Prohibited Zone (35 page)

We probably would have rolled anyway. We were going too fast and changed direction too fast, and the sand was too loose. The vehicle lurched, reached its tipping point and overbalanced. The side airbags deployed in a sudden explosion. More gnashing of steel and a strange sort of metallic moaning as the car rolled onto its side and then onto its back. Glass tinkled. Then silence. Distantly I was aware of a receding diesel engine.

‘Fuck,' said Hindmarsh, his first word for several hours. The airbag on my left had already deflated. I was still in my seat, upside down, the seatbelt holding me in place. I did a quick check and found I still had four limbs, none of them particularly damaged. I turned my head to the left and right without discomfort and concluded I was unscathed. Hindmarsh was unbuckling his belt, one arm stretched below to prevent him from landing on his head. I did the same and we extracted ourselves from the vehicle through our side windows.

Baz had pulled up and was leaning on his car.

‘Traffic's bad out here,' he said.

Hindmarsh kicked in the rear window of the upturned vehicle with his foot and grabbed his briefcase from the back seat. He ran back towards the salt lake, the direction in which the oncoming vehicle had gone. Baz and I jogged after him. Soon we were standing at the edge of the salt lake, the light good enough now to see to the far side. The Land Cruiser was heading diagonally across the lake in a roughly southwesterly direction, away from the track that had led us in. Hindmarsh was crouched on one knee, a pistol in his hand, his briefcase open beside him. He trained the pistol on the receding vehicle, already more than a kilometre away, and fired four shots in quick succession. I couldn't tell if any of them hit, but I doubted it. The target took a couple of deliberate swerves and kept beating across the lake. Soon it had reached the edge, climbed a sandhill and disappeared from view.

‘Not sure where he thinks he's going,' commented Baz. ‘Not much out that way except more salt lakes, more dunes and more gibber.' Baz had driven all night but looked fresh, his skin uncreased in the reflected salt-white light of the lake. He was unshaven, but on him it looked like designer stubble. I was reassured to see an ironic half-smile in place.

‘Who was it?' I asked Hindmarsh. He was back on his feet, still staring at the point at which the vehicle had disappeared. He hadn't weathered the night well. His skin was yellow and he looked like he wanted to throw up. His stubble just looked dirty.

‘Who do you fucking think? Jesus!' He pocketed his gun and ran to the Land Cruiser. I shivered, aware for the first time of the cold.

‘I don't think it was Jesus,' said Baz. ‘And I've got a feeling this isn't going to be a good day.' I could see his breath, and my own.

We followed Hindmarsh to where his Land Cruiser lay like a turtle on its back. He was rummaging about in the upturned contents at the rear of the vehicle. He found what he was looking for, a tow rope. He secured it to the vehicle's back axle just near the left wheel.

‘Back your car up,' he said to Baz. Baz gave him a mock salute and did what he asked. Hindmarsh tied the rope to the underside of the Prado and stepped back. ‘Take the strain,' he said. ‘Slowly.'

Baz knew what to do. He put the car into low range and, after a bit of straining and spinning of tyres, the Land Cruiser was righted with a thump, looking ten years older. Hindmarsh immediately detached and stowed the tow rope. Then he jumped into the driver's seat, started the engine and drove off in the direction we had been heading before the accident.

‘We might as well follow him,' I said to Baz.

27

W
E WERE THERE IN THIRTY MINUTES
. We traversed a series of small red sandhills, which gave way to a red gibber flat on either side of a salt-caked drainage line. Squatting in this bleak landscape was a small ATCO hut, no more than four metres across, painted with camouflage markings in green, tan and beige and, for good measure, draped in camouflage netting. It was mounted on concrete footings and had what looked like a steel-clad door with a single step up to it. I couldn't see a window. It looked like it had dropped out of the sky and probably had. Twenty metres or so from the hut was a large canvas command tent with similar camouflage markings, and about forty metres beyond that was a small generator connected to the tent and ATCO hut by a cable. When Baz turned off the engine of his car I could hear the generator puttering away. The tent had an awning, under which were three camp chairs, several plastic tubs with close-fitting lids and a small table. Between the tent and the ATCO hut were three dead people.

‘Looks like Amir has had a busy morning,' said Baz. Hindmarsh was already out of his vehicle and kneeling beside one of the corpses. Baz and I joined him. The chill was leaving the desert for the day but it had descended upon the prostrate figure forever. He was lying on his back, his eyes and mouth open. There was a neat little hole in the middle of his forehead and almost no blood. His skin was a peculiar drained kind of grey and had that dull look that human skin gets when its life force is gone. Even the blue eyes looked as if a blind had been pulled across behind them. But I recognised the face; I'd seen it at Spuds in the company of Hindmarsh. The haircut was still precise, the little moustache neatly clipped, the hair still grey. There was a white earpiece in his left ear. A thin white wire led from the earpiece to his breast pocket, where a white iPod was poking out. A second earpiece had fallen out of his right ear and lay on the ground next to him. The iPod was still playing; I could hear tinny music.

‘What's his name?' I asked.

Hindmarsh ran his hand over the corpse's eyes, closing them.

‘Brad,' he said.

‘Yank?' asked Baz. Hindmarsh didn't answer. He had moved over to a second body, which was sprawled on its stomach a few metres away. ‘He looks like a Yank to me,' said Baz.

‘That's what I thought when I saw him the other night,' I said. ‘He was at Spuds.'

‘That's right,' said Baz, remembering by rubbing his stubbly chin. ‘He was there with Hindmarsh. He could be one of your abductors, the one with the strange accent.'

‘It wasn't an American accent,' I said. I had a sudden thought. ‘You know what it was? It was an American accent trying to be Australian. I thought it sounded familiar – like Meryl Streep trying to do Lindy Chamberlain in
Evil Angels
. You know, “a dingo has taken my boiby”.'

‘That solves a mystery, then,' said Baz. ‘An American accent might have been a giveaway, so he just covered it up.'

The tinny music continued.

‘I think it's Elvis,' said Baz. ‘He was listening to Elvis.' He removed the iPod from Brad's pocket and switched it off. ‘He can't hear it anymore,' he said, almost apologetically. ‘Maybe where he is he can hear Elvis live now, anyway.' He touched Brad's skin. ‘Cool. Probably been dead a good hour.' Except it hadn't been a good hour for Brad.

Hindmarsh had rolled the second corpse onto its back. Another white male, probably younger than Brad, with several days' worth of stubble on his face, closely cropped black hair and what might once have been a sexy scar just under his eye. I couldn't immediately see where he had been shot but it was academic, anyway; he was just as dead as Brad. He was wearing only boxer shorts and had nothing on his feet.

‘Jesus,' muttered Hindmarsh, mainly to himself. He looked up at us and for a moment there was pain on his face. Then he mastered it and turned it back into a snarl.

‘Friend of yours?' asked Baz.

‘Work colleague. Who wasn't careful enough. Rod was his name.'

There was a pistol on the ground next to the body. Baz picked it up and sniffed it. ‘Smells like it's been fired.'

The third corpse was sprawled near the doorway of the ATCO hut. His throat had been cut with what must have been a very crude weapon. The wound was wide, deep and ragged and would have hurt like hell. But maybe it hadn't killed him because he also had what looked like a bullet wound in his chest. His still-open eyes and face were dotted with brown-red specks I eventually decided were grains of sand.

Hindmarsh was staring at the corpse. ‘Neil was a mate,' he said. ‘He didn't deserve this.' He staggered a metre or two and vomited.

Baz and I went into the hut. It wasn't much different to any other prison cell. There was a smell of shit. The only furniture was a broken, handleless plastic bucket, the source of the smell. A bright electric light was still on overhead, protected by a steel-mesh grate bolted to the ceiling. The fibro walls were dirty white, a couple of them decorated with spatterings of fresh blood. There was no bed, no bedclothes, no chair, no nothing.

‘What did he do for sustenance, lick the floor?' I asked, without needing an answer.

‘They've been torturing him,' said Baz.

‘Where's the rack?'

‘Don't need one. There are all sorts of ways to break someone. You don't need to wire up his testicles or anything, although they might have done that as well. But just making the bastard stand up all night would be torture, especially if he was wet. It gets fucking cold out here at night.'

I contemplated the room for a while longer. Then I looked out the door at Hindmarsh, who had finished spilling his guts but was still on all fours, his head bowed. I went out to him and pushed him on the side with my foot. He toppled over but scrambled immediately to his feet.

‘What have you been up to?' I pushed him in the chest with my hand. He took a step back and then lunged forward, swinging his fist at me. It missed.

‘Fuck off, West.'

‘Running your own private war, aren't you? Thanks for inviting us.'

‘Fuck off. Anyway, you invited yourself.' He took another swing at me. He was quick, and this time I stumbled as I stepped back and he landed a glancing blow. I made it look as if he had hurt me more than he had and exaggerated the stumble. Then I went in low, sinking my fist into his solar plexus. As he doubled over I kneed him in the face with less power. He fell backwards.

‘Now you have three dead colleagues and a killer on the loose,' I said. ‘Good work.' I stepped back and felt the side of my face where the blow had landed. It was no sorer than the rest of my face and there didn't appear to be any fresh blood.

‘Fuck off,' he repeated. He stood up. He was breathing hard and there was hate in his eyes. He'd had all the training and he'd just been whipped by an amateur. He didn't like it. Maybe he was starting to realise he wasn't as good as he thought he was. Baz had been standing off, watching, but now he stepped between us and pushed us in opposite directions with hands on our chests.

‘As far as I can work out, we're all sort of on the same side here,' he said.

‘The fuck we are,' said Hindmarsh. He glared at me. I glared back. We had a glaring contest. Then he let the gibber he had been clutching drop from his hand. Big red blobs of blood were dripping from his nose and mouth and from his chin to the ground. He wiped his face with this sleeve and looked at it.

‘You'll keep, West,' he said. ‘You'll keep.'

‘Anyone have any ideas about what to do with our three corpses?' asked Baz.

‘We'll stow them in the hut,' said Hindmarsh, looking away from me at last. ‘After that I'm going hunting.'

Baz had his mocking half-smile going. He nodded at me, almost imperceptibly.

‘Not on your own you won't,' I said. ‘We're going to give you what you should have had from the start. A bit of public oversight.'

Amir might have left the camp in a hurry but he had dealt efficiently with the essentials. Hindmarsh did a quick stocktake and found that the satellite phone was missing, along with three pistols, two large plastic containers of water, about forty litres of diesel and various items of food. And one sniper rifle.

‘Just a minor problem, that,' observed Baz.

‘You don't have to come,' growled Hindmarsh. Baz had tended his wounds, packing one of his nostrils with cotton wad and replacing a tooth.

‘Wouldn't miss it,' said Baz. ‘But with a weapon like that he could pick us off one by one without us ever seeing him.'

‘As far as I can tell, he didn't take any ammo,' said Hindmarsh. ‘There are a couple of hundred rounds in the back of the tent. Maybe he didn't see them. It's possible the gun isn't even loaded.'

‘Possible, or likely?'

Hindmarsh shrugged. ‘Can't know for sure. Standard practice is to keep a thing like that unloaded until you need it. But the boys could have been shooting roos or something and left a round or two in it.'

‘What is it?'

‘SR-98. Accuracy International.'

‘Ten rounds in a cartridge?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Alright. He wouldn't bother taking it if it wasn't loaded, so we assume he has at least ten rounds with him. Do you have anything like that in the back of your truck?'