Mac had her as a nine-thousand-container ship, what they called a Post-PanaMax because it was too big to fi t through the Panama Canal’s locks. It looked fully laden, an absolute shitload of containers to search.
He scanned back and forth. No movement. Sitting stock still he scanned for any refl ections from inside the bridge. The cloud cover hadn’t arrived yet so there was every chance he might catch a glint.
Nothing.
He switched to the cargo decks, looking for any sign of the VX bomb. It had been shipped in a forty-foot red container box that looked completely standard, except for a smart box on one end. A smart box would stick out like a household fusebox about halfway up the height of the container. Mac knew what to look for, but couldn’t see it.
He gave the Leicas back to Paul, who said into the mic: ‘Yeah, mate, get back to me in ten, huh? Cheers, mate.’
Weenie had jammed into the radio chatter on the Singaporean side, said Paul. ‘Something called the EOC?’
‘Yep,’ said Mac. ‘That’s the Emergency Operations Centre. I’m betting it’s down at Tanjong Pajar. It’ll be in the MPA ops centre.’
Paul shook his head. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Mate, while you were running around with Aldam Tilao, I was pretending to be all sorts of things. Don’t you worry about that.’
‘Okay, well they’re fully panicked. Weenie says there’s lots of scream ing and blame mongering,’ said Paul.
‘Glad to hear it. Any word on what they’re doing?’
‘Evacuating the whole city. Apparently there’s no safe levels of this stuff. You can’t have people wandering around. There’s arguments about that, but a fi re chief has stepped in.’
‘That’d be right.’
‘Weenie wasn’t sure. He thought the word was Hazmar, or something. Said it sounded Arabic.’
Mac laughed. ‘It’s HAZMAT.’
‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘The arguments are jurisdictional. In most EOPs -‘
‘Speak English, mate.’
‘In most Emergency Operations Plans there’s a command and control chart for who makes the fi nal call. But once it goes to HAZMAT, the fi re chief – in most countries – has control of the ground.’
‘Thought you said the Yanks had brought in some classifi ed cavalry? Yanks going to let a fi re chief run the show?’
Mac didn’t know quite how to explain it. ‘Mate, the bottom line in emergency management is who runs the cops. You can’t run an evacuation without them. And when things get stressed, and people are talking about nerve agent and evacuations, the cops will work with who they know and trust. And that would be the fi re department, not some American general.’
Paul nodded. Made sense.
‘Has Weenie heard anything about what Garrison and Sabaya want? We need to work out where this is going, maybe get there before them,’ said Mac.
‘I’ll get back to it.’
‘Mate, didn’t bring any tucker did you?’ asked Mac.
Paul pulled out a couple of protein bars from his breast pocket, chucked one. ‘What, they can’t feed you?’
‘Mate, I thought the Australian Air Force was going to personally attend to me. Till you turned up.’
Munching on the protein bar, Mac looked down on Golden Serpent and, seeing Brani Island between themselves and the ship, made a decision.
Paul got off the phone. ‘Weenie says he picked up a conversation between a cop and a politician. Something about prisoners? The politician told him he had no jurisdiction over Philippines prisons, let alone over Moro separatists. Weenie’s still on it.’
Mac stood, looked down at Brani Island. ‘Moros, huh?’
‘It’s what he’s hearing,’ said Paul.
‘You believe that?’
‘Mate, looks like you saw a ghost.’
Mac nodded. ‘I don’t buy it.’
‘What?’
‘You know these guys are pretty smart. They heist a couple of rare birds: VX and CL-20. They hijack a huge container ship and sail it into Keppel Terminal. Right beside the city that’s alongside the busiest port in the world.’
‘Pretty smart, I guess.’
‘Then the fi rst contact they make is to a US Army general who hasn’t even arrived yet, a move guaranteed to cause confusion and dissent in the Singaporeans.’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘You know, Paul, those two blokes made everything so much harder for the Singaporeans by fi rst making this a terrorism issue, and then compounding things by making it HAZMAT. Think you’ll also fi nd that Interpol have probably listed VX as a weapon of mass destruction. These guys down at the MPA are opening their ring binders at pages they never thought they’d be opening.’
Paul nodded.
‘But the third complicating strategy would have been surprise.
That would have sealed it. They could have berthed, been picked up by helo, by speedboat, frogged out of there, whatever. And then triggered the bomb with a Nokia as they fl ew off to their suite in the Maldives. Voomph! One hundred and eighty VX bombs aerosoling fi ve hundred metres into the air. Take about two hours for that vapour to descend all over Singapore.’
‘Okay. So they didn’t do that.’
‘No. They’ve been sitting there.’
Paul took a moment. ‘What about the Moro demand?’
‘If you were Sabaya, would you go to Singapore?’
‘Nah, just raid the prison. He’s done it before.’
‘Precisely. So what’s he doing in Singers fucking round with namby-pamby political demands? He’s some Brigadi Rossi uni student all of a sudden? That sound like the Abu Sabaya we know and love?’
Paul nodded, agreeing. If Sabaya wanted someone out of prison, he’d do it Filipino-style: bribe some guards, kidnap the governor’s daughter, show up with some fi repower and walk out of the joint with whoever he wanted.
‘Secondly,’ said Mac, ‘have you ever heard of Sabaya making a demand that didn’t have a dollar sign at the front and a handful of zeroes hanging off the back?’
Paul laughed. ‘Oh mate. You’re good.’
‘Well?’
‘No, you’re right. You’re right.’
Mac put the rest of the protein bar in his mouth and looked across at Golden Serpent. The Singaporeans would have to negotiate with Sabaya and Garrison, but Mac and Paul weren’t under those constraints. They had to get aboard that ship.
CHAPTER 35
They swam fast to Brani Island, both happy for the daylight. Mac led, keeping to a depth of fi ve metres. Though hard on the lungs, the rebreather wasn’t as bad as Mac remembered. He focused completely on where he was trying to go to make the fear go away.
They frogged to the south side of Brani Island where they were expecting no surveillance. The cars were already fl ooding off Brani, and the Singapore Coast Guard were on the water.
They were naked, dry clothes sealed in their backpacks.
Mac brought them up beside the stern washboard of a moored mid-sized roll-on/roll-off ship. To their right was the large slipway for ships, and further on was the Coast Guard depot. No cops. No boats against the quay.
They went up a galvanised iron ladder onto the wharf. To their left was the western extreme of the Brani container terminal. None of the rubber tyre gantries were moving, there was no one to be seen.
They kicked off the Turtle Fins, looped them over their elbows.
Shook off the waterproofed backpacks and made for an area where forty-gallon drums had been stored against the side of a wide, squat security building with a central roller door entry.
Pulling off their nose clips and small swimming goggles they tore the velcroed rebreather bladders from their chests, breathing shallow in the morning sun, not talking. Each man pulled the double seal-lock bags from his backpack and retrieved dry clothes. They wiped themselves dry with a chamois, pulled on undies, put on hip rigs then ovies over the top. Put watches back on, turned them inside their wrists.
Mac checked the Mark I injector kit: a nerve agent antidote that neither of them had any faith in.
Paul pulled the radios out of a seal-lock. Booted up.