Behind Mt. Baldy (41 page)

Roger was appalled as the
implications of this sank in. Reluctantly he agreed: “OK. We’d better go back.
What will we do with this pack?”

“Repack it and dump it beside the
road. Keep those notes though.”

Roger added the notes to his left
basic pouch,
then
repacked the pack. He then carried
it out and placed it beside the road.

Graham grunted,
then
said: “OK, let’s go back to Stephen.” He looked along
the road to the north,
then
clicked on the safety
catch.

“Which way will we go?” Roger
asked.

Graham pointed up through the
ferns.
“Down the ridge that leads from here to where we
camped.
That will be quicker and safer than walking along the road. That
way we will keep well away from that sentry post they have marked on their
map,” he said.

That brought an awful thought to
Roger’s mind. “But what if Pete and the police drive into the sentry post? They
could get ambushed. We need to be able to warn them,” he replied.

Graham nodded as he started
walking. “You are right. So we will walk through the bush near the road and be
ready to run out if we see a police vehicle. We know where the sentry post is
and we will cut across that big loop in the road to by-pass it,” he said.”

So the boys walked back across
the road past the grassy clearing. Then they entered the open bush on the left
and went westwards down the slope. They kept the road just in sight. The
walking was easy enough but the grass was wet and once again Roger found his
boots and trousers soaked. But that didn’t worry him as much as fear of meeting
more armed man, and of stepping on a snake.

Graham led and Roger thankfully
followed in his footsteps. As always it seem further than the map indicated and
they seemed to trudge through the bush for a long time, stepping over logs and
detouring around trees and clumps of lantana.

After a few minutes walk they
came out of the cloud. Away to the west Roger could see the next mountain. It
looked to be much drier country, almost open savannah, unlike the thick scrub
and ferns they were pushing through. The boys walked in silence one behind the
other. From time to time Graham stopped to study his map. By then Roger was
feeling tired and hungry.

After ten minutes walk Graham
stopped and took a compass bearing then pointed to the left. “That sentry post
should be a couple of hundred metres ahead of us. We will cut across the bend
here,” he whispered.

Carefully the boys moved forward,
now angling to the south. The slope became much steeper and the bush opened out
to savannah woodland with almost no undergrowth. The road came into view again.
It was a few hundred metres ahead and below them.  Through the stands of
tall trees Roger saw that they were now in the head of a forested valley.

Graham stoped and scanned the
road and bush ahead of them, then back to his right. “The road junction with
the sentry post should be back up there on a saddle on the edge of this open
timber,” he whispered.

“Can they see us?” Roger replied,
straining his eyes to study the trees behind his right shoulder.

Graham shook his head. “No, this
small spur here should be blocking the view. Come
on,
let’s get down near the road in case the police arrive.”

Roger agreed. The whole time they
had been cutting across the bend he had been worried about just that. So he
hurried along behind Graham who contoured down the grassy ridge until he was
just above the road. Here he paused and cradled the rifle in both arms while he
studied the map.

Roger looked down at the gravel
road ten metres below. “It will be quicker if we use the road,” he suggested.

Graham shook his head.
“Yes, but not safer.
We will look like a pair of prize
idiots if we run into that other fellow who ran way,” he replied as he slid the
map back into his map pocket.

Roger could not answer. He could
only grab at Graham’s sleeve and gape, his gaze riveted on the rifle barrel
pointing directly at him
:-
a tiny black hole of the
most startling clarity.

As he came to a standstill and
Graham looked up in surprise a voice up to their left cried: “Halt!”

Fear seemed to root Roger to the spot.
He instinctively put his hands up.

“Hand up!” the man’s voice
commanded; a harsh, guttural voice. “Put der rifle down or you is ver dead!”

For a moment Roger thought Graham
might try to fight back and a stab of pure dread lanced through him. To his mingled
relief and regret Graham did not. With obvious reluctance he placed the rifle
on the ground and raised his hands.

The man spoke again. “Move away
from der rifle. Keep apart and keep der hands high,” he ordered.

Glancing fearfully at the man
Roger recognized the uniform. “He is a royal guard,” he muttered to Graham.

The royal guard heard him.
“Silence or I shoot!” he snarled.

Once the boys were well clear the
royal guard halted them again and then moved to pick up the rifle. He studied
it for a few seconds, a frown creasing his brow. “Ver you get zis rifle?” he
queried.

Roger answered. “Off your
lieutenant,” he replied. By this time he was shaking with fear as well as a
cold.

“He der prisoner is?” the royal
guard asked.

Graham answered before Roger could.
“Yes. And you may as well surrender too because the police are on their way up
here.”

Roger saw an anxious look on the
man’s face. For a few more seconds they stood there, the royal guard obviously
trying to decide what to do. As they did realization came to Roger. ‘This bloke
is a sentry watching down the valley. We have just blundered into him by sheer
chance,’ he thought. He studied the situation trying to come up with a plan
that might keep them alive and set them free.

But no idea came to him and the
man pointed down to the road. “Go zat vay,” he ordered.

Graham looked at him. “Your mates
have gone. They have bugged out,” he replied.

“Bugged out?” the man queried.

“Gone.
Run away,” Graham replied.

The man looked anxious then shook
his head.
“No matter.
Ve go zat vay.
Move!”

Reluctantly they did.  They
made their way down onto the road and were told to start walking up it. “And
keep your hands on heads!”

So, even more reluctantly, they
started marching up the road, the royal guard following at such a distance that
there was no chance of jumping him. ‘And in this open bush there is no chance
of making a run for it without being shot,’ Roger noted.

For the next five minutes they
trudged up a slope that was much steeper than Roger had expected and the effort
had him panting and perspiring. With every step his mind roved over the
dreadful possibilities of the situation and he became so afraid he could hardly
make himself keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even the effort of
keeping his hands on his head almost became too much.

Another call to halt sounded from
behind a tree at the bend ahead. Roger and Graham at once halted. Roger saw
another rifle muzzle being aimed at him and felt his bowels weaken with terror.
The royal guard behind them shouted back and a rapid conversation in a foreign
language followed.

“Advance!” called the man behind
the tree. Gasping with fear and over-exertion Roger did so, Graham keeping
level beside him. They rounded the bend and came to a road junction. As they
did Roger glanced out of the corner of his eye at the sentry and noted that he
was also dressed in royal guard uniform. ‘We have really mucked this up,’ he
thought miserably.

Then Roger saw a second royal
guard kneeling behind a large tree on the other side of the road junction.

“Halt! Keep your hands up!” A
hard-faced, middle-aged man appeared out of the scrub in front of them. On both
sleeves of his green uniform shirt, just above the elbows, were pinned diamond
shaped yellow metal badges with three black parallel lines across them. The man
had a sub-machine gun of some sort, a wicked looking thing with an air-cooling
casing around the barrel. Roger did not know what type it was but he could see
that the man had his finger on the trigger.

The soldier pointed with his left
hand. “You, take off your vebbink. Lie down over dere.
Und
you- over dere.”

The boys did as they were told.
Roger was shaking with fright. He felt sick and was very conscious that the
other soldier had his rifle aimed at his head from only a few metres away. A
third appeared from behind a tree. The middle-aged soldier began to question
the man who had captured them. Roger could not understand a word of what was
said but got the impression that the middle-aged man was very angry and not at
all impressed with the explanation the soldier gave him.

The middle-aged man then walked
over and stood beside Graham. “Are dere any more off you?” he snarled in
heavily accented English.

“Might be,” Graham replied.

Thud!

To Roger’s horror the man took a step
forward and kicked Graham hard in the ribs. “Don’t be smart-alek bastard boy! I
ask you. You tell me; or else.” He bent and peered at the badges on Graham’s
sleeve, then turned and spoke rapidly to the other two soldiers in a foreign
language. The only words Roger understood were ‘soldats’ and ‘kadets’.

The man spoke again and Roger
heard boots crunch on the gravel near his head. He tensed for a blow.

“Put hands behind back,” he was
ordered. He did so, his face then resting on the wet sand and stones. The
second soldier quickly tied his wrists together with thin nylon cord. It hurt
but Roger made no complaint. It was all he could do not to cry, so great was
his fear.

Graham was similarly tied. Roger
watched the royal guard do it. The man had a wicked looking sheath knife and
used what looked like army green nylon cord. Graham was then searched and his
pockets emptied. Roger suffered this next. He had had it done to him in
training exercises but this had an entirely new and unpleasant dimension of
fear, pain and indignity. The man hauled him roughly onto his back so that his
weight was on his left arm and wrists. Then his pockets were emptied.

Roger heard the man grunt and say
something. He held up Roger’s jelly beans and grinned, then popped one in his
mouth and tossed another to the man with the SMG. The man wasn’t amused and
snapped something back.

Maps and notebooks were
collected. The compass tied to his pocket was left hanging. His protractor fell
to the ground. The man with three stripes (a sergeant?) bent over Graham and
put the muzzle of the SMG near his nose. Roger could see a muscle in Graham’s
neck twitching, but his face looked calm enough.

“Now boy, answer me and tell zer
truth or ve shoot you und zen ve ask der fat kaporal.”

Fat corporal! Roger felt a surge
of hot resentment even in his state of near collapse.

The man asked: “Are zere any more
of you?”

“Yes,” Graham replied.

“How many?”

“Four. No.
Three.
One has gone to get the police.”

“Der police!
Vy?”

“Because we saw you people.”

“So? Ve could be anyvon.”

Graham shook his head. “We know
who you are.”

“Oh
ja
!
Who are ve den?”

“Kosarian Royal
Guards.”

The man’s face was a picture of
genuine astonishment. Then it darkened into anger and worry. “How you know zat
eh boy? You are kadet Ja?”

“Yes, I am a cadet.”

“How you know?”

“We.
Roger
there,
pulled Captain Krapinski’s body out of Tinaroo Dam. And we helped the police
search for clues as to who killed him and why.”

Again the man’s face registered
astonishment, even shock.
“Krapinski!
You know ver he
is?”

The other men began talking
rapidly in their own language with Krapinski’s name cropping up several times.
The man doing the questioning was Feldwebel Stegberg or something Roger
deduced.

The feldwebel grabbed Graham’s
shirt front and spoke harshly to him: “Vot is dis about Krapinski’s body? You
say his body vos in a dam? You mean he is dead?”

Graham nodded. “Yes. We pulled
his body out of Lake Tinaroo four days ago. He had been shot.”

“Shot!
By who?
By you?”

“No.
By
Dorkoffsky.”

“Dorkoffsky!”

The man seemed even more
astonished. Again the men began talking in their own language. The feldwebel
turned to Graham again, holding the muzzle of the SMG right under his nose.

“Zut!
How you know Dorkoffsky? How you
know he
shoot
Krapinski?”