Snatched! E-Book

Gary Gregor

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

An abandoned military training base hidden in the middle of the Australian outback.

A school teacher and her class, kidnapped in broad daylight.

A ransom demand of two million dollars, three former Australian Army commandos, and a desperate, corrupt politician, all looking for a better life.

Major crime detectives Russell Foley and Sam Rose are assigned to find the hostages, bring them home safe and sound, and capture the kidnappers in the process.

But can Foley and Rose find the teacher and her class before the kidnappers carry out their threat and kill them all? It’s a race against time - in some of the most inhospitable country on the planet.

Leseprobe

SNATCHED!

FOLEY & ROSE BOOK 6

GARY GREGOR

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

DAY ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

DAY TWO

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

DAY THREE

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

DAY FOUR

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

DAY FIVE

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

DAY SIX

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2020 Gary Gregor

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of people play a role in getting an author's story from an initial idea to a published book. For some of them, that role is small, for others it is significant. All who contribute in some way, regardless the level of input, are important to me, and although it might be cliché, it is true that this book would never have seen the light of day without each of them.

If I must nominate just a few, I would start with my former colleagues in the Northern Territory Police Force. You wonderful folk are the inspiration for my characters and, while those characters are fictional, I occasionally draw on the personality traits of some of those I have met in the job. If you recognise yourself in any of them, please remember that you are there because you inspire me.

My beautiful wife, Lesley, who tolerates my long hours in front of the computer without complaint, I love you and I thank you, although I still insist my love of writing is not an obsession.

Last, but by no means least, I thank all at Next Chapter Publishing. The Next Chapter team took a punt on an unknown, and that's rare in this business. I hope I can justify your gamble. I know I'll never stop trying to honor that leap of faith; thank you.

This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of police officers everywhere who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their communities.

PROLOGUE

They found Walter Tjapanangka lying in a shallow ditch at the side of the Namatjira/Kintore Link Road just a few hundred metres from where it intersects the Gary Junction Road.

Walter had been shot once in the chest. He lay on his back, his lifeless eyes open, staring up at the searing central Australian sun. He bled out and died where he fell; on the hot, dusty ground. Flies in their hundreds swarmed in a noisy, buzzing frenzy around his face and chest, settling briefly in the blood that had soaked through his shirt and onto the talcum powder-like dirt beneath him before lifting off, flying around for a few seconds jostling for a better position, and then settling once again.

The two boys who found him, teenage brothers Billy and Henry Tjampitjinpa from Papunya, ten kilometres to the north, stood warily, several metres from the edge of the road and stared wide-eyed at the body, neither wanting to approach any closer.

Fearful of offending against aboriginal spirituality and thereby hindering Walter’s passing into the afterlife, neither Billy nor Henry dared to speak the deceased’s name.

They recognised Walter Tjapanangka immediately. Walter was a well-known identity in the Papunya/Haasts Bluff region and the brothers knew Walter had been on his way to Papunya with a bus load of school children on a day excursion from Haasts Bluff.

So, where was the bus? Confused, they turned their eyes from the body and scanned the surrounding country.

The school bus, and every one on it, was gone.

DAY ONE

1

In a perfect world, Walter Tjapanangka should never have been a school bus driver. But then, Haasts Bluff, a tiny, hot, dry, dusty aboriginal settlement in the remote, isolated wilderness of the West McDonnell Ranges was not, and never would be a perfect world. The truth was, when the Northern Territory government of the day supplied the community with a shiny, new, Toyota Coaster, 4 litre, 5 speed manual transmission, twenty-two seat bus, their generosity did not extend to supplying a driver and that presented a problem for the residents of Haasts Bluff: Who was going to drive the bus?

The long-awaited arrival of the bus all the way from Alice Springs, two hundred and fifty kilometres to the East, was a big event for the residents, all one hundred and fifty of whom gathered, animated with anticipation, at the school oval to welcome the new, bright and shiny bus. Not that the bus looked all that bright and shiny when it finally arrived due to traveling from Alice Springs, over mostly unsealed, dusty, corrugated, dirt roads. Nevertheless, community enthusiasm was never going to be dampened by a little dirt on the Duco.

Now they could travel to neighboring communities in air-conditioned comfort rather than in one or more of the numerous, rusty, mostly unregistered, borderline unroadworthy, and almost always unreliable cars dotted around the community.

Remote, isolated outback aboriginal communities are populated mostly with resilient folk. You simply don’t survive in such hot, inhospitable, barren places unless you are born with a good deal of durability and toughness inherited from your forbears running through your veins.

Walter Tjapanangka was one such person. He was about as tough and durable as they come. The Tjapanangka family were all strong, hardy folk, and their residency in Haasts Bluff dated back more generations that anyone could remember. They were not a particularly nomadic people; although at some point in their past, their ancestors must have been a curious, wandering clan to find themselves domiciled in the centre of the harsh Australian outback where they remain to this day.

Like the majority of the elder residents in the community, Walter was not a well-educated man. Structured, formal classroom education, embracing a curriculum of essential subjects such as English and Mathematics, among others, was non-existent when he was a boy.

When Walter was growing up, all he needed to know was how to track and hunt for food so he would not starve, and find water so he would not die of thirst. Basic in its simplicity, but reading, writing, and arithmetic were not matters of life-sustaining importance to the early, weathered, hardened, indigenous inhabitants of the nation’s desert interior.

No one knew just how old Walter was, even Walter himself had no idea of his age. The best educated guess would put him at around fifty years old, a number that could easily be off the mark by as much as a decade. When you spend every day of your life beneath the blazing sun of the Australian outback, where daytime temperatures can, and very often do, soar into the high forty-degree Celsius range, your skin is going to turn hard, wrinkled, and leathery very early in your life, adding years you have yet to experience to your age.

Walter worked as a grounds-man-come-handyman for the tiny Haasts Bluff community school. It was not hard work, menial at best, and that suited Walter. He kept the school grounds clean of rubbish, wiped dust from the schoolroom windows, and where his limited expertise allowed, he mended a broken chair or desk leg. There was no grass to mow, even the school oval was little more than a barren patch of dirt with goal posts at each end.

Water was scarce out in this country, the residents could count the number of times it rained each year on one hand, and when it did, it either evaporated in the air before it hit the ground or disappeared into the parched earth immediately it landed. The community could not afford to use what little water they were able to store on trying to encourage grass to grow on the oval.

The community did not have a lot in regards to funds and, although Walter was paid little more than a small stipend for his services, it was enough for his basic needs. Besides, his knowledge of financial matters was commensurate with his lack of education so he just went about his work with what could only be described as lackluster enthusiasm.

However, Walter was excited when he was appointed custodian and driver of the community bus. He was not overly exuberant with his enthusiasm, that was not Walter’s way, but he was inwardly proud of his position and considered his appointment as bus driver to be an indication of his status as an ‘elder’ in the Haasts Bluff community.

The bus was housed in a purpose-built, open-sided, corrugated iron-roof shelter between the community administration building and the single-room school building next door. Walter kept the bus as clean as possible given the desperate shortage of water and, when not tending to chores at the school, he could often be found in the shelter wiping dust from the bus exterior with a tatty rag or sweeping the interior with a broom which had seen far better days.

For no reason other than he worked at the school and was one of the very few residents who had a driver’s license, he was selected to drive the community bus whenever it was required. It mattered not to Walter, nor indeed to any other member of the community, that his license had expired long ago and was never renewed. No one asked and it never occurred to Walter to volunteer this small tit-bit of information. It would not have mattered even if someone did think to ask; this was the desert. There were no police stationed in the community, the closest, manned police station was in the settlement of Papunya, twenty-five kilometres to the north. Out here, who other than the police, really cared if he had a license to drive or not? It only mattered that he could drive.

Walter saw the car in the distance long before he reached it. He knew most of the vehicles from Haasts Bluff and Papunya, at least those that were still drivable, but, as he got closer, he was certain the car was not from either settlement; it was in much too good condition to be a local vehicle. The bonnet was up on the Toyota four-wheel-drive. Two men, two white men, stood at the road-side of the vehicle, next to the open bonnet. One of the men leaned over the bonnet, his back to the approaching bus, and the other stepped out into the centre of the road and waved his arms above his head, urging it to stop.

Twenty-eight-year-old Tracy Cartwright, a Primary-school teacher eighteen-months into a two-year tenure at the Haasts Bluff school, felt the bus begin to slow. Sitting in the seat directly behind the driver, she looked up from her book and saw the vehicle parked at the side of the road ahead. “What is it, Walter?” she asked Walter Tjapanangka.

“Can’t know, Miss,” Walter answered in his familiar, deep, guttural drawl. “Might be broke, dat car,” he added.

Behind Tracy, eleven students; five girls and six boys all aged between eleven and twelve, were engaged in the usual noisy, back-and-forth banter and laughter typically representative of a small gathering of pre-pubescent youth. The confusing, dis-jointed jumble of many voices talking at once faded quickly to an audible hum of hushed, curious voices, asking anyone who cared to answer, what was going on? Some of the students rose from their seats and craned their necks to see why the bus was slowing down. Others leaned out into the aisle, looked past the students in front of them, and peered curiously out through the front windscreen.

Tracy turned in her seat and addressed her young pupils. “It’s okay, everyone,” she said with a firm, authoritative voice. “A car has broken down up ahead. We are going to stop and see if we can help. Please sit down and stay in your seats. We will be on our way again soon.”

Children are by their very nature, extremely curious. However, the order - ‘sit down and stay in your seats’ may well have been delivered in a foreign language. Those who were standing in their seats remained standing and those still seated rose to their feet for a better view. This was exciting! Questions followed by speculative answers ranging from flat tyre, to flat battery, to blown motor, came in hushed voices, each overlaying another, and continued until the bus came to a stop about ten metres from the rear of the Toyota. Walter left the engine running so the bus’s air-conditioning continued to keep the interior comfortably cool.

Tracy turned again and faced her students. “Everybody, sit down, please!” she insisted. She waited a few moments, watching the children until they had all resumed their respective seats. “Thank you,” she said, finally. “Now, please remain in your seats and be quiet.” She turned back to the driver. “Should I get out and see what the problem is, Walter?”

“I’ll go, Miss,” Walter said, rising from his seat. “Maybe I can fix dat car.”

“Are you sure?” Tracy asked, glancing beyond Walter at the two men standing next to their vehicle.

“Yes, Miss,” Walter said. He opened the driver’s door, climbed out of the bus, closed the door behind him, and started walking towards the vehicle. As he did so, the man who had waved them down, crossed back to the car, leaned closer to his friend and said something to him. The second man did not turn to face the bus but remained leaning over the exposed engine compartment.

Tracy watched Walter Tjapanangka stop a few metres in front of the two strangers. The man who waved the bus down spoke to Walter, and pointed to the open bonnet of the vehicle. Walter moved forward, stood next to the second man, and leaned over the engine compartment. Then, the man who spoke moved away from his vehicle, looked back at the bus, and began walking purposely towards it.

A strange, unfamiliar feeling fluttered in Tracy’s belly. Why would one of the men approach the bus? She was being silly, she thought, and dismissed the feeling. Perhaps he simply wanted to let her know what was happening.

The stranger moved past the front passenger door of the bus and, as he did so, he looked up and smiled at Tracy staring curiously back at him through the window. He stopped at the sliding-type, centre door, reached out and opened it, stepped inside the bus and closed the door behind him. For a few moments, he stood in the aisle, looked up and down from the rear of the bus to the front, at the faces of the children, and then he looked directly at Tracy. He strode forward and stopped next to her.

“Nice and cool in here,” the man said with a smile.

The fluttering feeling deep in Tracy’s belly was back. This didn’t feel right. Something was wrong. Tracy looked up at the man. She attempted a friendly smile, knowing full well it did not come off as she would have liked. “Is everything alright?” she asked.

“Everything is tickety-boo,” the man answered. His smile was much more genuine than her pitiful effort. “Can you drive?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

The man shrugged. “Can you drive?” he asked again.

“Aah… yes, I can drive,” Tracy answered, with some hesitation.

“Good,” the man smiled. “Get in the driver’s seat.”

“What? I don’t understand,” Tracy said with a shake of her head.

“What’s not to understand?” the man said. The smile had disappeared. “Get in the driver’s seat.”

“Wh… what about Walter?” Tracy glanced out at the car ahead and then back at the man. “Walter is the bus driver.”

“Don’t worry about Walter,” the man said. “Just get in the driver’s seat.”

Tracy glanced hurriedly at the empty driver’s seat. “I… I’ve never driven a bus before,” she said. The nervous flutter was now a genuine feeling of fear.

“It’ll come to you,” the man said. “Get in the seat!”

“B… b… but,” Tracy protested.

The stranger leaned forward, his face just inches from Tracy’s. He slowly lifted his shirt, untucked and draped loosely over the waist of his jeans. Tracy drew back against the window and stared in horror at the butt of a hand-gun protruding above the man’s belt.

“Get in the driver’s seat!” the man hissed. “I will not ask you again!”

Tracy glanced quickly behind her at the children. Eleven confused and scared faces stared in wide-eyed silence back at her and the stranger leaning threateningly over her. What could she say to them? How could she explain what was happening when she didn’t know herself? Whatever it was, whatever was happening to them, she had to hold it together. She had to be strong. Her students relied on her. If she lost it, who was going to tell them everything was going to be alright? Who was going to look after them? It was her job. She was responsible for each of them. Despite the confusion, and the fear, clouding her mind, she had to keep it together for the sake of her students. They were just little children. She could not let them see that she was utterly terrified.

She reached for her hand-bag on the seat next to her and slowly slid sideways in her seat towards the aisle. Supporting herself on the rear of the driver’s seat, she pushed herself to her feet.

“Leave the purse,” the man ordered. He dropped his shirt-front over his waist, concealing the hand-gun, and took a short step back, enabling her to stand in the aisle.

“What?”

“You heard me, leave the purse.”

Tracy dropped the hand-bag onto the seat she had just vacated and looked back at the stranger. Now, they were very close together. He was very tall, she noticed for the first time. Her face was just inches from the man’s chest and she found herself staring at the press-stud fasteners of his shirt. She looked up. The man was smiling down at her.

He held her gaze for a few seconds, like he was admiring her, then, he took a single step back, towards the rear of the bus. Now, he stood behind her. Tracy turned her head and followed him with her eyes. He nodded towards the driver’s seat. “Get in!” he ordered in a quiet yet menacing voice.

Tracy glanced again at her students. “Let me talk to the children,” she said. She looked up at the man. “Please.”

The stranger looked briefly at the children and then back at Tracy. “Make it quick,” he demanded.

Tracy leaned sideways, looking past the man, at the confused faces of her young charges. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “Everything will be okay. Please stay in your seats. I don’t understand what is happening, but I’m sure everything will be okay. Please just do as you are asked and everything will be fine,” she paused and cast her eyes over the faces, hoping she sounded re-assuring. “This will be over very soon and we can be on our way,” she added, knowing she may well be promising something she could not deliver. She turned and climbed into the driver’s seat. As she did so, her skirt rose high on her legs, giving the stranger a tantalizing view of her thighs. She pulled at the skirt hem, preserving her modesty, and looked up at the man. The bastard was staring at her legs. And, he was smiling, again.

“Okay, let’s go,” the man said.

Tracy leaned forward, and looked down at the ignition key dangling from the steering column. Realising the engine was still running, she sat back and looked out at the vehicle ahead, parked at the side of the road.

As she watched, Walter Tjapanangka, ducked out from under the bonnet and looked back at the bus. Tracy felt her heart skip at when she saw the questioning expression on Walter’s face as he noticed she had moved and was now behind the wheel of his bus.

“Let’s go!” the man ordered, more forceful this time.

Unfamiliar with a manual transmission vehicle, Tracy fumbled nervously with the gear stick and, as she searched for the correct gear, a loud grinding noise came from the transmission case somewhere below where she sat.

“Use the clutch,” the man said, leaning close.

“W… what?” Tracy mumbled.

“Use the bloody clutch!” he hissed through clenched teeth, causing her to flinch.

Finally finding and selecting first gear, Tracy released the clutch and the bus slowly gathered momentum as it moved forward.

As the bus drew alongside the parked vehicle, Walter Tjapanangka stared at his beloved bus slowly moving past. From behind the steering wheel, Tracy was looking out the window directly at him. As their eyes met, he saw something in her face that confused him even more. Where was she going? Why was she driving the bus? He shifted his gaze and looked at the man standing in the aisle, close to Tracy. The man lifted his hand and waved. It seemed like a friendly gesture to Walter. Why was he on the bus? Where were they going without him? Why did Miss Tracy look so scared?

When she had passed the vehicle and moved further down the road, Tracy glanced into the rear-vision mirror. Behind her, the second man, and Walter, stood side-by-side next to the vehicle with the bonnet up. She focused on Walter. He looked so lost and confused, standing there staring at the bus moving further away from him. What must he be thinking, she wondered? She shifted her focus to the second man. The bus was gaining speed and moving away quickly but there was something about the man standing next to Walter that looked familiar to her. Did she know him? Had she seen him somewhere before? It was hard to tell, and getting even harder as she moved further away.

2

Detective Sergeant Sam Rose pulled up on the street in front of his partner’s small, two-bedroom unit in the Alice Springs suburb of Sadadeen. He sat for a moment and looked at the Mazda, two-door coupe parked in the driveway behind his partner’s Ford. It looked new. Sam knew his partner, Russell Foley, did not have a new car; firstly, he would have told him, and secondly, Russell treated money like it was a crime to spend it. Besides, the tiny coupe was a girl’s car; at least that was how Sam considered it. Maybe Russell had a visitor. A lady visitor? No, he dismissed the thought. It could not be a lady visitor. Russell did not have a lady in his life. If he did, Sam would have known that also.

Sam got out of his car and entered the driveway. As he approached the Mazda, he paused at the passenger door, leaned over and peered through the window. It was a girl’s car. The front passenger seat had an open box of pink tissues on it, and a tiny, pink teddy-bear dangled from the rear vision mirror. Definitely not the type of accessories Russell Foley would have in his car.

Curious, he turned his attention towards the unit. Suddenly, the front door opened and a very pretty lady stepped out and pulled the door closed behind her. She paused momentarily on the small front porch and looked across at Sam.

She was gorgeous, Sam decided immediately. About forty years old, he guessed; with body of someone twenty years younger he also noticed. Long, auburn tresses flowed down over her bare shoulders and a light, cotton, colorful, summer dress hung from very thin shoulder straps and fell to a point a couple of inches above deeply tanned, well-proportioned knees.

The woman stepped from the porch and held Sam’s gaze as she walked casually towards him. She stepped between Russell Foley’s car and the Mazda, and paused at the driver’s side door. Sam was sure he caught a faint whiff of perfume wafting on the gentle breeze across the roof of the car.

“Close your mouth,” the woman said with a smile, her voice sounding husky and very, very sexy. “You’ll swallow a fly.” She glanced quickly out to the street at Sam’s 1972, burnt-orange, Valiant Charger coupe. “Nice car,” she said. And, there was that smile again. She opened the door, climbed demurely into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed.

As Sam watched, she started the car, reversed out onto the street and drove away. He stood, rooted to the spot in Russell Foley’s driveway, staring after the car as it disappeared down the street.

“You gonna stand there drooling all over my driveway or are you going to come inside?” Russell Foley called from his front porch.

Sam turned and saw his partner smiling at him from his open doorway. He looked briefly again at the now empty street and turned back to face his partner. He thrust his hand towards the street “Who was that?” he asked.

“A friend,” Foley answered.

“A friend?” Sam asked as he walked up to Foley’s porch.

“Yes,” Foley smiled. “A friend.”

“Your friend got a name?”

“Of course she’s got a name,” Foley answered. “Everybody’s got a name.”

“Does it start with ‘Hot’?”

“No, it doesn’t start with ‘Hot’”

“Was she selling something?” Sam asked.

“No, she wasn’t selling anything.”

“What did she want?”

“Are you, my mother now?” Foley said.

“No, I’m not your mother. I’m just curious.”

“You sound like my mother,” Foley said.

Sam looked at Foley’s hair. “Your hair’s wet,” he said.

“I just had a shower,” Foley explained.

Sam paused. He turned and looked back at the street, and then back at his partner. “Ah… ha!” he said, smiling widely at Foley.

“Ah… ha?” Foley said. “Ah… ha what?”

“Ah… ha, you’ve got a girlfriend,” Sam declared.

Foley decided not to dignify Sam’s observation with a comment. He stared dismissively at his friend.

“And… your hair is wet,” Sam added.

Foley absently ran a hand over his damp hair. “I told you, I just had a shower.”

“You… sly… dog,” Sam smiled. “You sly, sly dog. You’ve been indulging in a little pre-lunch entree with the pretty lady who just left.”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Foley asked.

Sam stepped closer to Foley. “No, Russ,” he announced. “I most certainly do not have a problem with that. I think it is great! Wonderful, in fact!” He opened his arms and stepped even closer.

Foley stepped back. “Oh shit! You’re not going to hug me, are you? We’re in full view of the street. Get the fuck away from me!”

Sam lowered his arms. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“Jessica,” Foley answered.

“And,” Sam continued, “how long have you and Jessica been doing the mid-day- tango?”

Foley shrugged. “I don’t know… a couple of weeks, I guess. And, thanks for putting it so delicately.”

“Don’t mention it,” Sam said. “I’m your best mate. Delicate is my middle name.”

“No,” Foley responded. “Idiot is your middle name. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“We’ve got a job,” Sam answered. “Communications have been trying to reach you. So have I.”

“I turned my phone off,” Foley explained.

“Can I assume the lovely Jessica is the reason for that?”

“What’s the job?” Foley asked, ignoring Sam’s assumption. He stepped back into his house and led Sam into his small but neat and orderly lounge. Russell Foley was nothing if not a man of fastidious, neat and tidy habits. “Want a coffee?” he asked, ushering Sam through to the compact kitchen.

“We haven’t got time for coffee,” Sam said. “We’ve gotta go.”

“Go where?” Foley asked.

“We’ve got a body,” Sam began. “Out in the West Macdonnell Ranges, half way between Haasts Bluff and Papunya. Our chaps stationed at Papunya are at the scene. An aboriginal male, shot in the chest.”

Foley looked at his watch. “That’s two-hundred-and-fifty kilometres away,” he said. “It will be mid-afternoon before we get there.”

“We’ll be staying out there for a while,” Sam said. “Bring your swag. We’ll bunk down at the police station.”

“Shit!” Foley cursed.

“What?” Sam asked.

“I was planning on going out to dinner tonight.”

“With the lovely Jessica?” Sam asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Foley answered. “Who else have we got who can go out there?”

“The boss wants you, and me, to go,” Sam shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated? Complicated how?”

“The dead guy was the Haasts Bluff school bus driver. He was driving eleven young students, and their teacher, to Papunya on a day trip…”

“So, we’ve got plenty of witnesses,” Foley interrupted, sounding hopeful.

“No, not exactly,” Sam said.

“Oh? What do you mean ‘not exactly’?”

“The bus has gone,” Sam answered.

“Gone? Gone where?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “If I knew where, it wouldn’t be gone,” he said. “It’s disappeared! Nowhere to be found! Gone!”

“Hijacked?” Foley asked.

“Looks that way,” Sam nodded.

“Fuck!” Foley spat angrily.

“Fuck, indeed,” Sam said. “Get your swag, and a change of clothes.” He winked at his partner. “Give the new girlfriend a call and tell her you are going away with me for a couple of days. She’ll understand. You have told her about me, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve told her about you.”

“What did you tell her?”

Foley turned away and hurried along a short hallway away towards his bedroom. “I told her there’s a village somewhere missing its idiot!” he said over his shoulder.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Sam called after him.

Detectives Russell Foley and Sam Rose, veterans of the Northern Territory Police Force, had been partners and friends for a long time, having first met when they passed through the Police Training Centre in Darwin over twenty years ago.

Now, Foley and Rose were senior investigators with the Major Crime Branch, stationed in Alice Springs in the heart of the Northern Territory and the Australian continent. Their record as an investigative team was unsurpassed, with a case clearance rate admired by their superiors and envied by their colleagues with whom they worked.

However, most long-standing friendships of any real substance do not necessarily equate to a trouble-free journey. Such relationships are never developed without encountering the occasional rough patch in the road and Foley and Rose were no exception.

There was a twelve-month period some years earlier when their friendship was severely tested as a result of a one-off indiscretion between Rose, and Russell Foley’s estranged wife, Jennifer.

Sam Rose was not a drunk, not even by the most obscure interpretation of the term, but, like most red-blooded, Aussie blokes, he loved a cold beer and a good red wine and, on occasion, was guilty of over indulgence in both. Late one night, disturbed by a knock at his door as he was preparing for bed following a somewhat over-enthusiastic night out with a few of his colleagues, he stumbled unsteadily to his front door and found Jennifer Foley standing on his front porch, wearing a seductive, “come-hither” smile, and very little else. As they say in the classics, “a standing penis has no conscience”.

Jennifer Foley was well known to most of the members of the Northern Territory Police Force. Her reputation, garnered over many years, was that of a man-eater. She hated Darwin, and the Northern Territory in general. She hated her husband’s job and wanted him to resign and take her and their two kids back to Queensland from whence they came. So adamant was she, she was prepared to do anything to ensure that Russell quit his job and took his family back home.

It was not that Jennifer had a particular penchant for seducing police officers, any one was fair game as long as he was male; and married or otherwise was of no significance. It was just that screwing her husband’s colleagues seemed, at least to her warped and depraved mind, to be the ultimate insult to her husband.

Russell was aware of Jennifer’s infidelities; how could he not be. It was not like she tried hard to conceal her philandering ways. But Russell loved his two children, and for reasons even he, at times, could not fathom, he still loved Jennifer. Perhaps somewhere, somewhere deep in his heart, he believed Jennifer would see the error of her ways and re-establish the sincere, loving, caring relationship they once shared.

No one knew the Foley marriage was doomed better than his friend and partner, Sam Rose. If there was ever any doubt in Sam’s mind, it was dispelled when he woke the morning after his mis-guided dalliance with Jennifer. Jennifer was gone, taking with her his self-respect, his dignity, and his pride.

Jennifer, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get to Police Headquarters where she announced, in full cry, in front Russell and a squad room filled with Major Crime detectives, that she had just spent the night “bonking the brains” out of her husband’s best friend.

The ensuing confrontation between Foley and Rose was never going to end well. Later that morning, when Sam arrived at work, there came the inevitable “face-off”. Strong words, embellished with shouted accusations and profanity-laced insults, prefaced an exchange of blows, most of which, poorly directed and of little consequence, were thrown by Foley.

Unfortunately for Sam Rose, the one good, defensive blow he managed to land himself, was observed by the Officer in Charge of Major Crime who, on hearing the commotion coming from the squad room next door to his office, walked in just as Rose’s right hand connected with Russell Foley’s chin.

In the wash-up, Jennifer Foley took the kids and returned to Queensland, Russell Foley was promoted, and Sam Rose, faced with an enforced transfer to a remote outback community, resigned from the force and became a private investigator for a prominent insurance company in Darwin.

Following a series of murders in Darwin involving select members of both the judiciary and the police force, Foley and Rose reluctantly found themselves working together once again. Strained at first, the fractured relationship slowly began to heal and they were eventually able to put their animosities aside and resume their friendship.

Ultimately, Sam Rose was invited back into the police force, without loss of rank or seniority, and Russell Foley was transferred to Major Crime in Alice Springs.

Fast forward one year, and Sam also transferred to Alice Springs where he once again partnered with Foley and their relationship, both personal and working, resumed as though there had never been an uneasy hiatus.

3

Tracy Cartwright guessed she had been driving the bus for at least thirty minutes and, apart from turning left at the junction of Namatjira/Kintore Link Road and then heading north-east on Gary Junction Road, she had no idea where the ultimate destination might be. Although having never driven on Gary Junction Road, she knew that eventually it would meet the Tanami Road on the southern fringe of the Tanami Desert. She also knew this was dangerous country in which to travel. Traffic was scarce and the road conditions were atrocious at best. The bus was not designed to be driven on ungraded, deeply corrugated roads. Even travelling at low speed, the bus bumped, rocked, and jarred across the hard, dry ground threatening to wrench the wheel from her hands. If she lost concentration and crashed the bus, the consequences she and her students might suffer did not bear thinking about. Perspiration stung her eyes before running uninhibited down her face and dripping into her lap.

Apart from the road immediately ahead, Tracy was not taking a lot of notice of the countryside passing outside the bus window; she was way too busy trying to keep the bus on the road, and way too fearful of what fate awaited her and her charges when they got to wherever they were going to consider the aesthetics of the scenery. However, she had lived in this part of the country long enough to know there was nothing outside the bus other than flat, parched, extremely sparsely vegetated countryside. Help, if there was ever going to be any, was far, far from here. No one knew where they were; or where they were headed.

The man with the gun sat in the seat she had vacated. He was right behind her; so close she thought she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. Despite the fear threatening to overwhelm her, Tracy wasn’t thinking so much about her own predicament, but that of her students. Prior to the incident with the ‘stranded’ car and the man with the gun climbing on board, the children were scattered casually throughout the seats on the bus, laughing and chattering happily among themselves; this was a day out of the classroom, and any day out of the class room was always fun. Now though, they were silent. Sitting close together as if gathered close might bring them some measure of security.

Every few moments Tracy glanced into the rear vision mirror at the faces of the children behind her. All she saw was confusion in their eyes as they stared at the man seated behind their beloved teacher. What questions must be going through their minds, she wondered?

Beyond the children, out through the rear window, a thick cloud of dust stirred up by the wheels, followed the bus. There was a couple of times when she looked in the mirror at the children, Tracy thought she caught a glimpse through the dust cloud of a vehicle following.

The dust was so thick it was hard to be certain but she was reasonably sure there was a car back there. It was a long way behind, perhaps trying to avoid the dust thrown up by the bus, she surmised.

Through the dust cloud, she glimpsed it again. Now she was in no doubt. It was definitely there. For a brief moment she dared to hope it might mean rescue for her and her students. The more times she saw it, the more she thought there was something strangely familiar about the size and shape of it.

She glanced in the mirror once again and saw only dense, swirling dust. Then, there it was, closer this time. It was the same car! The same four-wheel-drive Walter stopped to help. It was following them! Was Walter in the car, she wondered hopefully?

The man sitting behind her leaned forward. Tracy flinched when she felt his moist, warm breath on her cheek. “What’s your name?” he asked softly, his lips almost brushing her ear.

“Tra… Tracy,” she stammered.

“Tracy,” the man said. “You are doing very well. About a kilometre ahead you will see a turn-off to the left. It’s just a bush track. Take it.”

“Where are we going?” Tracy asked.

“You don’t need to worry about where we are going. All you need to do for the moment is drive the bus.”

“What do you want with us?” Tracy asked, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.

“All will become clear soon enough,” the man answered.

“They… they’re only children. Please let them go. They are no threat to you.”

“Just drive the bus, Tracy!” the man hissed in her ear.

A tiny fleck of spittle landed on Tracy’s cheek. She took one hand from the wheel, wiped furiously at it, and the bus veered slightly from its track.

“Two hands!” The man said sternly. “Two bloody hands, Tracy! If you care about your precious rug-rats, keep two hands on the wheel!”

“What do you want with us?” Tracy asked again, fighting back tears.

“You look like a smart girl, Tracy,” the man answered. “Right now, the smart thing for you to do is to stop talking and keep driving.”

Tracy glanced again in the mirror above her head. She looked past the man, at her students. Then, her thoughts turned once again to Walter. She remembered the look on his face when she slowly passed the stranded vehicle and drove away. He appeared confused; the teacher was driving away with his bus, leaving him at the side of the road with a stranger. Would he understand the enormity of what was happening, Tracy asked herself? No, he wouldn’t, she decided. Walter was a nice man but he was a poorly educated, simple man. If she did not understand what was happening herself, there was no way Walter would. She hoped he was in the vehicle following, but for some reason, some strange, unfathomable reason, she knew he wasn’t.

“Slow down,” The man behind her ordered.

The commanding voice close to her ear startled her. “What?”

The man reached across in front of her and pointed out the window. “Slow down. There, on the left. Take the turn-off.”

Tracy braked a little too heavily. The bus slowed quickly and, forgetting to change to a lower gear, the engine began to shudder noisily.

“Change gear, Tracy!” the man ordered.

Tracy fumbled with the gear lever, forgot to use the clutch, the transmission complained loudly and, finally, she depressed the clutch, changed to a lower gear, and entered the turn-off.

The road, if it even qualified as a road, was narrow, ill defined, and very, very rough. It was little more than two tyre tracks faintly etched onto the hard, sunbaked earth. It was difficult to define for more than ten or twenty metres in front of the bus.

They were heading deeper into the vast central Australian outback. Farther and farther away from civilization and any hope of rescue. Tracy moaned softly and a few tears joined the rivulets of perspiration running down her cheeks. She stole another look in the mirror. The frightened, confused faces of her students stared back at her. And, outside, farther back behind the bus, beyond the dust cloud, she saw the other vehicle still followed.

Lake Lewis was an impermanent salt-lake approximately one hundred and seventy kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. Bordered in the north by Stuart Bluff Range, the lake covered an area of almost two hundred and fifty square kilometres. Sited on lease-hold pastoral land shared by Napperby Station to the north and Derwent station to the west and free-hold land owned by the native Ngalurrtju people, it comprised a series of salt-pans, clay pans and smaller salt lakes.

Mostly dry from one year to the next, on the rare occasion it was inundated, water flowed from Napperby Creek to the north and other small, surrounding ephemeral creeks leaving it relatively deep for up to six months before evaporating under the relentless central Australian sun and returning once again to a vast area of parched, cracked, hardened salt-pans.

On the south-western fringe of the lake, some fifty metres from the high-water mark, there was an expansive hummock on top of which stood the remnants of a communication antenna. From ground level, the hummock appeared as an incongruent hillock against the vast surrounding salt-lake stretching across the otherwise low, flat, featureless terrain.

Once standing many metres above the hummock and enabling communications with a base-station in Alice Springs, the antenna was now little more than four, short, rusted, iron support legs, entrenched deep into a large, solid, concrete base. It was not, however, only the rusted relic on top of the hummock which remained at this long-abandoned place; it was what was concealed below.

Here, many years earlier, there was a top secret, operational observation and communication outpost manned by personnel from the Australian Army. Hurriedly constructed in secret in the early months of 2003 and used as a command post during extensive military training operations designed to accustom troops to the harsh, desert conditions they could expect to encounter on deployment in Iraq during the Second Gulf War, the hummock deceptively disguised a four-room complex buried beneath.

Below the knoll, four large, dry-freight shipping containers, each six metres in length and arranged as two front-to-back, alongside a second pair similarly positioned, formed a large square. Each container was butted hard against the one in front, and the one alongside it. At the base of the hummock, on the western side, a short, sloping walkway led to the exposed front end of one of the two leading containers. Here, the large, heavy, steel, hinged door traditionally used for the loading and unloading of freight was welded shut and a smaller, single-person-access door had been fitted into its centre.

All four containers were interconnected by a series of internal doors constructed centrally in the sides of both the front and rear containers where each butted against the one adjacent to it, allowing access to and from each. Another door in the rear wall of the second, front container connected it to the third immediately behind it.

The result was, essentially, a four-room building completely hidden from view beneath hundreds of tons of compacted dirt. Over time, sparse, stunted vegetation, struggling for survival in the harsh conditions, had dotted the top of the hummock. To the unaware, it appeared as an odd geographical hump on the edge of a large salt-lake system in the middle of a vast landscape of hot, dry, inhospitable nothingness.

At the height of the Gulf War, up to two hundred Australian Army troops bivouacked in a sea of tents surrounding the hummock. Relatively comfortably ensconced in the Command Post beneath the hummock, the Commanding Officer, along with a small team of strategists and communications personnel, oversaw extensive war-games training exercises taking place across the wide, flat, insufferably-hot plains outside.

Whether soldiers can ever be adequately trained to endure the horrors of war, and in particular the climate and terrain one might expect to encounter on deployment in a war zone, is and always will be a highly debated issue. However, if there was ever a place where one might, in some small way, become familiar with combat under desert conditions, Lake Lewis and its surrounds was the place. Even for hardened combat soldiers, life in this place, albeit temporary, was bleak, hostile, and uninviting. The attrition rate of soldiers training here was high. Too high it was finally decided by those assigned to send them there in the first place. Just two years after it was built, Camp Lake Lewis was decommissioned and permanently closed down. The tall communications antenna on top of the hummock was removed, several truckloads of expensive communications equipment was dismantled and taken from the Command Post, hundreds of tents were taken down and, in very short time, the area returned to its natural state; a burning, desolate wasteland.

Tracy saw the large salt-lake long before she reached it. It was the glare she noticed first. Ahead, spread from east to west across her field of view, a thin ribbon of brilliant white shimmered on the distant horizon. As the bus bumped and jolted across the rough ground, slowly closing the distance between the bus and the lake, the harsher the glare of the blazing early afternoon sun reflecting off the dry surface of the lake became. The closer she got, the tighter she squinted against the brightness, silently wishing her sunglasses were on her head and not in her purse on the seat next to the stranger behind her.

Instinctively, she knew what this place was. She couldn’t remember the name of the lake but she remembered it was very large, and mostly dry. She had never been here before but she had read about it, back when she was first assigned to Haasts Bluff for her two-year teaching stint and she took the time to research the community and the surrounding area.

She glanced again into the rear vision mirror, beyond her captor, at the children. They were scared. The fear she saw in their faces was palpable. It looked like a couple of the young girls might be crying. It made her want to cry herself. What was happening to them, she wondered? What did this awful man want with them? For an instant, her eyes met the man’s. He was looking into the mirror, directly at her. He smiled.

Tracy tore her eyes away and focused again out through the windscreen. He’s smiling, she said to herself! What the hell is he smiling about? Was he going to hurt the children? Was he going to hurt her… or worse?

She felt his warm breath on her face again. “We’re nearly there, Tracy,” he said softly.

“T… tell me what you want?” Tracy begged, her voice cracking. “P… please!”

“Just drive, Tracy,” the man said. “Don’t worry about what I want. Think about your students. Think about yourself. Just do as I ask and you will all get to go home.”

“When?” Tracy asked.

“When this is over. Just drive the fucking bus, Tracy,” he hissed in her ear.

Suddenly it came to Tracy. They were not going home… ever! This man was going to kill them all! All her beautiful children; and her! They were never going to survive. She glanced again quickly into the mirror. He was still smiling. The bastard was still smiling at her!

She knew what he looked like! He was not trying to hide his identity. He was not wearing a mask. If he was telling the truth and intended to release them all at some point, he would be wearing a mask so she could not tell the authorities what he looked like. He was not wearing a mask! Tracy bit down on her lip, stifling a pitiful moan threatening to emerge, and the tears started again.