by John Marsden
Pushing wheelbarrows through bush at night is a shocking job. They don't make four-wheel-drive barrows, that's the problem. We didn't dare use the road at all. We hadn't seen any patrols in this district but that's probably because we weren't looking for them. We'd kept away from the road most of the time. Our convoy-soon broke up and we found ourselves going at our own various speeds, passing or overtaking each other from time to time.
To keep my mind occupied while I was lurching along with my barrow I thought about our truck problem. It was a good distraction from the hard heavy work. Only when the barrow tipped over, as frequently happened, did I have to come back to reality But try as I might, I couldn't think of anything that would have the slightest chance of success. Spray oil over the windscreen? Put a bullet through the engine? Jump on the back of a prime mover and pull out the air brakes? There were so many good reasons why those things wouldn't work, and no good reason why they would.
"OK," I thought. "Suppose I dig a hole in the road, lie in it, and when a truck goes over the top, I'll reach up, grab the undercarriage, haul myself up and then cut a few- lines and drop off again. Should work, no worries." I suggested it to Fi, who was following me with her barrow, and for a few moments she thought I was serious. Sometimes I really did wonder about Fi.
Then Kevin left me for a few minutes at one of the farmhouses and came back with a white object in his hands, the size of a tennis ball. It was hard to see it clearly in the darkness.
"What have von got?" I asked.
"Stove timer"
I was a bit surprised but recovered well. "What's the matter, your boiled eggs not quite right for breakfast?"
"Yeah, that's right. Listen, there were a few vehicles round this place, weren't there?"
"Mmm, I think so. There's the tractor, and a couple of ag bikes in that green shed. And wasn't there a paddock basher over by the tank?"
"Let's have a look. Leave the barrows for a sec."
"We can't use a vehicle to take the ammonium down to the road, if that's what you're thinking. Too noisy."
Kevin didn't bother to answer. I was way off the point. He led me to the paddock basher. It was an old Falcon ute, white, but with a lot of rust, like all the cars that lived close to the coast. And, like all paddock bashers, its keys were in it. Kevin gave them a turn, getting nothing but a tired whine as the battery opened one eye, then went straight back to sleep.
"Give it a push," he said. He had the driver's door open and started pushing from his side. I still didn't know what this was about but I put my head down and shoved. There wasn't much of a slope so it was hard work. But after fifty metres we were on a roll and a few seconds after that Kevin leapt into the driver's seat and gave it the gun. The engine coughed into life. Kevin brought it to a halt and as I arrived by his window he said, "Hop in. We're going for a drive."
"Kevin! This is too dangerous. We can't go hanging around the countryside. If anyone hears us..."
"Stop treating me like an idiot, Ellie," was all he said.
I bit my bottom lip and went round to the passenger side. The door wouldn't open, even with Kevin trying from his side. So I got in the back, the tray. We U-turned and went along the flat and up the hill, past the silent house, through a gate (which I had to open) and further up an old dirt track till we were probably about halfway up the hill. There Kevin turned the Falcon again, to face downhill, and got out, switching the engine off. He lifted the hood as I came round to the other side. He had a pair of pliers and he'd parked so that he was getting maximum moonlight. With his pliers he cut the lead between the coil and the distributor. I watched, fascinated. He was obviously in no mood to answer questions, but I didn't mind. When the lead was severed, he reconnected it through the back of the timer, each end coming in from opposite sides, so that the lead was now detoured through it. Then he rotated the dial on the timer, setting it for five minutes.
"OK," he said, "let's start it up." He jumped in and turned the key again but the battery was still too flat to turn the engine. With the ute pointing downhill we only needed to give it one shove and it rolled quickly away. Kevin stepped gracefully in, put it in gear and let out the clutch. The engine leapt into life.
I heard a noise behind me and spun round in sudden panic. Homer was looming up out of the darkness.
"What are you doing?" he asked irritably, as Kevin left the ute engine running and stood next to the vehicle, gazing at the bonnet. "Leaving us to wheel the barrows? You're making enough noise."
"Fair go," I said, annoyed. "We've done our share. Kevin's working out some idea to do with our attack on Cobbler's."
Homer became a little more interested. "What?"
"I don't know. He's attached an oven timer between the coil and the distributor."
"An oven timer? Serious? Is he cooking a cake in there? Kevin, what arc you doing?"
He strode down the hill to the ute. I followed. As we got there Kevin said, without looking at us, "Wait. You'll see. I hope."
We waited about two minutes. Just as Homer started saying, "I really don't think we should be making so much noise..." the engine of the Falcon cut out. There was no warning. One moment it was throbbing away in good health, the next the cold night air was completely silent. Homer and I looked at Kev in astonishment. "How did you do that?" Homer asked. "Just with an oven timer?"
"While you were mucking around in Physics I was paying attention," Kevin said proudly. He looked absolutely delighted. "All I've done is create another circuit, to go with the one that's already under the bonnet. The circuit I created is regulated by the timer, OK? So when the timer reaches zero, that circuit cuts out, and takes the whole engine with it."
I was dumbstruck. I gazed at Kevin admiringly. "That's so simple," I said at last. "And so clever."
"But how do we get it attached to a truck?" Homer asked. "'Cos that's what you've got in mind, isn't it? To fake a breakdown?"
"Yeah, exactly. And there is a way. What we have to do is create an obstacle for a convoy so they stop for a few minutes. While they're stopped I'll sneak out7 stick the timer on a truck, and set it for whatever time we decide, five minutes, ten, twenty. All I've got to do is make sure it's a petrol engine, not' a diesel. Twenty minutes later, when the truck breaks down, they won't connect it with the hold-up way back along the road. If it's nighttime, and if the drivers aren't good mechanics, I think they'll give up pretty quickly. I don't think they'll be able to figure it out, and they won't want to spend hours looking. It ought to work."
"Yes," I said. "And while we're loading the fertiliser we can take the timer out and make it look like something else caused the breakdown."
"Yeah, exactly," Kevin said again.
A wave of fear hit me as I realised that we were steadily solving all our problems. That meant only one thing: that we would go for it. It made me quite dizzy. Dear God, was it possible? We had already reached too far, tested our luck too often. Instead of quitting while we were ahead we were doing the opposite. I didn't say another word to the boys, couldn't. I went back down the hill, got mv wheelbarrow, filled it with another heavy load and began another long push back to our ammonium dump. It was all very well for Kevin. He wouldn't be the one going right into Cobbler's Bay. Why did it always have to be me who took the biggest risks? I was scared and that made me angry.
Down at the pile of fertiliser bags I met Fi. She was sitting in her barrow.
"Oh Ellie," she sighed, "why's everything so hard? I can't push this thing another inch, I swear."
"Huh. You think you've got problems."
I emptied my barrow and collapsed into it beside her, then told her Kevin's plan. As we talked we heard another convoy coming, and soon we could sec the big semis through the trees, rolling along pretty fast, considering they were on dimmed lights. Nearly all of them carried containers and the speed at which the trucks went made me think the boxes must be empty. There were fourteen of them and an escort truck at each end.
"How would we stop them to put
the timer on?" Fi asked.
"1 don't know," I said crossly. "I don't want to know. We must be mad. This is much too big for us."
"Oh, I'm not so sure," Fi said, as if looking at a difficult line in Macbeth, when we studied it last year.
"OK, go on, talk me into doing it and getting killed, and then you can feel guilty for the rest of your life."
It was a cruel thing to say and almost as soon as I'd finished saying it I was apologising. But I'd really hurt Fi, and it took me ten minutes to get her to talk again.
"I was just going to say that little people can do big things," she finally said huffily.
"I suppose so," I said humbly.
"It looks big," she said, with a bit more warmth, "because those ships and trucks and jetties are so big. But it's really just people, and they'll be like people everywhere. They'll be careless and they'll be lazy and they'll make mistakes. But you'll be totally alert and concentrating, and that gives you an advantage."
"Mmm." I was anxious to have her forget what I'd said, but I was also anxious to believe in what she was saying.
'"It's a good plan, Fllie, it really is. We can out-trick these people, and that's all we have to do. Stop thinking about causing a huge explosion; that's got nothing to do with it. It's just a matter of being smarter than a few dozen soldiers."
A few hundred would have been closer, but I pressed my lips together. Homer and Kevin arrived at that moment, with Lee and Robyn, who they'd found bringing back the last bags of fertiliser. We were all exhausted but Homer wasn't interested in that.
"I think we should do it tonight," he said.
"Geez, Homer, it's two o'clock in the morning."
"Yes, but this ship loading containers is perfect for us, and it might be nearly full now. We've got to get it while they're putting them in the holds, before they start stacking them on the decks. If Ellie and I can get in a container with all these bags, and get put on board, we've got the bomb to end all bombs. How else can we get on board if not in a container?"
"There mightn't be another convoy tonight."
"Yeah, but there might be. They seem to have been running night and day."
A long silence followed.
"Have you worked out how to stop the trucks?" I asked.
"Robyn has."
I looked at Robyn. Seemed like she was going to be the one to give me my death warrant.
"OK, what's the deal?"
"It's got to look natural, unsuspicious," she said. "Like, a tree across the road's too obvious. They'd be looking for an ambush."
"Agreed."
"Well, Ellie, isn't it time you had a chance to get reacquainted with your very best friends?"
Twelve
It was a big paddock and well stocked, probably a hundred and fifty head. It looked like it had been overstocked before the invasion, because the paddock was dotted with sad little piles of wool and bones. Foxes, feral dogs, wedge-tails, disease; they all would have contributed. The sheep left alive were in poor condition, toddling around feeling sorry for themselves. There certainly wasn't much feed left—it looked OK from a distance but it was poor dry grass, no value in it.
Being so big, though, the paddock was hard to muster. These sheep hadn't seen humans for a long time and they were getting a bit feral themselves. A dozen times as we flushed them out of blackberries, and from behind trees, I wished that we had a dog to help us. Instead we had Lee and Robyn and Fi, who were as much use as a couple of untrained budgies. We didn't need all the sheep, of course, which was lucky, or else we'd still be there, cursing and sweating and trying to make them do what we wanted. We ended up with maybe a hundred and twenty.
We got them out on the road after thirty minutes work. Then it was a matter of droving them along to a woody section of bush, and holding them till a convoy could be heard. That might sound easy but it wasn't. As soon as the sheep got out the gate they spread along the sides of the road and started eating. We pushed them along slowly but once we got them out of the open country and into the bushy section, the feed along the road disappeared. This upset the sheep and they revved up and started forward to find better stuff. Kevin and I had to head them off fast and then, with Homer at the rear to back us up, persuade them to stay right where they were. We needed that bush for cover, so the sheep had to stay out of open country.
Robyn was dressed entirely in black and had blackened her face as well, with shoe polish from a farmhouse. Shoe polish was one thing that never seemed to get looted. A few months ago we would have thought that blacking faces, wearing camouflage and synchronising watches was a bit over the top, Hollywood movie style, but now we did these things as a matter of course.
I'm not too sure how Robyn got the job of cutting the wire and attaching the timer. The obvious person was Kevin and at one stage he seemed to be volunteering, but somehow Robyn was left holding the pliers. There was a bit of mumbling about Robyn being good with her hands, and Kevin being needed to hold the sheep until the trucks appeared, but I think we all knew that this kind of thing just wasn't Kevin's style. He didn't have the nerve for it. It soon became clear that he didn't want to do it and Robyn said she would and so it was settled.
I think Robyn was always quite keen to do things that didn't directly hurt anyone.
When the sheep settled down and Kevin and I were holding them OK, Homer and Lee disappeared for a few minutes in the direction of the backpacks. I didn't think anything of it until they returned. When I next saw them they were each holding a sawn-off shotgun. This was a whole new move that I hadn't anticipated.
"What are you doing?" I asked angrily.
Homer looked away, guiltily, but Lee was cool enough.
"Don't be stupid about this, Ellie," he said. "We're going to give Robyn cover."
"How do you mean?"
"Ellie, this is dangerous stuff, really dangerous, let's not kid ourselves. These convoys are guarded front and back. If anyone comes up behind Robyn while she's working on'the circuit she's got no hope.' Well, she will have a hope now, because we'll shoot them."
"Oh yeah, and what happens then?"
"We all melt away into the bush. They might fire after us but they won't chase us through the bush in the dark. We call the plan off and go somewhere else. We won't have lost anything but we will have saved Robyn's life."
"Shouldn't Robyn have a say in all this?"
Lee hesitated. "Yeah, OK, fair enough. Robyn, what do von think? You want cover or not?"
Robyn didn't look at any of us. From out of her dark face a pair of white eyes gazed away through the trees. I was puzzled that she was taking so long to answer. I'd thought that she'd have told them pretty fast what to do with their guns.
"Yes," she said at last, still not looking at us, "I think I would like cover, thank you."
I didn't say anything, just walked back to the sheep, trying to keep my face controlled. I didn't like this situation. I also don't like being surprised by people, especially Robyn, whom I thought I'd figured out a long time ago.
I also like getting my own way.
"What do you think of these guns?" I asked Fi, looking for support.
"I think they're right," she said. "Robyn'd be a sitting duck otherwise. If she got shot we'd never forgive ourselves."
I gave up then. I still thought that it was stupid: that if we ever got involved in a shooting war we'd be massacred. But I'd been outvoted.
We waited about forty minutes and then heard the unmistakeable low rasping buzz of a convoy. "Oh God," I thought, "here we go." It was still a long way off but it got louder quite quickly. At one stage I almost convinced myself that it wasn't a convoy at all but a low-flying aircraft. Sound docs funny things at night.
"We're mad," I said to Fi.
She gave her little nervous smile.
"Do you think anyone'll ever know about the things we do?" I asked her.
"I know what you mean," she said. "It'd be awful if they didn't. I want my parents to know I've tried really hard to h
elp and to do brave things. I'd hate it if they didn't know that."
I felt better that she understood, that she felt the same way.
We were on a fairly straight stretch of road so we could see the lights of the trucks quite a way off. But these ones surprised me because they were using parking lights. It was a while later that I realised it was a good sign; they must be getting more nervous about air attacks. Up until then we'd seen a lot of convoys with dimmed headlights but never one on parkers only. It meant also that they travelled slowly, which was good news for the sheep.
Kevin at one end of the mob of sheep, and I at the other, were the only people left on the road now. We shook the sheep up and got them onto the bitumen as much as We were able. They weren't all that keen but we had them spread out enough to take up lots of space. At the last moment We slipped into the trees and joined the other four. We heard the brakes of the first truck come on and saw the little parking lights come to a halt. Other trucks quickly stopped behind it, as far back as we could sec. It was a big convoy. I saw Robyn sneak forward, followed by Homer and Lee with their guns. I felt sick. I heard truck doors slam, footsteps, voices yelling at the sheep. We figured on having a bit of time, as these guys probably wouldn't have a lot of experience with sheep, plus the sheep only understood English. And the soldiers wouldn't want to leave them wandering all over the road, where they'd be a hazard to other convoys.
