Wildfire (20 page)

‘Probably.’ Kelly nodded.

‘It’s the place that’s been making everyone sick in Coober Pedy.’

‘Oh, that’s just anti-American propaganda.’

Ben shrugged. It probably was, but as he tucked the flyer back into his pocket he had a moment of déjà vu: putting the flyer in that same pocket while the café owner in Coober Pedy said,
I had this terrible itching. I thought my skin was crawling with insects
…

They reached the door where they had seen the
figure in the blue uniform. Kelly stood aside for Ben to open it.

He still had misgivings. ‘Should we really be here?’

Kelly glared at him. ‘Why not?’

He looked at that curled lip and the interrogating eyes and couldn’t quite think how to begin.

She didn’t give him long to explain. ‘Oh, don’t be a scaredy-cat. I’ve been on these bases before. My dad’s in the army, remember? It’ll be fine. Come on, let’s go in.’

Inside was a dark corridor and an open door into a lighted room. Kelly led the way.

The room was some kind of laboratory. Ben was reminded of pictures he’d seen of mission control in Houston during the Moon landings. Except that the whole place seemed to be manned by just two people. They were surrounded by so much electronic equipment that it took him a few seconds to spot them. Each man had three computer monitors. Along the walls were metal racks holding more banks of equipment covered with flashing lights. Some of the equipment had a home-made look. The knobs and lights were different sizes, as if they had been fitted at
different times. The numbers and lettering on the labels didn’t match. It looked like a prototype machine that someone was constantly building and refining; like something out of Ben’s dad’s workshop in the back garden. Except that everything here was emblazoned with the insignia of the US army.

Both scientists wore the muted blue uniform. They seemed wrapped up in their work and didn’t take much notice of the newcomers. Ben’s dad was like that when he was concentrating.

‘The frequency’s stabilized,’ said one of the men. A label on his shirt said his name was Grishkevich. He was looking at one of the screens. On it was a satellite picture like the ones on weather programmes. Grishkevich pressed a cursor key. The map view moved down a few centimetres. He looked at it carefully and then at another map picture on another screen, comparing them.

The other scientist, whose name tag said Hijkoop, looked over his shoulder at his screens.

‘It doesn’t seem to have made any difference,’ said Grishkevich. ‘The wind’s died down to five knots but it could kick up again any minute.’

‘Hi,’ said Kelly.

Grishkevich continued to ignore her but Hijkoop looked up. ‘Ah, you got here at last. Are you guys new? I haven’t seen you before.’

Grishkevich spoke too, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen. ‘Sorry – you must have had a rough ride on the way in. We’re having a lot of trouble with it today.’ He continued to move the picture with his cursor.

‘They’ll have breezed in with no trouble,’ said Hijkoop. ‘That crate is big enough to cope with a bit of bad weather. You guys must get much worse in Alaska.’

Ben realized the scientists thought they’d come in on the Galaxy Starlifter. Of course, with their flying suits and the headsets around their necks, it was a reasonable assumption to make. Although they obviously couldn’t have looked at Kelly properly because she looked more like a teenage tourist than a military scientist. And people always assumed that Ben was older than thirteen, though he was sure he didn’t look old enough to be in the army just yet.

Hijkoop chuckled. ‘Alaskan winter to Australian
summer. I bet that’s a shock. Did you bring us some ice? We haven’t managed to make snow yet but we’re working on it.’

Grishkevich stood up. He brushed imaginary dust off his trousers. ‘OK, show us what you’ve got for us. I hope it’s not Alaska’s cast-offs.’

Ben was wondering if they could sneak out quietly before they got into trouble, but Kelly was determined to put them right. ‘We didn’t fly here from Alaska. We’ve just come from Adelaide.’

Hijkoop and Grishkevich stopped what they were doing and looked at Ben and Kelly properly for the first time.

Ben saw their expressions change. Hijkoop reached behind his monitor screens and pulled out the plugs. The satellite weather pictures vanished.

Kelly drew herself up to her full height. ‘I’m a United States citizen and I need help. My father is an army officer and he’s been kidnapped in Adelaide.’

Grishkevich snatched up some files and clutched them to his chest protectively. He glared at Ben and Kelly. His entire manner had suddenly changed and he looked very angry. ‘How did you get in here?’

‘We got lost,’ said Ben. ‘There was some bad weather. We got blown off course.’

Hijkoop was on the phone. ‘Security, we need help. We’ve got intruders.’ He put the phone down and looked at Ben and Kelly. ‘That story isn’t going to wash. You don’t just wander into a high security base like this. Who are you really? How did you get in?’

‘We’ll have you in court for trespass,’ said Grishkevich. ‘They’ll lock you up and throw away the key. How many of you are here?’

‘It’s just us,’ said Ben.

Kelly looked offended. ‘I’ll have you know that my father—’

Suddenly an alarm wailed through the building.

Ben pulled at Kelly’s arm and quickly dragged her out of the room.

In the corridor, she pulled out of his grasp, looking outraged. ‘I can explain to them.’

Ben took her arm and hissed in her ear. ‘You can’t. Look.’ He opened the cargo pocket on his trousers a little way, just enough to show her the piece of paper in there.
STOP SECRET US EXPERIMENTS.
He still had the Oz Protectors flyer.

Kelly stared in disbelief. ‘You dummy. Why didn’t you throw that away before?’

‘Well, I didn’t think we’d be coming here.’

‘If they search you and find that, they’ll throw our asses in jail.’

Behind, they heard people running down the corridor. Voices rang out, barking orders: ‘Use reasonable force. Shoot to wound, not to kill.’

‘Screw that,’ yelled Kelly. ‘Run!’

Snoopy sat in the back of an army truck with a blanket around his shoulders. ‘Look at that, dude,’ he said to Dodge. ‘Awesome!’

They were watching the flames and smoke that spread from one edge of the skyline to the other. The whole of Adelaide was ablaze.

Dodge was coughing. ‘I got a bloody lungful of smoke, Snoop. Should come with a public health warning, eh?’ They laughed.

An army medic came over with water bottles for them both. ‘You’re going to feel weak because of the smoke inhalation,’ he said.

‘No kidding,’ said Dodge. He nodded towards the
burning buildings. ‘Do they know how it got started?’

‘Some idiot lit a fire, probably,’ said the medic.

Snoopy tutted. ‘No consideration, some people.’ The medic looked at them with a frown. ‘You need

to keep your fluid intake up. Drink. Other than that, stay still. We’re going to be moving out in a few minutes, as soon as we’ve picked up a few more survivors.’

Dodge squirted some water over his tongue and grimaced. ‘Tell you what, mate,’ he said to the medic. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cold beer, would you?’

It wasn’t often that the desert base got unwelcome visitors, but it wasn’t completely unknown. Sometimes there would be suspicious noises in locked rooms, and the soldiers on guard duty would be sent to investigate. They had always traced the disturbance to possums or dingoes that had got in from the desert. They’d never had people breaking in before – the base was too remote. But now two youths had been spotted in the main lab and were haring out of the side door into the desert.

Three guards were sent to the lab. As they rounded the corner by the lab entrance they caught sight of the two intruders. A male and a female in flying overalls. As they raced out of the door, the bright afternoon sunlight turned them into silhouettes. They ran like the devil was chasing them, their feet kicking up clouds of red dust. The way people run when they know they’re in trouble.

Sergeant Kowalski and his two men pursued the pair a little way out into the scorching sunshine. They were racing towards the perimeter fence. The three soldiers stopped, steadied their AK-47s and fired a salvo of single rounds towards the perimeter fence. Plumes of dust rose as the bullets bit into the red sand.

The running figures changed direction abruptly like startled fish.

The sergeant spoke into a radio on his lapel. ‘Sergeant Macy, stand by, they’re heading your way. We’re following from behind.’

‘Roger,’ came the reply.

Even though the base did not have intruder alerts very often, they still had protocols in case it happened.
Spies and saboteurs could do a lot of damage and had to be apprehended.

Sergeant Kowalski shipped his weapon back onto his shoulder, letting it hang casually on its sling. ‘Take it easy, boys, we don’t need to knock ourselves out. Look at ’em go. They won’t be able to keep that up for long in this heat.’

Ben and Kelly were still running like the wind. Now they were alongside the dome. They were easy to spot – two tiny figures against a gleaming white background. They raced around the dome’s curved perimeter until they were out of sight.

Kowalski spoke into his radio again. ‘Macy, I think we can take our time. Where are they going to go? It’s nothing but desert out there.’

About four hundred metres away, near the other entrance, Sergeant Macy’s men were jogging towards the dome, ready to take up the chase. Like greyhounds on a racetrack, in a moment they would come running out the other side.

None of the soldiers noticed the cloud of dust blowing up on the other side of the dome. They didn’t even take much notice of the noise – a tinny
buzz like the engine of a lawnmower or a tiny boat.

But then a machine rose into the air above the dome. It was a spindly collection of struts like a First World War plane. Two figures sat in the tiny cockpit. The plane climbed, cleared the perimeter fence by a whisker and soared away into the blue sky.

The two GIs watched, speechless.

‘Aw, nuts,’ grunted Kowalski.

Bel had a searing headache. She trudged along past buildings that were blackened and dripping with water. They still smelled hot and the water was slowly turning to steam.

The whole street was blanketed in a thick smoky fog.

The road surface was soft under her feet like freshly baked cookies, and the metal rails of the tram tracks had expanded in the heat and burst out of the hilly tarmac.

Those tram lines might be what saved her, Bel thought. She knew that they ran towards the west side
of town – and the sea. She couldn’t see more than a few metres in front of her now, but she could follow the tram lines.

She passed a traffic light lying in the street, a vaguely oblong block of melted black plastic, with circles of red, amber and green, like a piece of sculpture by Salvador Dali.

The heat was making her head throb like a bass drum and the yellow protective coat didn’t help. It was stiff and heavy to move in. Her entire body was running with sweat, her shirt and skirt wringing wet.

She angrily pulled open the coat’s Velcro fastenings and took it off, but as soon as she did so, her back, chest and arms started to scorch. It felt as though she had peeled her own skin off. She put the coat back on, fastened it all the way to the top and walked on.

Ahead of her she saw a phone box – a mess of blackened plastic like a burned-out shower cubicle. The fire brigade had ringed it with yellow caution tape. That meant there was a body inside. Bel averted her gaze, but couldn’t help catching a glimpse of what was inside. A blackened figure was hunched, bent over the phone. Bel knew from her work in other
disaster areas that when somebody burned to death they curled up like a cooked prawn.

A noise behind her made her jump: it was the sound of a vehicle moving. She peered through the smoke and steam – was it coming towards her or going away? Red brake lights, enlarged to blobs by the smoky air, looked like a dot of colour on wet blotting paper. She started to run towards them, waving her arms.

‘Hey! Help! Help!’

The driver of the army truck wanted to get out of the burning streets as fast as possible, but he had to be careful as debris kept looming out of the fog. He had a truck full of rescued civilians and the last thing he needed was to damage the truck and strand them all.

In the seats behind him, a bedraggled-looking group sat in a silent row. They looked like they had come from a set of Happy Families cards – a vet, a decorator, a postman, a jockey and two people wearing tattered golf clothes.

Victoria, Troy and their embattled companions had been rescued at last. By chance, they had run into the path of the rescue truck. They would look back on this as the day they’d beaten the odds.

But Bel wasn’t so lucky. Victoria was gazing, exhausted, out of the back of the truck. The streets went past in a dream of fog. The heavy thrum of the truck’s diesel engine was lulling her to sleep. She didn’t hear the woman calling, just caught a brief glimpse of movement. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, but it was only a fluorescent yellow smudge in the gloom, a trick of the light. She settled back in her seat and closed her eyes.