by John Marsden
I couldn’t remember the other Pimlott Principle, but trying to remember it gave me something to think about, until nearly 10.45. Then a low hum in the distance told me that a convoy was approaching.
Our time had come.
At the same time I finally remembered the other Pimlott Principle. Go for targets that are achievable. I gulped, with a dry mouth. I could only hope we’d got that one right.
Chapter Eight
When I tried to stand I was alarmed to realise how much I’d stiffened up. I could hardly move. This wasn’t a good start. I desperately stretched my arms and legs, as much as I could without doing a full range of aerobic exercises behind the bottlebrush.
I soon realised though that we were way too early. We had to wait for most of the trucks to refuel before we could do anything. So in spite of my cramped muscles I crouched again, and tried to keep my limbs in working order.
I didn’t need to look to tell what was happening. The sounds were enough. Tough on Gavin, who was with Homer and Fi, and who relied on his eyes quite a lot.
The trucks came pouring in. It got noisy. Engines revving, people shouting orders or instructions or abuse, horns blaring. There was no sign of tanks, but there were quite a few cars.
Our first problem was unexpected though. First one man, then another, then another, then another, came past, all with the same idea: to get a bit of relief after being jolted around in their trucks for hours. The constant hissing and splashing, and the bitter smell, got unpleasant after a while. Worse, it made me want to do the same thing, and I found myself squirming, wishing I could duck into the bushes.
Lee whispered: ‘Maybe we should get a couple of them’, meaning the men using the lavatory.
‘But what would we do with them then?’ I whispered back. Funny, after all this time, I still hated to think of killing anyone in cold blood.
Lee didn’t answer.
The action around the bowsers continued without a break. I counted fifteen trucks rolling towards their parking area one by one, after they filled their tanks. I hoped they would meet Homer and Gavin and Fi there. Then at last there was a break in the toilet action. Without needing to tell each other we both got up at the same time and darted through the shadows, in and out of Dumpmasters and piles of drums and stacks of old tyres, towards the parking area.
There was no sign that Kevin was doing his job. I knew it was tricky for him, because we had no accurate way of working out the timing, but even so, by now he should have struck. I wished, not for the first time in this war, that I had followed my gut instinct and told Homer we shouldn’t use him. But as much as anything, I hoped for Kevin’s sake that nothing had gone seriously wrong. It would have been bad enough if the charge hadn’t gone off, or hadn’t been strong enough, but what would that matter compared to him being hurt or captured or killed?
Or—and this was the real issue for me—compared to him losing his nerve. What if he was now curled up in a ditch sobbing and shaking and wetting himself with fear?
I wriggled again. At least this way I was getting some exercise.
Then the lights went out.
Even with the curtains covering the windows it was instantly noticeable. I hadn’t realised how much light there had been over the whole place until suddenly there was none. And I heard the bowsers die. With a kind of ‘Urrrrr’ noise they stopped pumping. Kevin had come good after all.
I struggled to my feet and took a step out from behind my bottlebrush. Lee did the same, but on the other side. God it was dark. There’d been just a few calls and cries when the power first went but now it was getting noisy. I heard one voice start to emerge above the others, a guy who sounded like he was in charge. The way he talked, I think he was quite efficient, which was bad news for us. But we had to ignore him and get to work. Getting a good grip on the pack of explosive charges and the rifle, I crept along the side of the building. I saw a couple of dark shapes go past, heading in the other direction. It made me realise how visible I must be. I glanced across at Lee. He was further towards the shadows and a bit harder to see.
Already we were closing in on our target. I was startled to see how near we were. We were heading for the little parking area for cars, at the other end of the servo to the truck section. I strained my eyes, trying to see how many cars were in there. I could see some dull reflections, off metal and glass, and thought there were maybe three or four.
Lee loomed up beside me. He used his shoulder to push me towards the left, and I let him do it, knowing he must have a reason.
He did. Somehow he’d seen one car a little away from the others. That’s what we needed. A bit of privacy.
We circled around behind it, moving as fast as we dared. I felt the fear rise inside me, so much of it that I put my spare hand on my stomach to try to keep it down. We came up behind the car, Lee on the right and me on the left. Through the back windscreen it looked like no-one was inside. I confirmed it by checking through the side windows. Same result. It didn’t surprise me. Anyone in his right mind wouldn’t sit inside a car during a blackout in the middle of a war zone.
We kept moving forward. At last I saw Lee’s target. A soldier was right ahead, his hand cupped over his eyes: that familiar gesture of someone searching darkness, trying to see better. We’d agreed before that we’d go for a pair of soldiers, that we needed two. That’s what we’d said in the easy peace of the bush, up on the hill, when we’d been working this out. Now it felt a bit different. We’d settle for one, no worries, and sort out our next move afterwards. I glanced across, caught Lee’s eye, pointed to myself, made a series of big beating gestures with my fist, pointed to Lee and made little tiptoeing motions. He nodded and I had to hope he’d got the message.
I dropped my pack and rifle, and we both sneaked up on the man, me still on the left, not sure when to start making some noise, when to act as the decoy. The timing was kind of crucial. My life depended on it.
I was maybe a dozen steps from him when it was decided for me, because I made a noise without meaning it. The side of my boot scraped on a split in the bitumen. The man turned around quite slowly, as if he was curious but not yet suspicious. I started moving faster, hoping Lee would move faster still. The man reacted then. With a 360-degree leap he jumped and spun onto the bonnet of the car. I had no problem seeing his next move. A flying leap straight at me. Already his legs were tensing, about to drive off the metal and into my guts.
I was completely out of my depth. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do that Jackie Chan stuff. Might as well ask me to do open heart surgery on a bandicoot. I had my rifle, but I didn’t dare fire. I was relying on Lee. Maybe that was lucky, because I glanced across, beyond the man on the bonnet, to see if Lee was going to do anything in the near future. I guess it was like those old movies where the goodie pretends to see cops coming up behind the baddie, to trick the baddie into turning around. Only this was no trick. And I think the soldier realised it. Maybe it was because I did it so unconsciously, kind of naturally, like I wasn’t even thinking of how it would look to him.
So he drove off the bonnet, straight at me, but with a little less momentum, because he hesitated for a fraction of a second as he half-glanced backwards. And that meant Lee, diving after him, got a hold of his foot and tried to twist him in mid-air. The man landed on top of me, still twisting around. I fell, and then Lee came slithering after the soldier and he landed on top of me too.
It was a shambles. The man fought so desperately. It was like when you’re marking steers that are getting pretty big, and you don’t get a proper grip on one of them, and you know it’s more than your life is worth to let go, but at the same time you know that by hanging on you’re likely to get your face kicked in. And worse.
This was more like trying to hold down a tiger. The three of us were writhing around, and although two against one should have been enough, I began to panic and think he was going to get away. He was hitting me so hard that I felt I couldn’t hold on any longer. Th
en he got a hand up to my face and scratched my left cheek with sharp fingernails. He dug so deep. I screeched with the pain, feeling like half my face had been torn away. A moment later Lee hit him with the butt of his rifle. I felt the shock of the impact right through my body. But the arms suddenly went limp and fell away.
Trying not to sob, trying to hold myself together, ignoring the stinging in my face and the bruises to my body, I staggered up. Already Lee had fallen on the body and was tugging off his tunic. I picked up the cap, which had rolled away in the dust, and then helped Lee get the jacket off.
‘What do you think we should do?’ I asked. ‘I can’t go through this again.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘And there isn’t time. If I wear the jacket and you wear the shirt, it should be enough.’
I didn’t know what to think. It seemed a huge risk. But there wasn’t a choice.
‘All right,’ I muttered.
It was so difficult to get the shirt off. The jacket had been easy, by comparison, even if his floppy, heavy arms did keep getting in the way. Lee got the tie undone while I worked on the buttons. It was a revolting job. I think the guy was dead, although I kept telling myself he wasn’t. A couple of times my hands touched his skin, which made me feel nauseous. He felt sticky, clammy, like he was still sweating. Almost worse was having to put my arms through the sleeves. I kept my T-shirt on, to save time, and I was glad I had, when I felt how my skin crawled with the touch of the damp cotton.
Lee gave me the tie, but I had to get him to tie it. That’s one thing I’ve never learned. Then Lee pulled on the jacket. With the cap on his head he did look pretty authentic. I just hoped I looked the same.
Neither of us discussed getting the soldier’s trousers. We both would have heaved big-time if we’d so much as tried. Besides, I’d quite often seen soldiers with jeans and scraps of uniform. In fact it wasn’t often you saw one with a full uniform.
I had no idea how much time we’d wasted, but it seemed like a hell of a lot. Without any more conversation I grabbed my pack and rifle, and we headed out fast towards the front of the truck stop.
It was like coming from a suburb into the city. We’d been out in the suburbs, in the little carpark. Now we stepped into the CBD.
We’d worked out that the trucks would turn on their parking lights. We weren’t too bothered by that. We knew they wouldn’t risk turning on full headlights. But we didn’t realise how much light parkers would create. And stupidly, we hadn’t thought of torches. There must have been a dozen of those. All in all there was a hell of a lot more light than I would have liked.
We were coming around the front of the main building. I kept close to the buildings and at the same time stayed in Lee’s shadow. It was quite a balancing act. I needed a good choreographer. If I ever got back to school, back to my drama class, this would make a fantastic dance routine. But Lee’s shadow kept me out of the range of most of the parking lights. It didn’t save me from the torches though. Some of them were waving around out of control, like the people holding them were way over .05. I’m not sure what was going on. I’d say from their voices that they were definitely nervous. They probably suspected sabotage. They’d be mad if they didn’t. A couple of soldiers holding rifles ran past me at a good speed. Maybe they’d been posted to do sentry. A torch-beam suddenly ran across my face. It seemed to burn. I felt my skin go red where the light touched me. It was like some really sleazy guy had stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.
I kept walking. It was more than my life was worth to hesitate. The light seemed to linger on my face. My eyes half closed, expecting the challenge, the shout of discovery. It didn’t come, and a moment later the beam of light wandered off again.
I tried to get even closer to Lee’s shadow. I had to, with him in the tunic and cap. He had to ride shotgun for me. But as we approached the front of the truck stop the time came for tough decisions. I couldn’t skulk in the shadows any more, scuttling along like a rat.
I veered out from the wall. Already we were nearly at the corner. In another moment we would reach it and turn right, into the main refuelling area. What would we see? Would they notice us? What would happen if they somehow fixed the power supply when we were right out in the middle, dropping explosive charges into their fuel tanks? I gripped my pack tighter and turned the corner.
My mouth was dry as a dam in a drought. And I felt so strange in the unfamiliar shirt. Uncomfortable. Not only because it was a foreign uniform, but because they were the clothes of a dead man. I didn’t hesitate any more though. I was so set on doing the job that I didn’t think of hesitating. Anyway, hesitation would have been fatal. We had to act with total confidence.
We kept walking, but now, as we moved out from the line of the buildings, I scanned the ground, searching in the darkness for the little metal lid. I didn’t know where it would be. We’d all compared notes, back in the bush, trying to remember where service stations kept the covers for their underground tanks, but no-one really had a clue. ‘Out of the line of the bowsers,’ we all thought. We based that idea on the fact that when tankers arrived at service stations to refuel them, they seemed to park a bit away from the bowser area. That was the best evidence we could come up with. Suddenly it didn’t seem like much.
Nevertheless we kept walking. There was nothing else to do. I felt like I was in a music video, with spotlights and noises all around. As if things weren’t tough enough already, we had to find the lid fast, before Homer and Fi made their mark. The timing on this gig was crucial, but so much was up to chance.
I heard a shout and looked around guiltily. Damn, that’s exactly what I mustn’t do. They’d notice something like that. I had to be more—what was that word?—circumspect.
I ducked my head. At the same moment I saw the dull shine of the little cap in the ground. God, was that ever a relief.
Now I had to look around. There was no choice. I could hardly kneel down and prepare my bomb if there were half-a-dozen enemy soldiers watching closely. I kept walking, feeling my boot grind on the cap, giving quick glances to right and left. It seemed clear in both directions. Away in the darkness to my left was a row of trucks waiting to be fuelled. I couldn’t see where the line ended, but I think it went right out into the road. For all I knew it could have gone a hundred metres further.
I could see a few blokes around the trucks but they were far enough away for me to have a fighting chance of not being noticed.
I looked behind, a furtive peep. It was hard to get a good view. It seemed OK, kind of. There sure was a lot of movement, but I couldn’t see what exactly was happening. Just people trotting everywhere, some with torches, some without.
Well, I had to take the risk and get on with it. Homer said he’d give us twenty minutes. I couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since Kevin blew up the power line but it seemed like an hour.
I hissed at Lee, who was about ten metres away, then dropped to one knee and put my pack on one side and my rifle on the other. From now on, whatever happened, I had to concentrate on the charges and nothing else. It hardly crossed my mind that I could blow myself up. I was dealing with a fairly potent mixture: plastic explosive, fuse cord, lighter and petrol. But I wasn’t thinking about that. The fear dominating my mind was of the soldiers behind me and to my left. If they saw me I was dead. I had to stay cool. Nothing else mattered. Cool and steady. Calm mind. Calm eyes. Calm hands. I had to rely on Lee to deal with any problems that came along.
The cap came out fairly easily. Not like that terrible moment at Curr’s fuel depot in Wirrawee when we tried to put sugar in the fuel tanks for the planes at the airfield. I could still see the huge padlock they’d stuck on that tank. It probably hadn’t been that big a lock; it was just that in my memory it had grown to the size of a rockmelon.
I didn’t see why we actually needed explosive in these underground tanks, but Kevin, who was our science expert, said it was the way to go. He said petrol doesn’t explode when you drop a match in it, j
ust combusts rapidly. Very rapidly. But he said a few sticks of Ryan’s plastic would turn it from a big blast into a volcanic eruption.
I was fairly well organised. The explosive charge was on a bootlace. I lowered it into the tank, holding onto one end of the fuse. The smell of petrol made me nauseous, especially as I hadn’t eaten all afternoon. I’d been too nervous. From behind me came another yell; it could have been of discovery. I froze. I was so tempted to let go of the fuse and run for my life. Instead I clenched my teeth and pulled the cap of the tank towards me, dropping it into its hole. I had to be gentle, so I didn’t break the fuse. I sat it at an angle.
As I was adjusting it I heard one of the worst sounds in the world. At least, one of the worst sounds when you’re separated from your friends.
A series of shots came from behind me, like the putt-putt-putt of an electric motor starting up. They sounded like they came from the other end, from the truck parking area. Exactly where Fi and Homer and Gavin were meant to be creating the big diversion.
I grabbed a quick, desperate look at Lee. He looked back at me. It was hard to figure his expression, but horror wouldn’t have been too far wrong. He turned towards the sound and moved half-a-dozen uncertain steps in that direction.
Starting to panic I stood and ran away backwards from the tank, trailing out the fuse as I went. A glance showed dark figures running in all directions except towards us. Some were heading for the truck park, some were racing to the trucks in the queue, some were bolting into the restaurant area.
I got about fifty metres, quite close to the safety of the gardens between the servo and the bush. I heard a yell from my left, from among the sheds, the one direction I didn’t expect danger. Shrinking as much as I could I took a peep over there. A man in uniform was walking straight towards me, pointing and asking something, in his own language. I shrugged and dropped the fuse, wishing I’d brought my rifle. It was still back at the tank. Lee had his, but he was too far away from me now and surely couldn’t realise what was happening. The man seemed unarmed, but one yell from him and he could have me surrounded by his mates in seconds.