Read Alan McQueen - 02 - Second Strike for Free Online Page A

putting it in gear. She made to go then stopped, leaned out the window. ‘By the way, Joe wants you to call him as soon as you check in. Indons have shut down the cellular system so you’ll have to fi nd a payphone.’
    Closing her window, Julie squealed out of the forecourt as a couple of Anglos wandered out of the lobby.
    ‘Hi, darling. Hard day?’ came a voice near Mac.
    Turning, Mac came face to face with Anton Garvey, who’d been in Mac’s ASIS intake in 1990. More heavily set than he once was and a chrome-dome to boot, Garvs was going to be the declared Service operative in the AFP-led operation.
    ‘Garvs,’ said Mac, shaking hands as he tried to place the tallish, skinny bloke next to him.
    ‘Macca, this is Chez Delaney - Foreign Affairs, Jakarta.’
    Mac shook the bloke’s hand, uneasy at the fl oppy fi sh effect. Mac didn’t like his cricket club tie either.
    ‘Actually, Mr McQueen, it’s Chester,’ said the bloke through mean lips.
    ‘Actually, Chez, it’s Macca,’ smiled Mac, ‘but you can call me sir.’
    They walked the blocks to Bemo Corner, turned left and walked north up Legian Street to the site of the fi rst blast outside Paddy’s nightclub.
    It felt ominous, bathed in the temporary fl oodlights. On their right were hundreds of locals carrying bodies, parts of bodies, shoes and clothes, and directing cranes and other heavy lifting equipment to pieces of roofi ng, walls, rubble. Mac smelled acrid, scorched material as if bamboo or wood had been torched with gasoline.
    Mac didn’t want to be a bystander - he wanted to get in there and help. But he didn’t have the shoes or clothing to go into the mess that had once been Paddy’s Bar, a place he’d been very drunk in only a week ago during the Bali Sevens. They kept moving and it suddenly occurred to Mac that some of the Manila Marauders he’d played with might have been caught up in it.
    They were challenged by POLRI as they tried to move across the street towards where the Sari Club had once stood. Garvs fl ashed ID and babbled something in Bahasa, and then the three of them stopped spontaneously, shocked. The Sari Club had been completely annihilated, and a number of buildings around it were fl attened and still smouldering. Firefi ghters were pumping water over torn-apart buildings behind where the Sari had been, and forty or fi fty police and fi refi ghters crawled over the site, trying to get cranes and front-end loaders over to move slabs of concrete and debris. Voices moaned and screamed above the generators and fi re pumps, and Mac’s knees went rubbery for a split second, nausea rising at the sight of total carnage.
    In front of them was a crater in the road that looked to be six or seven feet deep and about twenty, maybe twenty-fi ve feet across.
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Mac, quite aware what it was but not expressing himself clearly. He was so tired.
    ‘Ground zero,’ said Garvey, but he said it like a question.
    ‘What’s the early mail?’ said Mac.
    Chester piped up, with a high-pitched squeak, ‘Terror bombing
    - a lot of Australians, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Few locals as well, eh Chez?’ muttered Mac.
    Chester sobered up fast as he realised what he’d said. ‘Well, yes.
    Umm, yep, you’re right.’
    The fi rst tendrils of dawn were just starting to ease into the darkness when they got back to the Hard Rock. Mac had heard that Chester was waiting on fi nal confi rmation from Canberra that DFAT would have overall carriage of the Australian effort. The Prime Minister felt comfortable with the Australian Federal Police in general and the commissioner in particular, and a number of arguments were being mounted to ensure that the AFP didn’t actually end up running the show - an outcome considered unthinkable by Foreign Affairs. Mac’s cop girlfriend, Jenny, had always suspected this was the way people like Chester operated, and Mac had never had the heart to tell her she was damned right.
    Garvs smiled as he pulled