Jet Skis, Swamps & Smugglers

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘You good?’ Neo asked, as they waded towards dry land.

  Robin nodded as he ditched his brightly coloured life vest. ‘Grazed knee is all.’

  Neo had landed in a spot where there were plenty of trees to give cover.

  ‘We need as much space as possible between us and that jet ski,’ Neo said.

  ‘I’ve got my drone-killing gadget,’ Robin said. ‘Hold my bow so I can get it out.’

  As Robin went to hand Neo the bow, a water snake fatter than Robin’s thigh cruised through the water between them.

  ‘Those are the deadly ones!’ Neo yelped as he bolted.

  Robin’s heart shot into his mouth as he realised there were smaller snakes in the water around him.

  ‘Get up here,’ Neo ordered when he reached dry ground.

  Robin was bricking himself as he splashed through water that got deeper before it got shallow. As he scrambled onto rocks, with a hand up from Neo, everything below his knee was coated in sticky green algae.

  It was an easy jump from the rocks to dry land, but with his imagination full of snakes, Robin spasmed like he’d been tasered when a thistle brushed his shorts.

  ‘That was no fun,’ he complained, clutching his chest as they headed towards a single-track road, which helpfully had a BEWARE OF SNAKES sign.

  Neo finally took the bow as they cut across the deserted road and onto marshy ground between tangled trees. After a few gulps from his water bottle, Robin pulled out his magic lunchbox and shook off some drips.

  ‘Hope the water hasn’t wrecked it,’ Robin said, as he pushed in the loose battery.

  One drone flipped and plunged satisfyingly into the swamp, while the other one kept flying in a straight line until they couldn’t hear it any more. At the same time, Neo used his phone to study the local map.

  ‘This area looks like a good tangle,’ Neo said. ‘Plenty of places to hide, and drones will struggle to pick us up again.’

  ‘Just hope there’s no cops over this side,’ Robin said, as he glanced around.

  Neo downloaded the map, then reminded Robin to switch off his phone in case the cops could track their signals. The tangle of branches and saturated ground meant they could move at a squelching walk, until they reached higher grazing land and broke into a run.

  Several drones buzzed by, but nothing locked on. Robin could run all day, but after seven kilometres Neo had a red face and a stitch. They’d reached a little shopping park, with car charging points, a drive-thru Mindy Burger and a Farm Stop, part of a rural chain that sold everything from pig feed and overalls to beer and groceries.

  ‘I need water,’ Neo said, stripping off his shirt to reveal a well-muscled chest and tan lines from his Delta Rescue wetsuit. ‘I’ll get some snacks. Maybe a change of clothes in case they’ve passed our descriptions around.’

  Robin nodded. ‘Best if I stay out of sight.’

  Beyond Farm Stop was a roundabout and a busy four-lane highway. Robin found a spot among trees. While his shirt and shorts had mostly dried out, his pocket had a ball of soggy napkins from the seafood restaurant, which he used to clean his scraped knee.

  He also noticed a slimy lump where his trainer met the back of his ankle. He tried kicking it off, but it was stubborn, and when he looked closer, he realised it was a leech sucking his blood.

  ‘Hate the delta,’ Robin told himself, shuddering as he prised the leech off with a stick then squished it against a tree trunk. ‘I thought Sherwood Forest was bad enough . . .’

  Neo took long enough for Robin to start worrying, but came back wearing a new black singlet and carrying four plastic bags.

  ‘Massive queue,’ he complained, as he flipped Robin a bottle of icy water. ‘They’ve got a couple of TVs in with the toasters and coffee machines. News cameras were on the beach, interviewing the jet-ski guy and that girl who kissed you.’

  Robin sat up anxiously. ‘Casualties? That cop I hit in the face?’

  ‘Two officers wounded, plus five civilians. They said three were serious but not life-threatening.’

  ‘That must be the three I shot through the knee,’ Robin said. ‘Why have you bought half the shop?’

  ‘Four big bottles of water and a pack of cheap face cloths so we can wipe this green crud off,’ Neo explained. ‘Small bottles of water to drink. Beef jerky, M&Ms, dry socks . . .’

  ‘I had a leech on my ankle,’ Robin said, between gulps of water.

  ‘Same,’ Neo said, opening a pack of trail mix as he sat with his back against a trunk. ‘Those snakes freaked me out. A bite from that big one would kill you in minutes.’

  ‘We’d better call your mum,’ Robin said. ‘Taxi’s too risky and we can’t walk forty kilometres.’

  ‘My mum will go bananas,’ Neo said, shaking his head and looking up at the sky. ‘Could you call Diogo?’

  Robin laughed. ‘How can you be eighteen and still scared of your mum?’

  ‘Not scared,’ Neo said. ‘Just . . . You know how mums are. Going on and on about every little thing.’

  ‘I really don’t,’ Robin said, a touch sad.

  ‘Oh damn,’ Neo said, waving his hands. ‘Sorry . . . I didn’t . . .’

  Robin half smiled as he dug into the bag of trail mix. ‘It’s OK, I know you didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘My mum is the best person to call,’ Neo admitted. ‘But check your present before I get yelled at.’

  ‘Present?’ Robin said, as Neo threw a bag over.

  ‘I got baseball caps, cargo shorts and Crocs, so we’re not wearing anything that’s on the news,’ Neo explained. ‘But the tank tops were ten each or three for twenty, so I got an extra one.’

  Robin dipped into a bag of Farm Stop’s finest fashion items.

  ‘I think it’s right at the bottom.’

  ‘Just what I always wanted!’ Robin said, laughing as he unfurled a black T-shirt.

  It had a sketchy-looking surveillance photo of himself dressed as a girl when he escaped from a cash-machine robbery. Underneath it said Robin Hood Lives.

  29. DOWN THE DRAIN

  Robin found two leeches on the back of his leg as he wiped off sand, algae and birdcrap, then swapped the ‘rich boy holidaying on Skegness Island’ look for the oversized tank and baseball cap of a person who buys clothes while shopping for ground beef and poultry bedding.

  Emma said she’d organise a pickup, but since the boys felt safe and there was a chance of police roadblocks, she reckoned it was best if they stayed put until things calmed down.

  Neo decided to move away from Farm Stop, in case they tangled with roaming kids or someone taking a leak in the bushes. They found a sheltered spot near an open storm drain that channelled water from the highway. Beyond the traffic and the retail park, it was fields of swaying wheat in every direction.

  ‘Did it get wet?’ Robin asked, as Neo pulled the navigation unit out of his pack.

  ‘Luckily I bought this pack for when I’m out on the rescue dinghy,’ Neo said. ‘It’s supposed to keep stuff dry.’

  ‘Don’t you need a plug?’

  ‘Should have a back-up battery,’ Neo said, shaking his head. ‘You can’t risk having navigation drop out if you’re cruising at twenty knots and your generator fails. I just hope it didn’t get fried when we cut the wire.’

  They were sitting on the slope of the concrete drainage channel and Robin shuffled closer as the unit’s screen lit up. After the manufacturer’s start-up screen, a yellow warning triangle came up:

  EXTERNAL GPS ERROR.

  ‘Tap the arrow at the bottom for a menu,’ Robin urged.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Robin. Apart from the bigger screen, it’s the same as the navs on Delta Rescue boats.’

  Neo proved his point by swiping past more warning screens and locating the Recent Trips menu. The slider bar got close to the oldest entry as he scrolled back by date.

  ‘That it?’ Neo asked.

  Robin nodded before Neo tapped DISPLAY ROUTE.
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  ‘Another couple of days and this would have been wiped,’ Neo said, as he tapped the option to display the route map.

  A 3D map popped up, showing Swamp King starting from out of its berth on Skegness Island, making a brief stop at a pier on the mainland and then heading to Landing Dock Y. Robin moved his face closer to the screen as Neo used the touchscreen to scroll up.

  ‘It stops!’ Neo said dramatically. ‘Just after it leaves the dock with the women on board.’

  ‘Noooo!’ Robin groaned, wrapping hands around his head and kicking feet in the air. ‘After everything we went through to get this . . .’

  Neo smiled knowingly. ‘I’m messing with you. I pressed the screen lock.’

  ‘Butthead!’ Robin gasped, shaking his head as Neo started scrolling again.

  After leaving Landing Dock Y, the navigation screen showed Swamp King zigzagging through shallow water between several islands to reach the delta’s main shipping channel. The boat then travelled upstream for thirty-six kilometres.

  Neo used his phone to photograph the navigator screen showing Swamp King’s final destination. Then he zoomed in to see the outline of a dock built for huge tankers.

  ‘Porthowell Dock,’ Robin read from the screen. ‘Heard of it?’

  ‘You can’t miss it,’ Neo said. ‘It’s part of a massive chemical plant on the riverbank. It was built to supply the car plants in Locksley. Most of it shut down, but you still see smoke coming out of chimneys when you go upriver.’

  ‘What if Porthowell wasn’t the women’s final destination?’ Robin asked, as Neo forwarded the photos to his mum.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it will be,’ Neo said. ‘The fishing boat unloaded the women at Dock Y, then Swamp King took them upriver to Porthowell. It’s a lot of hassle and risk, moving seventy people against their will. If you were going to drive the women somewhere else, why not load them into trucks at Dock Y?’

  Robin thought for a second. ‘So why transfer the women to Swamp King at all? Why not take that trawler to Porthowell?’

  ‘You can hide in the delta because it’s huge,’ Neo explained. ‘But a foreign fishing boat with women crammed on deck would attract lots of attention on the river.’

  ‘I guess there is a brain under that dark fringe of yours,’ Robin said, as he took a bag of M&Ms out of his pack. ‘You want, or can I finish ’em?’

  Neo’s phone rang before he could answer. ‘Mum,’ Neo said, then laughed. ‘So now you think we did a good job?’

  There was nobody nearby, so he put the phone on speaker.

  Emma told them that footage of Robin shooting the cops and escaping in the jet ski was blowing up online, and apparently the guy Robin shot in the shoulder at the archery shop was some famous retired tennis player.

  Then she told the boys what she planned to do next.

  ‘If the bad guys figure out why you stole Swamp King’s navigation unit, they might try to move the women. I’m going to organise a boat and find out what’s happening at Porthowell Dock tonight. If you guys think you can safely make it back to the water, we’ll pick you up along the way.’

  30. SET AN EXAMPLE

  It started chucking it down as the sun dropped so Robin and Neo got another soaking as they walked back towards the delta.

  Their pickup spot was a pier in front of an upscale nursing home run by a pal of Diogo’s. As residents’ TVs flickered inside dark rooms, Robin sat outside in a gazebo surrounded by roses and picked up the home’s Wi-Fi.

  He tapped on a video titled Robin Hood: Hero or Villain? The clip was from a trashy afternoon talk show called Muldoon. It was the kind of show where they book guests who don’t like each other and encourage the studio audience to misbehave.

  ‘Robin Hood is a criminal . . .’ a sweating congresswoman called Enola Straight began.

  Some of the audience jeered so loud she had to pause.

  ‘Today, this hooligan child shot and maimed six people. Two were police officers. One was a beloved Australian tennis champion. How can this be a hero? What type of people spray Hood’s name on walls and wear his T-shirts? We need to catch Robin Hood, then set an example by locking him up and throwing away the key!’

  Ms Straight finished with a flourish, pounding her fist on the desk. The camera cut to a noisy audience. About a third applauded the congresswoman, but others shook their head and jeered.

  A scruffy young comedian called Darrell Snubs spoke next. ‘When Enola Straight’s crew of muppets came to power, it was all like, yeah, we’re cool! We’re gonna make this country great. Fair tax, better schools, better hospitals, make everyone equal. And what did we end up with? Politicians whacking their own salaries up by half, whole towns run by criminal gangs with bent judges, and corrupt cops like the dirtbags who framed Ardagh Hood.

  ‘The boss class in this country doesn’t like Robin Hood because he didn’t say, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” when the system kicked him in the arse. Hood may be a kid, but he has the guts to fight back against a system totally rigged against the little guy.’

  Darrell Snubs stood up out of his chair and buttons flew off his shirt as he ripped it open to display a Robin Hood Lives T-shirt. Cheers and shouts erupted. The camera cut to the audience, showing screaming girls in End Police Corruption tops and two red-faced dudes shoving each other in the front row.

  ‘Snubs is great,’ Neo said fondly, as he stepped under the gazebo and saw the image on Robin’s phone. ‘I saw him live in Nottingham before he went into rehab.’

  ‘Seems to be a fan of mine,’ Robin said, feeling tired and fuzzy-headed as the clip ended.

  ‘My mum texted,’ Neo said. ‘They’ll be here in five.’

  Water Rat’s flat grey hull rolled out of the dark as Robin and Neo stepped onto the care home’s wheelchair-accessible pier.

  ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ Diogo said, as the boys jumped aboard.

  Marion gave Robin a big grin and a sarcastic wagging finger. ‘I let you off on your own for one day, and look at all the trouble you cause.’

  Diogo teased Marion as he powered Water Rat away from the pier. ‘I thought you’d slap his face after they showed him kissing that girl.’

  ‘She’s welcome to him,’ Marion said, as she settled on an upturned bucket next to Diogo.

  As Robin and Neo realised it was going to be no fun squatting in Water Rat’s open rear cargo bay, Emma peeled back a plastic sheet she was using to keep the rain off and introduced the two women huddled next to her.

  ‘This is Lynn, she’s a journalist, and Oluchi, her camera operator.’

  Oluchi, who looked about Neo’s age, gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Just the unpaid intern, but I can point a camera.’

  ‘Have we met?’ Robin asked, as he gave Lynn a curious look.

  Lynn smiled and spoke in her newsreader voice, ‘Good afternoon, this is Channel Fourteen serving the Central Region. I’m your host, Lynn Hoapili, sitting in a boat with a very wet bum.’

  ‘Oh wow!’ Robin said, cracking a big grin. ‘My dad always watched you when you used to do the morning show.’

  ‘I’m as excited to meet you, Robin Hood,’ Lynn said. ‘My cousin Napua put me in touch with Emma.’

  Emma explained further. ‘Delta Rescue isn’t resourced to take on smugglers that might have hundreds of forced workers, plenty of money and back-up from corrupt Customs and Immigration officers.’

  Robin nodded. ‘You can bet they’re paying the cops off too.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me.’ Emma sighed. ‘We’ll need publicity to get public opinion on our side, and we need to document everything we witness, because CIS will use every trick to discredit us.’

  ‘I get bored behind a desk in a studio,’ Lynn said. ‘So when Napua called, I told my boss I was sick and roped in Oluchi to film.’

  Neo gave Robin a friendly slap on the back and grinned at Oluchi. ‘I guarantee your story will get attention if you put this squirt in front of the camera.’

  31. TWO TU<
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  Robin sat in a puddle as the rain varied between drizzle and a blast that had to be pumped out of the open hull. Water Rat’s flat bottom was designed for skimming over shallow water in the delta and things got choppy as they moved into the Macondo River, which was flowing fast after days of heavy rain.

  Robin decided he’d be happy to spend the rest of his life on dry land and Oluchi felt even worse, spending half the trip heaving over the side.

  There was only moonlight as Porthowell Dock came into view. The river at this point was over a kilometre wide and the docks were on an epic scale, with concrete walls built to berth ships that rose ten storeys out of the water. The chemical plant behind was a cathedral of moonlit pipes, domes and storage tanks.

  Since the desolate harbour had been built for tankers, they had to scale eight metres of rusty metal rungs to get up to the harbourside. Diogo stayed on Water Rat, ready for a getaway if things got hairy.

  ‘Place is massive,’ Robin said as he stood with his stolen bow, glancing about. ‘Where do we even start?’

  As Lynn Hoapili recorded a whispered piece to camera, saying where they were and who they’d come looking for, Emma switched on a heat-sensing camera, that was part of the kit Delta Rescue used to find refugees.

  Robin hadn’t seen a thermal-imaging camera before and was fascinated. The device was shaped like a big ping-pong bat, and as Emma swept it around, its rear screen showed areas of the plant that were being used lit up in white and orange, while cooler areas were blue or black.

  Robin was amazed that the camera was sensitive enough to distinguish tiny traces of heat left by their shoes as they’d stepped off the ladder and walked around the dock.

  Neo had found an old diagram of the plant online and led the way along the riverbank, walking below transfer pipes wide enough to drive a car through. Oluchi had mostly recovered from her nausea and filmed with a shoulder-mounted news camera as they walked.

  Much of the sprawling chemical plant had been demolished, but three huge buildings survived. Robin, Marion, Emma, Neo, Oluchi and Lynn walked through an open gate and along a space between two ghostly buildings covered in pipes and rusted metal gantries.