Target for Terror

by Carl Hubrick

  ‘Go where?’ Jason asked bluntly.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Victoria admitted crossly. ‘But it won’t take long for the terrorists to track us here, and you know what that means.’

  ‘Aw, we left them in a ditch,’ Jason said with a sneer.

  ‘You don’t really think that will stop them, do you?’ Tom asked quietly.

  Jason shrugged.

  Corina put her hand on Victoria’s. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said. ‘I like the Kingis. I don’t want them to get hurt.’

  Victoria nodded. ‘Tom?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ her cousin answered.

  ‘Okay then,’ Jason said. ‘But after we eat.’

  *

  The food when it came was well worth the waiting - a feast of bacon and eggs, with the bacon still sizzling, along with a stack of fresh brown bread and butter.

  The children ate with the plates on their laps, the warm food like a tide of calm washing over them. The Kingis watched the food demolition derby with a sense of pride and pleasure, the clatter of cutlery a happy accompaniment.

  The film on the television ended in a burst of triumphal music and the long list of special effects credits rolled through. A news and current affairs programme came on to take its place.

  ‘And tonight we talk to this man,’ the programme presenter was saying. ‘Visiting US senator, Lloyd Honeywell, known to many in his country and abroad as – The Peacemaker.’

  The announcement made no impact on the Kingis, but its effect on the children was different entirely.

  ‘Peacemaker! That was the message...’ Tom began, but was immediately silenced by Victoria’s glare. Jason froze, a rasher of bacon dangling from his fork in front of his wide-open mouth. Corina gasped and her eyes shut tight. The nightmare was beginning again...

  ‘It’s getting late.’ Victoria put down her plate and smiled at the Kingis. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to get going.’ She looked at the others. ‘Have you lot finished?’

  Victoria was the only one of the children who seemed unmoved, Sally noticed. The others were quite obviously upset. Something on the telly!

  ‘Thank you so much for all you’ve done,’ Victoria was saying. ‘The food was really great and...’

  Sally interrupted her gently. ‘But you can’t go, dear. Have you forgotten? You car is wrecked.’

  Victoria shrugged. ‘We’ll manage.’

  Tom spoke up. ‘Sure! We’ll be all right.’

  Sally glanced at her husband as if to say – I told you they were strange.

  ‘You’ll have to stay the night, dear,’ Sally said. ‘We couldn’t just let you go wandering off in the dark. Who knows what dangers might be lurking out there.’

  Wiremu added his weight. ‘Sally’s right, Victoria,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s nowhere for you to go at this time of night. You’ll have to stay. I’m sorry we haven’t got a phone, but if it’s like you said and your parents aren’t expecting you home tonight anyway, then...’ he spread his hands and his eyebrows arched upwards completing his question.

  Victoria nodded, affirming an earlier lie.

  ‘Right then!’ Wiremu continued. ‘We can worry about it in the morning.’

  He stood up. ‘Okay! Now Sally will have something for you girls to wear to bed – and Tom and Jason here can put on something of mine.’ He grinned at the two boys. ‘Might be a bit small on you fellas though, eh?’

  Victoria tried a last feeble protest. ‘We don’t want to put you to any trouble...’

  Sally Kingi gave a broad smile. ‘It’s no trouble, dear. We have people staying over all the time. Wiremu’s relatives are always dropping in. I’ll sleep on the sofa and Wiremu can doss down on the floor.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘My husband was in the army for a while – he’s used to roughing it. In fact,’ she went on, enlarging on her story, ‘they had a special training camp for teaching those guys how to sleep anywhere.’

  She turned to her husband for confirmation.

  Wiremu glanced round cautiously, as if looking for spies, then nodded proudly. ‘And I passed,’ he said in a pretended whisper, ‘top of the class. They couldn’t wake me up for a whole week. The fella who was second – he only slept for three days.’

  * * * * *

  The nose of the big green Land Cruiser began to lift. This time the back wheels hit the ground and gripped. The vehicle lurched backwards onto the road, its headlights cutting a savage swathe of light into the dark. A moment later the big four-wheel-drive was roaring down the road again, following the direction the children’s utility had taken.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wiremu Kingi closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out into the black of the night. He had decided not to take the Land Rover. It was parked alongside the house and starting it might wake up those kids. And they looked like they really needed the sleep. It would take him about fifteen minutes to walk to his neighbours’ house to use the phone. He hoped Tony and Sarah would still be awake. They often went to bed early. A farmer’s day was a long and tiring one.

  Wiremu knew Sally was right. He was too trusting. The kids might have stolen that utility for all he knew. And from what they had told him, the vehicle was now well and truly smashed. One telephone call to the police might provide answers to a lot of questions. In his heart, he knew they were good kids, but there was something... something wrong. If they were in some kind of trouble, and he and Sally could help – well then, they would.

  The children had gone off to sleep a matter of moments after their heads touched the pillows – he’d checked. He and Sally had watched television for a while longer just to make sure, and then he’d left.

  The ex SAS sergeant did not use a torch. His eyes would take at least fifteen minutes to become fully accustomed to the dark, but his vision would soon adjust enough for him to follow the main road to his neighbours’ home.

  There was no moon, but the sky was clear and lit with stars. As always, the eternal mystery and menace of the night made him alert. Like a hunter, Wiremu trod softly, feeling each footfall, stalking the silence. He breathed in the coolness of the night air, savouring its freshness. His eyes searched upwards taking in the sacred majesty above him. Apart from a few of our nearer stellar neighbours, the starlight he saw now had been on its way for hundreds, even thousands of years – light years. Civilisations had come and gone in the time it had taken. The faint glow from the more distant stars in the galaxy was already ancient when the first Polynesians nosed their canoes into the white sand on the shores of Aotearoa.

  All at once, the big man stopped and stood still, his body tingling, eyes and ears seeking desperately to penetrate the darkness. Ahead of him, he could hear voices – children’s voices. He knew those voices. Wiremu felt a surge of anger rise. So, they had fooled him – tricked him by pretending to be asleep and then slipping out, probably through the bedroom windows.

  In the same heartbeat, his SAS training took over and he sensed, more than saw, something else. Slowly he scanned the darkness right to left so that he would miss nothing – opposite to the way a person reads – an old trick. Eyes trained to read tend to skip quickly to the right, missing detail.

  Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement – saw that the night hid other hunters as well – one, two, perhaps more – silent, like himself. But these were professionals about their business, armed and deadly. And the children were their prey.

  Now he understood. Knew the fear the children could not tell.

  Wiremu sank down into the darkness – became a shadow in a shadow land. Unseen, unheard, he could only follow and hope – hope he could do something to change the odds. Unarmed, he was no match for these stalkers. But perhaps a chance would come. Perhaps...

  * * * * *

  ‘Hey! Where is everybody?’ It was Jason’s voice, alone in the dark, alarm in his tone. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘Over here!’ Tom’s voice replied. The creak of fence wires nearby in the blackness e
xplained more fully.

  Jason made his way through the long grass at the road’s edge. It brushed against his legs wet with dew.

  ‘Hey! Wait for me! Anyway, where are you lot going?’

  ‘We’re getting off the road,’ Victoria’s voice answered. ‘It’s too open out there.’

  Jason’s foot found a fence wire and he creaked himself over after the others. He took a step and stumbled. ‘Hell! It’s full of ditches.’

  The field they were in had been newly ploughed and was corrugated with deep furrows. He caught up with the three shadows waiting for him in the darkness. ‘We won’t travel very fast on this stuff,’ he said. ‘Have you thought of that?’

  ‘But we’ll be a lot safer,’ Victoria replied. ‘And that’s what counts. We’ll keep parallel with the road so we won’t get lost.’

  ‘We’ll miss any chance of a lift,’ Jason persisted.

  ‘Look!’ Victoria said, stopping and seeking Jason’s eyes in the dark. ‘The last lot that wanted to give us a lift were offering a one-way trip – and they’re still out there. I’m not about to make it any easier for them - so let’s get moving.’

  Jason shrugged in the blackness. ‘Please yourself then,’ he muttered. He hissed a whisper into the dark around him. ‘Bloody bossy girl...’

  A fence wire squeaked nearby, seeming to answer and agree with him. He nodded smugly to himself and followed the others, his feet plodding blindly across the freshly turned earth.

  *

  The children made their way across the ploughed field and into the next - and the next -and the next. It was not possible to be sure what was growing in each, and some fields seemed to be simply pastures. Now and again, they came across paler shadows dotted about in the inky world – sheep! Each wire fence that creaked and squeaked as they climbed over, seemed to echo the sound again a moment or two later, as if the gloom was mimicking everything they did.

  Tom shivered. The night had its own sounds, mysterious and without shape, leaving the imagination to conjure up demons.

  Victoria pressed them on.

  *

  They could not tell how far they had travelled. The night offered no landmarks to record their passage. Above them, the ageless stars looked down, seeing all.

  Suddenly Victoria halted and told them to stand still. ‘Listen! Does that sound like a car to you, Tom?’

  Tom strained his ears. ‘Yeah, I think so. It sounds like it’s in the next paddock, coming this way.’

  ‘Yeah, I can hear it too,’ Jason said.

  A few moments later, the sound was almost on top of them - the sound of a vehicle in low gear coming straight at them.

  Suddenly, the vehicle’s headlights came on, transforming the night into a blaze of silvery light, forcing the children to shield their eyes against the glare.

  ‘It’s them, isn’t it?’ Corina whispered, her hand squeezing tight on Victoria’s.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Victoria replied. ‘But perhaps we’d better go back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Tom said quietly. There was a slight tremor in his voice. ‘I think they’re probably behind us too. I’ve been wondering what the noises were.’

  The children turned. Coming out of the darkness behind them into the light were two men in green and brown combat uniforms. Each one held a black machine pistol across his chest.

  One of the men spoke. ‘Ah, at last, we have caught some rabbits in our trap.’ His English was crisp and clear – carefully learned. ‘Karl will be pleased. He likes rabbit stew.’

  The other man laughed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The children stood frozen in the bright halo of the big four-wheel-drive’s headlights. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. The dark side had won.

  All at once, one of the terrorists gave a yelp as though he had been stung. His hand shot to his temple where a thin line of blood had begun to ooze. His companion stared at him open mouthed, then began to laugh. Almost immediately, he too cried out and staggered sideways, one hand rubbing wildly at his ribs.

  The children watched, fixed by fear and shock where they stood. A few seconds later it happened again, but this time they heard something first – a sudden cruel thud. Instantly, the first terrorist bellowed again in pain and dropped to his knees, holding his face in his hands, his machine pistol swinging from its sling. He bellowed into the darkness, pulled up the weapon and began firing randomly into the night. Blood flowed from his nose and mouth, looking black in the dazzling glow of the lights.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Jason began, but his question was drowned out by the growl of an engine as the third terrorist came to his comrades’ aid. The Land Cruiser jerked forward, turning sharply, its headlights seeking the new target in the darkness. The children were forgotten, for the moment.

  A voice boomed out of the night. ‘Run kids! Run!’ A storm of gunfire erupted from the terrorists in answer.

  Victoria grabbed Corina’s hand. ‘Link hands everyone - quick! Keep together!’

  Already she was starting to run. Tom chased after her, taking her other hand. He was dimly aware of Jason joining up with Corina on the other side. They ran for their lives, scampering like rabbits. Their best chance was to put as much distance between themselves and the terrorists as possible.

  After a minute or so Victoria slowed, sensing a fence must be near. They could only just see each other by the light of the stars. Behind them, an ominous silence had descended as the terrorists stalked another prey.

  ‘What the hell was going on back there?’ Jason asked in a frantic whisper.

  ‘Stones! Someone was throwing stones,’ Tom replied, keeping his voice low.

  Victoria held the fence wires apart while the others scrambled through.

  ‘Who was throwing stones?’ Jason asked, continuing the muted conversation on the other side of the fence.

  ‘Mr Kingi, of course,’ Corina said, answering her brother’s question.

  Tom held the wires wide for Victoria to follow.

  ‘Wiremu?’ Jason frowned in the darkness. ‘But how did he find us?’

  The wires let out a screech as loud as a trumpet call as Tom let them go.

  ‘No more talking!’ Victoria said as sharply as she could in hushed tones. ‘Hold hands!’

  She pulled the little chain of children into a fast walk. It was pasture now underfoot, soft and springy to walk on. They could smell its sweetness in the warm night air.

  All of a sudden, Victoria stopped and gave a gasp, then a quiet giggle. ‘Oh, they’re cows! They gave me such a fright. I wondered what on earth they were.’

  The dark shapes held their ground, not frightened, but not frightening either.

  Victoria checked behind them, noting with satisfaction that the glow of the Land Cruiser’s lights was travelling away from them. Then she began her quick march again.

  ‘Hey! Not so fast!’ Jason complained suddenly, his quiet voice forgotten. ‘I think I just stood in a cow poo!’

  Tom sniggered softly.

  ‘It might be funny to you,’ Jason continued unhappily, ‘but it feels really yucky! It’s all warm and slippery in my shoe.’

  Tom uttered a loud snort. ‘Trust you!’ he blurted.

  ‘Shut up, you two!’ Victoria hissed crossly. ‘We don’t want to bring the terrorists back down on us. Now let’s get moving. And keep it quiet!’

  ‘Sorry!’ Tom’s voice was back to a whisper. ‘Victoria’s right Jason, we’d better keep going.’

  ‘Why?’ Jason asked. ‘We can’t just keep running all night. While they’re chasing Wiremu we could stop – find somewhere to hide. I’m fed up with stepping in cow shit.’

  ‘And just where do you think we’re going to find a place to hide?’ Victoria asked.

  Her voice was tremulous. She was on the verge of tears. She knew their lives were in her hands.

  ‘This is not a game, Jason, There’s nothing here but paddocks and more paddocks.’

  ‘Oh,
there’s something here all right,’ Jason replied coolly. ‘Just take a look – straight in front of you.’

  Tom peered into the darkness and saw nothing – and then he did see it – a huge rectangle of sky without stars.

  ‘What is it?’ Corina asked.

  ‘Hay barn, I reckon,’ Jason answered.

  ‘First place they’d look,’ Tom countered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because...’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Well...well, because it’s the only hiding place for miles,’ Tom managed at last. ‘It’s too obvious.’

  ‘We could have gone in any direction,’ Jason persisted. ‘How would they know?’

  ‘Okay, okay, stop!’ Victoria gave a despairing sigh. ‘I don’t know whether Jason’s right or not,’ she said wearily. ‘All I know is we can’t keep going for ever. We’ve got to stop somewhere. They’ll be on our trail again soon, and if we caught out in the open...’ She left the thought hanging in the air.

  Just then, as if on cue, a rattle of gunfire sounded in the distance.

  ‘It might not be Wiremu,’ Tom said, voicing their fears. ‘It might be someone out hunting rabbits.’

  *

  The large bales of hay were stacked like steps in places and easy to climb. Within minutes, the children had made comfortable nests for themselves at the top of the pile, out of sight from below. The night air was cooling fast, and they wished they had the extra clothing from their packs, but they had left everything in the utility. The hay would have to do for now.

  ‘Pooh! This stuff stinks,’ Jason remarked to nobody in particular.

  Tom lay on his back and looked up at the dark roof of corrugated iron above him, though his mind guessed more of its presence than he could actually see. Tiredness swept through his body, and his mind wandered. He thought of his room at home and the bed that he slept in. He thought of Rhodo’s big brown eyes and her pink-tongued grin. He thought of Mrs Sykes and her classroom. It was all in another world - a world as distant almost as the stars.

  Rhodo with her pink tongue... running... running... Mrs Sykes and her cat with the canary smile...