Paul looked again. ‘Okay, so now they’re looking at the ceiling.
And wouldn’t you know it – lights!’
Paul turned and looked down the narrow alleyway where the containers didn’t quite touch the steel side of the warehouse. It ran to the end of the building. ‘Better recce, eh mate?’
Mac nodded. If there was an offi ce or a van at the other end of the structure, they’d better fi nd it. The girls and the woman were not going to come to them.
They jogged fast, jumping old brooms, Coke cans, dead spiders and porn mags: the detritus of warehouse life. At the end of the container row, Mac poked his head round the corner. There was another roller door entrance at this end of the building. Blood pumped in Mac’s ears, his kevlar vest swimming on a layer of sweat.
There was an offi ce perched up on a mezzanine at the far corner, set up so it could look down on the warehouse. There was also a ramp leading down to a sub-level.
Paul gestured. He’d go into the sub-level. Mac should check the other side of this level and the raised offi ce.
Mac made across the rear roller door area, veering left in an arc to avoid the static camera over the inside of the door area. Heading for the raised offi ce he looked down the corridors between the container stacks. His stance was perfect but there was no one to aim at. There seemed to be tons of freight in the joint, but no work being done.
The stairs to the offi ce were single helix. He stopped for two seconds, caught his breath. Paul crackled on the receiver. ‘Okay, Mac?’
‘Right as rain.’
He took it easy up the stairwell. It was open so he could see straight to the top. It also left him exposed should anyone walk into the warehouse.
The door to the offi ce had a glass panel in it. Mac peeked through: couldn’t see anyone. Pushed through the door. Walked across the fl oor area to what looked like a storage area.
A bang.
Mac froze. Lifted the Heckler.
More bangs, different tones. A gunfi ght. Mac ran down the stairs, trying to get his breath, not panic. It took an effort to run towards a gunfi ght rather than away from it.
The gunshots were coming from the other end, up in the offi ce area. Sawtell’s boys getting stuck in. Mac sprinted down the central corridor of the containers, an area large enough to get two trucks past at once.
Then the noises started coming from below him, the concrete almost shaking with the blasts. There were shouts, adrenaline-soaked male voices, crazed with anger or fear. Hard to tell.
Radio crackled. Paul, panting, ‘Mac. Get here now!’
Mac doubled back at a sprint, fl ying right into the curved downward ramp to the sub-level, face to face with Peter Garrison, fi fty metres away at the bottom of the ramp. They stared at each other, mouths open, panting, confused. Garrison raised his M4 with both hands. Mac was about to squeeze off when his leg gave out from under him. He spilled forward, lost his sights. His groin made a tearing sensation, his inside left knee hit concrete. Garrison fi red over the top of him, chipping concrete all the way up the ramp.
He hadn’t shouldered the M4 properly and it recoiled upwards and away to the right.
Mac rolled to his right. Garrison got a better shoulder. But assault rifl e fi re sounded close behind him and Garrison turned, tried to run back to his cohorts. Mac squeezed off, hitting what he thought was the American’s right calf. Garrison staggered a bit, but veered to his right, fi ring back into the sub-level as he went.
Mac limped down the ramp, his knee agony, breathing at thirteen to the dozen. Coming down to the fl at level, he saw Garrison and two other men with assault rifl es get to a stairwell against the far wall. Mac took a stance, squeezed off two rounds. They kept running. That was the trouble with a short-barrel handgun: no range.
He ran towards the stairs, fi ve shots left and three men ahead of him, all armed with the latest assault rifl es.
To his left he saw Paul, lying face down, blood around him on the concrete.
Mac’s blood drummed in his ears as he got to the stairs. Standing to the side, he looked up quickly, pulled back, looked up again and threw himself fl at against the other wall at the foot of the stairs, Heckler pointing up in a cup-and-saucer. His breathing was out of control, his eyes blurring with sweat. There was no air in the sub-level, and with the humidity it was making him gasp for oxygen.
He made up the stairs. Slow. In the movies, people giving chase always ran up stairs after the bad guys. In Mac’s world, the stairwell was where people were shot.
He got to the double-back in the middle of the stairs, suddenly realising the stairs went back to the street-level warehouse.
Sticking his face around quickly, he pulled back, stuck it out again and kept it there. Heard something, a rumbling sound. Moving up, he came to the top, stayed low, looking for the shooter. He came out of the stairwell, homing on the rumbling sound. Across the warehouse, the roller door was going up.
A roar sounded as an engine fi red. Mac started running. Coming around the last stack of containers, he aimed up. Forty metres away the last guy was shutting the rear passenger door of a blue BMW
5-series. As the engine gunned, the roller door went up further.
A back-seat passenger pointed his M4 at Mac, the fi re coming in three-shot bursts. Mac ducked behind the container as paint chips fl ew. More carbine gunfi re chewed up the steel he was hiding behind.
The BMW accelerated through the doorway and Mac came out of hiding, squeezed off, took out the rear window.
He ran to the door, caught the last part of the rego – 452.
Struggling to get his breath, he bent over, hands on knees. He felt so old – way, way past his prime for this shit.
Voices sounded behind him and he swung around and went to his knee in one motion, ready to squeeze off.
Sawtell, jogging, yelled, ‘Don’t shoot.’
Mac sat down on his arse. Resting arms on knees, he looked at the ceiling.
He wished he hadn’t seen it. But he had. The driver – a blonde woman – had looked him in the eye.
‘You okay, Mac?’ asked Sawtell.
Mac tried to respond, but vomited between his legs.
CHAPTER 40
They found Paul leaning against a large blue plastic dumpster bin clutching at his left side. The blood trail from where Mac had seen him lying was thick and dark.
‘Shit, Mac,’ he grinned. ‘What is it with Aussies and trouble?’
‘Follows us round like a bad smell. Didn’t I warn you?’
Sawtell knelt and lifted the left wing away from Paul’s body. Paul winced, gasped.
Sawtell whispered low, looked under there. Dark blood oozed through layers of clothing and kevlar.
Sawtell keyed the mic, ordered his medic guy to come immediately, then had another thought. ‘POLRI there yet?’
Sawtell listened, then said, ‘Negative. Stay with the hostages until POLRI get there. Secure the area. Over.’
The Green Berets had rescued the hostages with no injuries.
Sawtell unzipped the top of Paul’s ovies and looked at Mac, who came around behind Paul, held him up and forward while Sawtell stripped down the top of the grey ovies. Unclipping the fasteners on the kevlar vest, Sawtell pulled it over from the right-hand side then peeled it downward along the left arm.
The slug had grazed straight down the left side of Paul’s ribs in the area where there was no kevlar, only an adjustable gusset. There was another slug embedded in the kevlar, folded back on itself like a rosette. The fl esh wound looked like Paul had leaned against an iron someone had forgotten to turn off. There was bone showing and a lot of blood – fi ve-inch wet scar peeled back like a madman’s laugh.
Paul was trying to keep his breathing under control, but the shock and the pain were pushing him towards hyperventilation.