Dragons at the Party (39 page)

The radio was on, the reports being relayed through Police Centre. “The suspect is now beginning the climb up the mountains from Emu Plains. He is still under aerial surveillance.”

“We’ll get the bastard this time!” said Graham, no longer grinning.

They went down the long stretch of freeway at 150 kilometres an hour, siren wailing, light flashing. At this time of morning there was virtually no traffic going their way; in the opposite lane there were already cars heading for Sydney and the Big Day. Up ahead Malone could see the Blue Mountains, no longer blue, and the thick clouds of smoke, like yellow-grey thunderheads, hanging above them.

“The highway is blocked a mile out of Springwood,” the radio reported. “The bushfires have crossed the road. Police are turning back all traffic. The suspect is in for a shock,” said the police radio officer cheerfully.

“I bloody hope so,” said Malone.

“Right,” said Graham up front and grinned again.

Clements looked at Malone. “Did you call Lisa?”

“Bugger!” Malone threw up his hands. He looked at his watch. “Never mind, I’ll call her as soon as this is over.”

In the Mazda Seville was urging Pinjarri to increase his speed, but the Aborigine was taking no notice. It was as if he had gone back to his tribal heritage; he sat behind his bars of paint, fatalistic as an old man. The bone had been pointed and he had accepted it.

“We’re never gunna get away from that chopper, Mick. I just wanna stay on the road and make sure we don’t crack our fucking necks. I ain’t the world’s best driver. You don’t get much practice when you don’t own a car.”

“I thought you’d be stealing one every chance you got.” It would be about the level of Pinjarri’s rebellion: he was still contemptuous of the Aborigine and his hopeless cause.

Pinjarri
didn’t answer that, just concentrated on taking the car up the wide curving road. They came up behind a big semi-trailer labouring up the steep grade and Pinjarri slowed.

“Go past him!”

“I can’t! There’s a double-line and a bend up ahead—there’s too much traffic coming this way!”

“Pass him!” The gun came up.

Pinjarri, sweat glistening on his face so that the stripes were now beginning to smudge, changed down, took the car out from behind the semi-trailer and trod hard on the accelerator. Without believing in any god, he said a prayer: the old primitive instinct at work again. They roared by the huge truck and squeezed in in front of it just as three cars, nose to tail, came round the curve There was a scream of tyres, a blaring of horns but no accident.

Pinjarri let out a gasp of relief. “That’s the last time, Mick! You can shoot me, if you like. That’ll be better than running head-on into something.”

Seville hadn’t yet thought of death. He still believed in his skill and his good fortune; his invincibility, if you like. The skill had been less than perfect the past few days, but that had been at killing, not at escaping. He had been caught only once, back in his Tupamaros days; there had been three days of police torture, but then he had escaped, even with the handicap of his broken knee-cap. Since then he had evaded better and more sophisticated police forces than the amateurs who were chasing him.

The road twisted through cuttings and steep banks. The land on either side was rocky and last week might have been dense bush; now it was a black forest of stumps and bare trunks, highlighted in places with red where logs still glowed. Smoke wraiths danced in slow motion amongst the dark trunks and the acrid smell of smoke began to invade the car. Then they ran into a dense yellow pall blocking the road; Pinjarri slowed the car and they crept through it. When they came out of it they saw the police cars and the fire engines drawn up across the roadway a quarter of a mile ahead. Beyond the road-block the forest on either side of the road was a red-and-yellow inferno, flames leaping sixty and seventy feet towards the dense, billowing clouds of smoke above it

Pinjarri slammed the car to a halt and at once they heard the clatter of the helicopter above
them.

Two miles behind them the police convoy had slowed to a crawl behind the labouring semi-trailer. The sirens were blowing and the blue lights flashing, but the traffic coming downhill couldn’t hear or see because of the curves and consequently neither slowed down nor pulled over on to the road’s shoulders.

The young driver cursed. “Sorry, Inspector. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Just take it easy,” said Malone. “He won’t get past that road-block.”

Then the road widened, the semi-trailer pulled over into the slow lane and the police convoy, now caught up by the two SWOS wagons, accelerated past. At the same moment there was suddenly no traffic coming from the other direction.

Clements looked out at the devastated countryside, at several houses that were now just charred ruins, standing like rough charcoal sketches of what they had once been.

“He won’t get far in country like this.”

“We’re lucky,” said the young driver. “I was up here a couple of weeks ago, bush-walking. We got lost and they had to send in a rescue party for us. I never been so bloody embarrassed in my life. If the bush was like it was a couple of weeks ago, he could lose himself in there for weeks and we’d never pick him up.”

“I’m glad we’re getting a break at last,” said Malone and looked out at the smouldering homes of people who had had no breaks at all.

Then they came round a bend and ran into the thick barrier of smoke. The young driver braked sharply, glanced in his rear-vision mirror, said, “Christ, I hope they don’t run into my bum!” and drove cautiously through the thirty or forty yards of dense smoke. Everyone had hastily wound up their windows, but the smoke, or at least its smell, still leaked in and they all took out handkerchiefs and put them over their faces. Then they came out into the clear and there was the brown Mazda, the passenger door wide open, blocking the roadway in front of them.

Malone was out of the police car on the run, his gun already drawn. Clements and Graham
went
out their doors, drawing their guns as they did so. Police were running down from the road-block up ahead.

Dallas Pinjarri sat in the driver’s seat of the Mazda, his hands on the wheel, his seat-belt still on and his face streaked into a horrible mask as if he had run a hand wildly over the paint on it. He looked at Malone as the latter came up beside him, but his eyes were lost in the crazy abstract of his face.

“Thank Christ, mate. I never thought I’d be glad to see youse pigs.”

“Any time, Dallas,” said Malone. “Where is he?”

Pinjarri nodded off to his left. “He went down there. He’s got the Sako and two hand-pieces.” Then, reluctantly, sounding as if it hurt him to warn the pigs, he said, “You better be careful—he’s a cold-blooded bastard.”

“I know,” said Malone, aware of Pinjarri’s awkward gratitude and trying not to sound awkward in return. “We’ll be careful.”

The helicopter had disappeared, but now it came back, riding along the front of the clouds of smoke. Clements was using the hand-radio from the police car. “Where is he?”

There was a lot of static and noise, but the observer’s reply could be heard: “He’s heading south down into a gully. It runs down into the valley proper.”

“Is there any fire down there?”

“Not so far. Keep an eye on us. We’ll hover over him.”

“Watch out he doesn’t start shooting at you. He’s got a high-powered rifle.”

The helicopter swung away, dropping down below the level of the roadway. There was no traffic at all on this section of the highway now; one of the Highway Patrol cars had swung round and gone back half a mile to halt all traffic coming up from Sydney. Beyond the huge fire and the towering boiling smoke the traffic was banked up for at least a mile. Their Big Day, it seemed, had finished before it had even begun. History was just a repeat performance: every summer these fires broke out, homes were lost, people’s lives ruined.

The SWOS men, flak jackets on, properly booted, automatic weapons at the ready, were already
leaving
the roadway and plunging down the rocky slope towards the deep gully where the trees and bushes were still green and uncharred. Malone, in his dinner jacket and party shoes, his gun in his hand, went after them.

Clements yelled, “Scobie! Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m not going to miss the end of this!”

“Shit!” said Clements and followed him.

Graham looked at the young driver. “There’s no fools like old fools. Right?”

“I know where I’m going to stay,” said the driver, and did.

Down in the gully Seville, the canvas bag hanging by its strap from his shoulder, was beginning to panic again. Suddenly all his confidence had gone; he had chosen the wrong territory in which to match his skill against that of the New South Wales police. He was not a novice in rough terrain. As a youth he had tramped through the Enchanted Valley in Patagonia, through its forests of conifers and false beeches and past its strangely shaped rocks; he had climbed in the Andes that separated Argentina from Chile and had done the same in the Alps of Switzerland when he had lived there some years ago. He had trained in the guerrilla camps of the Bekaa valley, clambering over the rocky, treeless hills above Baalbek; and once, escaping from a betrayed Red Brigade bomb plot in Naples, he had walked over the southern Appenines from Salerno to Bari. But this Australian bush was something else again.

The rocks seemed to have done little to hinder the growth of the forest. The trees appeared to grow out of the rocks; every step between them had to be negotiated carefully. There could be no striding out, no sliding down a leaf-covered slope. And above him the tall canopies shut out all landmarks, so very soon he had no idea where he was heading except downwards.

He could hear the helicopter somewhere overhead and when it swung away he could hear the shouts of men up the steep slope behind him. Though it was still early, down here the heat was humid and heavy, as if the fires on the ridges had kept it from escaping during the night. His knee was hurting, hampering him each time he put weight on it. He was sweating profusely and it shocked him that it was not all from the heat: he was afraid, too. This dense forest was trapping him, closing in on him. He slid off
a
rock into a patch of dead brown leaves; a thick stick turned into a large brown snake and slid away from beneath him. He gasped, choking on the breath.

Then he came to a rocky stream, narrow and beginning to dry up. He bent down, scooped cool water into his face from a clear pool, then drank some. He straightened up, took the Sako out of the canvas bag and quickly assembled it. He loaded it and shoved the extra ammunition into his trouser pockets. He dumped his jacket and the canvas bag, debated whether to take the second Smith and Wesson with him, decided against it and left it.

The helicopter came back, seen now above the narrow patch of open sky above the creek, and he ducked back under the trees. Then he started to clamber up the opposite slope towards the top of the second ridge. He had no idea how many ridges he would have to climb before he was safe; for all he knew they might stretch to the western borders of the State. He knew nothing of the vast plains that, like the pampas of Argentina, began less than a hundred miles from here. He had not expected to have to battle the continent: he had come expecting to travel no further than the limits of the city on the harbour.

Malone, reasonably fit but no bush walker and certainly not shod properly, was having just as much difficulty as Seville in negotiating the down slope of the gully. The SWOS men, younger and more agile, had gone ahead of him. Clements, younger but out of condition and not in the least agile, was somewhere up above him, stumbling over rock, crashing into trees and swearing all the time. Malone, sweating profusely, tore off his jacket and dropped it over a bush; Lisa, a careful guardian of clothes, would ask him tonight where it was and he had better remember. His party shoes, he knew, would be useless after this, but that couldn’t be helped. If needs be, he would go after Seville in his bare feet. He hadn’t attempted to analyse his passion to capture Seville. He just knew it had to be done and he had to be there when it was done.

He could hear the clatter of the helicopter as he came down to a thin creek; it was up above the facing slope, so that meant Seville was heading for the top of the opposite ridge. He wondered why, as he crossed the creek, Seville hadn’t gone down it: the going would have been easier. Then he heard the automatics firing.

He
clambered up between the trees, slipping on the smooth rocks, panting like an old man making love. Christ, he thought, I’m going to die of a bloody heart attack! He paused, gulping for breath, and looked back down through the trees. Clements had just reached the creek. He was lying flat on the ground, like a black crocodile, his face buried in one of the pools of the creek. Then he rolled over and dipped his head backwards into the water. He looked as if he was prepared to lie there all day.

The automatic firing broke out again. Malone turned and clambered on, praying desperately he would be there before Seville died. Sweat was blinding him, his breath came out of his lungs like fire. He came up behind a SWOS man, fell against a tree and managed to gasp, “Where is he?”

The SWOS man, for all his youth and fitness, was also sweating and gasping; Malone felt a little better, psychologically if not physically. The SWOS man pointed and Malone looked up through the striped trunks of the eucalypts. “I can’t see him.”

“He’s in that nest of rocks, sir. He’s just got one of our men.”

“Killed or wounded?”

“Killed, I think. I saw him go down—he’d been hit in the face.” He looked at Malone. “Did you want this guy alive?”

“Preferably.”

The man looked disappointed; he nodded reluctantly. “Okay, we’ll do our best.”

Up in the jumble of rough-edged rocks Seville knew he had at last come to the end of the road. Though he had spent a third of his life in alien lands, often at risk, it had never occurred to him that he might die in a land as alien as this. Yet he knew it was about to happen. There was no death penalty here in Australia; with the killings he had committed they would send him to prison for ever. Death was a much better prospect than that.