by Frank Tayell
“You got through to the police in Melbourne?” Dodson asked.
“Just about,” Qwong said. “I was using a military frequency. Some soldier at the other end went looking for people with a badge until they found one who knew a Sergeant Grobotnik. He hasn’t been seen in days. He might have gone on leave, disappeared to help family. Or he found himself caught up in the chaos, sent off to help protect somewhere remote. Or he’s another victim. I hate chasing serial killers. You know the number of victims by the signature, the manner of death, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others who faced a less horrific end.”
“Or whose bodies haven’t been found,” Dodson said.
“Right,” Qwong said. “The line between assassin and serial killer is thin, and in this case, the bloke does it for pleasure as well as pay, which begs the question, who’s paying him?”
“The cartel,” Pete said. “They’re an international gang, right? So someone overseas.”
“Then why didn’t he vanish when the outbreak occurred?” Qwong asked. “This killer, what he did to those pilots, what he’s clearly capable of, it terrifies me, yet what he’s doing isn’t just for his own twisted enjoyment. He’s working for someone, fulfilling a contract or debt. So who is it this bloke is so scared of, or in awe of, that he’s still risking his life, even now? Do you know what the motto of our police service is?”
“To protect and serve?” Pete asked.
“It’s that punishment follows swiftly on the heels of crime,” Qwong said. “Never was a fan of that saying. It’s not the police’s job to punish but to deter and catch. But in this case, punishment can only mean one thing, and it’s the only way to protect, and so I’ve got to follow up quickly before the trail goes cold.”
“You’re going to Melbourne?” Dodson asked.
“First, I’m coming with you and Bobby to Canberra. Then it’s Melbourne. When the plane’s gone, the killer’s going to leave, too. I’ll be in Melbourne waiting for him. And speaking of that, I need to get a sketch from you, Pete, of what the bloke looks like. And that gun I gave you, I’ll need that back. I don’t know if I can process it, but I’ll need every scrap of evidence I—”
A thundering bang echoed across the airfield.
Qwong spun around. “What was—”
Another bellowing thud shook the ground.
Qwong and Dodson ran away from the shelter of the hangar. Pete followed them, out to the runway, stopping just behind them when he saw the smoke rising from the town.
“What happened?” Pete asked.
“Nothing good,” Qwong said.
“We should go help,” Pete said.
“Never rush in before you know what you’re dealing with,” Qwong said.
“Rule nine,” Dodson said. “But it doesn’t apply to me. I’ll get the fire engine from the garage, you get the soldiers to open the checkpoint on the—”
Another two explosions rent the air, and this time Pete saw the flames before they settled into a cloud of dust and smoke.
“Mick, you stay right there,” Qwong said, grabbing his arm. “Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“People are dying, Tess.”
“And we won’t be any help if we die next. Car bombs? A remote detonator? Mines? Grenades? No.”
“But it’s Mikko, isn’t it?” Pete asked.
“Maybe something he set up last night to cover what he thought would be his escape,” Qwong said. “Except, no, he didn’t know we’d go to the golf—”
“What’s going on?” Bobby said, running up to them, nearly breathless.
“Get him out of here, Pete,” Qwong said.
The ground turned sideways, and Pete nearly fell, but caught himself just as the sound of the explosion shook the air around him. Glass and metal tinkled to the ground. He turned his head, and saw the office was on fire. Wood and metal rained down on the runway as flames filled the sky.
“It’s not on a timer,” Qwong said. “It has to be a mortar or artillery. They’re out there, firing at us. But they want the plane, right? They won’t target that. Pete, take Bobby to the plane. Go!”
Pete pushed the boy before him, but Bobby was frozen, near immobile. After three faltering steps, Pete picked him up. Bobby was heavy, but laying a new carpet always involved carrying the old furniture and new flooring. It just didn’t require he run at the same time.
Halfway to the plane, Bobby began squirming. “Let me down.”
“Run,” Pete said. “To the plane.”
A figure was already sprinting from it. Liu, he realised a second later, just before another explosion rent the air. This blast wasn’t close. Somewhere in town, but he didn’t turn to look. He just kept running, keeping pace with Bobby.
“What’s happening?” Liu asked when they drew level with her.
“Bombs. A mortar,” Pete said, breathless. “Get to the plane. Safe on the plane.”
As they ran the last few hundred metres, those words echoed around his brain. Would they be safe? Why would it be safe?
Corrie stood at the bottom of the steps, an assault rifle in her hands, but that was no more use than the machine guns mounted on the soldiers’ armoured trucks.
Another distant explosion shook the air, a second followed immediately after, and Pete was grateful to just follow his feet, follow instructions, and follow Bobby up the steps and into the plane.
“Corrie, move those stairs off the runway!” Liu barked. “Bobby, are you okay?”
The boy nodded.
“Good,” Liu said. “Strap in.”
She hurried into the cockpit.
Pete stood by the open door, watching the smoke rise above the town until what Liu had said sank in. He darted into the cockpit where Liu was already flipping switches.
“Are you going to fly?”
“This is Mikko, right?” Liu said. “He wants the plane, yes? We move the plane and we remove the prize. He’ll stop. How else do I keep Bobby safe? Make sure he’s strapped in. There’s a hatch by the door, a retractable ladder. Open the hatch, drop the ladder so your sister can get aboard. But I’m not waiting for her, sorry.”
Pete ran back into the cabin, checked Bobby was in his seat, then ran to the door, fumbling with the hatch, and finding a flimsy stack of aluminium beneath. There were no instructions, but he pushed it towards the door, and gravity did the rest, extending the ladder as it fell. Corrie ran over, grabbed the swaying ladder just as the engine began to roar. Pete reached through the door as Corrie hauled herself up the swaying steps. He grabbed her arm and hauled her aboard.
“What’s going on?” Corrie asked as they pulled the ladder aboard. “Wait, there. That button. That’s to retract it. What’s happening?”
“A mortar, I think,” Pete said. “Or Tess does.”
“Josie said four soldiers disappeared with a Hawkei and mortar,” Corrie said. With the ladder inside, she reached out, grabbed the door, and hauled it closed. “Mikko must have killed them. This must have been his plan all along. After the golf club, he decided to go through with it anyway.”
“What, blow up the plane?”
“Destroy the runway so the plane can’t leave, destroy the town so there’s no reason for any of the soldiers to stay. Liu’s taking off?”
The plane gave the answer, juddering and shaking as it began to move.
“I suppose so,” Pete said. He was out of answers, out of ideas, and long out of breath. He found his way back to Bobby, checked he was strapped in, then collapsed in the chair opposite, buckled himself in, closed his eyes, and didn’t open them until the plane was in the air.
Chapter 27 - Road Warrior
Broken Hill
Tess Qwong dropped to one knee as an explosion detonated near the airport’s entrance. A secondary explosion followed, and a sharp, piercing scream followed that. Without thinking, she ran. Mick Dodson was already two steps ahead of her, sprinting to the barricade on Airport Road, but the screaming stopped before either of them reached
the casualties.
Two of the three Hawkeis were gone, though it was a safe guess to assume they’d driven into town when that first explosion had occurred. They’d left two soldiers on guard. One had been in the Bushmaster PMV’s turret, but that vehicle had taken a direct hit. Smoke billowed from the machine-gun-mounted vehicle. The soldier who’d been in the turret was nothing but scraps of bloody cloth. The other guard was a bloody ruin, thrown nearly twenty metres from his post.
Mick Dodson closed the soldier’s eyes. “He’s gone,” the doctor said.
Another round detonated, this one close to the runway. As Tess turned to look, she saw the jet fly up and through the smoke. Another shell detonated, a third, a fourth, all within metres of each other on the runway, but the plane was already in the air, soaring skywards, to safety, at least from the bombs.
“Think they hit the runway,” Dodson said. “There won’t be any more flights coming in here for a while.”
“The plane is gone. They should stop—” Tess began, but a round landed on a street north of the airfield. “Why are they still firing?”
“To cover their retreat,” Dodson said.
“They’re out there,” Tess said. “Out there in the outback. Somewhere right there.” She pointed at the scrubby dust.
Dodson picked up the soldier’s bloody rifle. He raised it to his shoulder, and fired a shot. “Still works.”
“Give me that.”
“Fine, then I’ll drive,” Dodson said. “What do they call that four-by-four, a Hawkei? You think that can manage off-road?”
Tess wiped the blood and gore from the rifle, as a secondary explosion erupted, bigger than anything they’d seen before, sending a plume of fire and smoke a hundred metres into the air.
“Knox Street,” Tess said instantly. “Bet that was Kirsty Bradley’s place. I don’t know if we can stop them, but we can chase them away.”
She grabbed a magazine from the dead soldier’s webbing, then followed the doctor to the four-by-four.
“Here’s the plan,” Dodson said, as he started the engine. “Find them, shoot them, end this.”
“Nice plan,” Tess said. “Simple and doable. I’ve some questions I’d like answered, though.”
“We’ll call that plan-B,” Dodson said.
“We’ve got to get outside the barbed wire.”
“No worries,” Dodson said, driving the military vehicle slowly around the zippered barricade.
A boom resonated behind them, jolting Tess forward. Dirt and shrapnel rained on the vehicle.
“We’re sitting targets,” Tess said.
“Yep,” Dodson said, as he threaded the vehicle around the barbed wire. “But that means they can see us. Which means we should be able to see them.” He spun the wheel, stamped on the accelerator, and gunned the four-by-four across the copper-red soil. Another shell landed on the road behind them, shattering the windows of the zippered-car blockade.
“They’re targeting us,” Tess said.
“Good,” Dodson said. “They’ll aim at us and not my airfield. Blowing up my airfield,” he muttered, his hands tightly gripping the wheel. “Blowing up my town. Who do they think they are?”
“That’s what they want, isn’t it? Destroy the runway and enough of the town that Broken Hill is abandoned, leaving them free rein to get to that plane. No chance of that now. Captain Hawker said a vehicle and mortar disappeared a couple of days ago. He thought the crew had gone AWOL.”
“More victims,” Dodson said.
“Easy-on, this isn’t your prop-plane!” Tess said as the Hawkei bounced over a rock, going airborne for a long second. She grabbed the strap above her head. “Now I know why they make soldiers wear helmets.”
“Does that rifle have its safety on? Rule forty-four, don’t get shot by your own gun.” Dirt fountained ten metres ahead and to the left. A shrapnel-shower of pebbles and dirt pattered against the vehicle’s armour.
“Aim for that pair of wattles,” Tess said.
“Those are mulgas,” Dodson said. “You think they’re behind there?”
“No. Twenty metres beyond the trees, bank hard right. There’s a depression a hundred metres beyond. That’s where they are. And I remembered something else. Turn! Now!”
Dodson threw the wheel as dirt spiralled up in front of them. “What did you remember?”
“Straight on! I remembered that they had a machine gun in the missing Hawkei. When they disappeared, they were meant to be setting up a checkpoint near Fowler’s Gap. There. I see them! Not in a straight line!”
“No worries,” Dodson said. “Rule forty-five, never drive in a straight line while charging a mortar position. A bit of a specialised rule, that one.”
“You really do make them up as you go along, don’t you?”
“Adapt them to the circumstances,” he said. “They’re running.”
They weren’t. They were driving, but not in a military Hawkei. A dune-buggy bounced out of the depression, driving due east, away from Broken Hill across the uneven ground. There was one seat, occupied by a driver, with a solitary passenger behind, standing in an uncomfortable crouch, holding onto the roll-bars the vehicle had in lieu of a roof.
“I can only see two of them,” Tess said, turning around, peering through the soil-splattered window. “Where’s the third?”
“Where’s the machine gun?” Dodson said. “And why did they do this? What is on that plane that’s worth starting a war for? Maybe we’ll try for plan-B, if we can. I’d like some answers. Does this thing have wipers? Can’t see much ahead of us.”
“Keep driving. Go straight,” Tess said. “There’s no third man, no machine gun.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure he’s not here,” Tess said. “If he’s anywhere, it’s where the Hawkei is waiting. We want to stop them before they get there.”
“The Menindee Road is ahead,” Dodson said as they jolted over a rock, down into a dip, and bounced up the other side. “Can you see it?”
“Dead straight,” she said.
The road grew from a thin sliver to a concrete scar stretched out before them.
“Can you see their Hawkei?” Dodson asked.
“No. No vehicles. No people in sight.”
“Hopefully no machine guns, then,” Dodson said.
When the dune buggy reached the road, the vehicle bounced onto the tarmac, skidded, but didn’t turn. It continued over the road and back into the scrub on the other side.
“Go straight,” Tess said. “Chase them down.”
“It’s what I’m doing, but where are they going?”
“If one of them was a pilot, maybe they have a plane out here somewhere,” she said. “We need to end this. Can you get closer?”
“Rule three, never take unnecessary risks,” Dodson said. “But there’s rule six as well. We’re running low on diesel. It’s down to a tenth of a tank.”
The four-by-four bounced down a rocky incline, across a dry creek bed, and up the other side.
“They’re getting further away,” Tess said.
“No worries,” Dodson said. “Hold on.”
He gunned the engine. The Hawkei bounced and skidded over the uneven ground, spraying soil and rock like shrapnel against the vehicle’s hard case.
“Can you shoot them?”
Tess wound down the window. Holding the rifle one-handed, she reached outside and fired. “I don’t even know if I was close.”
“You missed, if that helps,” Dodson said.
“It doesn’t.” She shifted position, and pulled the trigger again, this time as they careened up a boulder, and she lost her loose grip on the rifle. “I dropped the gun,” she said.
Ahead, the passenger on the dune buggy pulled himself around so he was facing them. One hand holding the grab-bar, he raised a machine-pistol that hung on a strap around his chest. He fired. There was no way to aim, but volume made up for accuracy. Even with so much soil and rock being churned by the tyres’ speeding pa
ssage, she heard bullets slam into the vehicle’s armour.
Dodson pushed the pedal all the way to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Tess asked.
“Ending this,” Dodson said. “Hold on.”
She guessed what he was about to do as the distance between them and the dune buggy dropped. The gangster pulled the trigger, emptying the last few rounds. One bullet hit the windscreen, but it didn’t shatter, and now the gangster’s weapon was unloaded. The strap might prevent him from losing it as the buggy jerked and bounced across the uneven ground, but he couldn’t reload one-handed. He reached for his belt anyway, going to draw another weapon, but the buggy hit a bump, he lost his grip and flew from the back of the vehicle, tumbling at speed across the rocky dirt.
“One down,” Dodson said.
The buggy’s driver glanced around. Realising the passenger was no longer there, he swivelled his head further, unintentionally turning the wheel as he did so. The buggy swerved, skidded, and slowed while Dodson managed to coax an ounce more speed from their trembling engine. Enough speed that the distance between them and the buggy fell away. Their grille slammed into the buggy’s rear tyre, sending the gangster’s vehicle tumbling across the desert. But Dodson lost control for a second, and that was twice what the speeding vehicle needed to slam into a rock, flip, and roll.
The seatbelt barely held Tess in place as the Hawkei tumbled three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, before settling on its wheels, now facing the wrong way. It took a second longer for the confusion and noise to coalesce into sights and sounds she could make sense of. A dull ache in shoulders and hips told her that pain would follow soon, but she could ignore it for now. The windscreen was completely smeared, and now partially fractured.
“Doc? Mick? You all right, mate?”
The older man groaned.
“Good,” she said. “You’re alive, and you’re going back to driving school when we get to Canberra. Blood’s pouring from a wound on your temple. Not thickly, and not fast, but persistently enough that you’re going to need attention, maybe stitches, and soon. That’ll have to wait until I’ve secured our suspect.”
