head-up display. Pizza incident? For a moment it meant nothing. The intensity of the moment overtook her.
Then it came flooding back. Camping on a dirt track. He wanted pizza, had to have pizza. So they pointed the car towards a small town on the map. But when they got there, everything was shut.
She asked for the map on the display. At least now she had a target.
// Oscar
If you had an aerial view, from a drone, you would see three vehicles converging on the park.
“The nav is not clear.” Michael said.
“Don’t use it. Just set a bearing and pace it.” Oscar said.
Ahead of them they could see movement in the undergrowth. Surely not? How would anyone find them? They couldn’t find themselves. They slowed, and watched the vegetation moving. It looked about the size of a person.
A huge red kangaroo jumped out right in front of them. Clearly as startled as they were. It hesitated, then turned and bounded off quickly along the track.
Oscar was watching his screen, looking for a sign.
“How far to this road?” he said.
Michael looked around. “About a kilometre.” It really didn’t matter. If they kept going in this direction, they had to hit the road.
The dirt roads were laid out leading north, in a regular grid going east. They marked the edge of properties. Not all of them were farmed. Some were surrendered to the dust.
// Alex
Alex stared at the dialing display. She should call. But she couldn’t. She just had to hope that he understood.
For a moment she thought of the famous one. Was this the end? The absence said it all, didn’t it? Some things looked alive for a long time when on the inside they were long dead. Fuck him, she thought. Then ‘fuck him’ she shouted to no-one in particular. She recognised the corner, and turned quickly in the direction of the pizza incident.
// Quang
Quang looked at the satellite view. The smoke was being driven by the wind like a blanket spreading over the intercept zone.
“There are two roads running north south. We’ll try the second one.” he said.
Neither Liuping or Quang was about to question this. But it was a guess. First road in was too obvious. They had played with the private code for a while, but it wasn’t giving anything up. Too personal.
“Look for a vehicle.” Robert said.
// George
George sat slumped, his phone on the table in front of him. Alice and Steve just looked at each other. This clearly wasn’t a case of blue funk. They were used to that. This was George in new territory.
“Ctrl-X?” George asked.
“They are there but they are not talking to us.” Alice said.
“The fire?” he said.
“It’s spreading, but it won’t get them. The smoke will make drones useless though.” she said.
“Alex?” George asked, finally.
“About twenty minutes from an intercept.” she said.
“Ours?” he said.
“Stawell the nearest. But we haven’t alerted them yet.” she said.
George put his fingers on the table. Pushed the phone away. Looked at the satellite feed, then across at the tracking. Estimates of Michael and Oscar’s location. The drones, Alex’s car.
// Liuping, Quang
Liuping and Quang worked the status display.
“You have 5 kilometres to go. Drones can’t track them.” Liuping said.
“Take the next right.” she continued.
They had GPS feeds from the car. Based on the last sighting of Michael and Alex they had a likely location. It was a blur on the screen, about 200m in length.
“You are there.” she said.
// Alex
Alex was struggling to recall, searching for landmarks. This road? Yes. She turned and went slowly, not knowing where they would be waiting. She tried to think of exactly where on the road the pizza incident was. Made for that. Then very slowly came to a halt.
// Liuping
“Where?” the driver asked Liuping.
“Just ahead.” she said.
// Michael, Oscar
Michael and Oscar were exhausted. They hovered at the edge of the road, searching for a car.
“You’ll recognise the car?” Oscar asked.
Michael looked puzzled. “Yes, of course.”
// Liuping
Liuping was getting worried.
“It’s right in front of you.” she said. Trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“I don’t see it.” the driver said.
She looked at the display. It showed the two cars within 5 metres of each other. Right on top of the blur where they were supposed to be.
Black is white, white is black.
“Do you see anything distinctive? A large tree. What do you see? Send me an image.” she said.
But even as the image was coming, she worked it out.
// Michael
Michael saw it through the smoke. Tentatively at first, then in a flat run for the car. Oscar fell into the back seat, Oscar in the front.
“You came.” he said.
“Of course.” she said.
Alex moved the car tentatively forward.
“Where to?” she said.
Michael and Oscar looked at each other.
“Just stay under the smoke for the moment.” Oscar said.
He called Mia.
“Hi.” he said.
“Hi.” she said.
“Made it.” he said.
“Into the middle of a shit storm.”
“Yup.”
“You have a plan?”
“Once you are out in the open, you are sitting ducks.”
“Public assassinations. You really think they are up for that?”
“I don’t want to test the odds.”
“So....”
“I’m going to call George.”
“Kostas?”
“The Alex connection?”
“Not just that. We have a problem in common.”
// Liuping
“GPS hack.” Liuping said.
“Clever.” Quang said.
“Sorry. I should have realised.” she said.
“How exactly should you have realised.” he said “Don’t sweat it. We have them within a radius. It’s just a matter of time.” he said.
// George
He could see the progress of the convoy on the wall. With such a police presence, he doubted that the pursuers would show their hand.
He moved the microphone closer.
“Mia. Full history.”
Moving every few months. Above and below the radar, with just enough presence to fund her modest lifestyle. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Hong Kong, Vietnam. Then, all of a sudden, here she was. Hired and planted.
He stared at all of it for quite a while, then dialed the number. Listening to it ring. It took a while. Imagining her bringing up stuff on her version of the wall before deciding to answer it.
Mia had George up on her screens.
“Hello.” she said.
“We have some mutual friends in trouble.” he said
“It seems I should be grateful to you for rescuing them.”
“I wouldn’t put it that strongly. We are just making sure they arrive back in Melbourne safely.”
Understated. Mia was taking in the stuff from the wall. Especially the high public profile that George had. Then the link to Michael, via Alex.
“Nevertheless. Not something we could have done.”
Which brought them to exactly what was Ctrl-X.
“You seem to float about a bit. What brought you back to Australia?” he said.
There was a significant pause. Of course he was going to fish for information.
“Homesick.” she said.
“A bit late in coming, wasn’t it?” he said.
“You know how it goes. Somebody burns a gum leaf, and before you know it you are on
a plane.”
The wall was giving him quite a different version of all this. At times it was almost impossible to conduct a conversation, with the wall updating and contradicting as fast as it could.
“Perhaps I should explain where I’m coming from. You know about my interest in Michael, through Alex. I’m also trying to unravel a string of murders that seem related.”
Mia hesitated.
“You think we are tied up in that? We don’t do that sort of thing.” she said.
Unless we are instructed to do so, she thought. In a sense she was being accurate. The backers hadn’t asked for anything like that. Given that she didn’t know who they were, or even what their motivation was, she wasn’t going to be much help.
“It’s the ‘we’ that interests me. Exactly who is involved here?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Because you won’t tell me, or you don’t know?”
No shame, she thought. For hire.
“You know that I don’t have that information.” she said.
Actually he didn’t but he did now.
“Have you considered that you might have passed your use-by date with whoever is operating you? That the easiest way to make sure there are no unexpected events further down the track is to make you all disappear?”
“It’s an occupational hazard.” she said.
“Maybe so, but I think we can help each other here.”
It wasn’t a conversation she was going to have with the backers. By the way, how do you feel about me helping George in homicide? He had a point though, she had no way of knowing.
“I’ve always found that looking after myself worked for me.” she said.
George paused. No way to force the issue. In any case, whoever was chasing them might well make the case for him.
“You know where I am.” he said.
“Sure.”
George made the necessary calls. It became a police convoy.
He stared at the phone. The car was reaching the outskirts of Ballarat. Finally he called Alex.
“Hi.” he said.
Alex blurted.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It just happened...” she said.
“I know. I know. Don’t worry.” he said.
The drones hovered as the car continued through the outer suburbs of Ballarat. What
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