Finding Trust (Centre Games) (34 page)

“Yeah, the paperwork should be simpler that way.”

Rihanna was not surprised at her father’s desire for them to cover the same blocks again. If there was one thing Peter Mason hated, it was paperwork. Not that he was actually doing it this time. Quade was.

Turning her attention to Rory, she asked, “So what have you discovered this morning?”

“Not much,” he joked. “I have scored a few phone numbers though.”

Brayden walked back to the group at that moment. “Well, don’t even think of going there at the moment.”

Everyone stilled at Brayden’s tone. Whatever Tom had told him hadn’t been good. “One of the Chinese guys broke this morning. Don’t know what Tom did, and I thought it better not to ask. But what he did tell me is that it’s for real. This event is the target.”

A hush settled over the group like a black cloud. They all knew what it meant. The threat was real and it could happen at any time over the next few days. If the virus got released, not only could it annihilate a population of horses but it would certainly have the same effect on any person who came into contact with the virus as well. At an event like this, the exposure rate could be upwards of fifty thousand people.

Rihanna had had enough. “Why don’t we just close the event down?”

Brayden nodded his head, clearly agreeing with her thinking. “I already asked the boss that, and he said the call from up the line was to continue with the plan and flush them out. They believe that aborting the event now will only give them more time to prepare and potentially get better organised.”

Peter looked agitated and very uncomfortable. “Shit, how much further up the line is there than the Centre?”

“Not very fucking much,” Quade confirmed for him.

“Look, there’s no point arguing over whether or not we can cancel. The call has been made. Boss’s managed to wrangle permission to advise the key organisers of this event but that number totals two and they have no idea how to manage something like this. So that means we’re the frontline.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Obviously, the latest news was weighing heavy on him. “Boss has also brought up the SAS. They’ll covertly be moved into position, in case they’re needed.”

“Don’t suppose they happened to say how they intend to release the virus?” Rory asked half-heartedly, trying to make a joke of it.

Brayden turned to him, all business. “Ah, nooooo.”

Rory curled the side of his face up and nodded. “Didn’t figure we could be that lucky. So what’s our plan?”

“Still the same, just be even more vigilant. Keep your eyes open, people; it’s only a matter of when. Okay, if there’s nothing further, let’s get back to it.”

They packed up their lunch things and placed them under the tree. Someone would be back to take care of them later.

“Get whatever water and snacks you want out of the coolers now. Don’t take anything from them once they’re left unattended. If you need anything, radio Rheeba. Don’t get tempted to use the snack bar, just in case,” Brayden called to everyone as he adjusted his comms unit and started to do checks with the team.

Rihanna grabbed a couple of bottles of water, muesli bars, and a couple of pieces of fruit and put them into her backpack. Her focus had been on the horses. She hadn’t even really thought about how she could become infected through eating something that was contaminated with the virus. The place was a potential minefield. Essentially everything could become a possible means for contamination or release of the virus. Surely the terrorists would target the avenues for greatest exposure?

***

The afternoon was dragging on. So far, all the checks on the horses had shown nothing out of the ordinary. Brayden could literally see Rihanna begin to wane.

She was hot, tired, and anxious. They all were. The difference was he and his fellow Centre team members were genetically better prepared to deal with all those aspects. They could operate on next to no sleep for days if they had to. Heat didn’t affect them anywhere near as much. It was still uncomfortable but not completely energy-sapping like Rihanna was finding it.

They’d just finished their fourth block and had about another twenty horses to check before they’d be finished with this iteration of observations.

Rihanna moved to start on the next block when he pulled her back into the shade offered by the overhang of the roofline. He flipped a nearby bucket over and motioned for her to sit. “Take a break, baby. You’re suffering. The heat’s stifling this afternoon.”

He pulled a bottle of water and a banana out of her backpack and passed them to her. “Here, get this into you.”

She took the water but shook her head at the banana. “I’m not hungry.”

He pushed the banana at her once again. “Minky, eat the banana—you need the electrolytes. This heat is sapping you.”

She reluctantly took the fruit and peeled it. Brayden flipped another bucket and pulled out a banana and water for himself.

“I hate this waiting, Bray.”

“Yeah, me too, but there’s not much we can do about it.”

“I just wish we could…”

Brayden raised his hand, cutting her off. He was listening to something coming through the radio comms. “Okay, it’s probably nothing, but we’ll meet there.” He immediately got to his feet and slung the backpack over his shoulder.

Rihanna was lurched to her feet, ready to follow him.

He was striding back towards the entrance. “Rory’s found a block that’s had the waterers turned back on.”

They passed the blocks they had recently been working in and rounded the corner to find Rory bent over the main water flow cock on the edge of the building. The hissing sound of water being sprayed into the individual stable receptacles could be clearly heard.

Brayden immediately went to where Rory was bent over the exposed pipe and water cock. “Have you got it?”

“Nuh. Fuck, someone’s broken off the handle and the valve’s jammed in the open position.” There was nothing jovial in his tone at the moment.

Brayden pressed the concealed button on his shirt, activating the radio mic. “Heads up, we’ve got a scenario at A Block. Someone’s turned on the waterers and jammed the valve in the on position on the main line.”

“Get the horses out of the stalls immediately. We’ll head down there now.” Peter’s voice came through clear.

“Roger. We’ll start emptying stalls.”

He turned back to Rory. “Can you shut it off?”

“I don’t think so without some tools. And what’s the point? The water is already flowing.” Rory was right as per normal. He could stuff around with it for ages but the damage was done.

Brayden was on the move to the nearest stall. “You check the next block. I’ll start moving horses.”

Rory was already running towards the next block when he turned and called back. “Get the boss to check the line at the entry. If they’re using the water as the transport, then they have to be getting the virus in somehow.”

“On it,” he yelled as he activated the mic again. “Boss, need someone to check the main line feeding the waterers. See if anything’s been connected or if it’s been tampered with.”

He grabbed the lead rope and headed into the stall. The bay filly was nervous but cooperative. He rubbed his hand down her neck and tied her up on the outside of the stall. Where the hell was that fucking groom? He could be helping. More to the point, where was Rihanna? He’d lost contact with her.

“Rihanna,” he yelled as he moved to the next stall.

“Down here, Bray, moving horses,” she called back.

“Okay,” he yelled back, glancing over his shoulder and noticing she’d already got three out of their boxes and had them tied up outside.

He worked his way down until all the horses were out of this row of stalls. In between moving horses, he’d been updating and receiving information through the comms unit.

Brayden was moving to the row of stalls that butted up again directly behind the row he’d just emptied.

“Brayden, Dylan’s just confirmed that the line has been compromised. Virus is in the watering system.” The boss’s voice was clear through his earpiece.

Fuck, fuck, ten thousand fucks.

They had a disaster on their hands.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Where were all the fucking staff when you needed them? Rory cursed as he raced to get horses out of the stalls. The place seemed to be deserted of staff.

His earpiece came alive to the sound of Brayden’s voice. “Rory, start bringing horses down from C Block to the transport yard. We’re going to evacuate the horses to a quarantine property. We can’t manage this shit here.”

“Roger, Bray.”

The five of them had been moving horses non-stop for the last twenty minutes and they still hadn’t come close to getting them all out. What a cluster fuck.

How many horses did he dare lead down at once? He glanced up, judging the distance. About four hundred metres. One was sensible, two was risky, three was crazy, four was just plain fucking nuts. He chose four.

“Come on, babies, let’s go.” He kept his voice calm and sing-song as he started to walk them between the stable blocks to the yard. The steel of their shoes was bouncing off the bitumen and echoing between the buildings. Every fibre in his body was yelling at him to run, but he had to stay calm. The young horses were anxious enough as it was.

“Steady, fella, let’s not race. We can do this. We can do this. We can do this.” He continued to chant in his sing-song voice. Who was he trying to convince? The horses or himself? he wondered.

Right then a loud clap of thunder erupted from the sky. He immediately felt his left arm reefed one way and his right the other. A streak of lightning flicked through the angry-looking clouds.

Just what they needed: a Queensland late afternoon summer storm. Should have fuckin’ known. The day was just too hot. He’d be lucky to hold onto the four of them now. Fuck, now he knew what torture by galloping horses felt like.

Four wasn’t feeling like such a great plan now.

Rory felt the skin on his hands burn from the friction of the ropes. He couldn’t let go. God knows where they’d end up if they bolted. He could only hope they felt the resistance on the end of the leads and eventually settle.

“Steady boys and girls, steady, steady, steady,” he soothed, his voice not belying the pain.

They settled into a workable jig-jog and moved on.

Thunder and lightning erupted again. Again the horses hauled back on his arms. Again he gritted his teeth and hung on. What he wouldn’t give right about now to have a bit more equine and a little less canine DNA in his veins.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brayden leading four down the road at the opposite end of the blocks. The horses were all calm and wandering along like kids’ ponies. Huh, the frickin’ benefits of having strong equine DNA.

As they approached the transport area, he saw a couple of large horse transporters pull up in the loading area. Their drivers jumped out and lowered the tailgates to allow the horses to be loaded. Rory moved his merry band of excited horses to the nearest truck. He wasn’t looking to hold onto them any longer than necessary. One of Terry’s staff jogged over with a clipboard, noting the lot numbers of the horses he had.

The driver came up and motioned for him to pass over a horse. He gladly relinquished the big black gelding on the far right. That fucker was strong!

In less than two minutes, all four were loaded. The truck could take another dozen. He turned and raced back to the stables, not really caring who saw him. In all the chaos happening at the moment, nobody would notice his unnatural speed. It felt good to use it.

Against his better judgement, he grabbed another four horses. His hands were on fire already. Damage was already done. The storm was growing in intensity. The rain hadn’t started to fall but it wasn’t far away. His ears were ringing from the high-pitched screams of frightened horses and the constant chatter of his team on the radio comms. They didn’t really need the comms to communicate but they had to blend in and appear totally “normal.”

He cursed his canine dominance again. His hearing was super sensitive. At times like these, it felt as if his head would explode.

As he expected, the horses tried to bolt—terrified of all the activity. Once again, he hung on and delivered them safely to the waiting driver. The few minutes of hell seemed to be at least an hour. The driver raised the tailgate and was moving to leave.

Realising he was the only one of his team in the transport yard, he turned to head back for another bunch of horses. He’d gone no farther than a few paces when the pungent smell of fire wafted into his nostrils. Following the origin of the smell, he spun his head right. His heart leapt into his throat.

He took off at a dead run.

The transporter at the far-right end was engulfed in flames. The orange and red strokes flickered through the high windows of the forty-five foot trailer. Loose horses scuttled away in every direction; he ducked left to avoid being mowed down by a dapple grey. As he got closer, he realised what had happened.

The sawdust shovelled in on top of the rubber matting had somehow ignited. It was common practice to cover the floor of horse transports with sawdust for hygiene purposes and to reduce the stress on the horse’s legs.

But what had caused it to ignite in the first place? A definite question for later.

He moved to the rear of the trailer, as close as he dared. He peered inside; the intense heat from the burning rubber scorched his eyes and skin. Relief flooded through him when he was sure there were no more horses in the trailer.

There was nothing further he could do here. The fire was far enough away from the rest of the trucks to not pose an immediate issue. They had bigger problems to deal with than this right now. He turned to head back to the stables when he caught sight of movement at the front of the trailer, just behind the prime mover. The flicker in the corner of his eye propelled him to check.

He raced up along the side of the trailer; the blue and green paint job was rapidly peeling and blistering from the intense heat. Were his eyes deceiving him? A wave of long white blonde hair was flicked over the shoulder of a tiny woman. It didn’t immediately register what she was doing.

He looked a little closer and let his brain process what he saw.

She couldn’t be, could she? Oh fuck, she was. This crazy little pixie was trying to disconnect the trailer from the prime mover.

He reached for her and closed his hand around her bicep, yanking her away from the truck.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled at her above the horrific crackle of flames. She struggled hard against his grasp. Her strength and determination surprised him.

“Getting the bloody prime mover off the trailer.” Her blue eyes were blazing with the same intensity of the fire wreaking havoc through the trailer. She tugged once more and broke free and raced back under the trailer. He noticed then that she’d managed to release the turntable from the trailer and was struggling with the hoses for air brakes and electrics.

The fire was intensifying by the second. He reached for her again, yelling, “It’s not worth your life.”

She struggled madly again and he knew he’d either have to hurt her or let her go. “It’s not my life I’m worried about,” she cried, slipping from his hold again. “It’s my livelihood.”

He knew right then that the only way he was going to get her out of there short of knocking her unconscious was to help her get the prime mover off.

“Get back,” he screamed, pushing her away. He reached up for the hoses and ripped with far more strength than needed. The connectors released. The truck was free of the trailer. Little miss pixie didn’t need any further encouragement; she scrambled up the steps and slid into the seat that seemed far too big for her delicate frame. The engine roared to life and she shifted the beast into gear and gunned it forward.

He leapt back from the trailer to a safe distance. The prime mover was quickly picking up speed as she hauled ass out of the transport area. The whine of the turbos screamed over all the other noise as she redlined the engine before upshifting. He counted three upshifts before she hit the entry to the transport yard. Diesel plumes curled skyward from the twin exhaust stacks. She rounded the corner onto the road and the truck let out a long blast from the air horn. A tiny arm came out the window in acknowledgement.

For a split second, he held her gaze as he returned the wave. Who was the crazy pixie? And what the hell was that all about?

Wasn’t that just the damndest thing?

***

The place was descending into chaos. Rihanna was jogging back to the D Block to grab more horses to be loaded and moved out. Her father and Quade were trying to round up several loose horses. The rain was coming down by the bucket load. At least the thunder and lightning had moved on for now. Pools of water were already appearing all over the pavement. Horses were calling out, anxious whinnies of distress. To make matters worse, she only had a vague idea where Brayden was.

She’d caught a few glimpses of him as he moved horses beside her. But moving horses wasn’t really an activity conducive to couple togetherness. The horses kind of got in way of getting close. By her estimations, they still had at least another hundred horses to move.

The biggest problem was the sheer lack of manpower. Tom had made a call to remove all personnel from the site except those directly employed by the organisers. This meant any grooms of the vendors had been removed from the facility. Well, that’s what they’d attempted to do. The reality was slightly different. Horse people, being horse people, followed their own rules. In most cases, these rules didn’t align with those generally in authority positions.

Alpha team was tied up at the racetrack part of the facility. They were running checks and moving people from the venue. A crowd of about ten thousand had turned up for today’s race meet. The massive storm that had descended upon them had meant the last two races had to be cancelled. That meant no help from Alpha team. They had enough of their own headaches to deal with.

The crux of it was there were five of them trying to move more than two hundred horses out of a facility that had now been contaminated. Standard protocol would normally dictate that the horses stay in the infected area. However, this situation was different. They’d recognised the contamination early and had managed to isolate the blocks where the water had flowed to A,B,C,D, E, and F Blocks. The likelihood of the horses ingesting the water from the auto system was very low. Therefore, the safest course was to move them from the contamination as soon as possible. They’d done this by immediately getting them out of the stalls. Now they were getting them off the property. The facility would not be suitable for use until it could be thoroughly decontaminated, cleaned, and tested.

Rihanna grabbed another two horses and headed for the transport yard. She’d seen Brayden, Rory, and Quade take four. She had no idea how they managed it, but she knew beyond doubt that two was all she could safely manage. Even two had been very hairy when the thunder and lightning was crashing down.

“Rihanna, can you hear me?” Her radio comm crackled in her ear. It had been really clear up until a few minutes ago. She could only assume the rain was creating the static.

“Yes, Brayden,” she replied, using her chin to depress the button microphone.

“Whereabouts are you?” The concern in his voice was unmistakable.

“On the northern side of D Block, heading for the transport yard.”

“Is everything okay?” A little of the tension had evaporated from his voice.

“Apart from being saturated and dealing with oated to the eyeballs young stock, I’m just peachy.”

“Okay, I’m to the south of you working along E Block, almost at the trucks.” She could plainly hear the tension in Brayden’s voice even through the static. Moving all the horses was taking a long time and the conditions they’d been doing it in were terrible. Coupled with these horses being mere babies, the job just got ten times more difficult.

Rihanna really hated dealing with babies. These horses were all between eighteen months and two years old. Their bodies had matured quickly but their minds were nowhere near as advanced. Her dad normally took care of the young stock. He seemed to enjoy it. He was welcome to it.

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you at the trucks in a couple of minutes.”

“Okay.”

Rihanna finished her conversation and was focused on keeping her head down to keep the rain out of her eyes and moving steadily along the pavement leading to the transport yard. She knew she was running on adrenaline. She’d been ready to drop this afternoon before all the excitement started. Her body had already taken quite a few knocks from the boisterous babies she’d been leading down for the last hour or so. Thinking about how many trips remained wasn’t the smartest thing to do but her mind seemed to keep wandering there—her own form of personal torture.

The thoughts of the number of trips were quickly erased from her mind when the chestnut filly she led in her left hand lunged sideways into her. Rihanna felt herself falling, the body of the chestnut pushed into her side. The pavement seemed to rise up to meet her and intense pain engulfed the entire right side of her body. She caught a glimpse of hooves flying near her head before it all went foggy.

The next thing she recognised was being dragged to her feet and not gently either. Her brain still felt too fuzzy to focus but she knew without a doubt the person who held her was not anyone she knew.