The Delta Chain (25 page)

‘We need to go faster.’ Walter slipped his
backpack from his shoulders and motioned for Kate to do the same.
‘We can run faster if we’re carrying less weight.’

‘Walter, I can’t…the Landscan III…’

He gripped her shoulders. ‘Forget that for
now, Kate. Our lives are going to depend on how fast we move.’

Reluctantly, she allowed him to assist her in
shedding the backpack that contained the unit. ‘We’ll bury it in
the bushes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’ll get a chance, some other time,
to come back and find it.’

‘We’d never find it-’

‘That’s a chance we have to take.’

It wasn’t long after, as they hurtled through
the undergrowth, that Kate became aware of the loud, close,
crashing sounds from behind. Closer and closer. She was lagging
behind, the distance between her and Walter getting wider, and she
cried out to him. Walter simply called back to her to run
faster.

Her face and hands were cut from the sharp
blades of the bushes. Each time she slipped or stumbled she bruised
her knees and the palms of her hands, but she kept forcing herself
forward. Her legs were like lead and she was drenched in sweat. It
trickled into her eyes, blurring her vision, and the vines and
branches and shafts of sunlight mixed together, disorientating
her.

The thump! thump! thump! of her heartbeat was
like a drum.

Rough hands encircled her ankles with the
sudden impact of a tackle and sent her crashing forward face first
into the ground.

She tasted blood in her mouth and then the
blows began. Fists and feet rained down on her. The pain was sharp
and agonising. Nevertheless she tried to struggle to her feet.
Several blunt slaps to the face and the side of the head left her
semi-conscious, her eye blackened and blood spurting from her nose.
She was vaguely aware, through hazy sight and intense pain, of
being manhandled to her feet and then half pushed, half dragged
back across the wetlands. The men’s voices rang in her ears – loud,
gruff, mostly unintelligible, but she did recognise the louder and
stronger of the voices bellow: ‘Don’t let that tracker get away
again!’

That was her last thing she heard before she
blacked out.

She woke with a start, the pain now a roaring
ache. Invisible knives stabbed at her temples. Her mouth was drier
than she’d have ever thought possible.

Her vision came into focus and she registered
the scene: the river rushing by and the small group of men on the
bank, leering at her with harsh, weather-beaten faces. Nothing
seemed real… There were four of them, but it was the one she
assumed to be their leader who made an immediate visual impact. He
was a large, barrel-chested man with thick, dark hair and an
unshaven face. Outback grunge? He might have come across, at
another time, like a cuddly bear of an uncle, a farmer perhaps, if
it wasn’t for the messianic stare, or his sneer.

One of the other men was bopping about in
front of her. Some of the men were talking but none of the sounds
around her were making any sense. Aware that she was vertical she
tried to pull her arms toward her but she couldn’t move. She
strained harder, whipping her head about and seeing that she’d been
spread-eagled, with both arms and the calves of both legs bound
tight to the trunks of trees. The river water lapped at the sandy
bank and her struggle brought laughter from the men. The full
horror of her situation exploded in her mind like a drug-induced
nightmare – eerie, improbable, but real.

This is happening to me…

She screamed out: ‘No, please no…’ but there
was simply louder laughter, as though a joke had been told. Kate
realised they were all drinking beer. Apparently these animals,
having dragged her to this spot and having strung her like the
squealing pig to the trees that fronted the river, were taking a
break, chatting and boozing while they waited for her to regain
consciousness.

The small man, who’d been bopping about
around her, lunged forward and tore her shirt open. His face filled
her view and she saw that his head was shaved and that he had
narrow, squinty features. He was nothing more than a petty street
thug, transplanted from some seedy urban hangout to the wilderness
of the Marrakai swamps. Another man of nondescript appearance, his
breath foul from too much alcohol, joined Headshave and they each
took hold of one of her breasts, laughing all the while as they
squeezed and roughly kneaded her soft white flesh. One of them
rolled her right nipple between his thumb and forefinger and then
pinched with all his strength. Kate screamed and the man’s cruel
jibe, ‘Squeal, bitch!’ rang in her ears.

Suddenly the men pulled back as the bearded
leader came forward, saying ‘Enough. Plenty of time for that in the
whorehouses in Alice.’ Kate saw that he held a radiophone to his
ear. ‘No more time for mucking around here. According to the
control room there’s company out in the water, coming in. Let’s
move.’

‘What about the tracker?’ Headshave
asked.

‘Montague and Stetham lost him,’ the leader
said, ‘and they’re back on the boat now. We don’t know what
reinforcements the tracker has already contacted. There could be
air and river craft here before we know it, so we take off
now
.’

Kate watched helplessly as this self-styled
riverboat captain and his three huntsmen pushed off in two
runabouts and rowed to the multi-decked cruiser out on the river.
She didn’t scream out for mercy; she knew that would be pointless.
She didn’t cry out for help – she knew there could be no help, not
here, not now, and Walter was far away.

But she did whimper and groan as the sweat
ran into her eyes, stinging them, and the ropes bit like teeth into
her wrists and her calves. She saw the heads of not one or two but
three crocodiles gliding rapidly toward her, eyes glinting.

When he realised Kate was no longer behind
him but two of their pursuers were, smashing their way through the
foliage at high speed, Walter began to run with complete abandon:
he knew that his best bet was to lose these men, then sneak back in
his search for Kate. He knew he could outdistance these men, any
men, and he sprinted like a human tornado across the landscape of
bulging ferns, water holes and rocky outcrops.

Twenty minutes later he stopped and,
crouching low to the ground, listened. Several minutes later he was
certain the men had given up on the chase. They couldn’t take the
chance of becoming hopelessly lost out here. Walter would now head
directly northwest in an ever-circular movement that would
ultimately return him to the riverbank, but from a different, and
he hoped safer, approach.

He began sprinting again. In his heart
though, he suspected the worst. Just as it had been with Greg,
Walter feared he would find Kate too late. History was repeating
itself and he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. He should
never have been persuaded by the wily Kate to attempt this…this
madness. He should have closed his ears, his eyes, and his heart to
Kate’s emotional plea.

Erickson stood on the bow of the retreating
boat, binoculars trained on the shore. He would’ve preferred to
stay and watch the gruesome spectacle from close range but that
would mean exposing the murderous act to the newer, younger members
of his crew. It wasn’t the right time for that, not until they’d
been with him longer. And he needed to move the craft further
upriver in case the Aboriginal tracker had alerted others.

The fewer who knew about the killings the
better. Sanders, Azzopardi and Tannen, who’d helped him catch and
bind the woman to the trees, were okay. They’d been with him a long
time and he knew the darkness in their hearts matched his own. The
other three, all petty criminals, were still unknowns when it came
to something like this.

He was being paid well to do a job he loved.
He didn’t want anything stuffing it up. Florida had been a lesson
to them all.

He leaned forward, straining for a better
view, but the curve of the river meant he could no longer see her.
He cursed under his breath. He’d enjoyed a full view of the man’s
death just the week before, and he’d hoped for the same today.

Erickson went down into the control cabin
where his electronics guy, Colville, was hunched over the
console.

‘Seems to be a flurry of movement towards the
shore,’ Colville said, ‘what do you think is attracting the crocs?
Another pig?’

‘Never mind,’ said Erickson. ‘We’re heading
north now, pronto. Concentrate on the area ahead.’ He didn’t want
Colville to know about the woman they’d left for the crocs.

‘You’re the boss.’

Erickson lingered beside the console,
watching the blips on the sonar screen, scratching at his beard.
There were three blips representing the reptiles, cruising quickly
to the feeding area. The first there would be the lucky one, and
Erickson imagined the strong jaws and sharp, ragged teeth clamping
down around the pliant female flesh. The thought, as usual, caused
a rush of excitement – intellectually, emotionally and sexually.
But his imagination was no match for being there in person.

He switched his attention to the radar
screen, positioned alongside the sonar. ‘Still clear?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Colville assured him. ‘Those two
must’ve been alone. No signs of back-up.’

‘Keep watching.’

These Northern Territory assignments had been
a dream for Erickson. Over twenty years before, he’d hunted the
crocs along these waterways, with just a shotgun and a two-man
dinghy, in the company of his father. Those had been times of great
adventure. He could not have dreamed then that a little over two
decades later he’d be paid huge money to command a specially
designed river cruiser as he hunted the crocs with an array of
sophisticated high-tech gear.

He and his crew had high-powered infra-red
binoculars. Regular scans of the surrounding swamps enabled them to
detect foot searchers who came too close. Sonic sensors alerted
them when vehicles came into the region. Together with the radar
and the sonar, they were able to detect any boats, planes or road
vehicles within a radius of 200 kilometres. Knowing such movements
meant Erickson could plot an evasive course, and the painted canopy
could be hoisted as camouflage. It was the kind of operation you
would expect from wartime soldiers in jungle terrain, and that fact
appealed to Erickson’s mercenary side.

The sonar enabled them to pilot the craft
with precision, steering clear of shallows. The sonar’s transducer
was mounted to the boat’s hull. It emitted a narrow, rapidly
rotating beam of high frequency that detected underwater objects
when the beam bounced off them. It meant Erickson and his team
could determine the movements of the crocodiles, follow them, and
capture them.

The boat’s deck contained the mesh-covered
pool where the crocs were kept in a drugged state. He looked out on
the pool now. They needed just one more, which they’d capture in
the next couple of days, then this particular run would be
over.

He would’ve loved to stay out here another
week. Ever since his childhood the Wildlife Preservation rangers –
or their earlier counterparts – had been a thorn in his side.
Feeding a couple of them to the crocs had been great sport.
Perhaps, Erickson thought, if they caught the tracker, he would
have one last chance to satisfy his blood lust.

No matter how hard he tried, Walter couldn’t
stop the image of Greg being torn apart. The faster he ran the
clearer the image seemed to become, distracting him, haunting
him.

He stopped and looked about, disorientated.
What was happening to him? He never became confused in the
wilderness. But he
was
confused. He reckoned he should have
been back at the river by now. He didn’t seem close.

Walter’s heart sank. There was no chance of
finding his way back before Kate met the fate the hunters planned
for her.

The first of the reptiles broke the water
just metres along the muddy bank, and began its slither toward her.
Kate wanted to close her eyes, to mentally remove herself from the
inevitable. To pray. But she was so frozen with fear that even her
eyelids wouldn’t obey a simple command; her eyes remained wide open
and fixed in sheer terror on the advancing creature.

Barbara remembered when another family
invited Joey to join them for a spot of fishing. They’d gone
somewhere along the Northern Rocks river that flowed past the town,
and Joey loved it. ‘What if you took Joey with you when you go
fishing, just the two of you. Perhaps you could do some of
that…male bonding.’

‘It’s a great idea.’ Costas knew the only
trouble would be getting Joey to do anything at all with him, but
he didn’t voice the obvious concern. He hoped his eyes hadn’t
betrayed his thoughts. He knew only too well how intuitive a woman
Barbara was.

He’d approached Joey with some trepidation.
To his surprise Joey had agreed without resistance. They’d
organised a very early morning trip.

It was the perfect morning. No wind, and the
river ran with an easy, natural flow. Costas was relieved to find
the boy in a reasonable mood. But then he knew how quickly that
could change.

They had fun setting up and caught the first
fish quickly. Then came a long period of sitting and waiting.
Costas tried to make small talk but Joey’s brief replies kept it at
that: small talk. After a while, Joey said: ‘My father hates me.
Did you know that?’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t hate you, Joey. What
makes you say that?’