Scorpion Sting

by Justin D'Ath

  For the first time I noticed two or three scrawny branches poking above the mirage about forty metres away. They were barely thicker than grass stalks and all but invisible in the shimmering heat haze. How Emu had seen them from all the way back at the target, and how he knew they were growing in a creek bed, was beyond me. But I trusted his bushcraft. His people had lived in this country for thousands of years. They knew how to survive in the desert.

  But not even fifty thousand years of accumulated survival skills were any match for twenty-first-century military technology.

  Off in the distance, a tiny ball of flame belched from the tank on our end of the line. It must have lowered its aim, because instead of flying over our heads, the shell hit the ground several hundred metres short of us and came skimming across the sand like a torpedo. It was travelling too fast for the eye to see. All we saw was its shock wave as it sliced through the mirage in a long silver ripple. Heading straight for us.

  A tank shell travels at sixteen hundred metres per second. There wasn’t even time to duck our heads.

  WHOMP!

  21

  TNT

  A cloud of sand exploded into the air forty metres short of where Emu and I lay. For a few seconds neither of us spoke. Both of us had expected to die. But we were still alive. Terrified, but alive.

  Emu broke the stunned silence. ‘That was close,’ he breathed.

  ‘They must be able to see us,’ I said. It made sense, now that I thought about it. Last night the terrorists had used infra-red scopes to find me in the dark. Of course they had the technology to see through a heat mirage.

  We looked at each other. I think both of us knew what the other was thinking. Emu gave me a tiny nod.

  ‘On the count of three,’ he said. ‘One, two, three …’

  ‘GO!’ we both yelled.

  If there was a world record for crawling forty metres, I reckon Emu and I shattered it that day. By the time we reached the creek bed, we were flying like greyhounds on our hands and knees across the baked red sand. We tumbled in headfirst. Safe!

  But we weren’t safe, of course. The terrorists had fired a shell at us. They knew we were there.

  Or did they?

  The tanks went on firing, but their shells kept whistling overhead and hitting the targets – or what was left of the targets. The high-explosive shells were devastating. None came close to our hiding place, though. After two or three minutes, Emu and I realised the terrorists didn’t know we were there, after all. The shell that had nearly hit us must have been a misfire.

  We were safe (or as safe as you can be at the wrong end of a tank firing range), but we were trapped. We couldn’t leave the dry creek bed without being seen. We were stuck there until nightfall, which was still three or four hours off.

  And then what? I asked myself. How was I going to save Nathan? Would he even be alive in three or four hours?

  It seemed hopeless. My brother was four hundred kilometres away, relying on me to get help. And here I was, pinned down by terrorist cannon fire, as helpless as he was. There was nothing I could do for him. I had to wait for nightfall and hope for a miracle.

  First, I had to survive until nightfall.

  Cautiously I raised my head and examined the creek bed where we lay. Instead of holding water, it was filled nearly to the top with sand. There was only a twenty-metre section that was deep enough to shield us from the terrorists’ view – and even that was barely half a metre lower than the surrounding desert. It wasn’t a good hiding place. Sooner or later, someone would come to check or replace the targets. They would drive right past the creek bed. They would have to be blind to miss us.

  Unless we found some way to camouflage ourselves.

  The sticks Emu had seen were the topmost branches of several scrawny shrubs that grew along the empty creek. They didn’t have enough leaves to hide a goanna, let alone two humans.

  ‘If we break the branches off all of them,’ I suggested, ‘we might be able to make a kind of hide like birdwatchers use.’

  Emu shook his head. He didn’t seem to be listening. He was lifting the stringy lower foliage of one of the bushes. It grew near the top of the creek bank where he and I had come tumbling in, and part of the bank underneath it had collapsed.

  ‘There’s a hole here,’ he showed me. ‘Get something to dig with, and we’ll make it bigger.’

  Where the bank had partially collapsed there was a little sand cave. It was barely twenty centimetres across the opening, but it looked quite deep.

  ‘Won’t it all fall on top of us?’ I asked doubtfully, remembering the cave-in that had come crashing down on Nathan and me the day before.

  ‘Not if we’re careful,’ Emu said. ‘The bush’s roots should hold the roof up.’

  It was our only chance. If we could enlarge the hole slightly, both of us might be able to squeeze in. Hopefully, the bush would screen the opening from the terrorists’ view if they drove past.

  I broke a dead branch off one of the other bushes and tossed it to Emu. ‘This any good to dig with?’

  ‘It’ll have to do,’ he said.

  He stuck his head and shoulders into the narrow opening and set to work. I positioned myself in the shallow depression behind him and used my hands to shovel the loose sand clear as he pushed it out between his legs. Soon we were both breathing hard and dripping with sweat.

  ‘There’s a rock or something,’ Emu’s muffled voice came from inside the hole. He stopped digging and leaned further in. ‘Ouch! It’s hot.’

  Next moment, he flung something out between his legs. Instinctively I caught it. Emu was right: it was hot. But I saw straightaway it wasn’t a rock. It was a long cylindrical object, roughly the size of a small fire-extinguisher. It was painted dark green and had a point on one end. There was something written on it in white. The letters were badly scratched, as was much of the green paint beneath them, but they were still legible: TNT.

  ‘Holy guacamole!’ I whispered, too scared to drop it, too scared to move.

  I was holding a high-explosive cannon shell.

  22

  INVASION

  Emu backed out of the hole. When he saw the shell in daylight, his eyes widened. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  I licked the sweat off my upper lip, and nodded. ‘It’s the one that came straight at us. It must have misfired. I think it’s what made the hole.’

  ‘Get rid of it,’ said Emu, looking as scared as I felt. ‘Chuck it away.’

  ‘It might be unstable,’ I whispered, adjusting my sweaty fingers on the shell’s hot metal casing. ‘If I bump it, it could blow up.’

  ‘Do you want me to put it back in the hole?’

  ‘No, we need the hole,’ I said. A drop of sweat fell from my chin and landed on the shell. I watched it evaporate. ‘You keep digging,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll put the shell down the other end of the creek.’

  Provided it doesn’t blow up first, I thought.

  Cradling the hot shell in my arms like a newborn baby, and keeping my head down because of the tanks, I shuffled slowly along the shallow trench on my knees. It was hard not to wobble. Every tiny movement felt like it was going to be my last. The shell’s pointed end had a grey metal tip that was cracked slightly, and from the crack came a sharp, strong smell like burning matches. One wrong move, I sensed, and I would be splattered across half a hectare of desert. But I kept going. I only stopped when I was as far from the hole as it was possible to go without revealing myself to the terrorists. Crouched forward on my elbows and knees, I lay my deadly burden gently on the ground and slowly eased my hands out from underneath.

  As I lifted my hands clear, I accidentally brushed the pointed end of the shell with my thumb. The shell rolled two centimetres and bumped into my watch. I held my breath.

  There was no blinding explosion. The world didn’t end.

  My every instinct was to get away from the shell as fast as possible. But I couldn’t. If I left it as it was, the terrorists mig
ht see it as they drove past and stop to investigate. That might lead them to our hiding place. With infinite care, just a trickle at a time, I slowly covered the shell with sand. It took ages.

  I was concentrating so hard, I didn’t hear the approaching turboprop engines until it was too late to make a dash for cover.

  It was too late to do anything other than fall flat on my face in the creek bed.

  With a roar so loud it made the ground tremble, a shadow the size of Uluru burst over the rim of the creek bed. Everything went dark as a wall of metal blacked out the whole sky. Two enormous tyres nearly took my head off.

  Then it was gone. A cyclone of red sand swirled around me as the flying monolith thundered off in the direction of the tanks.

  I lay still for a few moments, shocked, deafened and partially stunned. My brain tried to make sense of what had just happened. An aeroplane, I thought. A huge one. It had missed me by no more than one or two metres. It was landing on the tanks’ firing range.

  They would blow it to bits!

  Then I realised there hadn’t been any shooting for several minutes. I had been so busy with the shell, I hadn’t noticed the absence of cannon fire until now.

  Where was the shell? I suddenly thought.

  Uh oh! I was lying on it.

  Trying not to tremble too much, I took my weight on my forearms and thighs, then slowly lifted myself up. There was no explosion. The shell lay partially buried, a patch of green paint and the letters TNT just visible through a dusting of red sand. I smelled burning matches again, and thought I saw a wisp of yellowish smoke rising from its cracked nose cone. Hardly daring to breathe, I worked myself backwards until I was clear of the shell, then turned and crawled flat out back along the creek bed towards Emu. He was waiting for me at the mouth of the enlarged sand cave.

  ‘Thought that plane was going to land right on us!’ he said.

  I raised my head and peered over the lip of the bank. The tanks had moved to the sides of the valley to make way for the landing aeroplane. It was seven or eight hundred metres away, slowly turning around. Although it was on the ground, it seemed to float like a ship on the shimmering silver mirage. A ship with wings, propellers and a tall, triangular tail. I recognised it now. It was a C-130 Hercules, a military transport plane.

  Six tanks and now a Hercules, I thought incredulously. Were the terrorists planning an invasion?

  ‘It said Australian Air Force,’ Emu whispered beside me. ‘On the side of the plane, it said Australian Air Force.’

  ‘They must have stolen it,’ I whispered back.

  Or captured it, I thought.

  Had the terrorists already invaded? Had they taken over the country while I’d been out in the desert?

  ‘Emu, have you heard the news lately?’

  ‘Not since two weeks ago.’ He frowned. ‘What’s that noise?’

  The Hercules was taxiing in our direction. Its four engines were kicking up quite a din. But when I paused to listen carefully, I heard another sound. It was coming from behind us, and it sounded familiar. I turned my head.

  ‘Is the hole big enough?’ I asked.

  Emu was already scrambling towards it. ‘Hope so,’ he said over his shoulder.

  We dived for the sand cave, and not a moment too soon. Four sleek, brown-and-green helicopter gunships came swooping over the sand dunes towards us, like giant predatory dragonflies.

  23

  SCORPION STING

  It was a bit of a squash, but Emu and I managed to squeeze ourselves into the hole. We wriggled in feet first until only our heads poked out. Emu dragged one of the overhanging branches down in front of us so we couldn’t be seen. But we could see out through the leaves. And what we saw was frightening.

  The helicopters landed about three hundred metres away, in a cloud of swirling sand. Because the creek bank impeded our view, all we could see were their swishing main rotors and the tops of their camouflaged tails.

  But the Hercules came closer. It taxied to a standstill less than two hundred metres from the end of the creek bed. We could see it perfectly. Even before its four whistling propellers had stopped turning, the cargo door beneath the C-130’s broad, raised tail section gaped slowly open like a giant mouth. It swung to the ground and formed a ramp. Two lines of armed soldiers in combat uniform came pouring out.

  ‘It’s an army!’ Emu gasped.

  ‘Shhhhh!’ I breathed.

  One of the terrorists was walking towards us. Judging by his fancy uniform and all his ribbons and medals, I guessed he was a bigwig. Emu pulled the branch further down and we both held our breath. I tried to formulate a plan. Bigwig wasn’t carrying a gun like the other terrorists: all he had was a pistol in a holster. If Emu and I took him by surprise, we might be able to grab his pistol before he did. We could take him hostage. We could get him to tell the other terrorists to drop their guns, then make our getaway in one of the helicopters. The pilot would have to obey us if we had Bigwig as a hostage.

  But Bigwig didn’t come close enough for us to put my plan into action. He stopped at the end of the creek bed, about fifteen metres from our hiding place. His medals flashed in the late-afternoon sun as he turned side-on to us. Another soldier came walking towards him. This one wasn’t a bigwig, he looked like a junior officer – probably Bigwig’s aide. He carried a small radio telephone. Bigwig took the phone and began speaking into it. We couldn’t hear what he was saying because the tanks were arriving. Roaring and clanking like bulldozers, they pulled up in a row next to the Hercules. Hatches popped open and their crewmen emerged, four from each one. They climbed down and lined up in front of their tanks.

  Emu nudged my arm and pointed. A cloud of dust appeared in the distance. Half a minute later, eight large camouflaged trucks trundled into view. They stopped next to the tanks and soldiers began jumping out over the tailgates.

  While this was going on, three commanding officers from the Hercules had formed the other soldiers into platoons. They marched across the sand and halted fifty metres away, facing Bigwig. The soldiers from the trucks lined up behind them. Bigwig was still on the phone, listening and nodding. The aide pulled a small pair of binoculars from a case on his belt. Raising them to his eyes, he searched the sky somewhere to our right.

  ‘Here they come, sir,’ he said.

  Bigwig ended his phone conversation and barked an order to the troops assembled in front of him. Everyone snapped to attention.

  I heard a helicopter approaching. It was just a tiny black dot in the sky. My mouth had gone dry and I was trembling uncontrollably. The terrorists had gathered here to meet whoever was in that helicopter. It had to be someone important. The terrorist leader, no doubt.

  The man who had conquered Australia.

  As the helicopter grew in size, I was distracted by a movement to our left. A jeep had appeared from inside the Hercules. It drove down the ramp and came speeding towards us across the sand. It pulled up next to Bigwig and the driver stepped out.

  ‘Look at the flags,’ Emu whispered in my ear.

  Hanging from a short pole on each of the jeep’s front mudguards was a miniature Australian flag.

  I wondered what to make of it. If the terrorists had taken over Australia, why were they flying our flag?

  The helicopter was much larger than the gunships and bigger than the one I’d seen in the terrorists’ camp last night. It was a Westland Sea King, with ‘Royal Australian Navy’ painted on the side. It was true then: the terrorists had captured all the armed forces – the Army, the Air Force and the Navy.

  Australia had been taken over.

  The Sea King landed in a cloud of dust in the middle of the open space between Bigwig and the troops. As soon as the main rotor had whirred to a stop, a door opened and two flight crew wearing Navy uniforms jumped out. One of them dropped a folding step into place while the other secured the door. Bigwig snapped to attention and saluted as a uniformed figure appeared in the doorway.

  Even from a distance of
forty metres, I recognised the newcomer immediately. I had seen him heaps of times in the newspaper and on TV. It was the air chief marshal who commanded the entire Australian Defence Force. The terrorists must have captured him.

  But why was Bigwig saluting him? And why was the chief of the Defence Force saluting back?

  Then something clicked in my brain.

  Last time I’d seen the air chief marshal was on the television news less than a week ago. He’d been talking about a joint military operation called ‘Scorpion Sting’. It was a training exercise involving all the armed forces, a kind of pretend war that was to take place in the desert.

  Suddenly everything made sense. None of this was real! These weren’t terrorists, they were Australian soldiers. Emu and I must have accidentally stumbled into Operation Scorpion Sting. The shots they had fired at me last night were blanks. They must have thought I was part of their war games. I was wearing a khaki shirt and jungle boots – in the dark I must have looked like a soldier. That explained why nobody had shot at me as I rode away on the motorbike. That was why there were red warning flags on the sand dunes behind the tank firing range.

  Before I had time to tell Emu the good news, a second figure appeared at the helicopter’s door.

  ‘Leaping lizards! It’s the Prime Minister!’ Emu gasped, so loudly that the aide standing next to Bigwig turned and cast a suspicious glance in our direction. As he did, his hand dropped to the chequered grip of the big black pistol on his belt.

  Emu and I were fifteen metres from the aide, buried up to our heads in the creek bank, with only a scrawny branch for camouflage. We froze.

  For a moment I considered giving myself up. I wanted to call out ‘Don’t shoot!’ and come crawling out of our hiding place. But would that work? The aide might think we were terrorists. His duty was to protect Bigwig and the Prime Minister and the air chief marshal. To lay down his own life, if necessary, in defence of his superiors. He would probably shoot first and ask questions later.

  Only when the aide turned away did I allow myself to breathe again. A fly was buzzing around my eyes, but I couldn’t do anything about it. The Prime Minister and air chief marshal were walking towards us. Bigwig and his aide stepped forward to meet them. The Prime Minister shook hands with Bigwig, then all four men came walking towards the jeep, where the driver stood to attention waiting for them. It looked like he was going to drive them somewhere – probably to inspect the troops.