Crystal Coffin (30 page)

Chang coughed and Ryan looked left, watching him return the mirror to its original position. He looked again, thinking he saw the colonel smile.

‘You have something else in mind, sir?'

Chang's smile widened. ‘I think it's time to challenge our RAAF friends into a little army-airforce exercise.'

‘A race to find him, sir? I thought we needed to keep this under wraps?'

‘Indeed,' Chang said. ‘We need their resources. I'm thinking more along the lines of a joint operation. If we have to tell them anything, we'll tell them he's navy.'

Ryan and Beattie grinned with the same smile. The last joint army-airforce exercise was Operation Paper Wasp. Held in the state forest above Helidon, it had been infiltrated by an electronics technician from HMAS Jervis Bay, who disabled their tracking systems as a joke by the navy to prove their boys could be just as good for in-country warfare as they were on the water.

‘Nice touch,' Beattie said, but in reality he thought it could be perfect.

Locklin waited for the nurse to leave his sister's room before entering. His chest felt light without the weight of the Browning and holster he'd decided to leave in the Bedford.

‘Hi, sis,' he said, closing the door behind him. ‘I hear you've been causing trouble.'

‘Jayson!' she smiled, relieved to see him. ‘We're in trouble.'

He held up his hand. ‘Forget that,' he said. ‘You first. Is the baby all right?'

‘Yes, yes,' she said, grappling over her whale-proportioned stomach to reach her overnight bag on the bedside table. ‘Pass me that, will you? The baby's fine.'

He did, but only to stop her from hurting herself.

‘Easy does it!' he said as she pushed her nose into her bag. ‘You'll blow a valve.'

She reached deeper and pulled out a baby's disposable nappy from underneath the kitchen sink that she had stashed in there. She opened the nappy and pulled out a gold-tabbed 120Mb data disc from the padded stuffing. Locklin blinked, but he wasn't too surprised.

‘These are this morning's keystrokes from a business computer in Rome,' she said. ‘I downloaded them from an airline company. It's him, Jayson. It's Fletcher.'

He took the disk from her and flipped it over. The only markings on it were those of the brand name. ‘So what's an airline company in Rome got to do with us?' he asked. ‘That's halfway across the planet.'

‘They're coming
here
, Jayson. They're flying here tonight. I saw the word Wivenhoe, a bunch of figures with altitudes and latitudes and stuff, and the date.'

‘Wivenhoe?' he said, instantly thinking of the sea plane he'd seen that morning. ‘Could you see a time?'

‘Yes, eight o'clock,' she said, realising that was the same time her brother's flight was supposed to leave for Timor. ‘Take a look yourself and tell me I'm crazy,
please
, because it gets worse. They know who I am.'

‘How would they know that?' he said, returning his thoughts to the disk. Even if he could get past Gran MacLeod without being seen, he didn't have time to go back to her house and try it out. He wondered if the nurse's station had a PC with a 120Mb-friendly hard drive, and decided that he didn't need to worry about finding out. If his sister had said she'd seen it, then she'd seen it.

She explained about the messages and the photos they displayed at random from her files. ‘At first I thought they'd hacked me long before I'd even looked at their website. I mean, their security protocols would really have to be on their toes to spot me coming in
and
have time to track me
and
do what they did. But I've thought about it and it's acting like some kind of sentinel Trojan. I'll bet if I ran a Trojan detect at home, it'll be sitting there waiting for me to log on again so it can finish its dirty work.'

He knew what the words Trojan and sentinel meant separately, but he'd never heard them put together before and the look on his face told her so.

‘That's a security program,' she said. ‘It stands guard on the server and instead of blocking a Trojan that it sees coming in, rides it back somehow to track me. I don't know how, I'm not into hacking, but I'll bet it's a fully automated program.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘It called me MS HM MACLEOD. The only place I know of where I wrote my name exactly like that was on the licensing page for my software, and a program might look there to find out who the PC was being used by. That's good news because it means they may have a few of my files, but they might not have figured out what they are yet. Strange that it did it that way, but it's the only reason I can think of why it called me that. Everywhere else, all my letterheads and stuff, are all Helen MacLeod. So if there'd been a person in my files, they would have called me Helen. Now
that
would have scared me.'

‘And I'd be an uncle by now,' he grinned.

‘That's better,' she said, surprising him.

‘What is?'

‘Your smile. I haven't seen it in all the time you've been back.'

‘That can't be right,' he said, glad to see a smile on her face too. ‘I distinctly remember grinning as I gave Maitland's pressure valve the flick this afternoon.'

‘What's that suppose to mean?'

‘Long story. But I put a city chick up on a horse this morning and that gave me a chuckle too. You should have seen her face.'

‘A city chick?' his sister asked winking. ‘Is she cute?'

‘Get that thought out of your head,' he snapped. ‘She's working for the Maitlands and she's not my type.'

‘Oh? And what exactly is your type?'

‘Don't ask,' he said, reading her mind. ‘I've got enough worries.'

‘You do,' she said, serious again. ‘What are you going to do about them?'

‘Nothing that you need to worry about,' he said. ‘You just concentrate on cooking that baby a few more weeks. All things going right, the next you'll hear from me is a call from ET to say it's safe to go home.'

‘Home meaning Freeman?'

He nodded. Perfect name for the place now that he thought about it.

Locklin walked out of the main hospital entrance and immediately wished that he hadn't. The silver Magna that swung around in the drop-off area directly in front of the big glass doors had a Commonwealth of Australia numberplate on its rear bumper and an army uniform perched behind the wheel.

There was nowhere to hide.

Framed against the floodlit glass doors of the stark white foyer, he glanced around in search of cover and found none. To his right, a nurse helped a mother load her new baby into a car. To his left, a group of four senior schoolgirls sat on a low wall, counting cute guys that walked in or out of the main doors. Apparently, Locklin made thirteen. They wolf-whistled at him, chanting ‘thirteen, thirteen, thirteen', as they laughed and waved.

The Magna driver bumped elbows with his passenger and pointed at him. Locklin read his name on their lips and their doors flew open.

‘Fourteen, fourteen … fifteen, fifteen, fifteen!' the girls squealed as the two men got out.

Locklin took off uphill with both corporals on his heels. The men split, running each side of the new mother. The girls screamed like a cheer squad at the new excitment and the nurse shouted at the men to take more care.

Ahead of Locklin, the path was strangled by a construction barrier that squeezed pedestrians against the traffic. He leapt to the top of the barrier, kicking his feet to scale it and saw the trench on the other side. He swore and leapt down again, dodging cars as he bolted through the traffic. He heard brakes screech and swearing as his pursuers tried to cross further down the hill.

Downhill was where he needed to be. The multistorey car park was there and below it on the street, he'd parked the Bedford truck. But he couldn't make it past the front without being cut off. He jumped a low picket fence on his right to cut through someone's front yard and get around the carpark from the back.

One corporal followed him through the yard, the second headed down the footpath to go in through the parking station's tollgate. In the garden alongside the house, Locklin startled a sleeping Alsation, but he was too quick for it and behind him, the corporal had to shake the angry guard dog off his leg. In the backyard, Locklin scaled the fence and leapt to the second-floor rails, which were level with him. He bolted through the second level of the car park to the front and lowered himself carefully over the rails, while his pursuers shouted at each other in confusion.

The soldier below realised his mistake when he got to the back of the ground level. His mate was above him, hanging off a six foot fence perched on top of a retaining wall. On the other side, he could hear a dog barking.

‘Hurry!' they shouted to each other, swearing. But they were too late.

Locklin had run full circle and was across the road. But his truck couldn't outrun a Magna and there was no time to go down to it for his Browning, so he waved to them as he reached their car and threw his keys to the Bedford out the window onto the median strip.

‘Take care of my dog, boys,' he shouted taking time to wink and smile at his noisy cheer squad. ‘He's in the back of my truck and he could be thirsty.'

As he took off, he laid RAAF rubber on the road and the cheer squad went wild.

‘Take care of Eric Maitland as soon as we've made the delivery,' Fletcher said, pouring himself another glass of wine in the back seat of the Mercedes. It was so nice not to have to drive from the airport this time, he thought. ‘Just dump the body over the Atlantic somewhere with the others on your way back.'

‘Will there be room him?' Farran asked.

‘There are only two rush items being collected tonight,' Fletcher said. ‘The balance of delivery has been delayed a few months.'

‘Only two? Will that be profitable?'

‘At four point seven and eight and a half million each, I'd have to say yes.'

Aaron Fletcher's Mercedes was the first to approach the gap in the fence into the overgrown paddock and as it braked before turning off the bitumen he gulped down his wine in case it spilled.

He had liked the property when he'd first arranged for his stepbrother to acquire it, now it was only a weed or two less than a jungle — one of the reasons he hadn't sacked the farmhand at Freeman next door when he'd acquired it more recently. As the two black cars pulled up at the boathouse, Fletcher got out to look at the lake and consider his greater vision for the area.

‘This won't be such a bad place to visit,' he said, gesturing to his thick-necked driver to pop the boot. ‘After we've cleared out all the vermin. Pity we'll have to leave it for a while. Ah Eric,' he said, turning around to see his stepbrother in the door. ‘I do enjoy that look on your face.'

‘What are you doing here?' Maitland whinged. ‘Why all the muscle? Are you expecting trouble?'

‘No,' Fletcher said as if to a child. ‘Just a little extra company while you work.' He smiled as he wrapped an arm around Maitland's shoulder, and gave the nod for his men to plunder the trunk of the Mercedes for shotguns and revolvers as if it was a treasure chest full of gold and gems.

‘Farran,' Fletcher said, ushering Maitland towards the cabin, ‘get your men to take a look around. I want this whole area locked up tight for when the buyers get here. Make sure your boys know their footings before dark and then take one of them and get me the girl and her computer and anyone else who tries to stand in your way.'

Farran nodded, taking the last Smith and Wesson revolver from the trunk while his five men scattered to familiarise themselves with their surroundings. The three with shotguns took up positions in the trees to the north, south and west of the boathouse. ‘Kirk,' Farran said calling to a man who had long dirty hair and tattooed arms, ‘you're with me!'

Kirk tucked his Smith and Wesson cowboy style into his belt as Farran ordered Bricker, beside him, to keep patrol right outside the cabin. Bricker scratched his spikey red hair and spun the load cylinder of his revolver constantly as his eyes roamed the clearing, sky and lake.

‘Sir, you want your daughter now?' Farran asked, pushing a finger between his neck and collar where it itched now that his blood was starting to pace.

‘Stepdaughter,' Fletcher corrected. ‘There's none of
my
blood in her veins. And yes, why not invite her to the party too.' He did have other plans for her, but time was running out and framing her for his wife's murder was just getting messier by the second. ‘Might as well put her to work helping you load the stuff while you're there.'

Maitland's jaw dropped open. ‘You're bringing the rest of the batch here? I told you the cavern's flooded. There's nowhere to store it.'

Fletcher patted his brother's shoulder. ‘Why don't you just get back to work and let me worry about everything else.'

‘Not until you tell me what's going on,' Maitland insisted. ‘I haven't finished the forgeries for this batch yet.'

‘We're clearing out of here, Eric,' Fletcher said tiredly, ‘as soon as the buyers leave.'

‘But we've gone to so much trouble! I can work here. I like it here!'

‘You should have thought of that before you let things get so complicated.'

‘It's not my fault people keep poking around.'

Farran pointed to Kirk as a signal for him to drive. ‘What about Maitland's wife and kids?' he asked Fletcher as he slid into the passenger seat. ‘You want me to put them to work too?'

Fletcher nodded. ‘We'll get rid of all the vermin at once.'

‘No!' Maitland shouted, attracting attention from Fletcher's men. ‘You can't go round killing everyone, Aaron. People will hunt you down for that. Steal a few paintings, run off a few copies and replace the originals with fakes so that no-one notices and nobody ever gives much of a hoot. But go round killing everyone, especially kids and —'

‘First the priest and now kids. You're not going all moral on me, are you?'

‘It's got nothing to do with morals! It's simple maths, Aaron. Kill one farmer, get land, get a couple of people poking around. Okay, so you kept that under control for about a year. But the guy's neighbour kept poking, didn't he? You killed him and now we've got more people sticking their noses in. You might be able to pull strings to get a couple of cops and a priest out of the way, but how many strings have you got left? Every time you knock someone off, your problem multiplies!'

‘You leave the maths to me, Eric. You're the artist, remember?'

‘No, Aaron,' Maitland said flatly. ‘My future's staked out on this deal too and I'm not about to let you blow it with your heavy hand!'

Fletcher clicked his fingers and Farran's pistol pointed at his stepbrother's belly while Bricker's revolver pointed at his back. ‘I think you've said your piece now, Eric,' Fletcher said. ‘This deal is going down whether you're a part of it or not. I suggest you get back in there and finish copying those originals or I'll get someone else to finish them from photos later.'

Fletcher nodded to Bricker, who was standing at the boathouse door and smiling at Maitland with his revolver still drawn.

‘Mr Bricker,' Fletcher said. ‘Would you please show my stepbrother inside and make him comfortable?'

‘Sure, Mr Fletcher,' Bricker said, spinning his revolver's cylinder again as Kirk and Farran drove away. ‘I'd be glad to.'

Lieutenant Colonel Chang stepped around the podium in the briefing room to mouse-click his laptop and an elongated topographical image of southeast Queensland appeared on the overhead screen.

‘Operation Dragonfly,' he continued, ‘is an exercise in preventing an attack on a strategic defence target where the target is unknown and the infiltrator is known.' His pointer circled the map. ‘The boundaries set for this exercise extend from the Port of Brisbane in the east to Cunningham's Gap in the west and north to Somerset and Wivenhoe Dams.'

‘That's one hell of game zone,' Squadron Leader Harris said. ‘You've got Brisbane airport, a capital city, two major water supplies, air and army bases, major rail and road transport arteries, not to mention one hydro and two conventional power stations. You say we've got one man to find in all of that. What sort of a time frame have we got to play with?'

‘Twenty-four hours,' Chang said listening to the room go quiet. ‘An excellent chance to test resources with most of them already stretched in Timor. Army Intelligence has provided us with one key advantage however. We know what our man looks like.'

Four additional mouse-clicks resulted in the map being replaced with an image that Corporal Beattie had prepared in transit between Clara MacLeod's ostrich farm and Amberley air base. Beattie had taken only minutes to create what he called a dual composite. He'd taken a file photo of Locklin posing with a US marine after completion of a joint training obstacle course and overlaid the body and uniform of a size-adjusted, headless naval officer. The RAAF assembly of key officers were now looking at a head and shoulders shot of Acting Sub Lieutenant Jayson Locklin.

As he allowed the impact of the white uniform to sink in, a flying officer knocked and entered, calling his name.

‘Phone call, sir,' she said. ‘It's Corporal Beattie. He says it's urgent.'

‘Patch it through,' Chang said, moving quickly to the phone in a corner of the room.

The phone rang twice as the call transferred and Chang listened quietly for a minute and a half.

‘He did
what
?' Chang said, turning his back to the assembled officers. He rubbed his forehead in disbelief.

‘He took our car,' Corporal Beattie repeated with the timid bleat of a sheep that had just been shorn and neutered. ‘I haven't reported it stolen yet, sir. I'm assuming you still wish to keep this as a defence matter?'

‘You assume correctly, Corporal. What of the weapons?'

‘The weapons we signed out this morning, yours included sir, were secured in the trunk, but the key is on the ring with the ignition key. He has full access, sir. My echelon bag was also in the car to change clothes as you suggested, so he has everything in that too.'