Leopard Dreaming (44 page)

The metal platform jolted to a halt. Mira heard more boots marching to greet them, all smelling like sweaty men, and she wondered how many more there must be throughout the whole facility.

Kitching lifted her over an invisible gap — or so he said — as his stiff cotton collar brushed her cheek while he lowered her onto solid ground. ‘Watch your step, Mrs Creed. After you, please. Third corridor on your right, then seventeenth door on the left, you’ll find a computer room, powered up, with everything you need to get the paperwork started for the primary transaction.’

‘Seven
teenth
?’ Lina’s heels left the metal platform, sounding hesitant. ‘How big is this place?’

‘Is it safe?’ Sanchez asked, sounding more worried than ever. ‘Looks like it’s been bombed already.’

‘Renovations,’ Kitching replied. ‘Incomplete, but it’s the last place Garland will think to look for us. Half the lights don’t work anyway. Now shut up and be grateful you’re here, because the alternative was a long drop from the chopper, out at sea.’

Mira heard a hiss to her left and stopped.

‘Snake!’ Sanchez cried, tugging her back a step. ‘Watch out. It’s a red belly.’

Lina screamed — a long terrified scream, as if she’d actually fallen from Kitching’s air taxi and not yet struck the water. A scuffle broke out beside Mira, shoving roughly into her, until someone other than Kitching muffled her cries, and wrestled her into a strained silence.

‘Leave her alone!’ Mira shouted. ‘She’s not fighting. She’s terrified!’

‘It’s only here for the creepy crawlies,’ Kitching argued. ‘But if it saves my eardrums … Take care of it, Bohai.’

A rapid burst from an MP5 silenced the hiss, but sent ricochets down the hallway.

‘Step lively now, ladies. We’ve got a long night ahead and more guests on their way.’

On dusk, as the sun set inland beyond the Great Dividing Range, the last rays of the day bled a crimson path across the placid waves of Moreton Bay — leading directly to the shallows of little-known Hall’s Bay, one of the few remaining stretches of coast that didn’t twinkle at night with civilisation. Development staved off. Stalled by the large tract of coastal forest that, until recently, had been owned by Mira’s family for nine generations. State forest on one side, and on the other a colonial ghost town that had been reclaimed as Crown land during the Second World War for use as a military base.

Lockman paced the rear deck of the
Liquid Limo
, staying under cover, his worries divided between their destination and whoever might be following. Or watching via satellite. Smaller yachts and fishing vessels bobbed and sped about in no apparent pattern. He kept watch anyway, while Gabby and the others studied the replays of all the movements around them.

Following the flight path of the chopper for almost an hour had brought them through the maze of isles
and mudflats, leaving behind them the greater expanse of Moreton Bay. Staring out over it, he clenched and unclenched his fists, growing ever more anxious and uneasy. Patience had always been his hardest lesson, no matter how calm he might appear on the surface. Wild weather and waves would have better suited him for riding in on, and yet the waters of the bay remained calm and glassy. The
Liquid Limo
slid across with the ease and grace of an ice skater, leaving only a pale white trail. Storm clouds only boiled up from the eastern horizon, as if hunting him over from Stradbroke Island to the mainland, but without Dark Music pounding from the speakers on every deck, the cruise still seemed inappropriately tranquil.

Heading inside again, he heard Gabby and Darkin arguing about their destination options.

‘What’s the problem?’ Lockman asked.

‘See for yourself.’ Darkin invited him to the helm.

To his left, he noticed Sei crouched beside Chiron’s wheelchair, talking quietly and inspecting each other’s injuries; somehow managing to make light of them at the same time as she chastised him for leaving the safe house.

‘Hey, at least I can say I killed the last guy single-handed,’ she joked. ‘You should put on more weight if you want to further your career as a punching bag.’ Her smile fell away the moment she saw Lockman, and rising stiffly, she joined him at the helm.

No closer than arm’s length, he noticed. She also kept one eye on Ben.

‘Look, it landed briefly here first.’ Gabby pointed to the leftmost replay of radar and sonar imagery, where a green map still blinked with moving lights of various colours. Blue for shoals of fish, red for vessels and green for harbour markers. Then she traced a wide but crooked circle over the screen, taking in a few of the bigger islets. ‘It went this way over Lamb Island,
Likiba Isle and St Helena, where it hovered or landed for a few minutes each as if making deliveries — possibly subterfuge — before it veered off this way and flew all the way down here, to the Surf Lifesavers Club at Southport. So maybe we should have sent Delaney to go interview the pilot.’

‘The air-sea rescue service survives on donations,’ Darkin argued, leaning his hand on the back of Gabby’s chair. ‘So long as weapons were kept out of sight and they were paid enough, there’s nothing abnormal in hiring a little joy flight. I did it myself a few years back to get aerial shots for an album cover. The girls went a bit wild at one stage, but pilots set them straight, as if they were used to their guests getting rowdy from time to time. And I know they weren’t strangers to having passengers in costume, or role-playing spy missions. It’s fairly common nowadays in the corporate sector as a team-building exercise.’

‘Back up,’ Ben said, rolling his chair into the gap between Lockman and Sei. ‘You said Likiba? Did it land at Serenity? Maybe the matron’s been released already?’

‘If she was, she didn’t survive the drop, I’m afraid Ben.’ Sei spared him her usual abruptness. ‘Minimum altitude at that point was three hundred metres, which is too high for rappelling, normally, and too low for a parachute.’

Lockman noticed Gabby glance from Sei to Ben and back again, as if she’d just noticed the same thing he’d suspected when he’d first seen them together; a strong survivors’ bond that seemed to go deeper.

‘Mira’s
there
.’ Lockman drew their attention back to the screen by tapping his finger on the position where the chopper had come to within a metre of the ground in coastal rainforest. ‘That’s the military reserve next door to her parents’ old place. How close can you get me, Gab, if we swing in behind those mangrove flats?’

‘Hard to say. Maybe three to five hundred metres. I haven’t been into that part of the bay for a long time. Waters can be a bit treacherous. Not so much fast flowing as a mess of shifting mud banks and mangroves. Depending on how thick they’ve grown and the height of the tide by the time we arrive, I may not be able to get in at all in this tank … no offence, Declan. She handles great and she knows how to spread her weight, but the
Limo
still needs at least two metres of clear water beneath her. Preferably three. And she’s three stories of sleek ’n’ sexy, built to stand out in a crowd. So if Mira’s being held hostage anywhere near there, this is hardly the right craft to go sneaking up on them.’

‘There’s nothing there,’ Ben argued. ‘Smoke and mirrors, remember? Bean counters sold all that land to developers who flattened it.’

‘Greenies filed an injunction,’ Gabby countered. ‘It’s all Crown land now. One of the last patches of coastal forest between Brisbane and New South Wales. A friend of mine in head office recently supplied archived satellite photos and vegetation maps to someone assigned to replanting every rock, tree and wildflower.’

Lockman had seen that much for himself, since Garland had also rebuilt Mira’s childhood tree-top home as a bribe in the hope of establishing a better relationship. By using volunteer environmental groups, she’d managed to keep the costs down to about the same as a normal safe house. Except Mira refused to have anything more to do with the place, replica of her childhood home or not.

‘It’s all there again,’ Lockman confirmed. ‘Solar power, spring water. Even the orchard, vineyard and wild veggie patch. But they’ll all be dead and fossilised long before Mira ever goes back there willingly. All the more reason for him to take her there. Or next door, at least, to the old World War Two bunker. He probably
knows that ground-penetrating satellite surveillance, like that used by the mining industry, and adapted for General Garland, can detect only parts of the facility and not movement inside it.’

‘I thought that place was just an urban legend?’ Gabby said.

‘No hidden security?’ Ben’s frown furrowed deeper with suspicion. ‘That doesn’t sound like the General Garland I know.’

‘Only partially installed, so not fully activated,’ Lockman said. ‘To the best of my knowledge, there’d been no need unless Mira moved in. Mangroves haven’t been cleared yet at this end of the beach, so that’s my access point. Should afford me some cover.’

‘Jet boat’s too loud,’ Darkin cautioned. ‘They’ll hear you before they see you. Jet ski’s nearly as bad unless you coast in.’

‘I’ll have to swim it. How much closer do you think you can get me?’

‘What about the
Seaview Play
?’ Sei asked. Darkin had rigged all three visiting craft for towing when he’d cast off at Poacher’s Cove. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘I work better alone.’

‘If you’re just saying that because I’m injured …?’

‘I’m not. I need you here.’

‘Oh, really?’ Gabby stamped her foot at him. ‘I may not be trained in stealth like you two, but I do happen to know a few things about creeping around in the bush. And the
Seaview Play
is a teabag now. You’ll need spare hands on a pail, so yours are still free for … whatever.’

‘Motor is shot, Gabby. Like I said. I’ll swim it.’

‘Ah, but I keep paddles under the seat. Nice and quiet. Oui?’

Lockman paused to consider it. ‘I didn’t see any.’

‘They fold up, sorry, and look more like telescopes. I should have mentioned them sooner.’

‘Yeah, that would have helped. Doesn’t change the fact I need you both here to handle him.’ He glanced at Chiron, who regarded him with that same hateful glare that stirred up his own jealousy and made him resent that Ben had been the first of them to meet Mira.

‘Keep him alive,’ Lockman whispered to Gabby. ‘For Mira’s sake, as well as his. Keep him away from … all of it.’ As a time bomb himself, Lockman could already feel his pulse ticking. He had to fight it; this urge to defend her by killing. He had to blast a fork in the path that was leading him down his father’s footsteps to oblivion. He told himself yet again that without Ben, Mira never would have made it out from Serenity in the first place, and that logic still dictated he owed Chiron that much at least. Except he couldn’t help the burning resentment of all the time Ben had spent with her — the same red jealousy he could see being projected up at him. Couldn’t blame the guy for that either, no matter how much his own fist itched to punch that look off his face.

‘Hey, I didn’t come as baggage,’ Ben complained. ‘I came to talk her out of this adolescent fixation she has with black and white justice before it kills her.’

‘Then you don’t know her half as well as you think. She’s no adolescent.’ He knew Chiron was ten years older than Mira, and that like her he’d been wrongfully locked up for the best part of a decade, but as far as Lockman could tell, that’s where their similarities ended. Being only two years older than her himself, he felt like he had more in common with her through music, camping and survival skills. ‘She went in knowing the risks.’

‘How can you say that?’ Ben demanded. ‘She has no skills or life experience to make rational risk assessments. She still holds to the simplest childish precepts of judging a friend from a foe.’

‘Yeah, and I’d pay to see you argue
that
with her.’

‘You don’t know how suicidal she can be! She can’t help it, Lieutenant. It’s in her genes. Her mother, her father. Both dead by their own hands. And this ready willingness to throw herself in the line of danger for her friends is just another permutation. She’s never had a chance to enjoy life enough to understand what she’s really risking.’

Lockman clamped his eyes shut briefly and shook his head, keeping Gabby between him and Ben and trying not to look at him. ‘Just keep him safe,’ he whispered. ‘If he gets hurt, she’d never forgive me.’

‘There’s a pair of two-ways in the
Ski Ya Later
,’ Darkin suggested. ‘Never been used, so we could pick a frequency and a few code words to use if we see more traffic headed your way.’

‘Good idea,’ Lockman conceded, and fetched his bag to perform his ritual of checking his gear. ‘So it’s settled. You take command here, Tarin. Summon the cavalry first chance you get, and I’ll scout ahead.’

Delaney sauntered across the main road at Point Lookout with her surfboard under one arm and shirt flapping open to reveal her white singlet and blue-chequered police bikini. She skipped up onto the sidewalk in bare feet and followed the path uphill until she reached the oldest camper-truck in a row of three. Then she casually set down her board near the rear wheel, plucked open the door and climbed in as if she owned it.

‘Whoa! Hey!’ Moser startled. He whipped out his sidearm in time with Symes as they both spun around from their wall of mismatched surveillance screens. And then recognised her as a friend.

‘Easy, guys.’ She latched the door closed behind her and stepped over a thick tangle of power cables, grinning broadly at them. ‘If that’s how you really felt, you should have locked it and made me knock.’

‘You secured the prisoners already?’

‘Yep. Bam Bam is watching them now. So even if they can pick their way out of their cell, they’re not going anywhere.’

‘What about the other two? Brette and Finnigan?’

She shrugged and hooked her hip up on the bench. ‘Oh, I put Bravo and Felix in the neighbouring cell. They’re not too happy, but it seemed pretty clear you laid a lot of trust in that guy, Gabby’s friend, Adam. And he struck me as being a bit too wary of them, so I figured better safe than stabbed in the back, right?’