squeamish?’ Barry asked.
‘Not really,’ Dana shrugged. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I got mugged in Hong Kong a couple of months back. Freakish thing: little scrap of a kid surprised me with a knuckleduster. But when I came around I’d been laid out in the recovery position and I was trussed up all neatly, like no kid ever would have done. I think the security services were on my tail and they used the mugging as an opportunity to search my room.’
Dana allowed herself a tiny smile. Barry – like hundreds of criminals before him – hadn’t even considered that it was the child mugger who’d been the intelligence agent.
‘I realised they’d put a tail on me when I arrived back in Brisbane a few days later. I thought I’d shaken them off, but it looks like I was wrong.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Dana asked, struggling to keep cool.
‘I grew up around here; an old school mucker works the radio at the local cop shop. I drop him a few bucks if he gets wind of anything suspicious around here. Late last night a routine patrol spotted a couple of guys sitting in a blue pick-up truck. Cops stopped and asked the dudes what they were up to. They pulled out ASIS IDs and told the cops to mind their own.’
Dana acted innocent. ‘What’s ASIS?’
‘Australian Secret Intelligence Service. It’s damned lucky she told me, ’cos this whole operation could have been blown out.’
Barry stopped walking and crouched down, craning his neck into the gap between two abandoned houses.
‘You see that red Holden?’
Dana peeked out at a bulky red saloon car parked on a driveway. The windows were blacked out, but the one on the passenger side was two-thirds open and she could see a man and a woman sitting inside. It was a clumsy position for a stake-out, but the Northern Territory wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity and Dana suspected that an operation on this scale would be using every available officer, experienced or otherwise.
Dana realised the two officers’ lives were in her hands. But what could she do? Barry was a powerfully built man who’d demonstrated advanced combat skills during his hotel room encounter with Bruce. He was in a high state of readiness, with the gun cocked and loaded in his hand.
Barry grabbed a Motorola out of his shorts and dialled the house. ‘Nina, I’m in position. Are you ready to move?’
‘All set to burn in fifteen,’ Nina confirmed. ‘We’re on our way out the door.’
Barry switched off the phone and handed it to Dana.
‘Take this, walk around to the driver’s side of the Holden and tap on the window. Try sounding upset. Your boyfriend just kicked you out of the house, your phone is dead and you want to borrow theirs to call a cab. That should be enough to distract them for the few seconds I need to get in close to their car. OK?’
‘Right,’ Dana said, unable to control her quaking voice. ‘Are you going to kill them?’
‘What else can I do?’
Dana tried thinking, but her brain felt like a cotton wool ball, clogged up by the sense of dread.
‘I can’t do this, Barry,’ she said, not having to put much effort into faking a sob.
‘There’s no time for games here,’ Barry said, his voice turning nasty as he pointed the gun at Dana’s chest. ‘You will do exactly what I tell you. If you mess this up, the first bullet I shoot will be going in your back. Now stand up and move.’
Barry shoved Dana forwards, almost sprawling her in the dirt. If it had been Nina, or even a less imposing man, she would have made a grab for the gun. But all she could do was walk dumbly between the houses towards the car. Everything seemed to go slowly. Each time her trainer crunched in the gravel and each swing of her arm took forever. Her skin felt boiling hot, as if she could already feel the bullet that would tear through her if she made a wrong move.
Please god, someone, anyone. Please get me out of this.
Dana glanced into the derelict houses on either side, considering a dive inside. But the windows were boarded and the doors padlocked.
She broke out of shadows into the hot sun on the driveway and walked around the back of the car. Her brain raced as she crouched down and tapped on the passenger window. She could try giving them a warning, but Barry would