Zero Minus Ten

by Raymond Benson

  Bond repeatedly slammed his elbow into Harry’s face, but the albino still clutched the AK-47. Finally, in an attempt to pull the gun up and away from Bond, he swung his arms above his head. Unfortunately, this action aimed the gun towards the cockpit. Another blast of gunfire riddled the control panel and the pilot, who slumped forward in his seat.

  The plane immediately swerved and started to dive. Bond and Harry were slammed against a seat, and Harry dropped the gun. They continued to roll as the plane spun upside down. The cabin’s ceiling was now the floor as they rolled over the seats. The little man suddenly delivered some severely painful karate blows to Bond’s sides, then squirmed away from him. He was trying to find the gun again, but it had fallen out of sight.

  The plane rotated again so that everything was right side up, but it was dangerously out of control. Both of them were tossed against the seats. Harry leaped towards Bond and began to pummel him. Stiff and in pain, Bond did his best to ward off the blows and protect himself. If only he could get a good punch in, but all he was able to do was to push the man’s face back with his right hand. It was enough to cause the albino to fall back. Bond jackknifed up, held on to a seat, and kicked Harry hard in the head. It didn’t seem to disable him. He grabbed Bond’s foot and twisted it sharply, nearly spraining his ankle. Bond cried out in pain, then used his other foot to kick Harry, who let go and scrambled into the aisle. He had seen the machine gun and was going for it.

  Bond jumped on to the albino’s back as he crawled towards the AK-47, which was not quite within his reach, but he was so wiry that he slipped through Bond’s arms and managed to get hold of the gun. He then attempted to get himself off the floor and on to his knees, but the plane lurched again, knocking both of them against the exit panel on the left side of the craft. Bond went for the gun, which Harry held across his chest. The albino’s back was pressed against the door, and the men were face-to-face.

  By now, all of the pressure had escaped from the cabin. It was difficult to breathe, but Bond could now use this to his advantage. Using all the strength he could muster, he kept his right hand on the gun to keep Harry from pointing it at him, and used his left hand to reach behind the albino to get at the door’s emergency lock. He found it and released it.

  The door swung open and Harry fell out, the gun still in hand. He screamed, a look of horror on his face as he flew away from the craft to his death. Bond managed to brace himself against the opening, then slowly climbed back through the aisle towards the cockpit.

  He threw the dead pilot out of his seat and quickly buckled himself in behind the controls of the aircraft. Christ, they were only a mile from the ground! Could he land the plane without smashing it to pieces? Bond levelled the aircraft as best as he could, slowing it to a safer speed. There was a patch of flat, sandy ground below. It would have to do. Thank God there were no cliffs or canyons in the area.

  Bond took her down, but it was going to be a crash landing no matter what he did. He braced himself, attempting to keep the plane straight so that the wheels would touch the ground before the nose did. Bond covered his face and hands and bent forward.

  As it happened, the plane landed square on the front and left wheels. The front wheel broke away and the nose slammed into the ground. Miraculously, it wasn’t crushed, but the propeller snapped off and the windscreen shattered into a hundred pieces. The entire aircraft skidded across the sand and finally came to a halt. It was broken and useless, but still in one piece. It was a testament to Cessna’s reputation and the durability of the Grand Caravan.

  Bond took several deep breaths and took stock of his body. He hadn’t been hurt. He slowly got out of the seat. The enormity of what he had just been through paled when he suddenly realized where he was. He looked out of the broken windscreen at his surroundings. Outside the sun was setting on a vast horizon of nothingness. He was quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

  The first thing he did was try the plane’s radio, but it was inoperable. The burst of gunfire from the AK-47 had blown a hole through it. Next, he searched the cockpit for anything that might be useful—maps, canisters of water … There were some navigational maps of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, but they didn’t tell Bond where the plane had actually crashed. He folded the maps and put them in his pocket. The pilot had reached for a gun in a compartment. It happened to be Bond’s own Walther PPK, but there were only a few bullets left in the magazine. Unfortunately, there was not a single bottle of water. The only other possibly useful items in the plane were a couple of life jackets, a fire extinguisher, a blanket, a pillow, and a torch. He tried the torch, but the batteries were dead. Wonderful …

  Bond climbed out of the plane and looked around. The horizon was a simple straight line circling him. The sun was setting quickly to his left, so it was fairly easy to ascertain the cardinal directions. However, knowing where north and south lay didn’t answer the big questions—where in God’s name was he, and how far was he from civilization?

  Fear gripped Bond’s heart. He could withstand many tortures, but if he was stranded many miles into the outback he would never be able to stop Guy Thackeray from destroying Hong Kong. He couldn’t even send a message to someone. He was totally alone.

  It was dusk, the sun casting a breathtaking orange splash across the sky. Bond noted its relation to the plane so that he could at least remember which way was west. How cold would it get at night? Bond tried to remember all the esoteric details of the Special Forces desert survival training course he’d taken many, many years ago. He had not once been called to practise any of the things he had learned when he was much younger and very green.

  Bond sat down on a rocky patch of brown dirt and removed his left shoe. He used the prying tool to open it, then took out the miniature microfilm reader and a thin packet of microfiche he had checked out of the Q Branch library before departing from London. He had known he was going to Hong Kong, so picked up as many maps of the surrounding area as he could. Australia had been an afterthought, as the nuclear testing in the outback was on his mind at the time. It was a damned good thing he had done so, he thought.

  Although he would have to wait until the stars were out before he could make a reliable estimate of his location, Bond could study the maps and compare them with the navigational charts he had taken from the cockpit. He started with the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area. He examined the maps and determined that the plane must have flown north over the desert. Exactly how far it had flown he didn’t know.

  How long had the plane been in the air before Bond woke? He had been unconscious for at least six hours, as the last thing he remembered was an unpleasant breakfast. The navigational chart showed previously marked flight paths to and from Perth, Alice Springs, and Uluru. Alice Springs, or “Alice,” was the legendary town in the heart of Australia famous for its red-baked ground and status as a popular tourist centre for exploring the outback. Uluru was also known as Ayers Rock, one of the natural wonders of the world. It was billed as the largest monolith on the globe, and some people believed it might be the crest of a mountain buried beneath the ground. The Aborigines regard it as a sacred site, and recently the Australian government had given Ayers Rock and the surrounding land back to them. They renamed it Uluru, the proper Aboriginal name for the rock, and managed the tourist business at the site, operating the attraction as a national park.

  Bond guessed he was somewhere along a route either to Alice Springs or to Uluru. They weren’t that dissimilar. Alice Springs was a little northeast of Ayers Rock. The plane would eventually have flown over Aboriginal reserve land.

  It was starting to get chilly. The desert could become frighteningly cold at night. It was a good thing he had the blanket.

  In an hour, the sun had completely disappeared. He had never seen a night sky so clear and so abundantly filled with stars. He spent half an hour studying the constellations and comparing them to southern hemisphere winter sky charts that came with the microfiche. The microfilm reader
conveniently provided its own illumination. The bisecting lines of the Southern Cross was the celestial south pole. It was sharp and bright in the sky. Using simple geometry, Bond compared the south pole star to the spot on the horizon where the sun had set. The angle was less than 90 degrees, indicating that the plane had indeed flown northeast. He had two choices—walk back southwest towards Kalgoorlie, or continue northeast. The other small mining towns like Leonora were very far away.

  The Aborigines are known for practising something called a “walkabout,” a rite of passage for young and old people alike. They would go out into the bush and stay there for days, weeks, or even months, living off the land, becoming one with the spirits whom they believe live there, and then return. Some say that the spirits act as guides and protect the humans. Bond wasn’t a religious man, but he stood there under the stars and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply several times, concentrating on the silence of the desert.

  Following the instincts that had brought him luck and fortune in some of the world’s elite casinos, Bond started walking northeast. He was gambling that the plane had been flying at least two hours, maybe more. He believed he was closer to Uluru than to any other inhabited place.

  With the blanket wrapped around him, Bond walked across the flat land. He kept the south pole star in sight, checking his route every half hour. He tried to remember what types of plants indigenous to Australia the Aborigines used for water and food. He knew that the mulga tree had moist roots and seeds and the bottle tree contained water in its trunk, but was damned if he could remember what they looked like. There were others, he knew, but most of them grew in other parts of the continent. Central Australia and most of the Northern Territory were the most barren and arid sections of the country. Some bushes and plants held fruit, but he wasn’t sure which were poisonous and which were safe to eat. There was something called a yellow bush tomato which he thought he might recognize, and another called the ruby saltbush. He might find a desert fig bush if he was lucky. It was difficult at night, so he would just have to wait until the sun came up before he could seriously examine the flora. He was already hungry, but he could wait. The important thing was to travel as far as possible while it was cool.

  The minutes turned into hours and Bond kept walking on course. At one point, he heard the howls of wolves. No, they weren’t wolves—they were dingos, the wild dogs of Australia. He saw them, a pack of eight, some twenty metres behind him. They were curious, following him. Were wild dingos dangerous? He couldn’t remember. There was one famous case in which a woman claimed they stole her baby from a camping area, but would they attack a full-grown man? He was certainly in danger if they were rabid.

  The dingos moved closer, surrounding him. They resembled small wolves in the moonlight. He didn’t want to waste the few bullets he had in his pistol, but he would if he had to. Perhaps there was another way to get rid of them.

  Bond sat down and removed his left shoe. He extracted one of the inflammable shoelaces and two pieces of flint. Then he broke off a three-foot branch from a dried bush nearby. The dingos growled when he did that. Bond rubbed the flint against the steel. A couple of sparks flew, then the shoelace caught fire. He quickly wrapped it around the branch, and eventually he had a torch.

  007 jumped up abruptly, shouting at the dingos and waving the torch. A few of them yelped and immediately ran away, but three of the larger dogs stubbornly held their ground. They growled and bared their teeth, then barked fiercely. Bond ran at them, swinging the torch and yelling. Two dingos backed off, but the third, the leader, attacked. Bond swung the torch at the animal, hitting it on the head. It yelped and retreated, having got the message that the human was indeed too much for them to handle. Once the leader moved away, the others followed. In minutes they were gone.

  Bond carried the torch until it was extinguished. Then he walked on …

  ZERO MINUS TWO: 29 JUNE 1997, 6:00 A.M.

  The sun rose over the land, bringing warmth and life to the desolation around him. He folded the blanket and tucked it into his trousers. He sat down to rest a while and removed his right shoe. He took out the tube of sunblock ointment which Major Boothroyd had thoughtfully included in the field shoe and applied some of it to his face, neck, and arms.

  He was very hungry and thirsty now. If he was to keep up the same pace in the hot sun, Bond desperately needed water. He looked around him. There was some vegetation here and there, but he didn’t know what it was. It all appeared to be dead. He stopped and dug up a shrub to examine its roots. They were black, dry, and totally useless.

  At mid-morning, he saw three kangaroos in the distance. They were feeding off some kind of bush. When they heard him, they scampered away. Bond examined the bushes and found that there were several specimens of a yellow tomato-like fruit still attached. If the kangaroo were eating these things, then the fruit couldn’t possibly be poisonous. He recalled his desert survival instructor’s words: be sure to take notice of the wildlife, for animals are usually good judges of what is nutritious and what is deadly. Bond plucked one of the small yellow tomatos and bit into it. It was sour, but fresh-tasting and full of liquid. He ate two, then picked the remaining five and put them in his pockets.

  By midday, Bond was sweating profusely and becoming dehydrated. The sun seemed to fill the entire sky. He wished he had a hat, but the blanket became an asset once again. The fruit provided nourishment and some liquid, but he needed water badly. He kept going, pausing to rest for five minutes every hour. Sometimes he would see an animal. There was an anteater frantically searching the ground for an antbed. A perentie lizard scampered over some rocks. Bond would have liked to catch it, for he had heard that such lizards were edible. The most incongruous sight he saw was a herd of wild camels galloping across the desert. He had no idea where they had come from or where they were going—it was just another surreal occurrence in a land where anything, or nothing, could happen.

  He came upon a large graceful tree, probably a she-oak, standing alone on the barren ground. The roots were thick and hard, but probably contained some kind of moisture. Bond removed the file from his shoe and started to dig around the base of the trunk when he saw something that made his heart jump. There, in a patch of soft dirt, was a human footprint. It was probably a fresh one, for it was perfectly formed and showed no signs of erosion. It was a small bare print, probably belonging to a child. Were there Aborigines nearby? Bond knew he was on their land. Aborigines were traditionally a peaceful group—they could very well offer him assistance.

  He stood up and looked around. There was nothing but the horizon. He put his hands to his mouth and called out, “Hello!” He did it three times in every direction. If there was anyone within a mile, they might have heard him.

  Bond knelt back down and continued digging around the base of the tree. After a while, one of the roots was exposed. He wasn’t sure what to do next. It was too large and thick to break with his bare hands, and he had no appropriate tool for cutting it. He tugged on it and squeezed it, but quickly found he was wasting energy.

  Damn! There were other plants that contained water, he was sure of it. As he pondered the problem, he ate one of the yellow fruits from his pocket. It went a long way towards quenching his thirst. Perhaps he could make it through the rest of the day without water, but what about tomorrow? And the next day? Of course, by then it would be too late. In fact, if he didn’t reach civilization by midnight, he doubted that he would make it back to Hong Kong before the first of July deadline. Maybe he could alert the proper authorities in time. Then the problem would be finding the bomb. They surely wouldn’t have much time to search an entire territory. The situation seemed quite hopeless.

  Bond sighed, then stood up. He glanced at the sun to get his bearings, then turned to continue walking. What he saw stopped him dead in his tracks.

  A black girl stood twenty feet away from him. She was an Aborigine, probably in her late teens or early twenties, and was wearing a dirty white t-shirt and d
usty khaki shorts. Her legs and feet were bare. The girl was thin but looked healthy. It had most likely been her footprint that Bond had seen. She was carrying a long, thin, sharpened wooden stick in one hand, and also had a netted bag slung over one shoulder. The bag was full of tubers of some kind.

  She looked at Bond with a mixture of curiosity and fear. Her brow was creased, as if she was questioning the evidence of her own eyes.

  Slowly, Bond raised his hand in the universal gesture. “Hello,” he said pleasantly.

  The girl tensed and looked as if she might run.

  “Wait,” Bond said. “Don’t be afraid.” He dropped the file he was holding and held out both hands. “Can you help me?” He gestured towards the tree. “I was trying to find water. You know … water?” He mimed drinking with cupped hands. Did Aborigines speak English? He thought they did; but now, out here, he wasn’t sure …

  She just stood there, staring at him. Bond tried to review what he knew about the Aboriginal people during the few seconds of silence. He knew that many were nomadic, were family-oriented, and were probably the most neglected and poorly treated races in history. He knew that the women were usually the food gatherers, while men hunted and performed spiritual rites. This woman was probably out gathering food for her family.

  “Can you speak?” Bond asked. He pointed to himself. “James.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the yellow fruits. “Oh, I have some of these. You want one?” He showed it to her and offered it. She eyed it, then looked back at him. Her large brown eyes were full of wonder. She did not fear him anymore, she was wondering what the hell he was doing there.

  Bond tossed the fruit to her, underarm. She caught it with her free hand. Bond said, “Good catch.” He smiled at her.