Prohibited Zone (38 page)

Hindmarsh was close now, perhaps twenty metres away, but far enough that I didn't think he had heard what Baz had been saying. I had a clear line of sight to him. He had moved in an arc so that he was still behind Amir but to his left now, and was making sure he wouldn't be in Baz's line of fire. Amir still hadn't moved. The gun hadn't wavered.

‘I'm sorry,' Baz said again. ‘I came out here to find you. To save you the trouble of finding me.'

‘Yes, I wan' fin' you,' said Amir.

‘How did you know? What happened?' I asked.

‘Saira, she waig up,' said Amir, his eyes not leaving Baz. ‘She tell me whad 'app'n.'

‘I knew she did,' said Baz. ‘I knew later, when I saw her again. I knew she knew. Jesus.'

For a long time afterwards I wondered if I could have done something to prevent what happened next. Maybe I should have called out to Hindmarsh sooner, warned Amir about him. Hindmarsh had taken up his shooter's stance, legs splayed. He was gripping his pistol in two hands and aiming it at Amir. I was waiting for him to announce himself, to call on Amir to drop his gun. Then it occurred to me that he wasn't going to. Even from that distance it was clear he was preparing to shoot.

‘NO, HINDMARSH!' I yelled, taking a step forward and holding out my hand. Too little, too late, too useless.

It was Baz, I think, who fired first. His gun had been hanging loose at his side but it jerked up and fired with extraordinary speed. It seemed as though Baz hadn't moved a muscle. The shot was so loud I thought my eardrum had burst. The second shot was almost as loud. Two shots, two hits. Twenty metres away, Hindmarsh buckled and fell. Amir had been spared. He was still standing, his pistol still pointing at Baz. Or where Baz used to be, because Baz had fallen. He was lying face down on the gibber-strewn ground in a lazy, elegant sprawl, one arm beneath him and the other outstretched, still holding the Luger.

‘Baz, you okay?'

He didn't reply. I looked at Amir and made a gesture that I hoped told him I was not a threat and was only going to the aid of my friend. Then I bent down and felt Baz's throat for a pulse. I found it, but it was as feeble as Elvis through an iPod.

‘Baz, you're still alive,' I said, stupidly. I rolled him gently onto his back, using his hip and shoulder as points of leverage and trying to minimise movement in his spine, the way I'd been taught in first aid. His face was pale, almost grey, and his shirt was wet with blood. I ripped it open and found the wound, a dark hole in his chest somewhere close to the heart. Blood was oozing out of it. I tore off my own shirt, bundled it up and pressed it against the hole to try to stop the bleeding. Then I looked at his face. His eyes were open and they could see death. I propped his head up with my free hand. He made an effort to focus. He groaned, and his face twisted in pain.

‘This is fucked, eh, Westie?' he said. His voice was a gravel whisper.

‘You'll be right, Baz.'

‘I'd rather be having a beer by the pool.'

‘Me too, mate.'

His lips formed an awful smile. He looked down, towards his chest, to my bloodied hand pressing my shirt to his wound.

‘Lot of blood.'

‘Not so much, mate. I've seen worse.'

‘Might need another heart.'

‘I've always said that about you.'

I heard a movement nearby and looked up to see that Amir had walked over, gun still in hand. He loomed over us.

‘I thing he shood me,' he said.

‘He shot Hindmarsh, not you.'

‘I know now.' He stepped away a few paces and fired his gun into the ground, repeatedly, until the magazine was empty. The bullets buried themselves, spent, in the hard Australian desert, joining the gibbers for all time. Then he tossed the gun away.

‘Enough,' he said. ‘No more shood.'

He was wrong, though. There was one more shoot. Beyond him, Hindmarsh was stirring. For the first time I realised he wasn't dead. It struck me at the time as a great shame.

‘Hey arsehole, what are you going to do?' I yelled. Amir looked behind him. Still lying on the ground, Hindmarsh shifted his position, pointed his pistol at Amir, and fired. It wasn't a bad shot at twenty paces. The bullet struck Amir in the middle of his forehead. He fell to the ground and didn't move.

Hindmarsh slumped again, one hand clutching his thigh and the other still holding the gun out in front. I rested Baz's head on the ground and ran to Hindmarsh. He was looking at his leg and grimacing in pain. He heard me coming but before he could react I kicked the gun out of his hand. It clattered among the gibbers.

‘Just in case you don't think there are enough dead people yet.' I collected the gun and threw it as far as I could. ‘Stay there and die, will you?'

‘Rice shot me. Why the fuck did he do that?'

‘Because you're an arsehole.' But I was no longer interested in Hindmarsh. I took a quick look at Amir but he had died the moment the bullet had struck him. I ripped off his shirt because I needed another towel.

Baz was even paler, his breathing very laboured. His face was contorted with pain, his eyes screwed shut. He had gathered some gibbers in his fist and was squeezing them tight. Viscous flecks of pink spittle had appeared in the corner of his mouth. Flies were checking out the habitat of his face and liking it. I brushed them away but they were persistent. I rested my hand on his brow and he opened his eyes and searched my face.

‘Do me a favour, Westie?'

‘Yes, I'm going to get you to a hospital.'

He tried to smile, of course. He was talking out of the side of his mouth, now, each word a struggle. ‘Silly bastard, you are. Always said that . . . about you.' He held the attempted smile for a few more seconds, then it shuffled off and the look of death came back, stronger than ever. ‘Don't tell Mum.

About this.'

‘Of course not.'

‘Break her heart.'

‘You hang on, Baz. Leaving us is what would break her heart.'

‘Tell Saira . . . I'm sorry.'

‘Of course.'

He closed his eyes. ‘Couldn't stop m'self. Knew it was wrong . . . couldn't stop.'

‘Take it easy, mate.'

‘Worried me. What else was I capable of?'

‘Is that why you came out here?'

He didn't answer. Each breath had a gurgle to it now and he coughed up a gob of rich red blood. I mopped it up with the tail of Amir's shirt.

‘Hold on, Baz.' His eyes flickered open and then closed again. He stopped breathing. ‘Baz!' I shook him, gently, as if I might be able to nudge him back to life. But he was gone. I placed his head gently on the stony ground and folded his arms across his chest. I took the gibbers from his hand and put them in my pocket.

‘See you, Baz,' I whispered.

I touched his face. Death had changed it. Whatever it was that had made him human was gone, now and for all time. Baz's time was spent.

30

I
CARRIED HIM BACK BECAUSE
I didn't want to leave him for the dingoes, but I had to leave Amir. Hindmarsh had bound up his leg but could hardly walk and I left him behind, cursing black and blue. I couldn't have cared less if he had bled to death out there.

Coming down the steepest part of the hill was no fun at all. I slid part of the way but I never dropped Baz. By the time we got back to the car the sun had set and the long dusk had mellowed the desert and the heat and the flies. My knee was hurting like buggery. I grabbed a tarp out of the back of the vehicle and wrapped Baz in it. Then I took a long drink of warm water from the twenty-litre container in the back. I went to Hindmarsh's car and flicked on his satellite navigation system to get the coordinates of our location. Then I grabbed his satellite phone and walked back to Baz's car. I looked through my wallet and found the card of Ian Dickson, the cop at Woomera, and dialled him up. It was after eight and I guessed he'd be at Spuds. He was; I could hear the clink of billiard balls in the background.

‘Westie, you bastard,' he said.

‘Dicko, I've got five dead men, including one Afghan suspected terrorist. Interested?' My voice was hoarse; even to me it sounded lifeless.

‘Jesus. Of course I'm fucken interested. What's going on? Where are you? You sound terrible.'

I filled him in very briefly.

‘Baz Rice is dead?'

‘Yes, but for Christ's sake keep it to yourself. Look, ASIO's in this, mate. They'll want to hush it all up, so you'd better get out here as fast as you can.' I gave him the coordinates. ‘I'm going to call Tarrant, too, but you'll be the first one on the ground.'

I hung up and called Tarrant. He wasn't happy to hear from me, especially after I told him what had happened. The only part I left out was Baz's indecent act at the detention centre.

‘How the fuck did you manage to conjure up five dead bodies?' asked Tarrant. ‘What a mess.'

‘It's not pretty.'

‘I'm coming up there, West.'

‘Can't wait to see you.'

As soon as he had rung off I called Kara and had a long conversation with her at the government's expense. I repeated the explanation I had given to Tarrant, again leaving out Baz's deed.

‘There's more,' I said. ‘But I'd better not tell you over the phone.'

‘I can't believe that Baz is dead,' she said. ‘Are you okay?'

‘Yeah, I guess. I'm probably in shock.'

‘What will happen now?'

‘I'm not sure. Tarrant is on his way, along with probably half the country's brigade of spooks.'

Hindmarsh arrived, limping badly, an hour later.

‘Where's my fucking phone?' he said. His face was changed by pain and exhaustion, almost beyond recognition.

I handed it over. ‘Cops are on their way.'

‘I want Janeway's phone, too. We had a deal.'

‘Deal's off, arsehole.'

He snarled, but that was all he could do.

We ignored each other until Dickson arrived in a police Land Cruiser, just before dawn – a fair driving effort at night, even with a sat-nav. I had spent the night in my swag, managing about five hours of fitful sleep.

‘Hey, Westie,' he greeted me through his open window. ‘You took some findin'. What's goin' on?'

The stars were still bright and the air was still cold and, as far as I was concerned, nothing was going on, not anymore. Hindmarsh was nowhere to be seen. I gathered some fallen wood and started a fire. Dickson squatted next to it as it struggled into life. He was carrying his own satellite phone and it rang. He spoke into it for a minute or so.

‘Chopper'll be here in a couple of hours,' he said, hanging up. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up, coughing smoke into the cold air. ‘Okay, tell me what happened, ball by ball. We've got time.'

As I stoked the fire I told him pretty much the whole story, omitting only personal details I didn't think he needed to know, and Baz's fall from grace. He listened intently, chain-smoking. By the time I'd finished the sun had risen and knocked the chill off the air. I let the fire die. I wondered if I looked as weary as he did. His eyes were bloodshot, he had a dirty grey stubble on his chin and the lines on his face could have been etched there with a carpenter's scribe.

‘Complicated, ain't it?' he said. ‘The problem will be the Yanks, just quietly. They won't want this story gettin' out. Want some advice, Westie?'

‘Sure.'

‘This won't be done accordin' to law, it'll be done accordin' to political fucken expediency. You've got some negotiatin' power in all this. Make sure ya use it.'

‘I will, mate. Thanks.'

‘Nah, thank you. If I play
my
cards right, this is me ticket out of Woomera. Man, will I be happy to see the back of that shithole.' He used the dying butt of one cigarette to light up the next. ‘Here's another piece of advice. Keep yer hand on yer balls or yer might lose 'em. Now, where are all these dead bodies?'

It took three days to sort out. The helicopter, when it arrived, was decked out in desert camouflage colours and was clearly military. It had a twin that didn't land; its job, presumably, was to collect the bodies from their various locations and generally to remove incriminating evidence. Our chopper disgorged several uniformed soldiers, each carrying a semiautomatic weapon. Hindmarsh received rudimentary first aid on the spot and we both got personal escorts, although they didn't cuff either of us. We flew for about half an hour and landed at a military base outside Port Augusta. Hindmarsh and I were separated at the landing strip and I didn't see him again. I didn't miss him.

They treated me well. I was taken to some sort of guest room with bars on the windows and an armed guard at the door. I took a shower as soon as I arrived and was fed a half-decent breakfast. A young corporal had been assigned as my minder. He was chatty, letting me know meal times and other important bits of information.