Leopard Dreaming (25 page)

‘You only need to stay here and keep your head down while I conduct a quick recon. I’ll make sure you get a quiet room with a shower and room service.’

‘I have no money for a hotel room. And there’s no way I could keep a meal down. Just leave me the bike and the key with a quick lesson on where to find the accelerator and brakes, and I’ll stay moving.’

He grabbed her hand instead and led her straight for the administration office. ‘No arguments, Mrs Smith. You need a holiday.’

‘Mrs?’ she complained and hung her head to trudge. ‘How about separate rooms for Smith and Jones?’

‘No arguments means no arguments.’

‘There,’ Moser said as they wove deeper into the maze of mangrove isles. Impossible to race at speed in such a narrow inlet, though foam amongst the spikes of air roots gave a fair indication they weren’t the first to pass by recently. ‘Power down, Syd. I see something ahead. Two o’clock.’

Flecks of white through the salty forest congealed into a police launch as they drew nearer.
Peacemaker III.
Reversed into a tight creek and overhung by vines and the forest canopy, the launch seemed to be in a perfect position for an ambush and quick getaway, but the cannon hung limply, facing the deck and leaking hydraulic fluids from a number of shots it had taken.

No movement aboard, but Moser signalled caution anyway. Drawing his Glock, and wishing he had Lockman’s slicker model and aim, he also shifted starboard and braced himself for another lead argument.

‘Easy, Clyde,’ Symes said as he idled nearer. ‘They’ve done shooting at us. Looks abandoned.’

‘Booby-trapped?’ Moser climbed aboard to search cautiously, while Symes hooked up a towline tail to nose with the taller vessel.

His boots crunched in a carpet of spent bullet casings. Far more issued than received through return fire. Not unexpected in an argument between machine guns and semi-automatics, yet the aggressors had taken far more damage. Blood greased three of the seats. Holes punctured all the toughened polycarbonate windows on the port side, turning their clear panes opaque with webs of impact patterns. And white foam caked the helm where an extinguisher had been used to douse flames from exposed wiring.

If the launch had been designed with outboard engines at the stern, instead of an inboard motor beneath the deck, Moser had no doubt that Lockman’s deadly aim could have disabled the
Peacemaker
completely. No sign of its original crew, aside from two service revolvers and a pink mobile phone with a police badge sticker.

Abandoned now, the
Peacemaker III
seemed almost spooky.

The phone buzzed and squirmed, as if vibration mode also muffled it like a hostage. Moser picked it up and found the screensaver rearranging the fan page for Dark Music as a slide puzzle.

‘Let me see that,’ Symes said as he came aboard. He took the phone, angled the touch-screen to the light and showed Moser the slide pattern for the unlock sequence that had been worn into the thin glass from the common habit of unlocking the smartphone without wiping the screen or washing fingers first. ‘Dirt and natural oils form a mild abrasive.’ He traced the slide sequence to no avail. Traced it again in the opposite direction and the phone lit up obediently on a response to the last message sent, along with the theme song for the SWAT movie and a message that greeted the owner as Officer Davies.

‘Cheeky bastards,’ Moser swore. He took back the phone and scrolled down the fan site, noticing a match between the user’s private icon of a spinnaker sail and one of the first posts on the page. ‘They posed as fans and reported seeing this boat racing off in the opposite direction.’

High-speed engines approached from both ends of the inlet.

Moser heard them first, pocketed the phone and wrenched Symes down behind the helm. The surrounding mangrove isles seemed to buffer sounds as effectively as a maze of thick cotton-ball walls,
and by the time he heard engines in the neighbouring channels, they could only reposition to minimise their vulnerability.

Boxed in.

Two jet skis slewed to a halt behind the
Ski Ya Later
, abruptly presenting two armed men.

‘Stand and identify!’ shouted the biggest of them. At the same time, they introduced themselves with the distinctive triangular muzzles of their Desert Eagles.

‘You first!’ Symes replied, keeping his cool. He also kept his aim steady, more or less, in time with the gentle rocking of the hull, but he also raised his head enough to reveal himself and show them his badge. ‘We’re here on official police business.’

‘Ah, Detectives! I’ll see your badges and raise you an army of dog tags.’ The big man grinned and holstered his weapon inside his chequered shirt, signalling his silent companion to follow suit. ‘I’m Senior Staff Sergeant Emmett Patterson. This is Sergeant Jo Pobody. You may not recognise us without all the padding and headgear, sirs, but we formed part of the security squad a few weeks ago when General Garland loaned you the services of Miss X.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Moser recognised his voice and stood up in full view, lowering his aim but keeping his Glock in hand. ‘You’re here suspiciously fast. So cut the crap and get to the shit.’

‘Affirmative. Consider yourselves flushed. We’re here to secure that vessel, pending a full military investigation.’

‘It’s a police boat,’ Moser argued.

‘And lucky for you, the two constables who were hijacked have been found, bound but unharmed, before they drowned. Davies and Peters. That still leaves the bad news. They never got a good look at the Asian mercenaries who posed as fishermen and faked distress
to lure them in the first place. And foreign insurgents on domestic soil means our military investigation takes precedence for national security purposes.’

‘That’s a lot of big words for a grunt,’ Moser said.

‘An interpreter can be arranged for you if required, Detective.’

Symes sighed heavily and holstered his sidearm. ‘We have reason to believe this vessel may have been involved in the disappearance of two civilians. So we’ll require copies of any and all forensic reports.’

‘We’ll pass on that request to the General. Or you can file a formal application through the proper channels. In the meantime, we’re authorised to ensure you step aside and provide any information you may have on the current whereabouts of Miss X and her primary bodyguard.’

Moser exchanged glances with Symes, and shrugged as if he knew nothing about her. ‘Hijacked too, were they?’

‘Bad luck, Sergeant. We haven’t seen her.’ Symes headed to the bow to detach the towline. ‘Wish we could help, but if we’re no longer required here, we’ve got a ski boat to return to its owner.’

‘Yeah, nice boat,’ Patterson said. ‘Word of warning. Make a beeline, and then stay off the bay for the rest of the day. Things are likely to get messy out there. And you do not wish to upset the general by intruding on her theatre of operations after you’ve been instructed to step away.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it. You want us to leave you the tow rope? Or did you come prepared?’

The look on their faces replied enough. As SAS, they were born prepared.

Moser climbed down into the
Ski Ya Later
, taking care not to lose anything out of his hip pocket. He waved to the two under-cover operatives while Symes reversed out between their jet skis, and kept his
mouth shut until a full nautical mile and at least seven mangrove isles lay between them.

‘You’ve got it?’ Symes asked.

Moser grinned, withdrew the pink phone and entered the pass code, already humming the SWAT movie theme. ‘Contacts are grouped as home, work and play. How much do you want to bet Officer Davies has family, who’ll want to lobby to find out where she’s being held by the general for questioning?’

‘Dial them up, Clyde. They didn’t say anything about questioning police or their next of kin.’

L
eft alone upstairs in the luxury spa resort, Mira rested her head against the apartment door, listening to Lockman’s footsteps retreating down the hall.

Part of her missed him already, the safety she felt around him, while a small voice of logic kept reminding her of the dog tags around his neck.

She tried to tell herself she didn’t care. She only needed to trust him enough to make it through this final mission with him, and since he had his own vested interests in catching and court-martialling Colonel Kitching, she felt confident that he wouldn’t leave her alone or vulnerable for long, or he’d lose that chance.

Yet how could she not care? He’d done so much for her already, and had such an intense field of energy about him, like positive magnetism to her negative. His hot to her cold. She sensed it so strongly she could feel the precise moment he left the building, as if the charge in the air itself had switched off.

Turning around, she tried to distract herself. Tried to relax. She also hoped the furniture would be in the same place today as yesterday, along with all the teabags and sample toiletries. Such a tidy, compact
little room, paid for in cash. His cash. Not many places to sit since the resort catered to patrons who came for either the bed or the great outdoors.

She glanced at the plump, perfect bed, but that failed to appeal. The yester-ghosts of a young dark-haired couple were already coupling on it. Adjusting her shades a little to avoid them didn’t help. The day before, an older couple shared time between the bed and the dining table, while the day before that, three fat bearded men played strip poker with a she-male prostitute.

Mira braced herself against the wall for balance, scrolling backwards and forwards a few times, trying to find a period when she had the room to herself, but her knack for finding trouble didn’t fail her. Every time she looked, she saw phantoms engaged in all manner of primal activities. Some only kissed or walked around naked in what they’d presumed to be privacy, while others went totally feral with their wild sexual antics. She saw the fat man from the car park tear the clothes off his two Asian girls the moment he had them through the door. A time before that, a long-haired woman rode a well-muscled man on the couch, while above her in real time Mira could hear the two male real estate agents getting busy on their floor.

Changing hues a dozen times more didn’t help either. She seemed only to hone her knack for homing in on the worst of human nature. Or else the only guests who rented such a room without an ocean view were predisposed to becoming beasts behind closed doors, as if the resort itself had a dark side. On the rug, she saw how many gay men it took to form a circle. In the kitchen, she saw three teenaged girls with a naked man, waxing his chest and apparently performing some kind of ritual, biting his neck and each taking turns licking his blood as it ran down his body. Willingly, he stood erect with his arms spread wide for
them as they writhed against him in the candlelight, and Mira nearly threw up when she saw one girl drop to her knees to make sure she didn’t miss any.

Every turn and every colour made her blush or feel ill — people of every shape, colour and sexual inclination on every flat or rounded surface in the room. The filthy underbelly to the ‘clean’ world laid itself open to her, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.

Pacing as she hugged the joey, Mira fed Pockets from the thermos, but it didn’t take long to see that virtually every square of the apartment had been used and re-used for carnal play — even the door against which she braced herself through the dizziness. She changed hues yet again, enduring the increasing pain and hoping to find herself in the quietest corner, but startled to find a ghostly old woman kissing her.

Mira leapt aside, horrified at the two old women locked together at the mouth while exploring each other’s wrinkles and crevices. Overlaid in time with Mira’s invisible body, they made her feel violated as an unwilling participant.

Scuttling to the last corner and switching hues again, despite the piercing level of pain, she saw the bedside alarm counting the minutes past 10 a.m. Normal checkout time every day. The room should have been empty then, at least, save for perhaps a maid, and yet when the young ghostly woman came in with her cleaning trolley, she was also leading the older concierge by his tie. The maid slammed the door behind him, withdrew a whip from her linen tray and ordered him to follow her to the bathroom on his knees.

Mira didn’t dare to watch them any longer either. Instead, she shrank down in the furthest corner, clamping her eyes shut and imagining herself alone.

In her happy place.

At Ben’s house, on his beachside patio, she remembered him drawing her into his arms, ever so tenderly, for their first and only kiss together. In her mind, she froze the scene at that moment, endlessly reliving it — interrupting it each time before they drew apart to avoid the terrible memory of him getting shot through the back when she’d first been captured by Colonel Kitching. However, the memory of Ben falling away from her kept coming back anyway, as if her life kept becoming its own flashback.

Tears bled from her eyes then as now, and the salty fluid distorted her dream — and then her vision as soon as she reopened her eyes. Pain shot to agony as the burning needles of normal light finally refracted enough for her to glimpse her own body. The joey wriggled and jumped, as if startled. Mira called out to her, just as true colours appeared briefly all around her. She saw Pockets hop behind the red floral sofa, but as she lunged to catch her, tears swelled even more from the pain and she saw through the next threshold; white light so intense it almost blinded her — until the air turned gold, and with it, everything as it would be inside the room at some time in the future.

Mira glanced at the clock and saw the time flick to noon, with two numbers blinking down over her body on the tiled floor. Time shifted again, slightly, and she saw herself stir on the bare floor. The ghostly golden door unlocked itself, and in came Lockman’s future phantom, carrying a small box of chocolates and a large carton of popcorn. Tears ran thicker, changing hues again too soon, and the pain pierced so hotly inside her head it burned her world black as she passed out.

Lockman stripped off his black t-shirt to mix better with the tourists, and watched the beachside hotel from the beach. So many sunbathers, but none interested
in him, except for a boisterous pair of young bikini blondes who whistled and waved at him.

‘Hey, nice tattoo!’ called the nearest. ‘Is that a dragon or a serpent?’

He passed them by with only a smile, and left the question still hanging. The dreamtime serpent that curled up from his waist and guarded his heart so ferociously was merely a private token of love from his great-grandmother, a northern Islander.

To his left, he noticed a young surfer toss his mobile phone onto a towel, then grab for his board and run for the surf, so Lockman seized the chance to call reception before the phone could lock.

He asked the concierge which room had been reserved for Mira, and returned the phone with a five dollar note. He didn’t bother wiping off his prints. If anyone traced the call, he wanted no chance that the innocent kid would be blamed for colluding with him.

Keeping to the bottom of a short sandy cliff where a dozer had been working to reclaim the dune after a storm, he scanned up the tallest hotel to the room where Colonel Kitching had instructed Mira to meet him. Using his binoculars like a camera, he took interest in all the best angles for scenery. For surveillance too as he switched modes and counted up floors to the fifth.

Too sunny at midday to bother with infrared mode. The heat and light created too much interference. Instead he switched straight to advanced “Peeping Tom” mode, which used a pulse of low-frequency radio waves, akin to sonar and sound waves for a mobile phone, to see through most solid objects.

Glass windows and thin walls became equally translucent.

No surprise to see a welcoming committee inside already. He counted three blurry human shapes in the room, and four more circulating the building in a pattern that looked like a regular patrol.

He still needed to get into the foyer to collect the room key, but as he made his way carefully around through the gardens he glanced across the road to the other resort where he’d left Mira, and spotted a fisherman near his bike in the car park.

Lockman could only see the guy from the back, but something about him seemed out of place. Not his baggy old clothes; just the way he filled them out. He had the muscular cut of a soldier with a cap and hair to match.

Lockman donned his shirt and circled around the garden, crossing the road further down and taking care to behave as casually as any other resort guest.

Uphill from his bike, he spotted a rusty old Landcruiser parked on the street. Only one amongst many, but the only one with black tape around the aerial to hide the thickness and shine that would otherwise give it away as the antenna for high-tech surveillance equipment. Rust on the rims had washed like water paints. Mud looked too evenly caked, and the windows looked pristinely clean in the shape of wiper blades — triangles of cleanliness that seemed too large to be made by the blades that were standard fit for that make of vehicle. All common mistakes when surveillance operatives needed to maximise their visual capabilities in too much of a hurry. It also resembled the vehicle he’d seen following them from the Drift Inn marina; the same vehicle that shot at him and Mira. However, the occupants didn’t look quite the same as Kitching’s rookies. These two appeared cleaner, freshly shaved, and more importantly, as he drew nearer Lockman realised he’d worked with these two soldiers before. Both sergeants from General Garland’s elite team of field specialists. Both had been present the night Mira first met the two detectives.

Sergeant Brette sat behind the wheel with his side window down and hand hooked out on the side mirror,
while the skinnier Lance Corporal Finnigan returned from tinkering with Lockman’s Blackbird.

Staying alert and inconspicuous, Lockman jumped a neighbouring fence and worked his way around to the far end of the Landcruiser, keeping his distance while he scanned further up the street to the corner where two more familiar faces sat in the lunch crowd of a busy cafeteria. General Garland herself, and her most trusted surveillance man. An airman who went by the appropriate code name Link Lasso.

Lockman had never known either of them to appear in public before, unlike Sergeant Brette and Lance Corporal Finnigan. It contradicted General Garland’s personal policy of keeping her senior team well clear of the area of operations, even on domestic soil during peace time.

Warily, Lockman leaned against a real estate van with his head down, taking greater care to be more thorough in his own surveillance — and noticed four other “tourists” up and down the street, who were conspicuous only by their attempts to hide fit bodies and crew cuts under big hats and baggy clothes.

Sliding over another fence in broad daylight, unnoticed, he worked his way around the block of shops until he could enter the café from the opposite direction. Then, using a smile as payment for a clean serviette and the silent loan of a pen from a pretty waitress, he scribbled a note and dropped it over the general’s shoulder onto her full plate of Caesar salad.

Quiet,
said the note. He wrapped his hand around her mouth and stooped to disguise his action with a quick kiss to her cheek. At the same time, he clapped a friendly hand on Airman Lasso’s shoulder, holding him down, while laughing, like a long lost friend and sliding into the chair between them.

Kitching can hear,
he warned them using sign language for the deaf, and the moment he did, the old couple at a neighbouring table lost interest in him.

What are you …?
Garland asked, clumsily, out of practice. She hadn’t needed to use that particular communication skill since she’d been a lieutenant herself, but she remained pedantic about correct grammar and spelling.
How on earth did you manage to slip past my surveillance team this time?

Blind luck. Stick to business. Kitching’s coming tonight. Or sending a team. Can you confirm anything?

Lockman glanced at her most trusted communications officer, who’d been recruited across from the air force, but Lasso only glared at him while jiggling the bag of his peppermint tea. Lockman couldn’t tell if he understood sign language or not, but it didn’t matter, so long as the airman didn’t try anything stupid, like signalling for the others to close in on him.

Do you want any chance of getting her cooperation back or not, General?

Of course, but we arrived only recently. I’m playing catch-up myself.

Lockman kept his eyes on her, using his peripheral vision to check her salad, barely touched, and noticed the lettuce was still crisp beneath the dressing, so she probably wasn’t lying about the timing too much.

Where’s Mira?
she asked.

Safe.
He avoided glancing towards the resort where he’d left her. Anyone else might have assumed the bike to be marker enough for Mira’s proximity, but parking the Blackbird near to where she’d really been stashed was such a rooky mistake that General Garland never would have expected it from him. Instead, they’d assume its location to be a decoy, and that he’d parked well away from her. Standard procedures required a distance of at least two city blocks.

Garland frowned — significant, since she rarely revealed her emotions any more than raising a brow.
Are you here to help, Mister Lockman, or shall I need to arrange a room for you at a civilian jail?

He rankled at the threat, but tried not to show it, since he still had his sisters and his own secret past identity to protect.

That depends. Did you find the Hilux? I left it as bait.

No trace of it aside from a few broken branches on the bank — both number plates discarded in the grass — and a pair of crushed sunglasses.
Her finger rapped once on the table, revealing her annoyance.
Interesting trick; taping the tracking device from her hues inside the hinge of your own shades. Clearly you picked up a few things working around special operatives, but that withdrawal from her account was my personal favourite. That’s one I’ll have to add to the training manual.