An Accidental Terrorist

by Steven Lang

  ‘Hold still,’ McMahon said into the radio. ‘Do not engage. Bragg and Boyd, you may have men approaching, avoid contact, repeat, avoid contact.’

  The men had divided into several groups of two. Each man had a torch and some of them were shining them around, into the trees, onto the ground. The leader went back to the unmanned vehicle and climbed behind the wheel. He made a sweeping turn around the machines and headed back towards the road with the other vehicle in tow.

  ‘Barnes, Leuwin. Let the vehicles pass,’ McMahon said.

  They wound away up the hill. His guess was that the drivers would be back. His immediate fear was that they would discover his own vehicles. Bragg had insisted that he drive the police four-wheel drive out of Eden. The damn thing was covered in reflective signs, the smallest amount of light would show them up. However, in some excess of care, he had made them drive several hundred metres along the side track. Perhaps it would be far enough. There was enough to think about as it was. It appeared these were not his saboteurs, the best guess was that they were some sort of vigilante group hoping to arrange an ambush.The situation was clearly out of hand.

  The men left behind were calling to each other, swinging their lumps of wood about, six of them, which meant at least eight altogether. They were apparently reluctant to head into the scrub. One of them was shining his torch into the ti-tree close to Bragg, calling out.

  ‘Something in the bush here, I heard it move.’

  ‘Be a fucking wallaby.’

  ‘No way I’m going in there in the dark.’

  ‘Reckon I’d rather go in there than argue with Bill,’ another man said.Two of the men began a mock fight.

  The sound of the vehicles was fading. McMahon had to make a decision. There were too many civilians around. Should he call it off? But if he announced their presence all hell might break loose.

  He looked at his watch. 2351.

  The fight had distracted the other men; taking advantage of the noise, he spoke into the radio. ‘So, gentlemen, we have company. It appears they are not a threat to us but to our expected guests. Just for the moment we’ll keep our own counsel.’At least until he could think of something better.

  ‘Permission to speak, sir.’

  It was Bragg.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant, go ahead.’

  But before he had time to speak McMahon heard another motor.

  ‘Hold it,’ he said, his voice cutting across the other man’s transmission.

  He assumed it was the vigilantes returning. But the men in the clearing had heard it too.The torches went out.There was a great crashing as they pushed into the scrub.

  twenty-eight

  Andy drives the panel van with what he likes to think of as a certain finality. As if the need for games is over, which clearly it isn’t, yet, Kelvin beside him in the beige work shirt with the epaulettes that’s supposed to make him look like Forestry, and this Carl over by the door, all in black from neck to toe like he was the fucking pink panther, wearing a belt with more gadgets on it than a Swiss Army knife, including one of them, too, of course, or his own version of it, bigger and better, being American, with a fucking pair of pliers on it.

  He needs to relax.

  No one’s talking, but Andy doesn’t mind that, he doesn’t want anything interfering with his train of thought. He’s thinking how this is the last time he’ll do this, that this evening is not just the end of this particular operation, it’s also the end of Andrew Weiss, and he won’t miss him one bit, he can’t believe how long he’s put up with him. Tonight a new life begins, one that includes hot and cold running water, flyscreens, television sets, supermarkets, a pub. He’ll take a holiday, that’s what he’ll do, he’ll go to fucking Thailand and get a room in a hotel in Phuket with a view of beaches and palm trees and women, a proper room with a big bed and white sheets and a fan overhead, a bar fridge, he’s owed that. He’ll stay there for weeks and just unwind, he’ll swim and he’ll stand in the shower with the hot water running over him until Andy has been completely washed away. He no longer knows who he is, he’s been so many different people for so long. He needs to stand under that shower for days. He needs time to find himself. That’s what hanging around with the hippies has done for him. He’s started thinking like them.

  Kelvin begins talking some shit. Jessica and the airport. The American tells him to shut up but Andy asks him another question to keep him going. People let things slip when they’re nervous.You can’t have too much information.

  Say what you like, the American knows his stuff, he knows what’s important. If he wasn’t his ticket out of there, his gift from the gods, he could almost like the bloke. He’s got class. The other night in the tent. Talking for hours. All sorts of stuff. By the end of it Andy had his books out on the table. The American understood what he was on about and that’s rare, there’s not many who’ve even heard of Tesla, or Thomas Aquinas, or the problem of evil. Carl getting worked up about it, what he called the modern face of evil, Andy liked that, the modern face, Carl saying that language was the problem, the way that the owners of money had distorted words, making out they were the good guys and that anyone who opposed them was evil, when it was the other way around, and Andy had had to agree with him because it was true, but at the same time he was thinking, it’s all very well mate, but you’re not it, you’re fucked, you’re my passage out of here if I can only figure some way to hand you to McMahon. And now he’s got that. The man gave it to him himself. On a plate.

  Kelvin thinks he’s meeting Jessica at the airport. Dream on, cunt.

  He pulls out a joint, ready rolled. He wets it between his lips so that the paper doesn’t burn too quick, so it burns even, and then, holding the steering wheel with his knees he lights it and takes a couple of tokes before offering it along the line, but nobody wants it. Carl winds down the fucking window.

  The first drag hits him hard. He smokes all day, most every day, and it’s rare to get a hit like that. Must be the combination of the new heads and the adrenalin. He feels powerfully present in the car, the wheel under his hands, the pedals at his feet, the rough surface of the Forestry road coming up through them. But at the same time it’s like he’s in a film. The headlights contribute to that, making a movie screen of the road, but there’s more to it than that, because right then he sees himself from further back, from the point of view of Milo Cermic, as if he’s sitting behind Andy, but he can also see Milo Cermic from somewhere behind him; he’s not sure where that is. Which is interesting in itself, but that’s not the point. The idea that’s grabbed him is that he, Andy, isn’t really Andy, and Carl’s not who he is either, and, now he thinks about it, he’s got no fucking idea who Kelvin is, which makes the three of them nothing but figments of their own imaginations, which is something like a definition of the present moment. People aren’t things at all, they’re just collections of information, nothing exists the way we think it does …

  In the midst of that thought he gets this terrible shaft of paranoia. What if McMahon’s not there? The dope is so strong that he has a hard time holding onto what he knows to be true — that the paranoia is part of the dope — that he spoke to McMahon just that afternoon, that it’s all in place. He tries to bring himself back to where he was before, driving the car with the other guys beside him.There was another thought in there.Yes, that’s it, he, Andy, took an idea he got from Kelvin’s girl and built it into a plan which has now manifest itself as these two being driven into a trap they suggested themselves. There’s a symmetry there. It would have been better if they’d been driving their truck, the way he’d planned it, but that can’t be helped. He gets lost for a moment in the picture of Jessica arriving at the airport and Kelvin not being there, and the perfection of that, the justice of it.This is the sort of thing Martin is always on about, You do less and less every day and in the end there is nothing left undone. Taoism. He never understood what it meant before, but now he sees it, and it’s very beautiful.

  ‘Here’s
the turn,’ Carl says.

  As if Andy doesn’t know where they’re going.

  ‘Okay,’ Carl says. ‘Does everyone know what they’re doing?’

  And Andy thinks that Carl seems to think he’s in charge, and he’s thinking he could almost get upset about that, except that in some way it’s true, Carl is in charge. This is his gig. Andy, or Milo, or whoever the person is who is always, and always has been, watching, right from the very beginning, is only a conduit, he’s not doing anything, he’s just the agent of Carl’s demise, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be: not doing, letting happen.

  twenty-nine

  ‘Here Anthill, you bastard!’ Stevo says, and raises his mattock handle like it’s a broadsword, swinging it at him.

  Anthill’s got a torch in his hand and he only just sees Stevo in time to block the blow, dropping the torch and bringing up his lump of wood. So they go at it, whacking each other’s sticks, hitting hard, growling and yelling, circling around each other with their feet wide apart and their knees bent; and all the other blokes turn their torches on them and for a moment it’s like the circus, like gladiators. He’s had a few sips and he’s happy, he can feel the spirits working in him. This is what he wanted, a bit of fucking fun, it’s not too much to ask is it?

  Howard isn’t happy though.

  ‘Quit it youse two,’ he says. ‘That’s enough.’

  So they put up their sticks and get the torches again and point them at the scrub. He shines his up in the trees, it’s a good one, one of them as floats, he bought a new battery this morning and the beam’s solid, lighting up the trees, only there’s nothing to see except branches, no birds or nothing, there never is.Where do all the birds go at night, that’s what he wants to know. All day long they’re flying round but come night-time you shine your torch in the trees and you see nothing. Anthill comes up and mimes having a sip, so he mimes not understanding back at him. Then they have one. They’re all still standing about. No one wants to go in the scrub. Anthill tips the flask up, you can see he’s sculling it, the bastard.

  ‘Here,’ he says, and takes it from him, and just then they hear another motor coming down the hill.

  He and Anthill dive into the scrub but it’s fucking dogwood, all vines and shit. They get in a couple of metres and turn around, crouch down. You can hear the other blokes rustling about, then it goes quiet except for the motor which you can hear real clear.They’ve got bits of leaf litter and tree in their faces, there’s probably fucking bull ants coming for them right now.Then he remembers Bill and Matt never come back to the clearing. This might be them now, else they’re still up the road with the vehicles. If they are then they’ll have to do without them. He’s still got the flask in his hand so he takes a swig and passes it to Anthill, beautiful fucking stuff it is too. The motor’s coming into the clearing. It’s a car by the looks, a van or something. It drives in and circles around, shining its headlights into the bush. Fucking miracle if they don’t see some bastard. It parks so the lights are shining on the dozers. Three blokes get out and go around the back and take out a box. One of them all in black, balaclava and all. This is them. They put the box on the ground. It’s something fucking amazing is what it is.Three blokes in a clearing in the middle of the bush. Bill said they had to follow his lead but Bill’s not fucking there. They’re handing out something to each other. Two of them go the other way, towards the snigger, one of them comes this way, over to the dozer. When do we fucking do it? Stevo’s got Anthill by the arm. This bloke by himself, he gets to the dozer. He looks around to see the other two but they’re behind the light, you can’t see them any more. The bloke walks, casual like, around to their side. He puts down what he’s carrying.What the fuck’s he doing? He’s coming for the scrub. He’s coming right at them. He must have seen someone. That’s what it is. He must have seen something and now he’s doing a bunk. The bastard’s started running. Stevo jumps up.

  ‘They’re doing a bunk!’ he yells.

  He pushes his way out of the scrub, his stick raised. The bloke stops in his tracks, looks behind him, then swings back to face Stevo. The bloke can hear someone coming towards him but he can’t see him. He puts his arms out, he says something, a name maybe. Stevo gets to him and gives him the fucking mattock handle straight, but the bloke must have sensed him ’cos he puts up his arm and he gets him right on it. You can hear the bone break. The bastard kind of crumples. He makes a noise like the wind’s gone out of him, like surprise, fucking surprise is what it is. He can hear Anthill coming up behind him but this cunt’s his, he’ll have this one. He takes another swing at him before he can get up again, whack, fair on the fucking head, like hitting a melon. Then there’s a sound like a gun, and the lights come on, but it’s quiet, real quiet and he can see all the branches of the tall trees and they’re white and red, red and white against the black sky, not a bird in sight.

  thirty

  McMahon watched the car circle the dump. It stopped a little way from the two machines, the headlights shining on them. Three men went around the back and unloaded something, the exhaust fumes blowing around and getting caught in the cones of the headlights. It was a disaster. These must be his guests. A complete fuck up. Time to call it off, but how? Best to announce their presence. Fuck Cermic’s cover. It was out of control. He spoke into the radio. ‘I’m going to call this. Barnes, on my word we’ll have that flare. When the lights come on I want you to advance, everyone, weapons ready.’

  ‘Now, sir?’

  But Cermic had already separated from the others. He’d reached the dozer. He assumed it was Cermic, hard to tell in the dark. He was alone, that was something. Whoever he was he put a parcel down next to the machine, turned to look behind him, then started towards the hill, the light behind him. McMahon couldn’t see the others.

  ‘Now, Barnes,’ he said. He paused for the count of one. ‘Okay, all units, advance.’

  There was a moment in which, by the peripheral glow of the headlights, McMahon could see the man he thought was Cermic running towards them. Then another man stood up out of the scrub and ran towards him. The other man was shouting. McMahon raised the loudhailer to his lips, but as he did so, as he opened his mouth to speak, the second man hit Cermic. Then there was the bang of the flare gun, the three second wait, the pop and the red light. By that time Cermic was down and if he was not mistaken someone had fired a weapon. Did they have guns? There were men all over the place, running. Everyone was shouting, swinging the lumps of wood. There was a gunshot. Someone was firing.

  ‘This is the police,’ he said into the loudhailer. ‘Put down your weapons.’

  His voice sounded peculiarly distant, impotent, in this natural environment. The loudhailer was designed to be used amongst buildings. Here, in the woods, the words went out and simply died, absorbed in the leaves.

  But it froze the locals. In the purple light they were caught mid-action. Two men were running down the road. Barnes had stepped out of the wood to intercept them. He had his gun to his shoulder. Leuwin, Bragg and Boyd were moving onto the site, their vision of the other men hampered by the machines. The van’s motor was still running. Masters was below him standing over what appeared to be two casualties. Beside him was another man, possibly injured.

  Less than two minutes had passed since the van had entered the clearing.

  thirty-one

  The road down was narrow, running into tall forest, past trees with bark made silver by the headlights, ripped out of context. There were still some fine stands in these parts, messmate and stringybark, silver-top ash.There’d only ever been sleeper cutters into this stuff and that was years ago. Pockets of rainforest remained in the gullies, keeping their secrets and their dreams. Carl wouldn’t have minded taking the time to actually blow the machines while they were here.The bastards had no business coming into places like this.

  Andy took the van for a turn around the perimeter of the site, but all was quiet. If the timber boys were there then they were well hi
dden. And if they weren’t? He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  ‘Let’s do it then,’ Carl said. Andy gave him one of his looks, but said nothing.

  No love lost there.

  They went round the back. Kelvin following, but slowly, scared half to death. No time to worry about that either. Carl held the end of his little torch in his mouth and opened the crate, folding back the waxed paper. He passed out the sticks of nitro, sweaty and cold, handed them each a roll of tape. Andy’s hands were shaking. Carl tilted his head back so the torch shone on his face. Perhaps it was the brightness of the light but his eyes seemed infused with a peculiar excitement, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a kind rictus.

  ‘Set it like I showed you,’ Carl said. ‘Then I’ll come and sort out the detonators,’ looking at him one more time. ‘But careful. I mean it.’

  Andy leaving, walking into the dark towards the dozer with the package and his torch held out in front of him like something fragile. Which it was. Carl glanced at Kelvin standing there like a stuffed chook. He took out his knife and drove it once, hard, into the rear offside tyre. Just in case. He walked over to the snigging machine pinioned in the headlights. Kelvin like a weight, like dead meat, behind him. He indicated to him to put the nitro down. He took him by the arm, ducked under the machine, into its shadow. Then he began to run. Before he’d gone ten paces someone behind him shouted.