‘They’ll have breezed in with no trouble,’ said Hijkoop. ‘That crate is big enough to cope with a bit of bad weather. You guys must get much worse in Alaska.’
Ben realized the scientists thought they’d come in on the Galaxy Starlifter. Of course, with their flying suits and the headsets around their necks, it was a reasonable assumption to make. Although they obviously couldn’t have looked at Kelly properly because she looked more like a teenage tourist than a military scientist. And people always assumed that Ben was older than thirteen, though he was sure he didn’t look old enough to be in the army just yet.
Hijkoop chuckled. ‘Alaskan winter to Australian summer. I bet that’s a shock. Did you bring us some ice? We haven’t managed to make snow yet but we’re working on it.’
Grishkevich stood up. He brushed imaginary dust off his trousers. ‘OK, show us what you’ve got for us. I hope it’s not Alaska’s cast-offs.’
Ben was wondering if they could sneak out quietly before they got into trouble, but Kelly was determined to put them right. ‘We didn’t fly here from Alaska. We’ve just come from Adelaide.’
Hijkoop and Grishkevich stopped what they were doing and looked at Ben and Kelly properly for the first time.
Ben saw their expressions change. Hijkoop reached behind his monitor screens and pulled out the plugs. The satellite weather pictures vanished.
Kelly drew herself up to her full height. ‘I’m a United States citizen and I need help. My father is an army officer and he’s been kidnapped in Adelaide.’
Grishkevich snatched up some files and clutched them to his chest protectively. He glared at Ben and Kelly. His entire manner had suddenly changed and he looked very angry. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘We got lost,’ said Ben. ‘There was some bad weather. We got blown off course.’
Hijkoop was on the phone. ‘Security, we need help. We’ve got intruders.’ He put the phone down and looked at Ben and Kelly. ‘That story isn’t going to wash. You don’t just wander into a high security base like this. Who are you really? How did you get in?’
‘We’ll have you in court for trespass,’ said Grishkevich. ‘They’ll lock you up and throw away the key. How many of you are here?’
‘It’s just us,’ said Ben.
Kelly looked offended. ‘I’ll have you know that my father—’
Suddenly an alarm wailed through the building.
Ben pulled at Kelly’s arm and quickly dragged her out of the room.
In the corridor, she pulled out of his grasp, looking outraged. ‘I can explain to them.’
Ben took her arm and hissed in her ear. ‘You can’t. Look.’ He opened the cargo pocket on his trousers a little way, just enough to show her the piece of paper in there. STOP SECRET US EXPERIMENTS. He still had the Oz Protectors flyer.
Kelly stared in disbelief. ‘You dummy. Why didn’t you throw that away before?’
‘Well, I didn’t think we’d be coming here.’
‘If they search you and find that, they’ll throw our asses in jail.’
Behind, they heard people running down the corridor. Voices rang out, barking orders: ‘Use reasonable force. Shoot to wound, not to kill.’
‘Screw that,’ yelled Kelly. ‘Run!’
Snoopy sat in the back of an army truck with a blanket around his shoulders. ‘Look at that, dude,’ he said to Dodge. ‘Awesome!’
They were watching the flames and smoke that spread from one edge of the skyline to the other. The whole of Adelaide was ablaze.
Dodge was coughing. ‘I got a bloody lungful of smoke, Snoop. Should come with a public health warning, eh?’ They laughed.
An army medic came over with water bottles for them both. ‘You’re going to feel weak because of the smoke inhalation,’ he said.
‘No kidding,’ said Dodge. He nodded towards the burning buildings. ‘Do they know how it got started?’
‘Some idiot lit a fire, probably,’ said the medic.
Snoopy tutted. ‘No consideration, some people.’ The medic looked at them with a frown. ‘You need
to keep your fluid intake up. Drink. Other than that, stay still. We’re going to be moving out in a few minutes, as soon as we’ve picked up a few more survivors.’
Dodge squirted some water over his tongue and grimaced. ‘Tell you what, mate,’ he said to the medic. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cold beer, would you?’
It wasn’t often that the desert base got unwelcome visitors, but it wasn’t completely unknown. Sometimes there would be suspicious noises in locked rooms, and the soldiers on guard duty would be sent to investigate. They had always traced the disturbance to possums or dingoes that had got in from the desert. They’d never had people breaking in before — the base was too remote. But now two youths had been spotted in the main lab and were haring out of the side door into the desert.
Three guards were sent to the lab. As they rounded the corner by the lab entrance they caught sight of the two intruders. A male and a female in flying overalls. As they raced out of the door, the bright afternoon sunlight turned them into silhouettes. They ran like the devil was chasing them, their feet kicking up clouds of red dust. The way people run when they know they’re in trouble.
Sergeant Kowalski and his two men pursued the pair a little way out into the scorching sunshine. They were racing towards the perimeter fence. The three soldiers stopped, steadied their AK-47s and fired a salvo of single rounds towards the perimeter fence. Plumes of dust rose as the bullets bit into the red sand.
The running figures changed direction abruptly like startled fish.
The sergeant spoke into a radio on his lapel. ‘Sergeant Macy, stand by, they’re heading your way. We’re following from behind.’
‘Roger,’ came the reply.
Even though the base did not have intruder alerts very often, they still had protocols in case it happened. Spies and saboteurs could do a lot of damage and had to be apprehended.
Sergeant Kowalski shipped his weapon back onto his shoulder, letting it hang casually on its sling. ‘Take it easy, boys, we don’t need to knock ourselves out. Look at ’em go. They won’t be able to keep that up for long in this heat.’
Ben and Kelly were still running like the wind. Now they were alongside the dome. They were easy to spot — two tiny figures against a gleaming white background. They raced around the dome’s curved perimeter until they were out of sight.
Kowalski spoke into his radio again. ‘Macy, I think we can take our time. Where are they going to go? It’s nothing but desert out there.’
About four hundred metres away, near the other entrance, Sergeant Macy’s men were jogging towards the dome, ready to take up the chase. Like greyhounds on a racetrack, in a moment they would come running out the other side.
None of the soldiers noticed the cloud of dust blowing up on the other side of the dome. They didn’t even take much notice of the noise — a tinny buzz like the engine of a lawnmower or a tiny boat.
But then a machine rose into the air above the dome. It was a spindly collection of struts like a First World War plane. Two figures sat in the tiny cockpit. The plane climbed, cleared the perimeter fence by a whisker and soared away into the blue sky.
The two GIs watched, speechless.
‘Aw, nuts,’ grunted Kowalski.
Chapter Nineteen
Bel had a searing headache. She trudged along past buildings that were blackened and dripping with water. They still smelled hot and the water was slowly turning to steam.
The whole street was blanketed in a thick smoky fog.
The road surface was soft under her feet like freshly baked cookies, and the metal rails of the tram tracks had expanded in the heat and burst out of the hilly tarmac.