Desert Demon (Foley & Rose Book 7)

by Gary Gregor

  “He’s our man, Russ. I’m sure of it.”

  “I agree with you,” Foley said. “I’ll pass on what we have to Yap Yap and let him decide where we go from here. We can’t possibly stop and search every four-wheel-drive on the road. There’s too many of them.”

  “We could stop everyone with a canopy and driven by a sole occupant,” Sam suggested.

  “That would still number in the thousands,” Foley said with a shake of his head. “Besides, we don’t have the manpower to conduct such a wide-reaching search.”

  “I think he’s gonna do it again,” Sam declared.

  “You think these two crimes were random?” Foley asked.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “If there’s a connection between Susan Chambers and the Watson family, Yap Yap will find it,” Foley said. “It might narrow the field a bit if there was a connection.”

  “My money is on random,” Sam insisted. “He’s gonna do it again.”

  “Where and when?”

  Sam shrugged. “I’m good, Russ, but predicting the where and when is beyond even my extensive investigative abilities.”

  Foley looked at Sam.

  “What?”

  “Your extensive investigative abilities? What the fuck is that?”

  Sam pointed through the windscreen at the road ahead. “Watch the road, Russ. You’ll kill us both before I get to demonstrate those abilities.”

  Covering an expanse of almost one-and-a-half-million square kilometres, the Northern Territory was the third-largest federal division on the Australian continent and the eleventh largest country subdivision in the world. Although sparsely populated, with less than a quarter-of-a-million residents, less than half the total population of Tasmania, looking for one particular person had to be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. While the vast majority of the Territory land mass consisted of unpopulated hot and dry desert wilderness to the south and sub-tropical rainforest to the north, hiding in it was a relatively easy thing to do if hiding was one’s intention.

  The four-wheel-drive utility, in all of its many configurations, was an iconic Northern Territory vehicle. Should the authorities be looking for such vehicle, the choices were endless. With nothing more to go on, other than “four-wheel-drive with soft, canvas canopy”, it would be like stopping every second vehicle on the road, and that would amount to a logistical nightmare at best.

  Sealed, bitumen access roads in the Northern Territory were few-and-far-between in relation to the overall size of the landmass. As well as providing the transport conduit to neighboring states, South Australia and Western Australia, these roads carried visitors and locals from one major tourist attraction to another by the shortest possible route. All were well travelled, and only the hardiest, most experienced—and some would say the most foolish—would dare to venture too far off these main arterial roads for fear of becoming hopelessly lost or suffering a major vehicle breakdown. Perishing in the relentless, unforgiving heat of a central Australian desert was, unfortunately, not uncommon.

  Some might think that locating a vehicle, any vehicle, in the remote desert areas would not be particularly difficult given the vast, endless, mostly treeless plains stretching from one horizon to the next. However, such beliefs could not be further from reality. If the man who killed the Watson family and Susan Chambers fled into any one of the desert areas surrounding the main, sealed arterial roads, he might never be found. If by chance he knew the desert and how to survive in it, he had a far better chance of evading capture than if he chose to “hide” amongst the traffic on any of the major tourist routes. However, if he was unfamiliar with the desert and the perils travelling in it presented, fleeing into it with the intention of avoiding capture was tantamount to committing suicide.

  The Australian desert topography, much of which was centred in the Northern Territory, was as perilous as any desert landscape anywhere in the world. Daytime temperatures could, and very often did, soar as high as fifty-degrees Celsius, and then plummeted to well below freezing at night. Like any arid, waterless desert, it would take the life of the unprepared quickly if one were foolish enough to venture into it while not acutely aware of the dangers within. The relentless, energy-sapping daytime sun would turn your carcass into carrion for the dining pleasure of all manner of desert-dwelling creatures—in hours rather than days. And, if by some rare stroke of good fortune you made it beyond daylight, you were almost certainly going to freeze to death during the bone-chilling night.

  Sadly, never to be discovered by any but scavenging desert-dwelling creatures who inhabited the scorched, mostly featureless landscape of Australia’s vast desert regions, the dry bleached bones of many a foolhardy adventurer lay testament to the perils of unresearched, ill-prepared desert travel.

  6

  In ancient Germanic terminology, Adalhard Jaeger’s name meant “Brave Hunter”. The thirty-two-year-old was a former member of Kommando Spezialkräfte, part of the German Army Special Forces Command, internationally recognised as one of the finest, most daring fighting units in the military world. When Adalhard passed the gruelling physical training required to be accepted as a member of Kommando Spezialkräfte, he then truly understood that Brave Hunter was an apt name for one such as himself.

  However, having been unceremoniously discharged from the elite unit as a result of ongoing breaches of military discipline, Adalhard was ordered by his strict, authoritarian father, Gerhard Jaeger, to travel to the other side of the world and go about re-adjusting his life to a standard befitting the Jaeger name.

  Where exactly his son went was of little concern to the senior Jaeger, as long as it was a place where Adalhard could reflect on the unacceptable behaviour that subsequently led to his dismissal from the army. He was expected, his father insisted, to take responsibility for his shortcomings and find a way to appease his parents for the tarnish he had undoubtedly smeared upon the well-respected Jaeger family name. He should go somewhere where he would not be influenced by those who took pleasure in flouting the rules and indulging in raunchy, drunken behaviour not conducive to the high standards expected by the specialist military unit to which he once belonged.

  Episodes of absence from duty without leave, wild barrack-room romps with prostitutes, numerous late appearances on morning parade dishevelled and hungover, along with numerous other breaches of discipline from which Adalhard could not seem to—or had no real desire to—eradicate from his life, was never going to end well.

  Adalhard’s family were generational members of Germany’s upper social class, and if he was to fit and be accepted into the fold of Hamburg’s socially elite, he must adjust his attitude and his counter-productive behavioural instincts accordingly. He was a Jaeger. He was to behave like a Jaeger. It was not a request from his father—it was an order.

  Adalhard’s unfortunate discharge from the Army was a terrible blow to his father. It was so unlike the long tradition of integrity, honour, morality, and trustworthiness forged by the Jaeger family forebears over many generations. It was embarrassing. It was an insult to his mother and father’s teachings and guidance during his young, developing years.

  It was his father’s greatest wish that his only son, indeed his only child, would one day follow in his footsteps and join him in the complex, labyrinthine maze of international money management.

  It was not the life for Adalhard. It was not that he particularly disliked military life; he was fit, healthy and passed the initial physical entry requirements with flying colours. It was the stern discipline and clockwork-like regimen of daily life as an elite combat soldier that Adalhard took exception to. He got enough of that from his father. He didn’t want to be “yes, siring” and “no, siring” all day at his workplace. He had had enough of that throughout his childhood. If they would just stop all the orders and commands, and the yelling at him to get out of bed at 6:00 am every morning, he might have settled into military life better than he had.

  Ada
lhard also liked women. Why not? Standing at a tad below six feet tall, he was young, fit, not unappealing to look at, and he was a member of Germany’s elite Kommando Spezialkräfte—all attributes that many a young woman found attractive. It was fair to say, however, that it might not have shown good judgement to get into the habit of bringing nubile young ladies back to his barracks room for evenings of consensual, often rowdy, alcohol-fuelled sex romps.

  Disciplinary charges brought against him by his superiors did not seem to deter the randy, young Adalhard. He was rebelling against the system, something he never had the courage to do at home, and it cost him his military career and earned him the scalding wrath of his father. Adalhard, at an early stage, had come to hate his father. If he thought the strict, regimental way of life in the military was not to his liking, living at home with his father was tenfold worse.

  Gerhard Jaeger was a sixty-four-year-old multi-millionaire financier who’d made his vast fortune, and continued to multiply it, by managing the financial resources of others. Known throughout the corridors of world finance as a hard, determined, and ruthless negotiator, Gerhard was considered by those who lived and survived in the complicated, often maligned and misunderstood business of making money for other people as the best-of-the-best. When it came to multiplying someone else’s fortunes and becoming obscenely wealthy while doing so, Gerhard Jaeger had no equal.

  Having made, lost, and then made even more millions during his career, Gerhard Jaeger was a man who considered failure, in any field of endeavour, a reflection of one’s character. To his mind, there was no harder business in which to survive than the business of international finance. If you failed, and many did, and you lost other peoples’ money as well as your own, you were finished in the business, never to return. For those who lived and traded in the precarious, speculative world of international money-making, failure was not only unacceptable but unforgivable.

  Gerhard stumbled a few times, although only a very few, in the early years of his chosen career but he never fell. He was good. So good, in fact, that one of his biggest and most consistent clients was the German Government, itself a major financial investor in Gerhard’s expertise and self-confidence that he could turn their taxpayer euro millions into billions with apparent ease. And he did, time and time again.

  Born, raised, and educated in Hamburg, the seat of Germany's oldest stock exchange and the world's oldest merchant bank—the Berenberg Bank—Gerhard lived with his wife, Heidemarie, and a small number of house servants and a gardener, on a considerable rural estate fifty kilometres from the buzz and hum of Hamburg’s financial district. In significant locations within the city, media, commercial, logistical and industrial firms, including such multi-nationals as Unilever, Airbus, Beiersdorf and Aurubis AG plied their respective trades. To Gerhard, this was the heartbeat of his world. This was the world that made him smile every time he drove into it in his shiny, freshly buffed Mercedes Benz motor car.

  Gerhard loved the life of international travel. His work took him to many different locations throughout the world, as well as a few of the lesser known financial hubs in parts of the world others like him preferred to leave off their international business itinerary.

  Now, his son’s inglorious discharge from the army had left him embarrassed and angry. How could his own flesh-and-blood bring such shame to the Jaeger family name? So far, some deft under-the-counter financial settlements, amounting to many thousands of euros, had managed to keep the whole ugly business of Adalhard’s abrupt dismissal as quiet as possible, but there was always the chance the media would get wind of the scandal and that was simply not acceptable to Gerhard.

  His son had to get as far away from Hamburg, and indeed Germany, as quickly and as quietly as could be arranged. After much consideration, and with a return date yet to be fixed, Gerhard sent Adalhard to Australia. It was a very long way from Hamburg and perhaps the absence would teach the young Adalhard that home wasn’t such a bad place to be.

  The military was Gerhard’s idea. He believed it would toughen-up his son. It would make a man of him. It would teach him that taking a backward step was not only counter-productive in the journey to success through the many pitfalls and unforeseen obstacles in the world of international finance but would be seen by those entrenched in that world as a sign of weakness.

  Adalhard Jaeger was not a coward but he did have a strong distaste for violence, particularly violence inflicted against himself. The ancient interpretation of his name, Brave Hunter, was about as distant from reality in regard to his character as was possible. Those who knew him best, particularly his father, knew the words brave and Adalhard simply did not belong in the same sentence. And, as for hunter, well, Gerhard didn’t think his son could successfully hunt for his dick on a dark night.

  Any vestige of bravery, toughness, or intestinal fortitude which may have flowed down through the family bloodline to Gerhard and, subsequently, on to Adalhard was gently albeit unintentionally guided from Adalhard’s character by his mother, Heidemarie. From the moment he was born, following a difficult, almost fatal childbirth, baby Adalhard was treated much like a girl-child by his mother, much to the chagrin of his father.

  Heidemarie always wanted a girl and was heartbroken when, after Adalhard’s birth, the doctor said she could have no more children. A second, and then third opinion, confirmed her worst fears: she was never going to have the little girl she so longed for. There was never a question as to whether Heidemarie loved her son, her devotion to him was deep—perhaps too deep, but he was not a girl.

  Despite her husband’s often and enthusiastic protestations, Heidemarie encouraged her handsome blue-eyed son to grow his lovely golden-blonde curls down to his shoulders. She encouraged him to regularly manicure his nails, to polish his shoes daily, and never to wear clothes straight from the clean-wash basket until they had been neatly pressed. Jumping in puddles, climbing trees, playing with toy guns, and bloody noses from schoolyard scraps with bullyboys were all vehemently discouraged by Heidemarie. She made a sissy out of him and Adalhard soon learned to dislike his mother almost as much as he hated his father.

  Adalhard pulled into Stuarts Well Roadhouse and parked adjacent to the diesel fuel pump. He paused for a moment and looked around the large expanse of forecourt and customer parking area. A customer walked from the roadhouse shop entrance, climbed into his vehicle, and proceeded to drive back onto the Stuart Highway. For the moment, there seemed to be no other vehicles in the near vicinity, and that suited Adalhard; the less bystanders around, the better, he thought.

  He stepped from his Toyota four-wheel-drive, stretched and yawned loudly, and then filled his vehicle with fuel. He had extra long-range fuel tanks fitted below the rear of the cargo area, an accessory he insisted on when he’d purchased the vehicle soon after he’d arrived in Australia.

  Mounted on a strong metal rack above the canvas canopy covering the cargo area were two spare wheels. A third spare was mounted on the cabin roof. He slept on the hard tray in the rear of the vehicle, in a swag under the canopy, protected from the ravages of both the scorching daytime heat and the sub-zero desert nights. He carried an Engel fridge/freezer combination in which he stored perishable food stuffs and bottled water. With power to his Engel supplied by long-life, deep-cycle batteries, Adalhard was nothing if not well prepared for extended stays in the bush. If it became necessary, he could survive deep in the Australian Outback for a week, or perhaps even longer without the need to refuel his vehicle or re-supply his food stocks.

  Whatever it was deeply ingrained in his very being that compelled Adalhard Jaeger to find people, complete strangers, and kill them was a mystery to him. He was not particularly troubled by the desire to kill, and that there were no criteria that a victim had to conform to that, helped him select who would be next on his kill list. His victim selection was purely random and opportunistic. If the place was right, the timing right, and the desire within him, someone would die. However, the victims had to b
e complete strangers; killing someone he knew would not be appropriate. It was important to him that he feel no remorse, no guilt, and no pain—which he might at the death of someone he knew, perhaps even liked.

  Despite his distaste for violence, killing was different; at least, it was to Adalhard. Violence which did not lead to death was painful, he reasoned. The stronger the violence, the stronger the pain. Death, at least sudden death, like a single gunshot to the head, did not hurt. The victim felt no pain. He or she was alive and then, a split second later, he or she was dead. Quick and painless. Simplistic really, he thought.

  The army taught Adalhard how to kill. He remembered being amazed at just how many ways there were to kill another human being. The method he liked best, the method which offered the least pain to the victim, was a bullet to the head. Not that Adalhard ever killed anyone while he was in the army; he was never in combat against a foreign enemy and the opportunity to legally take someone’s life never arose, and that was fine with him—not the never having the opportunity to kill part, but the never having been in combat part. While combat meant there was a better than even chance you might get to put all the kill training into actual practice, it also meant you might be killed yourself, and it was that part of the whole military combat thing that he was rather pleased he’d never had to face.

  Adalhard wasn’t even sure before he arrived in Australia if he ever really wanted to kill anyone. It wasn’t like the desire to commit murder was omnipresent in his thought process. It was there, at least something was there, deep in a dark recess of his mind. It was not a burning desire to take a life; in fact, he was reluctant to even call it a desire. It was just a deep, faint, distant curiosity that seemed to want to make its way to the surface and find a place in the forefront of his thinking. As deep, faint, and distant as it was, it was getting stronger … too strong it seemed. Perhaps it was a way to diminish the ever-present anger and disrespect he felt for his father.