Sweet One

by Peter Docker

  It’s only Dôme.

  Close enough.

  You didn’t have the instant in the room?

  Izzy smiles sheepishly.

  When will you ever learn, girl?

  And Mort laughs.

  Come on – let’s walk.

  They head back towards the main drag, as the mining town bustles its way through the morning. They are back on Hannan Street, and about to cross over to the Dôme, when Izzy sees the payphones.

  Hey – gotta make a call.

  What about your mobile?

  Reception.

  You can use mine.

  No, it’s OK. Order me a double shot flat white.

  Mort crosses over, pulling out his phone to make a call. Izzy goes into the phone box. She lifts up her bag, as if she were going through it for coins. Inside the bag, she takes the battery and SIM card out of her phone, and leaves it all apart. She finds some coins and puts them in the slot and dials. The phone rings once and Foster picks up. Izzy can picture him standing in the breezy foyer of the art deco warehouse building on Flinders Street, Melbourne – picking up the payphone.

  You all right?

  Yeah.

  Your phone unplugged?

  Yeah. Who rang you?

  The owner of the paper.

  Shit.

  I’m glad it’s you Izzy.

  So you can sack me when I fail?

  I’ve already sacked you.

  Izzy feels like laughing, in spite of the situation. She really wants to hate Foster, but he is so much like her dad that it’s uncanny. Who would’ve thought cops and journos would have anything in common?

  I’ve done some digging. The owner gives a lot of money to a charity called Future Secure, says Foster.

  What do they do?

  Supply special weapons and equipment to the SAS.

  Don’ t they get enough taxpayers’ money?

  Apparently John Paul Getty started it in the UK. After his son got kidnapped.

  There are army choppers everywhere here. Macca told me the Feds, or whoever they are, in Queensland are something to do with Defence.

  Good girl, Izzy. Macca is spewing too. You can ring him if you need anything. Ring me here. Assume we’re all being tapped.

  Thanks, Mister Foster.

  I don’t like to be leaned on, Izzy.

  I hear you.

  Izzy, you’re right where you’re meant to be. And there is nothing like a blood feud to sell newspapers!

  Is this a blood feud?

  You tell me, Izzy. It’s bloody, that’s for sure.

  Getting bloodier. Were you like this reporting on Vietnam, Mister Foster?

  People change, Izzy.

  He hangs up. Izzy quickly puts her phone back together in her bag, and crosses the road to the Dôme. Mort is inside at a table with two coffees sitting there.

  Mmmm – coffee!

  You all right?

  Had to ring my mum.

  Other Bodies

  Izzy and Mort drink their coffee. Two big Aboriginal men wearing big hats sit at a table next to them.

  Don’t you have to work? asks Izzy.

  We’ve got shots of the choppers taking off. We’ve filed the police statement vision. Now we’ve just got to hurry up and wait.

  What for?

  For the cops to bring him in.

  Do they know who it is?

  They’re not saying. Rumour is some ex-con, sex offender. The screws must’ve treated him bad, says Mort, looking out to the street.

  Sex offender ex-con, gang of ice-heads...

  Eh?

  How do they get the army choppers?

  Dunno, secondment, I spose.

  Ever seen it before?

  Never.

  They drink their coffee.

  They say anything about the other bodies? asks Izzy, imitating his casualness when he asked her over for a coffee.

  What other bodies?

  Two men: one multiple stab wounds, the other gunshot. Double tap – execution style.

  You serious?

  Got a witness says they were in the morgue.

  Where’d they go, then?

  You tell me.

  You going to write about it?

  I’m sacked.

  Really? Why?

  Izzy shrugs.

  You heading back to Melbourne?

  I got no reason now. I might have a holiday.

  Good on ya.

  They finish their coffees and go outside to smoke on the pavement.

  Where’re your Channel Seven mates?

  Gone to the early opener.

  The pub?

  Rub-a-dub-dub.

  It’s nine thirty in the morning.

  Mort smiles his impish smile.

  You wanna go for a drink?

  I thought you’d never ask!

  Laughing, they turn and head down Hannan Street to the tavern.

  Bedouin Ambush

  Out towards Southern Cross, the co-pilot spots the smoke, a tiny blue-grey smudge out to the east. The pilot takes the bird to the east of the smoke, taking her down, but keeping his distance. He brings her around into a low wide circle. There is a disused open-cut, a big hole in the ground two hundred metres deep, stretching for about eight hundred metres. Down in the bottom of the pit is an old 4WD with a lean-to canvas shelter attached to it, and a fire going close by. To camp down there you must not want to be seen. It might be another false alarm. The outback is full of people who don’t want to be seen. But worth a look. Whoever is down there is trapped. It’s a good spot to hide from a vehicular search – but not from a chopper. There’s only one way out and no cover.

  Bravo Bravo, this is Lima Sierra One.

  Bravo Bravo.

  We have smoke at a camp in a disused open-cut, with a 4WD flat back tray. We’re going to set down and sweep through.

  Roger that, Lima Sierra One.

  The pilot swings her around to approach the big hole low and from the north-east. The men in the back of the chopper pull down balaclavas and put their weapons to instant. They look out the doors at the scrub below. It goes on for fucking ever, this wasteland.

  Below them there is a man waiting. A soldier. A warrior. He lies there feeling the country. He can taste his country at the corners of his mouth. He can smell his country through the dust in his nose. And his country can smell him. The smell and the taste fill him with a power – a power so subtle that even those who are trained to look would have trouble seeing. The country is a story, a story hidden deep within his genetic code and vibrating through the fabric of his spirit. He brings a new story – or a new path on an old story. He borrowed this chapter from a Bedouin brother he was close with once: Insha Allah, we will meet again.

  The Bedouin learnt this ambush technique from desert snakes. The hum from the country drowns out the approaching chopper. He doesn’t need to listen or look, he can feel it coming. He knows the chopper won’t hover over the camp, the end of the pit is too close, and the bird would be too vulnerable to ground fire from the close tree line. At the other end the sweepers can alight from the bird and command the high ground for the pit, all out in the open. He knows that the pilots wouldn’t be briefed as to his real identity. He knows those ASIS systems well. Knows their weak spots. To not know your enemy is foolish, at the very least. He calms his mind, feels for the approaching thud-thudding of the rotors, and waits.

  The Black Hawk comes scudding in over the tops of the mallee and mulga to the clear area just on the edge of the lip of the pit. The nose comes up slightly as the machine slows, and the pilot brings her down for a perfect landing. The pilot is thinking of that scowl on the face of the agent with silver hair when he admitted to not having flown in Afghanistan.

  Smart arse. What about this for a landing?

  The men in the back are on the skids and ready to jump to the ground. As the rotor blades get closer to the earth, a huge cloud of red dust surrounds the chopper. The bird is straightening for the touchdown in the last s
econds of the landing sequence when the pilot looks out his right window to see a rock pillar rising out of the dust. How could there be a rock formation where there was none a moment ago? The rock formation changes, and becomes a red statue of a man. The figure is an impossible red ghost in the swirling dust and can’t be blinked away. The pilot is looking right at him. He sees the canvas drop away, but doesn’t compute what he is seeing. The greatest gift an enemy can give you is to underestimate you. The man with the MP5 and the canvas dropping away is in no doubt. This mob is not from the regiment. They would’ve blasted the campsite first. Nothing personal. The pilot knows he’s been had. He’s been had by the man rising out of the dust, bringing an MP5 to his shoulder. The pilot has his head fully turned to look at the impossible red dust ghost when the 9mm slugs tear through the windscreen and smash into his head and body. Two of the men in black on the back skids jump to the earth. The others are still in the chopper as it goes up and over, and then smashes back down into the side of the disused pit. The two jumpers are trying to see through the raging dust to get a bead on their attacker. They are each shot once in the head by a Browning Hi-Power. The chopper explodes. The man goes over to the bodies and quickly strips them of weapons. He turns, and in moments is indecipherable from the wild scrub of the desert.

  Early Opener

  The place has a low ceiling, heavy dark carpet, and muted lighting. These steps go up and then down some more, ending up in the below-street-level tavern. The barmaid is in respectable (for Baal) skin-tight mini-shorts and painted-on midriff top. The Kill Devil Hills are being piped through on unseen speakers, the casual menace of their ballads lapping at the feet of the drinkers like the waters on the shoreline of the mythical inland sea. Several whitefullas died out in the desert to the east of Baal searching for just such a sea.

  The rest of the day progresses in a blur from the moment Izzy steps into the place. Mort introduces her to the other Channel Seven blokes: David is a treacle-voiced dinosaur with roving eyes and roaming hands, and Kizzo is the red-haired one with glasses. She thinks bloody hell when the first beer is placed in front of her. Mort has gotten pints.

  The glassful of beer looks as big as her. The macho talk flows: Girls can’t drink beer; he’s just trying to get her pissed; you’ll be sorry if you do; print journos can’t drink!

  Izzy drinks the beer. She gets started. Then it’s on. David is the one who is getting nervous in case he has to do another piece to camera later on, especially when Izzy comes back with shots of tequila.

  Drinking like cowboys in a frontier town!

  Or ringers!

  Or outlaws!

  Or FIFOs!

  Laughter.

  What’s a ringer?

  Laughter.

  What’s a FIFO?

  Fly-in – fuck-off!

  Laughter.

  Fee fie foe fum!

  I got a sniff of uranium!

  Unobtainium!

  Abstainium!

  They drink and laugh. Izzy casually flirts with all the men as if they are lonely soldiers in a bar in a war zone in some far-flung Third World stink. Mort is at the bar ordering a round. Izzy catches herself watching him. He has some kind of raw power about him that is there, and yet not there. She can tell from the lines of his body under his jeans and the way that he moves that he works out. Then she catches herself catching the barmaid flirting with him, lighting up like a Christmas tree, and pushing her barely covered chest out for Mort’s gaze, so that Izzy has to grip her chair hard to stop herself from running over to the bar and punching the perky little bitch in the face.

  Then Mort is on the phone and pacing. David is telling some story about the airport. She wants to listen. She tells herself to listen. Izzy tells herself that she can listen and watch Mort’s arse going back and forth at the same time. Kizzo has some footage of the airport story on his phone.

  It is something she really wants to know about. But she isn’t listening, her eyes following Mort up and back like he is a dangling gold watch.

  When Kizzo asks her something, she turns back to the table with a blank look. Kizzo and Dave both burst out laughing.

  What? ... What?

  Izzy is still asking them, and they are still laughing like madmen when Mort arrives back at the table. Then they’re all standing, draining their glasses, and leaving. Outside, on the streets of Baal, the glare is a force to be reckoned with.

  They don their sunglasses and sweep down the road in a bubble of laughter and cigarette smoke until Izzy and Mort are alone in his room at the All Seasons Plaza. Mort is going over to the little fridge. Izzy is looking at his back.

  Did I say I wanted a drink?

  You did.

  I’ve changed my mind.

  Izzy takes off and launches herself at his back. She gets her arms and legs around him. Mort goes forward against the wall but doesn’t lose his footing. He swings around and she digs in. Clinging on to him in that moment she can feel his ropey muscles go taut against her flesh. He swings her one way, then the other, until she falls off onto the bed, his shirt half ripping away by the end that she has still got hold of. Seeing his exposed flesh, she rips at the rest of the shirt until he is bare chested.

  Izzy has never seen anyone so fit before. Mort’s torso is chiselled and finely toned by many years of training. Down his left flank he has a massive jagged scar that disappears below his G-Stars. Izzy is stripping off her own top, and they come together with a slap. They tear each other’s clothes off and fall upon each other like starving pilgrims. A flesh whirlwind flashes through the hotel room, tangles them, whooshes them around, and dumps them back on the bed. The wild sex obliterates everything, and eventually Izzy falls away into a deep sleep, right there in Mort’s hotel bed.

  When she wakes she is alone. A slight breeze stirs the curtains, and the light slanting into the room through the gap tells her that it is late afternoon, early evening. She sits up. The drinking session has left a fuzziness behind her eyes and the sex has left a bright tingling on her flesh as if she’s been tattooed all over. With this mixture of dull and sharp throbbing through her, Izzy gets out of bed and wanders aimlessly around the room. It smells like a man lives here. She gathers up her discarded clothing and makes a little pile on the bed. Apart from the bed, there is not a thing out of place in the room. Mort’s faint smell is his only residue. Izzy picks up the TV remote and clicks ON. Must be past five; get the early news – all hard-hitting Who magazine journalism and police rounds. She crosses to the bathroom as the TV flicks into life, steps into the shower cubicle and hits the taps. She adjusts the flow, applies hotel soap, and washes herself down, finishing with a long hard blast of cold water for as long as she can take it. She steps out and grabs a towel. There is a dry one, but she likes the idea of using his: especially because he isn’t here. She starts to dry herself but halfway through finds herself drawn to the open doorway to watch the TV news. The newsreader’s voice drawing her in like a stage hypnotist:

  A helicopter crashed in remote terrain north-west of Baalboorlie this morning, causing a serious setback for the most extensive manhunt in WA for more than a hundred years. The killer of two GPL4 prison guards is believed to have fled into the desert, east of Baalboorlie. All other helicopters involved in the search have been grounded until the problem is known. Police are yet to release details of the crash but it is believed there were at least four men on board.

  Still in the Goldfields: in an unrelated matter, police have released details of a man who died late today of a drug overdose. He was twenty-six-year-old Geraldton man John Larry Arthurs.

  Izzy drops the towel as she moves to her pile of clothes. The photograph of Larry is a recent one – him in a backyard sitting by a table made from a giant wooden cable spool, holding a beer. Izzy hits the remote and the box goes quiet. She can hear her own breathing, and the faint rustle of the curtains as loud as a bushfire. She throws her clothes on. She grabs her bag: phone, purse, room key, stuff – all good. The authoritie
s lied about the bodies, and now Larry, who told her about the extra bodies, is dead. He could’ve overdosed himself, it’s possible, but far too convenient.

  Izzy goes out the front door and almost runs down the street towards the setting sun and the Palace Hotel. She belts up the stairs to her room and lets herself in. She is crossing the room to pack her bag. But her bag is open and her stuff is strewn across the surface of the bench. Her computer is gone. She grabs her underwear and throws it into a bag. She looks out her window. There are two men in a car right below her. She must’ve walked straight past them.

  Curse you, alcohol! Curse you, Mort – with your high arse and your rippling abs! She told Mort she had a witness on the extra bodies. She goes for the door.

  She hits the foyer and quickly looks into the bar that has a view of the entrance area. There are a few blokes in there. Their eyes are on the young lady behind the bar who is truly stacked. All except one guy. He has short hair and a trimmed beard, and he is the only one in the bar wearing runners instead of boots. They’re not going to let her walk out the back again. Izzy glances at the front door. There are some hard hats hanging on a rack just inside. She looks back at the man with his trimmed beard at the bar. He hasn’t touched his drink. He’s looking over. He’s built like a brick shithouse. Izzy hopes that he works for Silver Hair and Four Axehandles. She marches up to him with all the sass she can muster, so that she pulls the eyes of all the men in the bar to her. She knows she hasn’t got long – that barmaid is something special. Izzy grabs the drink off the bar and hurls it into Trim Beard’s face.

  You bastard! You think you can come home drunk and slap me! Leave me alone! I was happy to fuck you! Why hit me? Arsehole!

  And she turns and flounces out of the bar. As she goes, the young barmaid with the huge bosoms calls out after her:

  You go, girl! Don’t let him hit you!

  Behind Izzy, she can hear it start. A stool scrapes. Another.

  Just let her go, mate!

  What sort of prick are you?

  There is more, but Izzy can’t hesitate. This won’t give her long. She grabs an orange hard hat, shoves it on her head, and stuffs her blonde ringlets up under the rim. She marches out the front door. She knows it only has to work for a glance, a glance in a mirror. That hens’ night in Melbourne with her mate Clara jumps into her head – how to walk like a man – pretend you’ve got one cock up your arse and one in each hand – and Clara demonstrates, all the girls falling about the place, laughing. It’s the most she’s laughed in her life, that night. Izzy bungs it on now. It’s only gotta fool the men in the car from a distance. And they’ll be waiting for a message from Captain Trim Beard in the bar that she’s coming out. And he’s busy for a minute, or so. She gets to the corner and scoots around, out of sight of the men in the car and the front of the Palace.