‘You lead.’
Panting behind the tall machinery shed, Mac regained his composure as they surveyed the ground and Bongo chatted to Tani. The growl of propellers and groaning hydraulics filled the valley.
‘She says the last time she came here, a few days ago, there were guards at the rear entrance of the barracks.’
Following Bongo’s gaze, Mac saw the rear steps of the barracks building, with no guards.
‘What’s that?’ said Didge, pointing. ‘Behind the house.’
Didge’s eyesight was acute: there was a small movement through the trees, about sixty metres away, in the shadows of the main residence.
‘That Sammy?’ said Bongo.
They craned to see, but the movement didn’t repeat itself.
‘Leave her here,’ said Mac. ‘Let’s look at the barracks.’
Moving along the wall of the machinery shed, Mac stopped at the entrance to it and realised the entire front section was missing.
‘Look at this,’ whispered Bongo.
One half of the shed was a hangar, containing a silver-grey MH-6 helicopter, its size and bubble-covered cockpit making it readily identifiable as the Little Bird reconnaissance helo used by the US military.
At the other end of the shed was a fleet of Toyota LandCruisers and a Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck.
Jogging across the dirt towards the barracks, Mac joined the other two at the rear steps. Hiding in shadow, they listened for movement but all they could hear was the commotion from the factory and airfield.
‘Didge, you on point; McQueen and I will cover.’
‘Copy,’ said Didge, sticking his face out beyond their hide. ‘On my three.’
Counting it out, Didge slipped around the corner and up the six or seven stairs to the back door of the barracks as Bongo and Mac covered the approaches.
‘Door’s unlocked,’ said Bongo, and Mac skipped up the stairs. As Bongo passed through, a crashing sound came from the direction of the house through the trees.
Pausing, Bongo and Mac stared at one another in the dark. Then the shooting started, from a single source — no responding fire. Voices screamed and bursts lit up the house, the windows looking like a TV was flashing on and off inside. It sounded wrong.
‘Let’s move,’ said Bongo.
Pushing into the dark of the barracks, Mac realised they were in a vestibule, an area deliberately separated from the dormitory. Tani had been right — there had been guards stationed here, because this was the stockade. Every military barracks had one.
Slipping slightly, Mac felt his bad knee give way again, the pain erupting in the joint. A hand held him up and he realised he’d slipped into Bongo. Beneath them, on a chair, was a Chinese soldier with a dark grin across his throat. Mac had slipped in the blood resulting from Didge’s handiwork.
His pulse going haywire, Mac found his feet again and followed Bongo towards a door that now swung open. Stopping behind Bongo, he looked over the Filipino’s shoulder and saw a cell. Didge was kneeling on the floor, whispering encouragement to a blonde woman as he used the guard’s keys to undo her manacles.
She sobbed, her crying getting louder, and Bongo stepped further into the room.
‘Name’s Bongo,’ he said, voice low but friendly as he held her by the biceps. ‘John and Margaret sent us — your childhood cat was called Sadie, a silver chinchilla whose favourite meal was the eels you caught in the creek.’
The woman blubbered and launched herself into Bongo’s arms.
‘That would make you Geraldine McHugh,’ said Bongo. ‘I’m here to take you home.’
Nodding for Didge to hold her, Bongo whipped off his back-pack. Mac had wondered at the overstuffed pack and now he saw the reason for it as Bongo pulled out a spare Kevlar vest and eased McHugh into it.
Turning for the door, Mac tried to block Bongo. He wanted to stay close to McHugh: there was a debriefing to go through yet, a detail Bongo didn’t have to concern himself with.
‘Where to now?’ said Mac, still panting slightly.
‘Phnom Penh,’ said Bongo.
‘Saigon suits me better,’ said Mac, regretting it immediately.
Bongo’s SIG was not pushed in Mac’s face like it would be in a gangster movie, but it was pointing at Mac’s throat and it had Bongo Morales on the other end of it.
‘Out of here, right now, with my client — that suits me, brother,’ said Bongo. ‘So you either swim with this, or you swim against.’
Gulping, Mac nodded and stood aside. ‘Remember our deal — I get to debrief with the Americans.’
‘The Americans?’ said McHugh, coming alive. Her voice was raised and Bongo swapped a quick look with Mac.
‘It’s okay, you’re safe,’ said Bongo, staring at Mac and gesturing for Didge to follow with McHugh.
The way Bongo had said okay was a veiled warning to Mac and he decided not to push the American angle. As they moved to the back stairs of the barracks, sliding in the blood and trying to stop McHugh reacting badly to the corpse, they paused. Across the dirt, people ran from the house, one limping, a little girl running for her life. Two bodies lay dead on the ground.
‘What?’ said Mac, seeing a hit, not a rescue.
People shouted and ran up from the factory while a man walked among the bodies, checking them with the toe of his boot. The man looked up and stared at the four of them.
‘It’s Sammy,’ said Bongo as they saw his face illuminated by the house lights.
Sammy started jogging towards them, M4 held across his body. His boy scout demeanour was long gone — now he ran like a trained killer.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Mac, trying to understand.
But the conversation was over. The first shots from Sammy’s rifle had slammed into the door above McHugh’s head.
Chapter 48
Sammy Chan leapt sideways behind a tree as Didge fired back at the American. Getting in behind Bongo and McHugh, Mac slipped off the porch, using Didge’s covering fire to escape along the lee side of the barracks building.
Stopping at the corner of the barracks, Mac aimed at the tree and let off three-shot bursts at the trunk as Sammy tried for a sighting around it.
‘Didge, your turn,’ said Mac, pausing from firing as soldiers ran towards them from the long factory building a hundred metres away.
As Didge ran around the corner, Sammy reappeared from his hide and let go a long burst from the M4 carbine, dropping Mac flat to the ground as the building’s corner exploded in splinters of wood.
Finding his feet as Didge grabbed him by the collar, Mac accelerated towards Bongo and McHugh, who were inside the machinery shed. Sprinting after them, still struggling to comprehend what was happening, Mac watched the greenish lights come on in the Little Bird’s cockpit — Bongo was going to fly out.
‘No,’ said Mac, knowing where this was going to end.
Didge stopped and turned back the way they’d come, knelt and fired several three-shot bursts as Mac continued running.
The whine of a helo starter motor began, its beeping alarm piercing the night, and Mac heard the slow whoosh of a rotor turning as he stopped and covered Didge. Through the partially lit stand of trees that separated the barracks from the machinery shed, Mac could see the compact form of Sammy Chan tucked in behind a tree trunk; a magazine dropped on the ground and the click of a new one being rammed home sounded.
‘Go,’ said Mac, turning and running up behind Didge as Sammy’s full-auto assault ripped through the trees in a right-to-left scything of foliage. Grunting, Didge twisted in the upper body and dropped his rifle as a bullet whipped through the top of his outer bicep, one of the areas not covered by the Kevlar vest.
‘Okay?’ asked Mac, dropping to his knees to reclaim the rifle as Didge backed up behind a tree, his left hand clutching the wound.