A window slid down.
A shotgun barrel was pointed.
‘Down!’ Cam yelled.
They all hit the ground.
The blast of a shotgun hit the dirt near Cam’s elbow. He felt a peppering of fine gravel hit his face, at the same time as he yelled, ‘Get ‘em!’ to Leanne.
He’d wasted his breath. She was already focusing her pistol’s sight on one of the car’s rear tyres as it ploughed through the gravel shoulder on its way back to the bitumen. Still on her stomach, she rested her right hand against her left arm.
‘Steady, girl, steady,’ Cam encouraged.
She eased back the trigger and fired four fast shots. The first blew out the rear left tyre; the second, never as accurate as the first, caused one of the rear brake lights to blossom into a red spray of broken glass. Then the car flipped, the other bullets having damaged something vital to the car’s steering.
Leanne was on her feet in an instant. Cam called out for her to stop, but she chose not to hear, running like a woman with a mission towards the flipping car.
Its last flip put it back on its sagging wheels — roof dented, headlights shining into the bush on the roadside, bonnet loose as a dead tongue.
Steam seeped through the bonnet’s gaps and hissed into the eerie silence.
Leanne positioned herself on one side of the car and Cam on the other, holding their gun arms out straight, aiming at the car doors. Cam heard Pete’s thumping footsteps behind them and a sharp crackle of gravel as the pursuing cop car coming to a halt nearby.
‘I think all that target practice must have damaged your hearing,’ Cam said to Leanne, not taking his eyes off the dented four-wheel drive.
‘Guess it must have,’ she said, cool as a tinny.
He risked a quick glance at her. Her eyes were wide and glued to the car, her mouth clenched into a thin white line.
Cam saw a blur of movement through one of the car’s tinted windows, heard a moan.
‘Come on out slowly, hands on heads,’ he called.
The passenger door vibrated, the shout from within high-pitched and scared. ‘The doors jammed, I can’t get out!’
There was movement all around them now — clanging car doors, torches slashing through the air, feet shuffling on gravel, tense, pent-up voices.
‘Try the window,’ Pete called to the man in the wrecked car.
‘It’s stuck, the old man’s hurt,’ the young, panicky voice answered.
With her left hand, Leanne cautiously tried the driver’s door. Unlike the passenger’s, it wasn’t jammed and she pulled it open with no problem. Cam moved to join her. Leaning over Giles senior with his Glock aimed at junior’s head, he had no trouble getting the young man to hand over the shotgun and passed it to the cop standing behind him.
Harry Giles lay slumped over the steering wheel, moaning softly.
Leanne shone her torch in his face. He had a jagged gash on his forehead, red fingers of blood streaming down his face.
‘Get out of the car,’ she said, giving him no quarter, the gun still firm and steady in her hand.
‘Can’t. Arm’s broke,’ Giles groaned.
‘Well, you can use your legs, can’t you?’
With one hand she snapped open the catch of his seat belt. He hesitated when she gestured with her gun for him to get out, so she yanked at his broken arm, making him yell.
‘Leanne!’ Cam barked.
‘Sorry about that, mate,’ she said to Giles, not sounding sorry at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Early Sunday morning
Most of the cars had disappeared from the truck parking bay. Fielding was on his way to Toorrup with the three uninjured prisoners and an ambulance had arrived for Harry Giles, who’d been taken to Toorrup Hospital with a police escort.
Pete, about to catch a lift back to Glenroyd in one of the other cop cars, called out to Leanne to ask if she was coming.
Cam was only half listening to their exchange; his eyes were focused on the white tumble of smoke bulging into the sky from the state forest a few kilometres ahead and to the west of them.
‘Go on,’ he said to Leanne.
‘But what about you?’
‘I’m going to hang around here for a while.’
‘Shouldn’t the vollies have it out by now?’ Leanne asked, referring to the volunteer bushfire brigade.
‘According to the fire-fighters, they had to leave it be for a while because of the hold-up. As a result it’s got pretty big and they’ve had to call in some more units. They’ve already got an observation chopper up there and are now thinking about calling in some water-bombers. I heard them calling for them over the radio.’
‘Crikey. Was Jo called out?’ Leanne asked.
He’d heard Jo’s voice across the radio earlier, high-pitched and clear in comparison to the murky rumble of her masculine counterparts. He nodded to Leanne and returned to the Commodore, his fear for Jo something he didn’t want witnessed by anyone.
‘She’ll be right. You know that, Sarge.’ Leanne trotted behind him, reading his thoughts.
‘Sure, she will.’ He leaned against the cop car and turned to her, his hand absently moving to his disfigured ear, down the rough corrugations of his neck. ‘You clear off. Get a lift home. I’ll stay here for a while. Someone needs to remain here in case of road blocks.’
‘Then we’ll both stay. It’ll be much easier with two of us.’ She waved goodbye to Pete and settled back into the passenger’s seat.
It seemed she was stuck to him like a tick and he had no choice in the matter.
***
They drove further along the highway and parked on a raised lookout affording an eagle’s-eye view of the fire in the valley below. The delicate approach of dawn, a pale slash across the eastern horizon, began to transform the blackness around them to purple, then grey.
But for Cam there was no excitement in the promise of a new day. The encroaching light brought nothing with it but dread.
The wind had picked up, the firefront now pushed by the emerging easterly towards the long, winding valley below them. On either side of the valley the terrain was steep and inaccessible: a grandstand of rocky outcrops, prickle bush and fallen trees.
Over the radio they’d heard the observer in the helicopter call up for aerial support. Fire had a tendency to rush up hills more quickly than travel down them. If it were allowed to establish itself at the foot of the hills, it would soon be racing up like a greyhound. Hopefully the water-bombing helicopters would be able to prevent this.
Not long after they’d arrived at the lookout, a Conservation and Land Management car and trailer pulled up alongside them. The driver, round and jolly, wearing a grease-splattered apron over his shorts and T-shirt, offered them food. He was returning from the fire ground, he said, and had some leftover hamburgers that were still hot.
When the man offered Leanne one of the small parcels from his hot box in the trailer, she shook her head — like Cam, settling for coffee from a polystyrene cup.
After the man had gone, Cam took a sip of coffee and gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You all right?’ He’d never known her to turn down an offer of food.
‘Tired.’ She passed a hand over her chubby face as if brushing away cobwebs.
‘You should have gone home.’
‘Probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep, anyway.’
Worried about her father, Cam thought. No surprise there: her old man had put her in a very difficult position. Funny how they both knew what the other was worrying about, but neither was willing or able to share.
He’d just heard Jo’s voice on the radio again, reporting back to the fire ground after refilling her vehicle’s water tank from a nearby dam. Her sector commander had told her to continue working on the firebreak with four other light tankers, approximately one and a half kilometres downwind from the fire. ‘Light tanker’ was a fancy name for the fire vehicles, which were not much more than modified Toyota utes
. Although they provided the fire fighters with much greater accessibility to rough terrain, they offered far fewer facilities and far less protection than the regular city fire trucks.
But at least the officer in charge seemed conservative. Cam heard him on the radio planning a clear escape route, and the observation chopper flying above was ready to make the call to get out of the fire ground if the approaching front became too dangerous.
‘Heli Obs One this is Heli Attack Two Two.’
The radio crackled into life as two helicopter fire-bombers chopped their way towards the fire zone. Cam turned up the volume, straining to hear the pilot’s words through the static.
‘Heli Attack Two Two, Heli Attack Two Three, proceed to sector three and hit the northeast corner of the front.’
The spotter in the observation chopper, Heli Obs One, sounded calm as he directed the helicopter fire-bombers to the fire from his high vantage point. Looking out of the car window, Cam thought he could make out his location: a bright dot in the grey dawn sky, shimmering above the valley’s eastern flank, as yet untouched by fire.
Both fire-bombers confirmed their orders, their lights moving into Cam’s field of vision. He knew the spot, the northeast corner of the map grid where they were heading, and close to where Jo was working near the side of a rocky hill. Several weeks earlier he’d been involved with the State Emergency Service, searching for some lost hikers in the area. Years ago the bush had been subjected to extensive logging and there were only a few large trees and a small amount of regrowth left. The dominant vegetation consisted of a thick patch of squat grass trees, their gritty black trunks filled with a turpentine-like substance. Ignited, they exploded better than any Australia Day fireworks display.
‘Heli Obs One, Heli Attack Two Three.’
Cam was already beginning to recognise the confident gravelly voice of Two Three’s pilot. He opened the car door and peered up into the grey sky to follow the course of the brightly lit water-bombers as they thrashed their way through the smoke to the drop zone. The silhouettes of their water-laden Bambi Buckets trailed behind them like threads of string. He heard Heli Obs call the water-bombers again: ‘Heli Attack Two Three, follow in sequence behind Heli Attack Two Two.’ Heli Attack Two Three confirmed the order.
Leanne climbed from the car and stood next to Cam, one hand on the roof of the Commodore as she craned her neck to view the action.
‘Heli Obs One, Heli Attack Two Two. We’ve dropped our load with good effect, but to the west of us the fire appears to be establishing in the grass trees. Caution other attack helicopters for possible local explosions.’
‘Heli Attack Two Two, Heli Obs One, wilco.’
‘Heli Attack Two Three, copied.’
But despite his calm acknowledgement of the order and the warning, Two Three’s pilot continued his approach to the firefront, churning his way through the smoke.
Cam was aware Leanne’s body was turning rigid beside him. ‘He shouldn’t have gone in, it’s too dangerous,’ she said.
‘Bloody cowboy,’ Cam said through clenched jaw.
There was a sudden gush from Two Three’s Bambi Bucket. A silver cataract of water dropped towards the fire as if in slow motion, and the grasping flames swallowed it up without so much as a flicker of protest.
Almost immediately the May Day call came through. ‘May day May day May day, Heli Attack Two Three. I’ve lost engine power, we’re going down.’ No longer cool and collected, the pilot’s voice was sharp with panic.
Cam could see the chopper rocking above the fire and guessed what had happened. The grass trees had exploded, sending up a cloud of ash and congesting the air inlet of the delicate turbine engine.
He’d been in enough sticky situations in helicopters to be able to visualise the pilot’s cockpit as it must look now. With the N1 and N2 gauges down, the rotor revs would be dropping, the caution lights flashing and the alarms blaring. They were on the edge of the dead man’s curve, a situation in which a chopper can never recover enough air speed to enable a forced landing. One hundred and fifty feet above the valley floor and covered in smoke: the outlook was grim for the chopper’s two-man crew.
***
Jo and Charlie stood about three hundred metres away in a cleared patch of blackened ground, the other light-tanker teams out of sight around the bend of their newly constructed firebreak.
Jo watched with horror as the chopper yawed violently and started to pitch down. The dawn light was growing with every second. The tip of the sun peeping over the hilltops illuminated the squirming outlines of the two men in the helicopter’s cockpit in a blood-orange glow.
Jo grabbed Charlie’s arm and they both peered slack-jawed and silent into the sky.
The chopper shuddered, the nose came up and the yaw stopped. Jo drew in a breath and held it.
‘He’s got no chance.’ Charlie spoke in a low whisper, as if worried the sound of his voice might distract the pilot. ‘But if he can keep the air speed up, he might be able to keep it under control for a few seconds longer.’
It wasn’t to be. The sounds above them ceased. The chopper, eerie with its lack of noise, began its descent to the valley floor. About to hit, it teased them all with false hope, curving up briefly before clipping a small tree with its blade and tipping to the right. It gyrated uncontrollably before colliding sideways with the ground, rotor blades slashing into a rocky bank in a spray of sparks. It slewed left, the skid caught on a rock and it pitched forward, smashing its nose into the ground.
The tail rotor spun on, poking up from the ground like a diving sea bird, and came to a gradual stop.
Aghast, Jo and Charlie continued to watch. With most of the undergrowth now black or destroyed they had a clear view. They tensed and prepared themselves for the explosion.
Nothing.
Jo roused herself and rushed for the radio in the light tanker.
‘Ground Command, Glenroyd Light Tanker Four. We are about three hundred metres from the downed chopper and are proceeding to assist,’ she panted, mouth so dry the rasping of her voice surprised even her.
The sector commander replied, ‘Glenroyd Light Tanker Four, copied. Ambulance and rescue team are mobilised. Do not, repeat do not, attempt to rescue any occupants in chopper because of danger of explosion.’
After acknowledging the order Jo beckoned Charlie over and they bumped in the light tanker over the blackened ground, getting as close as they could to the downed chopper at the base of the hill. They stopped to unravel the hose, aiming to extinguish any spot fires in the nearby bush before they spread to the crippled machine.
Luckily the main fuel tank of the chopper had not broken, but Charlie pointed out the ruptured small fuel lines only a few metres away. Jo could hear the sound of the jet fuel as it dripped and hissed onto the hot engine. It was tempting to squirt it with water, but she remembered being cautioned against such an action in her training course. Water on a hot fuel engine could do more harm than good, spreading the fuel and increasing the fire risk.
So she stood, helplessly watching Charlie squirt the spot fires in the chopper’s vicinity. When he’d done all he could, he pulled her further back from the chopper, explaining what would happen when ignition temperature was reached and the inevitable explosion followed. All she could focus upon was the thought of the bodies of the pilot and the observer, lying amongst the wreckage of the cabin. She was sure she saw one of the men’s chest rise — or had she imagined it?
Whatever, she couldn’t stand there any longer.
She lunged towards the downed chopper, finding herself held back by Charlies grip upon the sleeve of her baggy yellow jacket.
‘Don’t be a bloody idiot, Charlie, you just said the chopper could explode any second,’ she said, trying to shake him off.
Freed from his grasp, she sprinted to the chopper.
‘Quick, give me a hand!’ she called back.
He stared for a moment, his mouth gaping, then shook his head and hurried afte
r her.
***
Cam and Leanne witnessed the explosion from where they were standing. The ground shuddered; the fireball took off from the side of the hill, briefly illuminating all that surrounded it before being swallowed by a cloud of greasy black smoke.
From the radio, madness spewed, almost impossible to follow. The air around them was cluttered with flying ash, settling like snow upon their heads and shoulders, and on the roof and bonnet of the Commodore.
Cam leaned against the car roof, burying his face in his folded arms, the tip of his nose numb against the vehicle’s dewy surface. Despite the cool of dawn his underarms were damp with sweat, his legs ready to buckle. The light grew with every second, small birds twittered, magpies yodelled, but all sensation had ceased in Cam save for the iron grip of terror on his heart and the heavy press of smoke in his lungs.
It hadn’t been like this before, with Elizabeth and Joe. He’d lost consciousness not long after his failed rescue attempt, when he’d opened the door of his burning house and been caught in the back-draft. They’d been alive when he passed out, long dead by the time he woke up in hospital days later. Three years on and he still heard them screaming in his dreams. But it was a small penance to pay, with the pain of his burns now almost gone. He dug his finger into a sensitive area on his neck, willing the pain to return.
Lost in despair, he gave himself up to the numbness.
Seconds, minutes or hours later, he felt an urgent thump on his shoulder.
‘Did you hear that, Sarge?’ Leanne asked, her voice dizzy and breathless.
He looked up at her through red-rimmed eyes. ‘What?’
‘Jo’s voice on the radio. She and Charlie hauled the crew from the wreck. No one’s badly injured and the paramedics are on their way.’
Almost numb with relief, Cam had trouble finding his voice. ‘The fire?’
‘Under control. Glenroyd Light Tanker Four is being relieved, Jo and Charlie will be leaving the fire ground soon.’
And now Cam’s legs did buckle. He collapsed into the driver’s seat of the Commodore, whispering prayers of thanks to a God he’d never believed in. As he rested his head against the steering wheel, his mind rewound to something Brother Ambrose had said to him years ago, before the first cracking blow of the stick connected with the side of his head. ‘There weren’t any atheists in the trenches, boy, and there certainly aren’t any in St Bart’s.’
Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Page 22