Placing his finger on his lips, Mac made the international sign for silence as he backed towards the door, the white sheets turning black. Pulling the key from the inside lock, he locked the door from the outside, gasping for air as he looked at his watch: eighteen seconds.
Sliding down the companionway to the below decks, he moved through a smaller passageway which opened into a large aft cabin with a central table and double bunks built around it: a stinking rat-hole with white T-shirts and undies hanging from the ceiling, also known as the crew’s wardroom.
A bulb glowed in the upper bunk to Mac’s right, and pushing the laundry out of the way with the SIG’s suppressor, he found himself looking at a young Chinese man lying on his back, reading a PlayStation magazine. Mac shot him once in the forehead and followed with a shot to the temple. The suppressor reduced the noise to not much more than the sound of a Coke can being opened.
Sound came from the other side of the wardroom, and Mac moved carefully through the hanging underwear and around the central table, finding a Chinese man who’d rolled over to get some sleep.
Kneeling softly on the cot behind him, Mac withdrew his Ka-bar and sliced quickly through the carotid artery, clasping a hand over the man’s mouth and nose as he did so. The man’s head jerked slightly and a muffled yelp came from his lungs before he went slack in Mac’s hands.
Above decks, the conversation had started with Li, and Mac could hear the throb of the two Evinrudes against the hull. He reset his G-Shock to a one-hundred-and-twenty-second mission clock and left the room.
Outside the wardroom, another hatch led down a shorter companionway to the engine room — a dark, cramped space stinking of diesel and bilge and containing an old engine that had been cut to idle: Li’s story was working.
Pulling the hatch shut, realising he still had the rest of the ship to search, Mac paused. Was there someone behind that condenser? Pushing back into the engine room, he pulled the SIG to a cup-and-saucer stance and, peering into the darkness, he saw it again: between the old engine and the equally ancient condenser there was a foot.
‘Hello,’ he said, weaving the SIG through a jungle of pipes, analogue dials and jerry-rigged wiring.
‘What?’ came a confused male voice. In Aussie English.
Moving forwards Mac saw bilge slopping beneath the rotting duckboards, and as he eased around the engine block between the condenser, a face peered at him out of the gloom.
‘That you, McQueen?’ said Lance Kendrick, ankles bound and hands tied behind his back, Dave Urquhart sleeping against him.
‘No, it’s the tooth fairy,’ said Mac, kneeling and using the Ka-bar to snip the plastic ties.
Murmuring something, Urquhart woke with a start and yelped on seeing Mac’s tiger-striped face. They had seventy-six seconds before Li stood off and this ship returned to normal.
Freeing the two men, Mac shrugged off the M4, ripped the condom off the muzzle and gave it to Lance, whose injuries were obvious but not maiming. ‘You two okay to walk?’
‘Just,’ said Lance.
‘What about a swim?’ said Mac, checking the SIG for load and safety. He had fifteen shots.
‘Not if I have to dress like that,’ said Lance, nodding at Mac’s wet undies, and then examining the M4.
‘It’s just an M16,’ said Mac. ‘All you do is point and fire. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Lance, looking scared but resolved.
‘And get a good shoulder on this thing,’ said Mac, punching Lance in the right collarbone. ‘We want dead Chinamen, not holes in the ceiling.’
They moved slowly up the companionways to the first deck. Voices came from the port side so Mac led Urquhart and Lance across the first deck hallway to the starboard side.
Crouching in the shadows beside the railings, Mac looked at his G-Shock. They had under a minute to get to safety.
‘It’s very simple,’ said Mac. ‘You slip over the side, make no noise, and breaststroke or swim underwater to the banks. No flailing, no talking, no looking back.’
Looking through the steel railings, Urquhart was hyperventilating. ‘’Bout fifty metres?’
‘Less,’ said Mac. ‘You keep swimming, keep your head down and when you hit land you keep going — don’t stop and look around, especially if these pricks are shooting at you. Okay?’
The two men nodded but Urquhart had a thousand-yard stare.
‘Keep walking till you hit the highway,’ said Mac. ‘Wait beside the road — that’s the RV.’
Looking around, Mac felt something change — the engines were revving and then the screw churned the water behind the rudder. Taking the M4 from Lance, Mac offered his forearm and lowered the youngster over the side until they were both stretched out. Lance looked up and let go, disappearing into the slow-moving river.
Mac turned for Urquhart, who was frozen.
‘Remember the swimming carnivals?’ said his old dorm mate as he stole a scared look at the water. ‘Remember how I wasn’t in them?’
‘You needed a lawyer’s letter,’ said Mac, not wanting to hear this. Nudgee College had a very simple policy: everyone competed in the athletics carnival; everyone swam at least one event in the swimming carnival. The only exemption was Len Cromie, the pupil with cerebral palsy who defied his parents’ instructions one year and swam the fifty metres freestyle. He took five minutes to do it and half the school was in the pool with him by the end, urging him on and making sure he didn’t drown. The only other exemption in Mac’s memory was Dave Urquhart, who with a High Court judge for a grandfather and a father on the board of trustees somehow managed to get himself excused from the swimming.
‘We’re grown-ups now, mate,’ said Mac, watching Lance’s head bob up for air and then duck down and head for the river bank.
‘I can’t, Macca, I can’t —’
Mac stared at him. ‘Can’t?’
‘I never learned — I–I’m phobic,’ said Urquhart, with the same nervous stammer he had when the Lenihan brothers came around to see what was in his lock-box. ‘It’s a medical condition.’
‘No,’ said Mac, annoyed. ‘Len Cromie had a medical condition.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Urquhart. ‘Don’t use Cromie against me.’
‘You know what Len would say to you?’ said Mac, growling. ‘He’d say, “You wanna be a piker — go to fucking Churchie.”’
‘You’re a wanker, McQueen,’ said Urquhart, straddling the railing and holding his nostrils shut.
‘And you’re a Nudgee boy,’ said Mac, lowering him. ‘So get in the fucking river.’
Watching Urquhart panic and strike out for the river bank, Mac hesitated as he swung his legs over to follow him. There were fifteen seconds on his mission clock, more than enough time to drop into the water and escape.
Pulling his legs back over and onto the wooden planks of the deck, Mac cursed himself for what he was about to do. Checking the M4 for load and safety, he padded across the open space to the passageway that would take him back to the state room he’d locked the kids in. He felt foolish — he could hear the shouted conversation between Li and the ship’s captain coming to an end, and he knew the next step was going to be soldiers wandering around, finding their comrades dead and sounding the alarm.
Turning the key in the lock, fumbling in haste, Mac pushed in the door and beckoned to the kids. They huddled in the corner, behind the dead paedophile, refusing to move. Crossing the room, he held out his hand and realised that they were both naked — and modest.