Burning for Revenge (11 page)

With the jeep, I didn't hesitate. I started making a big turn, quite gentle, so it wouldn't look suspicious, even slowing down a little, and at the same time said to Fi: "Get a good grip on something."

"What about Kevin?" she asked.

I hadn't even thought of Kevin. "Tell him too," I said. There was no more time for conversation. Fi shouted into the back of the truck: "Kevin, grab a hold of something!"

At this stage we were facing northwest. The jeep was coming from the west. When we turned they slowed, then swung hard left to come around the front of us, maybe to get onto the driver's side of the truck, I don't know. I hadn't been expecting that, but it worked just as well for what I wanted. I think they still weren't sure about us, not knowing if we were a threat to their security or there for some legitimate reason. They probably couldn't believe anyone had got through their fantastic defences.

I started accelerating again, gently at first, then, when I judged them to be at the right point, I charged. Foot straight to the floor. The old truck did pretty well. Probably no one had ever asked her to do anything exciting or brave. Probably no one had asked her to go at full speed. Whatever, she surged forward with more power than I'd expected.

It happened so quickly that the soldiers in the jeep were caught unawares. I saw their startled faces. They were yelling at the driver and trying to get their rifles up. The driver thought he was going to get around the right-hand side of me, then did the worst thing possible: he changed his mind. He decided he wouldn't make it—he probably wouldn't have, it's hard to say—and he braked, slammed it into reverse and tried to back away at the same time as he spun the wheel hard to the right. It was a terrible, stupid decision. That's what I meant before, about how sometimes our minds work and sometimes they freeze. I don't know why he made such a bad move, such a bad call, at that moment of his life. And I'll never know now. Fi ducked to the floor, with her hands over her eyes, and I shut my eyes for the last two or three metres. It terrible. I still accelerating when we hit them. Someone told me once that the police are trained to do that: accelerate when they know they're going to hit another car. That way they suffer less damage themselves. It's horrible, but I don't know where that leaves me, because I didn't take my foot off the accelerator until the very last second. I wouldn't have even then, but some reflex made me lift it off as we hit. It seemed too frightening to hit at full speed in that cold-blooded way.

Still, we would have been doing ninety when we rammed.

It was a massacre. The jeep fragmented; there were bits lying all over the tarmac. Some pieces were a hundred metres away. The biggest piece I saw was the door, and that wasn't very big, being from a jeep. And I saw the engine. It was sitting on the ground like a mechanic had lifted it out with a block and tackle.

There were bodies, too. I think there'd been four or five soldiers in the jeep, but I only saw two bodies, one lying completely still and the other sort of twisting from side to side, like a fish that's been out of water five minutes and hasn't got much left.

And I saw some bits of bodies.

Of course I didn't do a major examination of the crash site. My glimpses were just that, glimpses, and I got them at high speed as we turned a big circle. I had to swing the truck around fast, so we could line up the petrol tankers while they were attached to the jets. It didn't necessarily matter if they weren't attached, but it was better if they were. So I put the truck into a skidding turn, hanging onto the wheel like grim death even though I thought we had a good chance of tipping. I could feel the tyres lifting on the right-hand side and I thought, "Hello, this is it, we're over." But I didn't bring the steering wheel back even one degree, because I knew we had to go for it, all or nothing, no slowing down for any reason.

In a way it was like a roundabout. We got a view of everything as we spun, a full look at the entire scene. I saw the wreckage of the jeep, I saw the vast expanse of the runways and the security fence beyond them. I saw some soldiers piling out of the door of a big humpy-shaped shed near the control tower, I saw Homer and Lee's truck swinging wide to get a good position, and I saw the rows of planes and the fuel tankers.

That was where the action was. The rest of the airfield would get revved up sooner or later—the soldiers teeming out of the shed would be the first of many—but the guys on the tankers knew right away that this was life or death. Two or three just ran. Even though we hadn't done anything yet to threaten them personally, they weren't sticking around. The rest were going mental. They were jumping down off the wings of planes, they were unscrewing hoses off threads, they were running to the cabins of trucks. They knew that whatever we had in mind, they were the targets. They knew they had seconds to save'their lives.

We had two problems. One was that as we skidded round we weren't in a good position to line up the rifles. Fi was trying to get off the floor and I was yelling at her: "Get up, get up," but with the centrifugal force of the turn she was very slow. The other problem was that we were now too close. Dangerously close. We could be incinerated.

As soon as we were far enough out of the turn I slammed on the brakes. Fi had just got up on the seat. Now she lurched forward, hitting her head on the windscreen. We didn't need that windscreen anyway but this was not the way to get rid of it. I'd once seen a worker on our place punch his fist through a windscreen, when Dad sacked him. It was the windscreen on the old Datsun paddock basher. But Fi's head didn't even crack this one.

As I wrenched the gearstick into reverse I yelled at Fi again: "Come on." There was no time to sympathise about her head injury. With the truck stationary for a second, shuddering with the shock of what I'd done to it, Fi managed to twist back up onto her seat. There was blood running down her face and she looked as pale as a peeled banana.

"The guns, the guns, I shouted at her. I still hadn't found reverse. Bloody thing, where was it? It took me three goes. I thought our whole mad attempt might end there. Then with a crunch the gearstick went into its socket. "Thank God," I muttered. I hit the throttle again, foot flat to the floor. At least with hectares of airfield behind us there was nothing much we could hit. I didn't even look in the side mirrors. If there was another jeep behind us it'd have to take its chances.

We went backwards, wheels spinning, lurching violently, Fi bouncing like a cork in a spa. We did run over something, probably a bit of debris from the jeep. But I knew we had to stop about then anyway. We just couldn't take any more time. If we were too close and got barbecued, so be it. It was impossible to tell what was too close anyway. We didn't have a lot of experience with this stuff. But to keep reversing for another five minutes_well, it wasn't an option. If we were wiped out we had to do all the damage we could first.

So I hit the brakes again. This time I remembered to warn Fi and she braced herself—just—by hanging onto the seat with one hand and the windscreen with the other. She held the rifles between her knees, pointing up at the roof but as we braked they both swung towards me. I hoped to God the safeties were still on.

So the moment had come. All those careful plans Colonel Finley and Iain and Ursula had made, so carefully, so long'ago, so far away they came to nothing. Now it was up to us, using a plan we'd made up on the spur of the moment, using our own brains and initiative, and a lot of luck. Funny, the Kiwis had only wanted us to come on this trip as guides; they thought because we were young we wouldn't be much use. Even though we'd done'so much already, they thought it was all a fluke. You could tell by the way they looked at us, and the way they talked. Like they knew so much more than us.

Well, here we were, inside the airfield, about to inflict major damage. I just hoped they'd build a big memorial to us after this was over.

I grabbed one rifle as Fi lifted the other. Fi was the worst shot in the Southern Hemisphere, but at least she was marginally better at handling a gun now, compared to when the war started. I checked that my safety was still on, then swung it round and used the butt to bash through the windscreen. It was wild. Glass flew. We got showered with it. But there was no time to check for scratches and cuts. Beside me Fi tried to bash out what was left of her part of the glass. But she wasn't aggressive enough. Or maybe she wasn't strong enough. Whatever, I swung my rifle again, nearly braining Fi, and smashed out all the glass I could.

And then we were ready. Ahead of us were five tankers. Coming from the right, around the corner of a hangar, were two more jeeps. I didn't dare look in the side mirrors. Anything could be happening behind us. I wished Kevin was functioning, so he could cover the rear. Or the right. Or the left. Anywhere. As it was, I had to make another quick decision, one of the most crucial I'd ever make. Fi was a lousy shot, sure. On the other hand, no one could miss these tankers. They sat there like big fat chooks in a nice line, like geese on their way to the dam. Although soldiers were rushing frantically to get the hoses out and move the trucks I estimated it'd be thirty seconds before they got rolling. These rifles could empty their magazines in a lot less than thirty seconds. But the two jeeps were coming fast. They were out of the cover of the buildings already, in the sunshine. I still wanted to stay alive. Stupid, sure, but it's the way I am. There was only one thing for it. I said to Fi: "You do the tankers."

She looked at me in horror. "Oh, but Ellie..."

"just do it," I yelled at her.

Further to my right, there was a massive blast. The ground rocked. A wave of hot air suddenly buffeted the truck, so that we rocked from side to side. From the left, I heard screams and shouts. Ahead of me, more soldiers started running away from the tankers. They knew what was coming now. Homer and Lee had struck, and they knew what we were going to do.

The force of the explosion made me realise we were probably still much too close, but it was too late to do anything about that. I didn't have time to look for Homer and Lee either; I hoped they were OK, but if they weren't there was nothing I could do. As Fi trembling and looking sick, raised her rifle, I wriggled around further to my right and got into a comfortable position, head just above the bottom of the window and rifle resting on the sill. The jeeps were still coming and I didn't have much time.

No sooner was I in position than there was a second explosion from the direction of the boys. Then another one, almost immediately. Seemed like they were going to be finished before we'd even started. I took aim, but my mind was on Fi, begging her to get a move on.

I think we both fired at the same time. There was the familiar BOOM of the rifles: less smoke than with other weapons I'd used, but a big recoil. I braced myself, waiting for the huge explosion, thinking there was a fair chance the truck would be blown right over. There was nothing. The only interesting thing was that the leading jeep, a bit to the left of the other one suddenly lost its windscreen. It shattered and blew out. I guess I was pleased but I didn't have time to think about it. Instead I was looking around for Fi, to see what had happened.

She was distraught. "I missed," she sobbed. She was like a kid who's grazed her knee. I couldn't believe it. No one, no one, could miss at this range. They talk about people who can't hit the side of a barn. Fi couldn't hit the Empire State Building at twenty paces. From our right suddenly came a series of explosions that I thought would never stop. The sun seemed to disappear. Everything went dark. The truck was rocking and being pushed around like a bulldozer was attacking it. We were actually being turned around—a truck that weighed five tonnes, and we were being turned around. "Go again," I screamed at Fi. I looked out the front—that was how much we'd been pushed around—to see where the jeeps were. One had been blown right over, and there were soldiers clambering out of it. The other, to my horror, was only twenty-five metres away, stopped, and I could see rifles being levelled at us. You had to give those guys credit. I had about one second to get them. I'd have to waste some ammunition here. It'd be stupid to die with unused ammo in the magazine. I fired a few rounds but out of the corner of my eye I saw soldiers from the overturned jeep kneeling and preparing to shoot. I started taking aim at them and was about to fire when Fi finally had her second shot. It felt like she spent five minutes lining it up. It wouldn't surprise me, because she would have been so nervous about missing again.

But she didn't miss.

Our whole plan was based on the simple fact that when Homer and I, in our immature youth, fired at those tin cans filled with fuel they exploded instantly, into groovy little fireballs. I guess the spark as the bullet penetrated the metal was what did it. We figured that if it worked on a small scale with a tin can it ought to work on a big scale with a petrol tanker.

We were right.

And we got blown away. I was right about that too. We'd been much too close.

God, I'll never forget that feeling. Now I know what cyclone victims go through. The terrible noise, the complete loss of control, being shaken with bone-snapping violence, like a rabbit in the mouth of a terrier, like a sock in a tumble drier. Trying to keep my gun in the air so it wouldn't go off and kill Fi. You feel so helpless. You are helpless. It was like when the four-wheel drive crashed in Wirrawee, only a thousand times worse. I hung onto the steering wheel but soon lost that, and ended up on top of Fi. All I could think of was those guns. I was still holding mine, still pointing it away, but what about Fi? Did she have a grip on hers? Once again, I'd forgotten poor Kevin in the back of the van.

I reckon we were blown more than fifty metres. Amazingly, the truck ended up the right way up again, sitting on its four wheels, if it still had four left. We were side on to the holocaust we'd created, but the other way around. I couldn't see anything of the tanker Fi hit—the flames were too intense to look at. I caught glimpses of dark skeletons of planes through the fire. All their fabric had been burnt away and you could only see black ribs, like a balsawood framework of a plane. Then there was another gust of wind and the planes disappeared again.