‘Cheers, Glenn. Good luck.’
Dave looked across at Jimbo. ‘Sounds like we’re a goer,’ he said.
Jimbo looked over at him but didn’t say a word, and Dave realised he’d made a mistake. Jimbo was a talented tracker, but he didn’t want to be in the midst of the take-down. The fact remained that whether Boyd identified with his heritage or not, he was part of their family.
Still, nothing could be done about that now. Dave resumed his focus and pushed the troopy even harder along the rough track, risking everything to find Kevin.
Chapter 36
The screaming of a wheel bearing and smell of overheated metal permeated the cabin of the utility.
Boyd and Kit’s progress had slowed again but they still pushed on doggedly, not speaking, each lost in his own thoughts.
The ranges were close to their left, covered in ochre rocks and stone, and dotted with white-trunked gums, but they didn’t notice. They were fixated on the bush beside the road, looking for the unmarked track which would lead them to the bunker and a replacement vehicle.
‘What’s that noise?’ Kit suddenly asked as a roar sounded above them.
‘Jesus, what the fuck?’ Boyd cried out, not knowing what was happening.
The aircraft, when it appeared, was about twenty feet above the ground, coming directly at them.
Boyd swung the steering wheel away from the oncoming plane while Kit ducked. ‘Fuck!’ he screamed. ‘Where did he come from?’ He put his head out the window and watched as the plane banked to come at them again.
Pulling back inside, he put his hands over his head and crouched in the footwell of the ute as the plane came in low over them, then swept up and away from the road surface, banking to the left away from the hills.
‘Who the fuck was that?’ Boyd swore. ‘And what the fuck are they doing?’
‘Those bastards went to the coppers!’ Kit screamed. ‘It’ll be the younger guys, not the Elders. Shit, I should have made sure they wouldn’t talk before we did this! I thought the Elders would keep the young blokes under control!’ Kit reached over into the back of the ute and took out a rifle, before turning on the CB radio and punching at the scan mode.
It burst into life and Boyd and Kit looked at each other in horror as they heard: ‘Stock Squad, Stock Squad, got a copy, Dave?’
‘Glenn,’ Kit whispered. ‘That’s Glenn’s voice.’
Boyd turned on him. ‘You said we wouldn’t have any trouble with him! Stupid prick!’
‘Copy, mate, what’s the update?’
‘Just scared the shit out of them. We’ve buzzed them but there’s not much else we can do. There are two occupants in the ute but I can’t ID them. Couldn’t see a third occupant but it’s dual cab, so might be on the back seat. They have made it to the hills and are still tracking east.’
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ said Boyd, pushing his foot down hard, without any result.
‘Listen, Dave,’ Glenn continued, ‘we’re about out of fuel. We’re gonna have to leave you. We will head to the closest station and refuel and get back up as quick as we can. I will update Bob as to the current situation.
‘Also, they appear to be having car trouble. Not sure how much further they will get. We’re turning to head back now and we’ll be as quick as we can.’
Kit peered up into the sky and saw the plane turning towards Cassia Plains and disappearing into the distance.
‘Copy that, we are on the track now.’
‘Get this thing off the road as soon as you can!’ Kit yelled above the screeching. ‘We’ve got to hide somewhere.’
‘Don’t panic,’ Boyd said in a calm tone. ‘We’ll outrun them. And we have the advantage of knowing where we’re going.’
After another kilometre Boyd swung the disabled vehicle off into the bush. ‘Here we go. The bunker track,’ he said. ‘Only a k up to the entrance and we can get rid of the body and ute, then we’re free, brother.’
‘Dunno how you make that out,’ Kit said. ‘How the hell are we going to explain what we’re doing out here?’
‘Get thinking. That’s your problem, not mine. You’re the one who’s got everyone thinking you’re a fucking saint. I’m going to have to get rid of everything. I won’t have time to think.’ He glanced at Kit and grinned at the scowl his brother had been giving him all his life.
The trail weaved under a dense canopy of eucalyptus trees, and the smooth surface of the road quickly changed to rocky outcrops as they started to drive up the ridge.
It only took the first jarring impact and that was it for the front suspension. The ute slewed to the left and came to a grinding halt, tipping to one side.
With a quick look out the window, Kit could see that the wheel had buckled under the engine and the ute was leaning precariously close to the ground.
‘Fuck!’ screamed Boyd, forgoing any pretence of calmness now. ‘Fuck it!’
‘Get out,’ yelled Kit, trying to scramble out of the window without hurting himself. ‘Ugh, fuck.’ His teeth were clenched in pain as he managed to crawl away, while Boyd shouldered the driver’s side door open and clambered out.
‘You good?’ Boyd puffed, running around to Kit. ‘You good, brother?’
‘Yeah.’ They both looked at the inert form in the back of the ute tray.
‘How far up to the bunker from here?’ Kit asked.
‘Too far to carry him. About half a k or more.’
‘Well, what the hell are we gonna do about him?’ Kit asked the question more to himself than Boyd.
Boyd hopped from one foot to the other then went to the back of the ute to look at Kevin again. Kit knew that Boyd was close to losing it.
‘You certain we can’t be linked to this ute?’ he asked.
‘No, Kit, I’ve already told you. There’s no worries there. I got it sorted.’ He spoke quickly, then realisation overcame him. ‘Fingerprints. We haven’t used gloves.’
Kit’s face went red with rage. ‘Guess we haven’t got a choice but to leave it,’ he said. ‘Okay, go get the stashed ute and bring it back here. I’ll see if I can hop down to where we turned off and sweep our tracks away and wipe out the cab. With any luck, Burrows will drive right on past. But for god’s sake be quick. We haven’t got a lot of time.’ Boyd headed off at a trot and Kit turned and limped down the track. He didn’t make it far before the pain was unbearable, so he dropped to his knees and crawled, keeping the injured ankle up in the air.
He was sweating hard by the time he reached the junction of the two roads and he had to lie on the ground to catch his breath.
The roar of an engine reached his ears and he catapulted up and quickly broke a low branch off a nearby bush.
Crawling again, he started sweeping the dust across the surface to cover the telltale tracks of their passing, then swept his way back to the narrow opening. As he checked to make sure he’d covered his own crawling impressions as well, he looked up to see if the entrance to the side road was visible. He decided he could probably fix that a bit more and broke off some more bushes and placed them in among the trees already there to cover the track opening. Satisfied that the camouflage was sufficient, he started to crawl back towards the ute.
Bugger this, he thought as he pulled his body along through the dirt. He was covered in red dust and had prickles in the palms of his hands, but he could move quicker this way than trying to walk.
By the time he made it back, Boyd still hadn’t returned, so he pulled himself up by the tyre and looked into the back seat, checking their victim.
Kevin’s chest still rose and fell in shallow breaths, and the bag over his head was now stained with the dark dried blood from the head wound.
Boyd was right about one thing, he thought, they do have hard skulls. A whitefella would be dead by now.
Turning at the sound of tyres, he watched as his brother arrived in Kit’s dual cab ute.
‘Let’s head back up into the bunker while they pass,’ he said to Boyd when he’d stopped. �
��Then, if they do see our tracks, they’ll be preoccupied with Kev for a while and hopefully we’ll be able to get out on the other track that goes straight up over the top of the ridge.’
‘That’ll be hard going,’ Boyd said, putting the ute into gear and doing a three-point turn.
‘Not as hard going as jail,’ Kit stated.
Boyd drove the ute into the mouth of the bunker and turned the key. The ticking of the engine was loud in the black silence and Kit turned to look over his shoulder out into the daylight.
‘You right?’ he asked Boyd.
‘Yeah, mate.’
‘Okay, as soon as they’ve driven past, we’ll deal with Kev and double back from where we came. There’s another telegraph track we can go down about five k along the road. You know what this joint is like, roads criss-crossing everywhere. That’ll get us back to Deep-Water. We’ll have to hightail it though. Once we’re there, play it cool and stick to the story.’
‘What story’s that?’
‘We’ve had water trouble and we’ve been camping out the last few nights working on the mills. Haven’t been home for three nights. Bit dirty ’cause of that. Then we burn the clothes, gloves and boots, everything. Make sure we haven’t left anything to chance.’
‘What about Tara? She’ll know we haven’t been out on the station.’
‘Tara will say whatever I tell her to say. She still remembers the last time she questioned me on something,’ Kit said flatly. ‘And even if they find Kev and he lives, we won’t have any more trouble with the community, and if he dies, well, even better. Win-win situation really. Just so long as he doesn’t give us up.’
‘I’m confident he won’t do that. Not after this.’
They sat there quietly, waiting to hear Dave’s cop car passing. Boyd got up and walked to the entrance.
‘I see dust,’ he said, looking into the sky.
‘And there’s the engine,’ Kit said quietly.
They waited, holding their breath. So much depended on the next few minutes.
‘Look there,’ Boyd said. ‘Good thing we’re up high, we can see him.’ They watched the approaching dust cloud through the bush canopy from their elevated position above the track.
‘Fuck, he’s hooking,’ Boyd said, watching the vehicle flying along at a reckless pace. It was upon and past their hiding place in a flash and continued on at high speed around the next sweeping bend.
The brothers turned to each other, their smiles wide.
‘Told you, didn’t I?’ said Kit.
‘Stupid prick was travelling too fast to see we’d turned off. He’ll be miles away before he realises he’s fucked up.’
‘Dodged a bullet. Okay.’ Kit’s tone changed from triumphant to business-like. ‘Let’s check we have everything out of the ute. We can’t leave anything in there that ties us to this. Then we get out of here.’
Chapter 37
‘Where are they, where are they?’ Dave muttered to himself as they closed in on the range. He’d hoped to see the dust of the fleeing vehicle by now. In fact, he was sure he should have seen it.
His troopy lurched heavily and he turned into the slide as they rounded another tight bend. Jimbo grabbed at the handrails and let out a little moan but didn’t say anything.
‘Sorry, mate.’ Dave risked looking over at him for a brief second then focused back on the road.
On the next straight section Dave picked up the mic of the CB again. ‘Fixed airwing patrol, Glenn, you on channel?’
The airwaves were silent and Dave swore. ‘Either they’re not in the air, or the bloody hills are blocking the reception. And I can’t see anything. I really need that plane up there!’
Gripping the wheel, he accelerated harder and watched the speedo climb to one hundred and thirty kilometres an hour, hoping like hell he didn’t hit a crevice, pothole or a roo.
Bec and Alice filtered into his mind and he realised he was risking his life again, as he had in Queensland. A high-speed chase through the station country of Western Australia wasn’t what he’d promised Mel, that no more harm would come to him.
Jimbo’s voice startled Dave from his fixation with the road ahead. ‘Sorry, boss, but those tracks have stopped.’
‘What’s that?’
‘No more tracks, boss, they must’ve turned off back there.’
‘Shit,’ said Dave as he braked heavily. ‘How far back did the tracks stop?’ He ran up over the side of the road as he tried to turn around in a three-point turn, and trees and bushes scratched the side of the car.
‘Not far, boss, not far.’
Dave accelerated back the way he’d come, rounding the corner at high speed again. As he drove over a small rise, he was greeted with the telltale sight of a vehicle dust cloud some way ahead on the track.
‘Well, well, look at that. Well done, Jimbo. That was great spotting. Especially since I was going so fast. They must’ve pulled off to let us go past. We’ve got them now.’
‘Maybe they changed cars, boss. Not the same tracks.’ Jimbo was hanging out the window looking at the ground.
Dave pondered this for a moment. It would have been smart to have another car hidden as an emergency back-up. That would put the cops off. That type of cunning made him want to catch them even more.
‘Not far ahead now.’
Another corner and a straight stretch and there it was.
‘There we go.’ Dave finally got his first glimpse of the vehicle ahead of them, a white dual cab ute travelling normally. But as he closed to within four hundred metres the ute’s speed picked up and its dust cloud intensified. The gap between their vehicles began to grow again as the more agile dual cab pulled away from his heavier troopy.
Boyd glanced in the rear-vision mirror and stared. ‘Fuck,’ he said.
Kit looked at Boyd and then looked out the rear window. ‘Where the fuck did they come from? Go, go, go! Put your foot down!’
Boyd jammed down on the accelerator and their vehicle leaped forwards. Kit turned and hunted for glimpses of the stock squad troopy through breaks in their dust cloud on the track behind them.
He switched the CB on again and waited to see if there was conversation between the air and the coppers, but the airwaves remained silent.
‘Floor it!’ he yelled. ‘Get us the fuck out of here, for Christ sake!’
‘We shouldn’t be running,’ Boyd yelled over the noise of the engine and the rattling of the ute as they bumped over the corrugations.
‘No choice now, mate. If we weren’t done for before, we are now. Only thing to do is outrun them.’
No matter how hard he pushed the troopy, the dual cab kept pulling away from him. Dave realised he was fighting a losing battle. The police vehicle was no match for the lighter, more agile ute. He had to make a decision: keep pushing on, or stop and use the sat phone to alert someone further up the track.
Coming over the next rise he saw the gap between their vehicles had grown even further. Now the other vehicle was only a dust cloud heading for freedom.
‘Damn it to hell!’ Dave slammed on the brakes and hit the steering wheel in frustration as he slowed to a stop.
Without thinking, he pulled the sat phone from its holder and dialled the number for Spinifex Downs, hoping that Bob would be there.
‘Hello?’ came a voice. Not Bob.
‘Is the policeman still there?’ Dave asked.
‘Yeah. I’ll find him. Hang on,’ came the reply, and then nothing as footsteps could be heard walking away from the phone.
Dave turned to Jimbo. ‘That road there got a name?’
‘Nah, but there’s a bunker down there.’
After what seemed like minutes, Bob’s voice came on the phone.
‘Holden.’
‘Bob, it’s Dave. Listen quick. I am following a white dual cab eastbound along a road that has a bunker at the end of it; the same road the plane followed the suspects on when they were headed in a different direction. They appear to have swapped
cars and doubled back, heading your way. I can’t keep up to them. Can you get someone to intercept?’ He reeled off the GPS coordinates.
‘Mate, just calm down. The plane will be up again in about fifteen. If we can get them overhead, we can follow them. Don’t risk your neck trying to keep up. There are too many things that can go wrong in this scenario. We know who they are, we can pick them up later on.’
Dave shook his head—he had no intention of listening to Bob. ‘I’ve got to go. I can still see their dust ahead so I’ll follow them as long as I can. Not sure how much longer that will be as I am getting low on fuel. Gotta go.’
‘Dave!’ Bob barked.
Dave terminated the call and accelerated off in pursuit again.
‘Lost him,’ Boyd said as they got to the top of a hill and he looked in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Can’t even see any dust. Maybe they’ve stopped.’
Kit turned in his seat and looked out across the valley that stretched for several kilometres back.
‘Good job, bro,’ said Kit. ‘Let’s slow it down, no point in killing ourselves now.’
Boyd pushed the car faster again.
‘All good, mate, we’ve been driving these roads all our lives. A few more kilometres of distance between us and the coppers won’t hurt. I’ll move it to the junction, then slow it down from there. We can take the short cut through to your place. I’ll hide this out at the old shelter, and we can take the bikes back to the homestead. Those stupid coppers will be running around looking for a white dual cab but it will have just disappeared.’ He laughed. ‘You know what? I reckon we’ve pulled this off!’ He looked over at Kit, joy and relief in his face.
Kit caught his eye and laughed too.
As they looked back to the road, travelling at a steady one hundred kilometres per hour, both men yelled simultaneously.
A huge bull camel stood in the middle of the road, staring at them.
Boyd reefed the wheel to the left, but it was too late and the vehicle struck the camel a glancing blow to its flank. The impact deflected the ute across the loose road surface and out into the open air of the rocky drop-off at the side of the road.
Red Dirt Country Page 27