Divine Madness (28 page)

Ideally, Barry’s team would be intercepted as they boarded the boat and caught red-handed with the explosives and equipment required to complete the bombing. In the unlikely event that they managed to get the boat out, there were three Australian coastguard vessels and an Australian navy patrol boat ready to intercept them before they arrived at the LNG terminal.

All of that ought to have been reassuring, but the spaghetti still refused to settle in Dana’s stomach.

‘Amen,’ Eve and Nina said happily.

Dana’s hands were released and she joined in, ‘Amen.’

‘OK,’ Barry said, belching loudly as he stood up from the table. ‘Nice meal that, thanks Nina. It’s time we shipped out, so if you girls want to use the toilet or anything.’

‘I’m OK,’ Dana smiled. ‘Do you need any help loading our equipment into the car?’

Barry shook his head. ‘Everything on the boat is being set up by our support team. All we’ll have to do is climb aboard and set off.’

This was a disappointment to Dana, because loading up the boat would have given the police more time to move in and arrest them.

Barry looked at the two girls. ‘I need one of you to come with me and sort out a little problem. The other one can stay here and help Nina set up the incendiaries to burn out the house.’

‘Do you really think they’ll track us back here?’ Eve asked.

‘Can’t be too careful about leaving fingerprints and DNA behind,’ Barry said. ‘We’ll set the timer for twenty minutes after we leave. This house is ancient and it’s got a wooden frame. It should burn up nicely.’

Eve smiled at Dana. ‘I’ll help Nina, if that’s OK.’

Dana shrugged and looked at Barry. ‘Seems like I’m with you.’

While Nina and Eve grabbed petrol cans, detonators and a bundle of industrial explosive sticks from the garage, Dana followed Barry into the hallway. He was tall enough to touch the ceiling without a ladder and easily grabbed a handle to pull down the wooden flap over the loft hatch. He went up on tiptoes, reached inside the dark hole and pulled out an automatic pistol with a silencer screwed on the front.

Dana looked shocked as Barry took the clip off and reloaded to make sure it wasn’t jammed.

‘What’s that for?’

Barry broke into a big smile. ‘Got a little problem with some devils.’

*

‘I thought this was the one,’ Lauren groaned.

She stared into a small cupboard at the end of an underground corridor. There was condensation dripping off the ceiling and the tiles at their feet were curled up from the damp.

‘I remember the map Rat drew. I was sure this was the right one.’

James was starting to lose patience. ‘Admit it, we’re lost.’

‘We’re
 
not
 
lost. I know roughly where we are, I just think we took a wrong turn when we passed that room with all the stacking chairs in it.’

James looked at his watch. ‘Well it’s nearly half-six. We’ve been going for fifteen minutes already and we can’t afford to wander around here all night.’

‘I know, I’m not stupid,’ Lauren said crossly. ‘If you’d shut your gob for a minute and let me think … I came down the corridor from the office. Took two left turns, down the spiral staircase and then …’

James started walking.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m finding the first exit sign, heading upstairs and clearing out of here.’

‘I’m sure I can find it, James,’ Lauren said as she started to follow him. ‘I recognise all these corridors.’

‘That’s because they all look
 
exactly
 
the same.’

A door clanked open fifty metres in front of them and a man in a chef’s uniform emerged, pushing a metal trolley stacked with tins of mixed fruit. They backed up to the wall as he headed for the exit.

‘At least we’re not missing a good dinner,’ James grinned. ‘I can’t stand fruit cocktail.’

They gave the chef half a minute to clear out before moving off again, turning left when they reached the T-junction at the end of the tunnel.

Lauren glanced at her watch as they walked. ‘James, we’ve got time. Can’t you let us have one last go at finding it?’

James tutted. ‘Fine, but then we’re out of here.’

Rat’s voice sounded a few centimetres behind their ears. ‘I’m sure I can help if you tell me where you want to get to.’

‘
Jeeeeeesus
,’ James gasped, as he and Lauren spun around in a state of shock. ‘Where did you pop out from?’

They realised he’d emerged through a door they’d passed a few steps back.

‘I
 
knew
 
you were up to something,’ Rat said, looking at Lauren. ‘You left the chute open behind yourself in the post room.’

James rapidly considered his options. He could easily knock Rat unconscious and bundle him back into the room, but he didn’t want to hurt his friend and Rat’s usefulness was obvious.

‘If I tell you the truth, will you take us to Susie Regan’s office?’

Lauren looked anxiously at James. ‘You can’t.’

Telling someone about the existence of CHERUB was up with taking drugs and underage sex on the list of things that could get you expelled from CHERUB.

‘Can you take us?’ James repeated, deliberately ignoring his sister.

‘I know every corridor and secret passageway inside this joint,’ Rat said. ‘But if I get caught messing around in Susie Regan’s office, she’ll have me paddled and locked in a sweatbox for a month. So you’d better have a
 
pretty
 
good reason.’

‘We’re not going back to the school,’ James said. ‘We’re escaping, there’s a car picking us up. You can come along if you help us.’

‘Are you serious?’ Rat gasped, breaking into a massive smile. But his tone quickly turned circumspect. ‘But … I mean, why do we need to go into Susie’s office first?’

‘We don’t exactly have a lot of time on our hands,’ James said, as he desperately tried thinking up a plausible lie to explain their actions to Rat. ‘If you start walking, I’ll start talking.’

*

Barry cut out the back door, across the dried-out lawn and began taking huge strides through the overgrown scrubland behind the neighbours’ gardens. Dana had to take a little leap every four or five steps to keep up.

‘Keep your eyes open,’ Barry said. ‘I’ve seen a few snakes back here since we moved in.’

Dana could have done without that particular piece of information. A big man with a loaded pistol was enough to worry about, without poisonous reptiles getting thrown in.

‘Are you squeamish?’ Barry asked.

‘Not really,’ Dana shrugged. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I got mugged in Hong Kong a couple of months back. Freakish thing: little scrap of a kid surprised me with a knuckleduster. But when I came around I’d been laid out in the recovery position and I was trussed up all neatly, like no kid ever would have done. I think the security services were on my tail and they used the mugging as an opportunity to search my room.’

Dana allowed herself a tiny smile. Barry – like hundreds of criminals before him – hadn’t even considered that it was the child mugger who’d been the intelligence agent.

‘I realised they’d put a tail on me when I arrived back in Brisbane a few days later. I thought I’d shaken them off, but it looks like I was wrong.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Dana asked, struggling to keep cool.

‘I grew up around here; an old school mucker works the radio at the local cop shop. I drop him a few bucks if he gets wind of anything suspicious around here. Late last night a routine patrol spotted a couple of guys sitting in a blue pick-up truck. Cops stopped and asked the dudes what they were up to. They pulled out ASIS IDs and told the cops to mind their own.’

Dana acted innocent. ‘What’s ASIS?’

‘Australian Secret Intelligence Service. It’s damned lucky she told me, ’cos this whole operation could have been blown out.’

Barry stopped walking and crouched down, craning his neck into the gap between two abandoned houses.

‘You see that red Holden?’

Dana peeked out at a bulky red saloon car parked on a driveway. The windows were blacked out, but the one on the passenger side was two-thirds open and she could see a man and a woman sitting inside. It was a clumsy position for a stake-out, but the Northern Territory wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity and Dana suspected that an operation on this scale would be using every available officer, experienced or otherwise.

Dana realised the two officers’ lives were in her hands. But what could she do? Barry was a powerfully built man who’d demonstrated advanced combat skills during his hotel room encounter with Bruce. He was in a high state of readiness, with the gun cocked and loaded in his hand.

Barry grabbed a Motorola out of his shorts and dialled the house. ‘Nina, I’m in position. Are you ready to move?’

‘All set to burn in fifteen,’ Nina confirmed. ‘We’re on our way out the door.’

Barry switched off the phone and handed it to Dana.

‘Take this, walk around to the driver’s side of the Holden and tap on the window. Try sounding upset. Your boyfriend just kicked you out of the house, your phone is dead and you want to borrow theirs to call a cab. That should be enough to distract them for the few seconds I need to get in close to their car. OK?’

‘Right,’ Dana said, unable to control her quaking voice. ‘Are you going to kill them?’

‘What else can I do?’

Dana tried thinking, but her brain felt like a cotton wool ball, clogged up by the sense of dread.

‘I can’t do this, Barry,’ she said, not having to put much effort into faking a sob.

‘There’s no time for games here,’ Barry said, his voice turning nasty as he pointed the gun at Dana’s chest. ‘You will do
 
exactly
what I tell you. If you mess this up, the first bullet I shoot will be going in your back. Now stand up and
 
move
.’

Barry shoved Dana forwards, almost sprawling her in the dirt. If it had been Nina, or even a less imposing man, she would have made a grab for the gun. But all she could do was walk dumbly between the houses towards the car. Everything seemed to go slowly. Each time her trainer crunched in the gravel and each swing of her arm took forever. Her skin felt boiling hot, as if she could already feel the bullet that would tear through her if she made a wrong move.

Please god, someone, anyone. Please get me out of this
.

Dana glanced into the derelict houses on either side, considering a dive inside. But the windows were boarded and the doors padlocked.

She broke out of shadows into the hot sun on the driveway and walked around the back of the car. Her brain raced as she crouched down and tapped on the passenger window. She could try giving them a warning, but Barry would kill her if he overheard.

As the passenger window whirred down, Dana briefly sighted the two agents, both looking her way. The woman was thin, wearing a lot of make-up. The man – more like a boy really – was in his early twenties, geeky with a spindly little neck.

You’re about to die
.

‘Listen …’ Dana said, then she paused for a fraction of a second, unable to decide whether to go into the spiel about her boyfriend or try saving their lives at the probable cost of her own.

But there was no time for a second word. Barry had timed his run well and already had the silenced pistol nosing through the gap in the driver’s side window. He fired into the woman’s chest at point blank range. The young man was startled and got a fraction of a second’s glance at Barry before his heart exploded.

There was less blood than you’d expect and the muffled sound reminded Dana of two cushions banging into one another during a pillow fight. Barry moved the muzzle upwards and Dana scrambled back from the car, shying away from the head shots she knew Barry would administer to finish the job.

As the bullets pulsed inside the car, Dana felt the most powerful emotional explosion of her life.

I just watched two people die
.

She thought she was going to throw up. Then everything started spinning. Raw panic: light-headed, barely knowing where she was, with purple and green flashes exploding in front of her eyes.

‘Shift it,’ Barry said, as he tugged her arm. The voice sounded like it was coming down a telephone line.

He yanked Dana forward and grabbed the handle of a silver car door. She hadn’t even noticed Nina pulling up a few seconds before.

‘Come on, hurry up.’

Dana trembled as the car door slammed and Nina hit the gas. She looked back at the red Holden, hoping – praying – that it hadn’t happened.

When she looked forwards, Barry was grinning at her between the front seats.

‘Sorry I got rough with you there, sweetheart, but we had to lose those dudes. You held up well.’

Dana gawped as she tried to recover. ‘Is this a different car to the one we were in earlier?’