Authors: Belinda Pollard
***
Peter was in the air, ten minutes down the lake. The medivac helicopter had been a few minutes late arriving at the airstrip, and then there had been the general kerfuffle of discussion and organization. He had briefed them on the risk of a possible gunman at the hut, and they’d formulated a plan for how to approach the situation. The medivac crew would hang back until Peter secured the site—whatever that might take—and cleared them to land.
The medivac crew seemed to him almost reluctant, but it was probably just that they’d been briefed to a different level of urgency than the one Peter was feeling. It irritated him beyond all reason, but he kept it to himself. After all, he could hardly insist, when he in fact had no certain knowledge of the location of the trampers or the condition of the diabetic woman. At least Invercargill had arranged the specialist as agreed, and he had to be satisfied with that concession. It could make all the difference to whether Rachel Carpenter lived or died.
Peter sat alongside Hawk in the small lead helicopter, his eyes straining ahead as light started to creep across the vast length of the lake, creating soft curves and woolly outlines of trees on the foothills of the mountains that lurked to their left. The overnight rain had washed the sky clean, and some fading stars still hung in the indigo now bleaching above. Sunrise wasn’t far away. He concentrated on relaxing his stomach, looking far ahead and not down, imagining he was moving in a boat, not suspended in a Perspex bubble a long drop above a deep lake, with only a spinning rotor between him and a fire-and-water grave. Helicopter policing was all kinds of hell for a man who hated to fly, but no one was teasing him about it this morning.
They had a stretcher pod mounted on the skids, in case there were more casualties than the two the medical chopper could carry. His service pistol, unearthed from its hiding place in the safe in his patrol car where it usually rested year-round, was holstered on his hip. A rifle was propped on the floor at his feet. So much armory in his quiet little town was jarring—ugly and yet necessary on this day of uncertainty. More lives could depend upon their superior firepower than simply those of the trampers. His binoculars, still capped, were cradled loosely in his hand. No point in using them yet.
Behind him sat Ellen, less than a meter away and yet it could have been a thousand miles. The distance created between them by his outburst yesterday had healed slightly when he sat with her at the hotel, but she seemed to have withdrawn from him again, and he didn’t know why. He might never get a chance to find out. The few possessions she’d brought with her to New Zealand were in the duffel bag crammed under her seat. If Rachel was indeed at Altham Hut, and an extra seat could be wangled from the medivac team, Ellen could well be leaving his life forever within the hour.
Next to Ellen was Hemi, who had brought his portable paramedic kit as instructed. There could be other injuries or illness among the survivors, and having Hemi on hand would allow the medivac team to focus all their immediate attention on Rachel. Plus, Hemi was an all-round useful person to have aboard in any kind of crisis. He must be fatigued by the rigors of yesterday’s search and body retrieval, not to mention his midnight dissection of the faulty PLB while Peter slumbered on the camp stretcher in his office, but he didn’t show it.
The radio squawked into life, startling the team in the chopper.
“Peter, it’s Amber, Tom has escaped. Repeat, Tom has escaped.”
Peter swore, and then activated the transmission button. “How long ago did this happen?”
“About twenty minutes. He asked for a phone call and then overpowered me and locked me in. I’ve just managed to get the neighbors to let me out.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He took my car. I’ve called Nyree and he’s not there.”
“Do we believe her?”
“I believe her. She sounded frantic when I told her what he’d done.”
“Who’s Tom, and what does this mean for us?” It was the medivac pilot. He’d heard the transmission too.
Peter had to think fast. Te Anau’s finest must look like the Keystone Cops to the metropolitan crew thanks to what they’d just heard, but that was the least of his worries. He also had to be careful with his words, because he couldn’t be sure who else was monitoring this frequency. Every redneck in the district seemed to have a radio scanner.
“He’s a person of interest in relation to these missing trampers. We’ll discuss options and get back to you, pronto. Keep following for now.” He swung round to talk to Hemi, and glanced at Ellen. She’d heard it all through her headset, and her eyes were like saucers. No time to deal with that now. He looked at Hemi and spoke to him through the closed circuit that communicated only within the chopper, the only way to be heard above the rotors. “What do we think?”
“Why is he doing this? He can’t get Bryan’s money now anyway, can he?”
“It was left to Lily, not Tom, and the terms of the trust looked pretty solid to me. Any challenge would be a fight for the lawyers.” His eyes slid to Ellen’s terrified face for half a second, and then back to Hemi. “And what matters right now is what Tom believes, which is probably whatever Bryan told him.”
If only I’d thought he might do this
, he added silently,
this could have been prevented
.
Hemi began to swear, decided to stifle it in Ellen’s hearing, and then got back to the task. “He’s got that crazy hunting mate with the little toy chopper, lives halfway up the lake. Thinks the US government is running all our lives and there are aliens inside ATMs, that sorta thing. If I was Tom and I wanted to get to Altham Hut in a hurry, that’s where I’d go.”
“You think his mate would help him launch a direct attack on the trampers? Paranoia isn’t the same as murder.” This conversation must be excruciating for Ellen to listen to, but it must be had.
Hemi shrugged, and narrowed his eyes in thought. “He might, if he didn’t know exactly what Tom was planning. He might put him on the ground there and Tom could approach on foot. Or he might even let him shoot from the air if he believed Tom’s hokum about how evil they are.”
“Why not get to us first? That gives him all the time in the world to get to the trampers.”
“Harder to persuade a friend to let you shoot down a rescue chopper and a medivac, even if the friend is a sandwich or two short of a picnic.”
Peter nodded and turned to the front again, uncapped the binoculars, and began searching the eastern shore of the lake for any sign of movement, while he thought a little more. At his side, Hawk increased speed without having to be asked. It increased the tilt at which the chopper flew, so that most of the bubble of the cockpit was facing down into the lake, right below his feet, had Peter cared to look there. But he steadfastly kept his eyes up. The pilot kept a firm grip on his controls, his posture relaxed. He’d flown in Vietnam, and Peter was thankful for that. Some of his superiors questioned whether Hawk was too old, but Peter knew the eyes were as sharp and the reflexes as fast as they’d been forty years ago. And the combat experience was priceless. One loon in a play-helicopter was nothing to this man.
Peter continued searching while he activated the radio transmitter again. “Medivac, keep following us at a safe distance. Please ask your passengers to keep a watch to both sides and behind, particularly at the edges of the lake. We believe we are looking for a small two-seater helicopter, but also beware of any boating traffic approaching fast. The wake will be visible, even in this light. If you see anything at all, tell me immediately.”
“What are you saying? Is this guy a threat to us? We didn’t sign up for that!” The medivac pilot’s answer was harsh and rapid.
“We believe it is unlikely there will be any threat to you. Please remain calm and keep your eyes open. And keep pace with us for the time being, but remain at a safe distance in case we change direction suddenly.” This could get messy, fast.
Damn, why did I bring Ellen?
The radio crackled to life again. “Peter, it’s Amber. I’ve just had a call from a farmer driving into town, reporting a dangerous driver. My car. Hard to pin him down to exact details because he was so cranky, but he passed it about twenty minutes ago, about thirty k north of town. Reckons it was doing at least 180, which I find hard to believe.”
Peter snorted, a brief sharp laugh, and his tension eased just a little. He knew the morning’s failures had hit Amber hard. She must have regrouped if she could joke about her useless car. “Copy that Amber. Well done. Stay by the radio.” He swung around to look at Hemi again, and spoke on the closed circuit. “Any idea how far away that makes his mate with the hunting chopper?”
“Not sure, he must be close. At least we know which way to look now.”
“Exactly.” He looked front again and addressed the trailing chopper. “Medivac, did you hear that? The missing suspect appears to have headed north. Please fall back, but keep us in sight. And keep watch behind and to the side, just in case.”
He continued to scour the sides of the lake, looking for movement, a flash of color, a navigation light—anything that might signal another helicopter on the move. He searched with the binoculars, and then took them down to get a wider fix on the lake shore, then put the binoculars to his eyes again. He stared at trees and hills until they blurred and morphed and doubled in number, and he had to blink and look again. The seconds passed, stretched into minutes, and still he searched till his eyes grew dry.
“Two o’clock! Maybe ten k ahead.” Hawk saw it first. The man wasn’t named after a bird of prey for nothing.
Peter scanned with the binoculars and there it was. How Hawk could see it with the naked eye was nothing short of miraculous. He adjusted focus, and could see it clearly, though at this distance it was still tiny even with so much magnification. Brightly colored, a little dragonfly. “Can we outrun it?”
“We can try. We’re already at maximum speed. But we’re bigger than they are.”
In the back, Ellen was weeping. No matter how hard she tried to stop, tears just kept leaking out of her eyes and dribbling down her face. Hemi noticed, reached out his big paw of a hand, and enfolded her right hand within it. The human touch was immensely comforting, even though he immediately resumed staring down the lake, towards whatever the pilot and now Peter had seen. She didn’t want to look, and besides, her vision was being refracted through the prisms of liquid filling her eyes.
So much terror that she wanted to vomit it out of her stomach. Not even just fear for Rachel any more, but for herself, and the other three people in this little fluttering craft. Tom was a loose cannon. Literally. She knew he was a crack shot. They’d told her that days ago, before they knew how much it mattered. And if he’d gone to a hunting friend, that would mean a gun, probably a hunting rifle with a nice long range. If it had occurred to Peter that Tom could just shoot down the rescue helicopter, it had to have occurred to Tom. She hadn’t thought she could fear for her own life while her daughter was in danger, but now she found she could. And these good men alongside her—the rumpled paramedic, the enigmatic pilot and the big, calm policeman—she so very much didn’t want their breath to be taken from them. All because of mental illness and bitterness and money.
But the deep dragging undertow of dread had been pulling since her eyes had first snagged on the weaponry Peter was toting this morning. He didn’t normally carry a gun, but clearly this was considered a situation requiring an “armed response”. The metal turned her relationship with him inside out, peeling back the skin and exposing the muscle and gristle and sinew. For the first time, she was confronted with the knowledge that he was a law enforcement official first, her protector second, and her friend… somewhere down the list. Should it turn out to be her own daughter who was armed and dangerous among the hiking party, he would not hesitate to deal with her for the safety of all.
They were closing on the little dragonfly, a meter of airspace at a time. But the dragonfly was closing on Altham Hut. Hawk said, “Smoke. Eleven o’clock.”
Peter knew there’d be no point in him trying to see it with the naked eye, so he adjusted the binoculars and there it was: a thin column rising above a fold in the hills, not far from the lake shore, in the small bay that led to the hut. Proof of life. It had to be the missing trampers. No one had used that hut since last summer.
He swung round to look at Hemi. “Smoke rising from Altham Hut. Looks like you were right about the direction they went.”
“Yeah, it’s great. Be even better if Tom hadn’t overheard me.”
It wasn’t the kind of comment that needed a reply. Peter glanced at the hand Hemi was holding, and felt a flood of longing to be in the back seat with her. For an endless second his gaze locked on her eyes, wide and dripping with tears, and then he swung back to the front. He closed his mind to all but the job in hand. He pressed the radio transmission button. “Medivac, hold back and hover. We’ll let you know when we need you. And keep your wits about you.”
***
In the hut, Jack was putting another piece of wood on the fire. He’d kept it stoked all night, rising every couple of hours to add more fuel. “We have to keep the bat signal alive,” he’d told the others.
It had been a long, unsettled night, with Callie’s wristwatch alarm beeping every half hour so she could check on Rachel. When the hypo finally struck about 4.00 am, they needed no beeps to wake them. Rachel groaned loudly, thrashed in her bed and shouted nonsense. It had taken the last of their energy bars to fix it.
Please God, let them come soon.
Jack had already been outside in the pre-dawn twilight, gathering more wood to dry over the stove, so it would be ready to burn when the hut’s store of firewood ran out. He was wearing his camera in the headstrap—ready, just in case. After all the horrors his little lens had captured, he didn’t want it to miss out on rescue and resolution.