Life Goes On by Tayell, Frank (large ebook reader txt) 📗

Broken Hill upon which Mick had lavished his attention. It was an eleven-hundred-kilometre flight. At a speed of five hundred and seventy kilometres per hour, they’d be above their target in two hours. They’d have half an hour to find the place from above, and another half hour to find somewhere to land, unless they wanted to refuel locally.

She’d allocated, and prepared for, up to twenty-four hours to search the crook’s mansion. But if they found a security guard willing to trade information for a pardon, they could be back in Canberra for the start of Oswald Owen’s political showdown. She didn’t need to be there for that; Bruce Hawker’s soldiers would stop a coup. No one could stop a vote being called and O.O. being dethroned. But that was democracy, and what they were sweating to defend.

She turned her gaze to the window. She loved Australia from the air. Except for the giant mines, occasionally larger cities, and black-thread roads connecting each, it had barely been touched in two centuries of immigration. Mick completely, and vocally, disagreed, but that debate had kept them distracted on their way to many remote accidents and too many return flights to the morgue. Now, it was truly changing. Fast.

Grey plumes rose from the pastureland surrounding a sprawling farm. A controlled burn of undead corpses? Perhaps, but this was bushfire season. Puffs of cooking smoke rose from a fortified town outside of which sat a long column of stationary vehicles. Beyond the town, dust trails marked vehicles speeding north. Could it be Goulburn? Probably not, though that name had stuck in her brain from the route Mick had picked. Follow the main roads to the coast, and follow the coast north, that was how they’d find Brisbane. From there, turn west, overfly Ipswich, and then do a handbrake turn to find the mansion.

Whether or not that town was Goulburn, there were ghouls beneath the plane now. A slow-moving column, at least a hundred strong, lumbered between two low, grassy hills. Gravity kept them to the lowland, and so kept them together. One hundred wasn’t so many if they attacked a settlement guarded by rifle-carrying soldiers. If the defenders were civilian-refugees armed only with tools, it would be a massacre.

She pulled the shade down, closed her eyes, and tried to banish the thought with sleep.

She was roused from an inadequately shallow slumber by Bianca’s voice over the cabin-address system. “We’ve arrived. Our destination can be viewed on the left— sorry, the port side.”

“Can’t miss it,” Mick added.

“Did I sleep through Brisbane?” Tess asked, raising her blind.

“And the refugee camps,” Toppley said. “I’d say Brisbane jumped into a ute and moved in with Ipswich. The camps are extensive, but fortified.”

Below, now, lay grassland, occasionally sloping, occasionally sunken, and just as occasionally broken by a neatly ploughed rectangle. It was mostly grazing land, though she could see no livestock. A smattering of tracks led between a sprinkling of farmhouses, but the mansion stood out, ringed by a near-gleaming white wall. Inside, straight lines and ninety-degree angles marked the alternating raised and sunken lawns, now turned brown. The late summer heat had boiled the swimming pools green, but the house glistened white, like the outer wall.

Two storeys high, with a balcony at the rear, and a large driveway in the east leading to a solid gate. In the north was an extended rooftop terrace, while the southern side was dotted with solar panels. It was an odd feature for a house of Sir Malcolm’s, whose newspapers devoted more ink to astrology than climate science. Odd unless you were worried about a failure of the grid. Behind the house, and running to the compound’s rear wall, was a garage almost the length of a hangar, covered in wilting brown grass. Behind that, a jet-black road sliced through the pastureland, about ten kilometres in length.

“I’m going to set us down on that road,” Mick announced. “I’ll give her one low pass to check for obstacles, a sharp turn, then a quick landing, so buckle-up and hold onto your lunch.”

“What was the name of that mining company who were running the outback opal mine?” Toppley asked.

“Harris Global,” Tess said. “I just had the same thought. It looks like a runway, doesn’t it?”

“There are bodies by the house,” Clyde said. “Near the rear. By the garage.”

“It looks more like a plane hangar,” Toppley said.

It was a disconcertingly smooth and quiet landing, which spoke of how much money had gone into the surface. A fact confirmed by a visual inspection when Tess followed Clyde out of the plane. The roadside trees had been removed, and the pasture on either side had no drainage ditch.

“Clear,” Clyde said, letting his rifle drop to the low-ready with the barrel aimed at the road. “No movement from the compound.”

“No smoke, either,” Elaina said, as the rest of the team climbed out of the plane. “But I saw solar panels, so maybe that’s why.”

“This surface isn’t wide enough for a runway,” Mick said. “It’s just a road. But a good one. Too good for out here. A heavy tractor would churn it to shreds.”

“So why build it?” Zach asked.

Clyde whistled, and pointed away from the compound, across the gently rising pasture to where a figure lumbered out of the shadows of a slumping tuckeroo tree.

“Zom,” Zach said.

“Hold fire,” Clyde said, raising his rifle, a suppressed HK416 which had originally belonged to the RSAS, but which Bruce Hawker had given Tess in Broken Hill. She’d given it to Clyde, as he’d proved himself the best shot in their team, and swapped it for a shotgun, but hoped she’d need nothing more than the Taser counterbalancing the pistol on her other hip. Everyone else was similarly armed with what they’d scrounged, largely from the mercenaries who’d attempted the coup.

The bullet whispered from the suppressed assault