Alan McQueen - 01 - Golden Serpent Read Online Free Page B

impossible to walk away from a bunch of tangos who were shooting. It wasn’t in their nature or their training.
    ‘Roger that … sir ,’ replied Wardie. Almost snide.
    The clear-out proceeded without trouble. They RV’d at the top of the dune where Manny had already hogtied Samrazi and bundled him onto the carrier rack of his bike.
    The camp was silent but, looking back, Mac could see fi gures stalking around the north end. He watched as Ward switched frequency.
    Saw him morse something with the manual radio trigger.
    They moved down the dune, packed their stuff, got on their bikes. The adrenaline eased and Mac vomited quietly into the dirt. His overalls were wet down the back. He put on a fi eld jacket and helmet.
    The SAS lads did the same.
    Foxy led them out. Seven minutes later Mac heard the F-111s roar in from RAAF Base Darwin. They stopped their bikes and behind them, over the horizon, the air boiled up twenty or thirty storeys into the sky, fl ashing orange, white, red and then orange again. The ground shook slightly, and the group turned east again for the helo pick-up.
    Samrazi would sing, Mac was sure of that, and the Australian government would own a pile of free HMX that Mac and Manny had buried in the desert.

CHAPTER 2
    Mac watched the Dean of History and wondered how much of this chat was Davidson’s doing, how much a testament to his own genius.
    The fact that the dean referred to him as being from Foreign Affairs put the odds heavily in favour of it being a gift from Tony Davidson, Mac’s recently retired boss.
    Mac had fl own in from Townsville that morning on an Air Force fl ight after a day sleeping and debriefi ng. Today’s mission: fi nd a solid civilian job, ease himself into the straight world without anyone noticing, and have a legitimate life to offer Diane.
    Going civvie was harder than throwing on a tweed jacket and pulling the degree out of a drawer. It meant decisions about things he hadn’t had to consider before during his adult life. Things like getting a mortgage, selecting a phone company, getting the gas turned on.
    Things you learn by living straight. Things a woman expected from a man if she was going to get even halfway serious with him.
    Mac hadn’t owned a car since university but he’d owned six or seven identities. There was going to be a learning curve.
    He exhaled, made his shoulders go soft.
    The dean loaded a briar pipe. ‘Old habit,’ he chuckled.
    ‘Go for your life,’ said Mac.
    The view from the dean’s offi ce in the old Quadrangle building of the University of Sydney looked over a sloping lawn, across one-hundred-and-fi fty-year-old fi g trees and down on to the city. It felt like a stronghold.
    The dean smiled, pushed a stapled set of papers across the wooden desk. ‘An adjunct position isn’t much. Sort of a contracted attachment.
    But it’ll get you on board and we can take it from there, hmm?’
    Mac wanted to throw himself on the old bastard, weep with appreciation. But he stayed calm. ‘Sounds good to me, Jim.’
    The dean pushed back against his desk with his right foot, put the pipe in his mouth.
    ‘I’ve assigned you to Derek Parmenter,’ said the dean. ‘He can brief you on curriculum before the summer break. You can sit in on a few lectures and you should be fi ne for a February start.’
    Mac had met Parmenter and didn’t like him much. But he’d be lecturing and tutoring postgrad students on Australian foreign policy in South-East Asia. The gig was an ‘institute’ rather than a faculty, and that suited Mac. He couldn’t complain.
    ‘Just look it over, it’s all the basic guff,’ said the dean, nodding at the offer. ‘Then sign it and get it back to me by Monday, okay?’
    Mac grabbed the letter and looked gratefully at the dean, who pretended to puff on his pipe as he gazed out the window. ‘Can’t even smoke a pipe these days,’ he said, smiling at something far away.
    ‘Times have changed, Alan - you know that, don’t