Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
The Rover slowed to a stop in a patch of shade beneath an outcropping of rock. Cole got out, checked the brake fluid reservoir, and recapped it.
“Problems?” Erin asked.
“We’re losing a little fluid, but not enough to worry about. There’s a gallon of the stuff in the tool cabinet.”
He wiped his forehead on the back of his arm, resettled his hat, and looked at the sky. Heat and moisture made it a shade of burning silver-gray peculiar to the tropics. Nothing new there.
He looked to the dry watercourse that had bitten through the earth near the road, eroding a channel for the runoff of the wet’s pouring rains. There was no hint of water now. He hadn’t expected any.
“I’m going to take a look at the gully walls,” he said. “If you promise not to start taking pictures, you can stay in the Rover’s shade. Otherwise you’re coming with me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to spend half an hour tracking you down,” he said dryly. “This would be easy country to get lost in.”
“I’m coming with you. So is my camera.”
While Cole studied the steeply cut banks of the gully, Erin absorbed the angles, shadows, and densities of the landscape. She simply looked without expectation, opening herself to the land.
Gradually a subtle excitement tingled through her, a feeling she’d known only once before in her life, when she had accepted the arctic for what it was rather than what it wasn’t.
As soon as she stopped looking for familiar lines and colors, the stark, mysterious, completely inhuman beauty of the Kimberley began to seep into her. The savage heat of the day was balanced by the seamless night, stretching from horizon to horizon without artificial light of any kind. The scarcity of vegetation was balanced by the vivid elegance of ghost gums and the fluid whisper of spinifex. The scarcity of animals was balanced by their startling shapes and unlikely means of locomotion.
And the stillness was complete, a silence more beautiful than music, a seduction greater than any easy beauty of water or grass or forest. The profound silence called to her soul.
Slowly she became aware of Cole standing next to her, watching her.
“It’s getting to you, isn’t it?” he asked.
“What?”
“The land.”
“It’s extraordinary,” she said simply. “Even with its hellish climate.”
“Like the arctic in winter.”
She nodded slowly.
“Be careful,” he said in a soft voice. “If you fall in love with this land, there’s no substitute, no second best. There’s a whole Arctic Circle, but there’s only one Kimberley Plateau. There’s nothing like it anywhere else. The Kimberley will haunt you no matter where else on earth you go.”
“You love this place,” she said, surprised.
“Except during buildup, yes. And sometimes even then.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I was searching for diamonds the color of your eyes. Until a few weeks ago, I thought Brazil was the best place on earth to find them. I was wrong.”
“Are there diamonds here?” she asked, waving her hand at the empty land.
He smiled ruefully and pulled her to her feet. “There’s nothing in that gully but dirt. If there are strata made by paleo-riverbeds or beaches, they’re not showing.”
They walked to the Rover in an easy kind of silence.
“Would you mind driving?” Cole asked, handing her the keys. “I want to spend some time with the binoculars.”
“I don’t care if you want to sleep. I love driving.”
“Have at it. The brake pedal is a bit soft, so leave enough time to pump once or twice.”
Eagerly Erin got in, winced at the heat of the seat, and fired up the engine. The station road ascended in a leisurely fashion. The long, gently sloping ridge allowed her to take the Rover out of low range and all the way into third gear. The balky gear box gave her problems, but nothing she couldn’t manage. She shifted up through the gears, bringing her speed up gradually, enjoying the temporary breeze through the window.
“Too fast for you?” she asked Cole.
“Go as fast as you want. I’m not seeing anything but sandstone.”
The track continued to climb gradually until the Rover crested yet another small ridge. Abruptly the road descended into a gorge that looked more than a thousand feet deep.
“My God,” she said, downshifting quickly into second gear. “We climbed to the top of a mountain and I didn’t even know it.”
“Actually, we just climbed the leading edge of a very minor range. In Alaska, it wouldn’t even qualify as foothills.”
“No problem. I’ve finally figured out I’m not in Alaska.”
Erin looked ahead to the track snaking down in a series of long, steep switchbacks. If she didn’t want to ride the brakes, she’d have to go back to low range to slow the Rover. Getting into low range meant slowing down. She touched the brake pedal with her right foot.
It went straight to the fire wall.
She tried to pump the pedal, but there wasn’t enough pressure in the brake lines to make any difference.
Cole put the binoculars down.
“No brakes,” Erin said tightly. “I’ll try for first gear.”
The Rover was going too fast for first gear and they both knew it. They also knew it was their best chance of slowing the Rover’s descent.
She threw in the clutch and tried to grab first gear. In neutral the Rover picked up speed like a runaway roadtrain. There was a rending metal sound from the gear box. Quickly she double-clutched. Metal clashed against metal. She double-clutched again, and again metal screamed.
“Go back to second,” he said.
She’d already reached the same conclusion. Before the words were out of his mouth, she slammed the gearshift back into second and dumped the clutch. The engine roared, the Rover lurched, then steadied.
They were still going too fast for the steeply dropping track.
A quarter mile ahead, the road turned back on itself in a tight hairpin curve. At their present speed, the Rover would overrun the curve and go flying off into the gorge to crash hundreds of feet below. Erin and Cole both realized it at the same instant.
Even as he reached for the wheel, she yanked it to the right, where ghost gums grew in elegant array among the sandstone boulders. The Rover shot off the track and broke one gum at the base. The tree went flying over the bull bar. A second gum raked along Erin’s side of the Rover with a high scream. The third gum was bigger. The Rover hit it and bounced aside into a boulder.
She wrenched the wheel again and sent the battered vehicle careening between two more gums. By then she’d scrubbed off enough speed to grab first gear, slowing the Rover even more.
The last gum they hit shuddered and held. Dust, twigs, and leaves exploded around the Rover as the engine died. Erin slammed the shifter into reverse, holding the vehicle in place on the gears alone while Cole put the emergency brake on.
It became very quiet. As grit swirled through the interior, she looked at him.
“What, no cracks about women drivers?” she asked shakily.
“You can drive me anytime, anywhere,” he said. “You want to get us to a level spot, or do you want me to do it?”
“It’s all yours.”
By the time they switched places, put the Rover in low range, and crept to the bottom of the gorge, the adrenaline had stopped running wildly through Erin’s blood. She began to feel as flat as dust. When Cole found a level place and parked, she sighed with relief.
He ran his fingertip down her nose and smiled. Then he got out, rummaged in the Rover’s battered toolbox, and vanished beneath the vehicle, taking a small flashlight, a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, and several feet of small black tubing with him.
“Don’t you dare wander off and start taking pictures,” he said.
She jumped. His voice had come from beneath her feet. Guiltily she returned her camera to its bag. After a few moments she grabbed the binoculars, stepped on the front fender of the Rover, and from there to the platform on top. Between one of the spare tires and a cluster of fuel cans, she found a reasonably comfortable seat. Much more comfortable than the ground was, if Cole’s language was any indication. She pulled her hat firmly into place and began scanning the countryside.
Nothing moved but heat spiraling up from the land. The breeze was halfhearted, as sullen as the color of the sky. The gorge and the plateau on the other side were empty of life. No cattle, no kangaroos, no birds. Nothing but rocks and trees whose stubborn will to survive had to be seen to be believed.
When she lowered the binoculars, a subdued ripple of movement caught her eye. She focused the binoculars on a spot thirty yards away.
“Cole?”
A grunt was his only answer.
“What do Australia’s poisonous snakes look like?” she asked.
His head emerged from beneath the Rover, followed by his greasy, dirt-smeared torso. His shorts were the same color as the rusty earth. So were the backs of his legs. A narrow piece of tubing dangled from his right hand.
He glanced up at Erin, where she sat cross-legged on the spare tire, staring through the glasses. He followed her pointing finger and saw a snake curling across the dirt. The reptile was light brown with a faint blue blush along its belly. Shining as though every inch of its five-foot length had been recently polished, the snake moved with the languid, muscular ease of an animal supremely at home in its environment.
“Some of them look like that,” he said.
“It’s dangerous?”
“As hell.”
“Damn. I wanted to get close enough to photograph it,” she said.
“Why?”
“The contrast between the shiny scales and dust, the perfect curves against the angular land, life where there’s nothing but rock and dust…It’s beautiful.”
“It’s a king mulga, and it’s one of the most lethal snakes on earth. Stay away from it.
Beautiful.
Christ. I suppose I should have expected it. Anyone who believes in the tooth fairy is bound to be a little weird in other ways.”
Erin looked at the tubing Cole had in his hand. “Now that’s ugly,” she said. “No doubt about it.”
“Could have been deadly, too,” he said. “There’s been a slow leak since we tried to climb a termite mound on the other side of Fitzroy Crossing. The clip that was holding the tube cut into the rubber. When it got weak enough, the tubing gave way and the fluid dripped out.”
“Now what? More driving slow and praying fast?”
“No worries. The Kimberley is hell on vehicles. That’s why extra tubing and brake fluid are standard equipment. I replaced the bad tubing and didn’t find any other spots where fluid had bled through. Once I fill the reservoir again, we’ll be back in business.”
“Thank God. I wasn’t looking forward to walking out of here.”
“During buildup? Not likely, honey. You’d be lucky to get two miles before you keeled over.”
He opened the supply cupboard at the rear of the Rover, removed a gallon can of brake fluid, and shook it. The can was almost full. He went to the front of the vehicle, opened the hood, and took off the cover of the brake-fluid reservoir. Remembering the helicopter’s dirty fuel, he tipped a little of the liquid onto his index finger and rubbed. There was no gritty feel.
But after a few moments his finger burned. He sniffed the opening of the can. Beneath the heavy petroleum odor was something else.
“Son of a
bitch.
”
He scrubbed the fluid off his fingers with dry soil, then poured the contents of the can into a shallow runoff channel at the side of the road.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Someone added a corrosive to the brake fluid. If I’d used this to replace what we lost, there wouldn’t have been enough tubing in the Kimberley to fix the mess.”
She looked at the empty can of brake fluid. “How far will we get without brakes?”
“Not as far as we will with them.”
Cole began searching through the cartons of camping supplies. He pulled out several bottles, put them back, and then lifted out a big bottle of liquid soap.
She watched, horrified, as he poured soap into the empty brake reservoir. When he was finished he capped the reservoir and smiled at her.
“Fluid is fluid. This is a little heavier than the regular stuff, but it’ll do.” He smiled crookedly. “Look at it this way. We’ll have the cleanest brake lines in the Kimberley.”
“How long will it last?”
He shrugged. “We’ll be the first to know.”
Dog Four was behind Erin and Cole. When they finally came to the area that held promise of having a karst drainage pattern where caves might be found, their progress slowed to a walking pace. Cole began inspecting the ground on foot. She went with him, because it beat sitting in the Rover’s oven and baking.
The heat was, as always, stunning. Clouds towered and billowed, climbing toward a storm that never came. She watched the sky hungrily, hoping to see in its blistering turbulence the dark storm that would bring an end to the buildup’s savage heat and humidity.
“Rain, damn it,” she muttered.
“Not today.” He stood and dumped the handful of dirt he’d been dry-panning. “Probably not for a week.”
She sighed. “I wish it would rain and rain and rain.”
“Tell me that in January. I’ve seen it start raining on one afternoon and not stop again for four months.”
“Promises, promises.” She flapped her tank top, sending air circulating over her breasts. “No wonder people go crazy. The buildup is just one endless striptease. Like Abe’s blasted mines, each one a little better than the last, but none of them really worth a damn.”
Cole forced himself to look away as the cloth fluttered back down to conform lovingly to her breasts. Wanting Erin and not having her was making him a lot more irritable than the climate was.
“At least we’re in limestone country again,” he said.
“Any luck with the dry panning?”
“Enough that I want to look farther upstream.”
“What stream? The only water within miles is my sweat. And yours,” she added.
Shiny trails of sweat glistened through the hair on his naked chest. As she watched, a drop slid down the median line of his body and vanished behind his cotton shorts. She looked away quickly.
“Don’t forget the canteens we’re wearing,” he said. “There’s water in them.”
“How could I forget? Mine weighs more than my camera bag.”
“Doubt it. You must be carrying five pounds of film alone.”
“And I’ve shot all but three rolls. I’d go back to the Rover for more,” she said, sighing, “but I don’t feel like walking that far.”
“Is that a hint?”
She smiled wryly and shook her head while she fanned her top again. “Thanks, but it’d be a waste of energy and film. The sun is getting too high. It flattens out the shadows. By the time the light slants again, the clouds will have moved in. Maybe there will be a break at sunset. If not, there’s always tomorrow.”
Flapping her shirt again, she thought longingly of taking off the hot weight of the canteen, but she didn’t suggest it. He’d told her to wear the canteen every time she got out of the Rover to take pictures. He was no easier on himself. Not only did he carry an even bigger canteen for his prospecting expeditions but he also carried a large rucksack of gear.
She’d been startled to discover that a shotgun and several boxes of shells were as much a part of his gear as compass, binoculars, shovel, specimen bags, labels, sheath knife, survival blanket, and large swaths of plastic sheeting whose purpose mystified her.
“Drink,” Cole said. “Water weighs less in your stomach than hanging on your hip.”
Dutifully Erin unscrewed the top of the canteen and drank. The water was stale and hotter than her mouth. She sighed and thought of glaciers calving into an iceblue sea.
“Are you going to take more pictures?” he asked.
“Am I breathing?”
He glanced sideways at her and smiled slightly. “Dumb question, huh?”
The contrast between his amused smile and his powerful, nearly naked body made her breath stop. A shaft of longing went through her, making her painfully aware of her own body. Memories poured through her, hotter and more vivid than the sun, images of a sensual time before she had seen the perfect Chen Lai in Cole’s embrace.
“Just keep going upstream,” he said. “That way you won’t get lost. Okay?”
Erin nodded. “Where are you going to be?”
“Right behind you, dry-panning as I go.”
The quality of his voice made her heartbeat pick up. “Did you really find something?”
“There must be some old streambed or beach deposits up there,” he said, hooking his thumb toward the two low hills that flanked either side of the dry stream course. “I’m getting stuff that’s much more rounded and of a different type of rock than the rest of the recent streambed deposits. The old stuff could have been washed from layers of river or beach conglomerate.”
“Diamonds?” she asked eagerly.
“Nope. But that ridge is limestone, so watch for openings where the runoff streams cut into the underlying rock. There could be caves.”
“Really?”
“Wherever there’s limestone and water, there’s a chance of caves,” he said. “Not a certainty. Just a chance. Most caves are discovered when a stream cuts down through the rock like a knife through Swiss cheese, showing all the little interior holes.”
Her eyes lit up. She started to speak but ended by waving flies away impatiently.
“Time for more goo,” he said, reaching into his big rucksack. “Those flies sure love you, honey.”
Grimacing, she squeezed out a puddle of white, medicinal-scented lotion and began applying it. She worked swiftly, from the forehead down, covering every bit of skin that was exposed and a lot that wasn’t.
“Watch for snakes,” Cole said, picking up the gold pan again. “They’ll be in the shadows and crevices. If you see any birds or bats, let me know. Could mean water nearby.”
“Do we need it?” she asked.
“With what we’ve got in the Rover, we’re all right for a few days, but if we can find a source of water that isn’t on the maps, we can make Street’s job harder.”
She capped the squeeze bottle and handed it back to Cole. “Maybe Street is just what he’s supposed to be, a man inspecting the Dog Mines for the Australian government.”
“Maybe. Want to bet your life on it?”
When she started to answer, an abrupt gesture of Cole’s hand silenced her. He stood motionless, head cocked to one side in the attitude of a man listening intently.
“What—” she began.
Another sharp gesture cut her off. Silently he pointed toward the east. She shifted her position and listened intently. After a moment she heard the far-off drone of a helicopter engine.
Cole touched her arm and pointed again. She squinted into the shimmering sky. Finally she saw a dark dot skimming above the land. The helicopter was perhaps a thousand feet high and miles away. If he continued in the same direction he was going, he would miss them by a wide margin.
“Somebody looking for Dog Four?” she asked.
“If he is, he just flew over it.”
Abruptly the helicopter’s direction changed.
Cole cursed, grabbed Erin’s arm, and sprinted toward a clump of gums that were growing along the outer curve of the streambed.
“Get down and stay there,” he said.
She didn’t have any choice about obeying. He dragged her to the ground and pinned her with a forearm across her waist. Just as she opened her mouth to demand an explanation, she heard the sound of the helicopter. It was close enough to distinguish the rhythm of the rotors whipping through the air. After a minute the sound began to fade.
“No,” he said when she would have gotten up. “Not until we haven’t heard him for five minutes.”
She lay rigid, barely feeling the textures of grit and stone and tree root beneath her, aware only of the claustrophobic stillness of the day and the coiled tension of the man stretched out beside her. The sound of a shell being jacked into the shotgun’s firing chamber was like thunder to her taut nerves.
“You’re certain Dog Four is off in that direction?” she asked finally.
“Yes.”
“Maybe he’s lost.”
The drone of the engine began to strengthen once more, consuming the stillness.
“And maybe we’re lying in a pool of cold water,” Cole said grimly. “He’s doing legs of a search pattern. When I tell you to look down and be still, do it.”
A chill moved over her skin. “What if he spots the Rover?”
Cole didn’t say anything. He just looked at the angle of the sun. Darkness wouldn’t come in time to do any good. All he could do was hope that the trees he’d parked the Rover beneath provided enough cover. Having flown over the Kimberley himself, he knew how thin a cover the trees gave.
Like everything else that survived in the scorching land, the foliage of the gum and acacia trees was thin and grew in such a way as to minimize the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the leaves. In the outback, leaves were narrow and hung straight down rather than broad and spread at a right angle to catch every bit of light.
The engine noise came closer, echoing off the limestone hills and between the steep walls of the ravine. Erin didn’t need Cole’s terse order to hug the ground. She was already there. She pressed her cheek into the hot soil and wondered how the land could seem so empty one instant and be so full of danger the next.
The sound reached a peak, then gradually fell away once more as the helicopter turned onto a different heading.
“He’ll fly right over the Rover if he stays on that tack,” Cole said. “If the chopper lands, I’m going to head for the Rover. If I don’t come back and someone else starts calling for you, get up and walk into the open.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he cut in savagely. “Your chances of surviving alone out here in the dry are the same as mine of surviving an arctic blizzard buck naked. Street might have a reason to keep you alive. The land doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die.”
Cole took off his hat and mopped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as he studied the terrain. The bed of the dry ravine was narrow and twisting. It led up a gradual slope toward a notch between two low hills half a mile away. The heat was fierce. The lid of clouds only made it worse, but the heavy air conducted sound very well.
Both of them heard the instant the helicopter changed its heading.
“Why is he concentrating here?” she asked.
“Because it’s one of the few places around where the growth is thick enough and the land rough enough that a Rover could be hidden. He might even have equipment sensitive enough to pick up the Rover’s metal frame.”
“Or a signal hidden somewhere in the Rover?” she asked unhappily.
“Doubt it. I checked. Anyway, he’s looking, not homing in.”
The noise of the chopper surged suddenly. It had changed headings, approaching them once more.
Much too close.
The sound of the rotors ricocheted around them. Erin tried to drag air into her aching lungs. It was like trying to breathe through wet wool. She closed her eyes and willed the chopper to disappear.
The noise slowly abated.
She let out a sigh. Before she could speak, the sound changed, increasing steeply, then dropping abruptly to nothing as the helicopter landed.
“He spotted the Rover,” Cole said.
He came to his feet in a rush, shucked off all burdens but the shotgun and a pocket full of shells, and ran down the streambed. The savage heat and bogs of sand slowed him, dragging at his feet, turning his lungs to fire and his muscles to lead. The Rover was a mile away, a distance he normally would have covered in eight minutes. Under these conditions, he would be lucky to make it in twelve.
He was still four hundred yards from the Rover when the helicopter revved and lifted into the air once more. The chopper held at one hundred feet and began spiraling out from the Rover in a clear search pattern. Dust lifted in thin billows.
Then the chopper veered and began heading straight toward Cole.
He turned and sprinted toward the thin cover of the stream-side gums. Just beyond, at the foot on a steep rise, there was a tumble of limestone boulders, legacy of a landslide during the wet. He reached the rocks while the helicopter was still a hundred yards away. With the sound of the approaching chopper filling his ears, he searched for cover. The best he could find was an undercut where an old flood had eaten away the dirt beneath some boulders, leaving them half suspended over air.
He dove toward the little cave as the chopper tipped and charged like an angry bull. The engine sound was loud, but not loud enough to cover the staccato burst of an automatic weapon. Bullets thumped in the sand and whined off the rocks.
Cole pressed his back against stone and lifted the shotgun. The sound of its blast was deafening in the enclosed space. He pumped in another shell and fired, pumped and fired, working as fast as he could, not bothering to aim because the chopper was too close to miss.
The helicopter pulled up and leaped away like a startled bird.
Cole dug shells from his pocket and fed them into the magazine one after another until it was full once more. He threw the gun to his shoulder and took slack off the trigger.
“Come closer, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Just a little closer. That’s it…that’s it. Come and get it.”
The helicopter hovered nervously just out of range, feinting from side to side in sudden darts, trying to draw fire.
Cole waited with the patience of a predator at a waterhole, leading his cautious adversary as the chopper swept across the front of the rock slide once more.
The pilot was either overconfident or misjudged the distance. The instant he was within range, the shotgun erupted, spewing round after round of lead shot in a pattern that must have been too close for the pilot’s nerve, for the helicopter jumped upward and kept climbing until it vanished.
Automatically Cole reloaded until his pocket was empty of shells. The sound of the helicopter thinned until nothing remained but the ringing in his ears. Cautiously he rolled out of the shelter and looked around. Nothing moved between him and the Rover. He knew he should wait quietly for half an hour just in case an assassin had been dropped off, but he doubted Erin’s patience would hold out that long.
Using the trees for the small shade and cover they offered, he worked his way back up toward her. He found her precisely where he had left her. When she saw him, she jumped up and ran into his arms. For a moment she clung to him fiercely. Then she took a ragged breath and stepped back.
“Are you all right?” she asked, watching him with luminous green eyes. “I thought I heard shots.”