“No, we’ve put together some management teams from the refugees who came from Jakarta, and they’ll arrive at the coast in two days.”
“So you’re sending me and Mick on ahead. Without backup, I assume?”
“It’s not me,” Anna said. “This is Erin Vaughn’s mission. But she has a point. A deputy commissioner and the father of a cabinet minister probably won’t end up hostages. Or worse. We shouldn’t need an army. I don’t know whether those three will go quietly, but it’s really about whether the rest of their people will still follow the law.”
“No, we shouldn’t need an army to serve a warrant,” Tess said. “But I’m assuming you have one in reserve in case it goes wrong?”
“The SASR,” Anna said. “They’re waiting at Ballina. In a couple of days, they’ll parachute into Honolulu to retake the airport. I don’t want to use them because it might delay that operation. And since the fleet is already at sea, nothing but bad weather will delay when they reach Hawaii. Losses will be fewer if the SASR are already there.”
Outside came the sound of an engine.
“The coroner is here,” Tess said.
“I can speak to them,” Anna said. “And to your team. I’ll send them to the airport afterwards. You better get going.”
“You know, it’s days like this I wish I’d taken over my mum’s restaurant,” Tess said.
Chapter 4 - Frankenstein’s Mistake
Canberra and Beyond
With civilian road traffic banned, it was an easy drive to the airport, delayed more by barricades than traffic. Most of the new barriers were as empty as the roads, their guards deployed to the outer walls and suburban security. Her badge got Tess through the rest, and through the gates at the airport where she drove straight to the hangar Mick had claimed as his own personal garage. Outside, the runway was empty, though every other spare metre of tarmac was occupied with 747s, A380s, and 787s, with civilian props and military fighters parked beneath the shade of the jumbos’ wings. Inside the hangar, she found Mick elbows-deep in the partially disassembled engine of a Pilatus PC-12.
“Ah, there you are,” he said. “Do you want to speak to those refugees?”
“Who?” Tess asked
“The ladies who were in the car that crashed up by the wall,” Mick said. “You’ve come to question them, right? I put them in quarantine over there.” He pointed beyond the hangar’s wide doors, out across the crowded airfield and to another hangar, recently painted with a giant red cross.
“D’you know, I’d forgotten about them,” Tess said.
“They say they were bringing supplies here, didn’t want them to go to waste,” Mick said. “They’re lying. Reckon they were planning on setting up a black market.”
“Since all their supplies were confiscated, let’s believe the best,” Tess said. “But that’s not why I’m here. I need to give the ground-crew chief a heads-up to expect a few more recruits later.”
“More aircrew? Good on ya,” Mick said. “They kidnapped nearly everyone last night. And half the pilots,” he added pointing at the stationary planes. “Probably would have taken me, too, if I’d been here.”
“Who’s they?” she asked.
“The air force. They want to launch a satellite, so they’ve taken everyone they can grab, and flown them to somewhere in the Marshall Islands. Presumably because that’s where the rocket is.”
“A communications satellite? That can’t come soon enough.”
“And won’t,” Mick said. “Not if they think spaceships and planes are similar enough that aircrew can double as astronauts. So who are these recruits?”
“After you left the wall,” Tess said, “I was drummed into leading a team to clear some of the suburbs. We found a body. A suicide. Aaron Bryce.”
“No? Truly?” Mick asked, finally abandoning the engine to which he’d been giving three-quarters of his attention.
“I sent for Anna to identify the body,” Tess said. “I knew it was him, but with a cabinet minister, I needed to make it official. She wants to keep this news quiet for a few days. The conscripts I was with need work here as a bribe, and so you can keep an eye on them. But that’s not why I’m here, either. We’ve got a job. You and me. From the attorney general.”
“Erin Vaughn? Since when does she think she can give me a job?”
“Anna asked,” Tess said.
“Of course, that’s different,” Mick said. “And what does Anna want us to do?”
“For you to fly me up to Queensland to serve three warrants.”
“Three arrests?”
“Yep. All senior people administering important facilities,” Tess said, holding up the envelope Anna had given her. “One police officer should be enough. If it’s not, the military is ready, but hopefully they won’t be needed.”
“And you want me to fly you?” Mick asked. “Where in Queensland?”
Tess glanced at the notes. “Camps 17 and 23, Ocean Shores and Ballina.”
“That’s not Queensland,” Mick said. “Ballina’s in New South Wales. Ocean Shores? Is that near Mullumbimby? Didn’t think they had an airport.”
“Queensland is our first stop,” Tess said. “Then we’re flying to the airport at Ballina. They should have three desalination plants operational by now. Because they haven’t, and because of what sounds like incompetence, they had to bring forward the departure of the fleet from Brisbane so they could use the space in the city to house the refugees who can’t be housed further along the coast.”
“And why are we investigating?”
“Because the incompetence has also led to an outbreak of dysentery. Our first stop is the airfield at the Durham Gas Refinery. We’ll pick up some meds aboard a broken freighter that was forced to make a landing. Then on to Ballina and Ocean Shores.”
“If Ocean Shores is where I think it is, we’ll have to drive from Ballina,” Mick said. “Or pick up a helicopter. Durham’s the place sixty kilometres north of the Jackson Oil Refinery?”
Tess shrugged. “You tell me. It’s not my beat.”
“If we can’t refuel at Durham, we’ll top up in Jackson. And we need a plane that can carry prisoners as well as cargo? There’s nothing for it, we’ll have to take Frankenstein’s Mistake.” He walked out of the hangar and over to a Beechcraft Super King Air sporting RAAF colours.
“A pilot really named this plane Frankenstein’s Mistake?” Tess asked.
“No, I did,” Mick said. “Even before our new aerospace corps pressganged my ground-crew, we were short-staffed. The majority of the experienced mechanics and pilots were sent to the coastal airports to ensure a quick turnaround of the refugee flights.” He stopped by the plane. “We’ll have a range of three thousand three hundred kilometres, a speed of five hundred and seventy kilometres per hour. And we should have capacity for eleven passengers. But open a dictionary, look for demarcation, and a picture of this plane will be illustrating the definition.” He opened the door. A ramp quietly, and quickly, unfolded.
“That’s neat,” Tess said.
“Try walking up it,” Mick said. “It’s an engineer’s solution to a problem that wasn’t there. Do you see those rails on the ramp, and then inside? The cargo sits on those so they can be rolled up the ramp and to the tail where they’re locked in place for the flight.”
“So a pilot can load the plane without help?” Tess asked. “Where’s the problem?”
“They didn’t consider weight distribution. They took out the seats, replacing them with those two fold-down benches, you see? Flush with the cabin walls.”
“Those are benches?” Tess asked.
“Good enough for aircrew being flown a short hop, but that leaves the cargo at the back, making her tail-heavy. Worse, the engineer’s design only considers there ever being a full load. The cargo has to be stacked from the back, otherwise the locking mechanisms won’t work. We don’t want cargo sliding around as we fly.”
“Then let’s take a different plane,” Tess said. “Looks like you
’ve got plenty.”
“The jumbos are too big for Durham. The Hercules arrived flying on one engine, so she’s out of action. Trying to get anything else out of that jumble of planes will take us all day. Yesterday we had a trio of C-17s here, but they went east. No, we’ll have to take this freak of science. Are you happy carrying prisoners in there?”
Tess clambered inside, unfolded a bench, and tested the webbing-harness straps. “They’re civil servants. Administrators. They won’t be trouble.”
“Rule nine,” Mick said. “Better to be prepared than dead. There’s some spare handcuffs in the office.”
“Any chance there’s some coffee there, too?” Tess asked.
The take-off was surprisingly smooth, and the ascent even smoother. That didn’t stop Mick grumbling about engineers, but Tess began to relax as the plane soared north over the suburbs she’d been guarding during the night and the outer-burb she’d cleared that morning.
“What’s our ETA?” she asked.
“It’s an eleven hundred kilometre flight. We should manage five hundred kilometres an hour. Maybe a bit more,” Mick said. “So we’ll get in around one-thirty if the wind’s in our favour. Two-thirty if it’s not. How long will you need in Durham?”
“An hour. Probably less,” Tess said. “How long will it take to load the meds?”
“That depends on what they are,” Mick said.
From the envelope Anna had given her, Tess extracted the printed summary. “The broken plane is one of twelve aircraft which flew out of the airport in Dili.”
“In Timor Leste? That’s the Presidente Nicalau Loboto International,” Mick said. “I’ve been there.”
“You have? When?” she asked.
“After Operation Astute was over,” he said. “I flew in medical supplies. Short runway, if I recall. What type of planes were these?”
“Assuming they’re the same as the plane stranded in Durham, they’re 737-NGs,” Tess said, glancing at the notes. “Korean charter, but flying the UN flag. They were carrying medical supplies from an airport warehouse, loading them even as the airport was overrun. One plane was lost over the Timor Sea. According to the Timorese pilots who made it to Darwin, the captain and co-pilot were infected and the one soldier they had aboard crashed the plane into the sea.”
“But eleven aircraft made it to Darwin?” Mick asked.
“Where local pilots took over, and flew the planes to the refugee camps at Cairns, except for one plane which, suffering engine failure, had to land at Durham.”
“That’s good flying to find the airfield,” Mick said, with professional respect.
“The pilot’s name was Elaine Lassiter,” Tess said, reading from the notes.
“Ah, there you go,” Mick said. “She’s one of mine.”
“A flying doctor?”
“And former Border Force,” Mick said grudgingly. “But I fixed all the mistakes she learned from them. What’s on the plane?”
“Among other things, twelve crates of metronidazole.”
“The antibiotic? I’ve a box of that back at the runway,” Mick said. “How big is a crate?”
“Doesn’t say. There’s a lot of other gear aboard. There’s a handwritten note here, saying they’ve sent another twenty thousand workers to the Jackson Oil Refinery to increase the strategic oil stockpile. They need the medical supplies. If the plane can be repaired, they want it to hop the sixty clicks south.”
“Don’t they need those supplies in Durham?” Mick asked.
“Not yet,” Tess said. “The gas refinery is part of phase-three of the expansion plans. The oil fields are the priority. We need diesel to power the temporary generators until new, more permanent, power stations are built. Not to mention the fuel for the road convoys. Ramp up production now on everything, everywhere. I think Anna said phase-three of the plans won’t be implemented until after winter.”
“It’s Oswald Owen’s plan, not hers,” Mick said. “That bloke wants to dig out our country’s bones, leave her an empty crater in the ocean. You know his problem? His and Ian Lignatiev’s, and even our new prime minister? They’re treating this like a war. Calling it a liberation of Hawaii, an invasion of Mexico, an advance to the Panama Canal. Each time I tune in to the PM’s daily news update, I expect to hear a promise it’ll be over by Christmas. But this isn’t a war, it’s a relief effort.”
“I know, Mick,” Tess said. “You’ve mentioned that once or a million times. You reckon we’ll be at Durham by two?”
“Give or take, and out of there by three. If we can’t refuel, we’ll have to go to Jackson. It’s another fourteen hundred kilometres to Ballina. But we should make it before dark.”
“If not, we’ll wait at Jackson,” Tess said.
“Not in Durham?” he asked.
“Nope,” Tess said. She held up the sheaf of papers. “Because I’ve not got to the good part yet.”
Chapter 5 - Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Durham Gas Refinery, Queensland
“Wake up,” Mick said.
“Do I have to?” Tess asked, but she began stretching herself awake as best she could in the close confines of the co-pilot’s seat. “Talk about a long morning after the longest night. Are we there?”
“Pretty close,” Mick said. “Picked them up on the radio a minute ago. Do you see the smoke ahead?”
Beyond the cockpit lay a wide arid expanse of shadowy reds, stark pinks, and so very rare dots of green. Ahead, though, a thin column of smoke rose to the nearly cloudless sky.
“Talk about the never-never,” she said.
“Ah, it’s not that remote,” Mick said. “Not if they have a runway.”
The wavering grey column of smoke was nearly mirrored by the ruler-crisp black line of the runway, startlingly vivid amid the crushed ochre dust. Between the runway and a low tower and squat hangar was an empty helipad and busy stand crammed with three small planes, none bigger than their Beechcraft. A kilometre beyond, a black dagger of road cut through the umber soil to a jungle of shining steel pipes belonging to the refinery itself.
“There’s the 737-NG,” Mick said. “Overshot the runway, by the look of her. Doubt we’ll get her in the air. Brace yourself.”
“Smooth landing,” Tess said as Mick taxied the plane to the far end of the runway. “Your engineer mate did a nice job on the engine.”
“The RAAF tuned her up,” Mick said. “And he’s no mate of mine. Bloke’s a professor.”
“Ah,” Tess said. “Am I sensing some personal rivalry at the root of your dislike for the bloke? There are the cattle trucks, to the west of the runway. Only twelve of them. No sign of the cattle. No sign of people, either.” She unbuckled her harness, stood, and crossed to the locker.
Inside, beneath Mick’s assault rifle and one of her own, and above the strapped-in-place storage locker with the outback-emergency packs she’d have insisted on even if Mick hadn’t, was her holster. Smoothing down the red and black flying doctor’s jacket and trousers that had been the only uniform available at Canberra’s airport, she adjusted her badge and buckled on the gun belt. To the two spare magazines in the holster-clip, she added another two to her pocket, though if she had to fire even one bullet, they were in deeper trouble than a gun could save them from.
Outside, a brushed-clean red and yellow pick-up ambled towards their plane.
“The welcome wagon is in no hurry,” Tess said. “You radioed them to say we’re picking up the meds?”
“And inspecting the cargo freighter,” Mick said.
“Did they ask any questions?”
“Nothing unusual,” Mick said.
“How long will you need?” Tess asked.
“Call it an hour,” Mick said. “But I’ll keep this monster ready for take-off. We can be back in the air faster than you can strap in.”
Adjusting her badge one last time, she opened the cabin door. The ramp automatically extended, clattering to the baked tarmac. Awkwardly, she clambered down to the runwa
y, thinking Mick might have a point about the professor turned engineer who’d tinkered with the plane.
“G’day,” she called to the truck before waving away the squadron of flies who’d also come to inspect the new arrivals. But where the insects buzzed close, the truck had stopped ten metres from the wing. Driver and passenger had climbed out. Both wore corporate blue jumpsuits with wide-brimmed hats that bore the same company logo.
“You’re the pilot?” the driver asked. Mid-thirties, five-nine, she was well tanned and well built from a hard and remote life. The driver was about a decade younger, with the too-muscled arms of a young man who was beating bush-boredom by pushing weights.
“Deputy Commissioner Tess Qwong,” she said, holding up the badge she’d hung around her neck. “Australian Federal Police. And you are?”
“Talya Bundeson,” the driver said. “This is Rob-O Hansen. Over the radio, you said you were the flying doctor.”
“That’s me,” Mick said, making an awkward show of climbing down the ramp. “Mick Dodson, surgeon emeritus with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The father of a cabinet minister gets a police escort these days. Prime Minister’s orders. And it’s her orders that brought us here. We’re on a mercy dash to grab the meds from the back of that cargo plane.”
“There’s none there,” Talya said. “Because of the heat. We moved everything into the hangar.”
“Good on ya,” Mick said. “I’d buy you a drink, but I’ve a long way to fly before nightfall. I could do with one for the plane, though.”
“Your daughter is the prime minister?” Hansen asked.
“Strewth, Rob-O,” Talya said. “Bronwyn Wilson’s in her sixties. He means he’s the father of Anna Dodson. The… the… um…”
“The Minister for Housing and Agriculture,” Mick said. “That’s her. And I want to see if that Boeing will fly again.”
“Not easily,” Talya said. “You’ll need a new compressor, a new combustor, and probably a whole new engine, but you’ll need to bring in a new undercarriage first. A prop is all that’s preventing her from belly-flopping into the dust.”
Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 5