Excerpts
BORDER WATCH
Chapter One
The gun coughed once in the still, humid night. Without even the breath of a cry, the young man dropped where he stood, his blood a darkening stain seeping into stark white sand that shimmered in the silver moonlight.
With an indifferent shrug, the big man next to him tucked his gun into the waistband of his cargo pants.
Too easy.
Too easy to kill, too easy to take another man’s life. Shouldn’t be, he shook his head, but it was. Always had been for him.
He grabbed the fallen man round the ankles, the leather gloves he wore at odds with the warmth of the night. Sweat soon seeped into his eyes, burning pinpricks that irritated him as he dragged the body along the water line, his bare feet leaving footprints to fill with the incoming tide.
Dark water swirled in deepening eddies round the deserted headland, tiny whirlpools sucking away the traces of the tide. That, he knew, was going to make it easier to hide his tracks. It took him another fifteen minutes before he was happy with the position of the body.
“Tide should get him easy,” he grunted with satisfaction. “Some-one else’s problem, some-one else’s nightmare.”
He wiped the trickles of perspiration off his forehead as he began the long walk back towards the streetlights. With catlike night vision he scanned the dunes and the foreshore. Melalucas, old before civilisation built houses at their gnarled and ropey feet, reached high towards the night sky and the glistening jewel of a moon. Stringy leaves hung still and limp. The trees tremendous girths could hide a small gathering but he sensed a quiet, almost resigned calm in them. No movement anywhere. Another tidy kill and another step closer to disappearing.
Twenty minutes later, he whistled a tuneless dirge as he dumped the gloves in a rubbish bin by the public barbeques. Bins would be emptied before the body surfaced again.
Without lights to illuminate them the playground equipment stood like silent sentinels, dark guardians of the deserted sand pit. He couldn’t resist the childish urge to sit on the swing. It was a simple joy, something he’d never known as a child. Something he indulged in as an adult, but only when no one was looking. It made him smile with unfamiliar delight, a hidden, forbidden pleasure.
In the gloom of the night, the swing flew higher and higher with each rhythmic push of his legs until he was almost horizontal, the metal brackets squeaking with each pass.
At the very peak, the chain grabbed, the swing jerked. The gun dropped out of his pants spinning away into the dirt and he swore, using his feet to break his speed.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself. Careless. He fingered the scratches on the snub-nosed weapon. Bloody barrel would be damaged as well now. The ammunition clip slid in and out easily enough but he had to get rid of it anyway, he supposed, it had a history.
His four-wheel drive was parked in the shadows and he fumbled a touch getting the key in the ignition. After the rush of adrenalin that always went with a kill, the lethargy of the long night slowed him down. A lot more to do still tonight before he could hit the sack, he reminded himself, forcing the fog of tiredness from his brain.
With his seatbelt fastened he drove along the esplanade at a sedate pace. No point in drawing any attention to himself or the vehicle. Bad enough he had to risk leaving the body unburied.
Still, now was not the time for a mutiny and the troops were getting restless. Death was a galvanising motivator – someone else’s death anyway.
The humidity wrapped warm wet tentacles round Morgan’s lungs, squeezing the air from them as she opened her front gate. The hiss of automatic sprinklers and the haunting call of a lone curlew were the only other sounds so early in the morning. She paused for a moment looking eastward to the early glimmer of sunrise low on the horizon. Dawn on a beautiful day in Trinity Beach, the start of another languid, hot summer.
‘Sam, Sam,’ she hissed over her neighbours’ fence, her voice pitched low. The scurrying of claws on tiles brought a quick grin to her face. Sam would be sliding as he rounded the corner, scrabbling for purchase on the floor and about now, he’d crash into the gate. The fence shook under the impact and a rapturous dog leapt at her as she eased
the battered gate open.
‘Morning to you too, big fella. Make enough noise or what?’ She scratched the floppy ears, her hands sinking into the red fur, the dog’s nose nudging her waist. ‘Come on.’ She gave him a final pat and straightened her shoulders as she jogged down the hill. Sam barely broke into a trot to keep pace with her.
A defensive curlew, its mottled brown feathers ruffled in outrage, flew at them wings spread wide, as they rounded the corner. Like a beautiful Egyptian hieroglyph the bird’s eyes were outlined in a sharp black border, elongating its already elegant head. Its hissing, spitting defiance made Morgan smile with admiration. The parent bird would have stashed its chick away from danger before it launched itself at the intruder. It stood its ground. Sam dismissed it with a sharp snort.
The sea breeze was still a couple of hundred meters off shore, a faint ripple scarring the surface. Sweat already dampened Morgan’s shirt, gluing it to her back. She waved at the caretaker out hosing the night’s rubbish away from the local snack bar, cleaning up before the breakfast crowd arrived.
‘Morning, Gus.’
‘Morning, luv. That dog’s hardly moving,’ he teased her. ‘You need to ride a
bike.’
‘Love you too.’ She wrinkled her nose at him and kept moving.
‘Wish you did,’ he called after her, his grin revealing several missing teeth.
‘Ha.’ Morgan tossed her head in mock disdain, her dark ponytail swinging clear of her shoulders as she pushed the pace up just enough to make the dog break into a jog, trot, jog, trot.
The barbeque cleaner was finishing his work down at the beachfront as Sam nosed over to check out the empty rubbish bins.