Burning for Revenge (18 page)

But now was the time to make my move, while they were still a fair way away. I used the jeep as cover and went for a little darting run halfway down the bank to the first bit of shrubbery. I paused there, panting, and peered through the branches. So far so good. The soldiers were still on the job.

I put my head down again and waited a moment. I needed another charge of energy, another gulp of oxygen.
But when I looked up again my stomach went into a spasm. The young soldier, the fifteen year old, was walking straight towards me. I stared at him in horror. I flattened myself even further, like an echidna, squirming against the ground, as though I thought I could press a hole into it. His gaze was wandering across a patch of blackberries, but it felt like a laser beam heading my way. In another second it would reach me. He would see me. His eyes would widen. His mouth would open. He would call out. I would be dead.

A plop saved me. A loud sharp plop from the water. In the middle of the biggest pool large, rough ripples were spreading. It was almost too big for a fish. I wondered if it might be a platypus. The boy frowned—something he seemed to do most of the time—and turned towards the river. He and his mates were so nervous that they would have jumped at a leaf falling from a tree. He took a step towards the bank, but then another soldier called out a few sharp and angry words. The boy screwed up his nose as though someone had farted. Mumbling to himself he walked back to the search party.

I thought I'd better make the most of my reprieve. I made my second dash, keeping so low to the ground I nearly got gravel rash on my tummy. I'd planned to stop again but once I started I just kept going. The last few metres were breathtakingly scary. But I made it to the jeep, crouching beside it, on the safe side. I peeped around the left-hand taillight to have a quick look at the soldiers. They were poking their rifles into some willow roots. It was a long way from where we'd been hiding, so I wasn't worried that we'd left any incriminating evidence. They were probably peering down a wombat hole. I reached into the jeep and released the handbrake. "You're a genius, Fi," I thought. I backed away slowly, but the soldiers were still interested in the willows. Before I knew it I was at the top of the hill. One last slither over the crest and I was with the others again.

I got a few pats on the back for that effort. But Lee was proud of himself too. "Did you like my shot with the rock?" he asked.

"Rock? What rock?"

Then I realised. "Oh. I thought it was a platypus. God, you took a hell of a risk."

We decided to stay and see what happened. It was too important to us. If these guys weren't fooled, if they were convinced we were in the area, it'd change our whole strategy. If we had successfully conned them, then we'd bought ourselves another chunk of time and space. We had to know.

It took half an hour to find out. In that time the soldiers, working carefully and methodically, covered the whole area up to the road. Then they at last decided to take a break. They came back down to the jeep.

It took another five minutes for anything to happen. For those five minutes we watched from our vantage points, sweating and wishing. If willpower could make those guys do what we wanted, they would have been moving at triple speed. But all our combined willpower didn't seem to make any difference. The soldiers lit cigarettes, and stood around talking, but still very watchfully, with rifles ready. I thought maybe they were losing enthusiasm. There wasn't much to encourage them.

It was only when one of them threw his cigarette away and went over to the jeep that things at last started to happen. He sat in the drivers's seat and tried the key again. Again it didn't fire up. He continued to sit there. One of the others called something but the man in the driver's seat just shrugged. For another couple of minutes he sat gazing through the windscreen.

I didn't see him look down at the handbrake. But suddenly I heard his cry of surprise. Of delight even. He jumped out of the car, calling to the others. I felt Fi's hand grip mine nervously. This was so important to us. Especially to her, seeing it was her idea. It just had to work. We were too tired, too wrecked, to start another long bout of running and hiding. We had to buy that extra time.

Whatever the man said brought them all to have a look. There was a lot of excited discussion. But one thing was for sure: their attitude changed. They were relaxed, laughing, happier. I knew they didn't want to find us, any more than we wanted them to find us. To them we were vicious armed guerillas. Totally dangerous, totally deadly. Amazing. But I could see how they would think that way. They were just regular soldiers, used to cleaning their boots, marching round the parade ground, getting the barracks inspected, having rifle practice in the afternoons. Nothing would have prepared them for the kind of stuff we were doing. Nothing would have prepared them for the inferno we'd created at the airfield.

They were thinking now that they weren't going to find us. All they had now was a jeep with a faulty handbrake. That was cool by them. They were happy again.

There was more discussion. But at least two of them obviously wanted to go. With dark coming on, I assumed they were approaching the end of their shift. The first two were starting to wade across the ford, and urging the other two, the older man and the teenager, to come with them. They weren't as keen, but after a moment they started to follow. The five of us watched anxiously as they splashed across the river. Soon they were heading up the opposite bank. But only when they were over the top and out of sight did we relax. We lay back and laughed. The relief was huge, overwhelming. We had survived, without hurting or killing anyone. It was big break.

No one was very keen to go back in the river. The darker it got, the safer the river would be—ambushes would hardly work when they couldn't see us—but we had become so uncomfortable and cold after the first trip that we weren't in a hurry to do it again. Instead we decided to follow the banks for as long as we could, then get some sleep. Funnily enough, no one even mentioned food. I guess there was no point. We knew we wouldn't be magically coming across any golden arches, so what was the good of whingeing? But I also knew our energy levels were a long way down, and we would need food soon.

We struggled along the sides of the river. It was difficult. There were big patches of blackberries in a few places, blackberries that stretched for a hundred metres or more. And in another place the banks were just too steep. Finally, while the rest of us struggled through another tricky part, where a clump of trees forced us into a big detour, Lee slipped into the water and swam around. It took him thirty seconds, but it took us ten minutes. When we got past the trees, Lee was waiting, comfortably stretched out on the grass. It was enough of a hint. At the next patch of blackberries we all took to the water.

We floated on for an hour and a half. By then the light was gone and we were terribly cold again. We needed to get out of the water. None of us had a clue where we were, but we hadn't seen any sign of habitation for twenty minutes, and the thick bush on either side of the river made us think we'd be safe.

We clambered out. We were so cold and miserable and hungry that when Homer said he was lighting a fire, no one objected. He looked straight at me, quite fiercely, as if he expected me to kick up a fuss, but I didn't have the spirit to say anything. And when I thought about it, as we straggled around the clearing looking for wood, it seemed like the right thing to do. It'd be dangerous to stand around in wet clothes. By the morning we'd have a few cases of pneumonia to worry about.

So Lee dived into his waterproof pack and got his matches. He'd said to me that I might be grateful one day for his waterproof pack, and he was right, as usual.

We lit a tiny fire and huddled around it to hide the flame, feeding it with dead twigs so there'd be no smoke. We talked quite a lot, in low voices, in case there were people closer than we realised. My first question was to Lee. "Was I dreaming or did you take the rifles from where those two soldiers dropped them?"

"Yeah, you must have been dreaming. I never touched them."

For a moment I actually believed him, which shows how tired I was.

"Yes you did!" I said indignantly.

"OK, I did then. Whatever you reckon."

"Oh come on Lee, tell me, what happened? How did you do it?"

Homer finally took pity on me. "It was a snap decision. It looked like there was a good chance we could get out without any shooting, but only if we put the rifles back. So we took the risk."

I was relieved it was such a simple explanation.

We talked about the airfield, each telling our stories. What we'd done and where we'd made mistakes and how stunning and amazing it all was. We didn't rave or scream or have a celebration party. We just talked quietly. I knew we were probably hurting Kevin by having our postmortem right in front of him, but too bad. We needed to do this. We weren't trying to rub salt in his wounds, but the whole thing had been so overwhelming, so intense, so sudden and rushed, that we hadn't even begun to absorb it. That very morning we'd brought off what could be one of the most important hits of the war. We knew that from the Wirrawee airfield the enemy controlled thousands of square kilometres of land. We'd changed that. The explosions and the fires had been so vast and on such a scale that it was quite possible we'd destroyed every plane.

We were talking about the big hangar when Lee said: "We should try to contact Colonel Finley."

"Yes, good idea," Homer said, with sudden enthusiasm.

Lee went on: "They mightn't even know this has happened. And they'll need to know, because then they can take advantage of it. They can bomb the hell out of any targets they want."

"But they'll know about it," Fi said. "All that smoke! It'd just about have crossed the Tasman."

I think Fi's real worry was that if we used the radio we might give our position away. The New Zealanders had told us how easy it was to be traced, and how we should only use the radio in emergencies. To be honest, I did sort of want to call the Colonel, but for the wrong reasons. I wanted to hear a friendly familiar adult voice again, and even more than that, I wanted someone to say: "Fantastic! You guys did well. That was good!"

I hadn't heard any praise from an adult in quite a while.

"We'll be circumspect," I said to Fi. She just looked at me, like: "You're pathetic."

We decided we'd spend a maximum of four minutes trying to establish contact. That mightn't sound much, but the New Zealand Army maintained a twenty-four hour a day listening watch on the frequency we'd been given, so if we were in a good enough position and there wasn't much interference we might get through.

We were all still damp. Steam was rising from our clothes but the fire wasn't big enough to dry us out. We decided to go find a place for the broadcast, and hope that the walk warmed us a bit. Even Kevin seemed to brighten a little at the thought of talking to New Zealand, and he came along fairly happily. At the next bend of the river we trudged up a hill, occasionally whispering a comment, but mostly we were silent, thinking our own thoughts.

At the top, Lee took out the radio. He was so confident it hadn't been damaged during our assault on the airfield that he hadn't even checked it vet. But I was very nervous as he turned it on. If it was broken ... well, I didn't want to think about that. The isolation, the fear, the loneliness of having no radio would be almost unbearable. Sometimes I thought the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge we weren't alone. There was an invisible link across the Tasman, a reminder that someone was on our side, fighting like we were, committed to the same cause.

The little red light came on OK. So far so good. Lee pulled up the aerial. He pressed the transmit switch and began calling. Our password was the password that Iain and the Kiwi guerillas had used—Lomu. Lee would say it four or five times, then switch to receive.

He didn't have to say it for long. After the second group of "Lomus" his ear was nearly bitten off by the reply. It was a woman speaking, not a voice we recognised but she had the right response, which was "Zinzan." They were football names, I think.

Her first question was: "The Colonel wants to know if you've been active? Over."

Lee fired back: "Yes, very. Over."

"We thought so. We've had some interesting reports. Have you reunited with the Keas? Over."

I had to think for a moment. Then I remembered.
Keas were the codename for Iain and Ursula and their group. But Lee was already answering. "No, we're still alone. We have no news of them, unfortunately. Over."

"But you've attacked their target? Over."

"Yes, correct. Over."

"Do you know how many units were destroyed? Over."

"Not exactly. We guess a minimum of thirty. Maximum could be anything, fifty or more. We might have got the whole lot. Over."

"That's what we're thinking. But some buildings are still standing, and we need to know what's in them. Can you help us there? Over."

"We only know about the ones in the northwest corner. Over."

"Yes, go ahead, that would be very helpful. Over."

"OK, the new galvanised iron hangar, about a hundred metres by fifty, next to a power line, is empty except for a few trucks. Across from that is an L-shaped wooden building, and that's the soldiers' barracks. To the south of the hangar is a store shed with aircraft parts, stuff like that. That's all we know about. Over."

There was a pause, then the voice came back. "Thank you. That's excellent. It was the first building we were worried about. What credibility rating would you put on your own assessment? Over."

"Huh?" Lee looked at me.

"I think she means, how sure are we that the hangar's empty," I said swiftly.

"Oh, OK," Lee said. Then, into the radio, he said: "We're one hundred percent sure. It was our home away from home. Over."

There was another pause, then the woman asked: "Did you sustain any casualties? Over."