No Man's Land

EPILOGUE

Darkness was fast approaching on a big Sunday out the back at the point of Lennox Head.

There was not a breath of wind. The water was smooth as glass and the dying sun was only minutes from slipping below the green hills running behind the town of Lennox.

Carter sat alone in the take-off zone, watching a swell roll in from the north-east, hoping to catch a final wave before the light disappeared altogether.

It’d be his last surf at Lennox for a few months at least. He was heading to Bali in the morning to train some new recruits for the order and, to his surprise, was looking forward to the challenge.

In the gathering gloom a familiar voice yelled out to him. “Hey, Carter!”

Carter turned to see Knowlsie pulling up next to him.

“Haven’t seen you around for yonks,” Knowlsie said. “You been on holidays?”

Carter paused a beat. “Something like that. What’ve you been up to?”

“Visiting the rellies in Perth. And I’m now in Year Ten. Man, it’s full-on.”

“You’ll be sweet.”

“Dunno about that.”

“Just do what you do in the surf. Charge every test. You’re a smart kid.”

A broad grin spread across Knowlsie’s face and his eyes dropped as if embarrassed.

“Hey,” he said, changing the subject, “one of my mates reckons he eyeballed you arm-in-arm with a hot-looking woman. Is that your new girlfriend or something?”

“Wouldn’t say that exactly.”

Erina had left the day before for Burma — there was trouble on the Thai border at the refugee camps — and he didn’t know when he’d see her next. He’d miss her, but their relationship was what it was.

Both needed to do what they needed to do. Their duty to the order came first.

Thanks to Callaghan the order had more autonomy now. And Thomas had undergone his own personal jihad, becoming far less autocratic and more willing to listen before making decisions.

He’d begun to trust the group’s intelligence, rather than dictating to it. That was, in part, due to Kemala’s softening influence. She and Thomas were now “officially” in a relationship.

Kemala was the first woman to be endorsed as head of the Sungkar clan and was in the process of reforming it, endeavoring to instill in all its members the profound spirituality at the heart of Islam — something many in the West could learn from, including Carter himself.

“Hey, Carter,” Knowlsie said, pointing out the back. “Big set coming.”

A snarling double overhead wall of water reared up fifty feet out to sea, promising to form a perfect arching barrel.

“It’s all yours, big guy,” Carter said, expecting it to be the last rideable wave of the day.

Knowlsie gave Carter a grateful nod, turned and started stroking hard for it.

The wave reared up. Carter took great pleasure in watching the kid leap to his feet, gun his board down the line and charge like he’d always told him to.

Carter turned back out to sea.

From nowhere another perfect wave rolled in from the deep, the biggest of the session. It rose up and towered triple overhead, the size of a small building, forming a steep wall of water.

He spun his board around, powered into the wave and sprung to his feet in one fluid motion.

The lip curled. His board raced across the near-vertical wall of smooth water. He dropped down the face and lined up the barrel peeling in front of him.

The board accelerated. He crouched even lower and charged forward.

A thick wall of water broke over his shoulder. He entered deep inside the holy vortex of the green room, covered by a cascading curtain of crystal liquid.

For some reason unknown to him, a reason that had nothing to do with Islam, Christianity or any other religion, he thought of Djoran and whispered, “Allah akbar.”