And it was hot! Just touching it was painful and he broke into a new sweat as the heat transferred from the blistering rock to his sweaty flesh. He was profoundly thankful that the bunched-up shirt in his right hand was protecting it from both heat and harm and he wondered if he should tear it in half to try to protect the left as well. But there was clearly no time.
Go! Don’t wait! Willy told himself.
Knowing he would both cook and be seen if he hesitated he went crawling up the rock like a huge spider, trying to keep his knees and elbows clear of the sharp point and ridges that he now saw made up almost every square centimetre of the surface.
Once he spiked himself so badly that he had to pause to let the pain ease. While he did he cast a fearful glance over his left shoulder but there was no sign of either man. The bushes and the small ridge of rock hid them. But the wreck of the Cessna and Mr Drew’s body were both clearly visible. Fearing to end up like Mr Drew and certain the men would just shoot him the moment they saw him Willy continued his painful scramble.
It was fifty metres up the slope and he was sobbing for breath and perspiring freely as he reached the crest. Heedless of scratches and torn clothes he dragged himself over at the lowest point (‘Keep off the skyline!’ his Air Cadet instructors had taught). Then he flopped down on the other side, gasping and trembling so badly he could barely move.
No shout had indicated that he had been seen but Willy knew he had to keep moving. After only a few seconds to gulp air and to steady his shaking muscles he transferred his shirt to his left hand and moved to a crouch. The heat had already made its way through his trousers to burn at his skin.
Keep moving, he told himself. But which way? Crouching just below the crest Willy paused to think and to study the lie of the land. What he saw both appalled and shocked him. The ridge he was on ran off in both direction like a monstrous dragon’s back, all sharp spikes and lumps, shimmering in the heat. To his left was another valley almost identical to the one he had just escaped from—savannah woodland and a shallow creek bed along the middle. Beyond it was an almost identical limestone ridge, all pocked with dark shades and blotches of green and visibly reflecting waves of heat. Beyond that ridge was another one looking liquid in the heat haze.
God! What an awful place! What a wilderness, Willy thought.
But he had made a decision. He knew that his friends and safety were off to his right front, back across on the other side of the wreck.
I will do the unexpected and go the other way, he thought.
At the back of his mind was the thought that when he could not be easily found the helicopter would be back and with it buzzing around he would be pinned down and much more likely to be spotted.
So he risked a peek around a clump of rock—spotted Zoltan nudging Mr Drew’s body with his boot—and ducked down instantly. The man’s callous action made Willy even more scared of Zoltan and sent him scampering down the far side of the ridge as quickly as he safely could. As he did he turned left and went west, angling down the rough rocks and dodging around any bushes. The afternoon heat radiating from the rocks was so intense he felt like he was being fried. His skin seemed to shrivel and he could feel burning pain every time he had to touch the rocks with his hands to steady himself.
Five minutes of painful scrambling, and two falls that left his knees skinned and an elbow bleeding, had Willy at the bottom. Each time he broke his fall using the bunched-up shirt that was gripped in his left hand. He thanked his foresight in taking it off. As soon as he was clear of the rocks and there was only grass Willy began to run. From time to time he cast a glance back to check if either of the men had climbed to the crest of the ridge. To try to stay in cover as long as possible he did not run directly across the valley but ran close beside the base of the ridge, heading back past where the Cessna had first come down.
But Willy was no athlete and within a couple of minutes he could not run any more. By then his breath was coming in rasping hot gasps and his heart was hammering so hard he was scared it would burst. There was the beginning of a painful stitch in his right side and his muscles all felt weak, quite unable to keep lifting legs that increasingly seemed to be made of lead.
Reluctantly Willy slowed to a gasping walk. Still casting fearful glances back, he hurried on close under the ridge. Fear of the men overcame any fear of snakes and he just strode through the long grass, only taking care not to trip on rocks, logs or anthills.
After another couple of minutes Willy began to entertain cautious hopes that he had made a clean break. He knew he was now at least three hundred metres from where he had crossed the ridge and he could no longer see that area. He slowed slightly but kept walking.
Now he was very aware that he was walking away from his friends, but he kept going in that direction because another idea had come to him. His boiling emotions were churning both his insides and his thoughts. By this time Willy was in such a state of shock and disbelief that he could only shake his head. But growing fast was a deep sense of grievance and outrage. Anger began to replace terror as the dominant emotion.
The murderous mongrels! I’ll show them, he told himself.
Chapter 6
ANGER
Willy stopped against the trunk of a large ironbark while he listened and studied the ground ahead. Sweat trickled into his eyes and his mouth and tongue felt dry. Every inch of his skin seemed to be burning and itching and darts of pain kept shooting through his left knee and right shoulder. Gingerly he tested both arms to check if anything was fractured. There was a throbbing pain when he moved his left shoulder and the right shoulder kept hurting but he was able to move both and decided they were only wrenched.
To his dismay and disgust he found that his skin seemed to be smeared with a mixture of sweat and blood. There was a trickle of blood still dribbling down from above his right eye but there did not feel to be any large cut, just the lump of a large bruise. Of more interest was where a bullet had winged his right upper arm. This had caused a long scorch mark crusted with dried blood. It still wept fluid and the occasional drop but had mostly stopped bleeding. Willy could only thank his lucky stars and wince.
Having recovered his breath, he resumed walking, scanning for any sign of enemies and alert for the first hint of the helicopter. Every fifty paces or so he halted under the cover of a large bush or tree and looked carefully in all directions. He was also very conscious of the baking heat reflecting from the bare limestone on his left.
Five minutes later, when he was sure he was more than half a kilometre from the crash site and out of sight of anyone on the ridge near it he stopped again for another check.
Time to put the next part of the plan into action, he told himself.
While he had been walking, Willy had been thinking hard. As the terror had receded to just a niggling fear, so his anger had grown. A determination to exact revenge had been melded by the white heat of his emotions into a determination to bring the men to justice and to hurt them in return.
“I will see if I can rescue that girl,” he muttered. “They won’t be expecting that.”
With that in mind he turned right and struck out across the floor of the valley towards the next ridge. As he did he kept glancing back over his right shoulder to check that he was not being observed from the area where he had crossed the first ridge. He also studied the ridge ahead of him. It was similar to the one he had crossed but like it was of uneven height. There were sharp knobs and jagged little peaks but also quite distinct dips. He aimed for the lowest of these to his left front.
Five minutes later he was at the base of that ridge. Close up it looked identical—sharp points and thousands small raised ridges of limestone with knife-like edges. Clumps of the tangled green bushes grew along the base and in clefts in the rock. The heat of the afternoon sun radiated from the bare rocks with physical force and Willy ran his tongue over lips that were starting to dry out and crack. Worse still he could feel the skin on his bare back and arms starting to burn.