Part 16 (1/2)

”No. They don't know where we are. They're just guessing. If we can make Motukokako, we can lose them.” He patted the control console. ”Come on, little submarine, you can do it.”

Tane didn't smile. He felt sick.

Motukokako rose suddenly out of the seabed before them. A huge rock wall in the lights of the Mobius. Mobius. The pinging was getting louder now. The pinging was getting louder now.

”Here we go,” he said, slowing the submarine down and crawling along the face of an underwater cliff. The currents were strong and volatile, throwing the small craft from side to side, but Fatboy kept the Mobius Mobius as steady as he could. as steady as he could.

Another cliff rose on the starboard side, and Tane realized that they were in the ”hole,” the short pa.s.sageway that cut right through the rock of the island.

When the rock walls disappeared, Fatboy steered to the port side and held the craft steady in one spot, using the motor to adjust for the currents that threatened to drive them back into the cliff. The pinging grew in intensity, but Fatboy shook his head at Tane's querying look.

”We are behind the island. They can't 'see' us here. But better get that periscope up and let me know when they come around the point.”

Tane raised the buoy and tried to look around. It was difficult in the swelling waves, even with the gimbals that kept the camera steady.

The moonlight illuminated the edge of the island and sea beyond, but the water kept spinning the buoy around, and he had to constantly maneuver it.

The pinging surrounded them by the time Tane caught the first glimpse of the bow of the frigate, a dark silhouette against the moonlight.

”There she is!”

Fatboy was already turning the submarine, and rock surrounded them again for a moment as they ducked back through the hole in the rock.

Tane aimed his camera at the edge of the island just in time to see the stern of the frigate disappear behind it.

”What now?” he asked.

”Wait,” Fatboy replied.

Less than thirty minutes later, the s.h.i.+p returned, but they were through the hole to the other side of the island long before it would have been able to ping them.

”It's like playing hide-and-seek,” Fatboy laughed.

It sort of was, but Tane still felt sick.

They stayed in the shadow of Motukokako for another hour as the pinging receded into the distance. Only then did they start the journey back to Auckland.

Tane spent most of the trip sitting on the floor by Rebecca's bed, watching her. She woke up at one point, looked at him, and said, ”Nothing makes any sense.” But most of the way she slept. She vomited once or twice and he cleaned that up and rea.s.sured her gently that she was okay.

She had held her breath for him.

BAMBI Gazza Henderson poured the remains of his dinner onto the last embers of his fire with a hiss and a small puff of steam. of his dinner onto the last embers of his fire with a hiss and a small puff of steam.

The dregs of his coffee went the same way, but there was barely enough heat left in the fire to raise a sizzle.

Technically, the campfire was illegal here deep in the bush at this time of year, but rules like that were for hikers and tourists. He had been hunting in the forests of Northland for more than twenty years and felt as at home in the bush as he did in his own living room. He certainly knew how to put out a campfire properly.

He heaped earth on top of the fire's remains and stamped on that carefully, making sure there was no chance of residual warmth flaring up again later and causing a forest fire. He had no wish to do that. It would be like burning down his own house.

Bambi's cold dead eyes stared up at him from beside his pack. Bambi wasn't a fawn, like in the movie. It wasn't even a doe. He was a buck, a h.o.a.ry old stag, but Gazza always called the deer he shot ”Bambi.” It was a kind of twisted joke that had started when he used to go hunting with his mate Trevor in their teens.

This Bambi was a beauty. His antlers were worth at least two hundred on the Douglas points scoring system. Plus he had the Kaipara split in the antlers, which traced his ancestry directly back to the original fallow deer released in New Zealand in 1864.

The Kaipara split wasn't worth any extra points, but it was certainly worth a few pints in the clubrooms when he got back. Besides, he was sure that Bambi would take out the New Zealand record this year.

”Won't you, old boy,” he said out loud. Bambi just stared at him coldly.

The sun was setting through the tall straight trunks of the kauri of the forest, and a light haze was rising as the day cooled. It softened the shadows of the trees, already elongated by the low angle of the sun, and gave the forest a quite otherworldly feeling.

Gazza debated with the dead stag for a while whether to de-head him and leave the body in the bush. He was a trophy hunter, a sportsman, he told all his mates, not a butcher, and the whole stag was a lot of weight to lug all the way back to Russell.

As he watched, the haze thickened into a light mist, swelling up around the tree ferns and rata vines. It seemed a bit unusual for this time of day. Mists were common in the early mornings, and many times he had awoken to find himself in a whitened-out world. But not usually in the evening when the land was still warm.

In fact, he couldn't ever remember a mist through the forest at sunset like this.

The tall kauri made ghostly spires as the delicate tendrils of the fog-for it really was turning into a fog-wrapped their way around trunks and through the fanned-out leaves of the pungas. Already those trees, more than twenty or thirty meters away, were dissolving into the mist, leaving a wall of white behind the trees closer to him.

There was a vague movement in the mist, more of a stirring than anything else.

”Anybody there?” he called out. He didn't expect there to be, but the alternatives were a deer or a Captain Cooker, one of the ferocious wild boars with razor-sharp tusks that populated the Northland forests.

He reached for his rifle but left the safety on. Hunting was a dangerous enough sport in the full light of day. But in the twilight, in a fog, it could be a death sentence. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot some innocent tramper, or another hunter, thinking it was a deer or a Cooker.

But at the same time, he didn't want to leave himself defenseless in case a wild boar did suddenly materialize out of the mist and charge toward his little campsite.

There were more movements then, more stirrings in the mist, around and in between the trees.

”Anybody there?” he called out again curiously, but not nervously.

The mist was thickening all the time, and he could see barely a few meters now. He had a strong sense that someone or something something was out there. He slid a round into the chamber of his rifle and flicked off the safety. was out there. He slid a round into the chamber of his rifle and flicked off the safety.

”I am a hunter,” he called out. This time there was a slight nervous catch in his voice. ”I have a rifle. Please identify yourself.”

There was no reply, and all around him now, he had the sensation that the woods, the mist, were alive. Indefinable shapes swirled around him in the fog, ghosts amongst the trees.

A short while later, two rifle shots echoed through the tall kauri of the forest.