Dark Country (40 page)

‘I’m pleased that you followed instructions, Gillespie,’ he said.

‘Now let’s see if you can, Russo. Let the women go, and let them walk to the bike. Once they’re there, I’ll walk to you.’
He held up the envelope with one hand.

‘And if I don’t like your instructions?’

‘My thumb is hovering on the “send” button of a text message, to a senior police contact, advising that a certain freighter
about to dock in Sydney is carrying a shipment of cocaine.’

‘I could shoot you now, Gillespie.’

‘If you raise your arm, I press the button.’

He forced himself to keep calm, keep still. It would work within seconds, or not at all.

‘Release the women,’ Sergio ordered.

Three men hauled them out of the back, and they stumbled, blindfolded, hands bound. One of the men cut the ties around their
wrists, and Sergio himself ripped the blindfolds off.

‘Walk to the motorcycle, ladies. Do not go anywhere near Gillespie, do not stop, do not talk. Have I made myself clear?’

They nodded, then Deb put her arm around Megan and started guiding her away.

Gil remained motionless. They crossed to the side of the road, to keep their distance from him, but as they came closer, he
saw the bruises on Deb’s face and arms, the raw red marks on Megan’s wrists.

‘Get away,’ he mouthed, and Deb gave a minute nod. If she’d been by herself, he might have had an argument, but with Megan
to protect, she’d do the right thing.

As soon as Deb and Megan reached the bike, the men came at him. He raised his hand with the phone, growling, ‘Wait until they
leave.’

He couldn’t risk taking his eyes off the men. He heard the bike start, the engine rev. And he heard engine sounds alter as
it started to move. He waited a second or two, then lifted his thumb from the phone.

They didn’t give him any more time. They rushed him, tackled him to the ground, shoving his face into the sand. He tried to
twist away, but a boot slammed into his gut. Pain screamed through his body, his head and, somewhere in the middle of it,
he heard a shot, then another. They dragged his arms behind him, cuffed them and hauled him upright. Panic giving him strength,
he fought them, needing to turn, to see down the road.

‘Let him look,’ Sergio ordered. ‘It will give him plenty to think about, while we wait for my cousin to join us.’

The bike lay on its side on the road, Megan and Deb sprawled nearby – silent, still heaps on the blood-reddened sand.

Despite Gil’s calm, almost casual, voice when he’d set up the meeting, Kris’s uneasiness kept building. He wouldn’t have set
her up to go into danger without warning, but the sense that something was wrong couldn’t be ignored.

According to the clock in the unmarked police vehicle, she crossed the creek at twenty past ten. She’d shifted into four-wheel
drive earlier, the deep, sandy ridges on the road a hazard. She glanced again at the dark clouds gathering on the western
horizon, their ominous colour a vivid contrast to the rest of the blue sky and the sunshine, gold on the dry paddocks. The
forecast storms were on their way; with luck, she’d be off this road before it turned into a quagmire.

Four kilometres past the creek, she started looking out for Gil and his bike. When she saw a figure waving in the middle of
the road, she thought for a moment that it was uncharacteristic of him. And then she saw it wasn’t him … Deb slumped to the
ground as she stopped. Kris leapt from the car and ran to her, then saw the blood on her hands, on her shirt, and covering
her lower leg.

‘Kris! Thank God it’s you,’ she gasped, gripping her calf. ‘Megan’s shot. In the back.’

The unease solidified into outright fear, but Kris pushed it down, made herself focus on the here and now.

‘Is she alive? Where? How far?’

‘Just up the road. I was going for help, but shit, it hurts.’

‘You’ve done well, Deb. Let’s get you into the car.’

Kris helped her to her feet, half-carried her to the car, and guided her onto the back seat.

‘Slide back if you can, and put your leg up on the seat. The higher it is, the better.’

She found the first-aid box and pulled out dressings. She tore open packets, pressed a couple of dressings against Deb’s leg.
‘Press as firmly as you can, Deb, and hold it there. I’ll call for an ambulance as we go.’ Then she asked the question she
dreaded hearing the answer to. ‘Do you know where Gil is?’

‘They took him. He exchanged himself for us. He tried to get us a chance to escape on the bike, but the bastards fired before
we’d got far. Megan was hit, and then me, and I lost control of the bike. We went down. I told her to stay still. We didn’t
move until the car drove off. It was a black Land Rover, but I couldn’t get the number.’

Kris nodded, made her way back to the driver’s seat, thoughts racing, screaming between terror and anger, cursing Gil at the
same time as she wanted to shake him and hold him
and yell at him for making her so damned afraid she almost couldn’t cope.

Her hand shook as she gripped the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition. But she managed to keep her voice clear
and steady as she radioed in to report the shooting, and request paramedics.

Eight hundred metres down the road, she found Megan … She was conscious, in pain from the wound in her side, and rapidly,
Kris assessed, going into shock. She pushed back Megan’s top, quickly located the entry and exit wounds, an inch or two from
the side, just above her waist, and desperately tried to remember what anatomical parts were where.

‘It hurts, Kris,’ Megan whispered.

Kris took Megan’s cold fingers in hers, brushed her hair from her face with her other hand. ‘Sshh, Megan. Lie as still as
you can. There’s an ambulance on its way. We’re not far from Birraga, so it won’t be long.’

Fifteen minutes it took, before they arrived. Fifteen long, lonely minutes during which she did the little she could for Megan,
questioned Deb some more and briefed her colleagues on the situation by radio, giving orders and forcing herself to think
professionally and objectively, as though the man in the custody of the Russos was simply a citizen, and not the man her heart
cried out for.

She kept being a cop, doing what she had to do, holding the saline bag for Megan until the second ambulance arrived with more
paramedics, supervising and liaising and thinking and planning while she did so, because letting herself fall apart would
fail Gil and all the others she was responsible for.

Deb had hung Gil’s jacket on a dead tree branch above in an effort to provide a small amount of shade for Megan, but after
the ambulances finally departed, and while her colleagues were busy on the radio, Kris unhooked it from the branch, hugged
it to her body, and tried to pretend that the warmth in it was Gil’s.

Bound tightly at wrists and ankles, with a thick hood tied over his head, Gil lay on the floor of the vehicle, relaxing his
body as much as the rough road allowed, and listening to everything the five men said. He didn’t give himself a whole lot
of chances, but he intended to take any single one that presented itself, and the more he knew, the more prepared he’d be.

He didn’t, couldn’t afford to, let his thoughts go to Deb and Megan. If he did, he’d lose his concentration, maybe miss his
chance, and no way would that help them. If they were alive, Kris would find them. If not, he’d grieve for them after he killed
Sergio Russo. Either way, he needed to be alive, and ready to act.

The men didn’t talk much, but Sergio made a phone call to Tony, talking quickly in Italian. Gil guessed a word here and there,
similar to English words, but the only one he really knew was ‘Dungirri’.

They’d certainly been in the vehicle long enough to be getting close to Dungirri, although they’d stayed on dirt roads, not
sealed ones, and taken many turns. Reality was, they could be anywhere within a seventy-k radius of Birraga.

They stopped at last, after a long, bumpy track, and the men dragged him from the vehicle, laughing when he hit the ground.
Ignoring the bruising, he took the chance to scrape his fingers over the cool ground, identified leaf litter rather than bare
dirt, broad leaves as well as fine needles. He breathed in deeply and slowly, got faint scents through the cloth that might
have been the native cypress, and the white and pink spring-flowering bush he’d never known the name of. All of which suggested
somewhere in the bush, on the Dungirri side of the scrub.

Two pairs of arms grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. Something firm pressed against his temple.

‘We’re going to free your feet, Gillespie, and you’re going to walk. Just remember I’ve got this Glock in my hand, and if
you do anything stupid, I’ll use it. Your extremities first, I think, because my cousin does want you to be alive when he
gets here.’

They marched him across some flat, sandy ground, and into a building. A large shed, he thought, because of the way the voices
echoed, and the swallows that shrieked around their heads.

‘There’s some narrow steps, now,’ one of the men said. ‘Don’t lose your footing, Gillespie.’

He made it down the first couple of metal steps before they pushed him the rest of the way. He twisted, landing mostly on
his side, his arm scraping on the cement floor. They jeered, of course, while his arm and shoulder throbbed with pain. He
heard the clang of a metal door and as they kicked him and told him to get up, he realised where he was: walking into a buried
shipping container, about twenty-five kilometres north of Dungirri.

The emergency department at Birraga hospital buzzed with people working and speaking in low, urgent voices, against a constant
background of electronic beeps.

Kris sat on the hard chair by Deb’s bed, in an alcove at one end of the department. They’d given Deb painkillers, seen to
her leg, and Kris kept her occupied by going over the details of the night for any more information she had about identities,
locations, and the intentions of her captors. But Kris turned most of her concentration to the curtained bed at the other
end of the area, listening for the lilting accent of the new emergency doctor, only recently arrived from India, or the Scottish
brogue of Morag Cameron, the local general practitioner. Neither of them spoke loudly, though, and there were only snatches
of information from the nurses and technicians who went in and out.

When Morag finally emerged from behind the curtain, Kris sprang up and went to her.

‘How is she?’

‘She’s stable, but there’s still some internal bleeding,’ Morag explained, succinct as ever. ‘We’ll airlift her to Tamworth.
They’ll have theatre teams ready. Can you inform her next of kin?’

‘Her father …’ Her mouth dry, she swallowed, made her voice normal. ‘He’s been abducted. I’ll have someone inform her grandparents.’

She went outside, into the garden beside the building, where she could hardly hear the beeps and where the perfumed roses
drowned the hospital smell. The storm clouds were overhead
now; along with the scent of the roses, the air carried the scent of rain, not far away.

Beth had stayed with the Russells overnight, so Kris dialled her mobile number, spoke with her briefly, glad she could rely
on Beth to handle things at that end. She would find someone to drive the Russells to Tamworth if they were fit enough to
go.

Steve Fraser swung out of the ward block on the other side of the garden, and crossed over to her as she hung up.

‘I’ve just been speaking with Mark,’ he told her, after she’d given him the latest on Megan and Deb. ‘Gotta love a politician
with a gift for faces, names and voices. We might have IDs on a couple of the men. I’ll follow up the leads now.’

‘Good.’ She nodded, although a voice inside her head argued that they needed to know where, not who. ‘I’ll go back to Dungirri.
Half the town’s been working for Flanagan properties in one way or another, and I’m going to interrogate the lot of them if
necessary.’
Especially Sean Barrett and the Dawson boys
, she added to herself.

‘Okay. Keep in touch, let me know what you learn.’ He turned to go, then remembered something. ‘Petric and Macklin are on
their way back. Seems Tony Russo left Sydney this morning, heading this way.’