Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike (21 page)

‘
Jenny!
‘ yelled Mac.

She turned, froze and stared at Mac, who gave her the look, but she didn’t run as he’d hoped.

George moved in and stood too close to Jenny, hands on his hips.

She turned back to face him while he made a show of looking down her muslin shirt and letting his fat tongue run along his bottom lip.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s our little oinker.’

As Jenny stood her ground, staring George in the eye, something welled in Mac. Pride and fear.

‘George is it?’ said Mac, keeping his hands where the Thai could see them, though he felt the silencer go in harder behind his ear.

‘What’s it to you, pig-lover?’ snarled George, not taking his eyes off Jenny.

‘Forget him, George. This is you and me,’ said Jen.

The cocaine skank muttered something and her hand went to her face. Blood fl owed freely down her wrist.

‘Those Dunns or Lamas?’ continued Mac, nodding down at George’s silver-tipped, red and black boots.

George fl inched for a split second, wanting to get vain about his fancy footwear but quickly snapping back to the hard-man.

‘Are you
relating
to me, eh, cop-fucker?’ George shifted his gaze to Mac, his bottom lip full and wet like a spoiled child’s. ‘Fuck’s sake, mate, I spent six years in fucking Woodford being related to every day

- now
you’re
a fucking shrink too?’

‘Leave him out of this, George,’ said Jen, but Mac wanted eye contact, wanted to goad George into a comment that would make his wife snap. It wasn’t entirely risk-free, but a simple diversion was all he had to work with.

‘Sorry,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t mean to insult you with the Charlie Dunn thing. They’re Tony Lama, right? Couldn’t be anything else.’

George took his eyes off Jenny again, shifted his weight around her and eyeballed Mac. The drug lord’s eyes had that extreme paranoia that too much cocaine produces; he loved that someone had noticed his fi ve-thousand-dollar boots, but he suspected there was a piss-take in progress.

In slow motion, Mac watched George reach into his pants, coming out with a large stainless-steel clasp knife.

‘You think I’m a joke, eh, pig-fucker?’ said George, opening the knife.

‘Leave him, George,’ said Jenny fi rmly as the knife came round to her heaving chest.

‘Nah mate,’ winked Mac. ‘Just spotting the boots. Or maybe they’re those Korean knock-offs. Been to the Penang Markets lately?’

George’s eyes narrowed as Mac leaned forward slightly, hoping the Thai would lean with him, get him off-balance.

The Thai leaned.

‘So, oinker,’ George said to Jenny, his eyes now homicidal. ‘This must be little Rachel’s dad? Cheeky cunt, isn’t -‘

That’s all George got out before Jenny hit him in the mouth with a fast right hand. Mac swung up with his left hand, spun and pulled the Thai’s right gun-hand down, twisted it anti-clockwise. Whisking his right hand down, Mac grabbed the silencer and wrenched the handgun back on the Thai’s forearm as fast as he could, breaking the Thai’s fi nger and tearing his wrist tendons. The Thai dropped to his knees and, twisting the Thai’s gun-hand, Mac pushed the silencer right down past the forearm, put all his weight into it, breaking the Thai’s wrist joint and another fi nger as he went. The whole manoeuvre was over in two seconds and the Thai fell sideways, in shock.

Mac threw the gun over the rear fence and turned to see the clasp knife spinning through the air, Jenny throwing a side kick at George’s left knee joint and the knee collapsing inwards as Jen followed through with a right elbow across the bridge of George’s nose. Blood sprayed everywhere as George went down, Jenny kicking him in the balls before he hit the ground. As Mac reached her, Jen kicked the drug dealer’s chin, snapping it back. Jenny was going for another kick when Mac grabbed her around the waist, lifting her as her foot snapped out at a point two inches short of shattering George’s jaw.

‘That’s enough, mate,’ said Mac as he pulled her away, her arms and legs still fl ailing.

‘Fucking let
go
of me!’ she screeched. ‘Let
go
!’

Mac put her down as she swung a reverse-elbow at his head and turned on him. Eyes ablaze, nostrils fl aring, Jen tried to get around him to have another shot at George.

‘It’s over, Jen. Let’s move,’ he rasped, heaving for air.

Jenny looked into him as her breath came ragged and hoarse like a cornered animal. ‘Can’t threaten a girl’s family, Macca. Not how it works,’ she said, then turned and stomped into the night.

Mac surveyed the scene as he caught his breath. His training had different imperatives to Jen’s, like: don’t leave a trail, don’t get caught, don’t draw the cops, don’t give a government anything to go on.

He looked at the coke skank, blood smeared around her mouth and chin. She looked back at him with drugged blue eyes, shaking all over despite the warmth of the night.

Mac looked down at George, who was unconscious, and the Thai, who was weeping and writhing on his knees, his right arm mangled.

The girl pulled a weird narcotic smile. ‘Shit, man - that your wife?’

Mac shrugged, wondering if he should fi nd that gun and wipe it.

‘Fucking awesome,’ nodded the skank.

Mac walked the babysitter home, only half listening as she chattered on about which senior cert subjects she was taking, the uni entrance marks she needed, which university she wanted an offer from and what career she was hoping to follow - all the stuff they loaded onto seventeen-year-olds these days. At her door Mac slipped the girl two twenty-dollar notes, thanked her and went in search of the nearest bottle-o.

When he got back to their townhouse, Jenny was on the back balcony, slugging on a VB, staring out over the trees that fronted the roaring sea. ‘I spoke with Frank. He’s sorting it,’ she said softly, looking at him.

Mac nodded, not quite understanding how it worked between cops. All he knew was that Frank had contacts in the Queensland Police and if he’d told Jen to sit tight and let him do the running, then that was probably the way to go.

Jenny said she had to step out, get some things, but Mac had beaten her to it. He threw the smokes and the lighter on the balcony table. Jenny mouthed the word
thanks
but didn’t look at him.

‘More beers in the fridge,’ he said, the adrenaline still washing out of him.

Jen tore open the soft pack, pulled a cigarette out of the ragged silver paper and lit it. When Jenny was stressed or unhappy, she smoked and drank. And she did it alone. Mac didn’t want her walking around in this state - all it would take would be one young stud getting fresh with the
darlin’
or
sweetheart
and next thing Mac’d be getting a call from the cops.

‘You okay?’ asked Mac.

‘Right as rain,’ said Jenny, staring into the distance.

‘Sure?’

‘Girl’s gotta do, Macca,’ she said, blowing a plume of smoke straight up into the night air. ‘Girl’s gotta do.’

It was 4.48 am when Mac was woken by Rachel’s burblings, her signal that she was ready for a new day. The fi rst hint of dawn streaked the sky over the Pacifi c as Mac lifted her out of the cot and walked her through to the kitchen, changed her nappy and put her in the highchair. Giving his daughter the warmed-through bottle of formula, Mac ate a banana and they watched Fox News together.

Rachel drained the bottle with enthusiasm and when she’d discarded it and her little legs were starting to kick with impatience, Mac switched the menu to a small bowl of mashed pears he’d heated up.

The news anchor said there were problems in Pakistan which were spilling into Afghanistan, and the White House seemed to be distancing itself from General Musharraf, Pakistan’s president. Mac snorted and Rachel stopped chewing and stared at him, big dark eyes trying to work out where Dad was at.

Mac smiled at her and thought about how the Indians, Russians and Israelis - not to mention a few Australian diplomats and spooks

- had been trying for years to get the Americans to stop treating Pakistan like a protected species. Pakistan’s intelligence service had created and funded the Taliban in the early 1980s with the approval of the CIA, ostensibly to create an anti-Soviet counter-invasion force.

But the Taliban, its Pakistani masters and some of the CIA handlers had evolved into what could only be described as a massive heroin syndicate.

Mac had watched some very smart, totally committed men and women walk away from a career in the Agency as it slipped from bad to worse. People didn’t get a fancy degree and choose government service over private wealth to become facilitators to drug dealers, slavers and arms barons. You didn’t go into the spook life to be a guardian angel to the Pinochets, Noriegas and Saddams.

And now that the wheels were falling off Pakistan’s openly corrupt system, the CIA was walking away with a supercilious smile on its face, attentions now focused on getting the State Department to start bringing Burma in from the cold and inoculate its junta against criminal investigations for heroin traffi cking. Mac reckoned within two months there’d be a concerted push via global media outlets

to rehabilitate the junta as a necessary ally in the War on Terror. You could forget Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s accurate portrayal of Rangoon being
one of the worst regimes in the world
, because by the time those speechwriters and ghosters from Langley were fi nished, Burma’s fruit-salad brigade would look like a cross between Clark Kent and Sister Immaculata.

Mac turned off the TV, put a John Fogarty CD in the stereo and started cleaning up while Rachel banged her spoon on her highchair table to the beat of ‘Centerfi eld’. Starting with the outside decking, he emptied Jenny’s ashtray and brought her empties inside before putting the garbage out the front. Then he packed the dishwasher, wiped the benches and did a quick clean of the kitchen and breakfast/dining area lino fl oors. Jenny was many things, but houseproud was not one of them, and since Mac was raised by a working mother, he took cleaning, cooking and laundry as a given. Jenny never mentioned their housework arrangement to anyone, even as a compliment to Mac. Aussie girls seemed to have an instinctive grasp of how the male ego worked.

There was a blue current-model Ford Falcon sitting by the kerb as Mac walked to his silver AirTrain Connect car. The driver was waiting but Mac kept his black leather document satchel rather than handing it over.

‘Morning, Mr Davis,’ said the driver, smiling as he opened the passenger door to the Holden Calais. ‘Getting an early start?’

Mac gave him a wink as he slid in, then held his hand up as the bloke went to shut the door. ‘Just a tick, mate.’

Mac got out and walked to the Falcon, knocked on the driver’s window and waited as the glass came down. There were two male cops in the front seats, in dark suits. The driver was late thirties, had a round face, full head of black hair and a dark cop moustache.

‘Help you, sir?’ he said.

‘Watching out for her?’ said Mac, nodding at the townhouse which looked uninhabited in the dark of early morning.

‘And you’d be Mr McQueen …’ He said it slow, wanting to assert his authority.

‘Correct,’ said Mac, putting out a hand.

The cop looked him up and down and decided to take Mac’s hand. ‘Doug Fletcher. Just keeping an eye on Jen, you know, with that Bartolo prick causing dramas.’

‘Good stuff. What’s their go?’

‘Laying a complaint against the AFP,’ the cop shrugged. ‘Usual shit.’

‘All these brutish women wandering around -‘

‘- streets aren’t safe for hard-working criminals.’

Mac nodded. ‘Who’s the Thai?’

‘He’s Cambodian,’ said Doug, ‘and he’s trouble, that’s who he is.’

The AirTrain Connect car dropped Mac at Robina station and he walked straight onto a carriage containing one person - a middle-aged woman with a large green suitcase in the luggage enclosure. He sat three seats behind her, his back against a bulkhead. On his right the sun was nudging over the Pacifi c, a sight Mac never tired of.

Back in Rockie as a teenager, Mac and his mates would head out for Great Keppel Island during the holidays, sleep on the beach and spend all day snorkelling and spearing fi sh. Waking up at six am as the sun crested the Pacifi c was something you never forgot, and Mac allowed that sun to warm him again as the train stopped at Nerang and a bunch of rowdy Pommie travellers staggered on, drunk. There must have been a win to a footy club overnight because they were talking about a goal, and when one of them grabbed a bloke’s cap and started throwing it to their mates, there was a wrestling match with the bloke who wanted his hat back.

Mac saw the woman in front of him fl inch. He got up, sat beside her, started talking. Her name was Minnie and she was fl ying to London to see her daughter, who’d married a Scottish lawyer and was eight months pregnant. The Poms saw Mac’s move and calmed down. Mac smiled to himself. In about twelve hours’ time they’d just be coming in to land at Changi, wishing to God they’d got some sleep the night before.

Mac got off the train at the domestic airport terminal in Brisbane and paused at the head of the stairs that went down to the terminal entrance. He pretended to check his phone, wanting everyone on that train to be in front of him. When they’d fi led past, he lowered the phone and used the elevation to recce his approach to the airport building. The action was just starting to warm up at the set-down area, with all the business and government types being dropped off for the morning shuttle to Sydney, Canberra and Cairns. Everything looked okay and he strolled down from the raised station and went into the concourse.

Tony Davidson was exactly where he’d said he’d be: in the Qantas Club lounge on the fi rst fl oor of the building. Mac fl ashed his Qantas membership card to the concierge, grabbed a cup of coffee and a crois sant and moved over to where the windows looked out on the tarmac.

When Mac sat down, Davidson barely looked up. ‘Macca,’ he said through a mouthful of bacon and eggs.

‘Tony. Good fl ight?’

Davidson sat back, wiped his mouth and lifted his cup of tea for a sip. ‘Can’t complain - slept most of the time.’