Dead Heat (3 page)

Joey didn’t say anything, but the sisters knew he was appalled. His peers in town had been locked in battle with the children
from the commune since anyone could remember, and now Joey was going to have to share a car with the enemy! All term Dawn
and Georgia teased him mercilessly from the back of Bri’s ute, which culminated in Joey leading the townies down the lumpy
dirt track into the heart of the commune and its timber cabins and chicken yards and pelting them with mud, destroying their
treehouse, and finally dragging the commune kids into the stream and dunking them.

A week later Georgia led an ambush with Dawn and six others, throwing sticky balls of flour mixed with water at the townies,
who were on their way to a party. The townies’ parents had gone berserk, calling Georgia an uncontrollable little savage,
but her mother had never been great on discipline and merely said in that calm tone of hers, “Playing is healthy behavior
for children. You’d rather they sat indoors watching TV?”

Georgia had been delighted that the enmity between townies and commune kids had deepened to another level. She loved the freedom
of the commune and she had loved fighting for it. The day it closed, three days after her seventeenth birthday, sold to a
guy from Brisbane who wanted to develop it into a rainforest health center, was the day her childhood ended.

Bri turned around in the pilot’s seat and looked at her critically. “Don’t they feed you in the big city?”

“They feed me just fine, Bri.”

“You’re too bloody skinny,” he grumbled. Then, “Getting married soon?”

“Bri, get serious, will you? We’ve got better things to do than sit and talk about my private life. Like getting me to Cairns
for a connecting flight.”

“Are you?”

She made an exaggerated groaning sound and banged her head in the palm of her hand in a parody of agony. “Even my mother doesn’t
give me such a hard time.”

“Yeah, well.” Bri grinned and shook his head, chuckling. “Someone’s got to, young lady, or you’ll run wild the rest of your
life.”

“I don’t run wild! I’m very responsible, I’ll have you know. I’ve a full-time job with a very reputable publishing company
and a rented house in a very nice part of the city. I have a company car and an expense account.” Her chin lifted. “I’ve even
been offered a promotion. National marketing manager. What do you think of that, then?”

He snorted. “Full-time nothing. It’s not for you, all that soft city stuff. You need something to get your teeth stuck into.
Something you’re proud of, that you care about and want to fight for. Like the commune.”

Momentarily she was shocked into silence, then she said, voice small, “I tried.”

She could feel Lee’s and Suzie’s gazes on her, but she ignored them.

“You did good,” said Bri, voice softening. “Your mum too. You both did real good, but it wasn’t to be, was it?”

“No.”

Bri reached a hand around the back of his seat and waggled his stubby fingers at her. She gripped his hand briefly. He squeezed
back, giving their clasped hands a little shake like he used to, and she could feel the back of her throat close with tears.

“You find something worth fighting for, you call me.” He dropped his hand and peered at her over his shoulder. “I’d like to
sling a handful of flour patties at some blokes, believe me.”

While Bri radioed Becky at Control, she leaned across to Suzie and murmured, “Sorry about that, but we haven’t seen each other
in a while.”

“I think it’s nice,” she said. “Especially now I know you are
the
Georgia.”

“What do you mean,
the
?”

As Suzie’s face softened into a smile, Georgia realized she’d done the woman a disservice. She wasn’t pretty. She was stunning.
Glossy, shoulder-length blue-black hair, slanting almond eyes below fine arched wings of eyebrows, a perfectly formed tiny
nose, and a heart-shaped mouth. Her cheekbones could have cut Parmesan.

“I’ve been flying with Bri the past few years,” Suzie said. “Cairns, some days all the way to Brizzy. Long flights, just me
and him for hours. I know all about Joey and your battles. Bri never quite knew who to root for, you know. He was torn between
family loyalty to his nephew, and admiration for your indomitability.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Georgia ruefully. “I got pasted regularly.”

Suzie was laughing. “So I gather.”

Georgia sensed Lee watching them from the copilot’s seat, but before she could say a word, Bri was offering a headset to Lee.
“You fly?”

“Yup.”

“Wow. Two pilots,” Georgia remarked. “Does this mean we get in-flight service?”

Lee leaned around to give her one of his scary stares, but she refused to back down. The more unfriendly he was, the more
he got under her skin and the more she wanted to irritate him. She took a good long look at his watch, a Tag Heuer chronograph
with a copper dial and fine-brushed steel bracelet, and was reminded of her ex-boyfriend, Charlie, hankering after a Tag just
like it in David Jones’s window. Even if she took the promotion she’d never be able to afford a watch like that. She knew
it was worth over four thousand bucks.

From the look on Lee’s face, suspicious, guarded, she reckoned he was daring her to remark on it.

“Nice watch,” she said cheerfully. “Can I get one like that duty free?”

“I doubt your annual expense account would stretch that far,” he responded coolly.

Incensed, she was going to tell him about her upcoming Easter bonus, but Bri interrupted, wanting to know what airplanes Lee
had flown—pilot bonding, she supposed—and then he started the engine. No chance of sensible talk through the clattering roar
that followed. As Bri ran through the pre-takeoff checklist he tapped each instrument with a forefinger, and Georgia settled
back, putting Lee’s unfriendliness aside and hoping the flight wouldn’t be too bumpy.

Through the window she could see Evie’s little Suzuki, slumped beneath a dripping African oil palm. She wondered what Evie
would say about the fresh dent in her car. She must ring her as soon as she arrived home in Sydney and offer to pay for the
damage. Not that Evie would take her money. Local etiquette dictated that if a neighbor or mate was in need, you loaned your
chainsaw or mower, your boat, your car, no worries about insurance or getting paid back if you destroyed their property. In
fact, all the better if you wrecked what you’d been loaned; it made a good tale to tell down the pub, and you owed them. Big-time.

Finally, Bri taxied the little airplane to the far end of the puddle-dotted dirt runway. Way in the distance Georgia saw a
tall figure standing on the SunAir office steps, looking their way. For some reason he looked familiar, but she couldn’t think
why. Probably another local she’d known as a kid.

“All buckled up?” Bri asked.

Nobody said anything, so Georgia said dutifully, “All buckled up.”

The engine note rose as Bri pushed the throttle forward a fraction, then again, and they were buzzing and bouncing and shaking
and rattling along the runway. A strip of rubber from the window seal wriggled loose and fell onto Georgia’s lap. She tried
to push it back into place but it fell off again, so she gave up and put it in the seat pocket, hopping the airplane would
stay together for the rough ride south.

As they swooped into the sky, a vision of the dead cassowary filled her mind, the vivid blue of his face spattered by grit
from the road, the sturdy legs and great spread toes with their elongated spikes upturned and lifeless, his rudimentary wings
of glossy hairlike feathers, reduced to a few long, bare quills, marred and smeared with mud.

If her mother had been there, they would never have flown. She would have taken the death of the great bird as an omen, a
sinister and fateful promise.

The cassowary is, after all, flightless.

G
eorgia was staring at Lee’s tattoo when the Piper’s engine gave a splutter, but she didn’t take any notice. Bri’s aircraft
always spluttered.

They had been flying about half an hour when Lee took off his sweatshirt, revealing a tight-fitting gray T-shirt with the
sleeves stripped off. Smooth-skinned and muscular as he was, the tattoo suited him. A blue Chinese dragon twisted up his biceps,
wings unfurled, its tongue forked with flames. It reminded her that she had wanted a tattoo, just after her first organized
raid on the townies. Her mother had given her permission to have a tattoo of a rose or a heart, but flatly refused the request
for a snake entwined around a dagger.

Miles away, still staring at the snarling dragon, she barely looked up when Lee leaned forward and tapped a dial, checking
with Bri. “Fuel pressure,” he said.

“Switch fuel tanks,” Bri said on a half-yawn. “That’ll sort it.”

Turning her gaze outside, Georgia could see a river snaking through the carpet of trees, winding east for the Coral Sea, and
guessed it might be the Bloomfield. Apparently there was an exquisite luxury hotel nestled in there somewhere, with lagoon
pools and swim-up bars, and she peered down, wishing she’d come to Queensland for a pampering holiday with massages and five-star
service rather than Tom’s funeral.

She was going to miss her grandfather. Not that they’d spent much time together since she moved to Sydney, but he’d been a
rock, someone she could always turn to, and despite her protests, every month on the dot, he’d sent her a check to help her
out with the rent.

Without Tom, she’d probably still be stuck in Nulgarra, working in the supermarket or on one of the deep-sea fishing boats,
but he had urged her to get away from small-town thinking and taken her to Sydney, found her a shared rental house, and only
when she had a full-time job did he fly back to his happy retirement in the rainforest. Mentally, she blew him a kiss. Love
you, Tom, she told him. And thanks.

A little while later Lee said, “Pressure still dropping off.”

“What the hell . . .”

The Piper’s engine suddenly started to choke.

“I don’t believe it . . .” Bri was tapping and scanning dials, and so was Lee.

The engine gave a single great cough, and died.

Georgia’s heart just about leaped into her throat. “Jesus,” she said.

With a shuddering bellow the engine started again, but it was running so roughly that she expected it to give out any second.
God, oh God, she thought. Please, make it run smoothly.

Convulsing to catch properly, the engine gave another huge cough, and at the same time the aircraft lurched violently sideways.
Georgia heard herself let out a ragged gasp. She was gripping the armrests so hard that her knuckles stood out white. Bri’s
and Lee’s voices were low and urgent.

“Anywhere to land round here?” asked Lee.

“Start looking. We’ve ten minutes max.”

Georgia jerked her head to stare down at the ceaseless canopy of green way below, broken only by great jagged peaks of rock
jutting through the trees. She couldn’t see anything they could land on, not a road, not even a forest track.

The engine gave two more coughs, then silence. All she could hear was wind against the fuselage, the whine of the starter.
Lee pointed at a thin streak of what could have been fuel on the windscreen at the same time as Georgia smelled the faintest
trace of smoke.

“Something’s burning,” she said, astonished by her calm tone. She wanted to scream.

Lee said something in Chinese to Suzie, but Suzie didn’t respond. The woman’s face was chalk-white and frozen with terror.
Much like her own, Georgia guessed. She was already drenched in cold sweat, and when she tried to swallow there was no saliva.

“Over there.” Lee was craning his head high as he pointed through the windscreen. “Clearing.”

Bri sat up tall and took a look. “Christ, it’s small.”

“Check wind direction.”

“North-northwest.”

“Yup. Let’s go for it.”

Bri swung the airplane to the left and the Piper began to lose height.

“Mayday Mayday Mayday. VH Charlie-Alpha-Tango, Piper PA28, declaring an emergency.” Bri sounded remarkably unruffled. “VH
Charlie-Alpha-Tango. Seems we’re out of juice. We’re at four thousand feet, and intend to land . . .” He rattled off the coordinates
fast.

Lee swiveled around in his copilot’s seat. Voice calm and steady, he said, “We’ve less than ten minutes before we make an
emergency landing. First, I want you to tighten your seat belts, hard as they can go.”

Georgia’s fingers felt stiff and numb as she did as he said. Adrenaline was pouring through her and she was amazed she wasn’t
yelling. She didn’t want to die. But she was about to. She’d never read a newspaper report that said, “A light aircraft crash-landed
in the rainforest yesterday, but everyone survived because they were wearing their seat belts.”

Lee swiveled around for a second to check the instruments, then turned back, telling them to remove pens and any sharp objects
from their pockets. “As we go down, I’m going to unlock my door, and once we’ve landed, I’m going to help Suzie out first,
then you, Georgia, and lastly Bri. Keep your feet flat on the floor and when I say ‘brace,’ brace this.” He calmly took them
through the emergency procedures. “We’ll be fine,” he added. “I’ve done loads of these landings.”

“Crikey,” said Bri. “We talking tens or dozens here?”

“Over a hundred.”

“Sure glad to have you aboard, mate. You know where the fire extinguisher is?”

Lee bent double and reached under his seat. “Here.”

“I’d say we’ll make a—”

Bri never finished his sentence because the plane suddenly hit an air pocket. Or that’s what Georgia assumed, but she gave
a startled yelp when the plane slid violently to the right, its nose dropping dramatically, making her stomach lurch and her
handbag slide across the floor.

“Okay, okay, let’s go wide. Use flaps,” Lee instructed.

“Use flaps.”

The smell of smoke intensified.

“Better get her down fast,” said Lee.

“Too right.”

Georgia was streaming with sweat. She glanced at Suzie, who immediately took her hand in hers and gripped it hard. Georgia’s
responding grasp was stronger than she could remember gripping anybody. She wondered if she wasn’t breaking the fragile mouse
bones of Suzie’s fingers. They stared at each other. Neither spoke.