‘Hold her still, Andy,’ said Darren.
Andy pinned her arms by her sides.
Darren extended his sooty fingers towards her face.
Wanasri realized what he was going to do. ‘No!’ she squealed and tried to squirm away. But with Andy’s bulk squashed against her there was nowhere to go. Darren, grinning, drew on her face with the sooty fingers.
As soon as Andy released her, she pulled down the flap of the sun visor and inspected the damage in the mirror. Darren had drawn tiger stripes across her forehead and cheeks.
‘I’ll get you back,’ growled Wanasri, secretly pleased she had been so clearly accepted by the crew.
Petra braked at a junction and looked both ways before easing the big engine through a ninety-degree turn. ‘Hey,’ she noted, ‘it’s getting kinda windy out there. Look at those trees.’
The other crew members had been so busy giving Wanasri her initiation stripes that they hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on outside. The tall eucalyptus trees along the road were waving hard, as though someone was shaking them. So were the aerials and satellite dishes on the roofs of the houses. Dustbins fell over and their contents were snatched away in a whirling storm.
Darren pointed along the road. ‘Hey, see that smoke over there?’
At the end of the road, a black plume of smoke rose into the sky. It was slanting at forty-five degrees, blown by the wind.
Instantly the mood in the truck turned serious. It was as though someone had flipped a switch. The crew were back on duty.
Petra put the siren on and pressed the accelerator to the floor.
Darren spoke into the radio. ‘Control, this is Engine Thirty-three. We’re going to investigate smoke on Oak Street. We might need back-up.’
The wheel jiggled from side to side in Petra’s hands. She fought to keep it straight. ‘That is some cross-wind. The truck’s steering like a supermarket trolley.’
Wanasri buckled her helmet back on.
When they reached Oak Street, Petra braked, skidding, and the truck pulled up beside a big corrugated-iron fence. They had barely come to a halt before Andy jumped out. He ran over to the gate and started to pull it open. Then he snatched his hand back with a yell.
‘It’s hot!’
Darren brought over the bolt cutters. He hooked them around the handle on the door and yanked the gate open.
Intense heat slammed into them like a wall. With the heat came a choking smell of burning rubber. They were in a scrap merchant’s yard. A mountain of tyres lay in one corner, heaped up against the iron fence, and they were on fire. The wind was fanning the flames, throwing black smoke and burning scraps of rubber into the air. That was why the blaze had looked small from a distance. The high wind was whipping the smoke away, diluting it. But that same wind was also carrying the burning scraps in a wide arc over the houses.
Petra screamed into her radio. ‘Need major back-up on Oak Street now! Code Red! Code Red!’
Chapter Eight
Ben thought he was doing pretty well. He was flying big loops and figures of eight and learning to ride the air currents over the hills and valleys of the vineyards. He was even wondering if Kelly might let him try a landing.
Suddenly the plane started going sideways. It felt as though a giant hand was pushing the fuselage.
Kelly was aware of it immediately. She looked up from the map on her lap. ‘Jeez, where did that wind come from? Give me control.’
‘You’ve got it.’ Ben was relieved to hand over to her. He tucked his feet under the seat, let her take the stick and sat back. He felt the pedals move up and down as she tried to compensate for the wind. The engine roared above his head as Kelly opened the throttle.
He relaxed. Flying was actually quite tiring. There was so much to think about. It felt good to let Kelly worry about it for a while.
His relief didn’t last for long. Despite everything Kelly was doing, the microlight was still drifting off course. He could see her tugging the stick from side to side, her knees going up and down as she worked the pedals furiously. He could see the cables that ran through the cockpit to the rudder sawing backwards and forwards. But they were having no effect. The engine was straining but it couldn’t push them forwards. The craft was being pitched sideways like a paper boat.
Sitting in a fragile bubble 1500 feet above the ground was a bad place to be when things started to go wrong. Ben expected any moment to feel a great bang and see a wing snap off and tumble past the cockpit.
Kelly managed to get the nose down, and they started losing altitude.
Ben noticed the altimeter. ‘Kelly, we’re at nine hundred feet.’
Kelly stuck her head out of the window but her voice still carried on in his headset. ‘I know. I’m going to land.’
Ben looked out of the window. They lost height very quickly. The rows of vines, which were visible only as stripes in the landscape at cruising altitude, enlarged into distinct hedges. Ben was convinced he could see the individual leaves. They were being ruffled in a strong wind. In between the hedgerows were wide avenues of bare red earth.
Kelly lined up on one of the avenues and pointed the nose towards the ground. She closed down the throttle. The engine noise lowered, like a singer humming down through a scale. Ben felt the plane lose airspeed. He could make out more details on the ground now. Wooden poles and netting holding up the vines. The herringbone marks where tractors had driven down the avenue.
The microlight seemed to hop sideways in the air. Kelly pumped her feet up and down on the pedals. Her voice came through on the headset, muttering through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t you dare …’ The nose lifted. Ben felt a bump. For a moment he thought what he had been dreading had happened; that something had snapped off. Then there was a bump at the front as well. That was the wheels touching down.
Above their heads, the engine stopped. Kelly squeezed the brake hard. Ben could feel the friction as the brakes bit into the wheels, and every jolt and rut in the track jarred him. It was like taking a sports car over a hundred speed bumps at full tilt. But he was very grateful to be back on the ground.
The plane slewed to a halt on the dusty track, its tail poking into a row of vines.
‘We’ll wait it out here,’ said Kelly. ‘We’re too small and light to make any headway in a wind like that.’ She secured the brake with the strip of Velcro, turned off all the systems and undid her seat belt.
Ben stepped out the other side, easing the stiffness in his limbs. The dusty ground felt rock hard under his feet, completely dried out after months of drought. Without the breeze they felt when flying, the heat was stifling. The flying suits stuck to their skin. The first thing he and Kelly did was unzip them and slip off the big doughnut headsets so they hung around their necks.
Ben unzipped a pocket in his trousers, took out a bottle of sun cream and smeared some on his face and arms. It felt gritty where the red dust had stuck to his skin.
Kelly couldn’t resist a mocking remark. ‘Gotta protect that lily-white English complexion, eh, Ben? Your mom’s got you well trained.’
Ben snapped the lid shut and held the bottle out. ‘Don’t you want some? George isn’t going to fancy you if you come back looking like a lobster.’
Kelly hooked a bottle of water out from behind her seat and drained it. She looked at the empty container with disappointment. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare water?’ she said hopefully.
Ben pointed to a sign at the end of the avenue of trees. It said: FORREST VALE VISITOR CENTRE, ONE KILOMETRE, with an arrow pointing to a path to the right. ‘I haven’t, but they’re bound to have some at the visitor centre. Will the plane be all right if we leave it?’