Counter Attack (32 page)

Chapter 58

The soldier’s hand went to his side arm and Mac drove his open hand at a point just below the man’s nostrils.

Head snapping back like Howdy Doody, the soldier’s knees buckled under him and Mac pounced, slashing his Ka-bar knife as the adversary went down. Raising his arm instinctively the soldier took the knife blow across the forearm, which opened up and spurted blood like a cherub pissing.

Rolling away the soldier swept a low kick and hit Mac in the back of the right leg, making him fall forwards and lose the knife as he hit the wall. Transferring his weight onto his right shoulder, the soldier lashed out with a left foot at Mac’s face, which he deflected by shrugging his shoulder and tucking his chin behind it.

Jumping on the soldier, Mac hit him in the heart and followed through with a dropping headbutt, but the soldier turned his face at the last second and Mac’s forehead bounced off the boards. Stunned momentarily, Mac watched an elbow fly into his mouth and then the soldier’s fingers were in his hair and a knee was pumping into his face, smashing his nose and splitting his cheek before Mac punched the Chinaman in the nuts and rose to his feet with a left uppercut and a jab to the bloke’s throat.

Falling backwards onto his arse, the soldier saw a chance to grab his pistol and Mac tried to retrieve the M4 from its position on his shoulder blades. As the muzzles came around at each other, another soldier walked into the passageway, reaching for his own gun. In the confusion and the darkness, Mac took his chance and put bursts of three-shot into each man. A bullet sailed past his left ear and he ducked reflexively, too slow to have avoided it.

Blood splattered the walls and cordite filled the confined space as Mac gasped for breath. Blood ran off his face, and his right leg – already injured from a gunshot wound – quivered beneath him. It wouldn’t hold after the adrenaline wore off.

The noise had been deafening and Mac heard the sound of boots clattering and voices raised in panic. Turning, he couldn’t find the kids. Peering into the cabin, he saw them sitting in the corner.

‘Come on,’ he said, gesturing with his hand. The girl shook her head but the boy shrugged free and ran to Mac.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw a shadow moving around the corner and into the passageway. Given the layout of the vessel Mac reckoned that since he’d killed four of the ship’s complement, there wouldn’t be more than six left: if you took away the captain and engineer, whom he assumed were non-combatants, Mac should have four soldiers to deal with.

As the shadow shortened and a small scrape sounded around the corner, Mac opened up with the M4, tearing out chunks of the woodwork and putting holes in the far wall. A yelp sounded and Mac knew he’d either hit someone or they’d got a face full of splinters.

‘Now,’ said Mac, snapping at the girl, and she jumped up with hands over her ears and ran to Mac.

Moving with the kids onto the poop deck, Mac kept to the cover of the veranda, suspecting one of those soldiers would’ve stayed on the top deck and would have a gun trained on the open area below.

Standing in the shadows, Mac looked out over the railing: forty metres to the river bank, at least three soldiers with assault rifles and Mac having to haul two kids through the water. He didn’t like his chances, even if they could get into the water without taking a bullet. The choice was between running and dying, or fighting and dying.

Voices yelled down the companionways and a board squeaked above them. Holding his breath, Mac waited. The squeak came again, this time right above his head and Mac pointed the M4 at the source of the noise, pushed the selector to full auto and pulled the trigger. After four seconds, he slung the rifle over his shoulders and looked at the kids, who had their hands cupped over their ears.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, running forwards with a hand holding each child’s bicep. As they got to the railing, he leapt over the top rail and the kids jumped with him, the boy hitting his knees on the top as they flew through the air.

The river sucked them down as they hit, a swifter current created between the ship and the river bank. Mac held onto each bicep, trading off their panic at being held with the larger problem of losing them in the Mekong River at night.

Surfacing, they gasped for breath and kicked for buoyancy as they looked around. The current had taken them beyond the ship, which seemed to have slowed. Looking along the starboard side they’d jumped off, Mac saw a soldier limping along the top deck, trying to get a sight on Mac and the kids. Another soldier trotted around the forward cargo hatches with a Chinese AK-47 and took a standing marksman stance on the fo’c’sle railing over the prow.

‘Under again,’ said Mac, making a theatrical display of taking a deep breath.

They dived again as the bullets plopped in the water. Kicking sideways towards the bank, Mac counted twenty seconds before he felt the boy struggling, and they surfaced again.

Looking around, using all his energy to keep the three of them afloat, Mac saw the ship pointing at them. The Chinese were trying to run them down.

Looking to the bank, Mac saw another thirty metres of swim- ming – twenty-five if they were lucky. The ship wouldn’t want to go too shallow, but the river vessels had flat bottoms and didn’t worry too much about grounding.

‘Go,’ said Mac to the two kids. ‘Swim.’ He pointed to the river bank.

Dog-paddling ineffectually, the children took off at a pace that would see them run down in twenty seconds. Reaching for his M4, Mac shrugged it off his back and into his hands as the bullets hit the river again. Lifting the rifle, he took aim as he trod water and shot at the soldier on the fo’c’sle. He missed but the slap of a bullet under the soldier’s feet made him lurch backwards and abandon his post for a few seconds.

‘Go – swim!’ Mac yelled at the kids over the sound of the approaching ship and the clatter of assault-rifle fire.

The limping soldier joined his buddy on the fo’c’sle rail and Mac aimed a shot at his heart, pulling the trigger. The gun jammed and Mac ducked under the water as the two shooters opened up on him.

Dropping the M4, Mac unholstered the SIG and unscrewed the suppressor. He estimated the ship was five seconds from running over the top of him.

Rising to the surface, SIG in cup-and-saucer grip, Mac let off three shots at the fo’c’sle rail but the shooters were gone. He fired another volley at the window of the wheelhouse.

Gunfire echoed from the vessel and an almighty blast of light and sound emanated from the far side of the ship.

Turning for the kids, Mac struck out. If they could aim high enough into the current the ship might miss them. Closing on the children, he saw them standing; they’d reached the muddy shallows but Mac wanted them to keep swimming – a person moves twice as fast across water as they do through mud.

As they clambered through the mud like salamanders, Mac rolled onto his back to take another shot at the soldiers. If they were going to be run down, it would be now.

Looking up, trying to find a shooter, Mac saw the ship had turned away and the shooting was happening inside the vessel.

Clambering up the bank, legs weak, Mac led the kids into the bush as the ship surged back into the navigation channel, its old diesel thumping in time with the gunshots.

They weren’t clear yet. If Mac was on that ship, he’d have a boarding vessel over the side by now to chase his prey into the jungle.

‘We’re going to be okay,’ said Mac to the drenched kids as they stopped behind a tree well inside the tree line. The boy’s jaw clattered and the girl’s wide eyes expressed fear. They swapped names as they caught their breath – the boy was Kai and the girl was Chani, and they weren’t siblings: they were neighbours, from the same village in the Chamkar.

They were all naked, he had no food or water to offer them and he had no plan except that he needed to round up Urquhart and Lance. He’d been responsible for the safety of a couple of kids eight years earlier, and he’d screwed it up. Mac didn’t want another round of that weighing on him.

Making a check of his webbing belt, he confirmed he had about ten rounds left in the SIG. The knife was gone, as was the M4.

Pulling the boonie hat off his neck, where the drawstring had held it, he gave it to Kai and they fashioned it into a fig-leaf arrangement. Taking off the webbing belt, he helped Chani make it into a modesty garment.

‘This way,’ said Mac, pulling up his sagging undies and aiming inland for the highway.

By the time they hit Highway Seven – the south–north trucking route from Phnom Penh into Laos – Mac could barely walk. He’d told Lance and Urquhart to get to the road and stay put and he hoped that they’d followed his advice because he was in no mood for finding a couple of office guys in the jungle.

Kai and Chani had found him a branch that Mac tried to use as a crutch but his right leg was creating pain that ignited fire rockets at the periphery of his vision.

In the military they used to say of problems: ‘fix it or fuck it’. That is, find a solution or shrug it off. So Mac was manning it out, trying to stay conscious, trying to keep going for the kids.

Looking north and south along the highway, they watched the trucks passing with little chance of flagging one down. In Indochina, hijacking of road, sea and river commerce was a profitable activity among the local gangsters. A Cambodian trucker would as soon stop for an armed man with tiger stripes on his naked body as a media mogul would set up a porn channel on Iranian TV: it simply wouldn’t be worth his while.

They walked north, keeping to the footpads that fringed the major roads in Cambodia – the modern world had arrived but most country folk still walked or rode ancient bicycles.

Mac’s small moans of pain had been rising in volume and, after ten minutes of walking, Kai grabbed his left hand. It was functionally useless but as a gesture it meant a lot.

A branch snapped and Mac pushed Kai to the ground and dived into a shallow ditch. Bringing the SIG up to a shooting position, Mac hissed at the kids to come in behind him, staying low to the ground.

They scrambled up behind him and Mac peered into the jungle, the sounds he’d picked up getting drowned out for a few seconds as three trucks went past in convoy.

‘Macca – that you?’ came a voice from the bush.

‘Davo?’

‘Yep,’ said the voice.

Standing, his heart fluttering, Mac limped to the centre of the footpad as three locals slid past silently on their World War II–era pushbikes.

‘You told us to stay put,’ said Dave Urquhart, walking into the footpad, Lance behind him. ‘What now?’

‘Get to Kratie,’ said Mac, his head swimming.

‘Thanks for the swim,’ said Urquhart with a sneer. ‘Thought this was a rescue.’

‘Come on, Dave,’ said Lance, his rock-star image not surviving his dip in the Mekong. ‘Be glad we’re out of there.’

Mac leaned on the branch, trying to get air into his system. ‘You’ve both got shirts – the kids get one each.’

‘Fuck off, McQueen,’ said Urquhart, still smarting from the gibes about Len Cromie and Churchie, which was a big Anglican school in Brisbane and Nudgee’s bitter rival. ‘We’ve got more serious things to think about – like where the fuck are we?’

‘Kids need clothes,’ said Mac, his words sounding far away, the pain smothering him.

Lance unbuttoned his expensive adventure-traveller shirt and handed it to Chani.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Urquhart, pulling off his wet polo shirt and handing it to the shivering boy.

‘I knew a man lived inside you,’ said Mac.

‘Mister,’ said Kai as he slipped into the oversize shirt and pointed to something up the road.

Mac squinted into the darkness while Kai gabbled at Chani.

‘He say, there a well up there, mister,’ said the girl.

‘Water?’ said Lance. ‘Christ, I’d die for a drink.’

Crossing the highway, they entered the open area with a well and trough in the middle of it – a throwback to the days when Highway Seven was a farmer’s donkey track.

They drank and washed themselves, Lance and Urquhart being particularly dehydrated after their incarceration in the engine room.

As Mac scooped water into his parched, sewer-filled mouth, a Toyota 4x4 slowed and then skidded to a halt as it overshot the lay-by. The white reverse lights lit up and then the Toyota was reversing at high speed.

Motioning the team behind the trough, Mac crouched behind the concrete hide and aimed his SIG. Ten shots and a fifty per cent chance of the thing jamming after such a drenching. Against what? A vehicle full of Dozsa’s boys? The Chinese cadre? He didn’t feel up to it.

Pulse pounding in his temples, Mac cocked the handgun and aimed it at the Toyota’s passenger door as the vehicle stopped in the gravel.

Standing slightly for a better stance, Mac counted his shots in advance: two in the passenger door, run to the rear of the vehicle, create visual confusion and then drop the driver as he got out of the 4x4 and hope there wasn’t more than one in the back seat.

The door opened and Mac squeezed the trigger. The shot cracked like a stockwhip as the passenger ducked back into the vehicle, the SIG putting a star in the windshield.

Through the haze Mac thought someone was screaming
Macca
but he didn’t know why. Then he was falling, fainting, and his face hit the dust and gravel. He was warm now – he could sleep for a thousand years.

Chapter 59

Lying face down on the hospital bed, Mac flinched as the doctor took the hot compress off the bullet wound in his calf and pushed stainless-steel forceps into the hole.

‘You get choice,’ said the doctor, in clear English. ‘Fast and painful, or slow and painful?’

‘Just do it,’ said Mac, not in the mood for medical humour.

Besides the pain, Mac was dreading having to speak with Jenny. Some husbands’ burden was to explain their way out of a game of golf that turned into an all-nighter at the nineteenth, or a business lunch that had ended up at a nightclub. Mac would have to explain how he came to be shooting at his wife in a highway rest stop in central Cambodia.

There was a glugging sound and the nurse leaned in, and then there were strong hands wrapped around his knee and ankle as the doctor grunted and cursed under his breath. After a final sucking sound like a plunger in a blocked lav, the doctor was standing beside Mac’s face showing him a small, dark slug in the grip of the bloody forceps.

‘That been in you forty-eight hours?’ said the doctor, a young man who claimed to have been educated in Perth. ‘Amazing that you walking around.’

‘I wasn’t,’ said Mac. ‘I was kissing dirt by the side of the road.’

The nurse moved in with a trolley filled with bandages and immediately started on a bed bath for the wounded leg.

‘Yeah, well, you should have been to hospital when you are shot, Mr Davis,’ said the doctor. ‘Can die from the infection – especially you swimming in the river.’

‘I’ll be using mouthwash the rest of my life,’ said Mac, still tasting that foul river-swill in his mouth. ‘Where’re the kids?’

‘Kids are fine,’ said Jenny, moving into the curtained area as the nurse dried off the wound.

‘Great,’ said Mac. ‘What are you doing up here, anyway?’

‘Dodging bullets from the father of my child,’ said Jen, dark ponytail sitting on her right shoulder.

‘Sorry,’ said Mac, hoping the nurse didn’t speak English. ‘I had a big night. And you?’

‘Captain Loan is following a lead in Stung Treng,’ said Jenny, all her weight on her left hip, arms crossed. ‘I’m interested. You might be too.’

Pausing to assess the hidden trap, Mac proceeded carefully. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah – we searched Quirk’s apartment in the old BP com- pound in Saigon and came up with a laundry receipt from a place called the Water Dragon Guest House. It’s on the east side of Stung Treng.’

‘So it’s “we” now?’

‘Observing,’ said Jenny. ‘Chanthe spoke with the owner of the Water Dragon and she said she remembered a regular Australian visitor – called himself John Black but John Black looks just like the photograph we showed her of Jim Quirk.’

‘Jim – in Cambodia?’

‘He used to stay at the guest house every second weekend. He’d take a suite but would be in and out of the suite rented by what she called Turks.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. She later found out the Turks used to stay in a place out of town, across the Srepok, but had stopped going there after a room was blown up and some other Turks were assassinated.’

‘So why would I be interested?’ said Mac, as the bandages went on his leg.

‘Because I called Maggs, asked him about it,’ said Jenny.

‘Harley?’ said Mac.

‘I was wondering if he’d seen any Turks through Phnom and he tells me they’re probably Israelis – retired Mossad guys.’

‘Well, that’s interesting.’

‘He told me he’d seen you, Macca,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you had a drink with Maggs and didn’t talk about the Mossad guys – that’s precisely what people like you talk about.’

‘Steady, my sweet,’ said Mac, trying to work out how many people were listening. The annoying thing about cops was how open they were.

‘Well?’

The nurse finished and left the curtained cubicle.

‘Yeah, he told me there was a bunch of ex-Mossad hard-ons charging around the place,’ said Mac. ‘So what?’

‘Maggs noted the ex-Mossad vehicle in Phnom – it matches the Turks’ LandCruiser at the Water Dragon Guest House,’ said Jenny.

‘Okay.’

‘This Israeli vehicle is a green LandCruiser Prado. A similar vehicle departed the scene of Jim Quirk’s murder in Saigon.’

‘Common car,’ said Mac.

‘Patrons at the Mekong Saloon saw a team of Turkish or Israeli men go up the mezzanine stairs that night,’ said Jenny. ‘They also saw a blond off-duty soldier – Aussie bloke. Know who that might be?’

The curtain was pulled back and Captain Loan walked in. ‘Mr Richard, so nice to see you.’

‘Thanks for the ride, Captain.’

‘I saw what the doctor pulled out of your leg,’ said Loan, smirking. ‘The bookselling must be tough – anything you’d like to talk about?’

‘It’s a Cambodian matter,’ said Mac, rolling over to sit upright on the edge of the bed. His leg was heavily bandaged, his head spinning with the airless hospital atmosphere and the new round of painkillers.

‘Agent Toohey, I really wanted to talk with you,’ said Loan.

‘Yes?’ said Jenny.

‘The children – I asked them where their village is and they say it’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ said Jen.

Loan nodded. ‘They were rounded up from their village in Chamkar forest two days ago.’

‘By who?’ said Jenny.

‘Slavers,’ said Loan. ‘Mr Richard got these kids off the ship, but there’s a hundred more in the hold.’

Mac’s backpack was waiting at the Palace Guest House reception when he wandered in. Picking it up, he saw the clock behind the desk – almost midnight.

Leading the way, Mac showed Lance and Urquhart up to his suite and told them they could share the second bedroom.

‘Bathroom’s down the hall, boys,’ said Mac, ducking out.

He’d seen the lights in Scotty’s room, and he knocked gently on the wooden door in case he woke him and gave him a fright.

‘Who?’ came the slurred question.

‘Davis – Southern Scholastic.’

The door swung inwards and Scotty peered out, his Glock along his leg, a cigarette in his mouth.

Taking a seat in the spacious living room, Mac accepted the beer Scotty dug out of the fridge.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ said Scotty, cracking a new beer for himself and chaining a new smoke with a trembling hand. ‘Christ, I thought we’d lost you.’

‘That you with the flash-bang?’ said Mac, enjoying the cold beer but not in the mood for drinking.

‘Nah, Li threw that,’ said Scotty, ciggie hand shaking as he gulped at the bottle of Tiger. ‘I was too busy shooting the sky and shitting my pants.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did,’ said Mac.

‘What happened back there?’ asked Scotty, sucking too hard on the smoke. ‘We could see Urquhart and Lance crawling up the bank – where were you?’

‘Found a couple of kids on board,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t seem right to leave them.’

‘They can’t have been in more danger than you,’ said Scotty, polishing off the beer and standing to get another.

‘They were in bed,’ said Mac, fatigue pushing down on his eyelids.

‘Should have left them,’ said Scotty.

‘In bed with a grown-up,’ said Mac.

Shaking his head slowly, Scotty resumed his seat and gulped the beer. ‘What was the first thing I taught you, Macca, when you arrived in Basrah at the end of the war?’

‘You told me to make myself priority number one because no other bastard was going to do it for me.’

‘Not bad advice, right?’

‘It’s my eleventh commandment,’ said Mac.

‘So what the fuck are you doing putting your life at risk for a couple of kids you meet on a ship?’ demanded Scotty, stress tightening his lips. ‘You don’t think you’ve bitten off enough already?’

‘Well,’ said Mac, shrugging, ‘no other bastard was looking out for them.’

‘Don’t get old and sloppy, Macca,’ said Scotty, pointing with his ciggie hand. ‘Priority number one, okay?’

Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw it had just hit midnight – there was an appointment he wasn’t going to make. Taking the Nokia from his backpack, he found a received-call number and pressed it.

‘Just a sec, mate,’ said Mac.

A satellite phone connection would normally take twenty seconds to start ringing, but Mac’s call connected immediately. Then the distinctive Hungarian-Israeli voice came on the line.

‘Joel, it’s your favourite Australian,’ said Mac.

‘Ah, Mr McQueen – such a surprise.’

‘Where the bloody hell are ya?’ said Mac. ‘We had a date, remember?’

‘Um, yes,’ said Dozsa.

Mac noted the hesitation. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘I’m at the Stung Treng wharf and I’ve got your memory card.’

Dozsa laughed. ‘Have you really, Mr McQueen?’

‘So where are you?’

‘I’m precisely where I need to be, my friend,’ said Dozsa. ‘I hope you didn’t swallow the river water – there’s cholera about right now.’

The line went dead, and Mac stared at the phone.

‘Dozsa?’ said Scotty, exhaling a plume.

‘Yeah,’ said Mac.

‘Knows he’s lost the hostages?’

‘Yep,’ said Mac.

‘If we have the hostages and Sandy’s got the memory card,’ said Scotty, ‘I’m ready to fold the tent.’

‘What about McHugh?’

‘I’m debriefing tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know then. It might be a matter for the federal cops.’

‘Okay, boss,’ said Mac, gasping slightly as he stood and stretched. ‘Time to inspect the back of my eyelids.’

‘Don’t want another beer?’

‘Nah, mate,’ said Mac as he reached the door. ‘You’re doing the job of two men.’

The nightmare pushed him up and up, faster and faster, towards the light at the top of the mine shaft and then he was exploding out into the daylight and he yelled slightly as he realised his Nokia’s screen was blasting out an orange light, the phone buzzing around on the bedside table.

Feeling his heart thump against his sternum, Mac lay back on the pillows as he grabbed the phone.

‘Yep?’ he said, throat dry. His G-Shock on the table said 4.12 am.

‘Hi, honey, it’s me,’ said his wife. ‘I need your help on that ship.’

‘Ah, yeah,’ said Mac, rubbing sore eyes. ‘I’ll talk to you in the morning.’

‘What was the name of the ship?’ said Jenny.

‘No name,’ said Mac, disoriented. ‘A number.’

‘What was it?’ said Jenny.

He hated it when she was like this.

‘Um, I think it was . . . K 4217, or 4217 K. Something like that.’ Mac gently massaged his temples. Being pestered for small details took him back to his military days when special forces people were forced to recall every detail, from a hotel room and cell phone number to a map coordinate and an aircraft rego. Ninety per cent of special ops were for reconnaissance and an operator who couldn’t make a detailed report was virtually useless.

‘Macca, what was the number?’

‘Shit, mate,’ said Mac, lured into a fight. ‘It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m tanked on Percodan.’

‘Sorry, hon,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

‘Right,’ said Mac. ‘It was K 4217. Where are you?’

‘Don’t worry – get back to sleep.’

‘You’re not going after them?’ said Mac, sitting up. ‘Who’s with you?’

‘Got given two local cops,’ said Jen, voice cracking up.

‘What?’ asked Mac, the connection dying.

‘Local cops,’ said Jen through the static.

‘There’s soldiers on board that ship,’ said Mac, but the connection had been lost.

Limping into the kitchen of the suite, Mac grabbed a bottle of Vittel. Drinking it down, he looked out the window over the sink, saw the insects flying around the streetlight. They circled so fast that they ended up chasing themselves.

He didn’t think he would ever be able to tame his wife. She got something in her head and she moved like a locomotive. Mac had first met her in the Aussie embassy colony in Manila, where she was the ice queen of the group; good-looking, funny, smart and confident, but aloof and distrusting. She worked in the federal police intelligence taskforces but her specialty was tracking Australian paedophiles into South-East Asia and busting the brothels and trafficking rackets that supported the child-molesting industry. Jenny was relentless and she wasn’t scared of men, didn’t back down from them, and, being a country girl, was better at blokes’ humour and fast retorts than most men.

Certain kinds of men didn’t like her lack of respect and she constantly clashed with the police and consular hierarchies, accusing them of being soft on sex slavery. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the Indonesian-American-Australian teams chasing the sex slavers were mostly female, which had Jenny and her crew known as the ‘Dyke Squad’ among men in the embassy colonies.

Mac had fallen in love and then married her. He hadn’t taken the easy way by being with Jen, but he had followed his heart.

Letting himself breathe, Mac focused on the swirling insects as he tried to put Jenny out of his mind. He realised what had annoyed him about Dozsa’s attitude on the phone. He showed no interest in the card; didn’t demand it, didn’t try to threaten or renegotiate.

Why not?

The insects chased themselves around and around and he realised that he, Grimshaw and Sandy had been doing the same thing.

Moving out into the hallway, Mac knocked on Scotty’s door.

He waited forty seconds before the slurred voice asked what the fuck he wanted.

‘Scotty, it’s me – open up.’ Pushing into the smoky room, Mac shut the door and turned to his old mentor. ‘Mate, it’s still on – we’re not going anywhere.’

‘What?’ said Scotty, half asleep but fully annoyed.

‘It doesn’t matter if Sandy or Grimshaw has a card that can gain them access to the North Korean C and C systems,’ said Mac. ‘Dozsa has a backup copy sitting somewhere.’

‘What?’ asked Scotty again. ‘Then why have we been chasing this fucking thing?’

‘Quirk had accessed it through his Top Secret clearance, and downloaded it onto an SD card,’ said Mac. ‘We assumed there was one copy, one chip.’

‘Yeah?’

‘But when I rang Dozsa tonight, it didn’t worry him that we’d retrieved Lance and Urquhart, that he wasn’t going to get the card,’ said Mac. ‘In fact, the hostages weren’t at the Stung Treng wharf – they were nowhere near it.’