters back from the window.
In the distance Mac could hear sirens but they were going to be too late, so he stuck his head out and yelled, ‘Ari!’
Mac had two shots left. The shooters came back to the offi ce window and this time Johnny was ready and put one of the blokes on the ground. The other shooter took fl ight down the stairs. At the foot of the offi ce stairs the thug with a bullet in his leg fi red at Jenny, and when she fi red back the thug was joined by a shooter from the offi ce and another from the side entrance. As bullets fl ew through the shirt boxes, Jenny popped up and dropped the shooter still in the offi ce as a thumping sound came from one of the sealed doors until it caved in.
Ari moved into the warehouse, tiptoeing over prone children without looking down with a perfect cup-and- saucer stance and keeping his sight line down the barrel of the Beretta. When the last of the standing shooters saw him and aimed up, Ari dropped him with two shots to the throat. The injured thug on the ground threw down the gun and put his hands up as Jen moved forward, shouting, ‘Hold your fi re! Police!’
As she did, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, in a black T-shirt and yellow boardies, leapt from behind a stack of cloth bolts, grabbed Jenny around the throat and put a gun to her head. Johnny and Ari moved in slowly but stopped when they saw the youngster was upset.
Teenagers could do anything when they were excited. Mac’s mind raced, wondering how he could distract the kid and let Johnny or Ari drop him, but Jenny took the initiative, dropping her gun and letting herself be taken out the side entrance. As the boy turned his face momentarily, Mac noticed a triangular birthmark that moved from the left shoulder and up into the boy’s hair.
Sprinting across the iron roofi ng, Mac slid the last few metres, off the roof, through the air and onto the ground, where he rolled and came to his feet.
The teenager stopped on the clay and grass siding and pushed his gun further into Jenny’s head. Her lips were white, though she looked determined rather than scared.
‘I kill her!’ screamed the kid.
Mac dropped the Heckler and put his hands out to the side, showing the boy his wrists.
‘You the boss now, Santo.’
‘How you know my name?’ challenged the boy.
‘I know Merpati too,’ said Mac, short of breath.
‘You lie! You lie!’ the boy screamed, and shot at Mac’s feet. ‘Merpati is dead! I see!’
‘I not lie, Santo,’ Mac panted. ‘Merpati is alive. I found her and took her to hospital. She’s alive and she misses you, Santo.’
Tears ran off the boy’s face and for a second it was six years ago and Mac was holding the nine-year-old boy down, trying to keep them both alive, his face buried in that birthmark.
Then Santo hardened again. ‘Who send you?’
‘I followed my wife,’ he said, pointing at Jenny, ‘and we have a daughter. A beautiful daughter.’
Santo’s face now ran with tears, his head moving back and forth in denial as he gripped Jen’s throat. ‘I do this job now – I look after business.’
‘No, Santo,’ said Mac gently. ‘You were made to do this by evil men. You are a good boy, mate, and I want to take you back to Merpati and to your mum and dad, okay?’
‘Cannot go back,’ Santo bawled.
‘Yes you can, Santo! Remember I told you that if you did what I asked you, that you’d live?’
Santo’s eyes went wide and he stopped crying. Speaking like he was in a trance he said, ‘And I was quiet, Mr Mac – I did what you say.’
He pushed Jenny away and put the handgun in his mouth, Mac screaming No, Santo! as he pulled the trigger.
They froze in that position as the cop cars fi nally screeched around the corner. Cops fl ew out, radios barking.
Santo sagged to the ground, but there was no detonation – only a click.
Mac walked up to the boy, took the jammed Beretta out of his mouth.
‘You okay?’ he asked Jenny, as she moved in for a hug.
‘Doing better than him,’ she said softly, looking down.
Santo trembled like a leaf, but he was alive.
The police interviews went smoothly for Mac and Johnny, but the Broadbeach Ds weren’t buying Ari’s cover of a salesman. Jenny smoothed that over but the detectives wanted to charge Santo with something, even when Jenny insisted she didn’t want to make a complaint against the boy.
While it was being sorted at the Broadbeach station, Jenny got on the phone to get the infrastructure in place for the slaves, or what some American newspapers had tried to rebadge as involuntary labour.
The detectives had to take Santo into custody, so Mac had watched the boy go, promising him that he’d take him back to Idi.
‘I knew you’d come, Mr Mac,’ said Santo.
