Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike (52 page)

Someone from MI6.

Didge worked on Mac’s face with Dettol and a wet fl annel. Mac’s left eye was already closing up and his mouth was bleeding.

Eying Jenny’s mobile phone on the living-room table, Mac picked it up and tried Johnny.

‘Where are you, Macca?’

‘At the house,’ said Mac, almost weeping. ‘Jenny and Rachel are gone.’

‘Mate, Mari came here but we couldn’t get over to Broadbeach

- they’d closed the road.’

‘I think Hassan’s got them. We have to fi nd them.’

‘I’m coming over,’ said Johnny, and hung up.

Panting with stress, Mac took the SIM out of his zapped phone, loaded it into Jenny’s phone and tried it. He opened the ‘contacts’ fi le which was now fi lled with the contacts from John Short’s phone, and found a landline number with a 75 prefi x, meaning the Gold Coast.

He wrote it down, and then dialled a number in Canberra. The female operator answered and Mac said, ‘Sentinel.’

He was asked another question, and said, ‘Limelight.’

Mac asked for an address search and he gave her the number from Short’s phone. She got back to him twenty seconds later, the whirring of the listening posts and security measures creating a weird time/

space disequilibrium.

He wrote down the address and his adrenaline surged back in buckets. He knew the Surf Largo Apartments - they were just around the corner.

The address he’d been supplied with was the fi rst fl oor of the Surf Largo and there was a stairwell at each end. They split up - Mac with the two-shot Heckler and Didge carrying the spare Beretta from the hall table.

Mac was feeling better now. Didge hadn’t just cleaned him up

- he’d also lifted him back into the game, made him think that these bastards were there for the taking.

His heart pounding in his head and his left eye closed up, Mac pushed into the stairwell, which was empty and well lit. He took his time up the steps, crowding in on each switchback to give himself the best angle, and his enemy the worst.

At the fi rst-fl oor landing, Mac eyed the spring-loaded fi re door that pulled back towards him. There was no safe way to go through it, he just had to take a breath and step through, hoping he’d create more surprise for the other guy. He breathed in, breathed out, then pulled the door back and stepped into the hallway. It was carpeted in chocolate brown, the walls were taupe. The hall was empty and he moved down it, looking for number fi fteen.

Mac watched as the fi re door at the far end of the hallway opened and Didge stepped in with the Beretta. Mac jogged towards him and as the commando looked up from under his helmet, a handgun extended out of the door closest to Didge. The handgun popped and lifted, fl inging the Aussie commando against the wall, blood spraying up the taupe paint.

Yelling, ‘
No!
‘, Mac ran for the shooter, who’d stepped into the hall. Surprised by Mac’s presence, the shooter turned. Mac stopped and shot twice, missing with the fi rst but hitting the bloke in the face with the second, from fi fteen metres away. The shooter’s head sprang back and the man Mac knew as John Short was dead before he hit the ground. Mac was now out of rounds. Hearing a sound, he looked up and saw Jen, with Rachel in her arms. Relief fl ooding his body, Mac stood and made for them, but he froze as a man’s face stared over Jenny’s shoulder with a smile, a SIG Sauer resting in her ear.

‘Come in, eh McQueen?’

‘Sure,’ said Mac, looking into the sneering face of Danny Fitzgibbon.

Jen and Danny walked backwards very slowly and Mac followed them, forcing himself to stay calm, focused, alert. The door sprang closed behind them and they stood in the living area of a two-bedroom apartment. Danny pushed Jenny and Rachel towards Mac and he held both of them. Rachel’s eyes were huge and dark and Mac made himself give her a smile. If they had to go down they’d do it as a family, like Australians, telling the bad guys to go fuck themselves while the water rose around their ankles.

‘Well, let me see, Fitzgibbon,’ said Mac. ‘Gave up on the spying game and started picking on women and children, huh?’

‘Spare me the snide asides, McQueen.’

‘I guess it’s much easier than having to deal with people like me or Freddi or Ari, right? I guess water always fi nds its own level.’

A shot whistled past Mac’s head and buried itself in the plasterboard.

‘So what do you want, Danny?’ asked Mac.

‘Well,’ sniggered the tall Pom, ‘I’m glad you asked that, old man.’

Mac looked him in the eye, felt Jenny move in closer with Rachel.

‘You see, this has all worked out rather badly, thanks to you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes - fuck you!’ snapped Danny, momentarily losing his composure before collecting himself. ‘Why?’

‘Why what, Danny?’ asked Mac, trying to keep him talking. The guy was upset and might just make a mistake.

‘I don’t understand the Australians. They sideline their best spy, and then, when they bring him back into the game, he’s a due
diligence
guy for their export fi nance program?’ said Danny, shaking his head.

‘I couldn’t believe it when you turned up, McQueen. As soon as I knew you were at the Shangri-La, I’m thinking,
This is going to turn to
shit - McQueen just won’t let this go
.’

‘Well,’ said Mac, ‘that was the gig. There were questions.’

‘It was an NIA, for God’s sake!’ screamed Fitzgibbon. ‘It’s a lay-down - the politicians want it and the fi eld guys are supposed to sign off. That was your
role
.’

‘It was a handover of uranium-enrichment codes -‘

‘Oh shut up! I mean, for Christ’s sake, McQueen. Sumatra? Singapore? Noosa? Are you out of your mind?’

‘What was I supposed to do, Danny?’

‘You were supposed to spend two weeks at the Lar, making ten or fi fteen thousand a week - whatever they were paying you - and put everything back on expenses. No one would ever have asked about it, and we wouldn’t be here.’

‘There’d still be a blast in Surfers, killing thousands of people.’

‘Oh dear, you’re breaking my heart.’

‘Where’s Hassan?’ asked Mac, expecting the ringleader to be there.

‘Getting the transport, old chap. That’s why we camped across from the park,’ he said, nodding at the foreshore grassed area just behind the Broadbeach sand dunes. ‘Just keeping some insurance, make sure I’m allowed to get my taxi, know what I mean?’

Shaking his head at what a dickhead this bloke was, Mac asked,

‘So what about Diane?’

‘Ha!’ laughed Fitzgibbon cruelly. ‘Oh boy - when I found out it was one of our own doing the wife role, I had a small chat with our English Rose.’

Mac felt his pulse rising. ‘And?’

‘I thought she might want to stay out of prison, given her role in the
Golden Serpent
affair, stealing all that gold from the Chinese.’

‘Yeah, so?’

‘And she told me to fuck off.’

Mac laughed at that and Jenny pushed closer to him.

‘She said,’ continued Danny, in a cruel mimic of how English women of a certain class speak, ‘
I’d rather go to prison than owe you anything.
‘

‘She had to die for that?’ asked Mac.

‘But she didn’t, did she? That afternoon at the hospital? She kicked me out after you left. Told Carl to keep me away and then her old man arrived from Ottawa - and, well, you know how the toffs are, right, McQueen? They’ve had her locked up tight in the compound ever since.’

‘You like that feeling, Danny? You like that you had two women shot?’

‘Well, it would have suited me if Vi hadn’t been there, but -‘

he did the
shit happens
shrug, ‘what can you do?’

‘You can start by not being a traitor for a bunch of bombers.’

‘You know, McQueen - it started off the other way.’ He turned slightly to the window behind him, looking for a helo, and then turned back. ‘We helped Hassan’s crew heist the bombs bound for South Africa to stop them falling into the hands of those Marxists, right? I mean, shit, can you imagine a bunch of Bantus running around with their own nuclear capability?’

‘But?’

‘But it became so lucrative to keep the Pakistanis out of trouble, I mean how can you say
no
to all that money, right? So one thing led to -‘

‘Money?!’ challenged Jenny, now turning to Fitzgibbon. ‘Tony and Vi were our friends, they were top people. And you had them killed for money? Screw you, mate!’

‘Hey, watch it, squaw!’

‘
Watch it?
You’re nothing better than a corrupt cop, that’s what you are. A person who’s no good at his job so he takes the easy money to undermine the whole show. Screw you!’

Fitzgibbon lost his jauntiness, raised the SIG at Jenny while Rachel looked at Mac. ‘Well, well, McQueen, you had a bird like Diane on a string, and you go for this - what do Australians call it? - this piece of work?’

‘Like she said, Danny.’ He put his arm around Jenny.

‘How do you think that happened, eh Jenny?’ laughed Danny. ‘He walks away from Diane and gets you?’

‘He got lucky!’ snarled Jenny.

‘So,’ said Mac, still wanting more. ‘How did you fi nd us?’

Fitzgibbon laughed. ‘That would be telling, eh, old man? Let’s just say that all bureaucracies leak simple information -‘

‘You already knew Jen’s maiden name.’

‘Yes,’ sniggered the Englishman, ‘but it took someone with a brain to let me know that Jenny’s old cop friend now had a law fi rm on the Gold Coast.’

Mac sighed. The family trust that owned their home had Sian’s fi rm as the registered address.

‘Atkins?’ asked Mac, almost not wanting to hear the answer.

Fitzgibbon laughed. ‘Yep, you can thank Marty, but he was unwitting. Poor fellow had no idea what was going on.’

There was a tapping on the window and the Englishman turned to see a shape against the night sky. Mac grabbed Jenny and Rachel and pulled them down and to the side as the window exploded inwards, glass shards bouncing off his back. When he raised his head, the window was gone and Danny Fitzgibbon was a lump of meat on the rapidly discolouring carpet, part of his head now missing.

Sitting up, the glass fell off Mac as he looked out the jagged window frame, where the large form of Johnny Hukapa hung upside down like a bat, a sawn-off shottie in his hand.

‘Gizza lift, willya, bro?’

Getting to his feet, Mac lifted Jen and Rachel up from the ground, shielding them from the sight of Danny Fitzgibbon as they moved to Johnny, whose right ankle was strapped to the railings of the apartment above.

‘How’d you fi nd us?’ asked Jenny.

‘There was an address on your kitchen table. That
was
for me, wasn’t it?’

Didge had lost his left ear, a chunk of his neck and a lot of blood.

Johnny and Mac got him onto one of the beds in the apartment and wrapped his head in a sheet, laid him down and hoped he’d regain consciousness. Jenny hit the phone and persuaded the air ambulance to come. When it landed in the park three and a half minutes later, Johnny and Mac carried Didge out to the helo on a litter made of a bedspread. Jenny wanted to be with Mac before she went back into the house, so Johnny said he’d accompany Didge on the fl ight.

They said goodbye and Mac felt so embarrassed that when he tried to thank his friend, no words came out.

‘Take it easy, bro,’ said Johnny, giving him a thumb shake and then touching chests. ‘You’re a warrior, mate.’

And then he climbed into the helo.

Sarah worked in well with her cousins and her sister, and Johnny’s son James. There was a TV and a DVD player in the Chevron Island house, and Pat and Felicity took turns bringing the kids cordial drinks and biscuits while they watched The Wiggles. There was a real Christmas tree in the corner with presents under it, and Mac was busy wrapping up more in the spare bedroom with Pat McQueen.

‘You’re lucky with Jenny,’ said his mother quietly, not looking at him. ‘She’s going to be fi ne with Sarah.’

‘I know, Mum. She’s amazing.’

‘So are you, darling,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’m proud of you.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘A girl needs a dad. And Sarah and Rachel are going to enjoy having each other in their lives.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Mac.

They fi nished the last present - Mac doing the wrapping, Pat tying the ribbon - put them all under the tree and walked outside to where the extended clan was sitting down to eat in the back garden under the frangipani trees. Mac took a seat between Jenny and Pat and marvelled at the set-up. An old cop buddy of Frank’s called Bobby Seavers had inherited a house on Chevron Island behind Surfers Paradise but never used it. On hearing that Frank’s kids were living in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, Bobby had put out an open invitation to his old friends to use it.

Frank came over from the barbecue with the plate of meat. He’d hardly changed since Mac was a kid in Rockie. Still wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt with a pair of teal slacks. Still had those boxy wrists and piercing pale blue eyes that missed nothing. The receding, thinning blond hair was greying and swept back straight off the face, and Mac could see what he’d look like himself in twenty-fi ve years.

‘Get your laughing gear round that lot,’ Frank drawled as he put the chops, steaks and bangers on the table.

‘Oh, Frank! Please!’ said Pat. ‘What will Felicity think of us?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he muttered as he headed back to the barbie to take his apron off and grab his beer.

Pat made a face at Felicity and they both giggled.

Frank stood at the head of the table, the citronella wafting over them, and raised his glass. On Christmas Eve the McQueens took the opportunity to make their toasts and Frank started with his usual: ‘To all the angels who made it and the devils who didn’t.’

Jenny toasted Johnny and Tony and Vi, Mari toasted Jenny for busting the slave sweatshop, and Pat asked them all not to forget Sarah’s mum and Felicity’s daughter, who was still recovering in Jakarta. Mac raised his glass to Gary - who hadn’t made it - and Didge, who was alive but in Southport Hospital for Christmas Eve and probably a long time beyond. Frank reminded them that it was Queensland cops who, in the end, had bagged Hassan Ali in a stolen car somewhere up north on the Burnett Highway. Huck raised his beer, pointed at Ari, and said, ‘Here’s to Ari - the fi rst boyfriend Marama’s had who doesn’t stutter when he meets me.’