Free Fear Is the Rider by Kenneth Cook Page A

running.’ He turned the air-conditioning on. ‘We’ve got a few minutes. We’ll stay here and cool off. Have a drink.’ He reached over for the water container and they both drank, deeply and slowly this time.
    ‘Wait there,’ said Shaw. ‘I’m going up on the rock.’
    He left the car, carrying the shotgun, and easily clambered up the broken rock face on the side of the cleft. It was about ten metres high and from the top he could see back across the desert for what seemed an infinite distance.
    The Land Cruiser was there at the edge of the heat haze, a small speck at the head of the turbulence.
    Shaw could feel the heat beating up at him from the rock and down on him from the sun. Two hours it took to kill, the policeman had said; he could wait here for fifteen minutes.
    Katie was out of the car.
    ‘I’m coming up!’ she called.
    She was as well off with him as in the car, Shaw thought.
    ‘Soak something in water, some towels or shirts or something,’ he said. ‘We’ll need something over our heads.’
    ‘Have we got enough water?’
    ‘Plenty. Use that yellow tank in the back and fill the water container. Bring that with you.’
    Katie found two towels in the back of the Honda and soaked them in water. The drinking container was half empty and she filled it from the yellow tank, holding the two vessels awkwardly together and spilling water on the floor of the car.
    ‘Will I leave the motor running?’ she called.
    ‘No. Turn it off if you’re coming up.’ They would either have plenty of time to get away or no time at all. The motor might overheat if it were left running while the car wasn’t moving.
    It was an easy climb up the side of the rock and Katie was beside Shaw in moments. He took one of the towels from her and wrapped it around his head. She did the same. The top of the rock was irregular and they could lie down hidden from sight on the plain below. The rock surface was unbearably hot against the exposed parts of their legs.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ Katie was whispering. She didn’t know why.
    ‘It depends on what he does.’ Shaw found he was whispering too. Neither looked at the other. Both kept staring at the dark, rapidly growing blur ahead of the now clearly visible funnel of dust.
    ‘If by any chance he just goes past we’ll get back in the car and head for Yogabilla. He’ll think we’re ahead of him. If he stops and comes in here’—Shaw gestured down to the cleft where the Honda was almost hidden from the track—‘I’ll try to shoot him. Even if I just blast his tyre out, it’ll stop him.’
    The towels around their heads were almost dry. Shaw took the water container and poured water over Katie’s head and his own.
    The Land Cruiser was materialising rapidly. They could see outlines of the roll bars, and the bull bars, and the spotlight on the front of the radiator looking like a malevolent single eye even in the sunlight.
    ‘He’ll be here in a few minutes,’ said Katie.
    ‘Keep your head down.’ Shaw broke open the shotgun, took two cartridges from his shirt pocket and inserted them in the barrels. He closed the barrel and cocked both the hammers.
    ‘The trouble is, I don’t know how far away this thing is effective,’ he said. ‘Obviously close up it’s murder. If, by the grace of God, he comes close enough I’ll blow his head off…but…’
    ‘He can’t get us up here anyway,’ said Katie. ‘We can kill him if he tries to climb up after us.’
    Shaw felt the towel, again almost dry around his head. There was little need for anyone who wanted to kill to climb up after them. All he needed was to wait for the sun to do it. But with any luck it wouldn’t happen that way. He might go past. Or he might drive into the cleft and try to destroy the Honda. The Honda, glinting brightly silver through the caking dust that covered it, was not ten metres below them. Surely the shotgun would kill a man at that distance.
    The two of them lay there, tiny