Joe and Brad are both hungry and like that idea. Jesse puts a billy of water on the bed of coals while Decker tosses each of them a dehydrated pack of roast lamb and potato mash. Joe and Brad hold the packet in their hands, look at each other and then back at Decker and Jesse.
“How do we eat this?” Brad asks. He is normally quiet and just follows Joe’s lead but food is a big enough issue to break down his reservations.
“You open the top of the packet like this,” Jesse demonstrates like a teacher, “then you pour in boiling water and close the top. Wait ten minutes and then eat!”
Brad looks to Joe and they read each other’s thoughts. Bloody white man’s tucker! Neither relishes the thought of it. After a long day they want food. They look at each other again and make a decision.
“We’ll be back soon,” Joe announces and he and Brad walk out of camp, disappearing among the trees and scrub.
Decker and Jesse sip on their beers while they wait for the billy to boil. While they enjoy the beers and idle chatter, Decker notices the low hill between their camp and where he expects his prey to be so he tosses a few pieces of timber onto the fire. Bastard is right! The timber is dry and there’s bugger-all smoke. Fucker still has it coming though, he decides.
Just as the billy reaches boiling point, Joe and Brad return carrying something between them.
Jesse is lifting the billy off the fire just as they dump it on the ground. “What the fuck’n hell’s that?” Jesse calls out in shock, dropping the lid into the fire.
“Good tucker, bloody good tucker,” Joe calls back as he tosses the goanna onto the coals to cook in its skin. Neither Joe nor Brad notice the horror on the faces of Decker and Jesse. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Joe reaches into the Troop Carrier for a couple of beers and tosses one to Brad as they wait for their catch to cook over the coals. They look forward to the oily white meat with a flavour similar to chicken.
“What’s wrong with our food?” Jesse asks, barely hiding his revulsion.
“Good tucker for you mate,” says Joe. “We want real tucker!”
Decker and Jesse are thrown off guard and eat their freeze-dried roast in silence as they sip on their beers. Joe and Brad enjoy their own beers and wait patiently while Decker and Jesse do their best to ignore them. Soon Joe drags the goanna out of the fire and uses his knife to slice off strips of meat, offering the delicacy to his brother who eagerly scoops his share into his mouth, savouring the taste.
“We bin long way out mate,” Joe volunteers. “Me and Brad’ll find you real good hunt’n out here. A way bit closer to the swamp will be good. Tomorrow will be real good!” Joe promises and claps Brad on the back as he grins and nods in agreement.
“That’ll be good,” Decker offers after a while. He is revolted by what they are doing. He feels an urge to do them now so he can crawl into his swag and listen to their dying moans of pain but doesn’t know whether he still needs them. He thinks about his prey and how he is going to handle it while worrying about the headmaster and his fucking rifle. He should have thought about it but who would have dreamt it! He must have been thinking about the problem for a while because he notices the black fellas slicing further into the goanna, searching the intestines for something that he works out are the eggs.
They are in luck and Joe uses his knife to scoop them out onto a piece of bark. Joe and Brad tuck into the pile, each eating with a hunting knife. Fuck! Decker reacts with distaste, not understanding the delicacy he is missing, and goes back to solving his problem. The fifth beer supplies the answer and he looks over to Jesse, ignoring Joe and Brad finishing the last of their meal. “Jess,” he says quietly, “come here.”
Jesse looks over and Decker cocks his head to bring him closer. When Jesse is sitting next to him, he says in a quiet voice, “In the morning, before sun up, I’m going to check on the bitch and her fella. I want you to stay here and keep an eye on things. Whatever you hear, you stay put and keep the black fellas here, got it! If I want you, I’ll give a call on the radio.”
“Got it Pa! What are you goin’ to do? You won’t do it without me, will you?” Jesse asks with apprehension.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to pay the bitch back. I’m just going for a look and, if I have to, I’ll just make sure nothing spoils our plans,” he replies, thinking about the headmaster and the rifle. The worry nibbles away at him. He would never recognise or admit it, but the thought of facing someone he can’t intimidate scares him. “I’m hitting the sack. Let these black fellas finish up and remember what I told you,” he says to Jesse as he tosses his swag onto the ground.
“Don’t worry Pa, you can rely on me,” Jesse replies. He feels the swell of pride in his chest that his dad will leave him in charge and goes back to sit against the wheel of the Patrol to keep an eye on Joe and Brad. He watches as they lick their fingers before going back to the beers.
The sun has sunk below the horizon as the three of them throw their swags on the ground and pull the tops off another beer for a final drink. It is well and truly dark as Jesse crawls into his own swag to listen to the noises of the night as he drifts toward sleep. The last thing he hears is Joe and Brad mumbling to each other and the occasional chuckle of contentment as the fire slowly dies.
Decker sleeps light, woken occasionally by the odd noise or his in-built sense of awareness, switching on at random intervals to scan the darkness before drifting off again. He wakes before dawn, checks his watch and unzips the swag. He takes a swig of water, slips on his boots and rolls to his feet. The camp is quiet as he eases open the back door of the Nissan and selects the twelve-gauge coach gun, a side by side, double-barrel shotgun with short twenty-inch barrels and a small, high intensity torch mounted under the barrel. He breaks the action and slips two rounds of buckshot into the chambers. Each cartridge contains nine pellets, each the size of a .22 bullet. The load packs a lot of wallop and he slips two more into his pockets. He checks that his knife is still strapped to his belt before picking up the GPS and hand-held radio, slipping them into the pockets of his safari trousers. He adds some plastic ties, then heads out to the track and starts walking quietly toward his prey.
They should only be a few kilometres down the track and the GPS confirms the distance as three thousand four hundred and thirty metres. The night sky has little cloud and the half moon gives a good bit of light as he begins his hunt. He places his feet carefully but keeps up a good pace through the early morning darkness. As he walks, the sky to the east gains a little more light to help him as he picks out the still obvious track between the trees, regularly checking the GPS to maintain direction. In under an hour he sees the gleam of a vehicle among the trees as the moonlight reflects off it.
He stops and takes in the scene for a few minutes in the early morning twilight. He can see the moonlight reflecting off the surface of a lagoon to his right and, slightly to his front left, the dying embers of a camp fire still glow faintly. He takes a few steps further forward and picks up the dark shapes of two swags close together on the ground. Not next to each other, but close. He savours the anticipation. It is best this way, a bit sooner than he planned but safer. He takes another few steps, trying to pick the headmaster’s swag. He stops and waits with the infinite patience of the hunter, standing still in the early morning light. It takes only a minute or two for him to pick out extra details, the body shapes in the swags and the boots placed neatly next to each one.
Eyeing the larger swag, the one with the man’s boots next to it, he quietly takes a few more steps, slowly and carefully, as he gently pulls back the hammers of the coach gun to minimise the click. He is really enjoying this. The expectation almost gives him a hard on but he waits silently, taking one step, waiting again, and then taking another, gradually closing the range. He raises the shotgun to his shoulder. The buckshot will smash the ponce’s legs and all he will be able to do is squirm and moan until he’s ready to finish him. The look on his face will be classic! He’ll know what�
��s coming. God, that’ll be good! Fuck’n headmasters and their canes! This one can pay for all of them.
He hesitates a while longer, lingering on his thoughts. He feels the sexual power of control over life and death surge through him stimulating his loins as he settles the shotgun into his shoulder. Placing the front sight just on the lower part of the left-hand swag, he gently squeezes the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The blast of the shotgun snaps Jed awake instantly. It has been a restless night and the only sleep he manages is short naps between periods of alertness while his senses track and catalogue the sounds of the night. The three quarter sleeping mat isn’t too bad to lie on and the ground is mostly eroded sand. He’s known worse nights. Thankfully, it hasn’t been cold. The light blanket is sufficient while the insect repellent is keeping any mosquitoes at bay. Alex had been far from impressed with the changed sleeping arrangements but from what he can tell, she has slept soundly—very soundly indeed, judging from her snores!
He rolls over and shakes her awake. He is rewarded by a grunt and a moan.
He shakes her again until she responds groggily, “What are you doing? Get off me!”
“Wake up Alex!” he whispers urgently. “Get up, now!”
Even in the early morning state between sleep and waking, she senses the urgency in his voice and sits up, throwing off the light blanket covering her. “What’s up?”
“Gun shot! Close! Let’s move!”
She needs no further urging and rolls into a standing position. “Deflate the mattress and roll it up,” Jed commands. “We have to move!”
She follows his instructions to the letter. He is impressed. Mattress and blanket are rolled together, secured with a strap and thrown over a shoulder along with Alex’s travel bag. She is ready to move in under a minute and follows him out of the small rock shelter, along the face of the rock and up a cleft to the top of the bluff. They creep along it until they are above the campsite, close enough to observe and hear what is happening. Jed dumps his bed roll and dives face down to crawl to the edge of the bluff. She copies him to crawl alongside and peer over the edge.
“Be careful,” he advises. “Keep down so we don’t silhouette ourselves against the skyline.”
“Been there and done that a few times! But thanks for the tip,” and means it.
“Sorry Alex, just habit!”
“Understood.” They both peer cautiously down to the campsite. They see a figure stomping angrily around the camp in the early morning light, then come back and kick Jed’s swag again and again and again. The figure goes to the other swag and kicks that repeatedly, then stops and scans all around, pausing to gaze up at the bluff.
“Don’t move!” Jed snaps. “Movement will give us away. Stay still!”
Alex holds her position, eyes just peering over the top of the bluff. The angle makes the tops of their heads appear like the natural curve of the rock surface. They watch the figure walk around the Landcruiser and then start opening the doors and looking inside.
“That’s our mate, Decker,” Jed says unnecessarily. “He doesn’t look happy. I could have sworn we were safe for a while yet!”
“It wouldn’t take much to trigger him,” Alex says. “Thank God we slept away from camp.”
Jed blesses the laws of chance as well. “Sometimes you make the right decision for no logical reason. Just gut instinct. Let’s see what happens next. If we have to move, grab the gear and head down the side of the bluff, behind that line of bushes and into the clump of trees over to our left.”
Alex turns her head slowly to sight the trees about three hundred metres away. “Got them!”
Jed likes this woman. No dramatics. Does what she is told in a crisis with no unnecessary questions. They watch Decker rummage through the Landcruiser until he steps back, holding something in his hand. They can see him inspect it and then throw it back into the car.
“The transmitter!” whisper Jed and Alex together.
“Now he knows we really know what he’s up to!” Jed groans.
“He’s going to be really pissed off!” Alex adds, “He’s into control and now he’s lost it.”
They watch as Decker storms back over to the swags, kicks them around and fires the second barrel into Jed’s swag.
“I don’t think he likes you,” Alex surmises.
Jed watches the display with increasing uneasiness. “He intended to take me out,” he says reflectively. “This just got personal!”
“Welcome to my world as it used to be. Sorry.”
Jed just nods and continues to watch. They see Decker unclip a radio, talk briefly into it and return it to his belt. He paces around some more and they can sense his agitation, even from a distance. They watch him roll up the swags and stuff them into the Landcruiser. He takes out one of the twenty litre drums of fuel, unscrews the cap and splashes the contents over and inside the vehicle, then stuffs the drum back inside and closes the doors except for one.
“This doesn’t look good,” Alex says.
Using a piece of bark to lift out a smouldering coal from the fire, Decker tosses it into the vehicle and steps back quickly. For a second or two nothing happens, then there is a mighty woof of flame as the fuel-soaked interior explodes. A slash of orange flame flashes briefly out the open door before the all-devouring, blazing inferno swallows the whole vehicle. Grey-black smoke billows thickly out of the open door as plastic, vinyl, cotton, canvas and other materials are consumed. The paintwork blisters into huge bubbles and peels off in scabs that writhe and twist from the torturous flames. They see Decker step back to watch the vehicle burn then turn slowly around to scan the surrounding country.
They watch, stunned, as the vehicle is devoured before their eyes.
Alex breaks the silence. “When you hired that Landcruiser,” she asks in a contemplative tone, “did you happen to tick the box for insurance?”
Jed can’t restrain himself. “That bloody sociopath just blew up our vehicle and you want to know if I took out insurance?”
“Just checking whether it’s coming out of my budget,” Alex adds with a deadpan expression.
Jed is about to fire back a sarcastic comment but sees the look in her eye. He finally recognises what she is doing—downplaying the trouble they are in. She knows exactly how bad the situation is. She’d make a good commander in the field. He still underestimates her and is guilty of judging her too fast. Now the shit has just hit the fan, big time, and if he is going to have company dealing with it, she is a good person to have alongside.
“I think I ticked the box,” he replies with a grim smile. “We’ll find out when I tell the rental company about this one! Then there’s the camping shop as well! Surely you had a contingency line in your budget?”
“Not that big!” She is relieved he can play the game. She half expected him to spit the dummy. Maybe he’s starting to get me, she decides hopefully.
“I should have asked for a down payment on my services in advance. I think my share of the budget just went up in smoke!”
She groans quietly at the pun and manages a gentle kick as they watch Decker start to walk toward the bluff, then stop and walk around the burning vehicle, first one way then the other.
“He’s lost control and doesn’t know what to do,” Alex says. He had a structured, well thought out plan but now it is in pieces. I used to have that effect on him because I’m so unpredictable. Lashing out at me was his only strategy for regaining control. It’ll take him a while to get it back together. But when he comes up with a new plan, he’ll follow it ruthlessly.”
“I don’t think that’s going to bode well for us. Let’s just wait a bit and see what develops. If he comes past that fallen tree, we follow the plan and run for it. We’ll be able to make the scrub line before he gets to the top of this bluff.”
Alex nods in agreement. They wait patiently and unmoving. Soon they hear the sound of approaching vehicles, which bounce into view between clumps of scrub and
trees. Two vehicles stop behind the burning Landcruiser. They see a young white male jump out of the Nissan and run toward Decker. Two Aboriginals climb out of the other vehicle, and approach cautiously.
“That’s Jesse,” Alex points out. “An evil little bastard who should have been put down a long time ago!”
Jed notes the disgust in her voice. It doesn’t surprise him, given what she has told him so far. “Let’s see how this pans out.”
Chapter Thirty
Alex and Jed watch Decker stride angrily toward the Nissan.
“They’ve done a runner! They’re on to us! Can’t be far though,” he snaps, opening the back door of the Nissan to retrieve his laptop. He also takes out a portable satellite dish and arranges it while the laptop boots up.
The Aboriginals climb out of their Troopie, leaning on the vehicle to watch the proceedings and burning vehicle with interest.
Decker fiddles with the keyboard and satellite dish. His agitation increases. Finally he swears, slams the laptop shut and turns to face the two trackers. “It’s time we put you boys to work! This is no holiday jaunt and we all have to do our bit.” Decker picks up his shotgun, breaks the action, extracts the two empty cases and inserts two more from his pocket. With a grim smile he walks over to them.
Joe and Brad look back at him. “No pigs ‘round here boss,” says the older man, just as Decker reverses the shotgun and slams the butt into his stomach.
Fire Eye Page 16