‘Look,’ said Scotty as he smeared the grease on Mac’s shoulder blades, ‘I don’t know if —’
‘It won’t come to that,’ said Mac, buckling a webbing belt over his hips and slipping a condom over the barrel of the SIG before holstering it.
‘Yeah, well,’ said Scotty, his hands shaking as he finished the eye-black. ‘It’s okay for you.’
‘Why’s that?’ said Mac, doing his diaphragm breathing exercises as he reverse-slung the M4 over his shoulders so the muzzle pointed at his left ankle.
‘Well, you know…’ said Scotty, averting his eyes.
Calling Li to the back of the boat, Mac synchronised their watches and gave himself a ten-minute mission clock: after ten minutes, Mac would wait until Li started talking and would take his one hundred and twenty seconds from then.
Holding his G-Shock up to the other two, Mac counted three and they clicked their countdowns at the same time. He felt cold and focused, his mind empty of emotion, his skin a mountain range of goose bumps even as the humidity sat on him like warm dew. He felt fear but not the way he felt it as a teenager asking a girl for a dance at the surf club ball. This fear was a bottled, contained sensation that he used as fuel, and his trepidation was about completing the steps he’d created in his mind, not about pain or failure.
‘See you soon,’ said Mac, leaning backwards into the water on the starboard side and sliding into the ancient shallows of the Mekong.
Mac swam underwater for seventy seconds, emerging slowly into filthy flotsam about fifty metres downriver from Li’s boat. Taking gulps of air as he trod water, assessing the ground, he ducked under again and swam a line that would take him to the starboard side of the cruiser, the side closest to the riverbank. When Li arrived, Mac wanted all the talk to be on the opposite side of the boat.
After two more underwater swims, Mac tore off his face mask and let it drop to the bottom of the river. The cruiser was about fifty metres away and had lights burning on board. Expanding his diaphragm, getting as much oxygen as possible, Mac watched a figure on the upper decks of the cruiser smoking a cigarette just behind the port side of the wheelhouse.
Looking at his G-Shock, Mac saw the countdown had reached 4.11 — he had some time to play with.
Something hit him on the left shoulder blade and he spun around in time to see a grey-bellied rat float by — a welcome change from the more common floaters in the Mekong.
Another flame flared on the starboard top decks of the cruiser. Then the two goons were laughing and joking across the life-raft boxes. They looked like the PLA cadres from the Dozsa compound, their rifles not evident. The countdown hit 3.46 and the goon on the starboard side — the side Mac had decided to target — unzipped himself and pissed into the river.
Slipping under the water, Mac moved closer, using the blind spot directly behind the stern-mounted rudder to bring him into the craft. As he closed on the thick steel-plated rudder he felt the screw churning the water below the heavy steerage planks.
Reaching for the rudder, Mac mentally ticked off the approach stage from his to-do list and thought about boarding the craft without being seen and without slipping onto the prop; the screws on the older boats were under the stern’s hull, and generally weren’t a danger, but total fiasco was always just a slip away.
As his fingers searched for a hold, the air whooshed through his nostrils and he gasped as he was lifted out of the water and thumped head-first into the curved stern boards beside the rudder.
Stunned and disoriented as he sank through the murky waters, Mac coughed up a lungful of polluted water and felt his body go into panic.
Spluttering, his arms thrashing, Mac popped to the surface like a child out of a dream and grabbed for a hold on the hull of the craft. He’d been knocked down the starboard side of the ship, and as he fought for breath he heard the Chinese soldiers yelling and laughing. Digging himself into the slippery, lichen-covered hull as he vomited the river swill, Mac trod water with an egg-beater action, reaching for the SIG as the voices came to the rail twenty feet above.
Pulling the SIG up to his face as his left hand lost traction on the mossy hull, he slipped down again, his feet reaching too close to the spinning screw. With all of his strength, Mac pulled himself back to the surface with handfuls of slimy green river moss. Raising the handgun — comical with its condom over the muzzle — Mac saw the Chinese soldiers pointing at something moving in the water near the riverbank.
Following their gaze and praying they didn’t look down, he saw a pale-coloured Irrawaddy dolphin flip over and playfully swim backwards. The world’s rarest dolphin, trained now to play with European tourists, had tried to give him a ride, not knowing about the crown jewels.
Panting in agony against the hull of the ship, Mac struggled to control his breathing as he watched to see if the beast would come back for another Nutcracker dance. His G-Shock said 1.18 on the countdown as he cursed every Danish backpacker who’d ever encouraged these animals to commune with humans.
The dolphin did its squeaky little bark as it came back for another swim and the peaceful night was rent by automatic rifle fire.
Pressing himself hard against the slippery hull, Mac dug his fingernails into a gap between the planks and waited to die. As the gunfire abated, Mac allowed himself to look over his shoulder, the smell of blood and cordite floating over the oily river making him feel sick.
The dark stain of mammal blood slicked the water twenty feet from Mac’s perch and he could see pieces of shredded dolphin floating away on the current.
The Chinese soldiers laughed and a ciggie butt flew end over end, its glow extinguishing in the blood slick.
Breathing deep for composure and trying to ignore the pain in his groin, Mac moved back to the rudder and looked at his G-Shock. It showed 1.04 minutes until Go.
Chapter 57
Pulling on the boonie hat, Mac holstered the SIG handgun and climbed the rudder — a job made easy by the bands of iron wrapped horizontally around it. Lifting his eyes carefully over the transom he cased a dimly lit lower deck which would house a galley, the captain’s state room and probably a guest state room. He’d had this chat with Li: the crew’s cabins would be below decks and the holds and cargo decks were always forward of the wheelhouse. When locals travelled between towns on these ships, they sat cross-legged on the top decks and on the poop deck at the stern.
The soldiers talked on the upper decks, hidden from Mac’s view. He simply wanted to search the cabins and state rooms. If he was discovered, he’d remove the threat.
Climbing over the railing, Mac eased himself to the warm wooden decking and froze, listening for sounds as the water dripped off him. Tearing the condom off the SIG, he reached to a pocket on the back of the webbing belt and extracted a suppressor.
Moving along the port side of the covered deck, he stepped through an open hatch into a passage that led from one side of the ship to the other with a companionway dropping to the below decks.
Two doors faced the corridor. The state rooms, guessed Mac. Opening the first, he pushed his face in and saw the captain’s suite. A low-watt bulb cast a yellow glow over a functional cabin with a single cot, a wardrobe and a desk.
Shutting it quietly, Mac checked his watch. Forty-one seconds until Li pulled alongside.
Opening the second door, Mac eased into a similar cabin, no lights this time. In the darkness he saw a movement and heard some noises. From the cot in the corner, a man’s voice expressed confusion and then Mac saw him as he turned his face. Pulling the Ka-bar knife from his webbing, Mac jammed his right knee into the man’s chest, slapped his left hand across his mouth and nose and brought the Ka-bar across his throat. Feeling the air leave the dying man, Mac whipped around as he noticed there was someone else in the bed. Aiming his blade at the other face, just inches away, Mac stopped his attack as he looked into big, dark eyes. Adjusting to the darkness, he saw a naked child in the sheets on the other side of the corpse, and as he stood back, realised there was another in the bed — neither of them more than seven or eight years old.