“What the hell?” Luckman yelled.
“Brown snake. Giant one.”
“I don’t see any snake,” Mel said nervously.
“It was there. Big bugger, four or five metres long easy, right across the road. Bad sign.”
Bell thrust open his door, leapt out and projectile vomited across the road. Luckman ripped open Pat’s door before he had a chance to consider driving away. Pat’s pupils were dilated. He was gasping for breath like he was having some sort of attack.
“My turn to drive, shove over,” Luckman demanded, his tone demanding compliance. Pat did so without another word. “Eddie – you OK?” The pilot was still retching. He held up his hand to indicate he needed another moment or two. Luckman was likewise beginning to feel as if someone was twisting a knife in his guts from the inside. “When you’re ready, get in the back with Mel.”
“How badly do you need to do this?” Mel asked him.
“As badly as you want me to stop.”
“No,” Pat moaned, “let me out.”
“Stay there,” Luckman ordered, revving the engine. Bell staggered back to the car and Luckman had the pedal to the metal before the back door was shut. The old Ford had plenty of grunt and they hit 80km/h in seconds. The road ahead was long and straight. It couldn’t be much further.
The first IED exploded underneath the front passenger side, blowing the tyre rim clear off the wheel hub. The steering jerked violently in his hand as the front of the car dug into the road surface. The brakes were useless now. They might have rolled except at that point a second bomb blew out the front wheel on the driver’s side.
Why would they mine their own access road? Luckman had no time to think of a reasonable answer to the question as the nose of the car hit the bitumen with a shower of sparks. Somehow they continued apace down the road. “Seatbelts on if they’re not already,” he screamed.
Mel looked down to double check her buckle and realised with horror she hadn’t done it back up after their last stop. She tried desperately to pull the seatbelt back around herself, but it had become locked by the car’s rampant shudder and she couldn’t force it.
“Why aren’t we slowing down?” she yelled.
Luckman turned to her with a face so contorted that for a moment she thought he had lost his wits. “We’re still accelerating,” he replied in hateful astonishment.
Pat buried his head in his hands and curled up on the front seat in a foetal position. Bell threw up again, this time inside the car.
“Are you mad?” Mel yelled back, “Use the brakes.”
“The wheels have gone, there aren’t any brakes.”
“So how can you accelerate?”
“The car’s doing it, not me.”
The road began to veer sharply to the right, however with no steering the wagon continued in the same direction. It left the bitumen and cut a deep trench through the desert scrubland. Without a seatbelt to hold her the sudden deceleration catapulted Mel through the gap in the front seats. She hit the windscreen head first. The glass shattered from the impact with her skull and she fell at Luckman’s feet like a broken doll. He didn’t know whether she was alive or dead and he had no time to check because at that moment bullets began hitting the driver’s side door.
“Out!” he roared at Pat.
But Pat didn’t move.
Luckman threw himself across the car in adrenal fury and kicked open the passenger door, shoving Pat outside then diving out the same way. Crouching in the footwell he grabbed Mel and pulled her towards him. She was still unconscious. There was a nasty welt on her head that had started to bleed although it was probably the least of her injuries. He was almost certain her neck was broken.
Bell shoved open the back door and dived on the ground next to them. “OK Captain, what now?”
Luckman could find no words with which to respond. He was staring at Mel in a melange of despair and rage. He pulled a mat of hair from her mouth and tried to check her breathing and her pulse. He could find no signs of life.
He was dimly aware of Pat and Eddie Bell discussing something but he couldn’t hear what they said.
Then Pat jumped into the car’s back seat. “I was right, there’s two of them,” he called out.
He sounded relieved. The car was shuddering from the bullets, almost like it was flinching from their impact. Luckman realised there must be two attackers from the angle of the bullets striking the metal. They must have heavy-calibre weapons because the car was being torn to pieces. Slowly, carefully, he lay Mel on the ground and made his way to the front of the wagon hoping to catch sight of their assailants. He saw the guardhouse immediately but only spotted one man walking towards them and firing with each advancing step. Where was the other one? Luckman ducked for cover as a bullet ricocheted off the bonnet centimetres from his face. He retreated to the rear of the car fearful they were being flanked, but there was no sign of the other man. Where the hell was he?
It took all of Luckman’s willpower to resist the urge to pull out his pistol and fire back. Even though these lunatics had broken all rules of engagement, starting a firefight would only make matters worse.
“Give me a minute, I can fix it,” Pat called out from somewhere behind him.
But Luckman was fairly certain by now the situation was broken beyond repair. He stood up, holding his arms aloft, in a final desperate bid to surrender before anyone else was injured.
“Don’t shoot. I’m coming out. Don’t shoot,” he screamed, even as he saw with dread that the guard was still firing.
The first bullet blew off his index finger. The second hit him in the throat. As he fell to the ground, Luckman realised he recognised the face of his assailant.
Forty-One
The bittersweet thrill of mortal fear was something altogether new to Pat Williams. In all the time he’d worked for Clarence Paulson he had never needed to think too much about the nature of the powers with which he and the Verus Foundation had aligned themselves. These arrangements for the most part had been in place for a very long time and seemed to function efficiently. Secrecy had been a precaution he had accepted as a condition of employment but it had never before been a matter of life or death. Now suddenly they were being hunted like animals and the tremor in his hands and the panic in his guts left him feeling weak and unprepared for the danger they faced.
But when he saw Bell’s eyes catatonic in terror he knew he was not alone.
“OK Captain, what now?” Bell spat.
Luckman offered his pilot no response.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” said Pat, mostly to break the silence. But it felt weak to say it aloud and he was not ready to surrender to cowardice. He had faced down rabid dogs. He had saved Shorty from being mauled. He had travelled across space and time in search of humanity’s bold and ugly historical truths.
A mad idea occurred to him. It might even be enough to save their necks. He crawled up past Luckman to examine the front of the car. The panel work was ripped to shreds from the impact with the road, but amazingly the wheel hub had remained intact. While the tyre rim had been blown apart by the bomb, a small part of it remained bolted to the hub – the wheel nuts being made of sterner stuff than the rim itself. What was left of the rim had taken the impact with the road and had shielded the hub from damage. Which meant if he could get those wheel nuts loose and dig a hole under the hub he could attach the spare tyre.
He had a sneaking feeling there were two spares in the back of the car. One of them would be bald as a baby’s arse but it hardly mattered in the circumstances. He crawled back toward Bell, reached under the front passenger seat and pulled out an adjustable spanner. “How good are you at shifting wheel nuts?” he asked the pilot.