Dead Heat Read online

  I was staring at the disabled machine when I caught a note on the breeze. The base note of an internal-combustion engine — more than one. It snapped me from my torpor. I stood, statue-like, for thirty seconds, till I established the hum was coming from the west. Was it the same group of hostiles who’d attacked us, or another group? Or had the military sent a rescue party in response to Coombs’s mayday call? I had no way of knowing, so I had to prepare for either eventuality. I squatted next to the bike, switched my goggles to infra-red and emptied the pannier bags onto the ground. I transferred the food and bottles of water, plus a box of ammunition, to my backpack.

  Then I set about masking the bike’s thermal imprint. I shook out the blanket and the sleeping bag, folded them both in half and layered them over the bike. I placed dead branches and other debris on top and stepped back and switched my goggles to thermal. The edges of the pile still had a slight glow, but it was too far from the road to be easily seen, even by someone wearing goggles like mine, and especially if that someone was speeding past.

  Just to be sure, I took a bottle of water from my backpack and began dousing every bit of radiance in sight, starting with the pile I’d created, and following the radiant trail back through the spinifex all the way to the road. It took three bottles to do the job, but the water proved to be a very effective eraser.

  A glowing dot appeared in the far distance. Another one popped into view. And another. These guys weren’t riding dark, so they were probably bandits, and maybe the survivors from the group that’d hit us. But, despite the headlights, one or more of them could be wearing goggles with a thermal capacity like mine, so I still had to kill all evidence of my presence.

  I ran to where I’d skidded off the road and smoothed the disturbed dirt with my hand and killed the radiance with squirts of water. I picked up the wallaby, took it twenty metres into the bush and wedged it behind a big clump of spinifex. Then I raced back to the highway and used the last of my water to douse the animal’s blood.

  The job done, I headed into the scrub again, got down behind a boulder and waited. A minute later, six motorcycles, four of them with sidecars, came hurtling down the highway in single file, their headlights blazing. About fifteen people were crammed on board the bikes — riders, pillion passengers, and those in the sidecars. All the riders wore low-tech goggles, and their big Japanese machines had been made bigger by long-range fuel tanks, oversized panniers, and whip aerials that flew an assortment of tattered flags and foxtails.

  The bikes passed. Their rumble quickly became a low hum. It stuttered a bit and receded. Then, suddenly, it was gone altogether. Too suddenly? They couldn’t have moved beyond my hearing so quickly, so they must’ve stopped nearby. Maybe they were setting up camp. In the middle of the night? That didn’t seem likely. So, what were they doing? Preparing an ambush for someone maybe? Maybe planning to take out Coombs’s would-be rescuers? It’d be easy to do and could have devastating results. It gave me no choice. I had to go up there and check things out.

  I adjusted my goggles and set off. If they were preparing an ambush, they’d certainly have posted a lookout. Even if they were just camping, they’d have someone watching the highway. I hoped I saw their ‘eyes’ before they saw me.

  I switched constantly between infra-red and thermal vision as I walked along the highway. I got spooked a few times by creatures rustling in the scrub. And once I thought I heard a faint engine noise in the distance. I stopped and tuned in, but there was nothing.

  About five hundred metres from where I’d come off the bike, I paused to pop a piece of biltong into my mouth. That’s when I saw a faint glow about twenty metres ahead of me at the side of the road. I drew my Glock and dropped to a squat. If that was where the bandits had set themselves up, I was dreadfully exposed. Then again, if they were there, they would’ve taken me out well before I spotted their glow.

  I thought about going back to where I’d crashed the bike. I could wait there for one of the military teams that’d be powering towards me from the east. But if the bandits were preparing an ambush, my would-be rescuers would be sitting ducks. So instead of retreating, maybe I should stay where I was and fire some warning shots as my rescuers approached. But if I did that, they might mistake me for a bandit and blow me away, if the bandits themselves didn’t get me first. My third option was to continue up the road, assess the level of threat, and neutralise it if possible.

  I stood up and tuned in to the desert. The only sound was the undertone of a light breeze. I flexed my knees, took a few tentative steps forward, and stopped to listen again. I heard nothing to cause alarm. I took a few more steps and paused. Still nothing. I quickened my pace, and within a few minutes I got to the source of the glow: a chaos of radiant tyre tracks that curved through the loose ground at the side of the highway and turned onto a graded road that headed north into the bush. Wispy bits of glow were still visible where the road disappeared behind some biggish rocks about twenty metres away. I knelt down and examined the tracks. They all had the general profile of a motorcycle tyre, and given how fresh they were, they could only have been made by the motorcycles that’d passed me minutes before.

  As I considered my next move, I took in the line of the escarpment about five hundred metres away. The dark wall of rock filled the landscape east to west like a huge impenetrable curtain. If the escarpment was impenetrable, then I had heard the bikies stopping when I was back at the crash site. It meant they were very close by.

  So, what to do? I figured the team coming from Erldunda would pass by in about forty minutes. And while I’d have to be on the highway to hail them down, that didn’t mean I had to remain idle while I waited for them. I could follow the graded road for a bit and see where it led, find out who was up there and observe what they were doing. That sort of intelligence could prove invaluable. And, as a professional snoop, it was my natural inclination to poke around. Also, I might get lucky and find some form of transport to get me out of this place. My goggles would guide me and keep me safe. I wouldn’t go far from the highway — no more than a kilometre. I wouldn’t engage any hostiles if I could help it. And I wouldn’t walk on the road — I’d shadow it from the scrub.

  Having convinced myself that the excursion made sense, I moved down the highway, and then edged into the scrub about ten metres from the start of the graded road. I stayed parallel to the road as I picked my way between clumps of spinifex and the odd protruding rock. Every twenty metres or so, I flipped my goggles to thermal mode and moved closer to the road to ensure that it still radiated with heat from the bandits’ tyres.

  If there was an outstation in the vicinity, there was a chance I’d encounter one or more of its inhabitants out and about. That thought made me a tad paranoid, as did the abundance of cover around me: clumps of rock, depressions in the ground, small trees with fat trunks. All good places to post a sentry or position a sniper.

  I’d been shadowing the road for about four hundred metres when it curved around to run almost parallel with the wall of the escarpment. Small stands of eucalypts and various other trees grew near the base of the wall, which was more pocked and pitted than it had appeared from the highway. I squatted and took another sounding, but heard nothing untoward, so I stepped cautiously to the edge of the road and peered down the length of it. Twenty metres ahead, the heat markers turned onto a rutted track that ran straight towards the wall.

  I crept back into the scrub, got down into a squat, and listened again. Nothing. And nothing through the thermals, nor the infra-reds. Regardless, the bandits were nearby. They had to be. Unless there was some sort of passage through the escarpment. Was that possible? Of course it was, but it was also highly unlikely. Should I call it quits and go back to the highway? No. Not yet. I had to keeping going. Something didn’t feel right. If there was an outstation nearby, and if the bikies lived there with their families, why couldn’t I hear anything? Six overloaded motorcycles had just arrived
in camp. Where was the noise that people would make greeting the returned travellers? Where were the barking dogs and the crying babies?

  I gave the rutted track a wide berth and continued to shadow the graded road for another seventy metres. Then I cut across the road and headed for the escarpment wall in as straight a line as I could manage. I pushed through thickets of low bush and climbed in and out of a dry creek bed. My intention was to make it to the wall and double back towards the bandits. A classic flanking manoeuvre. If I were lucky, I’d find a vantage point somewhere along the way from which to assess the level of threat. To me and to those who’d come looking for me.

  When I got to the wall, I leant my back into its cool surface and listened in again. Nothing. I surveyed the area, focusing on all the different forms of cover where someone could be lying in wait for me: there were the piles of fallen rock mounded against the base of the wall, and the big-trunked eucalypts that lined the creek bed … and the deep banks of the creek itself would be a good place from which to take me out. I suddenly felt vulnerable again. I tried to calm myself, but the disturbing image that came to mind was of a lone duck flying over a party of shooters on the first day of the hunt.

  It seemed best to keep moving, so I edged forward along the wall, hoping to come across the rutted track the bikies had taken. I made my way around clumps of low bush and piles of fallen rock.

  I’d gone about thirty metres when I heard something strange on the breeze. I dropped to a crouch and listened. There it was again. It sounded like crowd noise. Just a hint of it. I flipped my goggles from infra-red to thermal and scanned the area. That’s when I saw it. About twenty-five metres ahead, coming from one of the bigger rock piles massed against the wall: an almost imperceptible glow that lit the edges of the pile from behind.

  I switched the goggles back to infra-red and crept up to the glowing pile. Then I moved slowly around it, boulder by boulder. I was sliding past a big rock on the outer edge of the pile when a small structure slid into view about ten metres away. I dropped to my stomach, rolled back behind a rock, drew my Glock, and braced for bullets to fly. But nothing happened. I stuck my head up to have a look. The ‘structure’ turned out to be an open-sided hut with a simple roof of spinifex thatch that was held up by four corner posts of rough-hewn timber. About a dozen motorcycles, half of them with sidecars, were parked underneath it.

  I got up into a crouch, still expecting to be hit by a spotlight or a bullet. Then something moved on top of a tall, flat rock that extended from the side of the shelter to within a few metres of the escarpment wall. I stared hard, but couldn’t distinguish between the shadows and the static white forms I was seeing. Then it moved again, and I recognised what I was looking at. The soles of someone’s bare feet hanging over the edge of the rock. One foot was scratching the other. The bottom of another pair of feet were braced on the edge of the same rock, next to the scratcher. And there was a third pair. Three people, presumably there to guard the motorcycles.

  I scuttled back to the far side of the rockfall to consider my options. My best move would be to return to the highway. Time was getting tight if I was going to rendezvous with the rescue party from Erldunda — I figured I had about half an hour before they passed by. But maybe a lot less.

  Then again, there were a dozen motorcycles just metres away from me. If I could get to them without being detected, maybe I’d find a key in one of them. But going into that shelter could be the end of me — the owners of the feet were so near, they’d probably hear me fiddling about, and certainly come running if I started one of the bikes.

  My third option was to spend another fifteen minutes exploring this place and then head back to the highway. That’d be cutting it fine for the anticipated rendezvous, but I wanted something to show for this little adventure, and the best I could hope for, now, was to locate the bikies. To do that, I’d have to slip past the sentries, and that’d be very risky. It’d be good to find an elevated position on this side of them. A place to get a bead on the area up ahead. Looking around, it took me two seconds to realise that the ideal spot was literally right in front of me: the rock pile behind which I was hiding.

  I studied the pile for a moment to work out a safe route to the top, then I pulled myself up onto a big boulder wedged against the wall. I clambered onto the one above it, and onto the one above that, and, boulder by boulder, I ascended the pile, as if it were a giant staircase, until I got to the rock at the top. I caught my breath and slowly raised my head and peered down at the area beyond the sentries’ platform. What I saw there made me duck my head for fear of being spotted. I waited a few seconds and slowly raised my head again.

  A group of about fifty men sat on the ground behind a small campfire. They were facing me, staring at something or someone hidden from me by the sentries’ platform. The majority of them were young Aboriginal bikies clad in black leather. Most of the rest were old white guys, also leathered up. I assumed they were the refugee bikies Coombs had talked about. Some older Aboriginal men in jeans and T-shirts sat at the front of the group.

  About fifty metres beyond the gathering, a large object covered in asymmetrical camouflage stood at the edge of a long strip of flat ground. The size of the object, and its camouflage, plus the rock-free evenness of the ground on which it stood, had me assuming the obvious: it was a light aircraft parked at the end of a bush airstrip. I flipped my goggles to thermal mode, but got no heat reading from the object, so maybe I was wrong. Or, if it was an aircraft, maybe it’d been standing there for so long it’d cooled down. If that was the case, maybe the bikies used it to transport their powders to the south. Or maybe the Movement heavyweight Coombs had mentioned had flown up in it — the one she said was visiting the area to gee up the troops. And maybe that’s what I was about to witness. A presentation to the faithful.

  A soft murmur went up from the gathering. Two men had stepped into my line of sight from behind the guards’ platform. They had their backs to me, so I couldn’t see their faces. One was dressed completely in leather, like the bikies. The other wore a dark T-shirt and jeans. The leathered-up one walked forward till he was standing at the very edge of the gathering. I flipped my goggles up and slipped my helmet off so as not to miss any of his words.

  ‘Thanks again for your patience,’ he said, and he paused while a young man translated his words into an Aboriginal language. ‘And please remember: a camp-wide silence is in force until we leave, so thank you for your cooperation. Now, before we hear from the man you’ve been waiting for, I’m sorry to confirm what some of you already know. About half an hour ago, we lost five brothers on the road near here. We got two of theirs, but one of them got away. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find him soon enough, and we’ll do him quick. You with me?’

  There were furious growls of assent from the men.

  ‘Now, let’s get on with it,’ said the man in leather, raising his hands. ‘He fights for justice. He risks his life, so you and your family can have a better life. And he’ll never give up until this land is ours again. Brothers, put your hands together for a black hero. One of our greats. Mr Ken Bynder.’

  It was Bynder! Up here! Unbelievable! The leather man turned in my direction. He had a full head of dark hair and the tight skin and hollow cheeks of someone who worked hard on their fitness. I put his age at about forty. His introduction had drawn a muted growl from the men, but Bynder still had his hands up for quiet as he stepped into view and moved in close to them.

  ‘Brothers,’ he said, and he paused for effect. ‘For decades, we’ve demanded recognition that this land is our land. That it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. But, as well as giving our land back, the white man must pay us big dollars in compensation. For the murders. And the kids they took away. For poisoning us with their nasty religion, their crook tucker, and their rotten grog. For the land they handed over to the Americans for military bases. Bases which made us all a nuclear target. And
for the weapons testing and the nuclear dumps that poisoned us and our land. The land they stole from us! The white man talks about law and order. Well, Australia is a crime scene! The white man conducts illegal activities on stolen land. Our land! And they’re still murdering us! Every day!’

  Bynder paused, the men growled their approval of his words, and as they settled down, the hint of a mechanised burble came to me from far out in the east. I turned my head, and there it was again. The faintest suggestion of a noise. Was it the team from Erldunda, twenty minutes early? Or maybe another pack of bandits? Or perhaps a team of rescuers who’d been despatched especially to find me? The guards’ rock seemed to be shielding the gathering from the thin noise I was hearing, as no one reacted.

  ‘The white man knows what he’s done,’ said Bynder, raising his hands again. ‘But he lies to himself, so he can sleep at night. And he’s angry with us, because we remind him of his crimes. He’s angry because he knows he’s living off the proceeds of those crimes. He’s angry because he can’t pray to his God with a clear conscience. And he’s angry because his God won’t forgive him until he makes right what he’s done to us. Well, the time has come to help the white man clear his conscience. To help him make his peace with his God. By taking back what’s ours! The time for talk is over! Dead and buried! Our brothers from other countries will help us. Our Indonesian brothers. And the Chinese. They threw the white man out years ago, and they’re going to help us do the same here …’

  Bynder turned. He could finally hear what I could see. A group of headlights coming from the east, led by a drone with a searchlight that jagged back and forth across the highway. He spat out an order, and a couple of men jumped up and doused the fire while the rest of them raced for a concaved area of the wall. The guards clambered down from their rocky perch and quickly joined them.