The Haha Man

by Sandy Mccutcheon

  ‘Details within the hour, so I’m informed.’

  The Woomera police sergeant, Dave Miles, who had been sitting quietly sipping a cup of coffee, raised his hand. ‘The security video is pretty good. The trouble is it’s black and white so we can’t get an exact colour description. But the licence plate number has gone out state-wide and interstate.’

  ‘I thought we had established the colour,’ Fleischer interjected.

  Dengler shook his head, paused while he swallowed the remains of the sandwich and reached for another. ‘What we have is a group of your people who insist that the bus was’ — he glanced down at his notes — ‘blue and cream, blue and grey, green and white, black, or brown and white. Take your pick. They also say the driver was between thirty and forty and of medium build, between thirty-five and fifty of slight appearance, and one remarkable individual has managed a complete transformation and suggests that the driver was a swarthy-looking individual of Arab appearance.’

  There was a stifled chuckle. Dengler let it subside, then continued: ‘What we actually know is that there was a bus, a driver and two so-called security officers. All of which adds up to two-fifths of fuck-all — a monumental cock-up. By morning I want a complete description of the bus and every cop in the country looking for it. I also want helicopters on all the main interstate highways out of Adelaide. Who knows, we might just get lucky. And Rootham, find your two men.’

  Since when have those two idiots been mine? Rootham thought. ‘I’m on to it, sir.’ He nodded and left the room. He was followed by Fleischer, opening a fresh packet of cigarettes and heading for the outer door. ‘I might join you.’

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked, Nigel.’

  ‘I thought I’d start.’ Rootham jerked his head in the direction of the crisis room and rolled his eyes. ‘With a bloody circus like that, it’s a pity you don’t have any heroin.’

  Just after the shift changed one of the centre’s guards drove into town and, before hitting the sack, phoned his wife in Sydney. With ill-concealed glee he told her the story of the phantom bus driven by women and the real bus that had succeeded in spiriting away fifty-one prisoners. It was a great story, he reckoned. She thought so too. In fact she thought it such a good story that she passed it on to her lover, a cameraman from Channel Nine. By dawn on Sunday morning, the news crew not only had a description of the bus, but had two choppers in the air.

  Sunday morning broke crisp and clear. However, neither word could be applied to Nigel Rootham. He had been up all night and, the way things were shaping, he wouldn’t be sleeping for some time. Dengler had returned to his hotel at 3 am with strict instructions to wake him if there was a breakthrough. There had been none. The bus registration details had finally settled the dispute about the colour. It was green and yellow. The bus itself belonged to a Rankin’s Rentals in Jeffcott Street, North Adelaide. The answering machine told them bluntly that the office was unattended on weekends.

  The latest communication from Minister Philson had left them in no doubt about his attitude. ‘These people have committed a crime in conspiring to escape lawful custody and because of the national emergency caused by the viral outbreak they are potentially dangerous. It is not beyond the capabilities of whoever organised this to have armed these people. So I want the full forces available to be used. I have spoken with the defence minister and he has placed the SAS Tactical Assault Group at our disposal.’

  Dave Hickey put down the phone and glanced at his notes. ‘Police choppers are deployed along all the major highways between Adelaide and Melbourne. They have orders to keep well away from the bus … if they find it.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘I suppose the SAS don’t want their moment of glory stolen by state coppers.’

  ‘Where’s the SAS?’ Rootham stifled his own desire to yawn.

  ‘Queensland. They’re on their way to Amberley airbase, where they’ll apparently take a Hercules to Williamstown and deploy from there.’

  ‘Bloody long way to travel to catch a bus,’ Rootham snorted.

  Dave Hickey was too tired to laugh. He checked his notes again. ‘There’s talk of getting satellite images or doing a high-altitude fly-over … or both.’

  ‘You mean with F1-11s?’

  ‘That’s what the man said.’ Hickey rubbed his eyes vigorously. ‘I tell you one thing. I’d hate to be on that fucking bus when the SAS arrive.’

  Shortly before eight-thirty there was a call from the minister’s press secretary, Jerry Tooth, wanting to know why he was fielding calls from Channel Nine.

  At nine o’clock, Dengler marched back in, having showered and — he took delight in mentioning — eaten a decent breakfast. After one look at Rootham, he sent him to the hotel with orders to sleep. Rootham had no problem obeying that command. He handed the communications role over to a fresh-faced young federal cop who had introduced himself as Mike Bull.

  ‘Go get yourself some rest, sir,’ Bull said as he waved him off.

  Rootham smiled wearily. It had been a long time since anyone had called him ‘sir’.

  It was just after 10 am that they received the call from the Defence Signals Directorate. They wanted to talk to Dengler — urgently. He left the room to take the call on a secure phone in Fleischer’s office. He was away for just under an hour. When he returned he was beaming with pleasure.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘we have a target. A Channel Nine chopper located the bus moving up a dirt road north of Nhill in Victoria.’ He turned to Fleischer. ‘I’m afraid one of your staff must have leaked the story, so be prepared for a little flack in the media.’

  ‘But I gave strict instructions …’

  ‘Fleischer, nobody here has been phoning Channel Nine.’

  ‘What about the chopper?’ Mike Bull asked. ‘Won’t it alert them to the fact they’ve been spotted?’

  ‘The chopper has been … er … asked to vacate the area.’ Dengler’s lips pursed as he paused to let them imagine the language that had been used. ‘Now, I suggest you all get some rest. The Victorian police have been told to butt out and from here on in it’s a federal matter. The mopping up will be done by the SAS.’ He acknowledged the murmurs of approval from around the table and added, ‘Good job, team.’

  Dave Miles got to his feet. ‘And the other bus — loaded with women terrorists? I take it we don’t have to worry about them any more?’

  Dengler waited until the laughter subsided. ‘Gentlemen, let me assure you of two things. These women exist and we have had a team on their tail for some days. I have no doubt that they are involved in these events, though I now doubt that they ever intended to run a vehicle through the perimeter fence. I intend to instruct my men to haul them in for questioning.’

  Dengler helped himself to another cup of coffee and waited.

  Soon a chopper would be on its way to take him to the temporary command post being set up in Nhill. There was such a fine line, he mused, between success and disaster. A couple of hours ago he had been racking his brain for ways to avoid the fallout from the whole affair. Now things were different. He could imagine the political mileage that would be made out of the events, with everyone and their dog wanting a bit of the glory. But one thing was for certain. Though his name wouldn’t, for obvious reasons, be in the spotlight, he was damned certain he was going to be mentioned in dispatches.

  Sunday morning at the Carriewerloo Woolshed was glorious. Andrea woke after a good night’s sleep to the sound of a rooster and the smell of bacon and eggs. She had always thought of herself as a city girl, yet the previous night had been magical. After dinner they had taken a bottle of wine out onto the verandah and sat talking as the galaxy wheeled slowly across the sky. Here, away from the city lights, the stars burned with a ferocity she had never imagined possible and their number was breathtaking.

  ‘I’m seeing most of them for the first time in my life,’ she had exclaimed.

  Mandy laughed. ‘Better late than never.’

  After a leisurely breakfast
they said their farewells and clambered into the truck.

  The narrow dusty road continued its loop to the highway. Neither of them talked for the first few kilometres. The dry and sun-baked countryside passing by made Carriewerloo seem like an illusion.

  They had gone almost eight kilometres when Andrea pointed out the two figures on the track. Mandy slowed down and stifled a grin.

  ‘What do you think?’ Andrea said, failing to suppress her laughter.

  ‘Poor things, they look so lost.’ She pulled to a stop.

  The men, ties awry, suit jackets over their shoulders, looked through the dust into the cab.

  ‘Need a lift?’ Mandy asked.

  For two men rescued from a sweltering day in the sun they were remarkably silent. Mandy and Andrea chattered away about their first long-distance drive since getting their truck licences. But the men remained sullen. Neither of them offered their names, or any explanation except a mumbled, ‘Car trouble.’

  Just short of the highway one of them asked if they could get a lift as far as Woomera.

  ‘I’m really sorry, we can’t do that.’ Andrea looked crestfallen.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Andrea and Mandy exchanged glances.

  ‘Home,’ Mandy said. ‘We’re going home.’

  Wilna had been driving for the last four hours and her neck was tight and knotted. They were hours behind schedule and only just out of Nhill, but at least they had their passengers and were heading into the desert. Everything ahead was new ground — to all of them.

  Wilna changed down a gear and negotiated her way around a large pothole. ‘Bloody road is atrocious. How are they coping?’

  ‘Fine. I think they’ll be glad to get out of the bus though. Actually, if you pass the mic, I’ll let them know that the end is nigh.’

  ‘Time to repent?’ Wilna laughed briefly. She unclipped the microphone and handed it over. Then …

  ‘Kate …’ Wilna took her left hand off the steering wheel and pointed. ‘I think we have company.’

  Kate felt her heart lurch. She stepped down into the stairwell and looked in the direction Wilna was indicating. Swooping low over the swampland to their left was a helicopter. It executed a slow banking turn and, gaining altitude, headed back towards them. ‘You think?’ But she knew there was no other reason in the world for a chopper to be anywhere near here.

  ‘Has to be.’ Wilna’s face lost the smile as she concentrated on the road. ‘You’d better rouse the troops.’

  ‘How far to go?’

  ‘About three to Yanac and then another eighteen.’

  ‘You don’t think they’ll try to stop us on the road?’ Kate craned her neck to catch another glimpse of the chopper, but it had disappeared.

  ‘No. My guess is that was a commercial one, probably media.’

  Kate grinned. ‘The story is out.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  Kate stepped up out of the stairwell, crouched by the first seat and shook Chloë gently. ‘Wake up, kid.’

  There was a mumbled response and then one eye opened. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘We just got buzzed by a chopper.’

  Chloë struggled into a sitting position and opened her other eye. ‘What?’

  ‘A helicopter just flew over us.’

  ‘Goody.’ She shut her eyes again and yawned. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Yanac.’ Kate stood up and switched the microphone on. ‘Sorry to wake you all, but in case you didn’t see it, a helicopter just flew over us.’

  The reaction was immediate. Everyone turned to the windows, those in the aisle seats leaning over their neighbours, scanning the sky.

  ‘I think it’s gone, but from now on we can expect anything to happen. It might be that we get stopped on the road, but probably they’ll send police from Nhill.’ There was a babble of conversation and Kate paused as the passengers took in the news. Then she held her hand up to gain their attention again. ‘We don’t have too far to go and, assuming that we make it, we’ll go about setting up camp exactly as planned. In the meantime, it would help if those by the windows keep an eye out for the chopper.’

  There was another burst of conversation and nervous laughter from the rear of the bus as someone broke the tension with a joke. As they passed through Yanac and continued north, the bus became quiet. But it was not the easy quiet of the previous few hours.

  ‘Are we going to make it?’ Chloë asked. She was wide awake now. She offered a bottle of mineral water to Wilna, who shook her head and changed down again.

  ‘If the road stays like this, we’ll make it. If the bitumen ends and it turns soft, then we have real problems.’

  The landscape was changing dramatically. Far away to the left and right were vast areas of Mallee scrubland, and by the time they reached the six-kilometre stretch of the Rumbalara Plains, the only signs of human presence were the occasional fence lines and windmills. The road was deteriorating, but not as badly as they had anticipated. The map they were consulting was old and what had been shown as a gravel road was now bitumen, but not in the best of repair. Wilna, her face set in grim determination, shifted up and down through the gears and kept the revs high.

  The bus swung around another large pothole. ‘Nearly there!’

  She changed down and slowly turned the vehicle onto a gravel side-road. ‘Just down here. Take a seat, this may get rough.’

  Off the bitumen, the road was little more than a scrub track: two gravel lines divided in the middle by some low sedge-like grass. There were no signs that anyone had passed this way for some time and it occurred to Kate that if they did get stuck they could be in real trouble. She tried to calculate how long it would take someone to walk back to the nearest human habitation. The nearest she could come to was a long time. On either side of the track the scrub crowded in, dense and unfriendly, as though it resented their intrusion. There was an almost constant scratching noise as branches brushed against the sides of the bus.

  ‘There goes the paint job,’ Chloë said, clutching the seat as they lurched through another dip. Then she felt the bus sway and come to a halt.

  ‘Shit!’

  It was unlike Wilna to swear. There was a sudden silence as everyone held their breath.

  Wilna shifted into the lowest gear. As she revved the engine, the bus shuddered and sand sprayed out from the spinning wheels. She tried again, this time without her foot on the accelerator. There was a slight movement.

  The bus inched forward.

  Then they stopped again. Properly, this time. All eyes turned to Wilna. She picked up the microphone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived. Welcome to Broken Bucket Tank.’ She paused until the cheering died down. ‘There are pit toilets, barbeque facilities and, hopefully, good water.’

  Faces pressed against the glass to look out at the foreign surroundings. Teatree, heath and broom threaded through neat brick fireplaces, a couple of barbeques and a large bore-water tank. Beneath the windmill was a tap, and overflow from the tank ran into a small dam.

  ‘There’s no McDonald’s,’ somebody said in English and, with general laughter, the passengers disembarked. Wilna grabbed her handbag and headed for the toilets, while Chloë and Kate waited by the bus.

  As it turned out, they remained at Broken Bucket Tank for less than an hour. While the passengers stretched their legs, ventured into the dilapidated pit toilets and sampled the bore water, the three women held an emergency conference.

  ‘This place is no bloody good,’ Chloë said, voicing what they had all been thinking.

  ‘Looked good on the map.’ Kate brushed away a persistent fly.

  Wilna produced the map from her handbag and unfolded it on the ground. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘I think …’ — Chloë wasn’t looking at the map at all, but watching two of the passengers pointing at something moving in the bushes — ‘I think we need a much more open space where we can guard our perimeter.’

  ‘Right
.’ Wilna nodded. ‘You could get within five feet of us here and we’d never know.’

  Chloë took a stick and drew a circle in the sand at her feet. ‘We need to see and be seen.’ She scuffed the sand circle away with her foot. ‘This place just doesn’t work.’

  ‘Which is why I brought the map,’ Wilna said tiredly. ‘Can we please just look at it?’

  For the next half-hour they went over the various possibilities, debating every crossroad and track along the road north. Whatever they chose now had to be right. They were running out of time.

  ‘What about Moonlight Tank?’ Chloë asked. ‘There’s the small track off to Chinaman Flat.’

  Kate shrugged. ‘At least there’s water there.’

  The trip to Moonlight Tank took half an hour. The entrance to the Chinaman Flat road was overgrown and yet the track itself, though sandy in parts, was firmly bedded on sandstone. A couple of kilometres in, the landscape became wild and seemingly untouched by European hand. Sandstone ridges and five-or six-metre-high sand hills bounded the road and the shrubs were sparse, bent and twisted by the prevailing wind.

  Kate, who had driven the twenty-five kilometres from Broken Bucket Tank, swung the bus in a wide arc and parked on a flattened sandstone outcrop.

  Wilna and Chloë jumped out and looked down into the natural basin a few metres below them. It was sheltered and surprisingly green. In among the heath scrub, a few plants still clung to their late flowers. The day was hot, but already the outcrop was supplying a small amount of shade.

  The place was perfect.

  Wilna stepped back into the bus. ‘This is it, folks. We all know what to do, so let’s do it. Then we can have some tucker.’

  Outside, Chloë heard a sound. Wind, a distant car on the road? She wasn’t sure, but as she turned her head to listen, she saw a small flash in the sky to the east and knew what the sound was. ‘There.’ She pointed. Like a pin prick in the blue.

  ‘It’s so high I can hardly see it,’ Kate said.

  ‘Yes. But I have the strangest feeling it saw us very clearly.’