by Carl Hubrick
We’ve contacted your people,’ the officer continued. ‘They can sort everything out when they get down from Wellington.’
The senator gave a shrug and smiled. ‘Very well then - why not? But how I’m expected to get a good night’s sleep with the threat of having my throat cut hanging over me, is way beyond my understanding.’
Upside down, back to front - everything was crazy at the bottom of the world...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a few minutes before ten. The night had now arrived in strength, and there was no moon to help the stars fight the dark. Wiremu Kingi stood on the front door step of the Wilsons’ holiday home, while Jo Wilson thanked him for the hundredth time, her hand resting lightly on his arm. It was plain to see the tears would flow once she closed the door. Already they were welling up like a Rotorua geyser set to blow.
Les Wilson, standing beside her, looked somewhat red about the eyes as well. And he had blown his nose a couple of times while they were talking.
There had been no easy way for Wiremu to tell the Wilsons that Tom and the other children were in the hands of terrorists. So he hadn’t. He had fudged that bit and made out... Well to be honest, he couldn’t remember now exactly what half-truths he had told. But the whole truth would have been too much to tell by far.
Wiremu had obtained Tom’s address from the police. He had taken the Land Rover and driven straight to the Wilsons’ home after dropping Sally off to stay with friends. The local constabulary hadn’t been too willing to help him at first. They found it difficult to believe his story about terrorists kidnapping children. But a call to the duty officer of his old Special Forces unit had changed everything. Apparently, word had come down from the top – the very top. After that, the police could not help him enough.
*
The door closed behind him and the big man stood for a moment breathing in the cool night air, tasting its freshness. Wiremu knew he had made one mistake – one big mistake. He had promised the Wilsons that he would return the children to them safe and sound - without fail. Now he felt almost sick at the hopelessness of his promise. It had been a pledge from the heart, not the head.
The big man punched his fists into his jacket pocket. Well he would do his best.
*
Wiremu stepped off the wooden deck of the Wilsons’ verandah and his boots crunched on the gravel of the driveway. He walked round the front of his Land Rover, seeing little more than its familiar square shape in the starlight. His hand reached out for the door handle, then froze. Across the road was the dark form of another four-wheel-drive – a Land Cruiser. It had not been there earlier. It was the same type of vehicle that had taken the children. The realisation went through him like a dagger’s blade. It had not struck him before that Tom’s parents might be in any danger.
The ex SAS sergeant flicked his collar up against the cool evening air. It was more a gesture of bravado than a need. He took a deep breath and began to saunter slowly towards the terrorist vehicle. A soft whistle came to his lips, tuneless at first, then slipping into a measured melody. It was an old Beatle’s number – It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night. Wiremu had no idea where the tune had come from.
The big man strove to keep his pace slow. He had to lull the terrorists into believing he was just coming over for a chat. Indeed a chat was all he wanted. He had no heroics in mind. The odds against him were far too high. Wiremu could not see the men’s faces, but he knew they were watching his every step, coldly assessing his purpose. He would be dead in less than a heartbeat should they find any reason to doubt him. Not since Afghanistan had he felt Hinenuitepo, the goddess of death, so close at his shoulder.
‘Gidday!’ Wiremu drawled as he approached. There was no immediate response from the terrorist vehicle, so the big man continued. ‘A bit bloody cool tonight, eh?’ He made a brief survey of the sky to further the small talk. ‘Clear enough though, should be a good day tomorrow.’
The driver now returned Wiremu’s greeting with a grunt – acceptable as a reply in the Kiwi idiom.
Wiremu put both hands on the cab roof and bent to peer through the open window. There were two men inside the vehicle. Wiremu noticed the driver had an injury to his nose and could not help a small smile forming.
‘Looks like something bad happened to your nose, mate!’
The terrorist gave another grunt.
Wiremu now became confidential, letting them in on a secret. ‘Look!’ He flicked a glance back at the house. ‘I thought I’d better ask you guys if you’d seen any kids around here lately, maybe up in the hills - four of ’em, two girls and two boys. The oldest girl’s about fourteen or fifteen, the two boys about twelve, the other girl’s younger.’
The driver shook his head.
The big man carried on. ‘Been missing for hours. I’m one of the rangers around here. Just been in to tell the parents a bit of good news.’ There was a spark of interest in the terrorist’s eyes. Wiremu glanced down at his watch. ‘The police are coming up here shortly – dozens of ’em. Want to talk to the parents. The cops are getting ready for a big sweep of the area where the kids went missing.’
‘The police are going to start a search – tonight?’ The terrorist sounded somewhat disbelieving. His Kiwi accent was just as unbelievable.
Wiremu shrugged. ‘Well I don’t know. I just know they’re coming. That’s what I’ve been told.’ The lights of a car travelling up the main road gave him his chance for the clincher.
‘Hello,’ he said, stepping back from the vehicle. ‘That might be the police now. I gotta go talk to them, so I better let you guys go.’
The big four-wheel-drive’s engine fired, then settled down to a rumble. The terrorists were on the move. But cold and professional to the end, they weren’t going to be rushed.
‘We will keep a look out for those kids,’ the man with the wounded nose said. His Kiwi accent came from the north – like - north of the equator. ‘How many did you say there were?’
‘Four!’ Wiremu called out above the motor. ‘Two girls - two boys. Yeah, keep an eye out. Thanks.’
The injured nose bobbed. ‘Okay mate! We will keep our eyes out. See you later.’
Wiremu nodded. He would be seeing them, but not too much later, he hoped.
The Land Cruiser’s lights came on and the terrorists drove off, letting the big four-wheel-drive pick up speed by itself on the downhill slope to the main road. They seemed anything but in a hurry.
It took the big man less than a minute to warn the Wilsons, and then he was in the Land Rover and on the main road following in the direction the terrorist vehicle had taken.
Wiremu drove hurriedly down the mountain road, taking the corners at speed. He did not want to lose them this time.
*
Wiremu did not see the darkened Land Cruiser across the centre of the road until he was right on top of it. By then it was too late to do anything, but swing on the steering wheel and slam on the brakes. His last memories were of the fierce scream of tyres and then the sudden quiet as the Land Rover launched itself out over a bluff. There was a second or two of nothing, and then the agonising thud of the blackness leaping out to reach him.
From the road above, the terrorists watched the Land Rover smash itself onto the rocky river bed some twenty metres below. They grinned at each other. Their night’s work had begun well. There was nothing better than a nice accident.
Wiremu Kingi – the big man looked just like the photograph of him they had found at his house.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At first, the children could see nothing in the dark room that was their prison. The door had shut tight, leaving not a chink of light. The room at the back of the terrorist hideout was barely more than a lean-to with an earthen floor. But it was more than solid enough to hold them.
The brief glimpse the children had managed before the door closed, suggested a smaller space than the main room of the terrorists’ lair – a storeroom for the history of junk and rubbish that h
ad accumulated during the hut’s existence.
Jason stood back to back with Tom for a few exasperating minutes as their numb hands sought to undo each other’s bonds. But it was a hopeless task. The knots were too well tied. Tom wondered if he would ever feel his fingers again.
It takes some time for eyes to adjust fully to darkness. And so the children’s ears were the first sense to tell them they were not alone. Close by, someone was breathing in short gravelly gasps - a breathing racked by violent coughing spasms.
‘I think it’s John X,’ Jason muttered. ‘On his last legs I’d say, from the creepy noises he’s making.’
Jason ventured closer to the sounds of broken breathing. The spy was lying on his back on the hard mud floor.
‘Where is he?’ Victoria demanded.
She shouldered Jason aside and dropped to her knees beside the young man’s dark shape, placing her ear to his chest. Why she did that, Tom couldn’t figure. The spy was obviously alive or he wouldn’t be coughing.
Watching Victoria in the gloom, reminded Tom of Florence Nightingale – a famous nurse he had once researched for homework. Florence Nightingale had wandered about battlefields caring for wounded soldiers in some olden day’s war or other – the first nurse ever to do so. His cousin seemed hell-bent on doing the same.
Then a weird thought struck him. Or was it that Victoria had some silly girl thing about the SIS agent?
But nah! The thought disappeared and Tom shook his head at the foolish notion. Whatever his cousin was, she wasn’t crazy.
Meanwhile Victoria had found out what she wanted. She sat back on her heels.
‘John’s okay,’ she declared in a glorious whisper. ‘I can hear his heart beating.’
But it’s strange how one’s most dramatic moments can backfire at times, as Victoria now discovered. The sticky substance on her face and in her hair was the young man’s blood.
The girl wiped her face as best she could on her shoulder and bent again over the spy’s shadowy shape.
‘John? John?’ she said in a low voice close to his ear. ‘Are you awake? It’s me, Victoria.’
But there was no response.
‘He’s probably unconscious,’ Tom said.
‘Or in a coma,’ Jason suggested helpfully.
‘Shush!’ Victoria replied to the pair of them. ‘He’s just sleeping.’
‘John?’ she called a little louder.
The third call of this name brought the young man round. But it was soon evident that Tom and Jason had been closer to the truth. The spy sounded delirious and seemed to imagine Victoria his mother.
‘John, it’s me, Victoria - remember? We found you in the hills, the four of us – Victoria, Tom, Corina and Jason. You’d been shot. We took you down to the rabbiter’s hut. We all tried to escape from the terrorists.’
Victoria had spoken to the spy as one speaks to a small child. But John X was still confused.
‘How did you find me?’ he queried hoarsely. ‘Is it time to go home yet?’
It seemed to Tom that John X believed himself rescued – by Victoria, if not his mother. He decided not to let the spy entertain any further false hope.
‘We didn’t find you,’ Tom explained, coming across the darkness and leaning over the man. ‘The terrorists caught us and locked us in here with you.’ He could see no more than a dark blob where he knew the young man’s face to be. ‘We’re their prisoners, same as you.’
John X seemed to take this in, for after a moment he asked in a last hope whisper. ‘Did you... did you... pass on the message?’
Tom shook his head and then realised it was a gesture the spy could not see.
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘There was no time, John – no time. They caught us before we had a chance.’
John X gave a deep sigh, and said nothing more, but his silence was eloquent on the subject. The Peacemaker would be killed. They would be killed. There was no one who could help them now.
But as usual it was Jason who had the last word.
‘I wonder if they’ll let us watch their telly?’
*
For the next thirty minutes or so, by Tom’s illuminated watch as read by Jason, since Tom could not read it with his hands tied behind his back, there was no sound from the terrorists in the other room. Tom backed up to the door a couple of times and tried to pull it open with his fingers, but his tied hands had no strength, and anyway, the door seemed to be securely bolted.
Jason tried too, but quickly gave up. ‘No sense flogging a dead horse,’ he said.
The children’s eyes had adjusted to the dark well enough now to find crates for seats and a broken armchair, which they took turns to sit in.
Jason tried once or twice to get them talking, but mostly they sat without speaking, lost in the shadows of their fears. John X had returned to his own strange world, somewhere between the living and the dead. Victoria tried half-heartedly to bring him round one more time, but gave up when he called her – mother. The nurse in her had finally decided he was better off left where he was – on whatever planet that was.
Tom thought about Rhodo and hoped the big dog had died a quick death. He thought about his mother and his father, and wondered if he would ever see them again. And strangely enough, he thought about Mrs Sykes and his Year 8 class too. He would have given anything to be sitting at his old desk again, with Mrs Sykes berating him about his homework, or the lack of it. He hardly noticed when the tears began to slide down his face. He had been crying a lot of late.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The children came out of their lethargic mode into full alert at the sudden sound of the bolt moving in the lock. The door swung open silhouetting a man in the space, the muzzle of his machine pistol pointing at them.
He was the tallest man of the terrorist group, and somewhat overweight. He had a sallow complexion and greasy black hair. His small dark eyes were deep set in his head.
‘Come out! Come Out!’ The big man jerked the weapon in an impatient motion.
The children obeyed, blinking a little as they came into the light.
The terrorist leader stood at the table by the television set facing them. The man had changed into a dress uniform of sorts that showed some rank upon the shoulder. The spiky blond hair had disappeared beneath a khaki beret with a golden badge pinned to its front. He was standing stiffly in the at ease position – legs astride, hands clasped behind his back. A black pistol, in a brown leather holster, was tied down at his hip.
‘Omar! Invite our spy friend out too,’ the terrorist chief directed. ‘I want him to take part in our celebration as well.’
There were just the two terrorists left now – the leader and Omar. Tom dared not think where the other two might be, or what they might be doing.
The man called Omar waited until the children had filed past him, then went into the back room and returned dragging John X out by his ankles. It was the first time the children had seen the young man properly in the light since they’d left him on the hillside. It seemed like an eternity ago.
The SIS agent’s green tartan shirtfront had now all but disappeared beneath a massive stain of dried blood. The flesh on his face had shrunk, and black stalks of beard spiked the transparent skin. It was obvious no one in the terrorist camp had bothered to tend his wound, and moving him had made the fleshy hole ooze scarlet again.
Omar dragged John X into a corner at the back of the room and propped him up against the wall. The spy’s eyes were sunken and fixed in a dazed stare. He sat there, bent into the corner, like a blood soaked rag doll. His breathing came in shallow rasps. The terrorists did not bother to tie his hands. There was no need for that.
Tom glanced at Victoria. Her stricken gaze said it all. Florence Nightingale was bursting to come out.
‘He looks almost dead,’ Tom murmured in an undertone to Jason.
His friend agreed in an overly loud whisper. ‘He sure does, and this lot don’t give a bugger.’
‘No ta
lking!’ the terrorist leader snapped. ‘Sit down! Now!’
Jason’s raised eyebrows said it all. Just like Mrs Sykes.
It was awkward getting down on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs. The children sat in a line in front of the television - Victoria, Tom, Corina and Jason. They sat there with their legs crossed.
Omar came and stood behind them, the machine pistol hanging from his shoulder.
The leader looked down at them and smiled. It was the cat smile again, but Tom knew the fierce fangs that lay beneath.
‘Good!’ The man’s voice was warm – indeed, almost friendly. ‘We are all together again, just like one big happy family.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Tonight is a very special night – a night that will go down in history as a magnificent triumph for our cause. In a few moments, we will witness the success of our glorious mission, brought to us by your very own New Zealand Television News.
We have not bothered to rely on our sophisticated radio technology here to receive the news of our victory.’ The terrorist waved an impatient hand at the transmitter and the other electronic gear on the table. ‘Messages on such equipment can be easily monitored and the source quickly traced by clever people like our spy friend over there. No – we are very happy to have our success broadcast to us on a public system.’
The leader gave a sudden grin. ‘And speaking of our special guest, I want to make sure he sees this too. John! John! Are you listening, John? I want you to be part of this historic moment.’
But the SIS agent did not answer. Even his breathing had gone quiet, and Tom wondered if the young spy might already be dead.
The terrorist shook his head. ‘Oh well, there are always those people who have to spoil things. People who pry into matters that do not concern them – like John. People who will not come when you invite them – like John.’ He paused, frowning. ‘They are - how do you say it – the party poopers?’