by Shane Carrow
“…have to understand, there’s a lot of people who say a lot of things. Now, I wouldn’t ever dream of, of… of doing the wrong thing. You understand? But I need to know exactly who you are.”
Rahvi’s voice drifted up to the ceiling in reply. “No, you really don’t, Mr Harrison. All you need to know is that I work for the Army. I work with some of General Draeger’s top staff. You can think of me as an associate investigator. Believe me, Army Intelligence can come down here if you prefer. But that’s not what you want. We can stop this from going any further right now.”
I shifted a little closer, peered down through the crack. Harrison was standing, pacing around the room. Rahvi was sitting in an armchair – I couldn’t see his face, but he seemed relaxed and comfortable, or was acting it anyway, his legs crossed and his hands clasped together. I couldn’t see anyone else, though. Maybe Harrison hadn’t been visiting anyone. Maybe this was some kind of safehouse or bolthole.
No – another man had entered my field of view, carrying a pair of coffee mugs. He handed one to Rahvi and kept the other himself, blowing on it. He was in his sixties, maybe, with wispy white hair and gnarled hands, but he seemed much more composed than Harrison. “Maybe it would help if you tell us how exactly you know about… what he claims to have,” the new man said.
Rahvi sipped his coffee. “You obtained them from a teenage boy two days ago. We know that because the sentries caught him trying to get over the wall last night. We believe he’s one of the loyalists who parachuted out of the RAAF plane shot down near Tamworth last week. That plane was carrying a nuclear warhead salvaged from an American aircraft carrier which sank off Brisbane.”
“Everybody knows that,” Harrison said. “It’s in the bloody paper.”
Rahvi made a neutral noise, and carried on. “The boy’s name is Michael Webster. Or so he claims. We had some trouble up north with him earlier. He’s the one who started those bushfires near Copeton, trying to escape the search parties.”
“He murdered my daughter,” Harrison said. Up in the crawlspace, I flared my nostrils a bit. The fucking liar.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rahvi said, without a trace of sympathy. “I can assure you his days are numbered. He’s on his way to Armidale as we speak. Once the interrogation teams are done with him, he’ll be hanged.
“In any case, he told us that you relieved him of what he says is a codebook, full of launch codes, including the one required for the warhead being carried by the plane. We are very close to recovering that warhead – but it’s useless without the codes.
“General Draeger is personally following this. He doesn’t yet know about what’s happened here in Bundarra, with the boy and the codebook. But he will soon. So let me offer you a charitable explanation, Mr Harrison. Let me suggest that maybe you didn’t realise what it was you had here. Let me suggest that maybe you came here to consult with your friend, and that when the two of you realised what you had, you immediately alerted the authorities. That would be me. So here I am, glad that we have such loyal citizens in New England, ready to take it off your hands and see that you’re both fairly compensated for it.” Rahvi sipped his coffee. “That’s one road. Do you need me to describe the others?”
He was good. He was fucking good, I had to give him that. I knew exactly who he was, and even staring down from up in the crawlspace, it was hard not to believe that he wasn’t actually an agent of New England’s military government – a person you seriously didn’t want to fuck with.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t good enough.
The older man had put his coffee down on the table, and a moment later he’d drawn a pistol from his pocket and had levelled it at Rahvi, right at his face, from only a few feet away.
Rahvi didn’t move.
“Whoa, Ian…” Harrison said.
“No,” Ian snarled. “This is bullshit. You’re not from the Army. They wouldn’t send one guy. They wouldn’t come here and play nice. If you were really from the government, if you really thought we’d been holding onto this thing, we’d be in the fucking cells already.”
Rahvi didn’t say anything. Harrison was muttering, speaking under his breath, as though he wanted to talk his friend down but didn’t have the guts to do it.
“You’re not from the Army,” Ian repeated.
“Oh, I am,” Rahvi said, taking another sip of his coffee. “But I’m from the real one.”
Then he flung the mug in Ian’s face and lunged forward, pushing the gun aside, a few blind shots firing off and thudding into the walls. Coffee had splashed across his face, scalding him, and the mug collided with his jaw. Rahvi had knocked him right over an armchair and the two of them toppled over it together, Harrison jumping across the coffee table to help his friend…
That happened in the two seconds while I shoved my palm down against the closest panel, knocked it down into the room, grabbed the beam and swung down into the living room, landing with both feet on the sofa. Harrison had joined the fray and hadn’t even heard me come down, but I leapt off the sofa and landed on his back, tackling him to the side, trying to get an arm around his throat. I caught a wild glimpse of Rahvi brutally slamming his fist down into Ian’s face, but then Harrison was rolling, trying to throw me off, and he was a big man and now he was on top of me and had the upper hand, and I could see the shock and surprise on his face as he recognised me but it turned into rage, and he had his hands around my throat and was choking me. I clawed at his face with my left hand while I struggled in my belt for the kitchen knife I’d taken, and pulled it free, and part of my brain was singing at me to sink it deep into Harrison’s gut while another part was screaming that we needed him alive. So I reached up and slashed at his face, a bright red sparkle of blood, and he recoiled and fell back as I scrambled to my feet.
There was the snick-snick of a gun’s slide being drawn back. Harrison looked up to see Rahvi standing above him, panting with exertion, his Browning levelled at the river trader’s face. Ian was on the floor behind him, his face a bloodied mess. He wasn’t moving. Out in the corridor, I could hear people calling and shouting – they had, of course, heard the gunshots.
“Matt, you okay?” Rahvi said.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said hoarsely, looking about the carpet for Ian’s gun. It had tumbled across into the kitchen area and I grabbed it, an unfamiliar model, slick and black with the words SIG SAUER stamped on the barrel. Well, a gun is a gun.
“The codebook,” Rahvi said. “Give me the codebook.”
“I don’t have it,” Harrison said, clutching his face where I’d slashed him with the knife.
“Where is it?” Rahvi hissed, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and shoving the gun closer into his face.
“The boat,” Harrison choked.
“All right,” Rahvi said. “Let’s fucking go, then.”
He forced Harrison to his feet and shoved him towards the door, gun pointed at his back – though he grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen bench as he passed, giving it to Harrison and telling him to keep pressure on the facial wound. I held my gun at my side and followed them out into the corridor, where about a dozen people had spilled out of their apartments into the hallway, some of them holding weapons.
“It’s all right, everybody!” Rahvi said. He’d holstered his gun and had one hand on Harrison’s shoulder, the other flashing his ID card at everybody – knowing full well nobody would look at it too closely. “Army Intelligence! We just had a single-body outbreak…” (A ripple of shock and dismay ran through the crowd) “…and I had to put it down. It’s all right! All under control! Containment teams will be here soon, but I need to get this man to the hospital. Stay in your homes, please. Coming through… move, please…”
Some people went back inside their apartments and shut the doors, but others were still milling around, staring at this strange sight. Staring at Rahvi, staring at me. But a few seconds later we were out the door.
“Move your fucking ass,” Rahvi said, jab
bing his gun into Harrison’s back again. We went down the stairs as quickly as we could. I half expected some of the residents to come after us, not believing us for a second. But a few moments later we were back out through the lobby, back out into the cold and swirling rain.
“What the hell is Army Intelligence?” I said, as we moved down the street back towards the river.
“Draeger’s secret police,” Rahvi said. “Or so they say.”
“Oh, they’re fucking real,” Harrison said, still pressing the tea towel up against his face. “You’re about to get to know them real well.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You’re dead,” he said. “There’s no way you’re getting out of here alive.”
“Then there’s no way you are either, then.”
We came back to the esplanade – the verandahs of the pubs still full of people, bright lights and warm shelter on a wet night. There were patrolling soldiers here, so Rahvi and I both holstered our weapons, but Rahvi kept an arm around Harrison as we trudged on through the rain. “Try anything and you’re fucking dead,” Rahvi said.
A pair of soldiers came past us, no older than twenty, wearing rain slickers. One had a Steyr Aug, the other just a bolt-action. “You all right there, mate?” one of them stopped and asked, squinting at Harrison through the rain.
My heart was hammering. No way we could shoot our way out of this. There were people all up and down the esplanade, the pubs and cafes were crowded…
“He’s all right, some dickhead glassed him at the pub,” Rahvi said. “Your boys arrested him, no worries there.”
“You need to come down the barracks and get stitched up?” the other soldier asked.
“No, no, all good, his missus is a nurse,” Rahvi said. “We’ll take him home, she’ll take care of him. Thanks, fellas.”
“You sure, mate?”
“It’s fine,” Harrison said, squinting at them, half his face covered by the bloodied tea towel. “Not as bad as it looks. I’m all right. Thanks, though.”
“No worries,” the soldiers said, and carried on their patrol.
“Fucking hell,” I murmured, as we carried on through the rain.
“Nearly there,” Rahvi said.
We headed down the concrete stairs onto the docks, where there was no movement at all – just a dozen boats sitting in the river, creaking at their ropes and gently rubbing against the tyres lining the wharf. “Your daughters,” Rahvi said, as we approached the houseboat. “Where will they be?”
“I don’t know,” Harrison said. “Jess will probably be in her room, Sarah will be in the wheelhouse – please, you don’t have to hurt them…”
“You didn’t seem to give a fuck about shooting your other daughter,” I said.
Harrison turned to look down at me with contempt. “That was your fault.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
We reached the gangplank. There was a light on in the wheelhouse, and Rahvi pushed Harrison first, up the stairs, through the door and inside. Sarah was sitting at the console in the pilot’s chair, looking through the glass at the raindrop-blurred glow of lights along the esplanade. She turned as she saw us come in, saw Harrison, saw me and Rahvi, saw the guns.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “Way to go.”
“Turn back around,” Rahvi said. “Hands on the console. You too, Harrison.”
They did as he said. “All right,” Rahvi said. “Matt, go get the other girl.”
“You’ll be all right by yourself?”
He just gave me a look.
“Right,” I said. “Okay.”
Back outside, into the steady rain, and down to the lower decks. I could vaguely remember which door was Harrison’s office, but the others were a mystery. I opened one cabin – no good, an empty bedroom. Second was a utility room of some kind.
Third time was the charm. A tiny bunk, Jess lying in bed, reading an old magazine by the light of a Tilley lamp. She started as I walked in, and then her face twisted up in shock and horror. “Oh no,” she said. “No, no, no, please…”
“Shut up!” I hissed, pointing the gun at her. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay! Jess! Shut up! I’m not going to hurt you!”
She contained her breathing. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Don’t get high and mighty with me,” I said. “We’re just here to take back what you stole. Get up. You’re coming up to the wheelhouse.”
She slunk out of bed, barefoot, wearing just a pair of track pants and her university hoody. I noted, with a slight twinge of guilt, that her left arm was in a plaster cast. I walked behind her, gun pointed in her back, as we went back out on deck and up to the wheelhouse.
So there we all were: me and Rahvi, both armed, Harrison and his two surviving daughters, sitting in the wheelhouse of his riverboat while no more than thirty metres away soldiers were patrolling up and down the esplanade and people were drinking in pubs, none of them any the wiser. Well, actually – the ruckus at the apartment building was probably filtering through to the authorities. But we had time, for now.
“The PAL codebook,” Rahvi said.
“It’s not yours,” Sarah said venomously.
“Just give it to them, Sarah,” Harrison said wearily. He was still pressing the tea towel up against his face – I’d slashed him pretty bad. “We need to cut our losses on this one.”
She looked at him with contempt, but didn’t disobey him. She produced the codebook, that beautiful little blue square of paper and plastic, from her pocket, and tossed it over to me. I caught it in one hand and shoved it in my jeans pocket. Some deep internal muscles which had been clenched in stress ever since I lost the damn thing finally loosened and relaxed.
We weren’t out of the woods yet, though.
“Here’s what happens now,” Rahvi said. “You’re going to cast off, and start up the engines. You’re going to take us out of Bundarra…”
“We can’t,” Sarah said. “There’s a curfew.”
“No, there isn’t, and don’t try to lie to me again. You’re going to take us further upriver, further south, as far as you can. Then we’ll leave you be.”
“They’ll just kill us, Dad,” Sarah hissed.
“No, they won’t,” Harrison said. “They know it will cause more trouble than it’s worth. And they know we’re not going to report them. More trouble for us than it’s worth.”
Rahvi nodded. Personally I didn’t see how hard it could be to shoot them and then scuttle the boat – not that I wanted to do that, or at least not to Jess, who seemed mostly innocent in the whole affair. Anyway, I didn’t know what Rahvi was really thinking, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Right,” Rahvi said. “So. Fire up the engines.”
“I’ll warm them up,” Harrison said. “But we need to cast off.” He nodded out the window, down towards the dock. The boat was attached to the wharf with thick ropes.
“I’ll go,” I said. “You watch them.”
I headed out into the cold, wet night again, wiping rain away from my eyes. Out along the esplanade, everything was normal: people going up and down, huddled beneath umbrellas or raincoats. The pubs were still spilling light and sound out onto the footpath. I headed down towards the stern and started fumbling with the rope around the tyre-wrapped bollard. The rain had soaked the rope and pulled the knot taut, and after a few moments I gave up and pulled the kitchen knife from my belt to cut it free.
Harrison had fired up the engines; the deck was vibrating underfoot and there was a sudden belch of diesel exhaust through the rain, the water by the stern churning up. “You heading out?” someone from the wharf called. “Nasty night for it!”
I glanced up and saw some random nobody, a dock worker or another river trader, standing up on the edge of the wharf. “Captain’s call!” I yelled back, and headed for the bow.
I glanced back up him as I reached the prow rope and began sawing through that one. He was staring down at the stern
bollard suspiciously, probably wondering why I’d cut through the rope instead of untying it. A moment later – as I cut the front rope loose as well – I saw him heading quickly back up the wharf, throwing glances over his shoulder.
At the same time there was a shout from the wheelhouse – a gunshot – and the window shattered.
I bolted up there, drawing the Sig-Sauer, glancing up the wharf to see the nosy bystander breaking into a run up to the esplanade. Up from the wheelhouse I could hear more shouting, could hear Jess screaming. I took the stairs three at a time and burst back inside to see Rahvi leaning against the wall, his gun levelled at the other two – Jess curled up on the floor beneath the console – Sarah lying dead on the ground, her head split open and her brains spilled out – and Harrison, standing there with his hands up, blood running down his face.
“Drive the boat!” Rahvi snarled. “Drive the fucking boat!”
I looked out the window behind us. The gunshots had been heard from the esplanade, and people were spilling out of the pubs onto the street, panicking, soldiers running through the rain. Harrison had taken the driver’s seat and was increasing the throttle, pushing the boat out into the heart of the river, taking us upstream.
“What the hell happened!” I yelled, still looking out at the window behind us. Some soldiers were down onto the wharf now, rifles in hand, moving towards us.
“She jumped me!” Rahvi growled. “Fucking stabbed me!” Blood was pouring from his leg; he pulled a rag from his pack and tied it around the injury with one hand, still keeping his gun levelled at Harrison’s head.
“Trouble brewing!” I said, looking out the window again. The boat had pulled out into the river but there was a trio of soldiers down on the wharf, right where we’d just been, squinting through the scopes on their Steyrs.
I ducked down just in time as they started taking pot shots at the wheelhouse, the windows shattering all around us, Harrison shrieking in pain as he was hit. The light bulb was taken out and suddenly the wheelhouse was dark. The barrage stopped after a few moments, all of us ducking down, the diesel engines still throbbing away.