Behind Mt. Baldy (9 page)

Just as Graham drew level with
the car they heard voices in the jungle and ten metres ahead of them two men
dressed in black walked out onto the track.

That the men were surprised was
obvious. They stopped in their stride with mouths agape. The first man, who had
a hard, thin face and close-cropped fair hair let drop a compass which hung on
a cord around his neck and his hand flashed to his pocket. The second man, also
thin but with a black moustache and black hair was carrying a rifle. He threw
it up ready to use and uttered a cry.

The boys stopped in shock. The
sight of the rifle pointing at him made Roger go cold with fright. For a moment
he could not move or speak. Then he joined the others bunched behind Graham,
who had stopped facing the men.

“Army?” the first man asked in a
hard voice, his hand in his pocket. His eyes rapidly scanned them. Roger had
the distinct impression the man was about to dive for cover.

“
No ..
no
.. Cadets,” Graham managed to say.

The first man spoke out of the
side of his mouth in a foreign language. The only words Roger understood were
‘Bruno’ and ‘Cadets’, only pronounced in a hard European way with a K. The
second man lowered the rifle but still held it in both hands and looked
suspiciously at them.

The first man forced a smile.
“You are not soldiers? You are Kadeten?” He could see they were unarmed. He
ostentatiously pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “You
startled us. Gave us fright, you know.”

“Sorry,” Graham replied. The four
cadets stood uncertain what to do.

The first man kept talking. It
seemed obvious to Roger the man was very nervous and guilty about something.
The memory of his dream the previous night seemed to swamp his consciousness
and ice-cold needles of fear stabbed down through his skull into his brain.

The man gestured casually. “We
have the rifle in case of the wild pigs. You need to be very careful of them
you boys.” He gave a short, forced laugh and pushed the handkerchief back into
a pocket, which Roger could see bulged with something else. From a shirt pocket
the man extracted a cigarette packet. As he fumbled for a lighter he turned and
said something in the foreign language to the other man. The second man nodded,
unsmiling, and walked over to the car and unlocked it.

Graham was now speaking and he
was angry. “You shouldn’t carry guns in a State Forest. It’s against the law. And
I don’t like people pointing guns at me. I should report you.”

Roger wished Graham wouldn’t
antagonise the man. He noted the man’s eyes narrow, even though he kept a smile
on his face. Worried that Graham would say something else Roger pushed forward
and took Graham’s arm.

“It’s alright,” he said to the
man. “We are just on a route march. We’ve got another twenty kilometres to go.
We are sorry we gave you a fright.”  He forced a smile even though he was
so scared he felt like he would lose control of his bowels.  Despite his
fear he managed to turn and smile at the other man, who had placed the rifle in
the car and stood with the car door open.

Graham went to speak but Roger
cut him off. “We have to go. Good day,” he said. Roger then started walking.
The man stepped aside. Roger didn’t dare look back but to his relief the others
followed him. Then he had to fight down an urge to run, an urge his more
rational mind told him was ridiculous. Weighed down as he was he
knew
he wouldn’t even be able to raise a lumbering trot.

“Roger, what the ..?” Graham
began.

“Shut up!  Keep walking!”
Roger hissed.

Graham did as he was told. After
about fifty paces Roger glanced back. Both men were standing watching them. Neither
was smiling. Roger walked even faster, feeling very scared and defenceless.

They had only covered another
hundred paces when a car door slammed behind them. Roger glanced back and saw
that both men were now in the car. Its engine roared to life.

By now the road was curving to
the right. An overgrown track went off on their right and on that side the
jungle gave way to open pine forest. The sound of the car came towards them.

“Wave!
Smile! Look friendly,” Roger
ordered. He forced a grin with muscles that felt like old rubber as the car
drew level. The men looked hard at them, then the driver’s teeth flashed in a
grin and the car accelerated away, to vanish around the next bend.

Roger suddenly turned down the
side track. Graham let out a surprised exclamation. “Roger, you’re going the
wrong way!”

“I know. Follow me.
Into the jungle, quick!”

Roger turned and pushed his way
into the jungle and didn’t stop until confronted by a tangle of vines and
‘wait-a-while’ ten metres in. Then he dropped his pack and turned to face the
others.

“I’ll bet those men are the
murderers,” he said.

CHAPTER 6

WHAT WERE THEY DOING IN THE JUNGLE?

Roger pulled out his notebook and
wrote down the car’s registration number and make. The other three stared at
him in surprise.

Roger repeated himself. “Those
men murdered the old man. I’m sure of it.”

Peter shook his head. “Don’t be
silly Roger. You’re just imagining things.”

“I’m not. Have you ever seen two
blokes look more worried and guilty in all your life?” Roger replied heatedly.

Graham nodded. “I certainly think
they acted suspiciously. When that bastard pointed that rifle at me I thought
he was going to drop me. He pushed the safety catch off.”

“I saw that,” Stephen added.

Roger went on, “And that first
man. I’ll bet he had a pistol in his pocket. Did you see how his hand went to
it?”

“He had something there that made
a lump,” Peter confirmed. “They thought we were soldiers.”

Roger nodded vehemently. “Yes.
They were foreigners, Europeans of some sort. I don’t think the one with the
rifle even spoke English.”

“What language was it?” Stephen
asked.

“Search me. It wasn’t German
anyway,” Graham said. Both he and Stephen learned German at school. Peter and
Roger both studied French.

“That second guy,” Roger went on.
“His name was Bruno.”

“I didn’t know he was a mate or
yours Roger,” Peter quipped.

“It’s no time for joking Peter!
It’s not funny. I’m going back for a look.”

The others again looked
surprised.

“Why? What for? Let’s just get
out of here,” Stephen said.

“Because when the blond man
pulled his cigarette packet out of his shirt pocket he dropped something. I
want to see what it is,” Roger replied.

He went to pass them to get back
out on the road.

“Hang on Roger. We’ll come too,”
Graham said, unclipping his pack. Peter and Stephen did likewise.

“What if they come back?” asked
Stephen, voicing the fear in Roger’s mind.

“So what?
We have every right to be here.
They won’t bother four of us without a good reason,” Roger said.

“I agree,” Peter added. “They
won’t know if we are alone or not. Soldiers go around in armies don’t they?”

Roger led the way back out onto
the road. As he did he was amazed how fast his heart was beating and how dry
his mouth felt. On reaching the road he cast a look in the direction the car
had gone. Then he headed back the way they had come as fast as he could walk.
The others followed, also casting nervous glances behind them.

Even before he reached the place
Roger could see the object. He went straight to it and picked it up. He held it
in the palm of his hand as the others crowded round.

It was a metal badge, shaped like
a shield. The base colour of most of it was shiny black but it had a raised silver
rim. On the face of the shield were the letters KSS in silver. The bottom
portion of the shield was red. The whole thing was only about 5cm high and 3 or
4 wide.

Roger turned it over. There was a
pin fastener on the back.

“A badge,” Stephen said quite
unnecessarily.

“What’s it made of?
Aluminium?”
Peter asked.

Roger weighed it in his hand,
then
shook his head.
“No, heavier.
Might even be silver.”

“Any writing on
it?”
Graham
asked.

The badge was passed around and
carefully examined.

“Here’s a number on the back,”
Peter noted. He read it out.
“One, three, two, zero, zero.”

Graham took the badge and also
weighed it in his hand. As he did his usually cheerful face clouded with
concentration.
“These letters.
Very
Germanic.
See the shape of the two ‘S’s’?
Straight
lines, not curves.
  Like the Nazi SS used.”

“But you said they didn’t speak
German,” Peter reminded him.

“No. It’s odd. It’s not just a
souvenir or something. Why would the man be carrying it?” Graham asked.

“Identification?”
Peter suggested.

“They were both dressed in
black,” Roger reminded. “Maybe it’s a uniform?”

“What, Nazis
here at Tinaroo Dam?
More than sixty years after World War Two!  Get real Roger,” Stephen
snorted.

Roger shrugged. “I wonder what
they were looking
for?
” He walked to the edge of the
jungle where the two men had emerged. There was no sign of any track but the
jungle wasn’t too thick.

Graham joined him. “Here, have
your badge. That first bloke was walking on a compass bearing.”

“Where would they have been?”
Peter asked. He pulled out his map and they all looked at it. Robsons Creek was
only a couple of hundred metres away and the lake about a kilometre.

“From the
lake?”
Stephen suggested.

Graham shook his head.
“Nah!
Why bash through the bloody jungle when there are roads
going right to the water, like the one where we dumped our packs,” he said.

“I’ll bet they were hiding
something,” Roger said.

“Like what?” Peter asked.

“Murder weapon? Bloodstained
clothes maybe,” Roger replied.

“Oh Roger!
Stop talking about murder,”
Stephen said. Then he paused, mouth open, before adding, “or ... or another
body?”

The boys turned as one to look
into the shadow of the rain forest. The place suddenly took on a very sinister
aspect.

“I wish you hadn’t said that
Stephen,” Peter said quietly.

There was silence for nearly half
a minute.

“We have to look,” Roger said.

“But where?”
Peter asked.

“I don’t know! In there,” Roger
pointed.

Graham pulled out his compass.
“We can’t just walk away from this. We’ll have a quick look, but only for ten
minutes. We are losing time again. Form an extended line ten paces apart. We
will go in on due
West
. If you get separated due East
will bring you back to the road.”

At that moment Roger had another
awful thought. “What if there are more of them, in there?”

The others looked at him, Stephen
with undisguised dismay.

Graham shook his head. “No. Those
two came in their car. They’re gone.  Let’s go or we’ll be seeing phantoms
next.”

“He does live in the jungle,”
Peter said.

“Who?”
Roger asked as he pushed a vine
aside.

“The Phantom, you know, the Ghost
Who Walks,” Peter replied.

Roger sniffed. “Don’t be silly
Peter. Not now.”

The boys lined themselves out and
began walking slowly into the rainforest.  Roger tried to look everywhere.
He scanned tree trunks for bruising, palm fronds for damaged leaves or stems,
and the black, rotting leaf-mould for tracks. There didn’t seem to be anything
unusual.

They went into the jungle for
about a hundred metres. To avoid trees, vines, fallen branches and clumps of
wait-a-while they had to weave to and fro but Graham kept them roughly on
course with his compass. It was a skill they had been trained at in cadets so
presented no new experience or technical difficulty.

“That’ll do,” Graham called,
looking at his watch. “Turn around and we will go back. Try to follow a
different route.”

Roger wanted to keep searching.
He found it frustrating as well as exhilarating. He also found he was sweating
profusely and had a scratch on his right hand and had tipped a stinging tree
with the little finger of his left hand. He didn’t remember seeing one but as
he made his way back he noticed the furry, heart-shaped leaves in time to avoid
a worse sting.