Grk Undercover (30 page)

As soon as they finished their beers, the Red Jelly Gang pulled the black bags out of the helicopters, emptied them and did a rough valuation of their stash. They now knew that they had made the biggest haul of their lives.

Tonight, they were throwing a party to celebrate.

Tomorrow, they would divide up their spoils, climb into the ute and the four helicopters, and travel in different directions. They wouldn’t meet again until Red Jelly summoned them to commit another robbery.

In the middle of the street, between the bank and the hotel, they built a big bonfire. The flames blazed for an hour or two. In the dying embers, they made an immense barbecue, stacked with sausages, ribs, chops, steaks and skewers of lamb and chicken.

They ate till they couldn’t eat any more. Then they grabbed some beers and squatted in the dirt, discussing how they were going to spend their share of the loot.

Red Jelly fetched a crate from the truck and walked around his gang, handing out beers. “Go on, mate,” he said. “Have another one. You’ve earned it.” He turned to the man who was standing nearest to the radio. “Hey, Russ! Turn it up! I love this song.”

“You don’t think it’s too loud already?” asked Russ.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Red Jelly. “Who’s going to hear us?”

“There might be someone round here.”

“There isn’t,” said Red Jelly.

“How do you know?”

“This place is empty, mate. Has been for years. Might be some lizards. The odd roo. If they want to join the party, they’re welcome. But you don’t have to worry about anyone else. Go on, turn it up.”

Russ did as he was told. Music boomed into the air. Then he took another beer and cracked it open. “Cheers, mate.”

“Cheers,” said Red Jelly.

They knocked their beers together and drank them down in a single glug.

Arthur Hubbard peered through his dusty windscreen and rubbed his eyes. Then he rubbed them again. Was he dreaming? Or was he going mad?

He was driving back from Broken Hill. His ute was packed with enough rice, beans and beer to get him through the next month.

Now he was driving down one of the loneliest roads on the planet.

Fifty miles back, a kangaroo had bounced through the beams of his headlights. Since then, he hadn’t spotted a single living creature. You could drive along this road for hours without seeing another car. You could drive for years without seeing a pedestrian.

And now …

Now he was dreaming. Or he was going mad. Those were the only two explanations. Why else would he be able to see four people sitting by the side of the road?

He blinked and rubbed his eyes once more and squinted through the windscreen, but the four figures didn’t disappear.

When you drive for a long time through an empty landscape with no company except the radio and your own voice, you start seeing mirages. A pub pops out of the landscape. Then you blink and the vision shimmers into the dust and disappears.

These four people didn’t shimmer or disappear. In fact, they stood up and waved their arms, making sure he didn’t miss them.

Arthur jammed on the brakes. His heavily loaded ute lurched and screeched and shuddered before finally rolling to a halt.

Arthur opened the door, clambered out and gave the four people a long, hard stare. Then he said, “Do you want a beer?”

All four nodded.

“You’re in luck. I filled my Esky this morning. Four beers, coming right up.”

As any Aussie will be able to tell you, an Esky is an Australian cooler. Arthur kept one in his car. When you’re driving down dusty roads, there’s nothing better than a cold drink. He opened the Esky, lifted out four beers, and handed them round.

Arthur fetched a lemonade for himself and took a long drink. He waited till everyone else had done the same. Then he said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what are you blokes doing out here?”

Sir Tristram Tinderbiscuit and his three newfound friends all talked at once. They told Arthur about the siege. They described how four helicopters had flown out of Sydney, taking Red Jelly and his men and the big black bags stuffed with money and jewels.

They pointed to the place where the four helicopters had landed. There, the four of them had been pushed out and forced to stand in the baking heat. Red Jelly had shaken their hands, wished them luck and given them two big bottles of water.

“Don’t worry,” he had said. “You’ll be safe here. Someone will drive down the road eventually. You might just have to wait a few hours.”

Then he’d got back into his helicopter and flown away.

Since then, the four of them had been sitting under the eucalyptus tree. They’d sat there through the heat of the day and the chill of the night, listening to the strange sounds of the outback. Over the past few hours, they had begun to wonder if they were going to die right here, sitting in the shade of this eucalyptus tree.

Their water had almost run out. There was only a little dribble left at the bottom of each bottle. Another few hours and they would die of thirst.

Arthur Hubbard had heard about the siege on the radio, but he never imagined that he might find the four hostages himself. He wondered if he might earn a smidgeon of the reward. Then he told himself to stop being so greedy. He had four sickly, sunburnt people to worry about.

“You’d better get in,” he said. “If you don’t mind a squeeze, you’ll all fit.”

Jimmy Hu and Rebecca Ward clambered into the front of the ute and sat alongside Arthur Hubbard. Robert Corrigan and Sir Tristram Tinderbiscuit sat in the back. Arthur started the engine and they headed for the nearest town.

Tim and Shane had been flying for a little more than three hours when they found themselves directly above the tracking device.

Shane tipped the plane over on one side so he could look down at the landscape. Then he tipped it the other way so Tim could look too.

Tim saw a vast expanse of reddish earth, stretching to the horizon in every direction.

A single line cracked the landscape in half. That was a road, Shane explained. Like most roads in the outback, it probably wasn’t tarmacked, just cleared of the biggest rocks.

Driving out here, you had to be careful. If you ran out of fuel, you might have to walk a hundred kilometers to the nearest garage. If you punctured a tire and didn’t have a spare, you might have to wait a month for a passing motorist.

Directly beneath them, the road went through a cluster of tiny specks. Those were houses, said Shane. A farm, perhaps. Or, more likely, a little town. If he dropped to a lower altitude,
they would be able to see the four helicopters. If they went even lower, they would spot Red Jelly and his twenty men—and perhaps even Grk too.

Shane flew onward, hoping that Red Jelly would dismiss the plane as a farmer heading home or a tourist traveling to Alice Springs.

Shane handed a map to Tim. “Can you open that?”

Tim unfolded the map on his knees. With Shane’s help, he found their position.

According to the map, those houses were a tiny town named Dead Dog Creek. The map didn’t say how many people lived there.

There wasn’t an airport at Dead Dog Creek. Or even a landing strip. There was only one possible place to land a plane.

The road.

They flew onward for ten minutes. Then Shane angled the plane toward the ground and dropped down, down, down through the sky. When they were barely higher than the tallest
trees, he turned around and headed back toward Dead Dog Creek.

Below them, the earth flashed past with terrifying speed.

The noise of the engines shocked birds into flight. A flock of crows wheeled into the air and spun away, screeching.

Tim gripped his seat.

The wings shuddered and screeched.

“Hold tight,” yelled Shane. “We’re going in.”

The plane drifted lower and lower.

The road was a narrow strip of hard earth, not even as wide as the plane’s wingspan. Drift to the left or the right and they’d smack into a tree or a boulder.

Don’t think about that, Tim told himself.

But he couldn’t think about anything else.

Red Jelly had the right idea. Landing a helicopter here would be easy. You’d simply hover down from the sky and gently rest your undercarriage on the uneven earth.

But they weren’t flying a helicopter. They were flying an eight-seater, twin-engined aircraft designed for landing in a normal airport with a long, smooth, well-lit runway.

Tim turned to his pilot. “Have you ever done this before?”

“No,” shouted Shane. He had a wild grin on his face. “But I’ve always wanted to!”

They were almost touching the earth now.

The wheels bumped on the rough ground. The plane lurched upward, then thudded down. The tires smacked onto the road, raising clouds of dust.

A kangaroo stood for a moment, staring in astonishment at the heavy object bearing down on him, then turned and bounced out of the way.

The plane smacked onto the road again. The tires skidded, the wings wobbled one way and the other and then a wing tip scraped against the earth. It shattered in an instant, leaving a trail of debris in the dust.

Shane struggled with the controls, but the plane seemed to have a will of its own. It bucked and dipped and bounced and flung itself at the road as if it was trying to smash through the hard earth.

A tire burst. Then another.

The whole structure groaned. Rivets popped. The tail tipped up and the nose plunged down. Both propellers shaved the ground and disintegrated in a spray of metal.

The plane flipped over and the wings broke off and the windscreen smashed into a thousand pieces.

Things look very different when you’re upside down.

Things feel very different too.

All the blood rushes to your head. Your eyes are heavy. Your skull is a steel plate pressing on your brain. Your arms and legs feel skimpy and useless and hardly even attached to the rest of you.

Your body wants to fall to the floor, but it can’t, because you’re tied to your chair by a seat belt.

These were all interesting sensations, but Tim knew he didn’t have time to think about any of them, because he could smell fuel.

He knew what that meant.

When the plane turned head over heels and landed on its roof, the fuel pipe must have snapped. Fuel would be pouring out of the tank and collecting on the earth. A single spark would ignite the lot.

Beside him, Shane was asleep.

Asleep? Now?

“Shane!” yelled Tim. “Wake up!”

That was when he noticed the blood.

It was dribbling down Shane’s face, collecting on the tip of his skull and dripping onto the ceiling.

Was he dead?

No, he was still breathing. He must have been knocked unconscious by the impact.

Tim struggled again, trying to pull himself out of his seat, but he was stuck. He needed help. And he needed it before they were both blown into a million pieces.

Tim reached across and shook the pilot’s arm. “We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted.

Shane groaned.

Tim yelled louder. “Shane! Wake up! We’re going to die!”

Finally Shane opened his eyes. He tried to turn his head, but the pain was too much. Then he realized he was upside
down. He looked at Tim. His voice was strangely quiet. “What happened?”

“We crashed. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Shane twisted in his seat. “Just stuck.”

“Me too.”

“Wait a second.” Using every last reserve of strength, Shane stretched across the cabin and unclasped Tim’s seat belt. “Can you get out now?”

Almost wrenching his arm out of its socket, Tim managed to struggle free of the strap. He turned sideways and tumbled onto the roof of the plane. His feet followed after him, thumping against the seat and the instrument panel, then collapsing around his ears.

Ow.

The pain.

No time to worry about that now.

Tim untangled himself and opened the door.

He hauled himself out of the plane and landed face-first in the dust. He would have been happy to lie there for a minute or two, inspecting his wounds, but he knew he had to save Shane first.

He hurried round to the other door and undid Shane’s seat belt. Although he tried to be as gentle as possible, he couldn’t help bashing Shane’s limbs against the door of the plane as he hauled him out. Shane winced, but didn’t complain. He just said, “Thanks, mate.”

“No worries,” said Tim. He’d only been in Australia for a few hours, but he already knew how to speak Australian.

“Help me up,” said Shane. “We’d better shift ourselves. This plane might blow any minute.”

Tim was much smaller and lighter than Shane, but he somehow managed to help the bigger man to his feet.

“Does your leg hurt?” asked Tim.

“It’s no problem.”

“What about your head? You’re bleeding.”

“Oh, it’s just a little scratch. Come on, mate. Let’s make for that tree. Here, give me your shoulder.”

Shane leant on Tim’s shoulder and they half walked, half hopped down the road toward a big gum tree.

Every step must have been agonizing for Shane, but he never complained. He just winced a little every now and then as if he had a toothache.

The gum tree was about fifty meters from the road. If a car came toward them, they would see its dust from miles away, giving them enough time to hide.

On the horizon, Tim could see a few dark shapes shimmering in the haze. They could have been cars or trucks, but Shane assured Tim that those distant silhouettes were actually buildings. That was Dead Dog Creek. Somewhere in the middle of those distant shapes, they would find four helicopters and twenty criminals and a small white dog.

They sheltered in the shade provided by the wide canopy of branches and discussed what to do next.

“I’m not going to be much help,” said Shane, gesturing at his leg. “And you can’t tackle Red Jelly on your own.”

“I could try.”

“No way, mate. That would just be suicide. You’re a brave kid, but you can’t take on twenty armed men. They’ll just blow you away.”