The bombers split at Surf Parade, Gorilla heading right, down Surf, while the other two kept going straight for the beach.
‘I’ve got Gorilla,’ gasped Mac, accelerating with the blast of fear.
He ran right into Surf – past confused people standing in the street
– closing on the bomber. But Mac knew it was too late, knew that the big Pakistani’s next move was going to be a left into Armrick and a few complexes along he was going to duck into Mac and Jenny’s home.
Trying to level the Heckler as he ran, Mac loosed two shots. But the Heckler wasn’t accurate over those distances even when you were standing still.
Gorilla turned left and went down Armrick, Mac rounding the same corner a few seconds later, almost bowling over a rubber-necker and his wife as he sprinted to the townhouse. He slowed as he got near and, gasping for breath as he stopped, took it in: two federal cops, dead. One in the front seat of the car with a bullet between the eyes, the other sprawled between the car and the entry to the townhouse – which was now hanging open. Mac hadn’t heard the shots and he had the feeling the hits had been done earlier.
His breath rasped and whistled in his lungs as he checked the Heckler: four rounds left and no spares. He stepped over the body nearest the entrance, the bullet wounds suggesting the cops had trusted their assailant.
The four steps to the door seemed to take forever and Mac’s heart banged in his head. Reaching the top, he sneaked in behind the doorjamb and looked down the hallway. It seemed deserted and he slowly moved over the threshold, using his right hand to push the door back to check for anyone secreted behind it. The door whiplashed back in his face, so fast it caught his left foot between the door and jamb, knocking the Heckler out of his hand. He screamed in agony and doubled over, pain pulsing in his left foot as the door swung back to reveal Gorilla.
Mac raised a hand as Gorilla’s fi rst kick came in and caught him in the bottom teeth, just above the point of the chin. His face lurched back, a tooth bending into the gum. The second strike came from a fi st, accompanied by a heavy grunt. Mac blocked it with his right hand, stood up straight and threw a left elbow into the Pakistani’s face.
Gorilla reeled back, and Mac used the momentum to throw a straight right into the bloke’s face, breaking the Pakistani’s nose and making him stagger down the hall. This time Gorilla caught his balance and stamp-kicked at Mac, hitting him in the groin. As Mac bent over from the strike, Gorilla was on him in a half nelson.
Losing his centre of balance, Mac was shoved backwards at speed until he hit the wall and mirror above the hall table, Gorilla’s huge arms locked perfectly across his throat, putting pressure on his carotids and lifting him off his feet as mirror glass shattered on the tile fl oor. Mac knew he only had seven or eight seconds before he fell asleep. He pushed his hand down, took an industrial grip on Gorilla’s modest testicles and twisted like he was opening a jar lid. The Pakistani’s eyes went wide and his grip slackened just long enough for Mac to wriggle downwards and to the side, ducking as the big man lunged again. Getting under the attempted bear hug, Mac hit the bloke on the left cheekbone with a fast, hard right hand that opened up the bloke’s face and made Gorilla raise his left hand. So Mac hit him in the kidneys and then the right side of the face with a low-high left-hook combination that made blood and snot fl y out the left side of Gorilla’s face.
The Pakistani staggered for balance and threw a hand out, grabbing Mac’s face with a single paw and digging in with his huge fi ngers.
As Mac’s hands went up to get the fi ngernails out of his eyes, the bomber moved in for a bear hug – an assured killer for anyone with the weight and power advantage that Gorilla had on Mac. As Gorilla squeezed the hold into place, the only thing Mac had going for him was his body position – with one shoulder over the hold and one arm pointing down Gorilla’s body. He looked into the Pakistani’s eyes, seeing yellowish orbs of evil.
‘Ready to die, McQueen?’ said Gorilla, as he squeezed and dug his fi st into the small of Mac’s back, making it almost impossible to breathe. Mac felt the warmth of the bloke’s bulging pectorals against his sideways-turned face, and he had an idea. Gorilla’s shirt had fallen open with the fi ght and Mac turned his face slightly into the big hairy chest and saw the nipple. Biting down into the generous areola, Mac clamped his jaws shut like a vice. The bear hug slackened as the Pakistani screamed like a woman in a horror movie. Mac kept his choppers going until blood was pouring into his mouth. The screaming became worse and Gorilla tried to push away but Mac twisted his face until his opposite teeth met and then he pulled back and tore off the Pakistani’s nipple, which hung out of his mouth like a hairy piece of sushi.
The two men stared at each other, Gorilla’s face changing from terror to anger as he charged. As he did he was knocked sideways when Didge appeared, a blade fl ashing. The Aussie grabbed a handful of the Pakistani’s hair with his left hand and brought the blade down across the Pakistani’s throat with the other. Gorilla stopped moving, his eyes staring at the ceiling.
‘Thanks, mate,’ said Mac, spitting chest hairs out of his mouth and wiping his chin.
Didge looked him up and down, chewing gum as he wiped his blade. ‘Didn’t know your mob were cannibals.’
They searched the rest of the townhouse but there was no one there.
Limping out onto the street, Mac asked where Lempo had gone.
‘Your Russian friend got Lempo, but he was shot in the leg for his troubles. The wound’s pretty bad.’
‘And Hassan?’ asked Mac, his mind spinning.
‘Don’t know.’
Mac heaved for breath and thought it through. Someone had taken off with his family, someone who could fake it long enough to get close enough to kill the Federal cops. Probably the same someone who’d worked out how to wheedle Vi’s maiden name out of an ASIS or ASIO operative; someone who had connections that were good enough to track down Mac’s family home.
Someone charged with retrieving two stolen nukes from Hassan Ali, but who couldn’t say no to the money and ended up in league with him.
Someone from MI6.
Didge worked on Mac’s face with Dettol and a wet fl annel. Mac’s left eye was already closing up and his mouth was bleeding.
Eying Jenny’s mobile phone on the living-room table, Mac picked it up and tried Johnny.
‘Where are you, Macca?’
‘At the house,’ said Mac, almost weeping. ‘Jenny and Rachel are gone.’
‘Mate, Mari came here but we couldn’t get over to Broadbeach
– they’d closed the road.’
‘I think Hassan’s got them. We have to fi nd them.’
‘I’m coming over,’ said Johnny, and hung up.
Panting with stress, Mac took the SIM out of his zapped phone, loaded it into Jenny’s phone and tried it. He opened the ‘contacts’ fi le which was now fi lled with the contacts from John Short’s phone, and found a landline number with a 75 prefi x, meaning the Gold Coast.
He wrote it down, and then dialled a number in Canberra. The female operator answered and Mac said, ‘Sentinel.’
He was asked another question, and said, ‘Limelight.’
Mac asked for an address search and he gave her the number from Short’s phone. She got back to him twenty seconds later, the whirring of the listening posts and security measures creating a weird time/ space disequilibrium.
He wrote down the address and his adrenaline surged back in buckets. He knew the Surf Largo Apartments – they were just around the corner.
The address he’d been supplied with was the fi rst fl oor of the Surf Largo and there was a stairwell at each end. They split up – Mac with the two-shot Heckler and Didge carrying the spare Beretta from the hall table.
Mac was feeling better now. Didge hadn’t just cleaned him up
– he’d also lifted him back into the game, made him think that these bastards were there for the taking.
His heart pounding in his head and his left eye closed up, Mac pushed into the stairwell, which was empty and well lit. He took his time up the steps, crowding in on each switchback to give himself the best angle, and his enemy the worst.
At the fi rst-fl oor landing, Mac eyed the spring-loaded fi re door that pulled back towards him. There was no safe way to go through it, he just had to take a breath and step through, hoping he’d create more surprise for the other guy. He breathed in, breathed out, then pulled the door back and stepped into the hallway. It was carpeted in chocolate brown, the walls were taupe. The hall was empty and he moved down it, looking for number fi fteen.
Mac watched as the fi re door at the far end of the hallway opened and Didge stepped in with the Beretta. Mac jogged towards him and as the commando looked up from under his helmet, a handgun extended out of the door closest to Didge. The handgun popped and lifted, fl inging the Aussie commando against the wall, blood spraying up the taupe paint.
Yelling, ‘ No! ‘, Mac ran for the shooter, who’d stepped into the hall. Surprised by Mac’s presence, the shooter turned. Mac stopped and shot twice, missing with the fi rst but hitting the bloke in the face with the second, from fi fteen metres away. The shooter’s head sprang back and the man Mac knew as John Short was dead before he hit the ground. Mac was now out of rounds. Hearing a sound, he looked up and saw Jen, with Rachel in her arms. Relief fl ooding his body, Mac stood and made for them, but he froze as a man’s face stared over Jenny’s shoulder with a smile, a SIG Sauer resting in her ear.
‘Come in, eh McQueen?’
‘Sure,’ said Mac, looking into the sneering face of Danny Fitzgibbon.