‘They’ve got the road on optical trips,’ said Bongo, meaning light beams that triggered when people or vehicles passed certain points. ‘Wonder what else they got?’
‘I don’t want to wonder,’ said Mac.
A scuffle sounded outside, a loud screaming and male grunts. Bursting out of the cabin, Mac and Bongo ran into Didge, who was holding a young girl by the scruff of the neck.
‘Found her beside the long-drop,’ said Didge. ‘Trying to get on a bicycle.’
Rattling off some Khmer at her, Bongo nodded and turned to Mac. ‘She lives with her family, between here and the river. She rides down once a day on her bike to deliver eggs and vegetables, sometimes fish.’
Talking with her again, Bongo translated. ‘She had a cup of tea with the guards and then the guns started. She escaped out the back window.’
‘The one I missed,’ said Didge, spitting.
‘Does she want to make fifty US dollars?’ said Mac.
‘Hang on, McQueen,’ said Sammy. ‘What’s this about?’
‘We can’t get to the camp by road without Dozsa picking up the optical trip wires — we’ll need a local to take us the other way,’ said Mac.
‘How do we know there’s another way?’ said Sammy.
‘This is South-East Asia,’ said Bongo, lighting a smoke. ‘There’s always another way.’
Chapter 47
They ran west through the forest, the half-moon dappling the footpad with enough light to see ten feet in front. Didge and the girl — Tani — went ahead, setting a pace that Bongo, Sammy and Mac struggled to maintain as they slid across mud and ducked low-hanging branches. Carrying backpacks filled with food and ammo, they wore Kevlar vests and carried their M4s across their chests. It was a cross-country tab of the kind that Mac had been forced to endure in the Royal Marines, and for some reason always in Scotland. But this was different: the humidity of the forest made their skin wet beneath their vests and the monkeys were much louder in the Cambodian forest than the deer ever were in the glens.
‘That Didge,’ said Sammy, panting as they forded a creek. ‘He ever slow down?’
‘No,’ said Mac. ‘But if there’s any trouble in this bush, he’ll kill it long before it comes near us.’
After almost two hours of jogging along the jungle footpad, Mac followed Bongo up an incline and found Didge and the girl waiting and eating.
Falling to the long grass of the clearing, they caught their breath as the moon passed in and out of cloud. Finding a banana and a muesli bar in his pack, Mac ate up and then finished a bottle of water. It was almost 10.45 and he wanted to tab until midnight and then lay up, let everyone have a nap before the fun part started.
‘Another hour, then we kip for two hours,’ he said.
‘Camp’s just over the hill,’ said Bongo, who’d been talking with Tani.
Looking around for Sammy, Mac saw him crouched twenty metres away, whispering into a satellite phone. Moving towards him, Mac ate an apple and waited.
‘Charles,’ said Sammy, ringing off. ‘Says the Hawk feeds are already coming through in the infrared range.’
‘Yeah?’ said Mac.
‘There’s several aircraft on the airfield,’ said Sammy. ‘Navy analysts are saying they’re Dash-8s and extended Fokker F-27s.’
‘There were none there this morning,’ said Mac. ‘What are they doing?’
‘The imagery is consistent with the aircraft being loaded and dispatched in fast rotations.’
‘Rotations plural?’ said Mac. ‘How many have taken off?’
‘Navy got the Hawk up there at twenty-one thirty and they’ve already logged three — there’s two being loaded and another just came in to land.’
‘Christ,’ said Mac. ‘What are they loading?’
‘Can we just get down there?’ said Sammy.
The knoll looked down on Joel Dozsa’s illuminated compound, the lights making it clear which building was being unloaded and revealing the road that led to the airfield.
Through his binos, Mac could make out a series of trucks backing into the loading bay of the long building that dominated the compound. Large white packages the size of wool bales were slid across rollers by the Chinese workers, from the loading bay into the trucks. The trucks were driven to the airfield, reversed up to the rear cargo doors of the planes — which now waited in a line — and the decks of the trucks were hydraulically raised to the height of the doors and the planes loaded.
Adjusting his field-glasses, Mac could see each plane taking between seven and ten of the bales, depending on the configuration of the plane. Waiting to be loaded was a North Star plane that looked like the one Mac had flown in with Luc.
The noise from the turbo-props echoed in a din around the valley, which suited Mac. Moving the Leicas back to the compound, Mac saw what looked like a barracks and, beside it, a large house. Further out, facing a large parade ground, was a machinery shed.
‘That house, between the factory and the barracks,’ said Mac, as Sammy raised his own field-glasses.
‘Yep?’ said Sammy.
‘I’ll bet that’s Dozsa’s house — and McHugh’s current address.’
‘Looks like the whole party is happening at the factory and airfield,’ said Sammy. ‘We should come around the back, past the barracks, and storm the house.’
‘Storm it?’ said Mac, dropping the Leicas. ‘I thought we were retrieving McHugh?’
Sammy hesitated. ‘Sure.’
‘We won’t be retrieving anyone, Sammy, if we start kicking down doors, making it like the movies.’
‘Yeah,’ said Bongo, joining them. ‘Let’s isolate the Israelis, and when we know where they are, find the captive.’
‘Okay,’ said Sammy.
‘Our lead,’ said Bongo, moving away with Didge.
Returning to his backpack, Mac knelt and pulled out the Colt and a webbing containing four mags for the M4.
‘So, where my money?’ said Tani, giving Mac a start. He’d forgotten she was with the party.
‘Sammy?’ said Mac, looking for the American, but he’d disappeared.
‘You promise,’ she said, and Mac realised she wasn’t a kid — she was at least eighteen.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Mac, slapping his pockets. ‘I did promise.’
Looking at what he had on him, Mac found one-dollar notes and fives, but no tens. The only note he could give her was a US hundred-dollar bill. Reluctantly, Mac handed it over, reminding himself to get it back from Sammy.
‘This one no good,’ said Tani, doing the theatrical frown of South-East Asia.
‘Hundred dollar,’ said Mac. ‘I only promise fifty.’
‘Not this,’ she said, handing back the money, shaking her head.
Holding it to the moonlight, Mac wondered what her prob- lem was.
‘Bongo,’ he said, gesturing for the Filipino to leave his intense chat with Didge and join him. ‘Tani doesn’t like the hundred-dollar bill. What’s the problem?’
Bongo and the girl spoke for thirty seconds and then Bongo grabbed the greenback.
‘Tani says they make these down at the camp,’ said Bongo. ‘Make more of these than birds in the jungle.’
‘How —’ began Mac.
‘She been down there when her dad delivers food supplies,’ said Bongo. ‘Says there’s a factory in that long building — factory that makes money.’
‘What is this place? And where’s Sammy?’
Standing, they walked to Didge, who was checking his rifle. ‘Seen Sammy?’ said Bongo.
‘Went that way.’ Didge hooked his thumb in the direction of the camp. ‘In a hurry.’
‘No kidding,’ said Mac, turning to look at Tani. ‘You know your way around that camp?’
‘Yes, mister.’