by Justin D'Ath
Lying dead still in our hiding place twenty metres from the jeep, I was still trying to work out what to do. We had to give ourselves up, but now wasn’t the time. It would be safer to wait until Bigwig and his important visitors had driven off, then come out with our hands up. That way, we wouldn’t be seen as a threat to the Prime Minister, Bigwig and the air chief marshal; we wouldn’t be shot on sight.
It was a good plan and it might have worked if the Prime Minister had got in the door he was supposed to. The driver was holding open the passenger door on the other side of the jeep, but the Prime Minister was so busy talking to Bigwig that he didn’t notice. The two men came round the near side of the vehicle, then saw their mistake and stopped.
‘Never mind, I’ll drive,’ joked the Prime Minister.
Everyone laughed as he opened the driver’s door, pretending he was about to get in. When he swung the door open, the Prime Minister took a small step backwards. And stepped on something in the sand.
I could have yelled out a warning, but nobody would have reacted in time. They would have seen me as the danger, not what was under the Prime Minister’s foot, about to explode. From twenty metres away, I could see a tendril of yellow smoke curling up around his ankle.
There was only one thing to do.
24
HERO
Bigwig’s aide was the only one who saw me coming. His eyes widened, his fingers fumbled to undo the leather clasp on his pistol holster. The others were still laughing at the Prime Minister’s joke. He was holding the jeep’s door and saying something about his driver’s licence being expired.
Twenty metres is a long way to run, through heavy sand, when a shell’s about to explode. And when there’s a soldier stepping around the front of the jeep ahead of you, a mean look on his face, pulling a pistol from its holster.
‘Get down, Prime Minister!’ he yelled, bringing his pistol up.
But the aide couldn’t shoot because the man he and I were both trying to save was directly between us.
I slammed into the Prime Minister’s back doing about thirty kilometres per hour. We knocked Bigwig and the air chief marshal over, too. The Prime Minister went down like a bag of cement, with me on top of him.
As we hit the ground, there was an ear-splitting boom. I felt a blast of hot air and saw the jeep’s door spinning overhead like a frisbee. The entire vehicle tipped up onto its side, then rolled slowly onto its back like a mortally wounded dinosaur as the driver and the aide leapt out of the way. All four tyres were flaming.
I must have blacked out then, because my next conscious memory is of an Army medic crouched over me. He had a stethoscope around his neck and a concerned look on his face.
‘How do you feel, Sam?’ he asked.
I didn’t even wonder how he knew my name. ‘Got a bit of a headache,’ I muttered.
He asked me to count how many fingers he was holding up (three), then offered me a glass of water. I drained it and asked for a refill. I drained that, too, but still felt thirsty. The medic brought me a brimming jug.
I was lying on a stretcher in the shade of the Hercules. A group of soldiers stood in a huddle about ten metres away. I recognized Bigwig and his aide talking to Emu. Bigwig had a bandage around the top of his head and was laughing at something Emu was telling him. Emu was no longer bare-chested, but was decked out in an Air Force shirt, an Army slouch hat and a pair of Navy commando boots. He saw me looking in his direction and winked.
‘Is the Prime Minister okay?’ I asked the medic.
‘He’s fine.’ The medic gave me a wry smile. ‘Apart from a few bruises from that rugby tackle you put on him.’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Nothing to be sorry about, Sam. I expect he’ll want to thank you himself.’
Which is exactly what happened. When the medic had checked me over and allowed me to get up from my stretcher, the Prime Minister and the chief of the Australian Defence Force both came and shook my hand. So did Emu and Bigwig, and the aide who had tried to shoot me.
‘You saved our lives,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘You’re quite a hero, Sam. I’m personally going to nominate you for a bravery award.’
I didn’t feel like a hero, and I didn’t really care about getting an award. There was something much more important on my mind.
‘Sir,’ I said to the air chief marshal, ‘how long would it take one of those helicopters to fly four hundred kilometres?’
25
LONG STORY
I led the way. It felt like we were the last six people alive in a black, silent world. We all wore helmets. A thirty-metre safety rope connected us, in case one of us slipped. The floor was rocky and uneven. In a couple of places we had to climb down nearly vertical shafts. It would have been slow going, but I had been here roughly twenty-four hours earlier and I knew what was around the next corner.
When we came to the first rock fall, I wormed my way across ahead of the others. Then I unclipped the safety rope from my belt and crawled cautiously forward on my own.
My torch beam played back and forth across the rubble. At first I saw nothing. I began to panic. Where was he? Had there been another rock fall since I left? Was I too late?
‘Nathan?’ I whispered, barely trusting myself to speak.
From the darkness to my right there was a shuffling noise, then a low cough. I swung my torch around.
‘You sure took your time,’ my brother said, squinting into the light.
I made my way over to him. Nathan was lying on his back exactly as I had left him. Except this time he was grinning.
‘What took you so long, bro?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I ran into a bit of trouble along the way.’
‘You always run into trouble,’ Nathan joked. He weakly raised his head. ‘Who are these guys?’
‘This is Captain Morrison,’ I said, as the medic set a first-aid pack down next to Nathan’s shoulder and began taking his pulse. ‘He’s an Army doctor. The lady behind him is Flight Lieutenant April Rickard, who’s flying us out of here in a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. Did you know they’re twice as fast as helicopters, and that they can land in the desert? All they need is about a thousand metres of clear –’
‘Whoa there!’ cried Nathan, giving me a time-out sign. ‘You brought the Army?’
‘And the Air Force,’ said Flight Lieutenant Rickard.
‘And the Navy,’ said Midshipman Thoren, who was carrying the stretcher.
Nathan lowered his head and sighed. ‘You never do things by halves, do you, bro? Next thing, you’ll be telling me you brought the Prime Minister.’
‘He wanted to come,’ I said, ‘but he had to go back to Canberra.’
‘Very funny,’ said Nathan.
‘It’s true,’ said Captain Morrison. ‘The Prime Minister asked me to pass on his best wishes, Nathan. He also said he hopes you make a quick recovery.’
Nathan was silent for a few moments, and his eyes moved slowly from Captain Morrison’s face to mine. ‘Little brother,’ he whispered softly, ‘what have you been up to?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s quite a long story …’
About the author
Born in New Zealand, Justin D’Ath is one of twelve children. He came to Australia in 1971 to study for missionary priesthood. After three years, he left the seminary in the dead of night and spent two years roaming Australia on a motorbike. While doing that he began writing for motorbike magazines. He published his first novel for adults in 1989. This was followed by numerous award-winning short stories, also for adults. Justin has worked in a sugar mill, on a cattle station, in a mine, on an island, in a laboratory, built cars, picked fruit, driven forklifts and taught writing for twelve years. He wrote his first children’s book in 1996. To date he has published twenty-four books. He has two children, two grandchildren, and one dog.
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