Wild Dogs, page 12
‘Fuck’s sake, let’s go!’ Gabe roared, firing up the engine just seconds before he saw Chase stagger out of the medical centre door and limp down the steps. Amin was only halfway inside when Gabe dropped the clutch, shooting the heavy vehicle backwards and reefing hard on the steering wheel. The ute lurched as it swung around, and Amin barely managed to get the door shut. Gravel sprayed as Gabe pressed the accelerator to the floor, thankful he had splurged on the V8 model. In his side mirror he saw Chase limping across the road, no doubt heading for his own vehicle. Gabe hoped the roo-shooter only had the six-cylinder version, or things could get very interesting shortly.
‘You boys in some trouble, hey?’ Darren said. He had one arm resting on the Engel’s lid, the other around Courtney’s shoulder, which was fair enough as there was very little room back there with all of Gabe’s gear. ‘This something to do with the—’
‘No.’ Gabe cut him off. He glanced at Courtney in the rear-view mirror, unsure if she’d heard Darren, or knew what he was referring to. If she had, she gave no indication. Instead, she was trying to peer through the back window, but soon gave up. Gabe’s canvas had clear plastic panels on the front and back, but they were clouded from sun exposure and almost impossible to see through.
‘Do you think he’s following us? What does he want with you? And why didn’t you just tell me you could speak English?’ The rush of questions came from Courtney with breathless excitement. And she was excited, Gabe could see it. Silly girl, she should be scared.
Gabe checked his mirrors, but their dust obscured everything. ‘He’s following, but his ute looks a bit slower than mine, hopefully.’
Amin strained around to look at Darren. ‘Thank you. It could have gone very badly back there.’
‘You blokes’re just lucky I needed a piss when I did, or we’d all be in the shit.’ Darren pointed to the two-way mounted in the radio console. ‘You gonna call the cops or what? They’re coming out here today, I heard. Might be able to get them on that thing.’
‘No police,’ Amin said firmly. ‘They are working with that man, and the people smugglers who brought me and my family to Australia. They have my wife and son, and we have to find them.’
‘What? Bent coppers? Bastards.’ Darren didn’t seem overly surprised, but seemed to think about it some more. ‘Parker would be alright though, unna? Not much gets past him, but I don’t reckon he’s bent.’
‘My God,’ Courtney said before Gabe could answer. ‘No wonder you didn’t want to fill in that form. So where are we going now?’
‘As far away from that Chase fellow as we can,’ he said. ‘But Carnarvon is the plan still, right, Amin?’
The man in the passenger seat nodded grimly, his eyes staring straight ahead at the wide gravel road. Gabe set his eyes on Darren in the mirror again. ‘I reckon you’re right about Parker though.’
Darren leaned forward and pointed ahead. ‘Up here, go right, down that little track. You stay on this main road, all that fella has to do is follow your dust. Turn here, he might miss it if he’s sootin’ hard trying to catch us, ’specially if the dust hangs about. He’ll drive right past it.’
After a moment’s thought, Gabe agreed it was a good idea. He slowed and turned, squeezing the ute under an acacia branch, and headed into the scrub.
‘Here, how about this, then?’ Darren said. ‘You drop us off up ahead, and I’ll run back to town and find the sarge. Tell him face to face what happened. They’re gonna be looking for me anyway, and if you’re missing, miss, they’ll get nervous and might bring out more coppers.’
Gabe continued to drive, but much slower than before. There was no sign of their pursuer and the road verge had disappeared behind them. He hoped Darren’s theory was right.
‘That might be a good idea,’ he said, and held up a hand to Amin, who looked like he was about to protest. ‘Parker’s alright – he’s been a bush cop for most of his career, and he knows me. Helped him track down a lost kid a few years ago, and some old prospector before that. I’m not saying he’s gonna be happy about things, but he’s not always completely by the book either. If anyone is going to believe us, it’ll be him.’
Amin didn’t appear convinced.
‘Look,’ Gabe continued, starting to think he’d feel a whole lot better if he had a beer in him. Just one, just to settle the nerves. ‘I don’t know how far we’ll get on our own. We’ve got that clown behind us, and now we’re out of town he might not be so slow to use that gun. Least if Darren can get the sarge on the case, he can look into a few things for us.’
Courtney raised a hand. ‘I still have no idea what’s going on. Did you say people smugglers?’
‘Yes,’ Amin said. ‘They brought me here and promised to bring my family once I’d worked to pay them.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Courtney breathed. ‘And you think the police are involved?’
‘Some, yes. That’s how they know when to bring the boats to shore, to avoid sea patrols.’ Amin looked skyward for a moment, palms of both hands turned upwards, and sighed. ‘Tawakkaltu Alallah, we will do as you say.’
‘Righto.’ Gabe grabbed one of his business cards from the pile jammed into the console and handed it to Darren. ‘Give him this to get hold of us. Tell him to use the sat-phone number. I’ll pull up just ahead. You get ready to bolt. Take Courtney with you.’
Darren eyed the nurse. ‘No offence, but how fast can you run?’
‘Not very,’ Courtney admitted. ‘And even less so in this bush.’
‘I reckon she’s better off with you, Gabe,’ Darren said. ‘If I gotta wait for her, I might miss the copper. He was supposed to be coming this morning.’
‘No, I have to go back,’ she insisted. ‘Dr Woolford is coming, and if I’m not there he’ll wonder where I am.’
‘Fine, go with him,’ Gabe growled. ‘Grab a couple of water bottles from that fridge, Darren. I’m going to stop up here. Amin, I need you to give me a hand with something, real quick. I think I’ve got just the thing for Chase if he follows us down here, but everyone needs to move. Right? Here we go.’
Gabe brought his ute to a halt, careful not to let the tyres skid. He leaped out and ran around to the passenger side. Working quickly, he opened up the canopy and the upright toolbox, and after a moment’s searching emerged with a small mallet and something else, something that he only ever used in the most deserted of areas.
‘What is that?’ Amin asked, following Gabe to the rear of the vehicle.
‘A little trick I picked up in Queensland,’ Gabe said, passing him the mallet and a large spike with a loop at the end. Fine fishing line was tied through the loop. ‘Go whack that in at the track’s edge, behind that shrub there. Make sure you can’t see it from the road, got it? And you two, get moving!’
Darren waved and set off into the bush. Courtney called back to Gabe as she followed, ‘I left you boys a present. Good luck!’
Gabe barely acknowledged her. He ran across the road, uncoiling the fishing line as he went. Behind him he heard Amin hammering in his stake. On this side of the road was another similar shrub, which was why Gabe had stopped here. Amin joined him, having finished his task.
‘What are we doing?’ he asked, glancing the way they had come. They could hear a vehicle in the distance.
‘Hopefully slowing him down,’ Gabe said, as he took the hammer. ‘He’ll soon work out he’s shot past us and backtrack. If he found our sign at that pit, he’ll find our tracks down here.’
Gabe hammered in his bit of gear. It was an old-fashioned rabbit trap with a steel picket welded to the bottom. Once in the ground, the trap stood about a foot high. He threaded the fishing line around the catch of the trigger plate, pulling it tight enough so the line hung clear of the dirt across the width of the road. With practised ease, he squeezed the spring assembly, and one of the steel jaws fell open, the other tacked rigidly in place. Gabe loaded a single shotgun shell into a small piece of pipe welded to the fixed jaw. The free jaw had a small piece of thin rod protruding from it, which lined up perfectly with the primer in the back of the shotgun shell held in the pipe, pointing over the track.
‘Don’t stand in front of that, it’s live now,’ Gabe said, as he set and latched the trigger plate. ‘Right, let’s go.’
The two men jumped back into the ute, and Gabe accelerated away. ‘With any luck, he’ll come down there shortly, hit the line and it’ll take out his front tyre.’
Amin gave him an approving look. ‘Very clever, my friend.’
‘Entirely illegal, but it’s a handy bit of gear if there’s a dog pad and the thing is trap-shy. Dog trips the wire, and I find him dead on the track. Of course, I can’t use it anywhere a bloody tourist might wander or station worker drive their motorbike over. Blow his friggin’ leg off. But in this case, I reckon old Chase will be the first to go near it.’
‘I think the Taliban would be very impressed.’
‘We’ll see soon enough,’ Gabe said. ‘This track is pretty rough, so any speed advantage we had is gone.’
‘At least we have one less thing to worry about.’
‘What’s that then?’
Amin reached forward and grabbed the box of antibiotics from the dash. ‘Our nurse friend did indeed leave me a gift.’
‘Shit, she must’ve grabbed them as we rushed out of there.’ Gabe was impressed. ‘I was too busy hightailing it for the door to even think of them.’
‘I as well,’ Amin said. ‘I think she is quite a brave young lady.’
‘Even if she does talk a mile a minute. Hopefully she can keep up with Darren okay and they can find the sarge.’
‘You had better be right about your policeman friend.’
Gabe hoped so too. Things were getting way out of hand now.
TWENTY-ONE
Chase Fowler shoved the fire extinguisher out of the way, ignoring the throbbing pain blooming at the back of his head and the sharper, fresher one erupting on his shin. Where the hell had that little bastard come from? He must’ve been in the toilet or something. This was supposed to be a simple pick-up and disposal. And how the fuck had that Arab escaped in the first place?
No time for that now, he thought, struggling to his feet and catching a glimpse of the young Aboriginal man disappearing out the door. A wave of dizziness washed over him as he rose, forcing him to grab the desk for support. Lucky the prick didn’t brain him with that thing. Just wait until he caught up with them. And he was in no doubt he would, though he hoped his head would be clearer and his leg a bit more functional than it was right now. He looked around the medical centre. Shit, he’d have to clean this up or it might raise suspicions.
With some difficulty, Chase picked up the extinguisher, hooked it back onto the wall, and righted the upset table and magazines. The unmistakable rumble of a LandCruiser firing up grabbed his attention. He lurched to the door, hoping the place looked normal enough, and shoved it open, almost tripping down the steps of the transportable hut as he hurried outside, only to spy the dogger’s vehicle spinning out of the car park, the passenger door still open with that damned refugee battling to climb in. How easy it would be if he’d just fall out and get run over.
For an instant he considered letting off a few shots, but decided against it. That shop was just over the road, and if the girl in there was as nosey as most other shopkeepers he knew, she’d be watching, or if not, the shots would draw her attention, suppressor or no suppressor. Letting that one off inside had been foolish, but he was angry. Was still angry. No, better to catch them out in the bush, where there was no one to hear such things.
Chase half skipped, half ran towards his own ute, still hampered by his sore shin. They had made it to the end of the bitumen by now, clearing the town outskirts and raising a billowing cloud of orange dust as they sped away. At least they would be easy to follow, even if that ute of Gabe’s had a few more horses under the hood than his old girl. No matter. He had tracked them here with no more than a discarded cigarette butt, a few well-disguised drops of blood and his own intuition. He would find them again. And even if he didn’t, Chase was fairly certain of where they were going, or at least trying to find.
He crossed the road, giving a friendly wave to the two children pedalling down the street towards him, and entered his vehicle. He quickly checked his phone. No calls, so that was good. Plans were still running smoothly. He was certain the old dogger hadn’t called the police, or his contact would have let him know, and he wondered why that might be. Surely the police would be the first priority, but he supposed the Arab must’ve talked him out of it, perhaps fearing he would be taken by Immigration if authorities became involved. That might change with the nurse running off with them, but he would worry about that if the time came.
As Chase pulled out from the store car park, he glanced around, checking there was nobody watching. There wasn’t, or no one that he could see. Seemed his single shot hadn’t garnered that much attention, so maybe that silencer hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. Gregory, the guy with all the connections, had procured it for him only a month ago after Chase admired the one he sported. Homemade of course, but it certainly looked the part, and when he screwed it to the barrel he felt like James fucking Bond.
He drove hard, leaving Jakob’s River behind in a cloud of his own dust as he followed his quarry. The fine orange particles hung in the breezeless air like an early morning mist, obscuring his vision ahead. His eyes flicked left to right, checking for any sign they had veered off the road, mainly because, if he were the one being followed, he’d be heading bush at first chance, and that Gabe fellow seemed like a cunning sort of bloke. He must have come across the Arab and the others just at the right moment – or wrong one, depending on your perspective – and somehow intervened. The fact that the other one wasn’t with them suggested he’d been too late to save him. Which was fine by Chase. That pair had been more trouble than they were worth, especially with the next delivery being so close.
He knew it had been a bad idea to involve the families. What was it they said in show business? Never work with children and animals. Well, in the people-smuggling game you could say the same about women and kids, so far as Chase was concerned. Too much emotion involved. If he had his way they’d only be dealing with single men, men who only wanted to get out of whatever shithole country they came from and work to send money home. But no, the powers that be decided more profit could be made by offering to bring the wife and kids over too – the perfect fucking family holiday.
Chase had been on enough shitty family holidays years ago to know travelling with little snot-nosed shits such as he had once been was far from perfect. No wonder his old man had gotten blind drunk most the time. And just like back then, he was dealing with the fallout, only now he wasn’t a skinny prepubescent teen standing between his mother and his father’s drunken fists, although his head currently rang as though he had. Chase rubbed it ruefully. First thing he was going to do was pistol-whip that smart-arse little prick, see how he liked it. See who bowled fuckin’ who, hey?
But then what? The refugee and that kid were easy enough. Down the hole with the both of them; no one would notice the refugee, and a missing blackfella might raise a bit of an alarm, but not one that would be paid much attention to by the authorities. Gabe might be more problematic. He might have to make that one look like an accident. Maybe an unfortunate poisoning by strychnine? That could be feasible; Chase had no doubt there would be plenty of the poison in the dogger’s ute somewhere. That left the nurse, and she was going to be the sticking point. A missing blackfella in the outback might not cause too much concern, but a pretty young white girl absent in an Aboriginal town? He could almost see the stream of news vans traipsing out to cover the story already. It’d make national news for sure. He’d have to come up with something special for her, and the beginnings of a plan started to form in his mind, eliciting a slight smile. Yes, that could work.
His planning was cut short when he realised the dust was thinning with no sign of any vehicle up ahead. Shit, they had turned off somewhere and he’d been too busy plotting to notice. Chase spun the ute around and drove back the way he’d just come, slower this time, completely focused on the verges on either side of the road. After about a kilometre he saw it, a narrow-gutted track that was no more than two bare strips of dirt heading north, with a fresh set of tread marks turning up them.
Chase grinned to himself. ‘Almost lost me. But you didn’t.’
He pushed on, bouncing his vehicle over the dry washes and occasional ant hill as he weaved his way through the scrub. It was a winding little track, and the ground was very hard in places. He lost Gabe’s wheel marks twice, but picked them up again moments later. The track wasn’t really that well defined, and it would be easy enough to veer off the path, but Chase had spent years driving down similar tracks at night plying his trade, and his eyes saw the way as clearly as if it were marked with cat’s eyes and a white line painted down the middle.
A shimmer of dust far ahead caught his attention and he strained to see it clearer. Gotta be them, he thought, and he accelerated marginally, still being cautious not to strike a sharp rock or broken-off mulga stump. There was a flicker of something strung low across the road, and he had just enough time to wonder why the golden orb spiders were out so early, only to realise if it were a web Gabe’s ute would’ve already passed through and destroyed it, before he drove straight over the top.
An explosion came from the passenger side and his ute lurched to the left. Chase skidded to a halt.
‘What the fuck?’ He climbed out to inspect, cursing again when he saw the damage. His left front tyre sported a thumb-sized hole in the sidewall and was flat as a tack. What the hell caused that?
Chase walked past his ute and spied the contraption staked into the dirt, partially obscured by the shrub. ‘Oh well done, dogger,’ he muttered as he studied the modified rabbit trap. ‘Very clever. Deadly bit of gear, that. Don’t reckon that one is on the list of approved dogging methods.’
