Headhunters

Chapter Seventeen

They drove east on the Barrier Highway for two hours until they reached the town of Wilcannia. The town was located where the Barrier Highway crossed the Darling River. The A32 bent to the south here. The terrain was arid, bordering on desert, although the landscape — studded with river red gum, yellow box and lignum — suggested that it was prone to flooding when the river was in full spate.

Milton looked out the window as they passed into the town. It was dark, and there were only a few streetlights, but the moon was bright and it cast enough illumination for him to see that it was a small place. There was a clutch of buildings centred around the junction of the highway, with a pub, café, post office and general store. The buildings were all painted in washed-out yellows, the colour bleached out of them by the fierceness of the sun. They passed a neat and tidy residence that announced itself as the council chambers of the Central Darling Shire, and then took a side street to the south.

They ran on, the ground undulating down as they reached the river. There was an abandoned building on the water’s edge. It was a large brick structure with a tin roof and looked as if it had, at some point several years earlier, been a warehouse. The name of the business had been painted across the top of the second storey, but the black paint had faded away into illegibility. A second painted message, more recent, warned that fire should be kept away.

The driver angled the car off the road and into the dusty space between the building and the river. There was a wide set of double doors and, at a quick toot of the horn, two men came around the corner of the building and opened them.

Four of them now? Their odds were getting worse.

The driver nudged the Nissan ahead of the doorway, put the shifter into reverse and backed up until the car was inside. The doors were closed almost all the way. The only illumination now was the silvery moonlight that filtered inside through the gaps and the glow of the instrumentation on the dashboard.

The two men who had opened the door had flashlights. They switched them on and Milton used the fresh illumination to glance around. It was an empty space, with exposed rafters above and a bare brick wall that showed evidence at regular intervals of brackets that would have supported some sort of industrial equipment. There was nothing else inside save for a white panel van that had been parked against the north wall.

Milton searched for any other means of egress. There was a mezzanine level at the rear of the structure, with an opened door just dimly visible beneath the half landing. The windows were all bricked up. The two men outside stayed next to the doors, and Milton could see that they each held handguns with their flashlights.

The man in the car with them opened his door, stepped out, and came around to the rear of the car on Milton’s side. With his Beretta held in his right hand and aimed through the glass at Milton’s head, he reached out with his left and opened the door.

“Out.”

Milton had hoped that the man might make a mistake, get in too close so that he could take his wrist and force the gun away, but he was too careful for that. He stayed back, out of range, covering him with the same steady aim as he got out of the Nissan. Matilda followed.

“This is a mistake,” Matilda said. “Whatever this is, you’ve got the wrong people.”

The man had his eye on Milton and didn’t respond.

Matilda’s temper overwhelmed her anxiety. “Talk to me!”

“Sit down, please, Miss Douglas.”

Milton registered that: they knew her name, too. He already knew that this wasn’t a random thing, but there was the confirmation. They had done their research. He filed that away with everything else.

Matilda did as she was told and Milton sat down next to her.

“Don’t worry,” he said quietly to her.

“No talking.”

“Stay calm. It’ll all be all right.”

The man came all the way up to Milton and pressed the gun right up close, in the centre of his forehead. Milton was thinking about that extra few pounds of pressure that he would need to exert to fire the first shot, the fractions of a second that that would buy him. The man was close enough now for Milton to gamble, jerk his head out of the way, sweep his arm up to try to knock the gun away. The man left the gun there for five seconds, long enough for the muzzle to leave a faint indentation on his skin, and Milton thought about taking action for every one of those seconds. He decided against it. He was confident that he would be able to disable the man with the gun, but there were three others now.

“I said be quiet,” the man repeated. “I meant it.”

Milton raised his hands in surrender and the man stepped back again. One of the men from the door walked over to him and the two conversed. They spoke quietly, and Milton was unable to eavesdrop. Instead, he looked over at the van. It was parked in a particularly dim part of the warehouse, but there was enough light from the flashlights for him to see that it bore the livery of UPS. He could guess why they had brought them here. They were going to be transferred from the Nissan to the van. It would be easier to transport them covertly in the van. It would have been more difficult to be discreet with them visible in the rear seats of the four-by-four. They had chosen to leave the van, collect them in the Nissan and then make the exchange here. If their abduction had been less smooth, and if a chase had been necessary, the powerful Nissan would have been a much better bet to catch Matty’s Jeep.

More planning. Milton was impressed.

It looked like the man with the gun was in charge of the two new arrivals, too. He said something, his tone assertive, and the other man went to the van, opened the hood and checked the engine.

The leader turned back to Milton and Matilda. “You want to use the bathroom, now’s the time,” he said. “We won’t be stopping again for several hours.”

“Where are we going?” Milton said.

The man smiled humourlessly and ignored the question. “Her first.”

Matilda got up and followed the man to the back of the room.

Milton was about to stand, but the man waved the gun as an indication that that would not be a good idea. He stayed where he was and watched them.

Matilda was five minutes. When she came back, the man asked whether Milton wanted to relieve himself.

“Yes,” he said.

The two newcomers followed Milton to the bathroom. He took a closer look at both of them as he made his way past them. One was around six feet tall, around the same height as Milton, with a head of curly black hair. He was handsome. The other was not; his hair was a messy thatch and his eyes black nuggets, mean and cold, sitting just a little too close together. They followed behind him, their weapons drawn. They had new Berettas, too, he saw. They all did.

The bathroom was a room with a bucket. There was a thin aperture in the wall, just below the line of the ceiling, and a little streetlight was admitted through it. The floorboards had been taken up and he had to step over the exposed joists. He could see from the discoloured earth in the corner that the bucket was just tipped out when it was full. There was enough waste there for him to guess that the men had been here for a few days. This appeared to have been a base for them.

Milton relieved himself into the bucket, zipped up his fly and turned back to them. There was no play for him. They had him covered, and Matilda was alone in the main room. Even if he had been able to disable these two, he wouldn’t have been able to leave without her. Any kind of move would put her in great danger. It was impossible. He dutifully led the way back to the van. The rear doors had been opened. He paused and felt one of the Berettas pushed into the small of his back.

He couldn’t see Matilda.

“Get inside.”

He was pushed, hard, between the shoulders and stumbled against the tailgate. Matilda was already in the back of the van. She had the bracelet of a set of cuffs around her left wrist. He pulled himself into the van and sat down on the floor next to her.

“Put the cuff on,” the man ordered.

Milton put the cold metal around his wrist and pressed it together until it locked with a click. “Done.”

“Show me.”

Milton shook his hand to demonstrate that the cuff was secure.

The man swung the door shut. The interior was swamped with darkness.

The chassis rumbled as the van’s engine started.

He heard Matilda give a little sob.

Milton reached out until his hand was atop her knee. He squeezed it. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. It’s fine to be scared. But if they were going to kill us, they would’ve done it here.”

“So what’s going on?”

There was nothing else for it but to be honest. “I don’t know.”