‘Israelis don’t like the jungle, McQueen,’ said Sammy, ‘and the jungle don’t like them. So what was going on?’
‘Dozsa’s operating up there with a Chinese cadre. They look private but probably PLA.’
‘What happened?’ said Sammy.
‘Dozsa waited, let them get close, then he executed them.’
Letting the field-glasses drop, Sammy sipped the coffee. ‘Mossad on Mossad. That’s —’
‘Scary?’ said Mac.
‘Your word,’ said Sammy, looking away.
Mac saw the look on the American’s face. ‘It’s okay to feel queasy about this guy, but four of us, up there? It might be travelling light.’
‘It’ll be six,’ said Sammy. ‘I hired some muscle.’
‘Military?’ said Mac.
Sammy nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Locals?’
‘Sort of — between these guys and your pilot, the US government might have change left over for lunch.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Mac.
Turning to his backpack, Sammy pulled out a fat envelope and handed it over. ‘Tell Luc he can at least serve tea and biscuits for that whack.’
‘He might find a few beers for this.’
‘So,’ said Charles, joining them, ‘you two come up with a plan yet?’
‘Do some aerial recon with Luc while the rest come in by vehicle,’ said Sammy. ‘There’s a village north of Stung Treng. I’ve rented the second floor of the local hotel.’
‘Cover?’ said Charles.
‘Forest biodiversity project for the World Bank,’ said Sammy. ‘Verification audit for the Sam Ang forest region — it’s across the river from Stung Treng.’
‘We official?’ said Charles.
Sammy smiled. ‘Got the lanyards in my bag.’
Charles frowned, bit on the arm of his sunnies. ‘I don’t want to storm this place. The Aussie girl’s in there and I don’t want this Mossad maniac blowing the whole thing sky-high.’
‘It’s a stealth assignment, Chuck,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m not racing out of my trench at these bastards, and neither is McQueen.’
Staring at Sammy and then Mac, Charles nodded slowly.
‘Okay, no heroics, no tough-guy scenes,’ he said, looking at Mac. ‘Remember, we answer to bureaucrats and they would rather we fail than create embarrassment.’
Mac maintained a straight face. ‘I turned forty last week, okay, Charles?’
‘Maybe it’s not just you,’ said Charles. ‘Sammy, make sure these mercs get the message, okay?’
A smashing sound came from the stairwell and then Luc was in the room, panting and scared.
‘What’s up?’ said Mac, standing and unhitching the Colt from the back of his waistband.
‘Down there,’ said Luc, trapped between a gulp and a pant.
‘Who?’ Mac cocked the Colt and moved to the stairwell, Sammy behind him.
‘Help me,’ said Luc, turning and running towards the end of the long room.
Turning around the edge of the stairwell, Mac looked down the carpeted stairs and saw no one. Moving down one stair at a time, he listened for sounds and heard men’s voices.
‘Let’s go,’ Sammy whispered over his SIG.
They got to the door at the foot of the stairwell. Mac’s temples were pounding. He didn’t know if he was ready for this after the violence he’d seen recently and his hands were swimming and his breath was shallow as Sammy moved beside him.
Looking through the glass panel in the door, Mac couldn’t see anyone in the ground-level reception area.
‘Shit,’ said Mac, hissing it out. The last time he’d burst through a door, Jim Quirk had been murdered in front of him. Now he had the pilot running for his life. Who was down here? The Israelis? The Chinese?
‘On three,’ said Sammy.
Counting it out, Mac opened the door, put his handgun in a cup-and-saucer grip and strode into the lounge, sweeping the Colt from ten o’clock to two. Sammy joined him as they scanned the empty reception area, wondering what had spooked Luc.
Relaxing slightly, Mac felt his breathing normalise.
‘Where’s —’ Sammy stopped short.
Turning to the American, Mac felt the gun muzzle behind his ear and dropped the Colt, put his hands in the air.
They stood for one second before the man behind them spoke.
‘You don’t remember too good, McQueen,’ said the South-East Asian voice with a faint American twang. ‘I told you — you pull on me, you’d better kill me.’
The sweat felt like ice on Mac’s forehead as the air-con turned the room into a fridge. That voice came from a decade ago — from East Timor, when Mac was being stalked by Kopassus intel and he’d needed a hired gun to protect him.
‘That you, Bongo?’ said Mac, trying to sound confident but squeaking slightly.
‘When I have the gun,’ said Bongo Morales, ‘I ask the questions.’
Moving in front of Mac, Sammy had a huge smile on his face.
‘Didn’t know you two were acquainted,’ he said, retrieving Mac’s Colt and handing it to him. ‘Bongo’s coming north with us.’
A large, dark man in military shorts and a T-shirt moved into the room through the front doors. Mac recognised him immediately: a former Aussie special forces soldier named Didge.
Nodding a greeting at Didge, Mac turned to Bongo. ‘So you’re the muscle?’ said Mac, stashing his gun.
‘Got brains too, McQueen,’ said Bongo, chewing gum. ‘You wanna stare at the pipes, that’s your problem, brother.’
Chapter 44
The Friendship made good time through the clear skies out of Phnom Penh. Luc turned to Mac and shouted that they were passing over a small town and from here they’d be flying over the Chamkar Leu district of Cambodia, a vast forest wilderness that stretched from north-east Cambodia into Laos and northern Thailand. Under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, Chamkar Leu was part of the infamous ‘region 42’ of the Central Zone — a part of Kampuchea that even Pol Pot did not entirely control.
Mac craned his head between the pilot and engineer and looked down on the expanse. To his right the glossy brown snake of the Mekong flowed north — south and extended as far as he could see, not crossed by a road until the Pakse Bridge, a hundred miles north in Laos.
It had been to these forests that Pol Pot’s cadres had originally fled in the days when they were just a bunch of Maoist revolutionaries who executed anyone who couldn’t recite the doctrines. After the Vietnamese Army invasions of 1979–80, it was into the Chamkar Leu that the cadres loyal to Brother No. 1 withdrew, turning the entire area into a KR haven of child prostitution, opium production and slave-trading; it had taken the United Nations more than a decade to bring it under central governance.
As they flew over the last vestiges of civilisation, Mac stared into the forest racing past below and remembered the night he’d got drunk at that cadre compound in the forests north of Meanchey with the KR strongman called the Duck: the kids in those cages, some as young as four; the pretty young women; the young mothers with kids; the oddities, such as twins, amputees and dwarves. The smell of warm skin and dry concrete.
He remembered the small details, like the Duck playing Wham’s greatest hits on a Sony portable cassette player; like the bar set up along one wall of the main building and the small stage in front of it. The Duck had dragged a fourteen-year-old boy named Ran out of a cage and made him dance sexy, pistol-whipping him until he swivelled his hips. The song was ‘Wake Me Up’ and the Duck wanted Ran gyrating when the band sang before you go-go.
Maggs had alibied him out of the ensuing murder investigation. But Mac’s conscience was clear. When the Duck had stepped out the door to take a satellite phone call, Mac had looked that scared, humiliated fourteen-year-old boy in the eye. Something had flashed between them, and — as if in a dream — Mac had walked to the bar, grabbed the Duck’s Beretta 9mm automatic, and given it to Ran.