“Somebody looking for Dog Four?” she asked.
“If he is, he just flew over it.”
Abruptly the helicopter’s direction changed.
Cole cursed, grabbed Erin’s arm, and sprinted toward a clump of gums that were growing along the outer curve of the streambed.
“Get down and stay there,” he said.
She didn’t have any choice about obeying. He dragged her to the ground and pinned her with a forearm across her waist. Just as she opened her mouth to demand an explanation, she heard the sound of the helicopter. It was close enough to distinguish the rhythm of the rotors whipping through the air. After a minute the sound began to fade.
“No,” he said when she would have gotten up. “Not until we haven’t heard him for five minutes.”
She lay rigid, barely feeling the textures of grit and stone and tree root beneath her, aware only of the claustrophobic stillness of the day and the coiled tension of the man stretched out beside her. The sound of a shell being jacked into the shotgun’s firing chamber was like thunder to her taut nerves.
“You’re certain Dog Four is off in that direction?” she asked finally.
“Yes.”
“Maybe he’s lost.”
The drone of the engine began to strengthen once more, consuming the stillness.
“And maybe we’re lying in a pool of cold water,” Cole said grimly. “He’s doing legs of a search pattern. When I tell you to look down and be still, do it.”
A chill moved over her skin. “What if he spots the Rover?”
Cole didn’t say anything. He just looked at the angle of the sun. Darkness wouldn’t come in time to do any good. All he could do was hope that the trees he’d parked the Rover beneath provided enough cover. Having flown over the Kimberley himself, he knew how thin a cover the trees gave.
Like everything else that survived in the scorching land, the foliage of the gum and acacia trees was thin and grew in such a way as to minimize the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the leaves. In the outback, leaves were narrow and hung straight down rather than broad and spread at a right angle to catch every bit of light.
The engine noise came closer, echoing off the limestone hills and between the steep walls of the ravine. Erin didn’t need Cole’s terse order to hug the ground. She was already there. She pressed her cheek into the hot soil and wondered how the land could seem so empty one instant and be so full of danger the next.
The sound reached a peak, then gradually fell away once more as the helicopter turned onto a different heading.
“He’ll fly right over the Rover if he stays on that tack,” Cole said. “If the chopper lands, I’m going to head for the Rover. If I don’t come back and someone else starts calling for you, get up and walk into the open.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he cut in savagely. “Your chances of surviving alone out here in the dry are the same as mine of surviving an arctic blizzard buck naked. Street might have a reason to keep you alive. The land doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die.”
Cole took off his hat and mopped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as he studied the terrain. The bed of the dry ravine was narrow and twisting. It led up a gradual slope toward a notch between two low hills half a mile away. The heat was fierce. The lid of clouds only made it worse, but the heavy air conducted sound very well.
Both of them heard the instant the helicopter changed its heading.
“Why is he concentrating here?” she asked.
“Because it’s one of the few places around where the growth is thick enough and the land rough enough that a Rover could be hidden. He might even have equipment sensitive enough to pick up the Rover’s metal frame.”
“Or a signal hidden somewhere in the Rover?” she asked unhappily.
“Doubt it. I checked. Anyway, he’s looking, not homing in.”
The noise of the chopper surged suddenly. It had changed headings, approaching them once more.
Much too close.
The sound of the rotors ricocheted around them. Erin tried to drag air into her aching lungs. It was like trying to breathe through wet wool. She closed her eyes and willed the chopper to disappear.
The noise slowly abated.
She let out a sigh. Before she could speak, the sound changed, increasing steeply, then dropping abruptly to nothing as the helicopter landed.
“He spotted the Rover,” Cole said.
He came to his feet in a rush, shucked off all burdens but the shotgun and a pocket full of shells, and ran down the streambed. The savage heat and bogs of sand slowed him, dragging at his feet, turning his lungs to fire and his muscles to lead. The Rover was a mile away, a distance he normally would have covered in eight minutes. Under these conditions, he would be lucky to make it in twelve.
He was still four hundred yards from the Rover when the helicopter revved and lifted into the air once more. The chopper held at one hundred feet and began spiraling out from the Rover in a clear search pattern. Dust lifted in thin billows.
Then the chopper veered and began heading straight toward Cole.
He turned and sprinted toward the thin cover of the stream-side gums. Just beyond, at the foot on a steep rise, there was a tumble of limestone boulders, legacy of a landslide during the wet. He reached the rocks while the helicopter was still a hundred yards away. With the sound of the approaching chopper filling his ears, he searched for cover. The best he could find was an undercut where an old flood had eaten away the dirt beneath some boulders, leaving them half suspended over air.
He dove toward the little cave as the chopper tipped and charged like an angry bull. The engine sound was loud, but not loud enough to cover the staccato burst of an automatic weapon. Bullets thumped in the sand and whined off the rocks.
Cole pressed his back against stone and lifted the shotgun. The sound of its blast was deafening in the enclosed space. He pumped in another shell and fired, pumped and fired, working as fast as he could, not bothering to aim because the chopper was too close to miss.
The helicopter pulled up and leaped away like a startled bird.
Cole dug shells from his pocket and fed them into the magazine one after another until it was full once more. He threw the gun to his shoulder and took slack off the trigger.
“Come closer, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Just a little closer. That’s it…that’s it. Come and get it.”
The helicopter hovered nervously just out of range, feinting from side to side in sudden darts, trying to draw fire.
Cole waited with the patience of a predator at a waterhole, leading his cautious adversary as the chopper swept across the front of the rock slide once more.
The pilot was either overconfident or misjudged the distance. The instant he was within range, the shotgun erupted, spewing round after round of lead shot in a pattern that must have been too close for the pilot’s nerve, for the helicopter jumped upward and kept climbing until it vanished.
Automatically Cole reloaded until his pocket was empty of shells. The sound of the helicopter thinned until nothing remained but the ringing in his ears. Cautiously he rolled out of the shelter and looked around. Nothing moved between him and the Rover. He knew he should wait quietly for half an hour just in case an assassin had been dropped off, but he doubted Erin’s patience would hold out that long.
Using the trees for the small shade and cover they offered, he worked his way back up toward her. He found her precisely where he had left her. When she saw him, she jumped up and ran into his arms. For a moment she clung to him fiercely. Then she took a ragged breath and stepped back.
“Are you all right?” she asked, watching him with luminous green eyes. “I thought I heard shots.”
“Nobody connected.”
“Who was it?”
“I didn’t get close enough to see. But it was the station helicopter.”
She didn’t ask any more questions as she followed Cole down the baking
dry wash to the place where they’d left the Rover. She was relieved to see the vehicle. Its burning interior was better than the unshielded rays of the sun.
Cole looked at the dark stains spreading out from the Rover. Even though he’d been expecting sabotage, the reality of seeing it was no less grim.
“Cole?”
“It’s just what it looks like,” he said roughly. “Radiator fluid.”
Silently she watched while he checked the Rover’s engine compartment, dashboard, and equipment cupboards.
“The son of a bitch was thorough,” he said, slamming the Rover’s door. “Not one bit of hose left, and no water to use in any case.”
“He took our water?”
“No. He took the food. The water he poured on the ground.”
She took a harsh breath. “The radio?”
“Gone. So are the maps.”
Her breath came out in a rush. She looked away, not wanting to show Cole how frightened she was. “I see. Now what?”
He looked at the blazing sky and then at the woman whose skin was pale beneath the flush of tropic heat.
“Drink your fill from the canteen, honey.”
“Shouldn’t I save it?”
“You’d be surprised how many people have been found dead with water in their canteens. Dehydration is like hypothermia. It saps your judgment before it kills you. Drink while you can. Thirst will come soon enough.”
39
Kimberley Plateau Afternoon
Erin looked at the contents of the rucksack Cole had spread out on top of the thin survival blanket. He took the rock hammer off his belt. Without hesitating he set the hammer beside the steel pan, sample bags, and rock samples he’d collected. The thermal bag she carried film in lay nearby. The compass was beside the canteen he’d carried. So were matches, shovel, three boxes of shotgun shells, the shotgun itself, the knife in its wrist sheath, and several large, folded sheets of plastic.
As she watched, he kept pulling things from the rucksack and sorting them according to their usefulness as basic survival gear.
“How much ice is left in the chest?” he asked without looking up.
“None. It all had melted even before he ripped off the lid. He must have looked in, seen only the rack holding the film, and gone on to more important things.”
Cole grunted. “Is the film all right?”
“It should be fine. The canisters are tight.”
Quickly Erin sorted unexposed from exposed film. When she was finished, she began stuffing rolls of exposed film into a military-surplus hip belt. From the belt hung a variety of pouches made of camouflage cloth.
“Don’t bother with the belt,” Cole said. “It will just be excess weight. We can’t afford an ounce more than is absolutely necessary.”
“How long will it take us to get back here?” she asked, looking at the mound of exposed film.
“We can’t count on getting back at all,” he said evenly. “It’s seventy miles to the Gibb River Road. That’s if we fly. On the ground it will be farther.”
“How far away is Windsor station?”
“Fifty miles, give or take, if we follow the road. Less if we don’t. But there’s nothing between here and the station except two limestone ridges and cracking clay flats that won’t see water between now and the wet.” He began packing the rucksack. “Even if we did make it to the station, the bastard in the chopper would be waiting and we’d be in no shape to outsmart, outshoot, or outrun him. There’s a better chance of finding water between here and the Gibb River Road, and a hell of a lot better chance of finding help once we’re there.”
What Cole didn’t say was that their chance of survival was slim at best. No food, little water, and mile after rugged mile of empty country, the kind of land that would demand everything from them and give back nothing but more demands on their failing strength.
Erin looked at Cole’s bleak expression and knew everything he hadn’t said. Without a word she turned her back on the pile of film that had recorded her first, irreplaceable perceptions of the alien landscape that was the Kimberley Plateau.
“Any water left in the ice chest?” he asked.
“Some.”
“Pour it into the empty canteen that’s under the front seat. If you can’t do it without spilling, I’ll help.”
Before she finished transferring the ice chest’s water to the canteen, he came up to the Rover with the heavy rucksack in one hand and the shotgun in the other. He pulled on a khaki bush shirt and stuffed another into the rucksack. Then he watched while she carefully drained the last drops into the big canteen’s mouth. When she capped the canteen and handed it to him, he hefted its weight with surprise.
“Almost a half gallon,” he said. “Good.”
He didn’t mention how little of their daily requirement that amount of water was. He simply clipped the canteen to his webbing belt opposite the other large canteen he carried. It, too, held about half a gallon of water.
“Take off your canteen and belt,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I can carry it.”
“Take it off.”
“Cole—”
“No,” he cut in. “I have three times your strength. Hand it over.”
She looked into his hard gray eyes and knew arguing would be useless. Worse, it would waste energy. She gave Cole the canteen and dropped the belt in the dirt.
Automatically she turned to the Rover and pulled out her camera bag. The instant she realized what she was doing, she replaced the bag and let the strap slide from her fingers. When she turned back to him, she was empty-handed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, touching her cheek briefly.
“It was just force of habit. Since we can’t eat it, drink it, or kill with it, we don’t need it, do we?”
“No. Wing will replace everything you lose.”
She nodded.
But even if she survived to have Wing replace her camera equipment, nothing could replace the exposed film. She put the thought out of her mind, because thinking about it wouldn’t help.
Cole took a reading on his compass and headed up the dry streambed with an easy, long-legged stride that was neither fast nor slow. Erin followed, trying to ignore the sweat sliding down her body and the heat rising in sheets from the parched land.
After two miles he turned and headed for a black velvet shadow that lay partway up one of the limestone hills. After a steep climb, they reached the shadow. More alcove than cave, the overhang gave shelter and a good view back down the wash. Faded pictographs showed against the rough limestone. Tongues of soot rose where campfires had burned.
“Aborigines,” he said, glancing around. “A band must have camped here during the wet.”
She forgot about the heat as she looked at the pictographs. By reflex she reached for her camera, remembered, and had to be satisfied with thinking about how she would have photographed the images if she could have.
“We can’t be spotted from the air here,” Cole said. “We’ll be safe until dark.” As he turned away from the drawings he saw the expression of longing on Erin’s face. “If it makes you feel better, there are thousands of places like this scattered around the outback. This won’t be your only chance to photograph an old Aborigine camp.”
She nodded, wondering if he believed the implication of his own words—survival, not death. But she didn’t ask.
Their odds of living wouldn’t improve by talking about it.
“Looking at those hand designs is rather eerie,” she said.
“Holy ground.”
“Really?” She examined the pictographs with new interest.
“Every piece of landscape that’s the least bit different is sacred to the Aborigines. Every seep, every oddly shaped rock, everything that isn’t flat and spinifex or rumpled and covered with sparse gum.” Cole shrugged out of the rucksack and flexed his shoulders. “But we don’t need to worry about guests dropping in. This place hasn’t been used since white men landed do
wn under.”
“How can you tell?”
“No broken bottles or beer cans.” Cole pointed to the rucksack. “Use that for a pillow. Sleep if you can. We’ve got a long night of walking ahead.”
“All night? Are you really that afraid of being spotted?”
“We’ll need less water walking at night and sleeping by day.”
She hesitated, then asked the question she’d told herself she wasn’t going to ask because the answers really wouldn’t change the outcome. “How long will it take to reach Gibb River Road?”
“Four days, if we’re lucky. Six days, more likely. The country gets rougher than hell in the last half, and we’ll be a lot weaker by then.”
“How much time do we have?”
“With only the water in the canteens, we’d be dry by this time tomorrow. By the day after, we’d be staggering.” He sat, leaned against the wall of the overhang, and pulled his hat down to cover his eyes. “If we get lucky, we’ll find an unmarked seep. If not, there are other ways.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he was asleep.
She closed her mouth and envied him that catlike ability to sleep whenever and wherever the opportunity offered. She didn’t think she would be able to sleep, but her body surprised her. Even the few miles she’d walked that day had drained her strength. Her last thought before she dropped off was relief that she wouldn’t have to face another hike through the brutal sunlight.
Erin didn’t awaken until she felt Cole stirring beside her. The quality of the light told her it was late afternoon. Pale, almost invisible lightning stitched through the dark gray sky. The river of clouds had become a seamless, seething lid over the land, holding in heat without bringing the cool sweetness of rain.
“You’re sure it rains here?” she said, swallowing to relieve the dryness in her mouth.
“Eventually. But not today. The clouds will be gone in a few hours. That’s just heat lightning.” He stood and held out his hand to her, pulling her to her feet. “We’ll make much better time while it’s still light.”
Death is Forever Page 30
