The day has been a long, hard slog across beautiful wilderness defending its isolation by jolting, bouncing and rattling both them and the vehicle. They finally bring the day’s travel to an end, finding a welcoming stand of shady trees next to a long, narrow billabong, once part of the channels taking wet season floods to the main river and the coast. Grasses and reeds line the edge of the billabong with leafy gums and Leichhardt trees clustering together around the permanent water source. Further back a long bluff of rock rears up about twenty metres above the land, coloured with diagonal bands of red, pink and orange ochre. The face has been scalloped into concave shapes by wind and blown sand over thousands of years. The occasional cleft runs up to the top where a weakness in the rock has been eroded by eons of wet season rains.
As the engine cools and ticks away in the background, Alex wanders down to the billabong to admire its tranquillity. Jed follows quietly and stands behind her while she admires the scene. Brownish-grey water lays quietly under the trees, shaded to a light blue in the middle of the billabong where the open expanse of late afternoon sky reflects from its placid surface.
“I’d suggest you don’t go too close Alex.”
“Why on earth not? It’s beautiful!”
“Beautiful it may be, but we aren’t far from the coast. You just can’t tell whether a croc may be lurking in there. They travel a fair way across country in the wet and end up in some unexpected places.”
Alex takes a step back. “What on earth would a crocodile live on out here?”
“Wild pigs, cattle coming to drink, the odd careless tourist enjoying the view or swimming on a hot day,” he explains in a serious tone.
She looks at him in disbelief and rolls her eyes in pretend impatience.
“Seriously though, they’ll lie in wait and grab the odd cow, kangaroo or wild pig, as well as anything else that comes their way. A good feed will keep them going for a while.” He steps forward to stand beside her, taking in the view. “If one was in there, you’d never know until it launched itself out of the water and grabbed you. A three metre croc can take a cow easy!”
“On this point, I won’t argue,” she compromises, not wanting to concede a position. “It’s still beautiful.”
“That it is, but we’ll camp at least fifty metres back just to be sure. Let’s get set up and cook some food.”
Alex nods in agreement, so they return to the Landcruiser to unload. There isn’t that much setting up. Just throwing some swags on the ground, lighting a camp fire for effect and setting up the gas cooker on the small camp table. Since they have brought fresh meat and vegetables in the cooler, it is a stir fry with a bottle of red to enjoy by the small fire. The crackle and scent of burning wood adds a relaxing tone to the meal.
With the sun on its way down, hundreds of cockatoos start to arrive at the billabong to drink their fill then fly heavily up into the tree tops. They collect in the boab trees until their spreading branches and leafy foliage become a snowy mass of birds. Screeching conversationally until the last of the birds leaves the waterhole and then, on some secret signal, taking flight together. Their wings make a roaring sound as they pump the air for lift, then they disappear together to wherever they are going to camp for the night.
Jed and Alex talk for a long time about Australia and the history of the North until she brings up the day’s conversation. Alex watches the birds depart and sits thoughtfully for a while. “I shared a lot with you today. I’ve never done that before. Perhaps it is travelling through this country that did it. It was good for me. I’m sorry if I shocked you.”
Jed has mellowed with wine and food as tiredness starts to creep into his body after the exertions of the day. “It doesn’t bother me Alex and I’m glad you shared it with me. You’ve been through something I can’t really imagine,” although he quietly reviews his last relationship and the abuse he took, thinking he actually can understand. But he isn’t in the mood to make comparisons. “I’m a bit worried though. That bastard picked us up in Darwin, followed us to the air museum and Adelaide River and now we saw a dust cloud behind us.”
“How do you think he managed to keep track of us?”
That’s a very good question,
Jed thinks. He doesn’t answer for a while, sipping on his wine. Finally he gets up, walks over to the Landcruiser and slowly moves around the vehicle. Alex walks over just as he drops to the ground, squirming under the vehicle.
“What are you doing?”
“Just looking,” Jed replies as he wriggles around underneath the Landcruiser, working his way to the rear. She sees the heels of his boots anchor themselves to the ground as he grunts and swears, tugging at something under the vehicle, then wiggles his way back out. He holds a small, black metal box in his hand. He tosses it toward her.
“What’s this?” Alex asks in genuine surprise.
“My guess is it’s a radio transmitter. The bastard’s been tracking us. Somehow he found us in Darwin and placed the transmitter after we hired the car. He’s been tracking us the whole time! He really wants you Alex!”
“Decker was in the army reserve and worked in security at one time. God knows how he got through any selection process, but he’s clever and charming when he wants to be. He always seemed pretty good at using computers and hacked a few things.”
“Bloody hell Alex! The military, security, computers, hacking—anything else you want to share about this guy!”
“Not that I can think off right now. What should we do with it?” she asks, raising the box toward him.
Jed considers the question. “If we toss it or smash it, he’ll know and we don’t know what he’ll do in response. If we leave it in place, we know he doesn’t know we found it and he’ll continue to track us. The odds are he wants you badly and maybe what he thinks might be in that plane. Did you ever talk to him about Fire Eye?”
“No, never! But I did mention I’d like to try and find Karl’s plane some day.”
“Did you ever mention finding the plane to anyone else?”
Alex hesitates.
Jed waits for an answer. When it doesn’t come, he prompts her again. “It’s important Alex.”
“My sister.”
She hesitates once more and Jed is about to prompt her, but decides to wait.
“And Damien,” she finally adds.
“Who’s Damien?” he has to ask. “Husband, brother, boyfriend, ex?”
“Just a person I live with,” Alex responds in a guarded voice, communicating her reluctance to elaborate.
Jed could have been shocked but isn’t. After the previous revelations nothing can shock him anymore, but he feels an instant urge to know more. A wave of jealousy surges through him.
Who is this man? Do they sleep together?
He wants to know more, but the image of Decker forces its way back into his consciousness and he refocuses.
Alex senses his unease. Privacy is important to her, but she relents just a little. “He’s my half brother. Got himself into trouble with drugs and the wrong friends, so I took him in for a while. It turned out to be longer than expected. He’s lazy, but harmless.”
So two people know what Alex is up to, plus any others they talked to
. He decides not to verbalise his thoughts. “Decker’s obviously been biding his time. He couldn’t take any action against you back home because he’d be an obvious suspect. If he can get you somewhere out in the sticks, anything goes. There’s no law out here to help,” he says as he scans the horizon for effect. “No doubt he’s got a good alibi set up to cover himself.”
“I’m sorry it has come to this! It’s the last thing I thought would happen. The jail thing should have been the end of it,” Alex reflects with genuine regret.
“Let’s just think things through. He knows where you are, but doesn’t know where the plane is. He’s got the map I made but that has three likely areas marked on it, one of which happens to be almost spot on. Another is close to where we are now. Even with that, he couldn’t find it. He still needs to track us. The question is, how do we manage the situation?”
“You’re thinking like a principal again,” she judges. “Don’t get pissed off! In the present situation, it might not be a bad way to think. Any ideas?”
“Let’s review the situation,” he suggests as he puts the transmitter on the back seat of the Landcruiser. “You’ve talked me into finding your grandfather’s plane. We’ve concluded there may also be something valuable in it. You’re being hunted by a sociopath who raped and abused you. You were told he was going to kill you because you wanted him out of your life. He has military training and is probably capable in the bush. He has experience in electronics, computing and no doubt firearms. You wanted to kill him, but had him sent to prison instead because in the end your only option was to lie in court and fabricate evidence. He’s obviously been planning payback for a long time and probably knows about Fire Eye. Have I missed anything?”
“I think that about covers it,” Alex acknowledges in a sweet little voice, camouflaging her feelings. There is a hint of apology in it. “Any suggestions?”
Jed takes a while to respond. “I think we need to talk about our sleeping arrangements for tonight.”
Decker slows the pace to a crawl and pulls off the track so their vehicles are hidden behind a thick band of scrub. He delegates Jesse to organise the camp while he cuts a branch of leafy scrub and goes back to where they pulled off the track. He wipes their tyre marks with the branch and sweeps the bent grass back in the opposite direction so that as much as possible is standing upright. It will take more than a cursory inspection to find where they pulled off the track. He can’t do too much about their wheel marks on the main track. He decides to take the risk as the ground is fairly hard and they aren’t too obvious. Even this far out, there is still the odd vehicle track remaining from mustering, hunting or fishing activity.
He walks back to camp and the boys have already cracked a beer each. At least they have one out for him but he curses as he sees the fire they have lit in a hole. He starts to kick sand over it. “No fuck’n fire! No bloody smoke you bastards!”
“No smoke, no smoke!” Joe calls out as he runs over to stop him. “Small fire, good wood, dry wood, good tucker fire!” he adds as he shoulders Decker away.
Decker hates to be corrected, and hates even more being in contact with Joe, but keeps his temper.
Probably won’t need the bastards,
he thinks,
we can do them soon
. Maybe it’s a mistake bringing them but he has learned to appreciate good preparation. He looks at Joe with eyes so dark they are almost black, totally devoid of emotion.
This bastard I’ll gut shoot and watch him squirm on the ground for a couple of hours while enjoying a beer! Bastard has it coming, bloody prick.
“Yeah, good idea,” he smiles thinly back at Joe. “Let’s put some water on and get some tucker into us.”
Joe and Brad are both hungry and like that idea. Jesse puts a billy of water on the bed of coals while Decker tosses each of them a dehydrated pack of roast lamb and potato mash. Joe and Brad hold the packet in their hands, look at each other and then back at Decker and Jesse.
“How do we eat this?” Brad asks. He is normally quiet and just follows Joe’s lead but food is a big enough issue to break down his reservations.
“You open the top of the packet like this,” Jesse demonstrates like a teacher, “then you pour in boiling water and close the top. Wait ten minutes and then eat!”
Brad looks to Joe and they read each other’s thoughts.
Bloody white man’s tucker!
Neither relishes the thought of it. After a long day they want food. They look at each other again and make a decision.
“We’ll be back soon,” Joe announces and he and Brad walk out of camp, disappearing among the trees and scrub.
Decker and Jesse sip on their beers while they wait for the billy to boil. While they enjoy the beers and idle chatter, Decker notices the low hill between their camp and where he expects his prey to be so he tosses a few pieces of timber onto the fire.
Bastard is right! The timber is dry and there’s bugger-all smoke. Fucker still has it coming though
, he decides.
Just as the billy reaches boiling point, Joe and Brad return carrying something between them.
Jesse is lifting the billy off the fire just as they dump it on the ground. “What the fuck’n hell’s that?” Jesse calls out in shock, dropping the lid into the fire.
“Good tucker, bloody good tucker,” Joe calls back as he tosses the goanna onto the coals to cook in its skin. Neither Joe nor Brad notice the horror on the faces of Decker and Jesse. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Joe reaches into the Troop Carrier for a couple of beers and tosses one to Brad as they wait for their catch to cook over the coals. They look forward to the oily white meat with a flavour similar to chicken.
“What’s wrong with our food?” Jesse asks, barely hiding his revulsion.
“Good tucker for you mate,” says Joe. “We want real tucker!”
Decker and Jesse are thrown off guard and eat their freeze-dried roast in silence as they sip on their beers. Joe and Brad enjoy their own beers and wait patiently while Decker and Jesse do their best to ignore them. Soon Joe drags the goanna out of the fire and uses his knife to slice off strips of meat, offering the delicacy to his brother who eagerly scoops his share into his mouth, savouring the taste.
“We bin long way out mate,” Joe volunteers. “Me and Brad’ll find you real good hunt’n out here. A way bit closer to the swamp will be good. Tomorrow will be real good!” Joe promises and claps Brad on the back as he grins and nods in agreement.
“That’ll be good,” Decker offers after a while. He is revolted by what they are doing. He feels an urge to do them now so he can crawl into his swag and listen to their dying moans of pain but doesn’t know whether he still needs them. He thinks about his prey and how he is going to handle it while worrying about the headmaster and his fucking rifle. He should have thought about it but who would have dreamt it! He must have been thinking about the problem for a while because he notices the black fellas slicing further into the goanna, searching the intestines for something that he works out are the eggs.
They are in luck and Joe uses his knife to scoop them out onto a piece of bark. Joe and Brad tuck into the pile, each eating with a hunting knife.
Fuck!
Decker reacts with distaste, not understanding the delicacy he is missing, and goes back to solving his problem. The fifth beer supplies the answer and he looks over to Jesse, ignoring Joe and Brad finishing the last of their meal. “Jess,” he says quietly, “come here.”
Jesse looks over and Decker cocks his head to bring him closer. When Jesse is sitting next to him, he says in a quiet voice, “In the morning, before sun up, I’m going to check on the bitch and her fella. I want you to stay here and keep an eye on things. Whatever you hear, you stay put and keep the black fellas here, got it! If I want you, I’ll give a call on the radio.”
“Got it Pa! What are you goin’ to do? You won’t do it without me, will you?” Jesse asks with apprehension.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to pay the bitch back. I’m just going for a look and, if I have to, I’ll just make sure nothing spoils our plans,” he replies, thinking about the headmaster and the rifle. The worry nibbles away at him. He would never recognise or admit it, but the thought of facing someone he can’t intimidate scares him. “I’m hitting the sack. Let these black fellas finish up and remember what I told you,” he says to Jesse as he tosses his swag onto the ground.
“Don’t worry Pa, you can rely on me,” Jesse replies. He feels the swell of pride in his chest that his dad will leave him in charge and goes back to sit against the wheel of the Patrol to keep an eye on Joe and Brad. He watches as they lick their fingers before going back to the beers.
The sun has sunk below the horizon as the three of them throw their swags on the ground and pull the tops off another beer for a final drink. It is well and truly dark as Jesse crawls into his own swag to listen to the noises of the night as he drifts toward sleep. The last thing he hears is Joe and Brad mumbling to each other and the occasional chuckle of contentment as the fire slowly dies.
Decker sleeps light, woken occasionally by the odd noise or his in-built sense of awareness, switching on at random intervals to scan the darkness before drifting off again. He wakes before dawn, checks his watch and unzips the swag. He takes a swig of water, slips on his boots and rolls to his feet. The camp is quiet as he eases open the back door of the Nissan and selects the twelve-gauge coach gun, a side by side, double-barrel shotgun with short twenty-inch barrels and a small, high intensity torch mounted under the barrel. He breaks the action and slips two rounds of buckshot into the chambers. Each cartridge contains nine pellets, each the size of a .22 bullet. The load packs a lot of wallop and he slips two more into his pockets. He checks that his knife is still strapped to his belt before picking up the GPS and hand-held radio, slipping them into the pockets of his safari trousers. He adds some plastic ties, then heads out to the track and starts walking quietly toward his prey.
They should only be a few kilometres down the track and the GPS confirms the distance as three thousand four hundred and thirty metres. The night sky has little cloud and the half moon gives a good bit of light as he begins his hunt. He places his feet carefully but keeps up a good pace through the early morning darkness. As he walks, the sky to the east gains a little more light to help him as he picks out the still obvious track between the trees, regularly checking the GPS to maintain direction. In under an hour he sees the gleam of a vehicle among the trees as the moonlight reflects off it.
He stops and takes in the scene for a few minutes in the early morning twilight. He can see the moonlight reflecting off the surface of a lagoon to his right and, slightly to his front left, the dying embers of a camp fire still glow faintly. He takes a few steps further forward and picks up the dark shapes of two swags close together on the ground. Not next to each other, but close. He savours the anticipation. It is best this way, a bit sooner than he planned but safer. He takes another few steps, trying to pick the headmaster’s swag. He stops and waits with the infinite patience of the hunter, standing still in the early morning light. It takes only a minute or two for him to pick out extra details, the body shapes in the swags and the boots placed neatly next to each one.
Eyeing the larger swag, the one with the man’s boots next to it, he quietly takes a few more steps, slowly and carefully, as he gently pulls back the hammers of the coach gun to minimise the click. He is really enjoying this. The expectation almost gives him a hard on but he waits silently, taking one step, waiting again, and then taking another, gradually closing the range. He raises the shotgun to his shoulder. The buckshot will smash the ponce’s legs and all he will be able to do is squirm and moan until he’s ready to finish him.
The look on his face will be classic! He’ll know what’s coming. God, that’ll be good! Fuck’n headmasters and their canes!
This one can pay for all of them.
He hesitates a while longer, lingering on his thoughts. He feels the sexual power of control over life and death surge through him stimulating his loins as he settles the shotgun into his shoulder. Placing the front sight just on the lower part of the left-hand swag, he gently squeezes the trigger.