No Man's Land - A Russell Carter Thriller (7 page)

5

Five minutes later Carter was driving along the two-lane highway at seventy-five miles an hour, several car lengths behind Erina’s black four-wheel drive. They were heading toward a local restaurant, which she said served breakfast and lunch all day. He was in need of food. He hadn’t eaten anything except for a banana he’d grabbed when he went home that morning to pick up his daypack and ute.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror for the third time. An iron-grey van maintained an even distance of a hundred and fifty yards behind him. It suggested his visit to the resort hadn’t passed unnoticed.

Erina would’ve spotted the tail as well.

Up ahead he saw a sign for the Billabong Restaurant and Guesthouse.

Erina’s four-wheel drive turned right and headed toward a clapboard cottage with a bullnose verandah sitting a hundred yards in from the highway. A parking area in front of the verandah was marked
Restaurant Visitors
. A single-storey red-brick motel wing had been built to the left of the restaurant, looking like it’d been tacked on as an afterthought without any effort to match the original homestead-style architecture. It had a flat roof with a large white satellite dish placed on top of it at the far end of the building. There were car spaces in front of each of the six rooms, none of which was occupied.

Further to the left of the motel there was an additional parking area marked
Coaches and Truck Stop
, which backed onto thick scrubland. That was empty.

He pulled into a car space in front of the restaurant between Erina’s car and a white Winnebago motorhome covered with fine red dust, the only other vehicle.

After switching off the ignition, he looked in the rear-view mirror. The van slowed while it passed the restaurant, then accelerated away.

Carter pulled the binoculars from the bottom of his daypack, stepped out of his ute and watched the van speed off toward the horizon.

Erina climbed out of her vehicle and stood next to him. “Great work, Carter. First you blow my cover and now you pick up a tail. I hope you’ve got a good explanation.”

“Let’s grab a table and I’ll fill you in.”

Carter followed Erina up three wooden stairs to the verandah, which led into a surprisingly modern sun-drenched interior. He paused inside the front door and noted three potential exit points: the entrance, kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen and bathroom were both situated at the rear left of the square room.

An elderly couple, the only other guests, sat eating their meal in the middle of the restaurant, facing a floor-to-ceiling window at the back. It framed a natural billabong, a small pond created after a river changes its course. It was surrounded by tall spindly gums and low-lying bush. Soft jazz played in the background.

Carter and Erina exchanged a look and chose a table at the front of the restaurant near the right side wall. Erina’s high heels clipped over the polished wooden floorboards. They both sat facing the entrance, their backs to the billabong, giving them a clear line of sight out to the highway.

“Okay, we’re sitting down,” Erina said. “Start talking.”

She sounded angry, but Carter didn’t respond. He was waiting for the van that had been following them to return.

“Don’t even think about messing with me,” she said.

“What are you going to do? Knock me out again? Trust me, I’m not here because I want to be.”

“Just tell me what’s happened.”

“Erina, you need to chill out.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

He’d forgotten how fired up she became if she felt he’d slighted her.

A young waitress approached and handed them a menu. With a warm smile, she asked, “Can I get you something to drink?”

Outside, above the hum of the air conditioning and the light clatter from the kitchen, Carter identified the sound he’d been expecting: the purr of an engine and tires crunching on gravel.

They both looked out the window at the same time. Erina had clearly heard it too. It was the grey van.

“We’ll order in a minute,” Erina said to the waitress, who nodded and walked away.

Twenty yards from the restaurant the van veered along the path that led to the truck and coaches parking area, out of sight from where they sat. The vehicle’s windows were heavily tinted, making it impossible to see who was inside.

Erina stood, took off her glasses and placed them on the table.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m going to check it out.”

He stood up. “Let me do it.”

“Why?”

“I’d hate to see you ruin your outfit. Especially the heels.” He looked her directly in the eye. “You look good.”

She stared back at him without acknowledging the compliment.

After a few seconds’ thought, she sat back down and with the hint of a smile said, “Okay, it’s about time you did some work.”

She pulled her phone out of her shoulder bag. “I’ll call Thomas and find out why the change of plan.”

“You do that.”

He slung the daypack over his left shoulder and perused the menu while he stood. “And while you’re at it, order me two turkey sandwiches on rye and a double-shot, extra-hot coffee.”

Without waiting for a response, he headed for the rest room at the back of the restaurant.

6

Carter pushed through the door of the men’s room and locked it behind him. There was an opaque glass window high up above the single toilet’s cistern. He grabbed the handtowel from next to the sink and shoved it into his daypack.

He closed the toilet seat cover, stood on it and examined the window. It was open a few inches at the base, as far as it would go without breaking. Carter lined up the heel of his hand with the window base and struck hard. The cheap lock and hinge exploded, dropping to the ground, and the window snapped wide open.

He stepped onto the cistern, squeezed his head and shoulders through the opening and studied the terrain. A dirt path ran behind the restaurant, in front of the billabong, and continued behind the back of the motel. It led to the coach and truck-parking stop, which he couldn’t see from the window. A thick cover of scrub surrounded the back of the property on the other side of the dirt track. It’d provide good cover.

He tossed his daypack out the window, then stuck his head and shoulders through again and inched his torso forward, to a point where he was half in and half out. The top of his thighs balanced on the window ledge. He looked down at the ten-foot drop to the ground, hanging in limbo for two breaths, then pushed himself further forward until gravity kicked in.

His body began sliding toward the ground. He raised his legs, arched his back and pressed his hands against the outside wall.

His slide gathered momentum.

At the critical moment, just before he started to freefall, he shoved hard against the wall with both hands and, tucking his head onto his chest, used his stomach muscles to force his legs over his head into a pike, doing a backflip in midair. He landed on the balls of his feet and stumbled a few steps forward to regain his balance.

It’d been a long time since he’d done something like that. He looked up at the open window and gave himself a 7.6 out of 10 for the effort.

Then he switched his attention to the roof of the motel. He needed to climb up and see what he was up against. Once he knew the strength, size and nature of the threat, his next move would become obvious.

A rusty drainpipe ran up the middle of the fifteen-foot-high brick wall of the motel. He tested the pipe’s strength with both hands. The metal was hot enough to brand a cow, but it’d hold his weight and get him to the roof.

He took the handtowel from his pack, ripped it in two and wound the two halves around his hands. Then he climbed the wall, using the drainpipe for purchase.

When his head came level with the guttering that ran around the roof, he checked the ground below him.

Right then left. All clear.

He pulled himself onto the flat tiled roof, padded across it and squatted behind the satellite dish that sat above the last guestroom, closest to the truck stop, glad the fierce sun was at his back.

He removed a small leather pouch from his pack, hung it around his neck and peered around the satellite dish. About a hundred feet away he spotted two men leaning on the hood of the grey van. He recognized them as the two bikers from the Wobbly Boot.

Just two things were different. They’d traded their bikes for a van and had handguns shoved down the front of their belts. The taller of the two handed a packet of tobacco to the other, who started rolling a cigarette.

A third guy was walking away from them and heading toward the back of the motel. He was short and stocky and wore a battered akubra hat, blue jeans that sat below his potbelly and scuffed riding boots. He held a lit cigarette in his left hand and a pump-action shotgun in his right.

If there was one weapon Carter hated coming up against, it was a shotgun – a lazy weapon that required no skill or finesse. All the person holding the weapon had to do was point the thing in the general direction of their target and pull the trigger. Even an incompetent amateur could neutralize the most highly skilled adversary. Carter rarely used one because of the danger of injuring others nearby.

The shotgun glinted in the sunlight. The man reached the back wall of the motel directly below where Carter crouched.

Carter blinked the sweat out of his eyes and held himself perfectly still, breathing softly. He ignored the flies crawling over his face. He needed to take the guy out before he knew what hit him. But first the guy had to move forward another few paces so he was hidden from his two mates.

Carter shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and adjusted his position as he watched the guy walk past him slowly.

The man tossed his cigarette on the ground and held his weapon with both hands, like he was expecting trouble.

Then he turned and looked up at the roof.

Carter realized his body must have thrown a slight shadow across the ground. Something he should’ve anticipated. He was out of practice.

The man squinted and started to raise the shotgun to his shoulder.

7

Carter’s body responded without conscious thought. He leaped off the roof, flying feet first through the air.

The guy wasn’t so well trained. His eyes widened and his body froze.

The heel of Carter’s shoe smashed into the guy’s temple, hitting the vulnerable point level with the top of his right ear.

Carter hit the ground hard, landing on his back.

The shotgun dropped onto the track and the man’s body collapsed backward like a sack of potatoes, making little sound.

Carter moved behind the guy and grabbed his head and shoulders, clamping his left forearm under the guy’s chin and around his neck, ready to pull back if he met any resistance, but there was none. He was out cold.

Carter released his hold, reached into the leather pouch around his neck and extracted a drug-tipped dart. He removed the plastic tip with his teeth and jabbed the sharp point into the guy’s neck. That’d keep him out of action for at least a couple of hours.

He rolled the unconscious man over, emptied the pockets of his moleskins and found a set of keys, a cell phone and a leather wallet. All of which went into his daypack.

He dragged the guy into the shadowy space underneath the restaurant’s rest room and hid the shotgun in the bushes. Then he moved down the path to the end of the motel and checked that the guy’s two mates were still at the van. They hadn’t moved.

He veered to his right into the thick undergrowth and circled around the coach and truck stop until he reached a position on the far side. The van was about twenty yards away now, and his two targets just in front of it. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted across the hot air.

The two men stood staring in the direction of the restaurant, looking away from where Carter was.

He opened his daypack, took out two thin black cylinders and screwed them together, creating one of his favorite weapons, a twelve-inch blowpipe.

Next he extracted two darts from the leather pouch, removed the plastic tips with his teeth and started counting down his breaths.
Ten, nine, eight …

When he got to three, he started walking out of the bushes toward the van, treading lightly to make as little noise as possible on the gravel. He stopped at the back of the van, only feet from them, and stood motionless.

“What I wouldn’t do for a few cold beers,” one of the men said.

“How about after we grab these fuckers, we head into town, go to the whorehouse, get drunk and fuck ourselves silly?”

“Have to twist me arm.”

They laughed, like this was a great joke.

Carter slipped one of the darts into his mouth, lifted the blowpipe to his lips and sucked in a lungful of air.

He stepped out from behind the van. The men were still watching the restaurant while they smoked.

The bigger of the two started to turn in Carter’s direction.

Carter blew hard.

The guy grabbed his cheek. “What the …”

His body slumped forward.

The other guy turned, opened his mouth and reached for his gun.

Too late.

The second dart caught him in the throat.

He collapsed onto the ground on top of his mate.

Carter dragged the two men behind the van and into the scrub.

Like their mate, they’d be out of action for at least two hours. He’d give them a wake-up dose if he needed to interrogate them.

He searched their clothing and came up with two handguns, both high-caliber Smith & Wessons, two cell phones, two wallets, two sets of keys and two packs of gum, one spearmint and the other extra-white, for a brighter smile.

He stuffed the phones, the wallet and the guns into his daypack and the gum into his trouser pocket. Then he stood up.

The three guys would keep until after he’d eaten.

8

Carter walked back toward the restaurant, pushing his hair back into place and brushing the red dust and grime off his T-shirt and trousers. He was wondering how Erina would take the news when he told her about Thomas and Wayan.

Erina was ice-cool in the execution of her duties – even clinical – but this wasn’t an ordinary job. Thomas was her father.

Carter had only seen Erina really lose it once, but it had genuinely frightened him. One time, before their brief affair, they’d busted a pedophile gang in Bangkok. A ringleader led them to a secret underground chamber where he kept a select number of underage workers for his own pleasure, some as young as six, lying naked and mute in steel cages. Erina exploded, blowing their cover and jeopardizing the operation. She would’ve killed him but for Carter’s intervention.

Erina’s past was even more challenging than his own. When she was fifteen and Carter twenty, she’d been kidnapped by an organized crime gang off the streets of Bangkok. They had used her as a bargaining chip in an effort to force the order to drop an investigation into one of their leaders. It had taken Carter and Thomas two weeks to track her down and rescue her from a property near Chiang Mai, from where she was taken to hospital and examined. No serious injuries or evidence of sexual abuse were found, but she’d refused to this day to speak about what had happened.

A month after Erina’s return, her American mother had announced that she was leaving Thomas and returning to Boston, taking their only child with her. It proved to be a defining moment in Erina’s life. She refused to go. She’d always been Thomas’s daughter, a fighter who had more courage in her than most adults.

She’d begun training from the age of five and was already highly skilled in the martial arts at the time of her abduction. The experience motivated her to work even harder to become a sanjuro and fight for those unable to protect themselves. It’d also made her wary of physical and emotional intimacy with anyone she didn’t trust completely.

Carter entered the cool of the restaurant and exchanged a nod with the grey-haired couple paying their check, then headed toward the table where Erina sat holding a fork in one hand, hovering over a green salad, while staring at her cell phone as if willing it to ring.

She looked up and ran her eyes over him. “You’ve certainly made a mess of yourself.”

“Better me than you,” he said, brushing at the stains on his shirt.

He settled in the seat opposite her, drank down the glass of water the waitress had left and took a bite of his turkey sandwich without really tasting it.

She placed her phone on the table. “What happened?”

He opened his daypack, checking that the two guns and cell phones were there on top, then slid the bag along the floor toward her.

She peered inside. “So they weren’t making a social call?”

He took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “You could say that.”

“Where are they now?”

He jerked his head toward the bushes outside. “Sound asleep.”

“Caucasians or Indonesians?”

“Caucasian.”

“I’m sure I know who they work for.”

He took another bite of sandwich, waiting for her to say more. She looked at him sideways.

“Something’s happened to Thomas, hasn’t it?”

He pushed his plate to one side and gave her his full attention. “Yes.”

She mouthed the word
fuck
and said, “Tell me everything.”

He gave her a detailed run-down of what had unfolded since she’d driven off from the property outside of Lennox that morning, including the attack on the order at Ubud. He knew better than to try to keep anything from her.

She sat in silence while he spoke and never took her focus off him.

When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and let what he’d said sink in.

She kept her voice low and controlled. “Those Sungkar bastards.” Then she put her glasses and phone in her shoulder bag and stood up.

Carter got to his feet. “What are you doing?”

“I know where the clan will be holding them.”

He grabbed her keys from the table. “Sit down. I saw how they operated at Lennox. They’re far from amateurs. We need to think this through.”

They stood looking at each other without moving. Neither said a word.

The kitchen door swung open. The waitress walked across the dining room and said, “Is everything all right?”

“Can I get a fresh coffee, please?” Carter asked. “Erina, you want anything?”

She shook her head.

The waitress forced a smile and said, “Be right back.”

She turned and walked back to the kitchen.

He placed his right hand on Erina’s shoulder. “We’re going to get them back,” he said. “I promise.”

Her head dropped and she took a deep breath.

“Whatever it takes,” he said. “Now sit down and talk to me.” He guided her back into her chair. “So, who do you reckon these guys work for?”

Erina put out her hand. “Give me their phones.”