Girl Underground

by Morris Gleitzman

  They’re compact metal camping spades, solid and sturdy. I lift one down and see the words stamped into the back of it.

  Made In Bulgaria.

  Menzies has grabbed two more spades strapped to the same vehicle. They’re small and plastic.

  ‘The more the better,’ he says.

  He takes two small plastic buckets as well.

  I don’t feel good, stealing other kids’ beach toys, so I reach into my sock and pull out the emergency ten dollars Dad gave me before we left home.

  ‘Have you got any money?’ I ask Menzies.

  ‘Only fifty dollars,’ he says.

  I leave the sixty dollars tucked behind the spare wheel. Even though what we’re about to do will involve breaking about eighteen laws, that’s still no reason to be dishonest.

  The road to the detention centre is very flat and very straight and luckily there are no cars.

  This time my thoughts are straight too.

  Get there, do the job, free Jamal and Bibi and their mum.

  The road to the detention centre is also very long.

  ‘It’ll be light by the time we get there,’ says Menzies. ‘My feet hurt already.’

  ‘It’s about a four hour walk,’ I say. ‘I measured it in the car while we were driving to the motel this afternoon. That means once we get to the fence we’ll have another four hours for digging before it gets light.’

  Menzies sighs.

  ‘I still think we should have brought Jamal’s father,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t like leaving him either,’ I say. ‘But he was too upset. I’m not surprised. To be in a detention centre for nearly ten minutes and not be allowed to see your kids. What a mongrel act. But if someone’s too upset, they can’t come on a job. It’s the rule.’

  I don’t tell Menzies it’s a rule I’ve just made up.

  It’s based on fact. Every time on The Bill someone goes on a job emotionally upset, they get arrested.

  ‘Arghhh,’ yells Menzies. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a lizard,’ I say. ‘It won’t hurt you. Remember Mr Lamb told us about them in geography? They burrow into the desert sand.’

  ‘Hop it, lizard,’ says Menzies, waving his buckets and spades. ‘You’ll only get jealous when you see how good we are at digging.’

  We walk on.

  I stare up at the sky.

  The stars in the desert are so much brighter than I’ve ever seen before. When I was little, Dad told me that every star is a human wish. If that’s true, with so many of them directly above us we must be getting close to the detention centre.

  The detention centre looks huge at night.

  Must be because it’s all lit up and the desert around it is dark.

  Menzies and me crouch behind a spindly bush at the very edge of the darkness and peer across at the compound. I can’t see any guards, but who knows how many security cameras they’ve got disguised as rocks.

  I reckon it’s about fifty metres to the fence. That’s the next part of the job. To get across that lit-up dirt without being spotted.

  ‘It’s a long way,’ says Menzies.

  ‘Could be worse,’ I say. ‘Imagine if the motel towels were blue.’

  Menzies smiles, which is pretty good for a kid whose feet have been bleeding for the last hour. When this job is over I’m going to get him a decent pair of Hungarian elastic-sided boots instead of those shoddily-made three hundred dollar American things he’s wearing.

  Menzies lies face-down on the ground, spades gripped in one hand, buckets in the other, water bottle stuck in the back of his belt.

  I drape one of the towels over him so no part of his body is visible.

  It’s a pretty good match. The orangy ochre colour of the towel is almost the same as the colour of the desert dirt. He’s so well camouflaged he could almost be a lizard.

  I lie down and drag the other towel over me.

  We set off, crawling on our tummies, staying under our towels.

  ‘Ow,’ says Menzies after about two seconds. ‘These stones are sharp.’

  ‘Shhh,’ I whisper. ‘Sound travels further at night in the desert.’

  When Uncle Grub was burgling he always kept very quiet near sandpits for just that reason.

  As we wriggle painfully towards the detention centre fence, Menzies doesn’t speak again, just swears softly to himself.

  I don’t blame him. As well as sharp stones there are little tufts of grass with thorns in them. And ants that bite. And I have to pinch my nose every few metres to stop myself sneezing from the dust.

  I don’t even want to think about snakes.

  After a long time I peek out from under my towel.

  The fence is only about two metres away.

  ‘Far enough,’ I whisper to Menzies.

  He looks out from under his towel.

  ‘The closer we get the less we have to dig,’ he says, and slithers on.

  ‘And the more we can be seen,’ I say.

  Menzies stops.

  We wriggle close to each other so our towels meet up and we can make a little tent out of them. I start scraping at the ground with my metal spade. The dirt is hard and crusty here. Must have got squashed a bit when they built the fence.

  Menzies starts scraping too.

  ‘Gently,’ I whisper. ‘No big movements till we’ve got a hole big enough to hide in.’

  Slowly we slide each spadeful of dirt out from under our towels.

  I try to imagine what we’d look like to any guard who comes out the back for a pee and spots us.

  Like two lizards, I hope.

  Two lizards trying to do the right thing.

  My arms ache so much I want to cry.

  But I don’t care.

  We’ve done it.

  We’ve dug a hole big enough for us both to climb down into. Bigger, in fact, because once we scraped through the desert crust, we found the dirt down here is softer.

  Now we can start the real tunnelling.

  I take a deep breath and send a silent prayer to my ancestor Benedict Podger.

  Give my arms strength. Let me be as good at this as you were.

  ‘My arms are seizing up,’ moans Menzies.

  ‘Keep going,’ I urge him. ‘Think of Jamal and Bibi.’

  I’ve been thinking of them for hours. Hoping they’re not on a plane to Afghanistan with plastic tubes down their throats.

  I’ve been thinking about something else too. Now that our hole is too big to camouflage with towels, I’m worried we might be seen. Out in this flat country our piles of dirt must look like mini mountains.

  I pray none of the guards needs a pee.

  If only they all had Bulgarian gameboys to keep them occupied.

  Trouble is, they don’t.

  I know because suddenly I can hear footsteps crunching across the dry ground. More than one person by the sound of them.

  Coming closer.

  In the gloom I see the whites of Menzies’ eyes get bigger. I put my hand over his mouth to stop him doing any loud gasps.

  We cower in the mouth of the tunnel we’ve started.

  The tunnel we may never get to finish.

  Menzies grips me tight.

  Then I gasp.

  Faintly silhouetted against the starry sky is a head and shoulders peering down into our hole.

  It’s over.

  We’ve failed.

  We tried, Jamal and Bibi, we really did.

  ‘Bridget,’ hisses a voice. ‘Have you gone dopey? What are you doing?’

  Dad?

  Sometimes surprise can rock your guts even more than fear. Right now my guts are nine on the Richter scale.

  Dad doesn’t wait for me to reply. I hear him hissing to somebody else.

  ‘Quick, Mohammed, there’s a light gone on in that building. Take cover.’

  Suddenly the hole is full of falling dirt and bodies. Dad’s armpit is over my face, I can tell it’s him by the Bosnian deodorant. Menzies sounds like he’s bee
n squashed too, and I can hear Jamal’s father whispering apologies.

  After a lot of wriggling and groaning, we all get untangled.

  The hole’s just big enough for the four of us to crouch in a huddle.

  ‘Of all the harebrained crazy schemes,’ says Dad, glaring at me. ‘This takes the Bulgarian biscuit. Do you realise what you could get for this? More years inside than I’ve got left. We all could.’

  Normally I’d be crushed. When Dad gets depressed our whole family does. But this time I’m thinking of Jamal and Bibi.

  ‘Only if we get caught,’ I say. ‘Come on, there’s more of us to dig now.’

  ‘No,’ says Dad. ‘Out of the question. We’re getting you kids out of here.’

  He grabs me and Menzies and starts to stand up.

  Then he stops and stares.

  We all do.

  Jamal’s father has grabbed one of the spades and is digging like a maniac. I’ve never seen a spade move so fast. Dirt is flying everywhere.

  Dad pulls me and Menzies away, but he turns back.

  Even in the gloom I can tell from from his face what he’s thinking.

  This isn’t just a harebrained crazy kid scheme any more.

  This is a father trying to rescue his children.

  We’ve run out of time.

  Even down here in the hole, with heaps of dirt half-blocking my view, I can see the pink creeping into the sky.

  Dawn.

  It’ll be light soon and then the guards’ll see us and we’ll be arrested.

  For a couple of hours I thought we were going to make it. We had a great excavation system going. Jamal’s father digging, me and Menzies passing buckets of dirt along the tunnel, Dad chucking them out of the hole.

  Every half hour we’d stop and have a square each of Antoinette’s chocolate. I knew she wouldn’t mind and Jamal’s father said Jamal and Bibi wouldn’t either.

  Then Jamal’s father hit concrete.

  I still don’t believe it.

  What is concrete doing under the desert?

  ‘Must be some sort of drainage pipe,’ says Dad. ‘Or sewer or something.’

  We all stare at it.

  I wish I could blow it up.

  Dad kneels down and brushes dirt off the curved concrete surface of the pipe. Then he gets out his keys and has a scratch at it.

  I admire his determination, but we just don’t have the three weeks it’ll take Dad to scratch his way through.

  Dad starts stabbing the pipe with his keys.

  He’s gone mental.

  Hang on, no he hasn’t.

  The concrete’s starting to crumble.

  ‘This isn’t concrete,’ says Dad. ‘This is very cheap and very nasty Albanian army cement. I was offered two hundred tonnes of it and I said no. Looks like one of the sub-contractors on this place said yes.’

  We all throw ourselves on our backs and start pounding the cement pipe with our feet. Chunks are caving in now. Soon there’s a jagged gap big enough to climb through.

  We peer in.

  My chest lurches with excitement.

  A little way down the pipeline, daylight is spilling in from above through what looks like a metal grating.

  I do a quick calculation. Yes. The pipeline is proceeding in a northerly direction. It runs under the fence. The grating is inside the detention centre.

  ‘Quick,’ I say. ‘We might just have time. If we crawl along the pipe and shift that grating and find Jamal and Bibi before the guards see us, we can get them out of here.’

  Dad grabs hold of me.

  ‘Bridget,’ he says. ‘It was a great try, but we can’t do this in daylight. We have to go.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We can’t leave Jamal and Bibi.’

  ‘I know how you feel, love,’ says Dad, and I can see he does. ‘But we just have to hope they can hang on until enough Australians have a stern word with the government.’

  Dad is still holding my arm. I pull myself free.

  ‘What if they can’t hang on?’ I say.

  Dad hesitates and I know he’s thinking about all the practical things that could go wrong in the next few minutes. That’s what dads do, it’s their job.

  Dads who aren’t desperate, that is.

  Jamal’s dad isn’t standing around worrying. He’s inside the pipe already, heading for the grating.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to Dad and Menzies. ‘We’ve got to help him.’

  Then I realise Dad isn’t thinking, he’s listening.

  And now I hear it too.

  A vehicle, coming towards us.

  ‘Mohammed,’ yells Dad. ‘Get out of there.’

  ‘Save yourselves,’ shouts Jamal’s dad. ‘I have to be with my family.’

  I don’t stop to think either. I scramble out of the tunnel and fling myself at the edge of the hole, trying to drag myself out. If I can slow these guards down even for a couple of minutes, Jamal’s dad might have a chance to get through the grating and be with his kids.

  The edge of the hole is too crumbly. I can’t get a proper grip to climb out.

  A car door slams.

  Suddenly I stop trying to get out of the hole.

  Astonishment turns my insides into soggy Albanian cement.

  A face is peering down at me over the edge of the hole.

  It’s Dave the bodyguard.

  ‘Dave,’ I gasp. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Dave doesn’t seem to want to look at me. If my eyes hadn’t just gone wobbly with tiredness and stress, I’d swear he was embarrassed. Except highly trained federal policemen don’t get embarrassed.

  Somebody else appears next to Dave, peering down into the hole.

  Menzies’ father, wearing a t-shirt.

  Now I know I’m not seeing clearly. Except it is him. I’d recognise his voice anywhere.

  ‘Menzies,’ he calls anxiously. ‘Are you all right?’

  Dad and Menzies appear at my side.

  ‘Dad,’ squeaks Menzies.

  ‘Oh, poop,’ says Dad.

  Menzies’ father and Dave give us a hand to climb out of the hole. When we’ve scrambled out, we crouch with them behind a pile of dirt.

  ‘Look,’ says Dad. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t tell you we were bringing Menzies with us, but I can explain.’

  ‘No you can’t,’ says Menzies’ father. ‘You haven’t got a clue what’s really going on here.’

  Dad looks at him, uncertain.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say.

  ‘You tell them,’ says Menzies’ father to Dave. ‘Seeing as you were part of it.’

  Forget the training, Dave looks more miserable and embarrassed than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life, including Gavin at his first court appearance.

  ‘You know that project on parasites you kids did at school,’ mumbles Dave. ‘Well, politicians are a bit like that, dependent on other organisms. They’re called voters.’

  He gives an apologetic glance at Menzies’ father.

  ‘Get to the point, Dave,’ sighs Menzies’ father.

  ‘Certain people in the government,’ says Dave, ‘reckon they’ve found a way to get all our votes. By making us voters think they know how to keep us safe from terrorists.’

  Dave pauses. I can see he really doesn’t want to say the next bit. But he does.

  ‘You’re the terrorists.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  ‘Terrorists?’ explodes Dad. ‘We’re not terrorists.’

  ‘Of course not,’ says Menzies’ father. ‘But you’re a convicted criminal breaking into a high-security detention centre with an immigrant from a muslim country. That makes you the next best thing.’

  The Albanian cement in my guts is turning hard and cold and I can’t stop shivering.

  What have I done?

  If Dad’s arrested as a terrorist he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail.

  ‘Dave,’ says Menzies. ‘What does my dad mean, you’re a part of this?’

  Da
ve looks away and doesn’t answer.

  ‘He was just keeping an eye on you,’ says Menzies’ father. ‘Letting the government know what you were up to.’

  Menzies looks like someone has whacked him with a spade.

  ‘We should have had a Russian blender on really loud when we were planning this job,’ says Menzies bitterly. ‘And I should have guessed you hadn’t really gone back to Canberra.’

  ‘Menzies,’ says his father. ‘Dave was just doing his job.’

  ‘Not any more,’ mutters Dave. ‘I’ve quit.’

  Menzies stares at Dave, taking this in.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ says Dad to Menzies’ father. ‘You’re part of the government. You’re in on this.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ sighs Menzies’ father. ‘Why would I be part of a plot to get my own son arrested?’

  Dad thinks about this.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he says.

  ‘We’re telling the truth,’ says Dave. ‘Why do you think you haven’t been arrested before now? You’ve got an open-cut mine here that can be seen from the moon. Because they want you inside the fence before they nab you, that’s why. It’s more dramatic. There’s a SWAT team in there that’s been monitoring every spadeful.’

  Dad is looking as sick as I feel.

  Menzies’ father sticks his face close to Dad’s. ‘You dragged my son into this,’ he says. ‘All I care about is getting him out safely.’

  Dad looks like he’s close to tears. But he doesn’t turn away from Menzies’ father.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Dad.

  ‘I want more than sorry,’ says Menzies’ father. ‘When you’re arrested in a few minutes, I want you to explain to the authorities that my son had nothing to do with this.’

  ‘But I did,’ says Menzies.

  His father gives him a glare that would shatter even high-quality Bulgarian concrete.

  Menzies doesn’t flinch.

  He just looks at his father, then gives him a hug.

  ‘Is there any point,’ says Dad, ‘in all of us getting into Dave’s car and driving very fast?’

  Dave and Menzies’ father shake their heads.

  Dad nods slowly and puts his arms round me.

  I can see he knows he’s going to jail for a very long time.

  In the distance I can hear the sound of vehicles roaring towards us across the desert. Police cars, probably, and troop carriers and armoured personnel vehicles and tanks.