Milkshake (41 page)

But he was already dead.

A blinding light called him as he climbed towards it. His eyes
refocussed, his strength began to return. The light became the way
to cheat death, not accept it. It was his escape, the opening of
the steel container he had lowered himself into only a few minutes
before. Now he remembered.

Looking over the rim, David Turner replaced the image of St.
Peter smiling down on him. “It’s the Co2 messing with your head.
You’ll feel fine again in a minute. Keep climbing.”

* * *

Taylor Morgan drove slowly past, noting the police cordon
around the post office building. He dialled the number on the
satellite phone and a familiar voice immediately answered. “Tell me
about the door, the steel door along from the main
entrance.”

Taylor looked back along the street. “Well, it’s open and I
can see some people with cases going in.”

“I thought so. It’s over, Morgan. Get back to the lodge and
await my instructions.”

* * *

Stacey Martin answered her phone.

“He’s on his way back. Is everything prepared?

“Yes, I just have to get rid of some visitors who just turned
up, then everything’s sweet.”

* * *

Cass looked at the other two leaning against the front of the
truck. “If yous fellas are expecting a lift looking like you’ve
pissed yourself, you can think again.”

“Can I help you, guys?”

The woman who’d helped David hide appeared beside them,
brushing wisps of hair from her eyes with one hand and carrying a
phone in the other. “Oh I see you found Mr Turner. That’s good. I’m
Stacey, by the way, Mr Morgan’s personal assistant”

Brent only had a moment to assess the situation.
She works at the lodge, she knows Turner. She
must know why he’s here. She knows Taylor Morgan, She know why he’s
here too.

“Get back in and meet me by the gate,” he
breathed to Cass as he walked towards the woman. Placing a hand
gently on her elbow, Brent turned and walked her away from the
truck.

“Not sure who you are, love. The accent kind of gives you
away, though. So this is what I’m thinking right now. SIS, by the
way. I’m armed and not in the mood for any shit. You somehow got
Turner into that death trap back there. He doesn’t realise; thought
you were protecting him. Right now all I’m interested in is
Morgan’s head on a stick, so I need you to help me get it.
“

A voice faintly called, “Hello, hello?” Someone else was
trapped in the tank! Surely they would be dead by now. How did he
miss them when he was in there?

Stacey offered him the phone. “He wants to speak to
you.”

Brent put the phone to his ear as if he’d never done so
before.

“Who am I speaking with, please? This is Captain Brent Piri
of the New Zealand Army, who’s this?”

“Aah, Piri, the man who tried to save his country with his
own birthday. Ingenious. The man who staked out Heathrow Airport
for a month, got his partner killed, then travelled halfway around
the world in one of our jumbo trunks to save an innocent
Brit.”

“Who are you?”

“Piri, I’m the man trying to bring wealth, prosperity, and a
future to your Godforsaken little Hobbit holes down there. You’re
being offered the chance to lead the future of this entire planet
and all you can do is run innocent Americans off the road with a
logging truck.” No Southern drawl. This wasn’t the
President.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the man responsible for the future of six billion
people. The global economy moves on my command. I have it in my
power to decide who eats and who starves, who has shelter and who
sleeps in the gutter, who works and who begs for a living. Who
lives and who dies. Right now that tiny split-in-two country, with
a navy of half a dozen boats, an army of a few thousand overweight
peace keepers, and a shiny new borrowed helicopter for an air force
are all that stand between my country and the determination and
will of the American people. Don’t take me for a schmuck, Piri. I
could have a stealth bomber out of Guam and in your airspace by
sundown. You could wake up tomorrow with your entire infrastructure
wiped out overnight easier than wiping my ass.”

Schmuck
clinched it. “Senator
Elmerstein, I presume. You overestimate your own importance, sir,
and underestimate the New Zealand people. This country sacrificed
ten per cent of its population in The First World War fighting for
your freedom on the other side of the world. Ninety years later,
you send your young men halfway round the world fighting for the
control of oil. Or is that all just an obscene distraction to mask
what’s going on here? We split the atom. You developed nuclear
weapons. We conquered the highest mountain in the world with two
men and some rope. You took ten years and billions of dollars
trying to prove a point and get to the moon first. In so many ways,
we’re so much better than you’ll ever be. This small country
punches way above its weight in the world, Senator. We can smell a
bully in the school yard at ten paces and right now the bully is
blinkered by his own sense of importance, drunk on power and blind
to the real strength of his enemies. Your Migration Manipulation
Program is no such thing. It’s an uncontrollable social experiment
wrapped around some crazy untested science. If my people ever find
the truth of what’s going on here, believe me it's easier for a bee
to annoy an eagle than it is for an eagle to annoy a
bee.”

“Not sure where you’re going with that, Captain, but I think
you’re right. We need to take a step back, re-evaluate, look at the
long term effect of what we’re trying to achieve here, use the
proper channels to engage with the people of New Zealand and the
wider global community.”

“Shit, Senator. Basically all I’m saying here is get off my
fucking land.”

“Well said, soldier, but do me a favour and get off mine
first. Stacey has some business to attend to. Put her back on,
please.”

Brent handed the phone back. “Stacey Martin?” He recalled the
name from the press reports of Patrick O’Sullivan’s infidelity
years ago. Like many New Zealanders, he never thought she actually
existed.

“Thanks, honey.” She pressed a key, turning the speaker off.
She’d heard it all. Stacey put the phone to her ear and turned her
back on Brent. He stood awkwardly, their confrontation an
international stand-off interrupted by a phone call. Brent thrust
his hands into his pockets, rocked back on his heels and let out a
loud impatient sigh.

“Is this going to take much longer?”

Stacey put the phone in her pocket.

“I’m done. Now, Captain Piri, I need your help.”

* * *

Taylor Morgan slid the black Toyota through the winding
back-roads, desperate to get back, take his valuables and notes
from his safe, and drive to the Sounds where he’d meet up with a US
Marine unit that would spirit him away, deep under the
Pacific.

Stacey ran to meet him as he lurched to a halt on the grass.
“Taylor, there’s a problem with vat one.”

“Not now, Stacey. Something’s come up. I need to grab my
stuff and get out of here.” She reached into her jacket pocket. For
a second he hesitated before the phone on the passenger seat of the
car called him back. He leant across the driver’s seat to retrieve
it. Brent ran to the front of the vehicle, throwing his full weight
against the open driver’s door. Morgan screamed, pinned by his
legs. Brent pulled the door fully open before shouldering it hard
against the crumpled trapped body now slumped sideways across the
car seat.

After three sickeningly ferocious slams, Brent pulled the door
open and let go. Morgan slid backwards onto the grass, whimpering,
holding his legs. “They’re broken” He looked pleadingly at Stacey.
She stared at him, holding his gaze. He never saw Brent running in
from his right side. Morgan had no time to brace. His head snapped
back, propelled by the full impact of the former Auckland Grammar
School rugby captain’s boot as it caught him with brutal force
under his chin.

He fell back onto the damp grass, jaw smashed, and trachea
ruptured, gasping for air. With each involuntary gasp, the breath
seeped through the ripped cartilage into the surrounding tissue.
Morgan’s eyes grew wider as his chest bellowed his lungs,
desperately trying to capture some air as he wheezed. He drooled,
unable to swallow the blood and saliva in his shattered
mouth.

Brent stared into the terrified, swelling face of a dying man
and spoke a quiet Maori prayer. Morgan thrashed his arms. Was he
reaching for help or trying to retaliate? Brent remained just out
if reach. He turned to see Stacey’s reaction. She stood transfixed
by the brutality she’d witnessed. “Give me your phone,” Brent
commanded. He grabbed it from her limply outstretched hand and held
it in front of him.

“I can’t watch this any more. I’m gonna call for an
ambulance. What are you doing with the phone?”

“Too late for an ambulance. Another two minutes and he’ll be
dead.”

Morgan writhed and gurgled, desperately trying to cough as the
blood and mucus followed the air through the rip in his windpipe
into his head cavity. “I’m taking some video to send your boss.
Elmerstein wants him gone, right? Just making sure he knows I was
here to witness it.”

Morgan’s breath rasped as his face began to swell, the air
entering the surrounding tissue as the one element he craved
destroyed him.

He fell silent, his dying breath replaced by the Stacey’s
sobbing off-camera as Brent turned the lens towards the horizon,
panning across the distant mountain ranges.

“This is what you wanted, Elmerstein,” he said before turning
the camera back to Morgan’s corpse. “This is what you got.” Then
pointing the lens at his own face. “Because you didn’t expect to
have to deal with this.”

Brent contorted his features until his eyes bulged and the
tip of his tongue touched his chin. A fearsome grimace of Maori
defiance and a cry of “Ka mate! Ka mate!” lingered on the screen as
he pressed
send
.

Chapter 26

The NH90 helicopter headed north, Captain Brent Piri in the
co-pilot’s seat. Behind him sat Commander Dalton, David and
Katherine Turner, with Ed and Anika Collington opposite.

It circled the marae before coming in to land as it had done
three days previously. The dust settled and the rotor blades came
to a halt. Maaka’s father stepped forward, greeting his guests as
they stepped down before leading the party to his son’s
tangihanga.

He led the male members of the group onto the marae, followed
by Anika and Katherine. Anika explained the protocol as they slowly
moved up the path to the meeting house. The notion of the women
following was not intended to indicate they were inferior to the
men, in fact quite the opposite. The male entrance onto the marae
ahead of the females traditionally signified the male warriors’
protection from any potential threat.

A small group of women stood on the steps, Maaka’s
grandmothers and aunties, their plaintive oratory a karanga, a
traditional welcome to the group

Maaka’s body had lain on the marae for three days. Today he’d
finally be laid to rest. Katherine never expected her first
exposure to Maori custom would be in the form of something as
personal or intense as a family funeral.

Once Brent had finished responding to the karanga with a short
speech in Maori, he led their group into the meeting house. As they
removed their shoes before entering, Anika softly explained that
such occasions were about family and friends gathering to support
each other, the extended family coming together often for the first
time in many years to say goodbye to the deceased and to talk with
them for the last time.

The Turners were overwhelmed by the scene that greeted them.
The room was large and open. Ornate carvings seemed to climb the
wooden pillars, supporting a high carved roof. Katherine sensed the
atmosphere to be one not of sadness but of joy. Small children were
playing on the neatly manicured lawn. Inside, groups of men and
women stood around laughing and talking.

This was certainly not the respectful, mournful atmosphere
Katherine and David had experienced at funerals back in the UK.
This was more like a happy family reunion.

Katherine thought the building looked basic, primitive even,
contrasting as it did with the smart, modern clothing of the people
who stood or sat on its floor. She felt guilt at her own
narrow-minded misinterpretation of her surroundings. She wondered
if a Maori family visiting a traditional English country church for
the first time would also think it primitive.

Katherine was beginning to understand why this country had two
names. It was only ‘New’ to the Europeans who‘d been arriving for
the past one hundred and seventy years. Before that, the Maoris had
been living without external influence for hundreds more
years.